Arguments against Mary being portrayed/described as "Queen of Heaven":
The queen of heaven in the 12th chapter of Revelation is an oft-discussed topic in both Evangelicalism and in the more traditionally-minded communions. In the former, it could have a million different interpretations depending on the teacher, and in the latter it is believed to be the Virgin Mary. However, I would argue that neither is correct, but there is a much more simple and yet theologically rich answer: the church.
This makes much sense typologically. When we first see the woman, she was “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” This is an obvious illusion to Joseph’s dream from Genesis, in which it says, “Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?”” (37:9-10). In this way, the symbolic nature is made evident: the clothing with the sun, moon, and stars is meant to symbolize that this woman is Israel, that is, the Church, because she is identified with Israel, Rachel, and the twelve patriarchs. However, I think this connection of astral phenomena goes deeper. On the fourth day of creation, God made the lights in the heavens, one great light to rule in the day, and one to rule the night, with her being the ruler of the many small stars. In addition, in the promise to Abraham, his children are compared to the stars. In this way, I would argue that the sun is Christ, who is the true Light, the Sun of Righteousness, and the Daystar who rises in our hearts. The lesser light is the Church, who rules in the darkness and yet the darkness does not overcome her because of Christ’s grace, and we, the stars, are her children. From this, we can analyze the woman a bit differently. We see her on the moon, because this light is her throne, and her crowning with stars because “grandchildren are the crown of the aged” (Prov 17:6). And she is clothed with the sun because the Church is called to “put on Christ” (Gal 3:27, Rom 13:14). We can also see this is simply the way the celestial bodies function. The moon does not produce its own light, as it is simply a hunk of cold rock, but it reflects the light of the sun, just as Moses reflects the glory of God that he experienced on the mountain. In the same way, the Church has no glory in herself but boasts of Christ and His great work.
Now to address the alternative views. The Evangelical position is really impossible to simply track down, so I’ll address the Marian claim instead. It is true that she does, in a microcosmic sense, mirror or image the scene. She was a woman who was pregnant and gave birth to the ruler of the nations, Christ, and she was pursued by Herod, who sought to kill her child. However, there are many details that don’t match up. First, the “great red dragon” is described with obvious Satanic imagery. He is described as a red Tiamat-esque dragon who led the angels to fall and who claims to have the perfect wisdom with his seven heads and ultimate rule with his seven diadems. Thus, Herod is only the dragon insofar as the king of Babylon is Lucifer (Is. 14), that is to say, he is an agent of the dragon in the world, but he is not himself the dragon, who is the devil and Satan (Rev. 12:9). What’s more, the rest of her story doesn’t match up with Mary’s. First, the dragon only pursues her after her Son’s ascension, while Herod pursued the Virgin after Christ was born. Also, Mary fled into the wilderness after the ascension, while Mary fled to Egypt with Joseph after Jesus’ birth and she stayed with John after His ascension, neither of which in the wilderness. Perhaps you could argue that her flight staying with St. John is her being “given the two wings of the great eagle,” since he is associated with the eagle, though that sounds like a stretch and still doesn’t explain her departure into the wilderness. Meanwhile, the Church has been in the wilderness of the world, in a constant state of moving from nation to nation, constantly persecuted by the great dragon with miraculous works saving her. The final point against it is that she wasn’t interpreted that way until fairly late. For one thing, the only early commentary on the book comes to us from Victorinus, who writes about the woman:
“The woman clothed with the sun, and having the moon under her feet, and wearing a crown of twelve stars upon her head, and travailing in her pains, is the ancient Church of fathers, and prophets, and saints, and apostles, which had the groans and torments of its longing until it saw that Christ, the fruit of its people according to the flesh long promised to it, had taken flesh out of the selfsame people. Moreover, being clothed with the sun intimates the hope of resurrection and the glory of the promise. And the moon intimates the fall of the bodies of the saints under the obligation of death, which never can fail. For even as life is diminished, so also it is increased. Nor is the hope of those that sleep extinguished absolutely, as some think, but they have in their darkness a light such as the moon. And the crown of twelve stars signifies the choir of fathers, according to the fleshly birth, of whom Christ was to take flesh.”
In this beautiful quotation, which I simply couldn’t bear to take anything out of, we see that from the earliest times, the woman was seen as the Church, not the Theotokos. Some have argued that Mary is then a type for the Church, and I agree. However, she is only a type insofar as the Church is a holy virgin and the mother of Christ. She does not fulfill the type as the holy bride (Eph 5), though I have heard some try to argue for it, because that would simply be weird and is foreign to the text. Thus, she obviously cannot be a full type of the Church’s type, since she only corresponds to a portion of the antitype.
The best argument I have seen in support of Mary as the woman is that the end of chapter 11 mentions the ark of the covenant, which is one type that Mary corresponds to, and then the text immediately moves into talking about the woman in the next verse. This is compelling, but doesn’t fit the structure of Revelation. Firstly, the book is described in a series of different visions, so the idea of the two being unrelated is plausible, especially as description of the woman begins with, “And a great sign appeared in heaven,” an obvious descriptor for a departure. In another two visions, Christ is audibly described as the lion of the tribe of Judah and heard with a roar but seen as a slain lamb, and the Church is described as 144,000 from varying tribes of Israel but seen as an innumerable multitude from all nations. The vision of the ark and the woman, however, are both visual, and the text does not relate the two directly. The final nail in the coffin is that Victorinus also doesn’t interpret the ark this way, writing only, “The preaching of the Gospel and the forgiveness of sins, and all the gifts whatever that came with Him, he says, appeared therein.”
I pray that we, as the church, would be better able to clothe ourselves in the Light of the Sun through our participation in Christ’s good works, and may we heed the words of the fathers as we unlock the mysteries revealed to the faithful. Amen Edit: Another argument I just thought of: In verse 2, it describes the woman as crying out in brith pains, but some (most?) Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox (and Lutherans whose names rhyme with "Killiam") think that Mary experienced no birth pains. Thus, one doctrine would have to fall, and I would much more happily confess that she felt no pain.
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