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Theotokos (Greek Θεοτόκος) is the most exalted Greek title given to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Its literal English translations include "God-bearer", "Birth-Giver of God" and "the one who gives birth to God." Less literal translations include "Mother of God". This title is a consequence of the Christian catholic and orthodox doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, "the Word made flesh" (John 1:14), the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, as defined dogmatically against the teaching of Nestorius declared heretical by the Council of Ephesus 431.

Contents

Defending the divinity of Christ[edit]

According to this doctrine of the Council, Jesus is equally God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one in divine being and substance of divinity and Godhead with the Father and the Holy Spirit as one God of three divine Persons. He is therefore God before his incarnation, God at the moment of his incarnation, and God in the womb of Mary, his true mother. There was never a moment from the instant of his incarnation that she was not his mother, and there was never a moment from the instant of his incarnation that he was not God and man. This title Theotokos is a doctrinal defense of the divinity of Jesus the incarnate Son of God and Son of Mary, God and man, the two natures of the one Person of Christ.

Some persons assume wrongly that all mothers precede the existence of their sons,[1] and that the title "Mother of God" blasphemously declares the false doctrine that she existed before Almighty God, as pagans in various parts of the ancient world (and in some places even today) believed in a Mother of the Gods, and this is adduced as proof that a Great Apostasy was committed by the Church and that the doctrines of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are pagan. This grossly distorted misrepresentation of the meaning of the title of Mary as Theotokos is not the true teaching of Christianity, and in particular is not the dogmatic teaching of the Catholic and Orthodox Church.

Protestant Christian Evangelicals and Fundamentalists who reject the doctrine that Mary is the mother of God, are not aware that their rejection of this doctrine implicitly denies the eternal divinity of Jesus from the moment of his incarnation. With Nestorius they prefer to regard her as the mother of his humanity only and not mother of him who is God. According to Acts 20:28, the human blood of Jesus is the "blood of God":

Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you guardians, to feed the church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood.

This truth contradicts the erroneous interpretation of some who point to Philippians 2:7, "he emptied himself", as proof that Jesus had divested himself entirely of his divine nature from the moment of his incarnation, throughout the whole of his earthly ministry, until his resurrection from the dead. In contradiction to this, mainstream Christian doctrine declares that there was never a moment that Jesus of Nazareth was not God. The reasoning of the Council of Ephesus, promoted by Saint Augustine, is that mothers are mothers of more than bodies, and are mothers of the persons conceived and born from their wombs, and nurtured and raised by them as their own children, and that Mary was authentically and really Jesus' mother, both by a divine miracle of supernatural grace and by nature. If Mary is not the mother of God, then Jesus was not God. He was God when he became man "and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). If Jesus is eternally God both before and from the moment of his incarnation, then Mary who carried him in her womb is his mother, and she is truly and actually the Mother of Jesus incarnate who is God and man. Both Orthodoxy and Catholicism see this as the highest and most unique privilege God ever bestowed on any human creature, and for this reason she was able to declare, "behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed". And for this same reason, Catholics call her "The Blessed Virgin Mary".

Scriptural support for the doctrine that Mary is the Mother of God[edit]

Virgin and child.jpg

Several passages of scripture state plainly that Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ the incarnate Son of God.

The following verses demonstrate that Jesus Christ the Son of Mary was and still is the incarnation of God:

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ The same notion mockingly proposed by critics of Theism, and especially of Christianity, is that "if all things that exist have been created, then who created God?". They ignore the Judeo-Christian doctrine that God is specifically the One "Uncreated" reality, without beginning, without end, eternally self-existing and self-subsisting, Who created all other existing things visible and invisible, the heaven and the earth, from Whom all created things come, and are held in existence, and without Whom they all would cease to exist.
  2. ↑ "Lord", Greek Κύριος Kyrios, here and in other passages, 700 times in the New Testament, is the word for God. See Strong's number 2962. Thus Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit Himself, declares Mary "mother of God - mother of my Lord".
  3. ↑ Mary here speaks through John's Gospel to every servant of the Lord, "Do whatever he tells you." This compact summary of the whole of the Bible from the lips of Mary is the constant teaching of the Orthodox and Catholic Church. See Luke 6:46; Matthew 7:21-23 and 18:15-18.
  4. ↑ "Son"—some ancient authorities read "God"—"the only God, who is in the bosom of the Father"

External links[edit]

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http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0431-0431,_Concilium_Ephesenum,_Documenta_Omnia_[Schaff],_EN.pdf