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Mary as a New Eve in the Thought of St Paul
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Although the theme of Mary as a new or second Eve is first explicitly found in the writings of Justin Martyr, there is an antecedent probability that it is of apostolic origin and familiar to St Paul. I argue that this theme helps to interpret several passages in the Pauline corpus that have remained without adequate explanation. The first and principal passage discussed is 1 Cor. 11:11-12, where the phrase ‘the man by the woman’ is put in parallel with the original formation of the woman ‘from the man’. Once it is thus accepted that St Paul understood the Virgin Mary through this typological lens, three others passages are seen to yield a more coherent and richer sense: ‘made of a woman’ in Gal. 4:4; ‘saved through child-bearing’ in 1 Tim. 2:14-15; and ‘each in his own “tagma”’ in 1 Cor. 15:23.
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References
1 Newman, J. H., A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on Occasion of His Eirenicon (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1900), p. 31Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., 140-41: ‘St. Justin, St. Irenæus, Tertullian, are witnesses of an Apostolical tradition, because in three distinct parts of the world they enunciate one and the same definite doctrine. And it is remarkable that they witness just for those three seats of Catholic teaching, where the truth in this matter was likely to be especially lodged. St. Justin speaks for Jerusalem, the see of St. James; St. Irenæus for Ephesus, the dwelling-place, the place of burial, of St. John; and Tertullian, who made a long residence at Rome, for the city of St. Peter and St. Paul’. A similar opinion was expressed in the 20th century by the patrologist Joseph Lebon (1879-1957); see Lebon, J., ‘New Eve’, in Theotokos: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary, ed. O'Carroll, Michael (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1982), p. 140Google Scholar. Georges Jouassard (1895-1981) inclined to the same opinion; G. Jouassard, La Nouvelle Eve chez les Pères Anténicéens, Bulletin de la Société Française d’Études Mariales 12 (1954), pp. 35-54. On the other hand, Luigi Gambero writes that ‘Justin was probably the first author to use the Eve-Mary parallel’; The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2019; originally published in 1999), p. 46Google Scholar.
3 See, for example, Pitre, Brant, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary (New York: Image, 2018), pp. 24-33Google Scholar. Thus, in Genesis 3:15 a prophecy is made to the serpent in the presence of Eve that he will bruise, or ‘lie in wait for’ (Vulgate), ‘the seed of the woman’; Apoc. 12:1-4 speaks of ‘a woman’ whose offspring, a Messianic figure, is a target for the dragon, identified as ‘the old serpent’ (12:9). Again, the temporal indications in Jn. 1-2 suggest that the evangelist is presenting the beginning of Jesus's ministry as the first week of a new creation, which, like the first week of the old creation in Gen. 1-2, concludes with a wedding: only Jesus and Mary are named at this wedding, and Mary, who is addressed only as ‘woman’ (Jn. 2:4), invites Jesus to perform his first sign, somewhat as the ‘woman’ of Gen. 3 invites Adam to commit his first sin.
4 All biblical quotations are taken from the English Revised Version, unless otherwise stated.
5 For example, the allegory of Sarah and Haggai in Gal. 4:21 ff, and of Jacob and Esau in Rom. 9.
6 He also puts Adam and Christ in parallel in Rom. 5:14-19.
7 See Duff, Frank, The Woman of Genesis (Dublin: Praedicanda, 1976), pp. 249-51Google Scholar. While the phrase itself ‘second Adam’ does not appear in St Paul, it is a legitimate conflation of two phrases from 1 Corinthians 15.
8 Fitzmeyer, for example, writes: ‘In this and the following parenthetical verse, Paul is arguing from the order in the second creation account (Gen 2:7)’; Fitzmeyer, Joseph A., First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible, general editors Albright, William Foxwell and Freedman, David Noel, vol. 32 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 415-16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Likewise, Collins remarks: ‘Paul continues his explanation […] with a reference to the story of the creation of the prototypical woman that describes her as being made of the rib of the man (Gen 2:21-23)’; Collins, Raymond F., First Corinthians, Pagina, Sacra, general editor Harrington, Daniel J. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999), p. 410Google Scholar. Barrett comments on verse 7, ‘Paul now follows not Gen i. 26, but Gen. ii. 18-23, as the next two verses show’; Barrett, C. K., The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Black's New Testament Commentaries: general editor, Henry Chadwick (London: A & C Black, 1971), p. 252Google Scholar. Some authors also see a reference to the creation of Eve in 1 Cor. 11:3, ‘the head of the woman is the man’, understanding ‘head’ (kephalē) here as ‘source’; see the discussion in Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians, pp. 410-11.
