Another Voice is back. I look forward to traveling with you again. And I suspect it will be quite a year in many ways.

This summer, relaxing close to the Belgian North Sea coast, my wife and I have been enjoying some peaceful days to rest and reflect. And…This week we celebrate out fifty-sixth wedding anniversary.

While on vacation, I have also been reflecting about my personal evolution as a Catholic “historical theologian.” I have now been teaching about religion, ethics, and historical theology for more than fifty-seven years. Getting older, I was thinking this week about what Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) allegedly wrote to a friend in 1942: “People like you and I do not grow old no matter how long we live. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.”

I remember growing up as a pious Catholic kid in southern Michigan, who was very much afraid of the God of threat and punishment, the God who watches me and judges, the God who takes sides and causes victories and defeats, and the God who responds to appeasement and sacrificial offerings. I believed and feared that I would suffer eternal punishment in hell for missing Mass on a single Sunday or eating meat on a day of abstinence, or my great fear: committing an adolescent sexual sin. I was encouraged to “go to confession” every week, because God was the Supreme Judge who demands that everything in our lives be in good order. There were so many things I had to avoid “under pain of mortal sin.”

Gradually I began to grow up. Fortunately, I had healthy guidance from some very good high school teachers and college professors at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. (I was never ordained a priest but became what they called back then “a lay theolgian.”) I began to realize that God does not exist in some far-off place, watching, and judging me. God is in the here and now. I began to understand God as the empowering energy of everything and as philosopher Paul Tillich (1888 – 1965) said the “ground of being.” I began to understand that God is love and when we love we are actively living in God. There we find salvation.

As one grows up, he or she realizes that perspective is important. Scientists have determined that the universe came into being 13.8 billion years ago. We humans are a very recent development; and it was only a moment ago that Jesus lived on Earth. But Jesus still lives and shows us how to be human. My perspective on Jesus changed thanks especially to Professor Gustave Thils (1909 – 2000) at the Catholic University of Leuven and Professor Edward Schillebeeckx (1914 – 2009) at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, today’s Radboud University. Both men encouraged me and strongly supported my wish to become an historical theologian.

More growth: I remember when Richard McBrien (1936 – 2015), longtime professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, wrote that it seems more difficult to say something original about Jesus’ resurrection. Edward Schillebeeckx in his book Jesus: An experiment in Christology (Dutch ed. 1974), had argued that we should not imagine that the belief of the disciples that Jesus had risen was caused by an empty tomb and the resurrection appearances. He proposed instead that a belief in the resurrection was grounded in “the new orientation of living which this Jesus has brought about in their lives and was not rendered meaningless by his death – quite the opposite.”

Frankly, considering what one reads in the New Testament, it is often difficult to distinguish between what should be taken word for word and what is to be understood as metaphor in the post-resurrection accounts. As Christians we accept Jesus as the ultimate life-giver, the very Word of God, realizing that we are called not only to believe, but to imitate. In John’s Gospel, chapter 12, we read “Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in the one who sent me. And whoever sees me sees the one who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.” Indeed, but for many people today belief is easier than imitation.

As a Catholic historical theologian, one of my concerns over the years has been a correct portrayal of the mother of Jesus. It is not that easy. When person or an event seems larger than life, people turn to poetry, creative imagination, symbolism, and figurative speech. That has certainly been the case with Mary. And so we have the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception thanks to Bishop Augustine of Hippo’s (354 -430) concept of Original Sin, the notion that all human beings are born in a sinful condition inherited from Adam and Eve and passed on through sexual intercourse. But Mary, because she was the Mother of Jesus, the church taught, had to be exempted from Original Sin. Mary therefore had a no-original-sin Immaculate Conception.

Mary’s Immaculate Conception, one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, was debated by medieval theologians. It was not defined as a dogma until 1854 by Pope Pius IX (1792-1878) in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus.

Today of course we realize that the story of Adam and Eve is ancient biblical mythology. There were no historic people called Adam and Eve, no Garden of Eden, no tempting snake, and no angry and punishing God. And no Augustinian Original Sin.

So what do we do with Mary’s Immaculate Conception? One could also ask the same question about Mary’s Assumption up above the clouds into heaven. Catholic dogma states that at the end of her earthly life, the Virgin Mary was taken body and soul into heavenly glory. Pope Pius XII (1876-1958) officially declared this an infallible truth of the faith in 1950.

 And of course there is Mary’s perpetual virginity. The brothers of Jesus are named in the New Testament as James, Joses, Simon, and Jude. The Greek word translated as “brothers” is adelphoí, which literally means “from the same womb.” Jesus’ unnamed sisters are mentioned as well in Mark and Matthew. The church doctrine about Mary’s perpetual virginity, however, was first officially proclaimed at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 CE which proclaimed her “ever virgin.” Then at the Lateran Synod of 649 CE Pope Martin I (c. 590 – 655) emphasized the threefold character of her perpetual virginity: before, during, and after the birth of Jesus.

Anchored in our Christian tradition we can and we should continue to grow in our knowledge and understandings about past people and events. Mary was probably about thirteen years old when she and her husband, traditionally called “Joseph,” gave birth to Jesus. She deserves great respect and veneration for being a loving, wise, and supportive mother throughout Jesus’ life from birth to his crucifixion and death on the cross. Her son James was leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem. About her other children we know nothing. Over the centuries, Christians have certainly found the Mother of Jesus a supportive Lady of Sorrows, Lady of Consolation, and Mother of Perpetual Help. Her faith in the loving and powerful presence of God was her strength, her wisdom, and her lifeline. It is our faith as well.

I recommend the recent book, CONTROVERSIAL: And What Do You Think of Original Sin? The author is my friend William G. Joseph. Drawing on his extensive background in ministry, theology, philosophy, and modern biology, his work explores the intersection of faith and the theory of evolution. 

And so we go on, people of faith, knowing that life brings sun and cool breezes as well as occasional storms but confident that the creative and life-giving Spirit is with us every step of the way.

Jack