In his book Evangelical Answers: A Critique of Current Roman Catholic Apologists, Eric Svendsen gives four objections to Mary’s greatest title: Mother of God (pp. 127-136). I respond to all four of them in my new book, Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines.
In this article, I want to zero in on two of the four of his objections that I think really get to the heart of what I tried to accomplish in my book. Though I first wanted to give a thorough defense of the Marian doctrines, as the title suggests, I also wanted to show how each of the Marian dogmas (and I add a couple of Marian doctrines as well) are crucial for our spiritual lives—and even our salvation. The Marian dogmas are not optional to the gospel; rather, as the Second Vatican Council put it:
For Mary, who since her entry into salvation history unites in herself and re-echoes the greatest teachings of the faith as she is proclaimed and venerated, calls the faithful to her Son and His sacrifice and to the love of the Father (Lumen Gentium 65).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church adds:
There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith (CCC 89).
There is a reciprocating relationship between the dogmas and our spiritual lives. The Marian dogmas are not somehow exceptions, as we will see now.
Breaking Jesus into parts
Svendsen claims the title “Mother of God”is illogical. But I want you to notice how. He explains: “(1) Some of Jesus is God, (2) Mary is the mother of some of Jesus; for Mary could very well be (and indeed is) mother of only the non-God part of Jesus” (p.130).
He then goes on to say: “The person of Jesus isn’t merely God, any more than the person of Jesus is merely man. . . . Mary gave birth to a person who is both God and man. She did not give birth to the pre-incarnate form of the Logos (p. 131).
The Catholic answer
There are two problems in Svendsen’s assertions.
Problem 1: He claims Mary gave birth to part of Jesus: the human, or “non-God” part. Yet there is nothing, not even a hint, in Scripture that suggests Mary is mother only to “part of Jesus.” In fact, one has to ask how someone gives birth to “part” of a person in the first place. Mary is called “mother of the Lord” (Luke 1:43), and “the mother of Jesus” (John 2:1), but never is she called “mother of part of Jesus” or anything even remotely akin to this.
And though Svendsen will claim he is not dividing the person of Christ—which the Council of Ephesus expressly forbade—the conclusion from his reasoning is inescapable. I’m reminded of St. Irenaeus’s dealings with the second-century Gnostics, who “with their tongue confess one Jesus Christ,” but in reality “divide up Christ” (Against Heresies, bk. III, ch. 16, 6-8).
Svendsen does not go any deeper in the discussion, but I wonder if he would go on to say that “part of Jesus died” or “part of Jesus is worshipped” and so on. Be that as it may, he does say enough for us to know he effectively divides Christ into two persons. If the subject to whomMary gave birth to was not God, then “he” would have to be a man.
Problem 2: Immediately after having effectively divided Christ into two persons, Svendsen claims that Jesus is both ahuman and a divineperson. And by this, he does not mean that the one, divine person of Christ possesses two distinct natures—he explicitly rejects this; rather, he claims the person of Christ is both a divine and human person simultaneously. He claims Mary “did not give birth to the pre-incarnate form of the Logos.” So there is now a different “form” of the eternal Word?
The problem with this position can be broken down into two points.
1. Although a person can possess two distinct natures (though this occurs only in Christ), a person cannot be one person and two persons simultaneously. That is akin to positing square circles; a logical impossibility.
2. In claiming that Mary “did not give birth to the pre-incarnate form of the Logos,” Svendsen introduces change into the eternal, divine person of the Logos. Not only is there no “pre-” or “post-incarnate form of the Logos” revealed in Scripture, there can be no “pre-” and “post-incarnate form of the Logos,” because there can be no change in the Eternal Word of God.This is heresy. “Change” is something God simply cannot do. Malachi 3:6 tells us, “For I the Lord do not change.”
Some will ask the question here, “If ‘the Word was made flesh’ in John 1:14, does this not imply change in the Word?” The answer is no. St. Thomas Aquinas explains:
Since the Divine Person is infinite, no addition can be made to it: Hence Cyril says [Council of Ephesus, part I, ch. 26]: “We do not conceive the mode of conjunction to be according to addition”; just as in the union of man with God, nothing is added to God by the grace of adoption, but what is Divine is united to man; hence, not God but man is perfected (Summa Theologiae, pt. 3, q. 3, art. 1, reply to obj. 1).
