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dations for Baptist Churches: A Contemporary Ecclesiology
(Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2005); Michael S. Horton,
People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 2008).
6
Paul S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 56.
7
Joseph C. Plumbe, “Mater Ecclesia: An Inquiry into
the Concept of the Church as Mother in Early Christianity,”
The Catholic University of America Studies in
Christian Antiquity 5 (1943): viii.
8
Douglas Wilson, Mother Kirk: Essays and Forays in
Practical Ecclesiology (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2001),
23-24; cf. Horton, People and Place, 91.
9
For example, in his chapter on the nurture provided
by the Church, a topic that could easily elicit references
to the maternal image of the Church, Edmund
Clowney neglects any such discussion, opting instead
to address the nurture that the Trinity provides individual
believers and the nurture of children in homes
and in Christian schools. See Clowney, The Church,
149-54.
10
For the central role that Calvin’s view of the Church as
mother played in his ecclesiology, see Léopold Schümmer,
L’Ecclésiologie de Calvin à la lumière de l’Ecclesia
Mater: son apport aux recherches ecclésiologiques tendant
à exprimer l’unité en voie de manifestation,
Zürcher Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte 11
(Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1981).
11
Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church, trans.
Michael Mason (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999), 320-
21.
12
For example, in statements regarding the question of
women’s ordination, Pope John Paul II argues that
male presiders are needed at the Eucharist in order to
symbolize Christ as the Church’s bridegroom. Mulieris
Dignitatem, 25-26.
13
Ibid., 27.
14
Avery Dulles, Models of the Church, exp. rev. ed. (New
York: Doubleday, 2002), 228.
15
Susan A. Ross, Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental
Theology (New York: Continuum, 2001),
111. Ross is even more explicit when she objects that
the nuptial metaphor for the Church “is seriously
problematic” because “it assumes that women possess
an essentially ‘material’ or ‘receptive’ nature and that
relations between men and women are to be understood
as asymmetrically complementary” (114).
16
Amy Plantiga Pauw, “The Church as Mother and Bride
in the Reformed Tradition: Challenge and Promise,”
in Many Voices, One God: Being Faithful in a Pluralistic
World, ed. Walter Bruggemann and George W. Stroup
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 134; cf.
idem., “The Graced Infirmity of the Church,” in Feminist
and Womenist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics, ed.
Amy Plantiga Pauw and Serene Jones, Columbia Series
in Reformed Theology (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 2006), 201.
17
Pauw, “The Church as Mother and Bride in the
Reformed Tradition,” 134.
18
Ross, Extravagant Affections, 114.
19
Ibid.
20
Pauw, “The Church as Mother and Bride in the
Reformed Tradition,” 134.
21
I am indebted to Amy Plantiga Pauw for influence on
this aspect of my argument in her work, “The Graced
Infirmity of the Church,” 200; idem., “The Church as
Mother and Bride in the Reformed Tradition,” 134.
22
Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s
Letter to the Churches in Galatians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1979), 247-48.
23
Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, NAC (Nashville: Broadman
& Holman, 2001), 38:219-20.
24
Grant R. Osbourne, Revelation, BECNT (Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2002), 456.
25
In particular, the rich history of the maternal image
has been compiled and evaluated by Plumbe, Mater
Ecclesia, and de Lubac, The Motherhood of the Church.
26
Commenting on its early patristic roots, Monica
Miller explains that the term “mother” as applied to
the Church occurs with “great frequency and spontaneity
… [indicating] that the practice had entered the
mainstream of tradition well before the close of the
second century.” Monica Migliorino Miller, Sexuality
and Authority in the Catholic Church (Scranton, NJ:
University of Scranton Press, 1995), 142; cf. Joseph C.
Plumbe, “Ecclesia Mater,” Transactions and Proceedings
of the American Philological Association 70 (1939):
536-37.
30