Rethinking the Life of Mary, the Mother of Jesus

ABSTRACT

At church, we are told that Mary conceived and gave birth to Jesus the Son of God as a virgin, without having had sexual intercourse with a man. Based upon this, the teaching of the “virgin birth,” Mary has been venerated as the “holy mother.” It is said, especially when discussing the beliefs of the Catholic Church, that the more the image of the Divine was restricted to the one-sidedly masculine “God the Father and Christ the Son,” the more the veneration of Mary increased, complementing those images with a feminine representation of the Divine. And in the Protestant churches, while there is no veneration of Mary, the teaching of the “virgin birth” is still an important one. However, how many people really believe in the possibility of conception without sexual intercourse? And do they believe that God the Almighty can instantly create an “iPS cell” and therefore generate a state of pregnancy? Or do they think that for Jesus, the divine Son of God, it is required that he be born as the result of a pregnancy which has not involved sexual intercourse? What kind of concept of the Divine and what kind of understanding of human nature leads to this kind of thinking? I cannot help feeling that there is a great danger in thinking in this way and that there is a great danger in this type of faith. This article meditates upon Mary, with these thoughts in mind.

Keywords:

• feminist biblical interpretation
• Jesus
• Mary of Nazareth
• nativity
• virgin birth