A beautiful hymn, found in many Protestant hymnals, shows that Protestants are comfortable calling God and Christ “King.” It begins, “Come, worship the King, all glorious above!” Although Protestants call Christ the King, it is not usual among them to call the King’s Mother their Queen.
Catholics believe she is indeed our Queen and that her spiritual royalty flows from and is subordinate to Christ’s kingship. The ground of Mary’s queenship is her role in our redemption. Pope Pius XII taught that “Jesus Christ alone, God and man, is King in the full, proper, and absolute sense of the term. Mary also, in a restricted and only analogous way, shares in his royal dignity as the Mother of Christ who is God, as his associate in the work of Redemption, in his conflict with the enemy, and in his complete victory. From this association with Christ the King, she obtains a height of splendor unequaled in all creation.”(Pius XII, Ad Caeli Reginam, no. 25, in Four Marian Encyclicals, ed. E. R. Lawlor (New York: Paulist Press, 1959), 104.) In God’s plan, Mary consented to give birth to the Savior precisely as Savior and King (Matt. 1:21, Luke 1:32-33). Her words, “Be it done to me according to your word,” were her pledge to live for her Son to the end, through contradiction and through the sword of sorrow which would pierce her heart as she stood beneath his cross.
Her queenship, like her Son’s kingdom (John 18:36), is not of this world. Her role is to draw people to acknowledge and follow Jesus as their Lord and King. The Bible prefigures her role in her instruction to the waiters at the marriage feast in Cana (John 2:5); in her acceptance of the beloved disciple as her son, a type of all Christ’s disciples in every age (John 19:26); and in her presence and prayer as a member of the tiny Church in the upper room, where the first Christians waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit to enliven them all (Acts 1:14, 2:1-41). Mary’s queenship is spiritual and ecclesial leadership, not exercised as a member of the hierarchy, which she was not, but by holy example and all-embracing intercession.
Evidence from the East
Catholics share this belief in Mary’s queenship with Christians of the Eastern rites, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Eastern Christians, whose main turf stretches from Poland to Sakhalin and from the Sudan to the White Sea, pray in these words: “I will open my mouth, and it shall be filled with the Spirit; I will break forth into a hymn to the Queen Mother….I will sing her privileges with exultation” (the Akathistos Hymn).
For Eastern Christians, Mary is “Queen of creation,” “Queen who saves by intercession,” “glorious Lady, Queen who stands at the Lord’s right hand.” In Egypt and Ethiopia Christians hail “the Virgin, the very and true Queen, glory of our race.” She is the “Queen of love.” The Western Syrian rite, centered upon Antioch, prays, “Lord, you have made her Queen of the heavenly spirits and of those who dwell on earth….Grant to us to feel at every moment the effect of the prayers which she makes for us; and help her that she will favor us, so that we will be protected” (emphasis mine–notice how clearly Mary’s subordination to Christ in her queenship is expressed). At the Incense Prayer, Mary is called “Immaculate Virgin, Mother, Queen of Angels and Empress of Saints.” (In far-off Germany, hundreds of years after this Syrian prayer was composed, Martin Luther would call Mary “more than an Empress,” as we shall later see.)
The Eastern Syrian or Chaldean rite in Iraq, Iran, and Malabar celebrates Mary as “Mother of the King of kings.” The Christians of this rite pray, “O Queen of queens, all rich, enrich with benefits your servants, O Mother of the Most High! For he has made you the dispenser of his treasures and universal Queen, for it has pleased the King of kings to place you over all. By your goodness, pour out on all the gifts they need, so that the whole world may prepare for you a crown of thanks.”
To Armenian Christians, Mary is “Queen of the world,” “Queen of the universe, who carried in her arms him before whom the celestial spirits tremble.” “We, the human race, we glorify thee, Mother of God, whom the angelic powers honor.”(All these texts from Eastern liturgies are found in Cuthbert Gumbinger, “Mary in the Eastern Liturgies,” in J. Carol, Mariology, 1:185-244.)
