Mary: Mother of God?

This article is prompted by an ad in the Parade Magazine titled: "Mary Mother of God: What All Mankind Should Know." The offer was made for a free pamphlet entitled "Mary Mother of Jesus" with this explanation: "A clear, insightful pamphlet explains the importance of Mary and her role as Mother of God."

This is quite a claim, to say the least! Nowhere in the Bible is Mary said to be the mother of God. I touched on this subject in a series on "Mary Co-Redeemer with Christ" printed recently.

Question: If Mary is the Mother of God, Who, may I ask, is the Father of God? Does God have a Father, and if He does, Who is His Mother?

The phrase "Mother of God" originated in the Council of Ephesus, in the year 431 AD. It occurs in the Creed of Chalcedon, which was adopted by the council in 451 AD. This was the declaration given at that time: "Born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to the Manhood." The purpose of this statement originally was meant to emphasize the deity of Christ over against the teaching of the Nestorians whose teaching involved a dual-natured Jesus. Their teaching was that the person born of Mary was only a man who was then indwelt by God. The title "Mother of God" was used originally to counter this false doctrine. The doctrine now emphasizes the person of Mary rather than the deity of Jesus as God incarnate. Mary certainly did not give birth to God. In fact, Mary did not give birth to the divinity of Christ. Mary only gave birth to the humanity of Jesus. The only thing Jesus got from Mary was a body. Every Human Being has received a sinful nature from their parents with one exception: Jesus was not human. He was divine God in a flesh body. This is what Mary gave birth to. Read Hebrews 10:5 and Phil 2:5-11.

Please refer to Hebrews 10:5 where we see. "...Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me."

The body of Jesus was prepared by God. In Matthew 1:18, "she was found with child of the Holy Ghost."

The divine nature of Jesus existed from before eternity, and this cannot be said of Mary Jesus never called her "mother". He called her "woman".

This doctrine deifies Mary and humanizes Jesus. Mary is presented as stronger that Christ, more mature and more powerful that Christ. Listen to this statement by Rome: "He came to us through Mary, and we must go to Him through her." The Bible plainly states that God is the Creator of all things. It is a blasphemous attack on the eternity of God to ever teach that He has a mother. Mary had other children who were normal, physical, sinful human beings. In the case of Jesus Christ, "His human nature had no father and His divine nature had no mother."

It is probably no coincidence that this false doctrine surrounding Mary was born in Ephesus. Please read Acts 19:11-41 and see that Ephesus had a problem with goddess worship. Her name was Diana, Gk. Artemis. You will not have to study very deep to find the similarities between the goddess Diana and the Roman Catholic goddess, Mary. It should be noted that the Mary of the 1st century and the Mary of the 20th century are not the same. Mary of the 1st century was the virgin who gave birth to the Messiah. Mary of the 20th century is a goddess created by the Roman Catholic Church. A simple comparison of what the Bible teaches about Mary and what the Roman Catholic Church teaches about her will reveal two different Marys. Mary is not the "Mother of God." If she were she would be GOD! There is only one true, eternal God. He was not born of a woman. Any teaching on any subject should be backed up by the word of God. If it cannot be supported by Scriptures, it is false doctrine.

Here is something interesting to ponder.

When Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and declared that the last days had come (Acts 2:16,17), he showed clearly that he was totally ignorant of God's plan to usher in a dispensation of grace before the return of Christ.

His ignorance of this was in no way due to some human failing in Peter himself, for the on the day of Pentecost the followers of Christ "were all filled with the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:4.

Moreover, what Peter said was SCRIPTURALLY correct, In the light of all that had so far been revealed, these WERE the last days. The prophets had said nothing about the dispensation of grace OR the body of Christ. There had yet been NO HINT of any interruption of the prophetic program.

In Joel's prophecy concerning the last days, Pentecost is followed by the great tribulation and the return of Christ. Indeed, the prophets had "testified beforehand" only "the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow" (1 Pet. 1:11). Now that the sufferings were over, it seemed as though the glory would soon follow, for no one could deny that the signs of "the day of the Lord" had begun to appear.

So Peter was NOT ignorant of the revealed program of God concerning the day in which he lived. Taught by the Lord (Acts 1:3) and filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4), he had an intelligent understanding of just where he stood in the divine plan. Hence the dynamic POWER of his message.

