popular culture

Jeffrey Fisher jfisher at igc.org
Mon Jan 20 10:04:48 PST 2003


fwiw, and it sounds like cge may be less rusty on this than i, bernard of clairvaux was really the person to push mary as an object of devotion in the west. i believe both the insistence on the virgin birth (i.e., jesus's birth as miraculous not only as far as conception but also in terms of delivery--mary remained a virgin even after she delivered) and on mary's bodily ascension can be traced to bernard in the 12th century. i imagine this was an issue in 1274 between the eastern and western delegations, but i don't think it was a critical issue.

at least that's my dim recollection.

On Monday, January 20, 2003, at 11:54 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:


> Someone thought it funny when I once said that I read LBO for the
> theological discussions, but we've concretized the hyperbole, I think,
> Catherine. Nevertheless, thanks for your response; here are three
> comments:
>
> [1] The question that came up was the role of virginity (not the
> Virgin)
> in the vast social movement that is Christianity, and I suggested that
> the
> congeries of motives, interests, ideas and concerns that pertained to
> the
> subject needed a variety of intellectual tools to disentangle --
> including, for a topic both psychic and somatic, attention to
> unconscious
> aspects, hence the reference to psychoanalysis.
>
> [2] It would be a highly unorthodox opinion to consider the mother of
> Jesus divine. The debate about her role as theotokos ("God-bearer" --
> the
> more usual Western Christian phrase, as scandalous in its way, is
> "Mother
> of God") was a debate about the nature of Jesus, whom orthodox
> Christianity came to consider at once entirely human and entirely
> divine.
> The term, in use since the 3rd century, was attacked in the 5th by
> those
> (Nestorians) who, so to speak, wanted to divide Jesus a bit. So the
> argument was only secondarily about Mary.
>
> [3] "Mariolatry" is a pejorative -- it means erroneously offering
> divine
> honors to Mary. Groups said to hold that view were condemned in the
> early
> church (4th century) and by the RC church in the 18th century. In the
> 16th century and afterwards, Protestant attacks on Catholic notions of
> human solidarity called technically "the communion of saints" (not just
> about saints) included the charge that Catholics commit mariolatry,
> although the word doesn't seem to appear in English until the 17th
> century. --CGE
>
>
> On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Catherine Driscoll wrote:
>
>> ...I don't get the reference to psychoanalysis...
>>
>> ...theotokos was massively contentious because for some it erased the
>> divinity of the Virgin and made her a vessel only and for others it
>> made her godlike because mortal flesh could not bear God -- that was
>> only possible for Christ...
>>
>> ...I can't recall a date for "mariolatry" but I think it's quite late
>> but yet as a polemical debate reprises debates around the separation
>> of the Roman and Greek churches...
>
>
>



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