CRI Out of Step
Christians who do not acknowledge Mary as their Queen are thus out of step with the vast majority of their fellow Christians, both Catholic and non-Catholic. A true concern for ecumenism would lead them to join us in devotion to Mary–or at least to refrain from attacking her. The subtitle of the entire CRI article is: “From Lowly Handmaid to Queen of Heaven.”(Elliott Miller, “The Mary of Roman Catholicism,” Christian Research Journal, Summer 1990 and Fall 1990. In these notes the two parts are referred to as Part 1 and Part 2. The articles represent the position of the Christian Research Institute.) We are supposed to see an anomaly here: “How could a mere village girl, a lowly handmaid, everbecome Queen of heaven?” The answer to this objection is in our Lord’s words of reproach to the Sadducees about another matter: “Are you not misled, because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God?” (Mark 12:24).
What Scripture Says
Scripture is full of the promise that the lowly and poor will be raised to royal dignity: “From the ash-heap he lifts up the poor . . . to make a glorious throne their heritage” (1 Sam. 2:8); “You who have followed me will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28); “If we persevere, we shall also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2:12); “I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne, as I myself first won the victory and sit with my Father on his throne” (Rev. 3:21). It would be unbiblical to deny this victory and share in Jesus’ royal Davidic throne to his Mother.
Jesus again said to his apostles, “It is you who have stood by me in my trials, and I confer a kingdom on you, just as my Father has conferred one on me” (Luke 22:28-29). But who stood by him most faithfully? The apostles fled at Jesus’ arrest. Only one, the beloved disciple, dared to stand beneath the cross. But Mary stood by him there, and so he will confer the kingdom on her.
Christopher O’Donnell points out the remarkable parallel between Luke 1 and Philippians 2:5-11, between Jesus and Mary as examples of poverty and humility raised to unimaginable glory: “It is worth remarking that the great hymn of redemption in Philippians 2:5-11 finds echoes in the first chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel. Jesus took the form of a slave (Greek doulos, Phil. 2:7); Mary describes herself as a slave (Greek doule, Luke 1:38). Jesus humbled himself (Phil. 2:8); Mary describes her state as one of humiliation (Luke 1:48). God exalted Jesus (Phil. 2:9); the humble are exalted (Luke 1:52). Every knee shall bend…confess that Jesus is Lord (Phil. 2:11); all generations will call Mary blessed (Luke 1:48). The similarity of Greek expressions throughout seems to suggest deliberate borrowing by Luke to illustrate the mystery of poverty being exalted in both Son and mother….One can at least point to a common tradition to which Paul and Luke had access.”(Christopher O’Donnell, Life in the Spirit and Mary (Wilmington: Glazier, 1981), 45.)
Luther’s Testimony
Every disciple will share Jesus’ royal dignity. But Mary is the first and holiest disciple, “full of grace” and first to believe in him (Luke 1:28,45). She is even–unimaginable dignity!–the very Mother of her Lord (1:43). This translates to Queen, if human language and divine revelation have any meaning at all. Although Martin Luther was somewhat nervous about applying the title “Queen of Heaven” to Mary, he admits that “it is a true enough name and yet does not make her a goddess.”(Luther’s Works, 21:327.) In a sermon Luther preached on July 2, 1532, the Feast of the Visitation, he said, “She, the Lady above heaven and earth, must…have a heart so humble that she might have no shame in washing the swaddling clothes or preparing a bath for St. John the Baptist, like a servant girl. What humility! It would surely have been more just to have arranged for her a golden coach, pulled by 4,000 horses, and to cry and proclaim as the carriage proceeded: ‘Here passes the woman who is raised far above all women, indeed above the whole human race.'” Five years later, preaching on the same feast day, Luther said, “She was not filled with pride by this praise…this immense praise: ‘No woman is like unto thee! Thou art more than an empress or a queen…blessed above all nobility, wisdom, or saintliness!'”(Ibid., 36:208, 45:107.)
