MARY, MOTHER OF GOD - Issues and Concern, Diocese of Marbel

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Mary,Mother of God (Theotokos)

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To invoke Mary as the Mother of God is to pay her the highest honor and to call upon her with a name that Christians have been using in their prayers for some seventeen centuries. According to Vatican Council II: “From the earliest times the Blessed Virgin is honored under the title of ‘Mother of God’ (Theotokos), under whose protection the faithful take refuge together in prayer in all their perils and needs” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 66). The footnote to the text of this teaching by the Council calls our attention to the following most ancient prayer to Mary, in which she is addressed by the title Theotokos: “We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God (Theotokos), despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us from all danger, O ever glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.” Some scholars date the origin of the Greek version of this prayer (usually called, in Latin, the Sub Tuum Praesidium) as early as the third century; if this is correct, the title Theotokos would go back in our Catholic tradition at least as far as the century before Alexander, the Patriarch of Alexandria, who is the first to have used it in his writings in 325. It would also mean that the title was on the lips of the faithful for about two centuries before Mary’s role as Theotokos was defined as a dogma at the Council of Ephesus (431). As a witness to apostolic faith about Mary, the testimony to the title’s usage on that part of the teaching and believing Church is indeed very early.

The English translation of the Greek word Theotokos as Mother of God is accurate enough, but it does not really capture the richness of the original. “God-Bearer,” “Birth-Giver of God,” “Bringer-forth-of God,” etc., have all been used in the attempt to make its meaning more clearly available in the vernacular. It is a most worthwhile theological endeavor to trace the term’s origins. St. Athanasius (c. 295-373), who succeeded Alexander as Patriarch of Alexandria, used it frequently in his writings along with the members of the School of Alexandria. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (died c. 386) and Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260-c. 340) used the title for Mary in early Christian Palestine, as did the three Cappadocians – Sts. Basil the Great (c. 330-379), Gregory Nazianzus (c. 329-c. 390), and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c. 394) – during the latter half of the fourth century in Asia Minor in what is now Turkey.

The attempts to translate Theotokos into Latin have also had their limitations in the Western Church. Mater Dei (Mother of God), Dei Genetrix (She who has borne God), and Deipera (Birth-Giver of God) have been the most customary. Etymologically, Deipera comes closest to the meaning of Theotokos and is found in the Latin text of the title of chapter VIII of Lumen Gentium, which also refers to it in the passage from section 66 quoted above.

The Nestorian Controversy • Trying to determine the meaning of Theotokos as clearly as possible helps us grasp more profoundly the Nestorian controversy that led to its dogmatic definition at the Council of Ephesus. This crisis was primarily and essentially Christological, since it centered upon the real meaning of the dogma of the Incarnation, that is, faith in Jesus Christ as the Word made flesh, conceived and born of Mary as true God and true man. Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople (died c. 451), had been asked to make a pronouncement on the aptness of Theotokos as a title for Mary. Although it had been in use at least a century and probably longer, he ruled in favor of Christotokos, “Christ-Bearer.” His reasons for rejecting Theotokos were the fear that this title would make Mary appear to be a goddess who begets divinity; or that it would risk reducing the Son of God to a mere creature, as the Arian heresy (condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325 and again by the Council of Constantinople in 381) had done during the previous century; or that it could make the human nature of Christ seem incomplete, as had the heresy of Apollinarius, who denied the incarnate Lord had a human soul (also condemned at Constantinople).

These concerns of Nestorius were based upon his problem with the so-called “communication of idioms” or what might be termed in more contemporary parlance the “mutual reciprocity of predications.” This axiom in Christology asserts that whatever characteristics and experiences Christ had as human can be said of him as God, and vice versa, because his one divine personality unites both his human and divine natures. Thus God was really and truly conceived and born of the Virgin Mary, and God suffered and died for us on the cross, even though such predications can be made of the God-man only by reason of his human nature. Also, concretely, Jesus of Nazareth may be said to be almighty, but only in virtue of his divinity as hypostatically united to his humanity: that is, the subject of the predicate “almighty,” which is “Jesus of Nazareth,” is the Son of God (divine) and the Son of Mary or Word made flesh (human).

In fairness to Nestorius, it should be noted that this dogmatic clarity about the hypostatic unity of the divine and human natures in the one Person of God’s own Son, through conception and birth of the Virgin Mary, was not defined as a dogma until the Council of Chalcedon (451) some twenty years after Ephesus – although the latter paved the way by its own dogmatic definition that Christ was true God as well as true man from the first instant of his conception in “the holy Virgin Theotokos.”

