Mary as Jesus mother

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While I accept that Mary was the actual mother of Jesus. Some protestant friends of mine do not. THey say that mary was only the surrogate mother, not Jesus actual mother, and that there was no reason to call Mary the “Mother of God.” Could soomeone find some bible verses that show Jesus saying that Mary was his actual mother. Thanks
 
Our Blessed Mother gave birth to Jesus…THAT I remember from my Protestant days. I got to be a little angel in the nativity play…that halo was always scratchy!

Are you serious with this question?
 
I am being very serious. And if the forum that this statement was up (its crashed, phpBB sucks) about Mary I would post it. The just is that Mary was not the real mother, only a surrogate mother, and that because jesus was not from a human conception, he had no real mother, only a step mother. There was some verse posted that was rather obtuse and probably taken out of context wich had Jesus standing with his mother and disciples talking to a crowd where it seemed that Jesus thought of his mother as being just another person. (he is calvinist so you get the idea)
 
A surrogate mother is a woman who gives birth for another woman, usually because that woman is unable to bear children. So, unless your Protestant friends are really Mormons and believe that God has a “wife” then they are not making any sense.

Besides which, what do they think Jesus called her, “surrogate mommy”?

http://forum.catholic.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif To those silly Protestants,

Augustinian
 
Oh man! I think even Calvin believed that Our Blessed Mother was the mother of Jesus. I would direct you to Luke 1 26 - 35 as starters. Luke 2 5-7, 21-35 41-51. Those are just starters, but in each, Mary is called His Mother. The person to whom you are speaking might be having difficulty with the concept that Mary is the Mother of God. My take on this - Jesus is God. Mary is Jesus’s mother, she is therefore God’s mother. I know there are more theologically sound explanations for this, but that is how I wrap my finite brain around the question!

God Bless
 
I was Protestant 'till nineteen years ago, and NEVER heard anything like this! What denomination are these people?
 
Scripture calls mary the Mother of my Lord. Thats pretty much saying Mother of my God. Same thing.

Mary was not just mother to One Half of Jesus, but she gave birth to a fully human, fully divine person.

A woman who gives birth to a child is that child’s mother
  • Mary gave birth to Jesus
= Mary is the mother of Jesus

Mary is the mother of Jesus
  • Jesus is God
=Mary is the mother of God

Luke 1:42-43 “And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, ‘Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’”

Again, some more logic:

Mary is “the mother of my Lord”
  • Lord is God
=Mary is “the mother of my God”

I know i borrowed that from a site, but its been so long I can’t remember where I first came across that.
 
Well it was actually about the topic of Mary as the “Mother of God” and after about 20 posts I finally drilled it into their heads that the title “Mother of God” was appropriate. That was with a calvanist, a methodist and a baptist. Then a non-denominationalist came along and ruined the fun, saying that mary was not the mother of Jesus, that she only carried Jesus. The others had stopped posting at that time, so the calvanist quickly switched his opinion and attacked Mary being the mother in a true sense to Jesus. And to Jesus she was just another woman.
And just to get us back on topic. Jesus’ view of his mother.

Matthew 12:46-50 While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers stodd outside, seeking to spreak with Him. Then one said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You.” But He answered and said to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and brother! For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.” - (NKJV)

So, from a biblical point of view, Mary is no different in regard to her relationship with Jesus than you or I.
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was the response that the calvinist gave, and the nodenominationalist gave this one:
mary was no more the mother than joseph was the father. they were acting as parents n order to allow Jesus to grow up in a family, although it wasn’t his. she was only his acting mother. not his mother. a motherly figure. not a mother.
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The whole topic for your perusal is here: christianchapel.net The site has some problems sometimes with stability of its php and stuff, so try anyways.
 
Here is the perfect one for you that St. Elizabeth says:

Luke 1:42-43 (42)*And she cried out with a loud voice: “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” (43) *And whence is this that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
This verse proves that:
  1. Jesus was in fact in the womb of the Virgin Mary
  2. Jesus was indeed God
    Yes, the Holy Spirit was the whole reason that Jesus was concieved in her womb (concieved by the Holy Spirit and became man), but it was for a reason, because in order for Jesus to take on flesh, he had to be born of a human and take on human characteristics, this was done through the person of Mary. This is simple biology really. A child takes on the genetics and DNA of their parent. Usually it would be a man and woman (mother and father). The Father was God, and the Mother was the Virgin Mary. Jesus took on the biological traits of the Virgin Mary, and retained His Divinity and the Son of God (also the Son of Man). Jesus there for would have been bilogically similiar to the Virgin Mary. God used the Virgin Mary as an instrument (and a willing participant because she said yes to God’s will) because God obviously needed to work through a human so He could assume a human form through her.
    For them to deny the above verses and claim Elizabeth just said it because she didn’t understand fully would mean that they do not believe the Bible…those verses are in there for a reason, because they are truth! Mary and Elizabeth surely had much more conversation together than this, but this part was obviously needing to be pointed out by the author of the Gospel for a reason, if not, he would have put the whole conversation in there.
    Secondly, if they do not believe that this happend this way and that God just made Mary some sort of surrogate mother, they may be apt to deny that Jesus was both fully human and fully Divine because Jesus would have no body, and that would make them NOT CHRISTIAN AT ALL…
    I am no Church authority, but that is my take on things, hope that helps.
 
