Mary- 'The Mother of God'

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SonofAdam

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Is it true that Catholics consider Mary to be the ‘Mother of God’? If so, what does it mean?

Also,

Do all branches of catholicism agree to this term?

Thank you for your responses.
 
all Christians believe in this term, because all Christians believe Jesus Christ is true God and true Man, his divine nature and his human nature complete and undivided in one Person. If they deny that Mary is the Mother of God, the Theotokos, then they also must deny Christ’s full humanity and his full divinity, and therefore are no longer Christian.
 
SonofAdam said:
Is it true that Catholics consider Mary to be the ‘Mother of God’? If so, what does it mean?
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Not only Catholics but most other Christians believe Mary is the Mother of God, obviously not of God before Jesus was born but of Jesus the incarnate Son of God. She is the mother of Jesus in his humanity not His divinity. She is not the mother of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit but the mother of the man who was born in Bethlehem.

We believe Jesus is the Son of God because that is what He claimed to be. Otherwise the noblest moral teaching the world has known would have come from the lips of a liar or a lunatic!
 
SonofAdam said:
Is it true that Catholics consider Mary to be the ‘Mother of God’? If so, what does it mean?

Also,

Do all branches of catholicism agree to this term?

Thank you for your responses.
Click to expand...
Above posts are correct. Obviously, Mary, as a human being, can not be the mother of the infinite, ever-existing God. God exists in and from Himself only. Jesus Christ, as God made man, did however have an earthly mother. So it follows that if God was man, and had a mother, the mother of God would be…the Mother of God.

As for your last comment, you may have meant all branches of Christianity? The answer would be yes, most denominations put it this way, that Mary is the Mother of God, although some do play word games and claim that she was simply the mother of a man and not God.

There are not multiple “branches” of Catholicism with varying teachings. Catholic literally means “universal” and is one, united Body. Hope this helps.

In Christ,
Frank
 
SonofAdam said:
Is it true that Catholics consider Mary to be the ‘Mother of God’? If so, what does it mean?
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It’s really very simple. Mary is the mother of God the Son. The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ is God the Son and Mary is His mother. This is taught by The Catholic Church everywhere and always.
 
SonofAdam said:
Is it true that Catholics consider Mary to be the ‘Mother of God’? If so, what does it mean?

Also,

Do all branches of ** Christianity **agree to this term?

Thank you for your responses.
Click to expand...
Had to replace Catholicism, with Christianity as there is one Catholic Church, not several branches off it. However it means that since Jesus was True God and True Man, with Mary as his earthly mother, she is the Holy Mother of God.

And not all branches agree, the Orthodox do, that she is the Theotókos, but some Protestant denomination don’t agree, and think that title is an oxymoron, and can’t put two and two together, or try and make 5 because they believe that we mean she if the Mother of the Trinity, the Godhead, not just the Mother of the second person of the blessed Trinity.
 
To put it simply:

Mary is the mother of Jesus (we all acknowledge that).
Jesus is God (all Christians believe this).
Therefore, Mary is the mother of God (insofar as Jesus, her son, is God).

We believe that Mary is the creature whom God, in His ineffable mercy and goodness, honored above all others by making her His mother at the Incarnation. She is also the Mother of God because her virginal motherhood directly depends on and belongs to God in an absolutely unique way. Her Son is God and her motherhood is a gift from and belongs to God alone, though God has subsequently given her motherhood to the whole church as one of the means to help us to approach Him in His ineffable essence, which far surpasses all that we can imagine. So she is, in accordance with the inscrutable and irreproachable will of God, our mother too.
 
tonyrey said:
Not only Catholics but most other Christians believe Mary is the Mother of God, obviously not of God before Jesus was born but of Jesus the incarnate Son of God. She is the mother of Jesus in his humanity not His divinity. She is not the mother of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit but the mother of the man who was born in Bethlehem.

We believe Jesus is the Son of God because that is what He claimed to be. Otherwise the noblest moral teaching the world has known would have come from the lips of a liar or a lunatic!
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When you said*,“She is not the mother of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit but the mother of the man who was born in Bethlehem.” * couldn’t this be reworded to say 'She is not the mother of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit but the mother of God the son who was born in Bethlehem?
 
Betterave said:
To put it simply:

Mary is the mother of Jesus (we all acknowledge that).
Jesus is God (all Christians believe this).
Therefore, Mary is the mother of God (insofar as Jesus, her son, is God).

