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The Sanctity and Glory of the Mother of God: Orthodox Approaches

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The Sanctity and Glory of the Mother of God: Orthodox Approaches 79 THE SANCTITY AND GLORY OF THE MOTHER OF GOD: ORTHODOX APPROACHES By KALLISTOS OF DIOKLEIA OVE AND VENERATION for the Virgin, the russian theologian Fr Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944), states: is the soul of orthodox piety, its heart, that which warms and L animates its entire body. A faith in Christ which does not include the virgin birth and the veneration of his Mother is another faith, another Christianity, from that of the Orthodox Church. His words are typical, and they indicate the unique place held in orthodox devotion by her whom we like to describe in our prayers as 'the joy of all creation'. How has this living heart of our piety, the life-giving source of our hope and joy, been understood in orthodox thinking, greek and russian, during the past sixty years? Scarcely ever in the history of Eastern Christendom has the Blessed Virgin Mary been the subject of controversy. There is in the East nothing comparable to the elaborate discussions in the medieval West about the Immaculate Conception, or to the catholic-protestant debate from the sixteenth century onwards about the whole position of the Virgin in christian theology and devotion. The main eastern controversy involving our Lady -- the fifth-century conflict between Nestorius and St Cyril of Alexandria over the title Theotokos -- was concerned not so much with the person of Mary as with the doctrine of the Incarnation. The name of the Holy Virgin is constantly on our lips, her face is always before us in the holy icons, she is everywhere present like the air we breathe ~ to use the analogy of Gerard Manley Hopkins- she is honoured, revered, loved, but not the subject of critical analysis. We have no developed' mariology' ; indeed, the very word, suggesting as it does an autonomous and systematically organized body of doctrine, has about it a non-orthodox flavour. In the uncontroversial milieu of the orthodox East, then, there has not been the same stimulus as in the West to seek for new approaches and 80 MARY IN CHRISTIAN TRADITION fresh formulations. Lex orandi, lex credendi: our understanding of Mary is for the most part to be found, not in formal definitions or in manuals of theology, but in the worshipping life of the people of God. Our attitude is traditional, doxological, intuitive. None the less, in recent orthodox thinking about the Mother of God certain master-themes are evident, and three of them in particular call for mention: the link between mariology and christ- ology; the Mother of God as icon of the Holy Spirit; the value of the Blessed Virgin's human freedom. In connection with each of these three themes, there are points of convergence between the orthodox approach and the teaching of Pope Paul VI in his Apostolic Exhorta- tion Marialis cultus (2 February 1974). Having considered these themes, in the second half of this paper we shall look at twentieth-century orthodox views on the sanctity and final glory of the Blessed Virgin. How has Orthodoxy reacted to the roman catholic definitions of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the bodily Assumption (1950)? Mariology and christology For the orthodox tradition there are in the end only two marian titles which the Church has endorsed with full" dogmatic authorityi Theotokos, 'God-bearer', and Aeiparthenos, 'Ever virgin'. The first of these was adopted by the third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, A.D. 431), the second by the fifth (Constantinople II, A.D. 553). Of the two, the first title is indubitably the more important: as St John of Damascus affirms, in words quoted by almost every recent orthodox writer on the subject, 'The name Theotokos expresses the whole mystery of God's saving dispensation'. 2 For, although the second title, Aeiparthenos, is used in conciliar acts from 553 onwards, as well as in the liturgical texts, and although the Orthodox Church believes firmly that Mary had no other children apart from Jesus, yet the councils attach no specific doctrinal significance to the term. The designation Theotokos, on the other hand, has a precise and basic theological content. It is the safeguard and touchstone of the true faith in the Incarnation, emphasizing as it does that the child whom Mary bore was not a 'mere' man, not a human person, but the divine person of the only-begotten Son of God, 'one of the Holy Trinity', yet genuinely incarnate. In the words of Fr Georges Florovsky (1893-1979), 'The name Theotokos is an inevitable sequel to the name Theanthropos, the God-man. Both stand and fall together. The doctrine of the hypostatic union implies and demands the conception of the divine motherhood'. 