Virgin Mary = mother of God
An article on my denomination website:
http://www.wels.net/cgi-bin/site.pl?1518&cuQA_qaID=1&cuTopic_topicID=7&cuItem_itemID=9871
There were some who were willing only to call Mary "Christotokos" (Greek for "the one who bore Christ"), but they were unwilling to call her "Theotokos" (Greek for "the one who bore God"). On the basis of Scripture, the church learned to affirm that the Christian could call Mary both names.From the moment of his conception in the body of Mary, Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man in one person. At the moment of his conception "the Word" (John's inspired name for the second person of the Trinity) "became flesh" so that he might "live for a while among us" (John 1:17). From that moment, and now for all eternity, what Paul says in Colossians 2:9 is true, "In Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form." From the moment of his conception, wherever the human nature of Jesus is, there also is the nature of the Second Person of the Trinity, and wherever that nature of the Second Person of the Trinity is, there is also the human nature. From the womb of Mary, to his birth, to the cross, Scripture never allows us to separate Jesus as if sometimes he was only man and sometimes he was only God. He was and is always the "God-man" in one person. It is just that he possesses both a human and a divine nature in that one person. That is why the angel could say to the shepherds on that first Christmas, "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11). Clearly, Mary gave birth to him who is the Lord himself! The incarnation (taking on of a human nature) of the Second Person of the Trinity is truly the greatest miracle in the history of the world! Now, of course, that presents us with the logical problem you mentioned in your question. Since God is three persons and yet one God, wouldn't that mean that Mary thus becomes the mother of the Father and the Holy Spirit as well? Here is one of those many places in Scripture where we humbly bow before a mystery that goes beyond our understanding. How the Son of God, eternally one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, could become incarnate without the Father and the Spirit becoming incarnate at the same time goes way beyond our explanation. But it is clear from Scripture that only the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word, the Son of God, is the one who takes on flesh and blood in the womb of the the Virgin Mary.
posted by Thuyen Tran at 9:02 PM
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Protestant historian Schaff commented on the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus, which concerned this very issue:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.x.ix.ii.html
It has not been unfrequently assumed that the word Theotocos was coined to express the peculiar view of the Incarnation held by St. Cyril. Such however, is an entire mistake. It was an old term of Catholic Theology, and the very word was used by bishop Alexander in a letter from the synod held at Alexandria in a.d. 320, to condemn the Arian heresy (more than a hundred years before the meeting of the Council of Ephesus); “After this, we receive the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, of which Jesus Christ our Lord became the first-fruits; who bore a body in truth, not in semblance, which he derived from Mary the Mother of God (ἐκ τῆς Θεοτόκου Μαρίας).”The same word had been used by many church writers among whom may be mentioned St. Athanasius, who says, “As the flesh was born of Mary, the Mother of God, so we say that he, the Word, was himself born of Mary” (Orat. c. Arian., iij., 14, 29, 33; also iv., 32). See also Eusebius (Vit. Const., iij., 43); St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat., x., 9); and especially Origen, who (says Bp. Pearson) “did not only use, but expound at large the meaning of that title Θεοτόκος in his first tome on the Epistle to the Romans, as Socrates and Liberatus testify.” (Cf. Origen in Deut. xxii., 23; vol. ij., p. 391. A; in Luc. apud Galland, Bib. Patr., vol. xiv., append., p. 87, D). A list is given by Dr. Routh, in his Reliquiæ Sacræ. Vol. ij., p. 215 (1st Ed.), 332 (2d Ed.).
In fact Theodore of Mopsuestia was the first to object to it, so far as we know, writing as follows: “Mary bare Jesus, not the Word, for the Word was and remained omnipresent, although from the beginning he dwelt in Jesus in a peculiar manner. Thus Mary is properly the Mother of Christ (Christotocos) but not the mother of God (Theotocos). Only figuratively, per anaphoram, can she be called Theotocos also, because God was in Christ in a remarkable manner. Properly she bare a man, in whom the union with the Word was begun, but was still so little completed, that he was not yet called the Son of God.” And in another place he says: “It is madness to say that God is born of the Virgin.…Not God, but the temple in which God dwelt, is born of Mary.”251 How far Theodore had departed from the teaching of the Apostolic days may be seen by the following quotations from St. Ignatius. “There is one only physician, of flesh and spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true Life in death, Son of Mary and of God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Further on in the same epistle he says: “For our God, Jesus the Christ, was borne in the womb by Mary etc.”253 With the first of these passages Bp. Lightfoot very aptly compares the following from Melito. “Since he was incorporeal, he fashioned a body for himself of our likeness…he was carried by Mary and clothed by his Father, he trod the earth and he filled the heavens.”254
Theodore was forced by the exigencies of his position to deny the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum which had already at that early date come to be well understood, at least so far as practice is concerned.
This doctrine, as is well known is predicating the same properties of the two natures in Christ, not in abstracto (Godhead and manhood), but in concreto (God and man). Christ himself had declared in St. John iii., 16: “God…gave his only begotten Son” (namely, to death), and similarly St. Peter declared (Acts iii., 15): “ye…killed the Prince of Life,” when in fact the being given up and being killed is a property (ἰδίωμα = predicate) of man, not of God (the only begotten, the Prince of Life). In the same way Clement of Rome, for example, spoke of “the sufferings of God” (παθήματα Θεοῦ) (1 Ad Cor. 2), Ignatius of Antioch (Ad Ephes., c. 1, and Ad Rom., 6) of an αἷμα and πάθος Θεοῦ, Tatian of a Θεὸς πεπονθὼς (Ad Græcos, c. 13); Barnabas teaches (c. 7) that “the Son of God could not suffer except on our behalf…and on our behalf he has brought the vessel of his Spirit as a sacrifice.” Similarly Irenæus (iii., 16, 6) says, “The Only-begotten impassible Word (unigenitus impassibilis) has become passible” (passibilis); and Athanasius, ἐσταυρώμενον εἶναι Θεὸν (Ep. ad Epictet., n. 10, t. j., p. 726. ed. Patav.)
