Posted on 01/02/2010 3:32:55 PM PST by NYer
The title "Mother of God" is offensive to some Protestant Christians because they believe that this title raises Mary to an inappropriate, even idolatrous, level -- the level of God Himself. There is also genuine confusion on the part of others -- including Catholics -- about how a finite creature (Mary) could be the "mother" of an eternal being. "Wouldn't Mary have had to exist before God in order to be His mother?", they reason.
Referring to Mary as "Mother of God," however, does not imply that she existed from all eternity (like God) or that she is the source of Jesus' divine nature. Mary was and is a human being. She is the Mother of God because she gave birth to the God-Man, Jesus, "the Word made flesh" (John 1).
The reality of Mary's divine maternity was proclaimed a dogma of the faith by the Council of Ephesus in 431, and this teaching contains two important affirmations:
1) Mary is truly a mother. Since Jesus had no human father, Mary contributed all genetic material to the formation of His human nature. As Pope John Paul II states in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater, "[Jesus] is the flesh and blood of Mary!" (see Catechism 485)
2) Mary conceived and bore the Second Person of the Trinity. Echoing the Nestorian heresy (which denied the inseparable unity of two natures of Christ in one Person), some Protestant Christians hold that Mary was the mother of Jesus' human nature only. But a mother does not give birth to a nature; she gives birth to a person. Since Jesus is a divine Person, it is logical that Mary be called the "Mother of God" (in Greek, Theotokos), even if this mystery has aspects that exceed our human understanding.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) teaches
Called in the Gospels "the mother of Jesus," Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as "the mother of my Lord." In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father's eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly "Mother of God" (Theotokos). [CCC 495]
The word Theotokos also helps us to understand this teaching a little better. The word literally means "God bearer," not "God generator." To "generate" God would imply that one is His origin, but this cannot be true because God exists from all eternity. To "bear" God means to hold him in one's womb. Historic Christianity (i.e., the Catholic and Orthodox churches) believe that Mary actually bore God (in the person of Jesus Christ) in her womb. Jesus didn't "become God" when He left her womb.
To deny Mary's divine maternity is to cast doubt on the reality of Jesus' divinity. Mary's divine maternity is, then, essentially a "Christological" dogma in that it affirms the divine Personhood of Jesus. To emphasize the profound importance of this teaching, the Church has restored the ancient feast of Mary, Mother of God on January 1.
Since we have been reborn as children of God in baptism and now share in the divine life through grace, Mary has become our mother as well. By drawing near to her as our mother, we draw near to Jesus Himself, the source of our salvation. This is why devotion to Mary is so essential to the life of the Christian, and why the Church encourages us to foster a greater love for the Blessed Mother in our lives.
One final point. It is interesting to note that two of the early Protestant leaders, Martin Luther and John Calvin, taught Mary's divine maternity and even condemned those who denied this essential truth.
Matthew 1 is outside of your Scripture?
Matthew 1: 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 11 "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means "God is with us." 24 When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home. 25 He had no relations with her until she bore a son, 12 and he named him Jesus.
That we call such things “surrogate parents”.
Legally, a surrogate mother has mother’s rights until a valid adoption has taken place. A child may have as many as 5 parents, even before you get into such things as gene splicing or gay/lesbian adoptions. The max number will increase as technology is further developed.
egg donor (biological mother)
sperm donor (biological father)
birth donor (gestational mother)
adoptive mother (legal mother)
adoptive father (legal father)
** If one does not believe in the Hypostatic Union, then one does not believe that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. End of story.**
THANK YOU ... this thread is reading like a Darwin Discussion at the DAILY KOS or DHUMMIES UNDERGROUND
Matthew 1:22 refers to Isaiah, which originally refered to the birth of King Hezikiah.
If you get a good old testament translation you can get a sense that the author of matthew overreached just a tad.
</heresy alert>
Are there more where you come from? Do you have Scripture to support these rather novel statements?
He doth protest too much.
You got me. I don’t believe.
Christ did not have a human nature before His human birth. At that time "the Word became flesh." God, as the second person of the Trinity, became man. God acquired the attributes of the man He became. Christ's body is God's body. Christ's words are God's words. Christ's manger is God's manger. And Chist's mother is the Mother of God.
Are you saying that the Apostles took 400 years to die? Nice conspiracy that you've got going there. Any proofs?
The Church long claimed divine authority based on the its subservience to the Whore of Babylon.
Church subservient to the Roman Empire - check, Whore of Babylon - check. Got some momentum there, chief. What's next?
Faith bump.
We are not calling this through current 20th century United States legality. Would the people of Jesus’ time see a child emerge from a woman’s womb and consider her the mother?
Heresy alert indeed. But the NT translation stands. It stands in Greek and in Church Slavonic. If one thinks that Matthew overreached, then who is to say that the whole business is not overreached?
The old testament selection was performed by the council of Rabbis after the Christians did their selection of authoritive books of the New Testament. The Catholic Church had some theological things that they could not justify in the rabbinically selected old testament, and so added what are known as the apocrapha. Tobit, Maccabees, ect. Various branches of Protestantism rejected the revisions of the Catholic church. The Septugent (LXX) greek version of the old testament has passages not written in the Hebrew texts, and so rejected by the Council of Rabbis (most famously the Susannah, Bel and Dragon narratives in Daniel, but many others) I like the New American translation because it brings out some of the alternatives (Freer logion in Mark) which give some variation of how much variation was available in the early church. The lost ‘Gospel of Peter’ has been recovered, and is available at your barnes and noble.
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who indeed! Well, I would, for one.
There are two ways to be a Jew: One is to convert, the other is to be born to a Jewish mother. No doubt that was plenty of evidence, but we keep in mind the scritural narratives that there were reportedly few people available in the Cave/Stable to witness the birth. The authors of Mark and John didn’t seem to think it mattered enough for them to mention.
And your opinion is yours to have and hold. :)
We DO know that the NT Scripture was edited and changed probably on purpose, in order to harmonize it better. And we know that, for instance Hebrews was NOT written by Paul and 2 Peter (and possibly 1 Peter) was not written by Peter either. We hold that the message of the Church is the message of Jesus; the Faith was taught and written in icons long before any written version of NT books were written.
:-)
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