CRI says, “The title ‘Queen’ was first used in association with Mary by Pope Martin in the seventh century.”(Part 2, 31.) The quality of CRI’s research in its article is poor. Ephrem the Syrian used the title “Queen” about Mary several times in his fourth-century prayers and poems. Here are two of my personal favorites from Ephrem: “Girl, empress and ruler, queen, lady, protect and keep me in your arms, lest Satan, who causes evil, exult over me”(Ephrem, “Oratrio ad SS. Dei Matrem,” Opera Omnia, ed. Assemani, t. III (Rome, 1747), 546.) and “Queen of all after the Trinity, Consoler after the Paraclete, Mediatrix of the whole world after the Mediator.”(J. Carol, 1:232.)
CRI’s only substantive effort to support its objection to Mary’s queenship is a quotation from one Victor Buksbazen: “When Christianity spread throughout the Roman empire…Mary replaced the old goddesses….[S]hrines dedicated to Mary began to replace the ancient temples….Although the tree of paganism was cut down, its roots remained…and helped transform Miriam of the Gospel into Mary of popular piety–later into Mariological dogma.”(Part 2, 32.) Thus, implies CRI, the many pagan earth goddesses, “queens of heaven,” became Mary, Queen of heaven.
Barth Straightens Them Out
Buksbazen and CRI here must contend with a more notable theologian, Karl Barth. Never considered by anyone, Catholic or Protestant, to be a fan of our Lady (he once called Catholic Mariology an “excrescence”), Barth considered the notion that Mariology developed from pagan sources to be a liberal Protestant interpretation and wrote, “It is not to be recommended that we should base our repudiation on the assertion that there has taken place here an irruption from the heathen sphere, an adoption of the idea, current in many non-Christian religions, of a more or less central and original female or mother deity. In dogmatics you can establish everything and nothing from parallels from the history of religions.”(Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936-1960), 1:143.)
Supporting Barth, Protestant theologian John de Satge writes, “It is not necessary to accept…the evil conjunction of Christian piety with the primeval mother-goddess.”(John de Satge, Down to Earth: The New Protestant View of the Virgin Mary (Consortium, 1976), 80.)
In any case, the idea that our forefathers in the faith continued to worship their old mother-goddesses under the guise of Mary is simply silly. CRI espouses the common yet unscholarly notion that people of earlier generations were necessarily more stupid than we are today. My readers will know, whether they are scholars or not, that if they consider Mary on the one hand and, let us say, Astarte on the other, they can tell the difference.
Early Christian converts could tell the difference too and perhaps more vividly than we. They had not only lived through their own conversion experience, but doubtless felt in many cases the profound distaste converts sometimes feel for their former religious allegiance.
“But they built churches to Mary on the sites of old pagan temples!” one might object. Of course they did. Those pagan temples occupied extremely valuable real estate, and they were often buildings of exceptional beauty. When Christians took possession of them, they were wise enough and shrewd enough to keep them, adapting them to their new needs. They re-consecrated them to the Triune God and often enough added “in honor of Mary.”
There was a powerful symbolism at work here too. A lofty temple of Christ, pressing down in all its bulk upon a foundation formerly sacred to a pagan god–what Christian, seeing such a building, offering Mass in such a building, would not recall the words of God to the ancient serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, while you strike at his heel” (Gen. 3:15).
A Dangerous Boomerang
There is another reason why CRI should not open this particular can of worms. If Mary is only the latest in a long line of pagan goddesses, then what about her Son? Rationalists will hasten (havehastened) to explain that the risen Christ too is only the latest in a long line of fertility gods, who died and then rose again, symbols of the cycle of vegetation: Osiris, Dionysos, Adonis, many others.
If the Christian Research Journal ever becomes the learned publication its staffers no doubt wish it to be, they will one day realize that in all Christian history this principle shines clear: Whoever discredits the Mother threatens her Son.