It’s evening in the Garden of Eden. Tomorrow, the woman will awaken to a different world. Earlier today, she and her partner fell for the serpent’s silky question. Now, they reel from the consequences: a world ruled by the forces of decay, typified by sorrow in childbearing, thorns, thistles, patriarchy, and death. The woman and her partner flee in exile, and she wonders if she will ever hear God’s voice in a garden again.
It’s morning in another garden. A woman can scarcely see through her tears. Someone has stolen her teacher’s body, and she needs answers. She alerts two fellow disciples—both men—who corroborate her claim that the body is gone. The puzzled men leave quickly, so she approaches the gardener alone. Anguish yields to joy as the risen Christ reveals himself and gives her a mission. Once more, God sends a woman from a garden—this time not in fear and sorrow as the forces of decay nip her heels, but in jubilation, proclaiming that Christ has routed these forces and the children are free.
~~~
Every list of female disciples in the synoptic Gospels begins with this second woman, Mary Magdalene,[1] signifying her prominence.[2] Jesus drove seven demons from Mary, according to Luke 8:2 and Mark 16:9.[3] Demons afflict people with various ailments, but the gospel authors do not connect these things with God’s judgment on those who are afflicted. Those oppressed by demons are ill, not evil.[4] Mary is not a bad woman turned good, but a woman in whom the forces of decay have lost their stranglehold.
Further, the Bible often uses the number seven as a symbol of completeness or perfection,[5] indicating that the demons had complete control of Mary.[6] As the only person said to have seven demons, her oppression most perfectly demonstrates the power of the forces of decay over her life. Her deliverance, then, makes her the “perfect” signpost for Christ’s resurrection power.
This means that Mary is a walking prophecy before she is a talking preacher. When we see Mary in the Gospels, we see the symbol of Christ’s victory over the forces of decay, including death, sorrow, thorns, thistles, and patriarchy. She is a flesh-and-blood foreshadowing of God’s new creation.
But if Luke has buried this too deeply for the casual reader, too far removed by barriers of culture, language, and time for some to understand what deliverance from seven demons signified, John shouts from the rooftops that Mary is the herald of a new “created order.” Far from a contemporary egalitarian discovery, perceptive readers from the patristic era until now have grasped the Edenic parallel in his resurrection scene (John 20:1–19).
You may have heard Mary described as the “apostle to the apostles.” This title first appears in the early third-century Commentary on the Song of Songs by Hippolytus, who applies the title to all the women who went with Mary to the tomb. But he doesn’t just stop with the title. Hippolytus connects Easter to Eve, showing how the forces of decay have been undone, liberating the bound woman:
Those bear us a good witness who, sent by Christ, became apostles for the apostles, to whom the angels said, “Go and tell the disciples: He is going before you into Galilee. There you shall see him” ….
O new comfort! Eve becomes an apostle! Behold, from now on the deception of the snake is seen through and she will no longer go astray.[7]
Thomas Aquinas adds in the thirteenth century, “She [Mary] had the office of an apostle; indeed, she was an apostle to the apostles insofar as it was her task to announce our Lord’s resurrection to the disciples. Thus, just as it was a woman who was the first to announce the words of death, so it was a woman who would be the first to announce the words of life.”[8]
The role of Mary and the other women at the empty tomb reverses the priority that men had assumed throughout human history, much as Deborah and Huldah had done in the Hebrew Bible, but now in the climactic moment of history! Women now carry God’s revelation to men,[9] and male privilege is shown the door. The old is gone; the new has come. John’s Gospel portrays Jesus as finishing the work of re-creation on “Day Six,” Good Friday, and resting on Day Seven just as God rested from creation in Genesis. On the eighth day, the new day, the garden tomb parallels Eden, with Jesus as the gardener of his new creation.[10]