New Testament Roots of the Dogma • Following the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, Constantinople II (553) and Constantinople III (680-681) supplied further clarifications about the mystery of the Incarnation and so also about Mary’s title as Theotokos, or Mother of God. We shall consider these later in this entry. Here, however, we need briefly to examine the continuity between the Christological affirmations of the New Testament and the dogma of the Theotokos, which is not a biblical title for Mary. It is necessary to see how the New Testament Revelation regarding the human origins (tokos) of Jesus from the Virgin Mary initiated a line of development in the Tradition that in time led the Church to call his Mother the Mother of God (Theos) in order to safeguard the mystery of the Word incarnate.

In the New Testament, a number of portraits of Christ, or Christologies, are revealed. The two with which we are here most concerned are a “conception Christology” and a “preexistence Christology.”

Conception Christology is found most clearly in the infancy narratives of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, especially in the latter’s scene of the Annunciation, where we ponder these words: “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end . . . therefore the child to be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:31-35).

Preexistence Christology is revealed in the Prologue to John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. . . . The Word became flesh . . .” (Jn 1:1, 14).

Actually, Christ’s preexistence as divine before becoming flesh, assuming a human nature from Mary in time, is also found in St. Paul (cf. 1 Cor 8:6) as well as in the Prologue of John’s Gospel. But the fourth evangelist makes it abundantly clear and explicit that the same Word (Logos), who became incarnate, or flesh, is also God (Theos). Usually in the New Testament only the Father in the Triune God is called Theos. To predicate “God” of the “Word” who “was made flesh” is thus a real basis in the New Testament for calling Mary Theotokos, meaning Birth-Giver of God, or Mother of God.

After the conclusion of the New Testament era, the New Testament conception and preexistence Christologies came to be combined in Sacred Tradition. This had not been explicitly done in Scripture, but the inspired authors of the New Testament did plant the roots and lay the groundwork. Here, then, we behold an excellent example of how Sacred Tradition may develop dogmas that are rooted, but not explicitly affirmed, in Sacred Scripture.

While it is well beyond the scope of this entry to go into the manifold details of this process in the history of the ancient Christian writers and Fathers and doctors of the early Church, it can be said that the development and its definitive conclusion at Ephesus both took place under the infallible guidance of the Magisterium. When those participating in the Council of Ephesus were confronted by the Nestorian crisis, they were obliged – like the conciliar Fathers at Nicaea I about a century earlier, who were challenged to defend the apostolic faith during the Arian crisis – to search the Scriptures for answers to questions that could not be found there. To safeguard the biblical faith, that is, they had to give a response that was faithful to, but also went beyond, the Bible.

To put the matter in other terms, the Fathers at Ephesus had to do more than speak about what Christ did to accomplish our redemption, which had been the main intention of the inspired writers of the New Testament; they had to answer the question of who Christ was in accord with the very meaning of the mystery of the Incarnation. This was necessary in order to refute the objections of Nestorius against the use of the title Theotokos, objections that would inevitably have led to the rejection of the New Testament Revelation that Jesus Christ is true God and true man from the first instant of his conception in the Virgin Mary’s womb. Ephesus achieved a response to the Nestorian question about Christ and his unique relationship to Mary, as Nicaea I had done in responding to the Arian question by adopting the term Homoousion (“consubstantial,” or “One in Being with the Father”) to express the coequality and coeternity of the Son with the first Person of the Blessed Trinity.

Reflecting upon such matters, one is forced to conclude that the human mind is never completely satisfied with a functional definition of any reality, that is, a definition based merely upon what it does. The mind instinctively reaches out to grasp what it is, its very being, essence, or nature that makes possible its activity. This applies not only to what we can know by reason alone but also to the supernatural truths of faith. Consequently, to the extent possible in this life (where understanding of divine mysteries can only come about by way of analogy or comparison with the objects of natural knowledge), it is logical for reason, enlightened by faith and operating through the discipline of theology, to seek understanding of the truth about Christ as true God and true man, in order to grasp the meaning and redemptive fruits of his Messianic mission.

