The Virgin Mary

[LilyM]

Lily,
By that logic, how do you explain when others refer to a grown man’s mother as “mother”?

Are they being disrespectful because it it like saying mommy to a grown man?

Are you discussing biblical references or the very different modern day usage?

In the Bible it is simply used by as a description of the relationship and not inappropriate. Women didn’t really have surnames, and many shared the same first names, so referring to their relatives was the way of distinguishing each individual Mary or Anna or what have you.

Luke calling Mary ‘the mother of Jesus’ is just his way of distinguishing her from the gajillion other Marys of the Gospels, just as before His birth she is referred to as being from Nazareth.

Jesus calling her ‘mother’ would be an entirely different matter - much more personal and intimate, perhaps less respectful. Can you not yourself see the difference between calling your own mother ‘mother’ or ‘mom’ and calling your pal Joe’s mother ‘Joe’s mother’???

Either way, in the Bible no-one ever did use ‘mother’ in that first sense, at least not in public.

 

[Ginger2]

Lily,

What did Jesus say when they told him his mother was outside?:

Mar 3:33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?

And then said:

Mar 3:34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my **mother **and my brethren!
Mar 3:35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

Replace “mother” with “mommy” and see what you think. But, I don’t think that word means “mommy”

 

[guanophore]

What proof do you have they were “inspired (Holy Spirit) teachings” and not just the sentimental opinions of those men (not even the writers themselves claim any Apostolic origin or divine inspiration)? That’s the challenge, G. Are you up for it?

The inspired teachings are those that have been handed down to us in the Apostolic Succession,a nd have been preserved and promulgated by the Magesterium. These are found in the Catholic Catechism. Catechism means to “faithfully echo”. These teachings handed down to use faithfully echo the teachings of Christ and the Apostles.

 

[Ginger2]

Lily,

What is the Greek word that means “mother” or don’t you think they had a word for mother?

 

[jmcrae]

Lily,

What is the Greek word that means “mother” or don’t you think they had a word for mother?

Why are we chasing down this rabbit? Just admit that Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ, already.

 

[Ginger2]

Lily,

Jhn 19:26 When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!
Jhn 19:27 Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own [home].

 

[guanophore]

Guonophore,

You say that “The Sacred Tradition and the Apostolic Authority.” is essential for salvation. Can you please be specific.

What doctrine from Tradition that is not found in the Bible, , will keep me or anyonme else out of heaven if we do not hear about it?

The Sacred Tradition and Apostolic Authority are the sources that help us to understand what is written properly, according to the Teachings of Jesus. Those who have separated themselves from these Sources have strayed from the Apostolic meaning of what was written. The book was never meant to be separated from the Source that produced it.

 

[Ginger2]

Lily, I think you are mistaken.

Gal 1:15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called [me] by his grace,

So is it OK to refer to your mother as “mommy” when preaching, but not to her face.

 

[LilyM]

Lily,

What is the Greek word that means “mother” or don’t you think they had a word for mother?

They didn’t speak Greek for starters

In Aramaic, as you probably know, there is an intimate term ‘Abba’ for father - which is not the formal word and is akin to Daddy. It was revolutionary for Jesus and Paul to use ‘Abba’ in relation to God the Father.

If I remember correctly nowhere in the Old Testament is God even referred to with the formal word for ‘Father’, let alone anything more intimate.

If I could make an educated guess, ‘woman’ was used even to address one’s own mother in a more formal and respectful sense. That probably means most if not all other forms of address were considered the female version of ‘Abba’.

Whatever language they used, they are NEVER recorded as using the word ‘mother’ in public, as simple as that, and rarely if ever in private.

 

[Ginger2]

jm,

Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ. I have always said I believe this.

I have said this so many times in this thread that it’s hard to believe you haven’t noticed.

 

[Jaypeeto4]

Is a person condemned if he rejects that Mary was assumed into heaven, queen of heaven, and all other aspects of the marian doctrines?