9 Homily 26 on 1 Corinthians; PG 61:218.
10 The variant reading is found in D2, K and L: see Thiselton, Anthony C., The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Testament Commentary, general editors Marshall, Howard and Hagner, Donald A. (Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 2000), p. 841Google Scholar. Thiselton notes that ‘all the early major MSS’ have the reading followed here, which is also that given by the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, 4th edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993)Google Scholar (henceforth: UBSGNT). Again, some translators have proposed rendering xoris as ‘different from’ rather than ‘without’, but this is also unimportant for our purposes; in the context, if man and woman are said not to differ from each other, this would be because each resembles the other in depending on the other, and it is this mutual dependence which interests us.
11 E.g. Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation…, p. 420: ‘The first clause (ek tou andros) alludes again to the creation of woman in Gen 2:21–23, mentioned in v. 8b’.
12 No alternative interpretation is to be found in Bray, Gerald (ed.) 1-2 Corinthians, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, general editor, Oden, Thomas C. (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999)Google Scholar. Cornelius à Lapide (1567-1637), whose knowledge of the Catholic exegetical tradition was unsurpassed, has this simple commentary on the verse: ‘Just as the first woman, Eve, was formed from a man, so man is conceived, formed, born and propagated by a woman’; Commentaria in scripturam sacram (Paris: Vivès, 1891), vol. 18, p. 356Google Scholar. St Augustine quotes the verse in De Continentia 24 as a proof against the Manichees that both sexes are from God.
13 Héring, Jean, La Première Epître de Saint Paul aux Corinthiens, Commentaire du Nouveau Testament VII (Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1959), p. 96Google Scholar.
14 Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 255.
15 Collins, First Corinthians, p. 413.
16 Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation…, p. 420.
17 Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians…, p. 800.
18 ‘“In the Lord” (en Kyriō) is an important Pauline formula, occurring some forty-four times in his letters. Its range of usage runs the gamut from a connotation approximating that of the adjective “Christian” to one that points to an almost [sic] mystical union between a believer and Christ’; Collins, First Corinthians, p. 412.
19 Commentaria in scripturam sacram, vol. 18, p. 356.
20 Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 255.
21 Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians…, p. 842.
22 La Première Epître de Saint Paul aux Corinthiens, p. 96.
23 Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation…, p. 420.
24 Evidently, my argument assumes that St Paul was aware of the virgin birth: apart from any other considerations, it would be strange if the companion of St Luke were not. What of the objection that he nowhere speaks of it plainly? There are two plausible explanations for this: first, his letters are not a systematic account of Christian revelation but a series of ad hoc responses to problems in the nascent Christian churches (had there been no liturgical problems in Corinth, we should have had no proof that he was aware of the Eucharist); second, it is likely that particular discretion was observed in speaking to converted pagans about the virginity of Mary, in case they were tempted to assimilate her to the virgin goddesses of their former beliefs. For a classic statement of the theory of such a ‘discipline of the secret’ in regard to the Blessed Virgin, see Montfort, Louis de, True Devotion to Mary, tr. Faber, F. (London: Catholic Way Publishing, 2013), p. 28Google Scholar.
25 Here I use the literal, Douai translation, not the ERV, which reads: ‘But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law’. The reason for this is obvious from the discussion.
26 Matera, Frank J., Galatians, Pagina, Sacra, general editor Harrington, Daniel J. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007), p. 150Google Scholar.
27 The Vulgate reflects this in translating the phrase factus ex muliere, ‘made from a woman’. Although patristic authors sometimes write gennomenon in quoting the verse, the variant does not appear in the critical apparatus of the UBSGNT; see Brown, Raymond Edward, Donfried, Karl P., Fitzmeyer, Joseph A., and Reumann, John, Mary in the New Testament (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1978), p. 42, n. 71Google Scholar.
28 McHugh, J., The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975), p. 274Google Scholar.
29 Brown et al. put forward all these passages as parallels; Mary in the New Testament, pp. 42-43. Craig Keener puts forward the passages from the Septuagint version of Job; Keener, Craig S., Galatians: A New Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019)Google Scholar, in loc.
