Heraclitus once wrote that “War is both father and king of all,” and “all things come to pass through the compulsion of strife.” According to the pessimistic, pre-Socratic philosopher, conflict in the world was not only inevitable, but necessary. It also existed in two planes, the vertical and the horizontal, “Gods and men: living in each other’s death, dying in each other’s life.” War, father and king of us all, was the fundamental nature of nature according to Heraclitus. It was not a very lively view of things, for without conflict, according to Heraclitus, the cosmos itself would cease to be (Kreeft, Socrates’ Children, 55). Further, it was probably not without good reason that Heraclitus used the metaphor of the “father” to describe war. On this Mother’s Day weekend, therefore, we might be inclined to look elsewhere in history to give us a better sense of reality. Instead of looking to the brooding Greek misanthropist, let’s turn our attention instead to Jewish anthropology, and to two mothers of men: Eve and Mary.
Eve: Mother of All the Living
In Genesis 2:18-24 we read the only ancient, near-eastern text that addresses the creation of woman specifically. Further, unlike the creation of man, which is told in one, brief verse, the creation of woman is told in a burst of poetic inspiration comprising of six extended lines:
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for[a] him.” 19 Now out of the ground the LordGod had formed[b] every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam[c] there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made[d] into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”[e]24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Nahum Sarna, commenting on the passage, points out that “With the appearance of woman, Creation is complete.” Why is creation incomplete without woman? Sarna explains: “He [man] discovers his own manhood and fulfillment only when he faces the woman, the human being who is to be his partner in life.” Moreover, this discovery of one’s own nature that can only happen in relationship with another, also has a physical component. Adam, who is only truly Adam in virtue of their being an Eve, possesses in himself the potential for life. But the potential for new life can only be realized in the physical unification with his consort. Alone, Adam is mere potential. The reunification of the separated elements is necessary to creation:
To become ‘one flesh’ refers to the physical aspects of marriage, as though the separated elements seek one another for reunification.
Sarna, 23
However, the physical reunion, the union between a real man and a real woman that produces new life, cannot be disassociated from the mental, emotional and, most importantly, spiritual aspects of the human person:
Sexual relations between husband and wife do not rise above the level of animality unless they be informed by and imbued with spiritual, emotional, and mental affinity.
Sarna, 23
In short, the procreative act that God ordained for Adam and Eve was always intended to be the one, concrete act most analogous to the coming together of God and man. First, in the intimacy of the sexual act itself, which is the most powerful experience outside of a direct experience of the Divine. Then, in the natural result of that act, the generation of new human beings.
Sexual procreation, i.e., having children, within the confines of a covenantal relationship comprised of spiritual, emotional and mental affinity was (and still is, albeit with increasing rarity) the one experience human beings could enjoy that most closely mirrored God’s relationship to His own creative act (bringing the universe into being), and His providential care for the product of that creative act. It was in this act that Eve was intended to be “the mother (and queen?) of us all.” But, in Adam we fell from grace. In falling from grace, death entered the world, and, in light of death entering the world, while motherhood persisted, a new model of motherhood would be needed to help restore what had been lost, and reverse the curse brought about by sin.
Mary: Mother of The Giver of Life
In the Gospel of Luke we are told that a young Jewish woman was visited by an angel of God. Her name was Mary. She lived in an insignificant town called Nazareth, and had a cousin, Elizabeth, who lived somewhere in Judea, in the hills. She was betrothed to a man named Joseph, and was a virgin. Other than this we know little about her.
Regarding the angel Gabriel’s appearance to this Mary, and his extraordinary address to her, Thomas Aquinas once wrote:
It was written in praise of Abraham that he received angels hospitably and that he showed them reverence. But it was never heard that an angel showed reverence to a man until he saluted the blessed virgin, saying reverently ‘Hail.’
From the Bible alone it is hard, perhaps impossible, to say whether there was something unique about Mary that made her worthy of being chosen to be the mother of Jesus, or whether what made her unique was her being chosen to be Jesus’ mother. Catholics and Protestants will dispute that, and I certainly have my own view on it. However, it is not relevant to my point here.
Nevertheless, there are two things about Mary Protestants and Catholics can, without hesitation or consternation, agree upon. They are: 1) Mary conceived of and gave birth to Jesus (as a virgin), and 2) Jesus was, and is, fully God and fully man. Given these two, non-controversial claims, one should be able to make the simple, logical deduction that Mary conceived of and gave birth to God. Mary is the theotokos, or “The Mother of God.” This term was rightly established for Mary at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. However, there was some controversy about it, and, in time, it took on a meaning more than originally intended:
Unfortunately, the term [theotokos] soon became regarded as expressing exaltation of Mary, to such an extent that by the sixth century false notions about Mary, originally framed by gnostics and a sect known as Collyridians, were taken up by the church itself.