This ontological or definitive mode of speaking, as distinct from the functional mode of the Bible, was characteristic of the early ecumenical councils of the Church, from Nicaea I in the fourth century through Constantinople III (680-681). Questions having arisen about the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and redemption that could not be answered by the biblical mode (“Who is the saving triune God and incarnate Word for us?”), it was necessary, in order to protect the truths of faith from heretical misinterpretation, to employ the conciliar or ontological mode (“Who is this God in himself, what are the internal relationships of the Divine Persons, and what is the definitive meaning of the dogma that one of these Persons – the Son, or Word – became one of us in the womb of the Virgin Theotokos, without in any way ceasing to be the Eternal Word or coequal Son of the Father?”). When the Council of Constantinople III defined that there are not only two natures in Christ but two wills (a human will as well as divine will) and so two operations, inseparable, undivided, and without confusion, the basic elements of faith in the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation were settled by the solemn universal Magisterium of the Church. Now the stage was set for further reflections upon the mystery in light of this definitive Christology.

The Theology of “Theotokos” • As is the case with all the articles of the Creed, St. Thomas Aquinas provides a theological reflection upon Mary’s role and title as Theotokos at once faithful to the revealing word of God in Scripture and Tradition, as authentically interpreted by the Church’s Magisterium, and helpful in making the mystery more intelligible to reason enlightened by faith. Frequently called the “Common Doctor” because his theology has contributed to the elucidation of all the Church’s doctrines, St. Thomas provides an incisive explanation of the mystery of Mary’s motherhood of God in the Christological section of his monumental synthesis of sacred doctrine, the Summa Theologiae (Pt. III, q. 35, art. 4), where he asks “whether the Blessed Virgin should be called the Mother of God?” Beginning his inquiry, as always, by clearly exposing the difficulties involved in getting at the truth, Thomas raises three objections against what will be shown to be orthodox faith and right reason in the matter: First, the Scriptures do not explicitly call Mary the “mother of God,” and we should not say anything about divine mysteries not contained in biblical Revelation; second, Christ is called God because of his divinity, which in no way takes its origin from Mary but only from the Father from all eternity; third, since “God” is predicated of the three Divine Persons, the title “Mother of God” would make Mary the Mother of the Father and the Holy Spirit as well as the Son.

In the part of the article designated sed contra (“on the contrary”), where he usually cites the authority for his teaching, Aquinas quotes St. Cyril of Alexandria, the defender of orthodoxy against Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus. His theological reasoning in the body of the article then proceeds on the basis of Chalcedonian Christology, as clearly defined in the early councils of the great Fathers of the Church. He writes: “Now to be conceived and to be born are attributed to the person or hypostasis in respect of that human nature in which it is conceived and born. Since therefore the human nature was assumed by the divine Person at the very outset of conception . . . it follows that it can truly be said that God was conceived and born of the Virgin. Now a woman is considered a man’s mother when she has conceived and given birth to him. Therefore, the Blessed Virgin is truly called the mother of God.”

The full meaning of “truly” (vere) here would seem to be that Mary is the Theotokos (mater Dei) in the proper sense, and not simply in an extended or metaphorical sense, because motherhood is always a relationship to the person who is conceived and born. Mary’s maternal relationship to Christ is therefore precisely a relationship of motherhood to the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son of God, who became incarnate in her by virginal conception at the Annunciation and was born by the virgin birth at the first Christmas. Thomas concludes the body of the article by saying that rejection of this doctrine leads to one or the other of two Christological errors: either the denial of the hypostatic unity of the divine and human natures in the one Person of the Word made flesh or else the heretical belief that Christ’s human nature was conceived and born of Mary before he became the Son of God.

Thomas’s reply to the first objection is that, although the New Testament does not explicitly call Mary “mother of God,” still it does reveal both that Christ is God and that Mary is his Mother; this answers one of Nestorius’s objections. Another is answered by Aquinas’s reply to the second objection, namely, his explanation that Mary is the Mother of God, “not because (she is) the mother of the divinity, but because she is the mother of a Person who has divinity and humanity.” His reply to the third objection, finally, is that, although the name “God” is commonly attributed to each of the three Divine Persons, it is necessary to determine from the context what is meant by any particular use of the name; thus, when we call Mary the Mother of God (or Theotokos), “God” here can apply only to the Son, who alone became incarnate.

Reflecting briefly upon the theological explanation of the Theotokos, we see that the notion of person (persona in Latin and hypostasis in Greek) is at the very heart of this probing of the mystery. The analogy with motherhood of human persons is helpful here. Even though through the act of procreation it is our flesh and blood that we receive from our mothers and not precisely our personhood, still we do speak of our mothers in relation to our coming into being as persons and not only in relation to the origin of our bodies. For example, we naturally say, “There is Joseph’s mother” or “There is Mary’s mother” rather than, “There is the mother of Joseph’s body” or “Mary’s body.” So, analogously, even though the Son of God proceeded from Mary as her true flesh and blood, not in his divinity as coequally and coeternally from the Father, still Mary is concretely the Mother of God in his human nature, which is really the humanity of the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. As our mothers need not be the principles of our souls in order to be maternally related to us as the persons we are, so Mary need not be the principle of the Son’s divinity to be really related maternally to him as the Divine Person he is.

