The Queen Of Heaven And The Son Of Man

December 15, 1985
Lakeland

December 22, 1985
Port Charlotte

In this season of carols and candles, the stories of Jesus’ birth, Handel’s MESSIAH, holiday celebrations, and gifts, the subject is chosen in order to increase understanding of religions, not only as mental frameworks for theology, but also as vehicles for emotions we feel, even when the rational mind may question and rebel. The Virgin Mary is the Queen of Heaven; Jesus is the Son of Man.

First, Mary, the mother of Jesus. As theology and dogma acquired complexities in the early centuries of the Christian movement, she was given many titles: “Blessed Virgin Mary,” “Mother of God,” “Our Lady,” “Queen of Heaven.” If one accepted the theological assumption that the “sin” of Adam and Eve tainted all human descendants beyond their own power to redeem, and that death became inevitable because of that “sin,” there is an inner logic to Mary’s various promotions to divine eminence.

If all humans were tainted with “sin,” no one born of a human mother and father could be the savior. Obviously, then, Jesus had to be born free from that flaw that all others inherited from Adam and Eve. So, the story goes, that Mary, a virgin, although married to Joseph, was made pregnant by the Holy Spirit. However, there was a problem. Mary was human. Therefore, she, too, had to have inherited original sin. That logical difficulty was overcome by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which pronounced that by the special grace of God, Mary was kept free from all stain of original sin from the moment of her conception. This theological development took centuries to become official. There was much learned dispute in the Middle Ages. In 1476, the December 8th Feast of the Immaculate Conception was established. Finally, Pope Pius IX, in 1854, pronounced the dogma as The Immaculate Conception of Mary. (I have wondered if it occurred to the theologians that if Mary was the first to be free or original sin, she, not Jesus, could have been the Redeemer, and been crucified to save us. But then, theology and dogma were the province of men, and such would not have occurred to them. A woman as Messiah – not to be thought of!)

Another logical step became theologically necessary if Mary was conceived immaculately, free from original sin. She could not die, because death came into the world [when] Adam and Eve sinned. So there had to be the doctrine of The Assumption. “Mary was taken up into Heaven, body and soul.” So pronounced Pope Pius XII in 1950. It was an ancient doctrine (although never mentioned in the Bible), but did not become official dogma until thirty-five years ago. Mary was crowned Queen of Heaven after her assumption.

This salvation scheme is [logical] if the premise of original sin is accepted. But I do not accept the premise for many reasons that would take much time to elaborate.

But today, I’d like to mention that the idea of a Queen of Heaven is ages older than the time of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.

In the Hebrew scripture of Jeremiah (7-17 ff) we read that the prophet became angry at the people of Jerusalem, “The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven.” A biblical scholar says that the cakes were probably in the form of a star – Christmas cookies, you might say, 600 years before the birth of Jesus.

The Queen of Heaven in Jeremiah is a female deity older than history. She is Isis or Ishtar from the religious myths of the ancient Egyptians, who was given many other names as cultures affected one another. Ishtar, or Isis, Queen of Heaven, was goddess of the Crescent Moon. She was also Mistress of the Seas, and as Venus, goddess of love and fertility. One of the ancient myths has Isis overcoming the power of a great evil serpent. Here there may be a cultural connection with the evil snake who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Interesting, too, that a few years before the time of Jesus, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, pregnant by Marc Antony, claimed she was the reincarnation of Isis and that she was bearing the divine royal child. Cleopatra never claimed virginity, however. That would have been too much even for her most loyal or most naïve subjects.

If one leaps ahead of those times 1500 years to Queen Elizabeth I of England, there will be found paintings of her with the royal crown surrounded by stars – another virgin queen, not only of England, but of Heaven (not specifically stated, but the implication is clear).

Mary, the mother of Jesus, Queen of Heaven in the old story of salvation, has many parallels. Does this cultural, mythological commonality tell us anything about Christmas? We will see after we look at Mary’s child, the Son of Man.

What mattered most to those who put together the gospels not less than thirty-five years after the death of Jesus was that Jesus was the divine Messiah hoped for, prayed for, and anticipated in the Jewish scriptures.

But did Jesus believe he was the Messiah? That question has been debated for hundreds of years, and no provable position has emerged. Jesus called himself the “Son of Man.” But he was the only one who used the name in the New Testament, with one exception (Acts 7/56). The term “Son of Man” was used frequently in the Jewish sacred scriptures we call the Old Testament. The contexts in which the “Son of Man,” as used, indicates a human being – a man. The Son of Man designated not a messiah, not a divine savior, but a man. [The term] “Son of Man” will be found in Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and most frequently in Ezekiel. Except for one passage in the strange, apocalyptic book of Daniel, “Son of Man” means a human person, born as we all are – born of a human father and a human mother. Jesus, with his thorough knowledge of his heritage, could not have been ignorant of that. But it was how he described [himself].

