Is Mary the mother of God?

Mary is the mother of Him who is God; not mother of God, as the Roman Catholics say.

How illogical and irreverent is the title given to her—“Mother of God,” She was privileged above any in being the mother of the Man Christ Jesus, but she could not be the mother of God.

Then again how illogical to call the Virgin Mary “the Mother of God.” A mother—a human mother as Mary was—is antecedent to her son. But God is from all eternity to all eternity, without beginning or end. Who can be His mother?

There are in the Roman Catholic hierarchy men of acute intellect and great scholarship, and yet this blasphemous and illogical title is given to a sinful woman, who needed a Saviour.

Again, as to making the Virgin Mary the object of worship, and the one to whom prayer is to be made. Only God should be worshipped. To worship the creature is blasphemous. To say that the Virgin Mary’s heart being tender and compassionate, she should be approached to intercede with her Son, and soften His heart, is indeed strange, and an insult to her, as it is a blasphemous libel upon her Son.

Can any creature, however blessed, be raised to this place of supreme worship? Was she the eternal mother of God? or the creature mother of the humanity of our adorable Lord? As to His humanity, she was the mother of the Lord. But does the word of God ever present her either as an object of highest worship, or as an intercessor of the saints? These priests who shut out the light say, “With delight let us celebrate the conception of Blessed Mary; so may she intercede for us to Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Page 178.)

Anastasius, a presbyter who had accompanied Nestorius from Antioch, and was his intimate friend, attacked, in a public discourse, the use of the expression, Mother of God, as applied to the Virgin Mary. The term thus violently opposed had on its side the authority of ancient usage, and many names of great weight with the people. Nestorius approved the discourse, supported his friend, and in several addresses explained and defended his attack. Many were pleased with these discourses, and many were stirred up against Nestorius and his friend: the excitement at Constantinople was immense, but the cry of heresy, heresy, arose, and the flames of a great and painful controversy were kindled.

The Difference Between Nestorius and His Opponents

Never was there a doctrinal strife in which the contending parties approximated so closely. Both subscribed, both appealed to, the Nicene creed: both believed in the absolute Godhead and the perfect manhood of the Lord Jesus; but it was inferred by the enemies of Nestorius, especially by Cyril, that he was unsound as to the incarnation from his objecting to the term, "mother of God." The meaning or import of the disputed term, as used by the doctors in the preceding century, was not to imply that the Virgin communicated the divine nature to the Saviour, but to affirm the union of Godhead and manhood in one Person — that "the child born, the son given," was God incarnate. It was attributed to Nestorius, that he maintained the mere humanity of the Redeemer, and that the Spirit only dwelt in Him after He became a man, as of old in the prophets. But Nestorius, as long as he lived, professed himself utterly opposed to such sentiments. Nor does it appear that such sentiments were ever directly made by him, but only inferred by his adversaries from his rejection of the epithet, Mother of God, and from some incautious and ambiguous terms which he used in his public discourses on the subject.

134 In judging the expression, "the mother of God" (a monstrous and really offensive expression), although he fully admitted the two natures and one Person, he used expressions justly objected to, and which his enemies did not fail to take hold of; but he did not really swerve from the truth as far as Cyril, who over and over again asserts that Christ had only one nature. At Ephesus, at the instance of John, patriarch of Antioch, he consented to use it even as capable of a good sense, as he had indeed already stated in his reply to Proclus' sermon.

N*. Well, we will go on with Dr. Milner. He quotes Pope Stephen as referring to tradition. But this is just the tradition on which St. Cyprian opposed him; and all the African churches and Firmilian and those of Asia Minor opposed him, saying his tradition was false. It is just an additional proof of the uncertainty of tradition, and it is the very case which makes Augustine say that, if the doctors of the church go wrong, he is not bound by them. Dr. Milner's statement as to the agreement of the Greek, Nestorian, Eutychian, and other bodies in the East along with Romanists (save on the pope's supremacy — a pretty important point when infallibility is in question) is simply untrue. They are corrupt enough, God knows; but they reject a quantity of Romanist doctrine and discipline too: as, to name no others, purgatory is wholly rejected in the Greek church, and the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son. And as to Eutychians, they held that Christ had not really two distinct natures, but that the Godhead was as the soul of Christ; the Nestorians, on the other hand, divided the Person, though at first it was merely a very just refusal to call Mary the mother of God. Nestorius wished to say the mother of Him who is God. However, intrigues had the upper hand.

"That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the SON OF GOD." We have the birth of a Babe foretold here, conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of Mary the Virgin. He is here called Son of God as born in time. Though seen in the weakness of infancy, and so partaking in humanity perfectly, yet is He sinlessly holy; and He does not forfeit His Sonship by accepting human conditions. Had His mother been divine, He had not been human. She was woman, singularly favoured because chosen out of all the virgins of Israel to be the mother of the Lord; yet the more we make of Mary, the less do we make of the divine miracle of this holy birth. The body in which He appeared was prepared for Him (Heb. 10); and in it was He to effectuate all the will of God. It was guarded from every taint of sin in the Virgin's womb; not by any immaculate conception of the Virgin herself (as affirmed by Rome), which could be supposed to free her from taint of sin, but by the power and wisdom of God the Holy Ghost. The fable of the Virgin's immaculate birth, had it been true, would have required the same miracle in her parentage and birth which Scripture declares with regard to the Babe in David's royal city.

It was from such passages as this that the theological term Theotokos, "Mother of God," as used of the Virgin (cf. Luke 1:35, 37) was drawn, which the Council of Chalcedon, happily, did not endorse. See, notwithstanding, the "Catholic" Catechism, p. 74. Our Lord, according to Mark 3:35, provided against undue emphasis being put on the mystery of the Virgin Birth (see note above on chapter 1).

The Expectant Mothers. — To Elisabeth's house Mary forthwith repaired. Doubtless Elisabeth had learnt from her husband Zacharias that her son John was to be the forerunner of Messiah, and the messenger of Jehovah, predicted by Malachi (3:1). But of whom, and when, was Messiah to be born, were questions as yet for her and her husband unsolved. Unexpectedly, and suddenly, it would appear, the narrative gives us to understand these were cleared up. Mary crossed the threshold of her house, saluted her cousin, and the expectant mother of John learnt who was to be the mother of her Lord. In what terms Mary saluted her we know not, but her response to Mary is recorded. It was the utterance of one filled with the Holy Ghost. She lifted up her voice with a loud cry (Luke 1:42-45). She knew both Mary's expectations and Mary's faith. When and how did she learn all this? Mary had not had time to speak of it. No whisper of it carried by human instrumentality had reached the hill country of Judea. Mary evidently, as Matthew teaches us, had not even told Joseph, to whom she was betrothed (Matt. 1:18-19). How did Elisabeth know? She told, as she alone could declare it: "As soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy" (Luke 1:44). The mother of her Lord was there.