Calling Mary “Mother of God” Tells Us Who Jesus Is

CE ^ | January 2, 2010 | Marcellino D'Ambrosio

[NYer]

The mother of the messiah has been called many things in the last 2000 years — the Virgin Mary, Our Lady, the Blessed Mother. But call her “the Mother of God” and you’ll see some Christians squirm.

This is nothing new. One day in the early fifth century, a priest preached a stirring sermon in the presence of the patriarch of Constantinople. His subject was the holy mother of Jesus. The preacher continually referred to Mary as the “Theotokos” meaning “God-bearer” or mother of God. This was no innovation — Christians had invoked Mary under this title for at least two hundred years. Nevertheless, at the close of the sermon, the patriarch ascended the steps of the pulpit to correct the preacher. We should call Mary the Mother of Christ, said Patriarch Nestorius, not the Mother of God. She was the mother of his human nature, not the mother of his divinity.

His comment sparked a riot. And the dispute rocked not only the congregation, but the entire empire. Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt, immediately recognized that Nestorius’ Marian theology was a symptom of a much deeper problem, a problem with the incarnation itself. For to deny Mary the title “Mother of God” makes of Jesus a dichotomy, a split personality. It would mean that God had not really embraced our humanity so as to become human. Rather, the humanity of Christ is hermetically sealed off from the divinity, as if Jesus were two persons, as if human nature was so distasteful that God, in Christ, had to keep it at arm’s distance. It is okay, according to Nestorius, to say that in Jesus, God raised Lazarus, or multiplied the loaves, or walked on water. But it is not okay to say that in Jesus God is born or that God died.

Cyril, aware that this was a challenge to the heart of our faith, demanded that an ecumenical council be called to settle the matter. So in 431, the Council of Ephesus met, under Cyril’s leadership, and solemnly proclaimed that Mary is indeed rightly to be honored as the Theotokos, the Mother of God. It proclaimed that from the moment of his conception, God truly became man. Of course Mary is a creature and could never be the origin of the eternal Trinity, God without beginning or end. But the second person of the blessed Trinity chose to truly become man. He did not just come and borrow a human body and drive it around for awhile, ascend back to heaven, and discard it like an old car. No, at the moment of his conception in the womb of Mary, an amazing thing happened. God the Son united himself with a human nature forever. Humanity and divinity were so closely bound together in Jesus, son of Mary, that they could never be separated again. Everything that would be done by the son of Mary would be the act both of God and of man. So indeed it would be right to say that a man raised Lazarus from the dead and commanded the wind and waves, that God was born that first Christmas day and that, on Good Friday, God died.

The Council of Ephesus, once confirmed by the Pope, became the third ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, and its teaching in this matter is dogma, truth revealed by God which all are bound to accept.

So why does the Roman liturgy celebrate the Octave of Christmas as the Feast of Mary the Mother of God? Because this paradoxical phrase strikes at the very heart of Christmas. The songs we sing and the cards we write extol the babe of Bethlehem as Emmanuel, God-with-us. He is so with us that after Gabriel’s visit to the Virgin of Nazareth, the Divine Word can never again be divided from our humanity. What God has joined, let no man separate.

[Kolokotronis]

Well, here's what we Greeks have done with Luke 1 for a devotion, the Akathist to the Holy Mother of God, the Chairetismoi. It was written in the 6th century by +Romanos the Melodist. We chant this on Friday evenings during Great Lent. Notice how the Archangel is himself in awe of Mary. This is no average, good girl. . http://lent.goarch.org/media/audio.asp?pageloc=akathist&play=true&title=The%20Akathist%20Hymn&location=/en/services/akathist/eikona/akathist_MSTR.mov#akathist "And I find the Immaculate Conception kind of strange....""

So do we Orthodox; so did +Thomas Aquinas. Given the West's concept of Original Sin, however, an argument can be made for it. The problem is that it makes the Theotokos something other than a human mother and thus deprives Christ of His human nature, a Christoloical heresy of ever there was one.

[Kolokotronis]

Well, here's what we Greeks have done with Luke 1 for a devotion, the Akathist to the Holy Mother of God, the Chairetismoi. It was written in the 6th century by +Romanos the Melodist. We chant this on Friday evenings during Great Lent. Notice how the Archangel is himself in awe of Mary. This is no average, good girl.

http://lent.goarch.org/media/audio.asp?pageloc=akathist&play=true&title=The%20Akathist%20Hymn&location=/en/services/akathist/eikona/akathist_MSTR.mov#akathist

"And I find the Immaculate Conception kind of strange....""