No. Not necessarily.
A person is CONDEMNED for rejecting the Light.
The gospel of John says that “this is the verdict,
that Light has come into the world” and men rejected
the light because their deeds are evil. People who practice
evil hate the light and do not come to the light.

So it depends on
how well and thoroughly these doctrines have been explained to them as well as thorough examination of the reasons for these doctrines and how well they fit the scriptural and traditional data.
A non-Catholic, even our most vehement antiMarian posters here, do not necessarily hate the Light for Pete’s sake.
What it is, is that they distrust the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. I was the same way for over 30 years.
It never even occured to me for DECADES that the Catholic Faith might even be worth a look, let alone my assent.

Today I am a Catholic, but for most of my life I never imagined that I would be one !! I would have laughed to scorn anybody who told me that I would one day be a Catholic. I didn’t hate the Light itself, I hated what I thought was a False Religion (( all of Trinitarian Christianity in general and Catholicism especially )).

There are millions and millions of people who love, worship, and adore Jesus Christ who at this very moment do not believe the Catholic Marian doctrines of the IC and the Assumption, and try sincerely to show that these doctrines are unscriptural. And they sincerely believe that they are correct. I do not believe that these people are condemned.

Now, if a person has been exposed to a full theological explication of these dogmas and their development,
and even THAT has not been done in these threads,
and comes to KNOW in his or her soul that these doctrines ARE OF GOD and THEN rejects them to “save face” or “win an argument,” then that is very close to sinning against the Light on purpose. Sinning against the Light is not done out of ignorance or misunderstanding. Some of the Pharisees who accused Jesus of being possessed by the Devil were men who had a thorough knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures, and more than that, for more than two years had followed him around, witnessing him perform miracle after miracle after miracle and hearing over and over again his sublime, wonderful spiritual teaching. Some of these men were acting out of envy and malice by attacking Jesus in the presence of such stupendous miracles. They wanted to KILL him for performing a miracle as an act of Mercy on the Sabbath. What fools they were!!! They KNEW that a human being had no power to do such a thing a make whole a withered hand and that only GOD’s power could accomplish it, and they still wanted to kill Jesus for doing it. THAT is malice.
I do not believe that the protestants here, even though they are
“de facto” resisting God in these particular matters, are doing so ON PURPOSE. They are acting on the basis of their sincere belief that only direct statements in Scripture are to be trusted, not Church authority. If the scriptures directly stated,
in these words, “Mary was conceived without original sin,” I have no doubt that Ginger and apophasis would accept the teaching immediately.

I used to be the same way. It was only after years of deep scripture study and meditation and prayer that the Lord revealed to me the actual Truth of the Catholic doctrines of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption of Mary.

Give them time and pray for them.
You’d be surprised at how many people God will reveal these
things to (the correct interpretation of the scriptural data).

Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+

 

[guanophore]

Quote Guanophore, “By denying the title Mother of God you’re denying the essential nature of Christ. Saying the one person borne by Mary wasn’t true God and true Man hypostatically united.”

I said no such thing. I said that Jesus is fully God, fully human.

I don’t think I said that. But you might consider using the “quote” button, so that a persons actual words and who wrote them will appear, to prevent confusion. If Jesus is fully God, and Mary is His mother, then she is the Mother of God.

 

[Ginger2]

Lily, the New Testament was first written in Greek.

So we have to depend that the Apostles translated Jesus’ words correctly. If we can not depend on that, then the NT is useless.

 

[LilyM]

Lily, I think you are mistaken.

Gal 1:15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called [me] by his grace,

So is it OK to refer to your mother as “mommy” when preaching, but not to her face.

Again, this is using the word ‘mother’ in the purely descriptive and impersonal sense that Luke uses when he calls Mary the mother of Jesus. As such it is not inappropriate and isn’t the equivalent of ‘mommy’.

Again, do you not see the difference in calling your own mother ‘mother’, with all the emotional resonance and connotation it has for the two of you, and calling your friend Joe’s mother ‘Joe’s mother’ as a simple acknowledgement of their relationship??

