A lot of the dogma arise from contentions and the effort to resolve them. Ephesus/Chalcedon had to do with just WHAT Jesus was, for example.
And if you say the “mother” implies "temporally prior to the entire Godhead," and I don't think so, should I NOT explain my view?
By the time Paul was traipsing across the Agora there was a centuries old tradition of asking what things were. Not only that but one finds in Plato an idea approaching that of the Trinity. So Xtians were going to encounter these guys and were going to have to deal with how Plato's “One,” “Indeterminate Dyad,” and “World Soul” were like and how they were unlike the developing Xtian understanding of God. Our side had to be ready to say, “Close, but ...” and “No way!”
We say, Jesus is Lord.” They say, “Okay, who ran the cosmos when Jesus was dying on the Cross?” And we're off to the races.
Or, my Jewish friends say, “It is inconceivable that HaShem be thought of as being subject to temporality; Maimonedes proves it!” So guys like me have to know where we say, “Yeah. It IS inconceivable, and that's why we adopt a posture of reverence when we mention it in our creed at Mass.” But we can say a lot to Jews about Word and God. I view some of my efforts to be like a little trickle of water on a big sand castle. It'll take time ....
And, if you're a masochist, you can read Whitehead's Process and Reality to see the sort of intellectual structure you have to erect to have a God who changes and who does not directly perceive the future in his eternal Now. And you can think about change and read Feser’s The Last Superstition and see what the whole “Prime Mover” (or “Unchanged Changer”) is all about.
In other words, if you're the kind of person who asks, “But what are we really saying, and what are the implications?” and if you sometimes hang with people like that, then ... you start asking what it might mean and what it could not mean to call Mary “Theotokos.”
Why not just appeal to John 1:1-14??