So do we Orthodox; so did +Thomas Aquinas. Given the West's concept of Original Sin, however, an argument can be made for it. The problem is that it makes the Theotokos something other than a human mother and thus deprives Christ of His human nature, a Christological heresy if ever there was one.

[the invisib1e hand]

Calling Mary “Mother of God” Tells Us Who Jesus Is, I guess, but it also may lend credence to the theory of evolution? ‘Cause a female gives birth to an offspring that is something other than herself?

Oy! Just oy! I don't know whether to laugh or curse!

If "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom," I'll wager that the denial of Mary is the beginning of ignorance.

I pity, oh do I pity, the miniscule myopic mind that can't accept the most beautiful human being ever to walk this most unworthy soil.

Ave Maria!

[the invisib1e hand]

So do we Orthodox;

It's the most audacious, beautiful, heart-stopping, mind-boggling, mouth-shutting event in history. A God that does such a thing is the only being worthy of the term and truly "beyond anything you could ask or imagine."

The Immaculate Conception, the Incarnation, these stop cold all other god-stories. Period.

Amazing.

Hail Mary!

[aruanan]

The Immaculate Conception, the Incarnation, these stop cold all other god-stories. Period.

Well, the Incarnation does. The Immaculate Conception was a long-after-the-fact unnecessary fix to remedy a non-existent problem. Different forms of this have still been popping up through history, one of the more recent from the Institute for Creation Research's Henry Morris who proposed in the ICR Acts and Facts that the way to avoid passing the human sin nature through human flesh to the incarnate Christ was the creation, ex nihilo, in Mary of a perfect human body genetically unrelated to Mary and the rest of the human race. It was a perfect human body that could stand as the perfect Lamb of God for the sins of the world but had not, through inheritance, partaken of the "sin nature." This "remedy," too, was based on faulty assumptions about the nature of sin and its mode of transmission through the human race.

[the invisib1e hand]

see me other post. The one that begins with "OY!"

[the invisib1e hand]

OK; you are, at best, a Nestorian heretic.

How do you tell the difference between a "nestorian heretic" and a regular imbecil?

[esquirette]

“OK; you are, at best, a Nestorian heretic.

How do you tell the difference between a ‘nestorian heretic’ and a regular imbecil?”
_______________________________________

I think perhaps one or the other does not understand that “Mother of my Lord” as Elizabeth exclaimed in Luke 1 is not the same as Mother of the Triune God, which is what is implied by “Mother of God.”

I could be wrong, though. There might be more diagnostics available.

[the invisib1e hand]

There might be more diagnostics available.

Yeah, diagnostics. That's it. That'll get you wherever you wanna go.

[editor-surveyor]

"... namely that Mary is the Most Holy Theotokos."

A bit of unscriptural nonsense, and illogic.

The Logos was God from all time, and his human body, born through Mary was not what made him God, nor has it anything to do with why he is God. Mary was not Mother of any part of his 'Godness,' nor did she ever claim to be.

[Kolokotronis]

"The Logos was God from all time, and his human body, born through Mary was not what made him God, nor has it anything to do with why he is God. Mary was not Mother of any part of his 'Godness,' nor did she ever claim to be."

You've never read the Creed, have you?

[Petronski]

Nestorius!

[narses]

+

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[Petronski]

No great conundrum there: the NASB got it wrong.

[Kolokotronis]

"I think perhaps one or the other does not understand that “Mother of my Lord” as Elizabeth exclaimed in Luke 1 is not the same as Mother of the Triune God, which is what is implied by “Mother of God.”"

Upon what do you base the notion that +Elizabeth was not recognizing Mary as the Theotokos, aside from the ancient heretical teachings of Arius and/or Nestorius come to life in modern American Protestantism?

"I could be wrong, though."

Indeed you could be.

[Kolokotronis]

"It's the most audacious, beautiful, heart-stopping, mind-boggling, mouth-shutting event in history."

The Immaculate Conception????????????????

[malkee]

This painting is “Our Lady of Perpetual Help.”

[editor-surveyor]

Creeds are the work of sinful men, not the Word of God.

[editor-surveyor]

If you should ever become a member of the Body of Christ, you will see how feckless and irrelevant the classifications you live by are.

[Petronski]

If you should ever become a member of the Body of Christ, you will see how feckless and irrelevant the classifications you live by are.

How deliciously judgmental. Or is it just mental you were going for?

Either way, bravo!