When we speak of the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures of Christ in the one divine Person, we have to qualify what we mean by the union being “in the Person” of Christ. St. Thomas, in explaining that the hypostatic union is a “created union,” explains that inasmuch as it is a created union, it cannot be “in God” in the sense that there could be change in God.
[E]very relation which we consider between God and the creature is really in the creature, by whose change the relation is brought into being; whereas it is not really in God, but only in our way of thinking, since it does not arise from any change in God. And hence we must say that the union of which we are speaking is not really in God, except only in our way of thinking; but in the human nature, which is a creature. . . . Therefore we must say it [the hypostatic union] is something created (ibid., q. 2, art. 7).
When the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon speak of the hypostatic union being “in the Person of Christ,” it is so inasmuch as the human nature assumed by Christ now has as its subject the divine Person of Christ. But inasmuch as that union is a created union, it is not “in God.” That is why St. Thomas says it is “not really in God, except in our way of thinking.” The human nature has as its subject the divine Person. Therefore, it is “in God” in that qualified sense. But inasmuch as this involves change, it is not “in God,” because God cannot change.
“But wait a minute,” someone might say. “Didn’t you just say Svendsen divided Christ into two persons? How can he now claim a divine/human melding?” Please understand, I am not attempting to claim Svendsen makes sense. I am simply taking him at his word. He says that the second person of the Blessed Trinity used to be God alone, but at the Incarnation he became a God/man mixture.
In contrast, the orthodox Christian position preserves the basic metaphysical principle that is rooted in reason and in Scripture we mentioned above: “For I the Lord do not change” (Mal. 3:6).
At the Incarnation, the second person of the Blessed Trinity added a human nature, but he did not change. The human nature of Christ received infinite dignity in and through the hypostatic union—hence, we can worship the man, Jesus Christ; but God did not change in the process. Neither did Christ’s human nature become a divine nature. But because of the hypostatic union, when one refers to the human nature of Christ, the subject is the divine person.
This is why we can affirm that God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, was born, suffered, died, and was resurrected. Even though the divine nature cannot die, the divine person did, because of the hypostatic union. We say “he” died because whatever is attributed to each nature must ultimately be attributed to the subject—the person. Thus, we also worship the whole Christ, not part of him. And thus, Mary gave birth to the whole Christ, not part of him.
This is a great mystery, and we should not shy away from admitting it. 1 Timothy 3:16 says, “Great is the mystery of godliness. He [God] was manifest in the flesh, seen of angels preached on unto the Gentiles and received up into glory.” The truth of the hypostatic union is beyond our ability to comprehend fully, but there is nothing about it that is contrary to reason.
Ephesus denies Christ’s full humanity
Svendsen next asserts that when St. Cyril and the Council of Ephesus claimed Mary to be “the Mother of God,” this does not properly distinguish between the natures of Christ. By calling Mary “Mother of God,” and not “Mother of man,” there is an implicit denial of the humanity of Christ; or a divinization of his humanity . . . it affirms that Mary gave birth to one nature, namely deity—stripped of all humanity (Evangelical Answers, 131).
In making his argument, Svendsen does something truly novel. He not only claims the Council of Ephesus and its definition of Mary as Mother of God to be theologically incorrect, he asserts the Council of Chalcedon, just twenty years after the Council of Ephesus, in its “Definition of the Faith,” agrees with him and with “Evangelicals, Chalcedon, and Nestorius” against the Council of Ephesus by actually rejecting Mary as Mother of God.
This is quite a claim. So just what did the Council of Chalcedon say that would separate its theology from the Council of Ephesus? According to Eric Svendsen, here it is: “The text of the document states, ‘as regards [Jesus’] manhood, begotten . . . of Mary the virgin, the Theotokos,’ hence being very careful not to ascribe birth to Christ’s deity.”
That’s it!
My immediate response after reading this truncated sentence from the Council was, “Really? Are you really going to conclude all of that from this?” Evidently, the answer is yes.