According to the notes in my Bible on Matt. 12:48:
Who is my mother? This was not spoken by way of slighting his mother, but to shew that we are never to suffer ourselves to be taken from the service of God, by any inordinate affection to our earthly parents: and that which our Lord chiefly regarded in his mother, was her doing the will of his Father in heaven. It may also further allude to the reprobation of the Jews, his carnal kindred, and the election of the Gentiles.
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When I used to be Protestant, I as well was caught up by my anti-Catholic presuppositions in reading this verse, and failed to look at the deeper meaning of the text. Frankly, I am embarrassed to see fellow Christians treat Mary as if she were some kind of human packing crate. Our Lord showed much more respect to her than that; she has been given more honor than any of us can give her in a million generations.

Hail Holy Queen!

The Augustinian
 
While I believe Scripture speaks for itself on this topic, I think this summary of Nestorianism (Copied from this Web (catholic.com/library/great_heresies.asp) shows how the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church reacted to ideas of this sort:

Nestorianism (5th Century)

This heresy about the person of Christ was initiated by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, who denied Mary the title of Theotokos (Greek: “God-bearer” or, less literally, “Mother of God”). Nestorius claimed that she only bore Christ’s human nature in her womb, and proposed the alternative title Christotokos (“Christ-bearer” or “Mother of Christ”).

Orthodox Catholic theologians recognized that Nestorius’s theory would fracture Christ into two separate persons (one human and one divine, joined in a sort of loose unity), only one of whom was in her womb. The Church reacted in 431 with the Council of Ephesus, defining that Mary can be properly referred to as the Mother of God, not in the sense that she is older than God or the source of God, but in the sense that the person she carried in her womb was, in fact, God incarnate (“in the flesh”).

My two cents:

In order for Christ to bring salvation to humanity, he must be fully human. So, my question here is: From where did he get his Humanity? If not from his Earthly mother, than whom?

If not her, than you start messing with the “Fully human, Fully Divine” Doctrine, and if you mess with that, you start messing with the meaning of the sacrifice of the cross, which I’m sure most Protestants would rather not do.

God Bless!
 
What is a mother?

Someone who cares for a child, loves the child, teaches the child, comforts the child, feeds the child…

Did Mary do all of those things? YES

Besides the fact that Mary gave birth to Our Lord!

But, as a mom of two adopted children, I am no less a mother than any other mom because I care for my children, love them, teach them, comfort them.

Since Jesus is God, and God could create any Mother He wanted to, wouldn’t He pick the most perfect woman He could?! And He did!
 
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OAB:
Could soomeone find some bible verses that show Jesus saying that Mary was his actual mother.
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In Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12:17, Jesus is described as Mary’s seed (Hebrew, zera; Greek, sperma). In Galatians 4:4, Jesus is described as being made of Mary.
 
Your friends who asked this question do not sound like true Protestants of any of the mainstream sects from the Reformation, who all adhere to and profess the Apostles Creed. Protestant has become an elastic and inaccurate term to mean non-Catholic. Strictly speaking, a Protestant is a member of one of the bodies that grew out of the Reformation, “protestors” against papal authority, Lutherans, Calvinists (Presbyterian, national reformed churches, etc.), Episcopalians, and the like, and those who broke from these bodies such as Methodist or Congregationalists. When sects proliferated, especially in the 19th and early 20th century, it became impossible to tell the players without a score card, since many of them do not adhere to any or all of the tenets of the Creed. I.e. Jehovah’s witnesses and Mormons deny the divinity of Christ, and therefore all doctrine that supports it. Some Pentecostals deny the Trinity, baptizing in Jesus alone. \

The posts above do a more than adequate job of defining the source of the doctrine for anyone who is sincere in their question and truly wishes to be instructed.
 
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flick427:
Secondly, if they do not believe that this happend this way and that God just made Mary some sort of surrogate mother, they may be apt to deny that Jesus was both fully human and fully Divine because Jesus would have no body, and that would make them NOT CHRISTIAN AT ALL…
I am no Church authority, but that is my take on things, hope that helps.
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A good way to help people understand the error of this postition is to simply ask “so, what part of you did your mother give birth to?” Most people can easily understand that a mother gives birth to a complete being, not just one part of that being.
 
Columba has a good post.

To deny that Mary is the Mother of God means that we deny the Incarnation because it then separates Christ’s human and divine natures.
Mary did not generate Christ’s divinity, but because Jesus is ONE person with TWO natures, hypostatically joined, we cannot separate the two otherwise we end up making non-sense of the Cross.

All truths about Mary, by necessity, lead us to truths about Christ.
 
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OAB:
While I accept that Mary was the actual mother of Jesus. Some protestant friends of mine do not. THey say that mary was only the surrogate mother, not Jesus actual mother, and that there was no reason to call Mary the “Mother of God.” Could soomeone find some bible verses that show Jesus saying that Mary was his actual mother. Thanks
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Luke 1:31 says You shall Conceive in your womb and shall bring forth a son. It does not say as it could have, You will be found with child, or that God would place this child in your womb. It specifically says that, She will conceive in her womb. Christ did in fact receive all of his physical humanity from Mary. She then gave birth to the person Jesus Christ who is both human and Divine.
 
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