We believe that Mary is the creature whom God, in His ineffable mercy and goodness, honored above all others by making her His mother at the Incarnation.She is also the Mother of God because her virginal motherhood directly depends on and belongs to God in an absolutely unique way. Her Son is God and her motherhood is a gift from and belongs to God alone, though God has subsequently given her motherhood to the whole church as one of the means to help us to approach Him in His ineffable essence, which far surpasses all that we can imagine. So she is, in accordance with the inscrutable and irreproachable will of God, our mother too.
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Ok.

You say: Mary gave ‘birth to God(i.e.Jesus)’,

I will now ask who was it that ‘died’ on the cross?
 
SonofAdam said:
When you said*,“She is not the mother of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit but the mother of the man who was born in Bethlehem*.” couldn’t this be reworded to say 'She is not the mother of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit but the mother of God the son who was born in Bethlehem?
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It could but “God the son” might give the impression that Jesus is the son of Mary but not the Son of God! To be precise, Christians believe the Son of God existed before He was born of Mary in Bethlehem. This obviously conflicts with the Moslem belief that God is One, not three Persons…
 
tonyrey said:
It could but “God the son” might give the impression that Jesus is the son of Mary but not the Son of God!

But if someone asks ‘who was Mary’s son?’, the people would say Jesus right?

To be precise, Christians believe the Son of God existed before He was born of Mary in Bethlehem. This obviously conflicts with the Moslem belief that God is One, not three Persons…
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What are you saying when you said, *‘the Son of God existed before He was born’ *?
 
SonofAdam said:
What are you saying when you said, *‘the Son of God existed before He was born’ *?
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a more proper term is that Jesus existed before he was incarneted

it means as God, He existed for all eternity in Spirit
 
SonofAdam said:
Ok.

You say: Mary gave ‘birth to God(i.e.Jesus)’,

I will now ask who was it that ‘died’ on the cross?
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We say: Jesus died on the cross, and so yes, God incarnate died (in the flesh) on the cross. The Lord of Mercy took up a human body and soul, and laid it down again for our sake. How great is the mercy of the Almighty, how great His ways, so far above our ways, yet willing to dwell among us to prove His great mercy and love!
 
SonofAdam said:
So since you believe Jesus ‘is God’ then aren’t you saying that ‘God died’ ?
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God in His humanity died on the Cross. God in His divinity is always in heaven. Your questions are really about the nature of God rather than Mary.

Moslems find it difficult to accept that there are three Persons in one God. Yet if God existed as one Person He would be the apotheosis of egoism! He would love Himself for all eternity! Love implies the identification of oneself with another person. In a human family the father and mother are united by love and their love-child unites them still further and blends their characteristics.

Their love reflects the perfection of the Blessed Trinity because the Father identifies Himself totally with the Son and the Son with the Father so that They are indistinguishable. The Holy Spirit is the fulfilment of the perfect Love which unites the Father and the Son. That is why Jesus prayed to the Father that his disciples “may be one as we are one”.

We see from the history of mankind with its conflict and bloodshed that unity is the most difficult thing in life to achieve yet it is the only way to co-exist in peace, harmony and joy. We are united in heaven but divided and isolated in hell…
 
Betterave said:
We say: Jesus died on the cross, and so yes, God incarnate died (in the flesh) on the cross. The Lord of Mercy took up a human body and soul, and laid it down again for our sake. How great is the mercy of the Almighty, how great His ways, so far above our ways, yet willing to dwell among us to prove His great mercy and love!
Click to expand...
So a part of God died then?
 
SonofAdam said:
So a part of God died then?
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That would be a strange way of putting it, it could obviously be interpreted in a very misleading way. Jesus died a human death. We do not think that when humans die it is appropriate to speak of only a part of them dying, even though their souls are immortal and do not die. We could speak in this way, but we would need to be careful to be clear about what we meant. This is true also in the case of Jesus.
 
Betterave said:
That would be a strange way of putting it, it could obviously be interpreted in a very misleading way. Jesus died a human death. We do not think that when humans die it is appropriate to speak of only a part of them dying, even though their souls are immortal and do not die. We could speak in this way, but we would need to be careful to be clear about what we meant. This is true also in the case of Jesus.
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I know that it sounds a little bit strange:

Isn’t this what it means though? You say ‘Jesus is God’ and that he ‘died’ on the cross but then when it is asked ‘Did God die’ you say[if you agree with tonyrey’s words] ‘no, it was His humanity that died’ so I asked, then since His ‘humanity died’, didn’t a part of Him die as well?
 
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