The Typology of the Theotokos: A New Eve; The True Tabernacle; The Queen of Heaven

Typology and the Unity of the Scripture

The second century heresy, Marcionism, a semi-Gnostic group, taught that the New and Old Testaments are completely separate. They taught that the God of the Old Testament was a wicked demiurge who was supplanted by Christ, the loving God of the New Testament. While few today would say that they are Marcionist, we still often create a disconnect between the Old and New Testaments where none exist. The two Testaments are really one; they are the history of salvation. Christ says in Matthew 5:17: ““Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” The whole of the Old Testament points to the Incarnation of Christ, even more, the Old Testament and the New Testament together are the story of the Incarnation.

The Old Testament is not only a prequel for the New Testament, however. In the Old Testament we see Incarnation, the destruction of Hades, and the restoration of human nature prefigured. Not only prefigured in a literary or figurative sense, but in a living relationship, that is, that the types we see in the Old Testament are a participation in the New Testament. In I Peter 3:21, the flood is discussed as a type of baptism: “There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” St. Paul frames the relationship between Christ and Adam as a typological one, particularly in 1 Corinthians 15:45. He also explicitly talks about typology in I Corinthians 10:11: “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.”

Christ, Baptism, but also the Eucharist, the Cross, the spiritual life, all the elements of the New Testament are present in the Old Testament. This typological understanding of the Old Testament also helps us to understand the honored place the Theotokos holds in the Orthodox Church. We see types of the Virgin Mary in Eve, in the Tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant, and in the place of the mother of the king.

The Theotokos, the New Eve

In Genesis, we hear of the fall of humanity in Paradise:

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. (Genesis 3:1-7)

Eve is approached by a serpent, which seems, at first, to be described as one of the animals God has created, it is “more cunning than any beast of the field.” That this is not another animal, however, seems likely because it begins speaking with Eve. Fr. Stephen DeYoung points out in his recent book on Baal, that the word for serpent appears in the Old Testament as seraph, linking the serpent with angelic beings of the highest order. This serpent is, then, not just a snake, but an angelic being, one that is opposed to God, in rebellion against Him. The serpent tricks Eve by dangling in front of her exactly what she naturally wants, to become more like God. Rather than doing this according to God’s will, however, she follows her own will, and listens to the demon. Her “yes” to this demon, puts herself, and humanity with her, in slavery to him.

The Theotokos, like Eve, is approached by an angelic being, the archangel Gabriel. He outlines God’s plan for the salvation of humankind through the Incarnation of Christ and tells her of her role. Once again, humanity is faced with a choice, to align ourselves with God’s will or to again follow our own will and continue defying God. Her answer to Gabriel is one of utmost humility: ”Behold, the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your will” (Luke 2:38). The humility of the Virgin Mary undoes the pride of Eve, her yes to God is the undoing of the yes of Eve to Satan. Like Christ is the new Adam, so the Virgin Mary is the new Eve. She is the Eve that Eve was supposed to have been and so takes her place as our mother. This becomes manifest at the Crucifixion when Christ says to His beloved disciple “behold your mother” (John 19:27).

The True Tabernacle

At the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary asks the Archangel Gabriel how she is to have a child as she is unmarried. He replies: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). The word “overshadow” here in Greek is ἐπισκιάσει. We see this word in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament as well, when God takes up His abode in the Tabernacle: “and Moses was not able to enter into the tabernacle of testimony, because the cloud overshadowed it, and the tabernacle was filled with the glory of the Lord” (Exodus 40:29, emphasis mine). God dwelt in the Tabernacle, as He does within the womb of the Theotokos. The Theotokos, then, is not only prefigured by the Tabernacle, she is the true Tabernacle. In the same way, the Ark of the Covenant prefigures her as well. The tablets of the law, written by God and so the word of God, were placed within the Ark. This prefigures the Word of God, who dwells within the womb of the Virgin Mary.

The Queen of Heaven

Often, when the title Queen of Heaven is used of the Virgin Mary, the idea is that she is the bride of God. In a sense one could understand the title in this way, as she shows unconditional love toward God. We tend to misunderstand, however, what is meant by “queen” when we look at the title in this way. Our context for what a queen is comes from the setup of the European monarchies: the queen is the wife of the king. In the united monarchy period of Israel, however, the queen was not the wife of the king, but the mother. We see this in Psalm 45: “the queen stood by on thy right hand, clothed in vesture wrought with gold, and arrayed in divers colours.” The queen in the psalm is not the bride coming to the king, but is enthroned at his right hand. How do we know that this is not another wife? We see in 1 Kings 2:19: “Bathsheba therefore went to King Solomon, to speak to him for Adonijah. And the king rose up to meet her and bowed down to her, and sat down on his throne and had a throne set for the king’s mother; so she sat at his right hand.” The place of the queen mother is at the right hand of the king.

In the passage in I Kings, we see the queen also playing out one of her important roles, that of intercessor. In this case, she pleads for the life of Adonijah: “Then she said, “I desire one small petition of you; do not refuse me.” And the king said to her, ‘Ask it, my mother, for I will not refuse you’” (1 Kings 2: 20). In this case, the king is not swayed by the intercession of the queen, but he is an imperfect king. The king, who is anointed, is a type of Christ, and Christ, as the perfect king, is swayed by the intercession of the queen. We see this in John 2:1-11, the wedding at Cana: “And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, ‘They have no wine.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Whatever He says to you, do it.’” Even though Christ at first refuses, the Theotokos knows that He will be merciful and fulfill her request, and he does, changing water into wine and saving the banquet.

The Orthodox veneration of the Virgin Mary is not some innovation or departure, rather it is a response to the unique place she holds within the history of Salvation. In Luke 11:27-28, a woman calls from the crowd: “blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breast you sucked.” Christ responds: “Indeed and blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.” The Virgin Mary is unique in that she gives birth to God in the flesh and is our greatest example of what it means to “hear the word of God and keep it.” The role of the Theotokos in salvation is show typologically in the Old Testament in (among others) Eve, the Tabernacle/Ark of the Covenant, and in the queen mother of the king of Israel. In that she is the fulfillment of all of these, she is truly worthy of honor. She is our mother, she is our queen, and she is the dwelling place of God Himself.