The New Eve
“I, your servant, have never eaten at the table of Haman, nor
have I graced the banquet of
the
king or drunk the wine of libations. From the day I was brought here till now,
your
servant has had no joy except in you,
Lord, God of Abraham. O God, whose power is over
all, hear the voice of those in despair. Save us from the power
of the wicked, and deliver me
from
my fear.”
Esther 4, (C) 28-30 (NAB)
“And Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word.”
Luke 1, 38
The Catholic doctrine of
the Blessed Virgin Mary as the new Eve – the spiritual “mother of all the
living” – appears to have been universally accepted among the faithful by the
second century as part of the Apostolic Tradition of the Church. This teaching
certainly wasn’t just a theological opinion held by a few early religious
thinkers, seeing that the Church Fathers Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, in their
bearing witness to the faith, referred to Mary as Eve’s anti-type in their
apologetic works against the claims of non-believers, Jews, and Gnostics
respectively. The Patristic Fathers of the first millennium consistently taught
and elaborated on what was handed down to them from the apostles as part of the
deposit of faith concerning our Blessed Mother’s essential role in the divine
order of redemption.
The idea of Mary being the new Eve, the free woman whom God promised from the beginning, would, by her faith, undo what Eve had unfaithfully wrought by heeding the words of the serpent, most likely arose from reflecting on Paul’s teaching of Jesus being the second Adam (1 Cor 15:20-23, 25). The early Church Fathers apparently placed the
apostle’s words in the context of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, the promise
of redemption, and the final victory over Satan, which included his humiliating
defeat by the faith and charity of an immaculate woman. They believed that the
Incarnation could only have resulted from Mary’s free consent to be the mother
of the Lord and Savior. With her moral participation hanging in the balance,
the Devil’s dominion over souls on earth might now finally be destroyed with
the coming of the divine Messiah through his chosen mother’s obedient act of
faith (Gen 3:15).
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The infant Church mostly
consisted of Hebrew converts to the Christian faith who were well versed in the
Pentateuch, and so, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they must have
perceived a connection between the forbidden fruit that Eve presented to Adam
(Gen 1:6-8) and the fruit which Mary had brought to mankind from her blessed
womb (Lk 1:42). The difference was that Eve’s offering resulted in mankind’s
alienation from God and subjection to death, both physical and spiritual. In contrast, Mary’s offering reconciled the world to God and gave hope of eternal
life with Him.
We know from sacred
Scripture that Eve was meant to be Adam’s “helpmate” (Gen 2:18), but she failed him miserably. What she proposed to her husband led to his fall from grace and, consequently, the fall of humanity (Gen 3:6, 8-13). Mary, on the other hand, collaborated with God as his helpmate in the
redemption of mankind (Lk. 1:42). The Lord’s handmaid received the word of the
angel Gabriel with “faith and joy”, unlike Eve who fell prey to the deception
of the fallen angel. Mary had no joy except in God, while Eve sought joy in the
vain allurements of this world, a weakness of hers that the Devil exploited.
The serpent saw how appealing the forbidden fruit was to Eve’s eye.
Thus, by her “faith working
through love” (Gal 5:5-6), Mary had an active, causative role in
mankind’s redemption. Being in a state of grace and always willing to please
God, she could mediate the coming of the Redeemer into the world. Only the
fruit of her womb could obtain the grace of justification and forgiveness for
mankind and regenerate human souls unto life with God in the Spirit by his just
merits, but not without Mary’s free consent to be the mother of our Lord and
Savior, which God willed with necessity.
Mary’s role in the economy of salvation wasn’t merely physical nor completely passive by any means. Our Blessed Lady wasn’t chosen by God simply to serve as a physiological means to an end with no regard for her human dignity and having been created in the divine likeness (Gen 1:27). Surely, God’s sovereign omnipotence couldn’t negate His goodness and righteousness. The eternal Divine Word could just as easily have become man and be as human as we are by being formed out of the clay of the earth as Adam had been (Gen 2:7), but instead, He chose to be “made of a woman” (Gal 4:4).
The truth is that God had
something more important in mind for Mary other than being a natural mother
when He fashioned her soul and sanctified it upon her conception, preserving
her free from every stain of sin (Lk 1:28). Our heavenly Father willed with the
necessity that Mary’s motherhood should be moral in nature; she was predestined
to be intimately associated with the Son in His redemptive work. Her
collaboration with God in His grace was necessary since Eve had freely
disobeyed God to fall from His grace. Eve’s transgression had to be blotted out most perfectly: through reciprocation. The incarnation wouldn’t
have occurred by default without the Virgin Mary’s salutary free consent to be
the mother of our Lord and Savior – the unblemished Lamb of God. In the words
of Melito de Sardis from his Easter Homily (A.D. 170): “He was born of Mary the
fair ewe.”
