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T h e F a t h e r s K n o w B e s t
Mary: The Mother of God
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Many Fundamentalists are horrified when they hear the Virgin Mary called the Mother of God, but they are unaware of what this doctrine means and what their own Protestant forebears said about it.
Mary isn’t the Mother of God in the sense that she is older than God or the source of the Son’s divinity, for she is neither. But in other senses she merits the title.
If Mary is the mother of Jesus, and if Jesus is God, then Mary is the Mother of God. There is no way out of this syllogism, whose form logicians have recognized as valid since before Christ.
To avoid its conclusion, some Fundamentalists assert that Mary did not carry God in her womb, but only Christ’s human nature. This reinvents a fifth-century heresy known as Nestorianism. Mothers do not carry merely human natures in their wombs: They carry persons, which is why abortion is a form of homicide. (Only persons have a right to life; natures do not.) Women do not give birth to human natures, but to persons.
The Nestorian claim that Mary did not give birth to the unified Person of Jesus Christ splits Christ’s human nature from his divine nature. It imagines two separate persons—one divine and one human—united in a loose affiliation. It is a Christological heresy of the highest caliber, as the Protestant Reformers recognized. Martin Luther and John Calvin both taught Mary’s divine maternity.
The Church Fathers, of course, had taught it centuries earlier:
Irenaeus
"The Virgin Mary, being obedient to his word, received from an angel the glad tidings that she would bear God" (Against Heresies, 5:19:1 [A.D. 189]).
Hippolytus
"[T]o all generations they [the prophets] have pictured forth the grandest subjects for contemplation and for action. Thus, too, they preached of the advent of God in the flesh to the world, his advent by the spotless and God-bearing [theotokos] Mary in the way of birth and growth, the manner of his life and conversation with men, his manifestation by baptism, the new birth that was to be to all men, and the regeneration by the laver [of baptism]" (Discourse on the End of the World 1 [A.D. 217]).
Gregory Thaumaturgus
"For Luke, in the inspired Gospel narratives, delivers a testimony not to Joseph only, but also to Mary, the Mother of God, and gives this account with reference to the very family and house of David" (Four Homilies 1 [A.D. 262]).
Peter of Alexandria
"[T]hey [those engaged in the public transport service] came to the church of the most blessed Mother of God, and Ever-Virgin Mary, which, as we began to say, he had constructed in the western quarter, in a suburb, for a cemetery of the martyrs" (The Genuine Acts of Peter of Alexandria [A.D. 305]).
Methodius
"Hail to thee forever, you virgin Mother of God, our unceasing joy, for unto thee do I again return. . . . Hail, you fount of the Son’s love for man. . . . Wherefore, we pray thee, the most excellent among women, who boasts in the confidence of your maternal honors, that you would unceasingly keep us in remembrance. O holy Mother of God, remember us, I say, who make our boast in thee, and who in hymns august celebrate the memory, which will ever live, and never fade away" (Oration on Simeon and Anna 14 [A.D. 305]).
Alexander of Alexandria
"We acknowledge the resurrection of the dead, of which Jesus Christ our Lord became the firstling; he bore a body not in appearance but in truth derived from Mary the Mother of God" (Letter to All Non-Egyptian Bishops 12 [A.D.324]).
Cyril of Jerusalem
"The Father bears witness from heaven to his Son. The Holy Spirit bears witness, coming down bodily in the form of a dove. The Archangel Gabriel bears witness, bringing the good tidings to Mary. The Virgin Mother of God bears witness" (Catechetical Lectures 10:19 [A.D.350]).
Ephraim
"Though still a virgin she carried a child in her womb, and the handmaid and work of his wisdom became the Mother of God" (Songs of Praise 1:20 [A.D. 351]).
Athanasius
"The Word begotten of the Father from on high, inexpressibly, inexplicably, incomprehensibly, and eternally, is he that is born in time here below of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God" (The Incarnation of the Word of God 8 [A.D. 365]).
Epiphanius
"Being perfect at the side of the Father and incarnate among us, not in appearance but in truth, he [the Son] reshaped man to perfection in himself from Mary the Mother of God through the Holy Spirit" (The Man Well-Anchored 75 [A.D. 374]).
Ambrose
"The first thing which kindles ardor in learning is the greatness of the teacher. What is greater than the Mother of God? What more glorious than she whom Glory itself chose?" (The Virgins 2:2[7] [A.D. 377]).
Gregory Nazianzus
"If anyone does not agree that Holy Mary is Mother of God, he is at odds with the Godhead" (Letter to Cledonius the Priest 101 [A.D. 382]).
Jerome
"As to how a virgin became the Mother of God, he [Rufinus] has full knowledge; as to how he himself was born, he knows nothing!" (Against Rufinus 2:10 [A.D. 401]).
"Do not marvel at the novelty of the thing, if a Virgin gives birth to God" (Commentaries on Isaiah 3:7:15 [A.D. 409]).
Theodore of Mopsuestia
"When, therefore, they ask, ‘Is Mary mother of man or Mother of God?’ we answer, ‘Both!’ The one by the very nature of what was done and the other by relation. Mother of man because it was a man who was in the womb of Mary and who came forth from there, and the Mother of God because God was in the man who was born" (The Incarnation 15 [A.D. 405]).
Cyril of Alexandria
"This expression, however, ‘the Word was made flesh’ [John 1:14], can mean nothing else but that he partook of flesh and blood like to us; he made our body his own, and came forth man from a woman, not casting off his existence as God, or his generation of God the Father, but even in taking to himself flesh remaining what he was. This the declaration of the correct faith proclaims everywhere. This was the sentiment of the holy Fathers; therefore they ventured to call the holy Virgin, the Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word or his divinity had its beginning from the holy Virgin, but because of her was born that holy body with a rational soul, to which the Word, being personally united, is said to be born according to the flesh" (First Letter to Nestorius [A.D. 430]).
"And since the holy Virgin corporally brought forth God made one with flesh according to nature, for this reason we also call her Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word had the beginning of its existence from the flesh" (Third Letter to Nestorius [A.D. 430]).
John Cassian
"Now, you heretic, you say (whoever you are who deny that God was born of the Virgin), that Mary, the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, cannot be called the Mother of God, but the Mother only of Christ and not of God, for no one, you say, gives birth to one older than herself. And concerning this utterly stupid argument . . . let us prove by divine testimonies both that Christ is God and that Mary is the Mother of God" (On the Incarnation of Christ Against Nestorius 2:2 [A.D.429]).
"You cannot then help admitting that the grace comes from God. It is God then who has given it. But it has been given by our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is God. But if he is God, as he certainly is, then she who bore God is the Mother of God" (ibid., 2:5).
Council of Ephesus
"We confess, then, our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, perfect God and perfect man of a rational soul and a body, begotten before all ages from the Father in his godhead, the same in the last days, for us and for our salvation, born of Mary the virgin, according to his humanity, one and the same consubstantial with the Father in godhead and consubstantial with us in humanity, for a union of two natures took place. Therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this understanding of the unconfused union, we confess the holy virgin to be the Mother of God because God the Word took flesh and became man and from his very conception united to himself the temple he took from her" (Formula of Union [A.D. 431]).
Vincent of Lerins
"Nestorius, whose disease is of an opposite kind, while pretending that he holds two distinct substances in Christ, brings in of a sudden two Persons, and with unheard of wickedness would have two sons of God, two Christs—one, God, the other, man; one, begotten of his Father, the other, born of his mother. For which reason he maintains that Saint Mary ought to be called, not the Mother of God, but [only] the mother of Christ" (The Notebooks 12[35] [A.D. 434]).
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