If one acknowledges that the Mother of God is the New Eve, I cannot understand how one can then relegate her to a fairly minor role in the economy of redemption. Consider how one speaks about the Fall. We always speak of the “Fall of Adam.” But the role of Eve in the Fall is never forgotten, and Eve is always present in the background as we speak of the Fall of Adam. Likewise, if we admit that the Theotokos is New Eve, then she should always be sitting in the background when we speak of the redemption secured by Christ. The Last Adam is borne for the salvation of the world, but the Woman who bears the Seed is Mary.

Just consider how big this theme is throughout Scripture. In Genesis 3, God declares that He will “put enmity between [the Serpent] and the Woman…[the Seed] will crush your head.” In other words, there are two wars that take place throughout the Bible. There is the war of the Serpent with the Woman, and there is the war of the Serpent with the Seed. That war typologically appears many times throughout Scripture. For example, in Genesis 12, Pharaoh attacks the Woman. In Genesis 20, Abimelech attempts to create Seed through the woman, in the context of the coming birth of Isaac. There is an attack on the Bride, and there is an attack on the Seed.

Head crushing isn’t just a job for the Seed, either. David, the prototype of the Messiah, the seed of the Woman, crushes Goliath’s head- and Goliath is the Seed of the Serpent as a Nephilim from Gath. But Jael also crushes the head of the Serpent when she drives a tent peg into Sisera’s temple. For that, Deborah declares that she is the “most blessed of all women”, terminology later applied to the Virgin Mary in Luke’s Gospel. Elsewhere in Judges, Abimelech, the false king, gets his head crushed by a woman. Here, we are not even told the woman’s name- she is the prototypical Woman, the Woman at war with the Serpent.

The idea that Mary appears “very rarely in Scripture” is just as wrong as the idea that Adam is only mentioned in Genesis 3, Hosea 6, Romans 5, and 1 Corinthians 15. Those who think Adam is a “minor character” have not developed the skill of reading the Old Testament thematically and intertextually. The sequence of events in Genesis 2-3 structures the rest of the Bible. Man given a commission in a land, man fails to guard the Bride, man exalts himself, man is kicked out, man is promised redemption through the Seed of the Woman. The curses of Genesis 3 provide a structuring device for a large portion of Leviticus. Those precious stones and metals in Paradise reappear later in Scripture describing the sanctuaries of God.

If we are to see Adam everywhere in Scripture, we also must see Eve everywhere in Scripture. And who is Eve? Eve is both Bride and Mother. She is bride of Adam and mother of the Seed. This is why she is called “mother of all living” only after she is promised the seed that will crush the head of the Serpent. In Isaiah 40-55, then, Daughter Zion is both Bride of the Lord and mother of the seed. Importantly, the identity of the Seed is focused downwards onto the Suffering Servant, and then is expanded outward to include the whole people of God.

The character of Adam marches throughout the Old Testament- he is the one who needs redemption. The character of Eve likewise marches through the Old Testament- she desires a husband who will rule over her rightly, and she will bear the Seed that redeems Adam. If we acknowledge that these two threads are essential in studying the Bible, then we cannot downplay the role of the Holy Virgin in the new covenant. The war of the Serpent with the Woman comes to its climax in the Virgin Mary, the New Jael, “most blessed of all women.” The war of the Serpent with the Seed comes to its climax in Christ, who crushes his head and redeems Adam.

If you have no problem mentally noting “and Eve” when you hear “Adam”, you shouldn’t have a problem mentally noting “and Mary” when you hear “Jesus.”

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One error that Orthodox make when dialoguing with Protestants biblically on the identity of the Virgin Mary is that they fail to build the structure within which she is identified in the Bible. It’s useless to simply point to Isaiah where God says “I will make the place of my rest glorious”, declare this is Mary, and be done with it. That won’t get you anywhere, because Isaiah is talking about the Temple.



What ought to be pointed out is that throughout the Bible, Temples are feminine. In the Song of Solomon, the Woman is described in terms alluding to Solomon’s Temple. Furthermore, the eschatological destiny of the city of God is to be filled with the divine glory and become a Temple-City. Cities are daughters, mothers, and brides, as noted above. Zion weeps in Isaiah because she is desolate, without children. Zion is also “Daughter Zion”, and she is also married by the Lord. Who is the Woman who bears the Seed? Corporately, this is Israel. The prophets paint Israel as ground persistently beaten by the Lord into fertility, until the Seed is finally ready to be planted and flower forth to fill the world with fruit.



The Virgin Mary is the climax of this theme. Ground is feminine in Scripture (Adam is the seed of the Spirit and the dust of the ground, for example), and Mary is the focal point of Israel as feminine Seed-Bearer. God made a promise to Eve that is finally fulfilled in Mary. Those themes are all evident in Revelation 12, which is the first sign of John’s Apocalypse and corresponds to the first sign of John’s Gospel, which likewise features Jesus’ Mother. The Woman cries out as she waits to bear the Seed. She finally bears the Seed, and has to flee an attack (Herod’s attack on Jesus’ family, fulfilling Daniel 11-12), and then the Woman becomes the Church-Bride who flees Jewish persecution, defeats the Judaizers, and awaits the persecution of Nero.