Little wonder that the later founders of the early Christian ritual and doctrine did not use the term Jesus used to describe himself, “Son of Man.” Such a human term, describing human origins, would strike a contradictory note in the creeds of later dogmatists who constructed the elaborate theology – a theology that seems far removed from the itinerant, radical, compassionate Jesus, the Son of Man, ... seemed not at all concerned about “original sin,” but was passionately moved by the cares, troubles, needs of persons he encountered in his own time and place.

Consider this too: the mythological base of the Advent and birth stories which have been such a precious part of western civilization are just that – myths. Any basis of historical fact is as shaky as proving there is a real person, Santa Claus, after the kids have discovered the wrapped presents in the closet shelf 10 days before Christmas.

If the general Christian public had been present at my foregoing remarks, and perhaps some of you, the opinion would prevail that that I’m the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” that I have “Santa Claustrophobia,” or that I am a “Noel Coward.” So be it!

But the illustrations of the Queen of Heaven and the Son of Man demonstrate the power that myths have over our lives. Myth is more than an old story discredited by modern scholarship, the modern mind, or modern science. The myths of the mid-winter solstice have power and have had that power for millenia. Christmas was celebrated long before Christian times: the Roman Saturnalia, the Scandinavian Yule, the mistletoe of the Druids, the sacred tree of the Teutonic tribes – all bear witness to the awe, joy, and celebrations at the return of the Sun, the increasing light, and the promise that the fields will once again bear crops.

It is commonplace that all these ancient myths stir a response in us at levels deeper than our conscious minds. We all feel the deep tides, deny them as we may. Cultural myths are like individual dreams, in that realities surface that our logical minds cannot fully express or tolerate. The eminent scholar of myth, Joseph Campbell, writes, “Myth is an imaginative elaboration of fundamental problems and tensions in the form of speaking symbolically to the whole human condition.”

Carl Jung and his followers were persuaded of the theory of a collective unconscious which constantly pushes archetypes from the depths of the psyche to the surface of the mind. The Great Earth Mother, the Sky Father, the Wise Old Man, and many other archetypes (the Queen of Heaven, the Sacred Child, the Savior) are in the subconscious of us all – such is the explanation of Jungians.

I don’t know enough to speak with any assurance on such psychoanalysis. It could as well be that we have similar dreams rising from the individual depths as much as a collective unconscious. The myths and dreams of gods, goddesses, heavens, hells, demons, are a consequence of inner psychic forces. Our individual dreams are not rational. Dream images are frightening, puzzling, erotic, teasing, bizarre.

Dreams have always been powerful in any culture. Shamans, medicine men, priests, witches, storytellers, and psychoanalysts use dreams to interpret events, fears, and hangups in our individual and social lives.

For example how do we come to grips with human sacrifice? Always there have been those who paid a great price for the benefit of others. Knowledge came into the world because of Adam and Eve, the old myth tells us. They paid a price of pain, labor, and death. The Christ myth is of a suffering savior who died for all. The Prometheus myth tells how that savior suffers perpetual torment because he stole fire from the gods. There were unwilling victims of Aztec myth who were slaughtered to ensure that the Sun would rise each day. Why should one suffer for others? [CJW note: But it has always been part of the human condition.] That’s a mystery as old as both the conscious and depths of human awareness. Philosopher Ernst Cassirer once noted, “The world of myth is a dramatic world – a world of actions, of forces, of conflicting powers.”

Thus, my concern is not that myths are pervasive and powerful in all cultures. To deny that would be like denying the law of gravity – the apple would still fall from the tree. My objection is when myth is treated as fact – or facts on which to build dogmas and doctrines, unchanging rituals, and intolerance of different interpretations.

One thing more: theologies do not fully realize the deep impulses generated by the tides of nature, seasons, and the human condition.

The noted Robert Ingersoll once wrote, “I do not consider it a very important question whether Christ was the Son of God or not. If he never existed, we are under the same obligation to do what we believe is right, and believing he was the Son of God or disbelieving it is of no earthly importance. If we are ever judged at all, it will be by our actions, and not by our beliefs. If Christ was good enough to die for me, he certainly will not be bad enough to damn me for honestly failing to believe in his divinity.”

Dickens’ “A CHRISTMAS CAROL” is a developing myth. The constant dramatizing of this lovely story has become part of our folk-lore, even though it is fiction not much more than a century old. It strikes me whenever I read or see it how little Christian dogma or theology is essential to the story. The main themes are how a man, through his frightened dreams, is able to look at himself, where he has been, what he values, and what roads he can choose henceforth [to] walk. The other theme is compassion – compassion to others. Both these strands – who we are, what we must do – are continuing discoveries of human existence. The myths of all peoples, particularly the religious myths, grapple with these mysteries. The products of the struggle are fear, joy, awe, and hope, expressed in old stories, music which evokes both glee and tears, dramas which are metaphors for our human condition, and [which move us to] share our lives and our gifts.