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In 1925, A. T. Robertson, a noted Southern Baptist New Testament scholar, published a book titled The Mother of Jesus. He wrote, "I have felt for many years that Mary, the mother of Jesus, has not had fair treatment from either Protestants or Catholics … She is the chief mother of the race, and no one should be allowed to take her crown of glory away from her."

If Roman Catholics have deified Mary, Robertson said, evangelicals have subjected her to "cold neglect." We have been afraid to praise and esteem Mary for her full worth, he said, lest we be accused of leanings and sympathy with Catholics. Robertson is right. It is time for evangelicals to recover a fully biblical appreciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the history of salvation, and to do so precisely as evangelicals. We may not be able to recite the rosary or kneel down before statues of Mary, but we need not throw her overboard. Let me suggest five ways for us to think biblically about the mother of Jesus—the Blessed Evangelical Mary.

Mary stands, along with John the Baptist, at a unique intersection between the old and new covenants. Mary's role points backward. In the gospels, she is the culmination of a prophetic lineage of pious mothers—Sarah, Rachel, Hannah (and not forgetting Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth who appear in Matthew's genealogy).

In one sense, any one of them, as members of God's people, Israel, could have been the mother of the Messiah. When Mary cradles the baby Jesus in the Temple in the presence of Anna and Simeon, we see brought together the advent of the Lord's Messiah, and the long-promised and long-prepared-for "consolation of Israel."

But Mary's role also points forward. As the Daughter of Zion, Mary also represents the eschatological and redeemed people of God. But it is not an easy redemption. In the Old Testament, the Daughter of Zion is depicted as being in the labor of childbirth: "Writhe and groan, O Daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail" (Micah 4:10). "For I heard a cry as of a woman in travail, anguish as of one bringing forth her first child, the cry of the Daughter of Zion gasping for breath" (Jer. 4:31).

By reading such texts typologically, the early church depicted Mary as the new Eve, the one through whose obedience the disobedience of the first Eve was reversed.

Yet from an evangelical perspective, one more thing must be said. In the Old Testament, Israel is not only portrayed as a virgin daughter, but also as an unfaithful bride. "Like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel," the Lord declares in Jeremiah 2:20. The waywardness of Israel is contrasted to the covenant fidelity of God: "Return, faithless people," declares the Lord, "for I am your husband. I will choose you … and bring you to Zion" (Jer. 3:14). It is hard to relate this theme to Mary if we consider her immaculately conceived and sinless from birth.

But there are at least hints in the gospels of another Mary—one who as David Steinmetz put it, "does not understand what God's purposes are, who intervenes when she ought to keep silent, who interferes and tries to thwart the purpose of God, who pleads the ties of filial affection when she should learn faith" (cf. Mark 3:21, 31-35).

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December 2003, Vol. 47, No. 12