Also, it is a metaphysical axiom that activities and experiences are predicated of a person, not merely of the part of him or her through which he or she is acting or having the experience (e.g., it is not my mouth that speaks but I who speak, not my leg that was injured in an accident but I who was injured). This throws more light upon the application of the Christological axiom regarding “the mutual reciprocity of predicates,” according to which human attributes, relationships, etc., can be predicated of God the Son: for example, that Mary is truly Mother of God because a Divine Person was conceived and born of her in his humanity wedded to his divinity.

Spiritual and Ecumenical Significance • Cardinal Newman remarks in one of his sermons that the “glories” of Mary “are not only for the sake of her Son; they are for our sakes too.” Not only has Mary’s title of Theotokos helped preserve the revealed truth about her incarnate Son, the Son of God; we may suppose that she has at the same time been watching over us, who must know the truth about Christ for the sake of our salvation. It is noteworthy that the solemn definition of his Christological dogma at Ephesus inspired the spread of filial devotion throughout the Catholic Church up to our own day.

After Vatican Council II, nevertheless, there did seem to be a decline in Marian devotion. Asked why he thought this had taken place, the theologian Karl Rahner said: “The special temptation that affects Christians today, Catholics and Protestants alike, is the temptation to turn the central truths of faith into abstractions, and abstractions have no need of mothers” (emphasis added). Mary’s title as Theotokos is no mere abstraction but a concrete expression of a central truth of our faith in Christ the Son of God and Savior of the world. Today theologians seem to have moved beyond making it an abstract principle, from which all the other Marian doctrines might be deduced in a systematic Mariology; it may be interpreted as the main Marian idea, but concretely, in the context of salvation history, according to which Mary’s motherhood of God incarnate is contemplated amid all of her Son’s graces and the gifts of his Holy Spirit. Some of these (her Immaculate Conception and consecrated perpetual virginity) have made her a worthy Theotokos, while others have followed from her divine motherhood (her exemplary discipleship, her glorious Assumption, her spiritual maternity toward us all). With such a rich understanding of this most glorious title of Mary, we now are better prepared to pursue the ecumenical dialogue, especially with our Eastern Orthodox sisters and brothers. In its Decree on Ecumenism Vatican Council II teaches: “In this liturgical worship, the Eastern Churches pay high tribute, in beautiful hymns of praise, to Mary ever Virgin, whom the ecumenical synod of Ephesus solemnly proclaimed to be the holy mother of God (Deipera, Theotokos) in order that Christ might be truly and properly acknowledged as Son of God and Son of Man, according to the Scriptures” (Unitatis Redintegratio, 15). In recent years, one of the most ancient feasts (that of Mary, Mother of God) has been restored as a solemnity on January 1, the Octave of Christmas. Catholics do well to unite their hearts with those of all their fellow Christians in a special way on that day, as the presiding priest or bishop prays over the gifts: “On this feast of Mary, the Mother of God, we ask that our salvation will be brought to its fulfillment. We ask this through Christ our Lord.” The fervent “Amen” – so be it – signals our petition to the heavenly Father that, through devotion to the Mother of his Son, all who are redeemed by him may come closer together in him who is the center of all unity.

See: Assumption of Mary; Christological Controversies; Development of Doctrine; Immaculate Conception; Incarnation; Jesus Christ, God and Man; Magisterium; Marian Devotion; Mary, Mother of the Church; Mary, Perpetual Virginity of; Orthodox Churches; Sacred Tradition; Thomas Aquinas, Thought of.

Suggested Readings: CCC 484-495. Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, Ch. VIII. John Paul II, Mother of the Redeemer, Redemptoris Mater. F. Jelly, O.P., Madonna: Mary in the Catholic Tradition, pp. 90-99, 142-144; “The Concrete Meaning of Mary’s Motherhood,” The Way Supplement, Mary and Ecumenism (June, 1982); “Marian Dogmas Within Vatican II’s ‘Hierarchy of Truth,’ ” Marian Studies (1976). D. Wuerl, R. Lawler, O.F.M. Cap., T. Lawler, eds., The Teaching of Christ: A Catholic Catechism for Adults, pp. 85-97.

F.M. Jelly, O.P.

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