30 Brown et al., who assert that there is no evidence that St Paul knew of the virginity of Mary, seize on this point; Mary in the New Testament, p. 37.
31 It is also worth noting that the mention of Eve in 1 Tim. 2, which I shall argue below has a typological force, begins with a reference to her formation from Adam (1 Tim. 2:13).
32 The use in Gal. 6:15 of the phrase ‘new creation’ (kainē ktisis), to describe the world into which one enters by faith in Christ also evokes this typology: Christ is the centre of the new creation, as Adam was of the old (cf. Gen. 1:28).
33 It is however doubtful that Catholic exegetes are free to join them: the Council of Trent, in defining the canon of the New Testament, expressly refers to ‘the fourteen epistles of Paul the apostle’; Council of Trent, 4th session, Decree on the Canonical Scriptures (DH 1504). This conciliar definition does not speak of epistles ‘that are said to be from Paul’, but of epistles that are from him (even though this was doubtless not the point primarily intended); and Catholics are bound to accept conciliar definitions according to the sense that they had when defined; cf. Vatican I, Dei Filius, ‘On Faith and Reason’, canon 3: ‘If anyone says that it can happen that in accordance with the growth of knowledge, a sense may be given to the dogmas proposed by the Church different from the sense in which the Church has understood and does understand them, let him be anathema’ (DH 3043).
34 De Trinitate, Bk. XII.7.11.
35 Commentary on the 1st Epistle to Timothy, cap. 2, lect. 3. An analogy for this interpretation may perhaps be found in Romans 4:11, where Abraham is said to have become the father of all that believe di’ akrobystias, literally ‘through foreskin’, i.e. while still in an uncircumcised state.
36 Marshall, I. Howard, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, International Critical Commentary (London & New York: T. & T. Clark, 1999), p. 468Google Scholar
37 Lapide, Cornelius à, Commentaria in scripturam sacram (Paris: Vivès, 1891), vol. 19, p. 206Google Scholar. For some other ancient interpretations, see Twomey, Jay, The Pastoral Epistles through the Centuries, Blackwell Bible Commentaries, general editors Sawyer, John, Rowland, Christopher, Kovacs, Judith, and Gunn, David M. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), p. 47Google Scholar.
38 For a summary of the different approaches, see I. Howard Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary…, pp. 467-71.
39 , C. K. Barrett, The Pastoral Epistles (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), p. 57Google Scholar.
40 , J. L. Houlden, The Pastoral Epistles (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 72Google Scholar.
41 Hanson, A. T., The Pastoral Epistles, The New Century Bible Commentary, general editors Clements, Ronald E. and Black, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), p. 74Google Scholar. Hanson also claims that the Greek will hardly allow this interpretation, but he does not say why he thinks so.
42 I. Howard Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary …, p. 469.
43 Kelly, J. N. D., The Pastoral Epistles, Black's New Testament Commentaries: general editor, Henry Chadwick (London: A & C Black, 1963), p. 69Google Scholar.
44 Dibelius, Martin and Conzelmann, Hans, The Pastoral Epistles, tr. Buttalph, Philip and Yarbro, Adela (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), p. 48Google Scholar. Fiore does not refer to it at all; Fiore, Benjamin, The Pastoral Epistles, Pagina, Sacra general editor Harrington, Daniel J. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007)Google Scholar.
45 Barrett, p. 57.
46 Houlden, p. 72.
47 Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary …, p. 471.
48 Kelly mentions this suggestion without endorsing it; The Pastoral Epistles, p. 69. Fiore also mentions it, The Pastoral Epistles, p. 71.
49 Hanson, p. 74.
50 The Pastoral Epistles, p. 48.
51 Marshall denies this, asserting that verses 13 and 14 form a ‘parenthesis’. But the exegete ought not to multiply parentheses without necessity; cf. I. Howard Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary …, p. 467.
52 The former theme is present in St Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, bk. 5, ch.19.1: ‘If the former did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the virgin Mary might become the patroness of the virgin Eve’. The latter theme is found in St Augustine's On Christian Combat, 22.24: ‘Since death came to us through a woman, life was born for us through a woman, so that the devil might be appalled to be defeated by each nature, both the masculine and the feminine’. Naturally enough, the two themes are not always clearly distinct. For more references and a theological discussion, see Scheeben, Matthias Mariology, tr. Geukers, T. (n.p.: Ex Fontibus, 2015)Google Scholar, especially pp. 200-8.
