Mary's Fiat: Freedom for Surrogacy?

In this paper I consider the role of Mary in Barth’s theology as Mary’s acceptance of the virgin birth serves as an example of God’s freedom alongside human freedom to acknowledge God’s work granted through grace.

In some ways Barth’s treatment of Mary is a strong affirmation of her significance for God’s revelation through Barth’s understanding of Mary as the climax of the covenant with Israel and in his insistence that Jesus’ humanity is of Mary. In multiple places stresses that the human nature of Jesus was not created ex nihilo but was truly from Mary’s humanity. For example in CD I/2, Barth compares revelation and reconciliation to creation but clarifies that here there is no creatio ex nihilo but still we may speak of a “’creative act in and upon the old natural man.’ In place of the ex nihilo we now have this old natural humanity, or in the symbol of the ex Maria” (186). Jesus is truly of Mary’s flesh and blood: “The person Jesus Christ is the real son of a real mother, the son born of the body, flesh and blood of his mother, both of them as real as all the other sons of other mothers.” (185) Yet, in his insistence that humanity does not co-operate in revelation or reconciliation or have anything within themselves to enable them to say yes to God, he can also be read as denying agency to Mary in her willingness to receive God’s work within her. For example he discounts her will, saying “It is not as though this non-willing, non-achieving, non-creative, non-sovereign, merely ready, merely receptive, virgin human being as such can have brought anything to the active God on her own, in which her adaptability for God consists (I/2, 191). The fiat of Mary falls completely out of sight. Further he sees the virgin birth as a counterpoint the creativity and sovereignty enacted by the male in world history post-Fall, also claiming that to the female there belongs “the form of receptivity, readiness, etc.” (194) So Mary specifically as female becomes a symbol for humanity’s freedom as expressed in receptivity. He insists this isn’t strictly passivity but the way it is framed as a counterpoint to the male as a sign of “the world history of human genius” certainly suggests the female is a better representation for what he is trying to communicate about God’s sovereignty in relationship to a human freedom that is acceptance, acknowledgement, and receptivity. He claims it is proper that a male father not be involved. “Natus ex Maria … describes the sovereignty of the divine act” (185). Barth frames freedom as receptivity in such gendered terms, applied with particularity to Mary’s body—her pregnancy and birth, suggests a troubling form of surrogacy closely related to the concerns raised by Dolores Williams about substitutiary atonement. In Barth’s concern to preserve the creative activity of God, he denies her autonomy and her agency in relation to her body.

I will also consider what it means that Barth view’s Mary’s pregnancy with and birth of the Son as the climax of God’s election of Israel. Does Barth’s discussion of Mary as the climax of the covenant of Israel create any complications for an affirmation of her freedom as an individual, even as her freedom to receive God’s action is by grace. Barth summarizes the same theme in this way: Humankind "is not the guarantor of His being. It was only there when he became—in the form of the people Israel, which was itself elected without its own co-operation or merit, and concretely in the form of Mary…It was not, however, Israel or Mary who acted, but God—acting towards Israel and finally . . . towards Mary. In all these forms man was and is only admitted and adopted into unity with the Son of God." CD IV/2,45, God’s covenant with a whole people through which to disclose God’s covenant with the whole of humanity in Christ with an emphasis on God’s free creative action in relationship with a whole people through history, is quite different than God’s free creative action with the body of a single woman. The emphasis in the former on God’s freedom to elect and to enable a whole people to receive this covenant relationship is distinct from the election of this young woman, who according to the research of Mitzi Smith may have actually declared her status as a slave in her society, not simply stated her status as servant to God. If Mary was a slave, as Smith argues, how does this further complicate the idea that her so-called freedom is expressed simply in receiving this pregnancy and birth from God, when even her statement of willed acceptance, is downplayed by Barth in his zealous rejection of Mariology and any hint of co-operation in God’s work in Christ. His treatment of Mary’s submissive obedience in the acceptance of this creative free act of God with her body leaves out important distinctions. 

Further, with growing acceptance of a priority of election to triunity in Barth, in what sense does God eternally determine that Mary’s humanity, and thus Mary’s womb will be for God’s Son, Jesus. Paul Fiddes anticipated this back in 1989: “this surely leads us to say that God must have chosen a woman to be the mother of Christ in the same primordial decree. … If Mary is Mother of God at one time in human history, she may surely now carry this title with her into eternity. She always was this in God's intention.” More needs to be said. If God chose from eternity for Mary’s humanity to provide for the humanity of the Jesus, then Mary does appear more as a pawn than as a human who freely accepts this role. The freedom supposed is in name only. Or, God risks more in the eternal electing decision than most who follow the argument for a prioritized primordial election will grant.