The role of women in religion can be examined from the point of view of the extent to which it is mundane - i.e. to do with the conduct of mortal life in this world; or cosmic - i.e. concerned with eternal matters and existence outwith this mortal life.
A cosmic role for women could be a religion where the creator was a woman, or when one or more of the god's was a woman - and there are also other possibilities.
My main interest is in Christianity. In historical Christianity we can see a cosmic role for the mother of Jesus in both the Eastern and Western Catholic churches.
And Mormons regard God the creator as a dyad of man and woman - Heavenly Parents who manifested divine creation and (in some literal sense) procreated Men.
Other types of Christianity among Protestants have essentially zero cosmic role for women; and this applies to Judaism and Islam.
As regards a mundane role for women - this is seen in terms of supernatural help with everyday life. This could range from a theologically formal role of female saints and other holy women in helping with various problems of life; to all kinds of unofficial, popular and folk beliefs of the same kind; that shade-off into superstitions and "luck" (and may occur even in what are officially strictly monotheistic religions).
At a further remove, there is the matter of women's role in the various churches. In some religions women have a essential role in churches, but in historical Christianity this has not been the case.
Sometimes all essential church roles were restricted to men, but in all instances women were inessential to the work of the church. The religion can be conducted entirely without participation of women.
Another vital aspect relates to Jesus Christ.
When it comes to a cosmic role for women in the life and work of Jesus Christ, historical Christianity has either had none; or has focused exclusively on the mother of Jesus whose role is probably only of explicitly cosmic significance relatively late in the history of the Roman Catholic Church - with the doctrine of immaculate conception.
Even the mundane role of women in the usual versions of the life of the adult Jesus during his ministry is minor to the point of being inessential.
This is (variously) a consequence of taking either the whole-Bible, or the whole-New-Testament (or Synoptic Gospels, or Pauline Epistles) as the major basis for Christian assumptions, and also of deriving core assumptions of church authority, tradition and a lineage of theology and practice dating back to Church Fathers.
However, my understanding of Christianity is focused upon the Fourth Gospel, regarded as the earliest and most authoritative source of knowledge.
As such, I see a potentially cosmic role for Mary Magdalene; who I believe to have been the wife of Jesus, and brother of Lazarus - whom I regard as the author of the Fourth Gospel.
Here - in brief - is what I regard as the description of Mary Magdalene's cosmic role in the work of Jesus Christ - using the Fourth Gospel (see this link for further discussion and more detailed referencing):
The Marriage at Cana (Chapter 2) is a rather garbled and tampered-with account of Jesus's marriage to Mary Magdalene - and it was the time of his first miracle.
I assume that Jesus became aware of his divinity at the time of his baptism by John; but he did not perform a miracle until he was married to Mary; which marriage therefore implicitly has a cosmic dimension, far beyond any mundane earthly ceremony.
Jesus encounters Mary on the way to resurrection of Lazarus (Chapter 11) - his profoundest and greatest miracle - the first resurrection.
Then again at the episode of the mysterious episode of the anointing of Jesus's feet by Mary (Chapter 12) - when he realized and announced that his death was imminent.
Mary Magdalene was present (with Jesus's mother, other women, and Lazarus) at Jesus's death on the cross (Chapter 19); and was then the first to meet him two days later when resurrected (Chapter 20).
I take these descriptions - bracketing Jesus's death and resurrection - to imply that Mary had some cosmic role in these unprecedented and eternally significant events.
The last we hear of Mary and Jesus is when he tells her: I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
Which I regard as an anticipation of the continuation of their eternal, cosmic marriage in Heaven, after Jesus's ascension and Mary's resurrection.
12 comments:
@L - Could you rewrite your comment? It is completely obscure to me what you mean.
this is a very important post, and something that needs to be explored much more. i think there was a great error in ignoring or downplaying the very clear hints about Mary Magdalene (to the point where it even seems like they introduce another Mary, totally out of nowhere, in Mark). perhaps even a diabolical pressure to steer people away from the conclusions you arrived at here and elsewhere.
Apologies. I don't know if this is an improvement, or if I misunderstood your post.
There is another cosmic role for women in historical Christianity: Christian women and in particular Christian wives are explicitly icons of the corporate body of Christians - Jesus's wife-people.
And that because Jesus has a wife, and the Christian people and the mother of Jesus are called traditionally 'spouse of the Holy Spirit', and that man and woman are made in the image of God (women therefore are icons of the metaphysical), and that monogamous, indissoluble Christian marriage is an icon of God's life, that the Son incarnated amidst a union of Joseph and Maria, that using marital related language it is said 'the Father begets the Son', and so on..... hidden in plain sight is that traditional Christianity implies something like a dyadic God. Or call it 'a marriage God'. Even if it is only 'male' person(s) of the Trinity and His Wife: a divinised, inextricably united to Him, Christian people. So much so that Jesus in Acts refers to Her as 'me': “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” which is consistent with Ephesians 'So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.'
@Luke - I still haven't a clue what you are getting-at; but I post the comment in case somebody else might find it interesting.