The apostles had expected the Holy Spirit to be "poured out" before the great tribulation and the return of Christ, and our Lord had promised them in commissioning them that they would then be supernaturally empowered to speak with other tongues (Mark 16:17). Thus when the Spirit came and they began to speak in other languages Peter knew EXACTLY what was happening and, pointing to Joel's prophecy, said WITHOUT QUALIFICATION: "THIS IS THAT."

"These are not drunken, as ye suppose...BUt THIS IS THAT which was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass in THE LAST DAYS, saith God, I will pour out of My Spirit..and..show wonders..and signs..before that great and notable day of the Lord come" (Acts 2:15-20).

As far as God's REVEALED prophetic plan was concerned, the last days- the days so long foretold HAD begun. Israel's long-promised Messiah had appeared, had died and risen again, had ascended to the Father's right hand and had sent the Holy Spirit to guide and empower His own. The next number on the prophectic program was the tribulation period with the judgment of the nations and Messiah's return, and the signs of these things were already beginning to appear. Peter saw the prophetic program for the nation Israel exactly as prophesied for so long: Pentecost, then the tribulation. Just as Peter declared on that day. -C.R.Stam, Things That Differ. "The Last Days" pp. 100-101.

But the tribulation did NOT happen as was prophesized. A mystery, hid in GOd, from the foundation of the world, was revealed to the Apostle Paul that put the tribulation on hold. ANd everything changed at that time. When it has run its course in God's Plan, the tribulation will begin and the remaining prophetic program will be fulfilled.

I’d say the following article is your modus operendi across threads, “arguing from ignorance.”

Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or “appeal to ignorance” (where “ignorance” stands for: “lack of evidence to the contrary”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is “generally accepted” (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four, (1) true, (2) false, (3) unknown between true or false, and (4) being unknowable (among the first three).[1] In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof.
Argument from ignorance may be used as a rationalization by a person who realizes that he has no reason for holding the belief that he does.
The fallaciousness of arguments from ignorance does not mean that one can never possess good reasons for thinking that something does not exist, an idea captured by philosopher Bertrand Russell’s teapot, a hypothetical china teapot revolving about the sun between Earth and Mars; however this would fall more duly under the arena of pragmatism, wherein a position must be demonstrated or proven in order to be upheld, and therefore the burden of proof is on the argument’s proponent.
Contents [hide]
1 Overview
1.1 Basic argument
1.2 Matters of confusion
2 Related terms
2.1 Contraposition and Transposition
2.2 Absence of evidence
2.3 Evidence of absence
2.4 Negative evidence
2.5 Null result
3 Related arguments
3.1 Argument from incredulity/Lack of imagination
3.2 Argument from self-knowing (auto-epistemic)
4 Distinguishing absence of evidence from evidence of absence
4.1 Formal argument
5 Examples
5.1 Absence of evidence
5.2 Negative results
5.3 Evidence of absence
5.4 Arguments from ignorance
5.5 In the field of science
5.6 Principles in law
6 Origin of the term
7 Sources
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
[edit]Overview

[edit]Basic argument
Arguments that appeal to ignorance rely merely on the fact that the veracity of the proposition is not disproven to arrive at a definite conclusion. These arguments fail to appreciate that the limits of one’s understanding or certainty do not change what is true. They do not inform upon reality. That is, whatever the reality is, it does not “wait” upon human logic or analysis to be formulated. Reality exists at all times, and it exists independently of what is in the mind of anyone. And the true thrust of science and rational analysis is to separate preconceived notion(s) of what reality is, and to be open at all times to the observation of nature as it behaves, so as truly to discover reality. This fallacy can be very convincing and is considered by some[2] to be a special case of a false dilemma or false dichotomy in that they both fail to consider alternatives. A false dilemma may take the form:
If a proposition has not been disproven, then it cannot be considered false and must therefore be considered true.
If a proposition has not been proven, then it cannot be considered true and must therefore be considered false.
Such arguments attempt to exploit the facts that (a) true things can never be disproven and (b) false things can never be proven. In other words, appeals to ignorance claim that the converse of these facts are also true (therein lies the fallacy).
To reiterate, these arguments ignore the fact, and difficulty, that some true things may never be proven, and some false things may never be disproved with absolute certainty. The phrase “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” can be used as a shorthand rebuttal to the second form of the ignorance fallacy (i.e. P has never been absolutely proven and is therefore certainly false.). Most often it is directed at any conclusion derived from null results in an experiment or from the non-detection of something. In other words, where one researcher may say their experiment suggests evidence of absence, another researcher might argue that the experiment failed to detect a phenomenon for other reasons.
[edit]Matters of confusion
See also: Evidence of absence
Much confusion about ‘arguments from ignorance’ can be caused when one side of a debate forgets that we often possess evidence of absence in practice.
The ignorance fallacy is sometimes confused (or combined) with logically valid contrapositive arguments. Contrapositive arguments rightly utilize the transposition rule of inference in classical logic to conclude something like: To the extent that C implies E then Not-E must also imply Not-C. In other words, if a cause always leads to an effect, then absence of the expected effect is evidence of absence of the cause. For example, if the causal proposition that If it’s raining outside then the streets will be wet is assumed, then it can be assumed that if the streets are not wet then it is not raining outside. The inference that it cannot be raining outside because the streets are not getting wet is exactly as true, or perhaps exactly as untrue, as the original proposition. The statements are logically equivalent.

