Mary Co-Redemptrix: Remote Co-Operation

Genesis 3. 15:  I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

Genesis 3. 20:  And Adam called the name of his wife Eve: because she was the mother of all the living.

Ecclesiasticus 24. 14:  From the beginning, and before the world, was I created.

Luke 1. 38:  And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.

Apocalypse 12 5-6:  And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod: and her son was taken up to God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God 

Theologians make a distinction between Mary's remote co-operation in the work of Redemption, whereby, by consenting to the Incarnation, she provided Christ with the humanity that he offered in sacrifice on Calvary,¹ and her immediate co-operation in the Passion through her willingness to unite herself completely with her Son's suffering for the sake of humanity. From an etymological point of view, the term Co-Redemptrix derives from the Latin cum (with), which does not necessarily imply equality in status. ² In Mary's case, her role in the Redemption is totally subordinate to that of her Son, since she is a creature wholly dependent on him. Nevertheless, though God could have brought about the Redemption in any number of ways, he chose to do so through Mary. It was through her that he took on human flesh, and she co-operated fully with his redemptive mission, in the first place by accepting to become his Mother, and thereafter by remaining faithful to him throughout his life, and in a special way, during his Passion and death. The consequences of Mary's fiat, ³  viewed in terms of the history of salvation, were seen as immense. From the moment of her assent, not from the moment of Christ's birth, the plan of redemption went into operation on earth. From her assent flowed consequences reaching right back to the dawn of history in terms of the redemption of Adam, Eve and all the Old Testament figures, as well as future events such as the Second Coming, the Resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgement and the glorification of creation (a new Heavens and a new Earth).

She is therefore the new Eve who is instrumental in restoring the bridge between God and humanity destroyed by the sin of the first Eve. ⁴This is why the Fathers confer titles on her such as 'true mother of all the living' (see Genesis 3. 2), 'gate of heaven' (see Ezekiel 44. 1-3) and 'ladder of heaven' (see Genesis 28. 12). In this chapter we shall consider the question of how Mary's co-operation in the Incarnation contributed to the Redemption of humanity.

The Patristic Period 

For the early Fathers, Mary's essential function was to generate Christ, the Redeemer, and by extension, the Church which they saw as the body of her Son. ⁵ It was largely in this sense that she was perceived as playing a role in the economy of salvation. In the very earliest writings, one finds claims that the Virgin is already foretold from the beginning of history in the prophecy of Genesis 3. 15⁶  She is seen as the fulfilment of a variety of Old Testament prophecies and the great Hebrew women of old foreshadow her. ⁷ Some of the Fathers, in addition to believing that the Old Testament foretold the Virgin also saw her foreshadowed in pagan mythology and literature. ⁸

The Fathers did not see Mary merely as the passive recipient of Gabriel's message at the Annunciation (Luke. 1. 26-38). Rather, heaven awaited her choice and by uttering her fiat she freely cooperated in God's salvific plan, providing the Word with his humanity, which was the very instrument of Redemption. In so doing, she reversed the actions of Eve and opened up the way for humankind to be restored. The Eve-Mary antithesis, based on Genesis 3. 15, was one of the earliest and the most enduring of the themes in Mariology, and is the foundation for the notion of the co-redemption.

Justin Martyr (†c. 165) was the first to speak of this central soteriological role, playing off the Virgin Mary's reception of Gabriel's message against the virgin Eve's response to Satan's words (it was believed that Eve remained a virgin until after the Fall). ⁹ Just as Eve had brought death to the world by listening to the voice of the serpent and disobeying God, the Virgin Mary had rescued the world from its bondage and opened the way to salvation by her fiat. It is precisely in this free consent that she reverses Eve's choice and sets in motion the process whereby humanity is restored to grace: 

He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might be destroyed in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, when she was still a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent, and gave birth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the joyful news to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Most High would overshadow her: so that the Holy One born of her would be the Son of God; and she replied, 'Be it done to me according to thy word.' And from her was born, he of whom so many Scriptures refer, as we have shown. Through him God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him, and he brings about deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe in Him. Dialogus cum Trypho, 100, 4-5¹⁰ 

An important theme in this passage, which was to form a central plank in the understanding of Mary's role in the economy of salvation, is the enmity between her and the devil. Although most of the early Fathers speak of the enmity between the serpent and Christ, and not Mary, in the context of Genesis 3. 15, since the Greek Bible as well as early Latin versions correctly translated the Hebrew hu (it) as a masculine pronoun (as opposed the Latin feminine ipsa in the Vulgate), so that it was the seed, and not the woman who crushed the serpent's head, ¹¹ by no means do they exclude Mary's role in defeating the devil. ¹² Since the rupture between God and humanity came about as a result of Eve and Adam, who allowed themselves to be tempted by the devil, it was necessary that another woman (Mary) and man (Jesus) should reject his attempts at seducing them. Had Mary not rejected Satan, which she was seen to do above all in her obedience to God's will and in her chastity, God's plan of salvation would have failed.

