In the first two centuries of the church Mariology was virtually
dormant. Irenaeus and Justin Martyr referred to Mary as the second Eve, but the
focus was on christology, not on Mariology as such. Just as Eve prepared the
way for humanity’s fall, so Mary prepared the way for humanity’s redemption,
but the Redeemer was Jesus Christ alone. For the most part, the extravagant
speculations of the apocryphal gospels, in which Mary was treated as a worker
of wonders and miracles, were resisted by church theologians and authorities.
The rise of a world–denying asceticism drawing upon Gnosticism and Manichaeism
was to exert a significant change in the way the church understood Mary—her
person and her mission. (Donald G. Bloesch, Jesus Christ: Savior & Lord [Westmont,
Ill.: IVP Academic, 1997], 109)