@Laeth - Thanks. I personally believe it was more than error, and (on internal evidence) that the Gospel was tampered-with (by deletions) as much as the authorities dared - in order to conceal what was originally known (by many).
In what remain as "hints" there was originally clear statement. Well, anyway... the multiple and cumulative hints do remain, for those with eyes to see.
For many Christians - or, what Christianity became - the whole idea of Jesus's marriage is simply absurd and blasphemous - and obviously wrong.
A big question is why this assumption became so.
Yet this is not the kind of matter susceptible for argumentative persuasion; because it reaches down to metaphysics. I state my views here mainly to demonstrate that they hang-together, are coherent.
Jesus treatment and inclusion of women was pushing the envelope for that culture/era. See Kenneth Bailey, "Jesus through middle eastern eyes" if you wish to explore the issue. Pretty sure he has a book specifically on that subject. There is a you tube channel of his lectures as well.
@Right Ron - Well that is a mundane argument - which has been made by people who don't believe in God or the divinity of Jesus. I think we need to make explicit our assumptions about what counts as evidence of Jesus's behaviour. Mine are that the Fourth Gospel is the earliest and only first hand source of evidence - and even that has (pretty obviously) been significantly tampered with.
(For instance, Chapter 21 is surely a later, and probably alien, addition to the Gospel which is completed at the end of Chapter 20.)
But, whatever evidence we use wrt Jesus treatment and inclusion of women, and the comparative evidence of other-people's behaviour wrt women - it does not make any significant religious difference. It could easily be explained a matter of circumstances or individual personality.
To my mind, this only becomes important if/when we infer what I call here a "cosmic" significance - something that makes a permanent difference, for those who come after.
@Bruce
i think the neoplatonic drift of christian thought is quite related to the denial of the cosmic significance of woman in general, but especially of woman as lover and wife. in a scheme where spirit is always superior to body, instead of the goal being their interpenetration into a resurrected life which is superior, the feminine (the body) must always be shunned, in the end.
there was a strand in early christianity that tried to identify the trinity as father, mother and son, which of course makes sense. but that still seemed to leave something out, because the son remains alone. then it was pushed even further by identifying the holy spirit as the mother, which makes zero sense even from Matthew and Luke. i think at the time the only way to conceive the divine feminine was as totally disembodied - and this is the precise opposite of what it is! the feminine part is the embodiment part (pretty much every religion always had Sky Father and Earth Mother). then of course Christianity introduces the Son - but what of the Daughter, which is necessary to push creation further? even the Virgin Mary could not be worshiped openly, and multiple official safeguards were put up to prevent it, even though in practice it was true for the common people, Mary as Mother Goddess was just logical. but there it's still psychically taxing to feel it as such and have the priests deny it in theory. obviously the same is true of conceiving Father and Son as the same essential being. as you mentioned, the Immaculate Conception dogma was a step in this direction, but too little and too late, and more a reaction to protestantism than anything positively willed and affirmed, in my opinion. plus it is all mixed up with other doctrines of original sin that are pointless. and of course, of the wife and lover archetype, there was nothing in the Virgin, there couldn't be. and the one place where it could be found, Mary Magdalene, they had identified her as a prostitute (and there is no reason for this), thereby tainting the whole thing. the very important role that the Magdalene plays in Jesus' story was thus completely muddled, effaced and forgotten: when it is her, by anointing him, that makes him the Christ!
@Laeth "The very important role that the Magdalene plays in Jesus' story was thus completely muddled, effaced and forgotten: when it is her, by anointing him, that makes him the Christ!"
I have never been very sure about what is going on in this scene, and perhaps a sentence or so that is lost might have made it clear. Although it may well have been as you describe. It would make more sense from the meaning of Christ as anointed. As yet, I don't have any clear idea of what this meant. But I think it must have some cosmic significance, or else it would hardly have been mentioned.
In historical Christianity Jesus has a wife: the Church. The Church is represented as a woman. Women and especially Christian wives are icons of the Church. In historical Christianity being a husband and wife means becoming 'one flesh'/one body and therefore, because of this theology, the wife of God the Church shares an inextricable union with God, a dyadic union. This wife was originally planned to be all creation/corporate humanity but since primarily the Fall, the Church is now this realised possibility of the wife of God. The marriage of a man and woman, in historical Christianity, is the preeminent sign/image/icon on earth of God and God's life. This seems to me to be cosmic and warrants a mention with regards to historical Christianity.
@Bruce
as i understand it from the old testament the anointing was a consecration, a setting apart of a specific individual for a higher spiritual purpose. the story of Jesus turns this on its head (as it does so many things from the OT) in two ways: first, the anointment of Jesus is done by a woman instead of a man (usually it was the high priest, but Jesus was already the high priest anyway), and second, Mary Magdalene anoints the feet, not the head (the part that touches the earth - to me, both things, woman and feet, are symbols that the future life will not be earthless, bodiless, purely spiritual - the second creation).
“when it is her, by anointing him, that makes him the Christ!”
This phrase ran through me strongly when I read it.
The image of how abundant she was with the oil - not just a little masculine dab on the forehead. And her hair all involved in it and his feet.
Pointing to the bodyness of heaven
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