Now, in defense of Svendsen, if the Council really was “careful not to ascribe birth to Christ’s deity,” we would have the Council of Chalcedon rejecting Mary as Mother of God, or Theotokos, a title infallibly defined at the Council of Ephesus just twenty years before. But rest assured, folks, this is simply not true.
The Catholic answer
Svendsen here produces a most selective quotation from the Council of Chalcedon, with a carefully placed ellipsis, in order to insert an assertion into the Council that is not there. But his attempt fails decidedly. Just using his truncated quotation alone one can see the Council clearly used the title Theotokos for Mary, which is a synonym for Mother of God. By using the term, the council plainly “ascribes birth to Christ’s deity” in the very words Svendsen quoted! But a simple reading of the entire text from the Council, without ellipsis, leaves no doubt as to its meaning. It says Jesus was “begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer, as regards his humanity.”
These words simply distinguish the Word’s eternal generation in the Blessed Trinity, as the eternally begotten and fully divine Son of the Father, from his (the Eternal Word’s) temporal generation as the fully human son of Mary. His divinity comes from the Father (not in time, but eternally) and his humanity from Mary. But the council was careful to call Mary “God-bearer” and not “man-bearer” precisely because it was defending the truth that Mary gave birth to one divine person. Thus, contrary to what Svendsen claimed, Chalcedon’s Definition of Faith does ascribe birth—being “begotten”—to Christ’s deity, both in eternity and in time.
Moreover, the claim that Chalcedon disagreed with Ephesus is shown to be false when we consider that the Council of Chalcedon declared in this same “Definition of the Faith:”
And because of those who are . . . shamelessly and foolishly asserting that he who was born of the holy virgin Mary was a mere man, it has accepted the synodical letters of the blessed Cyril, pastor of the church in Alexandria, to Nestorius and to the Orientals, as being well-suited to refuting Nestorius’ mad folly.
The Council also added “the letter of the primate of greatest and older Rome, the most blessed and most saintly Archbishop Leo, written to the sainted Archbishop Flavian to put down Eutyches’ evil-mindedness ” that states, “Thus was true God born in the undiminished and perfect nature of a true man.” Thus, the Council of Chalcedon agrees, contrary to Svendsen’s claim, “God [was] born .”
What about Svendsen’s claim that the title Mother of God denies humanity in Christ? The fact that Mary—who is human—is Christ’s true mother implies a human nature already. To deny this is to fall into Manicheanism, which denies Mary’s true motherhood as well as a true incarnation. Both councils made clear that Christ’s humanity was, in fact, received from Mary.
At the same time, the councils do not call Mary Mother of Man, but Mother of God (Theotokos), as mentioned above, in order to preserve the unity of the one divine person. Svendsen is clearly missing what the Council of Ephesus declared so plainly in its “Second Letter of Cyril to Nestorius, 43,” and Chalcedon affirmed: “For Scripture does not say that the Word united the person of a man to himself, but that he became flesh” (emphasis added).
In summary
What Eric Svendsen misses is, unfortunately, what millions of Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians miss as well. And these just happen to be the central purposes of the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon in defending a true Christology, while at the same time defending Mary’s title Mother of God, or Theotokos: The fathers of both ecumenical councils preserved and defended the very biblical and foundational truth that there is but one divine person in Christ, while affirming that he has two natures—one divine and one human.
Ephesus emphasized the one person of Christ and that Christ’s human nature does not equal a human person, because it dealt with the Nestorians who taught there were two persons in Christ. Chalcedon emphasized the truth that there are two natures in Christ because it specifically dealt with heretics who denied Christ had a truly human nature (Monophysites, referring to those who taught Christ has “one nature”). Both councils affirm that these two natures can never be intermingled as too often Protestants intermingle them today, or divided as they are too often divided. Indeed, in Svendsen’s case, we saw both the division and intermingling of natures from the very same pen!
The answer comes clearly and succinctly from the Church Jesus Christ established on this earth to be his voice that speaks with both authority and lucidity to the world via the Council of Chalcedon—and in agreement with the Council of Ephesus—in its Definition of Faith:
[T]he property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; He is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ (86).
In the final analysis, the manifold Protestant errors today, like the Nestorians before them, serve as yet another reminder that we cannot separate Mariology from Christology without distorting essential truths related to both.