53 ‘With a woman sin had a beginning, and because of her we all die’ (Sirach 25:24, New American Bible).
54 It may be said that they can exercise a spiritual maternity: this is a profound idea, but it takes us further away from St Paul's words than does my interpretation of them.
55 Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary …, pp. 468 and 469. The author says ‘connotes’ and not ‘denotes’, but he appears to mean the latter.
56 ‘Cause of salvation’: the phrase is used by St Irenaeus in Against the Heresies, bk. 3, ch. 22.4. For further theological discussion, see Nichols, Aidan, There is no Rose: the Mariology of the Catholic Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), pp. 69-71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 This figure of speech would be especially appropriate here, if we suppose that St Paul is presenting this child-bearing as a model for Christian women, who will, as a matter of fact, for the most part work out their salvation by fidelity to the duties of the married state. We need not hold that there is no reference to ordinary child-bearing in this verse, which is, on any reading, a dense one.
58 Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 354.
59 Bauer, W., Gingrich, F., Danker, F., A Greek Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 802-3Google Scholar. The supplement to Liddell and Scott also includes the meanings of ‘staff’ (of an official) and ‘club’ (at Sardis); Liddell, Henry and Scott, Robert, A Greek-English Lexicon with a revised supplement, 9th edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), supplement, p. 290Google Scholar.
60 1 Cor. 14:40. Someone might object that the Shepherd of Hermas seems to use tagma in a more abstract sense, in a phrase quoted by Bauer et al. ‘“Summon,” he said, “the men to whom belong the branches that were planted, according to the order in which (kata to tagma hōs) each one gave them in”’ (Shepherd of Hermas part 3, 8th parable, chapter 4.2). But here again it is a question of several groups; all the men in a given group gave their branches at the same time. A more literal translation would be ‘according to the group in which each one gave them in’.
61 Héring, La Première Epître de Saint Paul aux Corinthiens, p. 140; Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 355
62 The theory was proposed by Hans Lietzmann (1875-1942). It was discussed and rejected by Héring, La Première Epître…, p. 139 and more recently by Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians…, p. 572 and Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1232.
63 Cf. Lev. 23: 10-11, 15-16. The Septuagint uses the same word, aparchē (first-fruits), as St Paul uses of Christ in verses 20 and 23. For a discussion of this image, see Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, pp. 1223-25.
64 While authors discuss the possible fine shades of meaning conveyed by the preposition en (‘in’) in this phrase, they take it for granted – and so do not generally bother to state - that it denotes a relation to the person Jesus Christ in, so to speak, his entirety, including his historical identity, rather than to the ‘pre-existent Son’ simply as such. See, however, Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians, p. 164: ‘To be “in Christ (Jesus)” is a Pauline way of expressing the essential Christian mode of existence […] because it is a mode of explaining the effects of the Christ-event’. For a grammatical discussion, see A.J.M. Wedderburn, ‘Some Observations on Paul's Use of the Phrases “in Christ” and “With Christ”’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 25 (1985), pp. 83-97Google Scholar.
65 Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 351. Italics in original.
66 The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 1225, internal quotation from , F. F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Corinthians (London: Oliphants, 1971), p. 145Google Scholar.
67 Cf. Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians, p. 570.
68 Rad, Gerhard von, Genesis (London: SCM Press, 1972), p. 70Google Scholar; Westermann, Claus, Genesis (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), p. 41Google Scholar.
69 Some of the older commentators noted this. Cornelius à Lapide wrote: ‘Therefore Eve is also Adam; that is, man [homo]. God gave one name to both, so that spouses might know themselves to be as it were one person [hominem] in two bodies’; Commentaria in scripturam sacram, vol. 1, p. 125.
70 From this point of view, it is significant that he does not refer to either of these Adams as anēr (‘male human being’) but as anthrōpos (human being), both in 1 Cor. 15:21 and in 1 Cor. 15:47. The Septuagint version of Gen. 1:27 states that God created anthrōpos male and female.
71 cogs13125
72 First Corinthians: A New Translation…, p. 477.