It is, however, to be remarked that the properties of the one nature were never transferred to the other nature in itself, but always to the Person who is at the same time both man and God. Human attributes were not ascribed to the Godhead, but to God, and vice versâ.
For a full treatment of the figure of speech called the communicatio idiomatum the reader is referred to the great works on Theology where it will be found set forth at large, with its restrictions specified and with examples of its use. A brief but interesting note on it will be found in St. John Damascene’s famous treatise De Fide Orthodoxa, Book III., iij. (Migne’s Pat. Græc., col. 994).
(2) Meaning of the Word Θεοτόκος.
We pass now to the meaning of the word, having sufficiently traced the history of its use. Bishop Pearson says: “This name was first in use in the Greek Church, who, delighting in the happy compositions of that language, called the blessed Virgin Theotocos. From whence the Latins in imitation styled her Virginem Deiparam et Deigenitricem.”255 In the passage to which the words just quoted are a portion of a footnote, he says: “Wherefore from these three, a true conception, nutrition, and parturition, we must acknowledge that the blessed Virgin was truly and properly the Mother of our Saviour. And so is she frequently styled the Mother of Jesus in the language of the Evangelists, and by Elizabeth particularly the ‘Mother of her Lord,’ as also by the general consent of the Church (because he which was so born of her was God,) the Deipara; which being a compound title begun in the Greek Church, was resolved into its parts by the Latins and so the Virgin was plainly named the Mother of God.”
Pearson is mistaken in supposing that the resolution of the compound Theotocos into μήτηρ τοῦ Θεοῦ was unknown to the early Greek writers. Dionysius expressly calls Mary ἡ μήτηρ τοῦ Θεοῦ μου (Contr. Paul. Samos., Quæst. viij.); and among the Latins Mater Dei and Dei Genetrix were (as Pearson himself confesses in note 37) used before the time of St. Leo I. It is not an open question whether Mater Dei, Dei Genetrix, Deipara, μήτηρ τοῦ Θεοῦ are proper equivalents for Θεοτόκος. This point has been settled by the unvarying use of the whole Church of God throughout all the ages from that day to this, but there is, or at least some persons have thought that there was, some question as to how Theotocos should be translated into English.
Throughout this volume I have translated it “Mother of God,” and I propose giving my 210reasons for considering this the only accurate translation of the word, both from a lexico-graphical and from a theological point of view.
(a) It is evident that the word is a composite formed of Θεός = God, and τίκτειν = to be the mother of a child. Now I have translated the verbal part “to be the mother of a child” because “to bear” in English does not necessarily carry the full meaning of the Greek word, which (as Bp. Pearson has well remarked in the passage cited above) includes “conception, nutrition, and parturition.” It has been suggested that “God-bearer” is an exact translation. To this I object, that in the first place it is not English; and in the second that it would be an equally and, to my mind, more accurate translation of Θεοφόρος than of Θεοτόκος.
Another suggestion is that it be rendered “the bringer forth of God.” Again I object that, from a rhetorical standpoint, the expression is very open to criticism; and from a lexicographical point of view it is entirely inadequate, for while indeed the parturition does necessarily involve in the course of nature the previous conception and nutrition, it certainly does not express it.
Now the word Mother does necessarily express all three of these when used in relation to her child. The reader will remember that the question I am discussing is not whether Mary can properly be called the Mother of God; this Nestorius denied and many in ancient and modern times have been found to agree with him. The question I am considering is what the Greek word Theotocos means in English. I do not think anyone would hesitate to translate Nestorius’s Christotocos by “Mother of Christ” and surely the expressions are identical from a lexicographical point of view.
Liddell and Scott in their Lexicon insert the word θεοτόκος as an adjective and translate “bearing God” and add: “especially ἡ Θεοτόκος, Mother of God, of the Virgin, Eccl.”
(b) It only remains to consider whether there is from a theological point of view any objection to the translation, “Mother of God.” It is true that some persons have thought that such a rendering implied that the Godhead has its origin in Mary, but this was the very objection which Nestorius and his followers urged against the word Theotocos, and this being the case, it constitutes a strong argument in favour of the accuracy of the rendering. Of course the answer to the objection in each case is the same, it is not of the Godhead that Mary is the Mother, but of the Incarnate Son, who is God. “Mother” expresses exactly the relation to the incarnate Son which St. Cyril, the Council of Ephesus, and all succeeding, not to say also preceding, ages of Catholics, rightly or wrongly, ascribe to Mary. All that every child derives from its Mother that God the Son derived from Mary, and this without the co-operation of any man, but by the direct operation of the Holy Ghost, so that in a fuller, truer, and more perfect sense, Mary is the Mother of God the Son in his incarnation, than any other earthly mother is of her son.
I therefore consider it certain that no scholar who can and will divest himself of theological bias, can doubt that “Mother of God” is the most accurate translation of the term Theotocos.
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