Not everyone in the scholarly community has interpreted the Bible’s vision of the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1) in the same way.
St. John Henry Newman put it this way: Some scholars think that the woman stands for the Church. Others think she stands for the Church and Mary. Does the woman represent the Church and Mary, or does she represent the Church only?
The question isn’t either-or; it’s both-and.
I reviewed the opinions of five scholars, including Newman. Two think the woman of Revelation 12 doesn’t represent Mary: the Evangelical scholar Robert H. Mounce (231-232) and the Catholic scholar J. Massyngberde Ford (195-207). The other three do think the woman represents Mary: Michael Barber (151); Peter S. Williamson (206); and of course our Doctor of the Church, St. John Henry Newman.
Also, we should include in our assessment the Catholic Church’s interpretation. First, we see that the woman of Revelation 12 is often included in the Mass readings as an option on Marian solemnities and feast days. Therefore, the Catholic Church interprets that the woman of Revelation 12 is Mary. The recent document from the Vatican, Mater Populi Fidelis, takes this position as well (6), as do other Vatican documents. Mater Populi Fidelis took issue with the Marian titles of co-redemptrix and mediatrix of all graces, in part, because they aren’t rooted firmly in Scripture. However, the title of mother is.
We might wonder why it’s important who the woman of Revelation 12 is. That woman’s identity is essential to understanding the Catholic position of Mary’s motherhood as it applies to us. If we get the woman’s identity wrong, we will miss an extremely important and relevant scriptural point for Marian theology today. Mater Populi Fidelis does make an important contribution to apologetics. It reinforces a point that may have gone unnoticed.
It is not enough to say that John Henry Newman interpreted the woman of Revelation 12 as Mary. We have to assess the reason why he took that position. When a saint is honored with the title of Doctor of the Church, that certainly gives credibility to his ideas, but it does not make him infallible. A more advanced approach than an appeal to his authority would be an appeal to his reasoning. So, let’s dive into Revelation 12.
First, we have to understand that the vision includes three figures: the dragon, the child, and the woman. The identity of the dragon is clear from Revelation 12 itself. We are told in the text that “the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (v. 9). The identity of the dragon is not up for debate. The dragon is the devil.
Now, who is the child that the woman gives birth to? Newman tells us that all agree that the child of the woman is Jesus Christ. (This is Newman’s assessment in nineteenth-centuryEngland.) Of the five scholars I analyzed above, Ford alone doesn’t think the child is Jesus. She writes that the child born to the woman is “a prominent leader” and that “in our present text there seems to be no Christological reference” (200, 205). However, the other four scholars are all on the same page: Mounce (231), Barber (155, 306, footnote 16), Williamson (206), and Newman. They agree that the child born of the woman in Revelation 12 is Jesus. The Protestant scholar Craig R. Koester does, too (119, 199). So our final tally of the scholars I investigated are five in favor of the Christological interpretation (including two Protestants) and one against.
The scholarly consensus agrees on two of the three figures from Revelation 12. The dragon is the devil. The child is Jesus Christ. So who is the woman who gives birth to Jesus Christ in the vision? Mary, Newman argues:
No one doubts that the “man-child” spoken of [in Revelation 12] is an allusion to our Lord: why then is not “the Woman” an allusion to his mother? This surely is the obvious sense of the words; of course they have a further sense also, which is the scope of the image; doubtless the child represents the children of the Church, and doubtless the woman represents the Church; this, I grant, is the real or direct sense, but what is the sense of the symbol under which that real sense is conveyed? Who are the woman and the child? I answer, they are not personifications, but persons. This is true of the child; therefore, it is true of the woman.
It would be a personification only if the dragon only represented evil. But according to Revelation 12:9, the dragon is the devil. It would be a personification only to say that the child of Revelation 12 only represents “the children of the Church.” But scholars agree that the child isn’t only a personification; he represents an actual individual, Jesus Christ. It would be only a personification if we said that the woman of Revelation 12 is only the Church.
But Newman’s point is that both the dragon and the child are individuals as well as personifications. Therefore, the woman of Revelation 12 represents an actual individual as well: the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pope Benedict XVI concluded similarly in his homily on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (2011) that the woman of Revelation 12 represents Mary and “personifies the Church.”
Now that we have established who the woman of Revelation 12 is, we are led to the reason why it matters so significantly to the document Mater Populi Fidelis and our current interfaith dialogue. Revelation 12:17 calls the woman the mother of all Christians!
Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.
The woman is the mother of the people who are Jesus’ witnesses and who keep the commandments. Therefore, whether Protestants recognize it or not, if they witness to Christ in word and in action, then Mary is their mother. That point comes straight from the Bible.
The goal of Mater Populi Fidelis is to refocus Catholic Marian theology on what is firmly rooted in Scripture. The theme of Mary’s motherhood of all Christians is right there in the Bible, and this document from the Vatican didn’t miss it.
Mary’s motherhood in relation to us is part of the fulfillment of the divine plan, accomplished in Christ’s paschal mystery. In a similar sense, the Book of Revelation presents the “woman” (Rev. 12:1) as the mother of the Messiah (cf. v. 5) and the mother of “the rest of her children” (v. 17). (6)
Mater Populi Fidelis could be viewed as a Protestant victory in the sense that it corrects certain Marian excesses believed by some Catholics . . . including myself! However, the document takes a stance on who the woman of Revelation 12 is: the Blessed Virgin Mary. If this position is followed in the biblical discourse, it delivers a decisive blow to the Protestant position if Protestants try to ignore that Mary is our mother and theirs.