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From Jesus to Mary and Back Again: The History of the Annunciation
The surprising reason it falls during Lent, and why it has been important for fighting heresy and abortion.
Over at Christianity Today I’ve just published an article on a subject that has long puzzled me: Why don’t pro-life evangelical Protestants talk much about the Annunciation? And if we believe that life starts at conception, then why are we more likely to associate the Incarnation with Christ’s birth (Christmas) than with the Annunciation (conception)?
Some familiar names for Christian History readers—N.T. Wright, Darrell Bock, Scot McKnight, and others—were kind enough to reply, and I’m grateful for their insights. In fact, I received more response than I had expected, and as a result wasn’t able to include some of the more interesting church history aspects of the discussion.
Among them: Why March 25? The answer at first seems obvious: It’s nine months before Christmas. So many writeups on Annunciation assume (as I had) that once the church placed Christmas on December 25, it was a simple matter of counting backwards to mark Annunciation and Jesus’ conception.
But Muhlenberg College historian William J. Tighe argues that such a history gets things backwards. Before trying to determine either the dates of Jesus’ birth or conception, they tried to determine the date of his death. Tighe’s brief overview, which was published in Touchstone, is worth reading, as is his sequel of sorts in Touchstone’s current issue. But for our purposes here, what you need to know is that Greek Christians in the East said Jesus died April 6 and Latin Christians in the West said March 25.
Tighe continues:
At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the "integral age" of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.
This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed. … Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.
Thus is it no accident or irritation that the Annunciation often falls during Lent—or even Holy Week. Originally, that was part of the point. As Augustine wrote, "He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered." (Biblical Archaeology Review’s article on this point is also worth reading.)
As the centuries went on, Annunciation became more associated with Mary than with the Incarnate Christ. By 656, the tenth council of Toledo,for example, called it "the festival of the Mother of God." But discussion of the unborn Jesus continued.
One of the more beautiful meditations (if you can avoid being distracted by the aural reference) is from Ephrem the Syriac, who lived in the 300s:
It is a source of great amazement, my beloved
that someone should enquire into the wonder
of how God came down
and made his dwelling a womb,
and how that Being
put on the body of a man,
spending nine months in a womb,
not shrinking from such a home;
and how a womb of flesh was able
to carry flaming fire,
and how a flame dwelt
in a moist womb which did not get burnt up.
Just as the bush on Horeb bore
God in the flame,
so did Mary bear Christ in her virginity.
Perfectly God,
he entered the womb through her ear;
in all purity the God-Man
came forth from the womb into creation.
(quoted in The Harp of the Spirit, via Redeemer in the Womb. John Saward’s Redeemer in the Womb, which is largely available for free on Google Books, has a lot of great research in it. But it is also anti-Protestant in extremis. Example: "The Reformation’s rejection of Mary and the Mass has been followed, four centuries later, by the widespread abandonment of Christian morality and faith in God incarnate.")
For other church fathers, emphasizing God dwelling in utero was an important tool against contemporary heresies, such as Nestorianism (the belief that Christ had two natures).
As Gerald McDermott notes, discussion of Jesus in his mother’s womb picked up steam in the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica spends several questions examining the unborn Christ(31-34).
"When we are speaking of God made man, these months in the womb are, theologically speaking as precious as his birth and life upon earth," Roland Potter wrote in his appendix to the Summa. "This may be unwonted in modern theological thinking, but came naturally to St. Thomas and medievals generally. To be born of the Virgin Mary connotes a unique conjunction of the divine and human from the outset. This is the truth that lies at the back of all this series of article (in the Summa)."
Of course, Marian devotion began to pick up steam in the Middle Ages as well, but the Reformers still continued some thinking about the Annunciation and the unborn Christ. The Reformers were eager to drop many of the devotional practices and observances that had become focused on Mary, while directing some of those practices to Jesus. But rather than refocus the Annunciation on the first moments—the smallest and most vulnerable moments—of the Incarnation, most Protestants have simply let the day pass by.
"Most Protestant Christianity has been ‘festival-lite’, being aware of Paul’s warnings about ‘days, months, seasons, years’ in Galatians 4," Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright told me as I was working on the CT article. Similarly, he said, "Most Protestant Christianity has been ‘Mary-lite’, being aware of the danger of idolatry and non- or anti-scriptural teachings (and, latterly, dogmas)."