Ancient theologians commonly saw Mary as a new Eve. Their misogyny, inherited from the old order ruled by the forces of decay, tinges their commentary. Nevertheless, they understand that Easter reverses the Edenic fall and gives prominence to the sex that had been subjected to the rule of men ever since. In AD 381, Ambrose writes:
For Mary worshipped Christ, and therefore was appointed to be the messenger of the resurrection to the apostles. In this way she loosened the hereditary guilt and the immeasurable transgression of the female sex. For this the Lord has brought about secretly ‘that where sin had exceedingly abounded, grace might more exceedingly abound.’ And a woman is rightly appointed before men, so that she who first proclaimed guilt to man should be the first to proclaim the message of the grace of the Lord.[11]
In the early fifth century, Augustine adds:
Because man has fallen through the female sex, man has been restored by the female sex. For a virgin brought forth Christ and a woman proclaimed that he was risen. By a woman came death, and by a woman came life.[12]
When Eve’s eyes were opened after tasting the forbidden fruit, she covered herself and hid. When Mary’s eyes were opened after Christ spoke her name, she ran toward community, shouting, “I have seen the Lord!” Jesus, the seed of the woman who crushed the head of the serpent, had met Mary in the garden and enlisted her as an ally in preaching the gospel.[13] Mary vindicated Eve, making the most crucial announcement in history and showing that women can advance revelation from God with truth and clarity.[14]
Just as we long for the fulfillment of what Christ set in motion that first Easter morning, we push back against the forces of decay in big and small ways. We begin and end each day with toothpaste and a brush. In between, we pull weeds, stretch aching muscles, and eat our fruits and veggies. We check the oil in the lawn mower and pull an extra shift on the job when unforeseen frustrations dampen productivity.
We push back against patriarchy in big and small ways, too. It can be as simple as sharing links to CBE articles or blessing someone with a gift subscription to Mutuality magazine. Support women scholars by purchasing their works in the CBE bookstore, and share podcast sermons by women. Battling patriarchy should be no less routine and no more controversial than battling the other fruits of our fall. Jesus, Mary, and Eve agree. New day, new garden, new creation.
Notes
[1] Matt 27:56, 61; 28:1; Mark 15:40, 47; 16:1; Luke 8:2–3; 24:10.
[2] Likewise, Peter heads every list of the Twelve: Matt 10:2–4; Mark 3:13–19; Luke 6:14–16; Acts 1:13.
[3] From Mark’s longer ending.
[4] Dorothy A. Lee, The Ministry of Women in the New Testament: Reclaiming the Biblical Vision for Church Leadership (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2021), 48.
[5] The Hebrew word for seven (שבע / sheva) sounds like the word for complete (שׂבע / sava). We see the connection of seven to completeness in the seven-day creation pattern, the seventh year “sabbatical” cycle (Lev. 25:4), Joshua circling Jericho seven times (Josh. 6), and Elijah praying seven times before rain returns (1 Kings 18:43–44), to name a few.
[6] Esther A. de Boer, The Mary Magdalene Cover-Up: The Sources Behind the Myth, trans. John Bowden, 1st edition (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 23.
[7] Hippolytus, “Commentary on the Song of Songs 25.610, quoted from De Boer, The Mary Magdalene Cover-Up, 108.
[8] Thomas Aquinas, “Commentary on the Gospel of John,” quoted from Sean Davidson, Saint Mary Magdalene: Prophetess of Eucharistic Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), 196.
[9] Richard Bauckham, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 275, 278.
[10] Cyndi Parker, Encountering Jesus in the Real World of the Gospels (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2021), 148–49.
[11] Ambrose, “On the Holy Spirit 3, 11.73–75” quoted in De Boer, The Mary Magdalene Cover-Up, 109.
[12] Augustine, “Sermon 232.1–2” quoted in De Boer, 111.
[13] Carmen Joy Imes, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters, (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023), 130–31.
[14] Kat Armstrong, No More Holding Back: Emboldening Women to Move Past Barriers, See Their Worth, and Serve God Everywhere (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2019), 14.
Photo by Shalev Cohen on Unsplash.
Related Resources
“I Have Seen the Lord” Mary Magdalene in the New Testament and Early Christianity
Women in Scripture and History: Who was Mary Magdalene really? with Rev. Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt