Two Virgins

In his book Against Heresies, the second century bishop Irenaeus of Lyon addresses the Gnostic belief that God did not and could not have truly shared in human nature. In this context he takes aim at the Gnostics’ assertion that Christ received nothing from his mother the Virgin, and did not participate in her humanity. His thought here has become relevant again in light of popular Evangelical teaching.

Irenaeus speaks here of how the second Virgin, Mary, recapitulates the first virgin – that is, she retells her story as it ought to have been.

In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” But the Virgin Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey. Now Eve indeed had a husband, but being newly-created they had no understanding of the procreation of children.

And even as Eve was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also Mary, who had a man betrothed to her but remaining a virgin, by yielding obedience, became the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race. And a woman betrothed to a man is called his wife, even while she is yet a virgin; thus referring back from Mary to Eve.

Because what is joined together – humanity and death – could not be put asunder in any way other than by reversing the way this bond of union came about; so that what bound the first virgin should be cancelled by the new virgin, so that the new virgin may set the first virgin free again.

And in fact this is what happened: The first virgin’s covenant with death unbound man from the promised union with God. But the covenant accomplished through the second virgin renews the original covenant which the first virgin had cancelled.*

For this reason the Lord declared that the first should in truth be last, and the last first. And the prophet, too, indicates the same, saying, “Instead of fathers, children have been born unto you.”

And so also the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the Virgin Eve had chained through unbelief, the Virgin Mary has set free through faith.

And if the first virgin disobeyed God, yet the latter virgin was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the Virgin Eve. And so, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin; the disobedience of a virgin was balanced in the opposite scale by the obedience of a virgin.

(From Against Heresies, III.22.4; V.19.1)

* “The first virgin’s covenant with death unbound man from the promised union with God…” Translators and commentators are not at all agreed on how to read this subtle sentence. The translation by Roberts and Donaldson in the Ante-Nicene Fathers reads: “And it has, in fact, happened that the first compact looses from the second tie, but that the second tie takes the position of the first which has been cancelled.”