The coming hope of the
world’s salvation rested on our Blessed Lady’s obedient act of faith in charity
and grace. This was only fitting, in keeping with God’s goodness and
righteousness, since Eve contributed morally to the fall of Adam (mankind) by
succumbing to the serpent’s temptation. It may have been because of her egoism
that Eve sinned against God. Not unlike the fallen angel Lucifer, who appeared to her in the form of a serpent, Eve refused to obey God because of an inordinate love of self, which comes with pride and is concomitant with an inordinate desire for created things that she valued more than God the Creator. She lost faith in what Adam told her about God’s command to abstain from the forbidden fruit on the Tree of Knowledge. In fact, by
receiving the words of the serpent, she wished to be equally like God in her
selfish pursuit of happiness by making herself out to be the measure of her own
existence, to be like God but before God and apart from God following her own will (“radical self-deification”).
Mary, on the other hand, morally contributed to mankind’s reconciliation with God by humbly accepting the proposition of the angel Gabriel in humility and in the perfect love of God. What she willed for herself was what God willed for her since she had no joy and peace except in the God of Abraham. Mary aligned her will with God’s will because she esteemed His will over her own in steadfast love and unfaltering trust in Him: the essence of faith in Judaic thought. God was the measure of her life. She acknowledged Him as her Creator on whom she ultimately depended and in whom she placed all her confidence. There could be no true life for Mary apart from God. The vain pleasures of this world did not appeal to her.
Considering Eve’s
transgression, Mary’s faith in charity and grace temporally appeased the
Divine justice and pleased God to become incarnate. God could now turn His gaze
away from Eve’s infidelity and turn it towards Mary’s faithfulness and love,
albeit the unworthiness of sinful humanity. Moreover, the Son of God could now,
in turn, undo the sin of Adam by emptying himself and humbly taking the form of
a slave in our humanity, even by accepting his debasing death on a cross,
because of the absolute love He had for the Father and His perfect obedience to
His will (Phil 2:5-8). Mary had to have the same mindset and interior
disposition (humility and poverty of spirit) as that of her divine Son if he came into the world and reconciled mankind to God. She had to have the
liberty of will and moral responsibility to God if He became incarnate.
Hence, God wouldn’t have come into the world any other way but by the faith and charity of a woman who should reciprocally undo Eve’s indifference and disobedience, eventually alienating mankind from God. Mary’s acceptance of God canceled out Eve’s rejection
of Him. Mary’s Fiat at the Annunciation invited God back into the world so that
He could undo what Adam had wrought by Eve’s suggestion. Eve’s participation
paved the way for mankind’s spiritual and physical death. In contrast, our Blessed
Lady’s participation provided the hope of salvation to all who must emulate her
faith and charity in God’s grace if they hope to be saved.
By vindicating Eve, Mary became the maternal advocate of the entire human race. In this sense, she truly is our spiritual mother, whose womb has provided regeneration unto life with God because of her faith and love. The blessed fruit she has provided to all mankind can now be partaken of from the Tree of Life (Gen 3:24) by her congruous merits in and through the condign merits of her divine Son, the living Font of all grace. The promise of eternal life has rested on the blessed fruit in the palms of Mary’s extended hands ever since she joyfully consented to be the mother of our Lord and Savior in charity and grace.
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God hath shined forth.
Psalm 50, 2
Early Sacred Tradition
“He became man by the
Virgin so that the course which was taken by disobedience in the
beginning through
the agency of the serpent might be also the very course by which it would
be
put down. Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent and
bore
disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when
the angel Gabriel
announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord
would come upon her and the
power of the Most High would overshadow her, for
which reason the Holy One being born
of her is the Son of God. And she replied,
‘Be it done unto me according to your word.”
St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 100
(155 AD)
“And Mary said, ‘Behold, I
am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according
to your word.’ Eve
disobeyed God, yet Mary was persuaded to be obedient to God. In
this way, the Virgin
Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. And thus, as
humanity fell
into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin.
Virginal
disobedience has been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal
obedience. For in the
same way, the sin of the first created man received
amendment by the correction of the
First-Begotten”
St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5:19:11, 38
(180-189 AD)
“But we must consider
another marvelous aspect of the comparison between Eve and
Mary. Eve became for
men the cause of death, because through her death entered the
world. Mary,
however, was the cause of life, because life has come to us through her. For
this reason, the Son of God came into the world, and, ‘where sin abounded grace
super
abounded’ (Rom. 5:20). Whence death had its origin, thence came forth
life, so that life
would succeed death. If death came from woman, then death
was shut out by him who, by
means of the woman, became our life.”
St. Epiphanius of Salamis, Against Heresies, 87
(ante A.D. 403)
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