Pardon my simplicity here, but if Mary was the Mother of God, wouldn’t that mean that Mary had actually generated a member of the Trinity? And that He was a created being?
>>No. She birthed Jesus’s humanity, which was inseparable from his divinity. He had a human soul that was united indivisibly, without alteration, co-mixture, or division.
The dogma of Mary as Theotokos affirms that she gave birth to God the Son and that he was full God and full Man from the moment of his conception by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Why this is so hard for you to accept baffles me.
I learned this dogma when I was a Lutheran. Every one of the first generation Protestant Reformers believed in this teaching.
John Calvin’s arguments about Mary’s role are indistinguishable from those employed by St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Ephesus against Nestorius.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom31.ix.viii.html#ix.viii-p22
The Lutheran Book of Concord says:
For how could the man, the son of Mary, in truth be called or be God, or the Son of God the Most High, if His humanity were not personally united with the Son of God, and He thus had realiter, that is, in deed and truth, nothing in common with Him except only the name of God?
12] 7. Hence we believe, teach, and confess that Mary conceived and bore not a mere man and no more, but the true Son of God; therefore she also is rightly called and truly is the mother of God.
http://bookofconcord.org/fc-ep.php
And the decree of the Council of Chalcedon, as cited by Evagrius, lib. 2, cap 4, reads thus: “Following, then, the holy fathers, we confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and we all set forth with one voice that the same is perfect in deity and the same perfect in humanity; that the same is truly God and truly man, consisting of a rational soul and a body; that He is consubstantial with the Father as regards the deity, and that the same is consubstantial with us according to the humanity; that He is in all respects like us, excepting sin; that He was begotten before the world out of the Father according to the deity, but that the same person was in the last days born for us and for our salvation of Mary, the virgin and mother of God, according to the humanity; that one and the same Jesus Christ,
http://bookofconcord.org/testimonies.php
Martin Luther
11. At last they so exalted the indulgence as to teach that if one had even committed a sin of lust with the Mother of God, it would be forgiven him through the indulgence.
http://bookofconcord.org/exhortation.php
The Reformed Tetrapolitan Confession of 1530 refers to Mary as the “Mother of God”.
http://bit.ly/y78Ge6
And John Calvin reproves a Calvinist Church in England for refusing to call Mary “Mother of God” as “ignorance.” Found on page 346 in the following link.
http://bit.ly/yFVhuc
To accept the bible position we must believe that the soul is not connected to the flesh...
Even in your own religion, as the departed souls of Catholics head out to purgatory, their bodies stay in the grave... But no, Jesus' soul was separated from his flesh just as is the soul of born again Christians...
At the 'new birth' we undergo an operation...A spiritual operation...An operation made without hands...
Just as the Jews went thru a physical circumcision, we Christians go thru a spiritual circumcision...