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To: Colofornian

There are other saints given the title “God-Bearer” (in Greek Theophorus) (for instance, St. Ignatius the God-Bearer of Antioch, as the Third Bishop of Antioch is usually titled) and to the extent that the Holy Spirit dwells in any of us, we too are, indeed God-Bearers.

However, the word “Theotokos”, does not indicate one who bore God in the sense of carrying Him (though that is true of Mary, who is also titled “More Spacious than the Heavens” because she carried the uncontainable God within her womb), but one who bore God in the sense of giving birth to Him. The best, albeit cumbersome, Englishing of “Theotokos” would be “Birth-Giver of God”, which is why we Orthodox Christians tend to just keep the Greek word as the proper title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, rather then Englishing it as either “Mother of God” or “Birth-Giver of God.”


3 posted on 03/27/2015 2:53:49 PM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: The_Reader_David

One of the first things I learned, aeons ago when I first began learning a ‘foreign’ language, is that some things JUST DON’T TRANSLATE. I knew I was getting somewhere when I was laughing at the jokes in a comic book, and realized that there was no way I could adequately re-cast the joke in English.


4 posted on 03/27/2015 2:58:26 PM PDT by NorthMountain ("The time has come", the Walrus said, "to talk of many things")
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To: The_Reader_David
... the word “Theotokos”, does not indicate one who bore God in the sense of carrying Him (though that is true of Mary, who is also titled “More Spacious than the Heavens” because she carried the uncontainable God within her womb)...

Yes. We embody the Holy Spirit; likewise, Jesus was enfleshed within Mary.

However, the word “Theotokos”, does not indicate one who bore God in the sense of carrying Him (though that is true of Mary, who is also titled “More Spacious than the Heavens” because she carried the uncontainable God within her womb), but one who bore God in the sense of giving birth to Him. The best, albeit cumbersome, Englishing of “Theotokos” would be “Birth-Giver of God”, which is why we Orthodox Christians tend to just keep the Greek word as the proper title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, rather then Englishing it as either “Mother of God” or “Birth-Giver of God.”

Yes. We not only embody the Holy Spirit, but also BEAR His fruit (Galatians 5:22).

We not only BEAR His fruit, but Himself:

38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow FROM within them.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7)

This Spirit remains NOT simply contained, but flows FROM us!

6 posted on 03/27/2015 4:28:43 PM PDT by Colofornian
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