Treier and Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 565
One need not rehearse the long, contentious history between Roman Catholics and Protestants over the nature of Mary for a Mother’s Day post. Suffice it to say that so long as Protestants understand that theotokos is a logically appropriate term to ascribe to Mary, and that it does not entail belief in other, later developments in Marian dogma, then to affirm Mary as the Mother of God is a fact we should embrace as one of the 2 or 3 greatest truths that can be known by men. Mary was selected by God to be the Mother of God, the human vessel God used to bring into being not just new life, but the Creator and Giver of Life itself (John 1:1-3, Col 1:15-20).
Mothers: Givers of Life
Eve and Mary represent life. Eve, the mother of all the living, even if corrupted life, is humanity’s mother. Mary, the mother of the Giver of Life, is the role model for all women who seek true life. For in her acceptance and submission to the will of God, Mary became the vehicle for God’s greatest grace to man: Jesus Christ. That submission to God’s will entailed conception (miraculous conception), pregnancy, birth, the rearing of a son, and the witnessing of His death (and, of course, His resurrection). Mary, even if not unique in nature, certainly had a unique existence. Mary and Eve, no different than any other woman by nature, both fulfilled that which was most central to that nature: they were mothers who bore and gave birth to the living.
Given what we know, we might conjecture that not only did Eve and Mary, mothers of the living, create and nurture new life, but that they loved life. They loved life itself, because they were the closest to God of all women, and God is Life and the Giver of Life abundant:
8 And you shall again obey the voice of the Lord and keep all his commandments that I command you today. 9 The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your cattle and in the fruit of your ground. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, 10 when you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 30:8-9
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10
Same God, same Life.
Motherhood Under Attack: Haters of Life
Unfortunately, there are those who hate life. For these, motherhood itself is the greatest of threats. To be a mother, to carry and deliver new life is a despicable, restrictive, limiting, and self-denying thing. As such, this Mother’s Day we must also recognize that motherhood itself is under attack.
Some of these haters make a mockery out of motherhood. These are usually wicked and cruel men and their tactic is obscene. They call themselves “trans-women.” These are men who pretend to be women, and who claim to be able to give birth. It is in their willful rejection of that which God has ordained only for real women that they mock and ridicule life itself. In their malicious, self-serving, and narcissistic endeavors to deconstruct motherhood, to make it a plastic thing, they make a sham out of the most glorious aspect of true womanhood. In doing so, not only do they rebel against God, they deny the very process of history. “Trans-women” denigrate the role of women throughout the ages in their attempt to appropriate womanhood to themselves.
But, of course, we might expect this behavior from toxic males. In fact, this seems to be the final battleground for toxic masculinity: to usurp even that which is purely and wholly feminine. Once men can say in the face of actual women (and reality), “we are just as good of women as you” and get them to believe it, then what else is left for men to dominate? Finally, we might also point out, that men who pretend to be women, who make a mockery of motherhood, also spit in the faces of those woman who cannot have children, but who long to lovingly procreate. They too are victims of the great, malevolent charade that is transgenderism.
Still, there are others who hate life, and, in hating life hate motherhood. Tragically, these are themselves real women. They are the “feminists,” (the Simon de Beauvoir type, not the Susan B. Anthony type)– those women who defend the right to kill babies in the womb, or who chooses not to have children, even within the context of marriage (the anti-natalist). Tragically, these too have become like men, acquiescing to a societal expectation of “fulfillment” and “success” that was devised entirely by men. It is one of Satan’s cruelest tricks: to convince women to abdicate motherhood for the sake of being more like bad and vain men.
On Mother’s Day: Choose Life
Without an embrace of motherhood, and an appreciation of mothers, Heraclitus might be proven right. Without a positive view of life: the conceiving, bearing, birthing and rearing of children, then maybe war truly is the father of us all. In a society willing at every turn to denigrate the nurturing, cultivating love of motherhood, in a culture capable of making both a mockery of motherhood, or claiming it as superfluous, should we expect anything less than compulsion through strife?
This Mother’s Day, let us choose life, and not death. Let us honor both the mother of the living, Eve, and the mother of the One Who gives life, Mary. In doing so, may we show the appropriate respect for the sacred institutions God has established for all humanity, motherhood for His daughters, and fatherhood for His sons. To this end, Happy Mother’s Day.
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