That’s not to say that Protestants have avoided preaching on the Annunciation or the unborn Incarnate Word. And to some degree, my question about whether pro-life Protestants have ignored the implications of the Annunciation in their preaching against abortion has more counter-examples than it would have a few years ago. John Piper’s much-blogged 2009 "No Mr. President" sermon, for example, took Luke 1 as its text: "What Luke is doing—and he is doing it as the spokesman of Christ—is treating this child in the womb as a person. He uses the word baby, which he later uses for Jesus in the manger. He uses the word joy, which is what persons feel. He uses the phrase "filled with the Spirit" which is what God does to persons. He simply assumes he is dealing with a human person in the womb. And therefore so should we."
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Comments
"Why don’t pro-life evangelical Protestants talk much about the Annunciation?"
Maybe because doing so will just emphasize Mary's role as Christ's mother. They do recognize and acknowledge her as Christ's mother but they don't consider her as a mediator or someone to be praised unlike Catholics.
Posted By: bible sweepstakes | March 25, 2010 2:49 PM
"bible sweepstakes": OH, HEAVEN FORBID We acknolwlege Mary AS THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD!! BTW, It didn't seem to bother Elizabeth! Just maybe the Catholics and the Orthodox might have a valid point here.
Posted By: Nicholas | March 27, 2010 10:29 AM
First off, "someone [not] to be praised?" Mary - as a historical, real person - is the quintessential role model for unmarried mothers and giving oneself to God's will. How much more pro-life can you get? Secondly, Protestants need to get real about "mediators" with God. If you ask someone (a friend, the congregation, etc.) to pray FOR you, are they not a "mediator" with the Lord on your behalf? They are praying to God for you. (Hopefully you are praying for yourself as well.) Why shouldn't we ALSO pray to the Saints or Mary to ask their mediation with God as well? Never quite understood that objection.
Posted By: Brian | March 27, 2010 10:56 AM
I rather like the aural references in the meditation by Ephrem the Syriac: the WORD literally comes to Mary through her listening. This is what Christians strive to do with our scriptural study, to *hear* it so completely that it becomes a part of us. What was an actual experince for Mary might be a wonderous metaphor for the rest of us.
Posted By: Kristin | March 28, 2010 7:27 AM
In response to Nicholas: Three things come to mind.
First, Matt 12:50, anyone who does the will of the heavenly Father Jesus considers equally as mother or sibling. No one has more "pull" in heaven.
Second, there is no biblical data to lead us to believe that those who have passed their tenure here on earth have any interaction with those of us who are still here, so praying to saints is not effective. And, third, we endue the saint with abilities reserved for God: the ability to hear and process speech from every culture under the sun at the same, at all times.
It appears that biblically any believer who is alive on the face of the earth is able to approach God the Father in Jesus' name with any request with boldness and confidence, the only necessary mediator being Jesus.
Posted By: Russ | March 28, 2010 12:19 PM
Technically, Jesus was not a human person. Jesus was ONE person with two natures. Was he a divine or a human person? if you say human, you have embraced Nestorianism. The eternal 2nd PERSON took on human flesh and forever dwelt with two natures as the God-man. He became man but his person was and is divine. This is why Mary was esteemed so highly by ancient Christianity. A person was not produced in the incarnation, but GOD HIMSELF dwelt in a woman and received everything of his humanity from her.
Posted By: Canadian | March 29, 2010 6:06 AM
"Christ had a real body of the same nature of ours, a true rational soul, and, together with these, perfect Deity." -Aquinas
Posted By: Tomas | March 29, 2010 8:25 AM
Each believer 1 Cor 12:27; is indwellet by: GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON. GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT !
Each of us has DIRECT ACCESS TO THE THROWN OF GRACE.
To thing that "Someone" else has better access than we have is to be MISS LED BY THE MISS LEADER!!!
Posted By: David and Ellen Liles | March 29, 2010 9:17 AM
This is getting off track from the original, thought-provoking article by Ted Olsen. But, a few additional points of view...
#1. I'm not quite sure on what side Canadian is coming down on. Technically, Jesus WAS a human being. Nestorianism emphasized the disunion between the human and divine natures of Jesus. Nestorianism - rejected by the ancient church - held that in Christ there are two persons joined together: God the Son and the man Jesus. Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Perhaps it is beyond our (human) comprehension to fully understand it.
#2. With respect to Russ' objections... Are not all baptized believers members of the Body of Christ? (Rom 12:4-5; 1 Cor 12:12-27) Do we cease to be "members" when we die and join in Jesus' presence? I would hope not. Just as we can "talk" with other members of Christ's church on earth, why presume that we cannot "talk" with other members who have gone on ahead of us? Even Paul asked for intercessory prayer for himself. (Rom 15:30) We also hear of the angels and the elders placing the prayers of the holy ones on the altar (Rev 5:8; 8:5).
In reference to 2 Cor 5:19, Aquinas said "Christ alone is the perfect mediator of God and men, inasmuch as, by His death, He reconciled the human race to God... However, nothing hinders...others from being called mediators, in some respect, between God and man, forasmuch as they cooperate in uniting men to God, dispositively or ministerially."
Posted By: Brian | March 29, 2010 7:24 PM
Brian,
Sorry to confuse anyone. I was just responding to the last line of Mr. Olsen's post. Jesus Christ was fully human, yes. But in order to hold to Chalcedon, he was not a human person but a divine person with a human nature. He was not both a divine and human person, yet he was both human and divine. It is the crucial distinction of person and nature that you see in all the ancient councils. Personhood for us begins at conception, with Christ his personhood is eternal as he is eternally begotten of the Father but his human nature had it's beginning inside Mary at conception. Two natures did not come together in Mary to create a person, rather a Divine Person came to dwell in the womb of a woman in order to join himself to us.
Posted By: Canadian | March 30, 2010 6:23 AM
That is also why it should not make us Protestants queezy to say that there is NO salvation without Mary.
Posted By: Canadian | March 30, 2010 6:27 AM
And also we can understand why the ancient church rightly, properly and necessarily called Mary---Theotokos....the Mother of God. That Marian title was and is a defense of proper Christology...it is about Christ.
Posted By: Canadian | March 30, 2010 7:25 AM
Anyone who believes that the dates used by the Church as the birthdate of Jesus are fooling themselves. The dates chosen for most Christian holidays were political. December 25 is celebrated as the birthdate of Jesus for 2 simple reasons: first it was the birthdate of his chief religious competitor of the period Mithras, and secondly because the Sun reaches its lowest point on the horizon on December 21st where it rests for about 3 days before beginning its long ascension back to its zenith on December 25th. To learn more about how the Romans usurped the ancient religious scriptures of the Nazoreans and their leader Yeshu and proclaimed them the revelations of their godman Jesus Christ visit: http://www.nazoreans.com
Posted By: Nazorean | April 1, 2010 3:58 PM
I enjoyed both your article and this blog on the subject of why Protestants don't talk much about the Annunciation.
We have a website www.unbornwordalliance.com
and a blog www.unbornwordoftheday.com where we explore the pro-life implications of Christ's nine months in the womb. Although we are Catholics we do have pro-life Christians of other denominations who have signed up for our newsletter.
John Calvin, sees the womb of Mary for what it is: “Choosing from the womb of the Virgin a temple for his residence, He who was the Son of God, became also the Son of Man.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. I, trans.John Allen (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1936), 527.
Lutheran professor David S. Yeago says of Mary, that she:
"….is not simply a biophysical vessel, an unwitting conduit…her pregnancy is located within a context of covenant and communion, of God’s election and promise and the faith that these evoke…Mary is not simply a private person but a public one; she is called by the angel’s proclamation to an office, a public role within the communion of God’s people and the history of God’s salvation…her bodily “bearing” of Christ is inseparable from her faith."
David S. Yeago, “The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church”, Mary Mother of God, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 66-67, 69.
Posted By: Michele | April 3, 2010 12:15 AM
I would say that they don't preach about annunciation simply because they have a diffrent beliefs and teachings regrading this.
Christians have a great respect with Mary and her relationship with Jesus, but i know some other religion who doesn't see her that important.
Posted By: Christian Vendor Space | May 23, 2010 11:37 AM
In the book of Daniel, the Annunciation of Christ Jesus is apparent in the words spoken by the angel Gabriel to Daniel. See "Jesus was 61" link at:
http://christjesussonofgod.blogspot.com/2010/05/jesus-was-61.html
Posted By: Rich Herleikson | July 2, 2010 8:38 PM
Jesus was the Alpha and the Omega. His glorification being a God was far more important from the topic on the dating of his conception, birth and even death. Jesus came into the world as a man - but it is not about his manhood that we should put emphasize on. It is about the truth and the salvation that He brought us. Jesus ascended and left us as a God - should we recognize His godliness rather than His manhood?
Posted By: Vic | July 26, 2010 12:51 PM