Carl Sagan beside a Viking model
As Carl Sagan explains:
“ “Appeal to ignorance – the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., there is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist – and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: there may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we’re still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”-The Demon-Haunted World: (Chapter 12 – The Fine Art of Baloney Detection.) ”
For instance, absence of evidence that it rained (i.e. water is the evidence) may be considered as positive evidence that it did not rain. Again, in science, such inferences are always made to some limited (sometimes extremely high) degree of probability.
Arguments from ignorance can easily find their way into debates over the Existence of God. It is a fallacy to draw conclusions based precisely on ignorance, since this does not satisfactorily address issues of philosophic burden of proof. Russell’s teapot provides an example of why agnosticism is not necessarily an appropriate response to lack of evidence.
[edit]Related terms

[edit]Contraposition and Transposition
Contraposition is a logically valid rule of inference that allows the creation of a new proposition from the negation and reordering of an existing one. The method applies to any proposition of the type If A then B and says that negating all the variables and switching them back to front leads to a new proposition i.e. If Not-B then Not-A that is just as true as the original one and that the first implies the second and the second implies the first.
Transposition is exactly the same thing described in a different language.
[edit]Absence of evidence
Absence of evidence is the absence, or lack of, any kind of evidence that may show, indicate, suggest, or be used to infer or deduce a fact.
[edit]Evidence of absence
Main article: Evidence of absence
Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that can be used to infer or deduce the non-existence or non-presence of something. For instance, if a doctor does not find any malignant cells in a patient this null result (finding nothing) is evidence of absence of cancer, even though the doctor has not actually detected anything per se. Such inductive reasoning is important to empiricism and science, but has well established limitations. The challenge thus becomes to try to identify when a researcher has received a null result (found nothing) because the thing does not exist (evidence of absence), and when one simply lacks proper means of detection (absence of evidence).
[edit]Negative evidence
Negative evidence is sometimes used as an alternative to absence of evidence and is often meant to be synonymous with it. On the other hand, the term may also refer to evidence with a negative value, or null result equivalent to evidence of absence. It may even refer to positive evidence about something of an unpleasant nature.
[edit]Null result
Null result is a term often used in the field of science to indicate absence of evidence. A search for water on the ground may yield a null result (the ground is dry); therefore, it probably did not rain.
[edit]Related arguments

[edit]Argument from incredulity/Lack of imagination
Arguments from incredulity take the form:
P is too incredible (or: I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true); therefore P must be false.
It is obvious that P is true (or: I cannot imagine how P could possibly be false); therefore P must be true.
These arguments are similar to arguments from ignorance in that they too ignore and do not properly eliminate the possibility that something can be both incredible and still be true, or appear to be obvious and yet still be false.
[edit]Argument from self-knowing (auto-epistemic)
Arguments from self-knowing take the form:
If P were true then I would know it; in fact I do not know it; therefore P cannot be true.
If P were false then I would know it; in fact I do not know it; therefore P cannot be false.
In practice these arguments are often fallacious and rely on the veracity of the supporting premise. For example the argument that If I had just sat on a wild porcupine then I would know it; in fact I do not know it; therefore I did not just sit on a wild porcupine is probably not a fallacy and depends entirely on the veracity of the leading proposition that supports it. (See Contraposition and Transposition in the Related terms section in this article.)
[edit]Distinguishing absence of evidence from evidence of absence