It was Irenaeus (†c. 202) who gave Justin's idea theological depth through his development of the Pauline notions of recapitulation. Irenaeus' extensive reflections on the Eve-Mary parallel led him to the realisation that the Virgin is no mere cipher, because her freely-given consent was an essential element in God's salvific plan. ¹³ While it is Christ, the new Adam, who is the formal cause of salvation, Mary, the new Eve, also plays an instrumental role in undoing the damage caused by original sin and in restoring creation. Christ and Mary not only restore humanity, and creation as a whole, to their prelapsarian state, but actually complete the process cut short by original sin, bringing humanity and the created universe to maturation thereby fulfilling the original telos established by the Father.

For Irenaeus, recapitulation (anakaphaiosis) involves the restoration of what has been lost through original sin, which is not simply a return to the status quo ante, a restitution of the lost perfection of Eden, but a fulfilment of creation itself. According to Irenaeus, Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God, specifically in the image and likeness of the Son, the Logos. Prior to the Fall, man was fully in God's image because he possessed unsullied free will and reason. However, likeness to God was incomplete because Adam and Eve were still childlike, so their will and reason had yet to mature towards a perfect likeness of their Creator. He uses the example of a mother, who does not give solid food to an infant, though she could if she so chose. Similarly, God could 'have endowed man with perfection from the beginning, but man was as yet unable to receive it, being still an infant'.¹⁴ Had they not sinned, Adam and Eve would have been perfected and would have become immortal both in body and soul. Irenaeus is very insistent that the body, and not just the soul, is in the image and likeness of God, mainly because he was countering the Gnostic notion that the material world is corrupt. For him, part of the reason for Adam and Eve's weakness in giving in to the devil's temptation was that they had no visible model of perfected humanity to follow:  

For in times long past, it was said that man was created after the image of God, but it was not [actually] shown; for the Word was as yet invisible, after whose image man was created. Wherefore also he did easily lose the similitude. When, however, the Word of God became flesh, He confirmed both these: for He both showed forth the image truly, since He became Himself what was His image; and He re-established the similitude after a sure manner, by assimilating man to the invisible Father through means of the visible Word. Adversus Haereses 5, 16, 2 

It is Christ, then, by being the visible image of humanity perfected, who opens up the possibility for all to deify themselves (theosis), to become perfect images and likenesses of God both in the flesh and in the spirit. The Son had to 'recapitulate,' to take on himself, the whole of mankind's sinful nature and redeem disobedience through his obedience. Having recapitulated the sinful history of mankind on the Cross and having transformed it through this supreme act of sacrificial love, the resurrected Christ restored and perfected humanity. A logical sequela to this is that only resurrected humanity fully manifests the divine likeness to the Father that is the telos of human nature. The Incarnation, then, is not only a divine response to human sin, but the planned culmination of creation. Thus creation, Incarnation and Redemption are intimately linked. For mankind, they manifest themselves sequentially but in God, who exists outside time, they are all part of one eternal movement of His love, though accomplished in history.

Closely linked to Irenaeus' doctrine of Christ's recapitulation is his teaching on Mary, the new Eve, the universal Mother of the new creation. For Irenaeus, Mary is the 'cause of salvation', while Christ is salvation. It is in this sense that Mary is the fixed point, on whom the whole history of salvation depends. Mary's obedience to God's plan opens the way to salvation and brings life, just as Eve cut humanity off from God and brought death: 

Likewise the Virgin Mary is found obedient, when she says, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.' But Eve disobeyed, and she was disobedient when she was still a virgin. [...] Therefore, just as Eve, by disobeying, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race, so Mary, who although betrothed to a man, was nevertheless a virgin, by obeying, became the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race. [...] In fact, what has been tied cannot be untied unless one loosens the knot in reverse order. [...] And thus also it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed thanks to the obedience of Mary, for what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, the Virgin Mary set free through faith. Adversus Haereses, 3, 22, 4¹⁵ 

Mary does not simply put right the damage caused by Eve's sin. She recapitulates her, that is, she fulfils what Eve, and therefore all of humanity, was to be in God's eternal plan: 'And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it restored by a virgin.'¹⁶ Nor does he consider her role passive; the fulfilment of God's plan for the salvation of humanity required her active consent. 

And just as through a disobedient virgin man was stricken down and fell into death, so through the Virgin who was obedient to the Word of God man was reanimated and received life. The Lord, in fact, came to search for the lost sheep, that is, mankind who had lost his way. Therefore he did not form a different body for himself, but through her who had descended from Adam he preserved the likeness of that body. For it was necessary that Adam should be summed up in Christ, that mortality might be swallowed up and overwhelmed by immortality; and Eve summed up in Mary, that a virgin should be a virgin's intercessor, and by a virgin's obedience undo and put away the disobedience of a virgin. Demonstratio apostolicae praedicationis, 32-33¹⁷