RECAPITULATION
Irenaeus (+202) treats of this analogy in great detail and can be considered the first Marian theologian. The analogy that he uses of Mary as the New Eve is intimately connected with his fundamental theological principle of recapitulation. In the setting of Christ, as the new head restoring the human race to its former state of divine friendship, Mary takes her place in this process of restoration.
“Just as Eve, wife of Adam, yes, yet still a virgin … became by her disobedience the cause of death for herself and the whole human race, so Mary, too, espoused, yet a virgin, became by her obedience the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race. And this is why the Law calls her who was espoused to a man the wife of him who had espoused her, though she was still a virgin: to show the cycle that goes back (recirculationem) from Mary to Eve. The point is, what is tied together cannot possibly be untied save by inversion of the process whereby the bonds of union have arisen, so that the original ties are loosed by the subsequent, and the subsequent set the original free … and so it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by Mary’s obedience. For what the virgin Eve bound fast by her refusal to believe, this the Virgin Mary unbound by her belief.”
The recirculatio envisioned in this analogy by Irenaeus ties Mary intimately with the recapitulation by Christ of the human race and boldly reproduces in each detail the whole process, but now in reverse. The accent is placed on the antithesis between the first Eve and the New Eve. Both are virgins, one disobedient, the other obedient. We see easily here the same text quoted before from Justin. But for Irenaeus the analogy does not remain only a similitude of externals. Mary as Mother of the Savior has an active part in “untying” the knot of original sin. This is more closely seen in another text of Irenaeus written after the above text.
“Christ recapitulated by the obedience on a tree (cross) the disobedience that took place on a tree; and, to the destruction of that seduction whereby the betrothed virgin Eve was evilly seduced, the glad tidings of truth were happily brought by an angel to Mary, virgin espoused. For, as Eve was seduced by the utterance of an angel to flee God after disobeying His word, so Mary by the utterance of an angel had the glad tidings brought to her, that she should bear God in obedience to His word. And whereas Eve had disobeyed God, Mary was persuaded to obey God, that the Virgin Mary might become intercessor (advocata) of the virgin Eve. And as the human race was sentenced to death by means of a virgin, by means of a virgin is it delivered (salvatur). A virgin’s disobedience is balanced by a virgin’s obedience. For the sin of the first-formed was emended by the correction from the First-born; the guilt of the serpent was overcome by the simplicity of the dove; and we were set free from those chains by which we had been bound to death.”
In all these inter-related texts of Irenaeus we find a common theme: it is through the Incarnation that Jesus Christ becomes the “recapitulator,” assuming in Himself all of humanity and restoring all things through the Incarnation back to their pristine orientation to the glory of God and to the attainment of their own fullest perfection. Mary overcomes the disobedience of Eve and hence the evil effects caused by her original sin, death, meaning primarily, in the eschatological sense, supernatural death in the soul through loss of God’s life and final damnation; she does this by pronouncing her freely given “fiat.” Thus she becomes the mother of the human race through establishing them again in the spiritual life; in this she is inseparably united to the New Adam.
Irenaeus does not enter into the causality exerted by the Virgin in the redemption of the human race but simply is content to use the word “salvatur.” For him and for the other early Fathers it would have no meaning to ask what causality she exerted in the redemption, for this was a cooperation between God and a human being, a synergeia that could not be divided into quantitative parts. The value of Irenaeus’ texts for us lies precisely in the fact that he did not formulate conclusions in terms of our contemporary Marian theology, i.e. co-redemption, co-mediation, etc. In not doing thusly, he kept the dynamism of the analogy of Mary and the Church one of identity and unity. Thus the role of Mary in the redemption is one situated close to the Redeemer which can never be considered aside from her intimate relationship to Him.
No Father, either of the East or the West, developed this theme of Eve-Mary so well as did St. Epiphanius (+403). He was born and educated in Palestine and thus can be considered in the Syrian-Palestinian line of Irenaeus as opposed to the Alexandrian-Cappadocian line that did not develop this theme. In his Panarion he devotes two chapters to draw out of this parallel the most advanced Marian theology of his time. Here we see type and antitype of the Oriental mind applied to Mary in a mentality that is consistent with the same biblical mind that provides us with a link between the Old Testament and the New by seeing the overall plan of God in the continual history of salvation.
“It is she (Mary) who was intended through Eve. Eve it was who received in figure the name of Mother of the living. For Eve had been called this after she had heard the words ‘You are dust and unto dust you shall return.’ It was an amazing thing that after she had sinned she should receive this magnificent name. We must not see only the sensible reality that from her the whole human race on earth would take its birth but according to the truth that it is Mary from whom life itself would be born for the world because it was she who gave birth to a life and thus Mary became mother of the living. It is then in figure that Mary has been called Mother of the living.”
~ George A. Maloney, Mary: The Womb of God