Absence of Evidence is a condition in which no valid conclusion can be inferred from the mere absence of detection, normally due to doubt in the detection method. Evidence of absence is the successful variation: a conclusion that relies on specific knowledge in conjunction with negative detection to deduce the absence of something. An example of evidence of absence is checking your pockets for spare change and finding nothing but being confident that the search would have found it if it was there.
[edit]Formal argument
By determining that a given experiment or method of detection is sensitive and reliable enough to detect the presence of X (when X is present) one can confidently exclude the possibility that X may be both undetected and present. This allows one to deduce that X cannot be present if a null result is received.
Thus there are only two possibilities, given a null result:
Nothing detected, and X is not present.
Nothing detected, but X is present (Option eliminated by careful research design).
To the extent that option 2 can be eliminated, one can deduce that if X is not detected then X is not present and therefore the null result is evidence of absence.
[edit]Examples

[edit]Absence of evidence
(These examples contain or represent missing information.)
Statements that begin with “I can’t prove it but…” are often referring to some kind absence of evidence.
“There is no evidence of foul play here” is a direct reference to the absence of evidence.
[edit]Negative results
When the doctor says that the test results were negative, it is usually good news.
Under “Termites” the inspector checked the box that read “no”.
The results of Michelson–Morley’s experiment reported no shift at all in the interference pattern.
[edit]Evidence of absence
(These examples contain definite evidence that can be used to show, indicate, suggest, infer or deduce the non-existence or non-presence of something.)
A biopsy shows the absence of malignant cells.
The null result found by Michelson–Morley’s famous experiment represents “strong evidence” that the luminiferous aether was not present.
One very carefully inspects the back seat of one’s car and finds no tigers.
The train schedule does not say that the train stops here at 3:00pm on a Sunday.
[edit]Arguments from ignorance
(Draws a conclusion based on lack of knowledge or evidence without accounting for all possibilities)
“I take the view that this lack (of enemy subversive activity in the west coast) is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the sabotage we are to get, the Fifth Column activities are to get, are timed just like Pearl Harbor... I believe we are just being lulled into a false sense of security.” – Then California’s Attorney General Earl Warren (before a congressional hearing in San Francisco on 21 February 1942)
[edit]In the field of science
One looks in the back seat of one’s car and finds no adult-sized kangaroos and then uses this negative/null adult-sized kangaroo detection results in conjunction with the previously determined fact (or just plain old proposition) that adult-sized kangaroos, if present, cannot evade such detection, to deduce a new fact that there are indeed no adult-sized kangaroos present in the back seat of said car.
[edit]Principles in law
The presumption of innocence, if present, effectively removes the possibility that the accused may be both guilty and unproven, from consideration in judgment, and as such the accused is considered as innocent unless proven guilty. (See decision table below)
Innocent and unproven. Judged as innocent.
Innocent and proven. Judged as guilty. (Jury is biased, misled, makes error; law is incorrect; false evidence fabricated etc.)
Guilty and unproven. Judged as innocent. (Presumption of innocence)
Guilty and proven. Judged as guilty. (Innocent unless/until proven guilty is a summary of this and easier to remember.)
[edit]Origin of the term

From “Fallacies: classical and contemporary readings By Hans V. Hansen, Robert C. Pinto”
“It is generally accepted that the philosopher John Locke introduced the term in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding:”
“Another way that Men ordinarily use to drive others, and force them to submit their Judgments. And receive the Opinion in debate, is to require the Adversary to admit what they alledge as a Proof, or assign a better. And this I call Argumentum ad Ignorantum” – John Locke
[edit]Sources

Fallacies: classical and contemporary readings By Hans V. Hansen, Robert C. Pinto
Introduction to Logic by Irving Marmer Copi.
Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book IV – John Locke
[edit]See also

Argument from silence
False dilemma
Indeterminacy problem
Negation as failure
[edit]References

^ “Argumentum ad Ignorantiam”. Philosophy 103: Introduction to Logic. Lander University. 2004. Retrieved 2009-04-29.
^ “Appeal to Ignorance (Shifting the Burden of Proof)”. Gracyk’s Explanations of basic fallacies
Copi, Irving M; Cohen, Carl (1998). Introduction to Logic (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780132425872. OCLC 36060013.
[edit]External links

Appeal to Authority Breakdown section on Appeal to Ignorance
Fallacy Files article on Appeal to Ignorance

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