3 SANGTITY AND GLORY OF THE MOTHER OF GOD 81 Today, then, as in the past, Orthodoxy sees Mary first and foremost as Theotokos, Mother of God. And, as Florovsky's words indicate, this is a title that points at once to Mary's relationship with her Son. It speaks not so much about the person of Mary as about the person of Christ; and so, drawing out the implications of the title, recent orthodox writers insist constantly that mariology is but an aspect of christology. 'The Church never separates Mother and Son', says Bulgakov2 Significantly the two are shown together in one of the two chief icofis that dominate the orthodox church building as a whole, that immediately to the left of the holy doors in the icon-screen: This is an icon, not just of our Lady, but of the Incarnation. 'Mariology', writes Paul Evdokimov (1901-70), 'is a chapter of christology, a chapter without which christology itself would be incomplete'.S And Florovsky insists: The person of the Blessed Virgin can b e properly understood and rightly described only in a christological setting and context. Mariology is to be but a chapter in the treatise on the Incarnation, never to be extended into an independent treatise. Not, of course, an optional or occasional chapter, not an appendix. It belongs to the very body of doctrine. The mystery of the Incarnation includes the Mother of the Incarnate. This was said some fourteen years before Vatican II. Florovsky adds that, if the Mother of God has a place also in ecclesiology, this is precisely for christological reasons: 'Again, there must be a mariological chapter in the treatise on the Church. But the doctrine of the Church itself is but an "extended christology", the doctrine of the "total Christ", totus Christus, caput et corpus'.6 The christological character of all our devotion to Mary is likewise one of Pope Paul's dominant concerns in Marialis cultus. 'In the Virgin Mary', he says, 'everything is relative to Christ and dependent upon him .... Genuine christian piety has never failed to highlight the indissoluble link and essential relationship of the Virgin to the Divine Saviour'; we are to reject at all costs 'any tendency . to separate devotion to the Blessed Virgin from its necessary point of reference m Christ,.7 Here an Orthodox can do nothing but applaud, for such exactly is the way in which we under- stand the title Theotokos. Icon of the Paraclete A second theme that has fired the imagination of modern orthodox thinkers is the link between the Holy Spirit and the Virgin, between 82 MARY IN CHRISTIAN TRADITION him whom we call Panagion and her whom we call Panagia. It is a theme developed in particular by Paul Evdokimov. The Spirit, he says, points always to Christ (cfJohn 16,13-14), and so in consequence the third person of the Trinity is in some measure hidden, anonymous, elusive: for he speaks to us, not about himself, but about another. The Son is the image of the Father, and the Spirit is the image of the Son, but the Spirit himself has no image within the Holy Trinity. In the virginal motherhood of the Theotokos, however, there is given to us a true and living icon of the Paraclete. 8 To understand better what the Holy Spirit means, let us look at Mary. As Evdokimov says in the last paragraph that he ever wrote, a few hours before his death, 'The Holy Spirit has no place of incarnation, but he possesses in Mary the unique and altogether distinctive temple of his presence'. 9 Prior to Evdokimov, Bulgakov had also suggested a similar approach. In the Virgin, so he urges, is brought to highest fulfilment that which the Paraclete is seeking to effect in every one of us: 'The Holy Spirit is not incarnated in a man but manifests himself in humanity. The Virgin Mary, 'the handmaid of the Lord', is a personality transparent to the action of the Holy Spirit'. 10 Can this line of thought be carried a step further? Is there perhaps a special connection between the feminine character of the Mother of God, and feminine symbolism sometimes applied to the Holy Spirit, above all in syriac-speaking authors and in certain greek texts influenced by the syriac tradition? H The syriac Didascalia apostolorum (third century), for example, refers to the deacon as an image of Christ and to the deaconess as an image of the Holy Spirit, ~2 while the homilies of St Macarius (fourth-fifth century) speak of 'the true, heavenly Father, the good, kind Mother, the grace of the Spirit; and the sweet and longed-for Brother, the Lord'. 13 Scripture itself envisages the Spirit as a mother-bird, peristera, 'dove' in the feminine (Mt 3,16; Mk 1,10; Lk 3,22; Jn 1,32). Now it is of course true that in himself God is beyond all dualities and all opposites, and therefore he is beyond the masculine and the feminine.
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