Clearly the two uses of the word are very different in nature. Think of your husband calling you ‘sweetheart’ and think of a random bank teller doing the same. In public EVERYONE, even relatives, appear in Bible times to have treated each other like the random bank teller, terms of endearment like ‘sweetheart’ being out of bounds.

Clearly too, the word to use to one’s own mother in public was ‘woman’ and nothing else.

 

[Ginger2]

ricmat,

Thanks for the link. I’m tired tonight but maybe tomorrow I’ll have a chance to look at it.

My understanding is the the word Jesus’ used translated “mother” was a very respectful and enduring term.

I got a little carried away with the “mommy” thing. But it struck me so funny.

One note: I do not see anyone else in the NT calling his mother “woman” as Jesus did… No one that I could find even addresses his mother. Instead the references are always 3rd person, “his mother”.

 

[apophasis]

You are stating that the person in Mary’s womb, who came forth from her body, was not the Divine Person of Jesus Christ, but only his human form (as though the person and his human form could somehow be divided from one another).

This is what the heretic Nestorius also taught.

I said nothing of the sort. Go back and read it AGAIN. Only this time read what I said, not what you want it to say.

 

[Ginger2]

Lily, you have not one shred of evidence to support your opinion that calling one’s mother, “mother” was a childish term. But referring to someone else’s mother as “mother” was appropriate.

 

[apophasis]

The inspired teachings are those that have been handed down to us in the Apostolic Succession,a nd have been preserved and promulgated by the Magesterium. These are found in the Catholic Catechism. Catechism means to “faithfully echo”. These teachings handed down to use faithfully echo the teachings of Christ and the Apostles.

Proof???

 

[Jaypeeto4]

The term Mother of God, as used by the Catholic church, comes from the Greek word, Theotokos.
I think some of our non-catholic friends here are misunderstanding the sense in which the Catholic Church uses the term Mother of God.

When we say that Mary was God’s Mother, we do NOT believe
that she is the SOURCE of the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity,
she is not the ORIGINATOR of the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity.

What we mean is that the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity
hypostatically united inseparably to the human nature he took
from Mary in her womb so that she carried in her womb
God the Son hypostatically united to human nature.
Thus, she BORE the God Man into the World, hence,
Theotokos or God-bearer.

But she is not the “originator” of the Divine Nature of Jesus,
she BORE him, God lived in her womb united to a human nature, just as he, God, lived OUTSIDE her womb on earth for 33 years in his human body as the God-Man. He was the God-Man outside her womb just as he was the God-Man INSIDE her womb for nine months.

Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+

 

[LilyM]

Lily, you have not one shred of evidence to support your opinion that calling one’s mother, “mother” was a childish term. But referring to someone else’s mother as “mother” was appropriate.

:banghead: but they never DID call Mary ‘mother’ - apart obviously from John who took her as his OWN mother. They never even appear to have called her '***the ***mother of Jesus’, apart from the Gospel writers who had to for purposes of clarity.

I will repeat, until you understand this, that calling someone else’s mother ‘their mother’ is a completely different thing to calling your OWN mother ‘mother’. Just as calling your own husband ‘sweetheart’ is completely different to calling a casual acquaintance ‘sweetheart’. Appropriate in the first circumstance, dismissive and possibly offensive in the second. I say this merely to illustrate that WHO addresses a particular term to WHOM matters enormously in terms of its meaning.

Now when the Apostles spoke to Mary they almost certainly called her ‘woman’ as He did, why would they do differently?

And the very lack of people calling their OWN mothers ‘mother’ is sufficient evidence that it was rare to do so, if not that it was never done. And again we have no evidence that Jesus himself ever did so.

Now He wasn’t one to stick to custom merely for its own sake, He broke customary etiquette many times over. So if he didn’t call her ‘mother’ in public it could only be because there was meaning, and not a complimentary one, attached to calling one’s own mother ‘mother’ in public.

I never said it was necessarily seen as childish, just that it was ‘not the done thing’ for whatever reason, and that was possibly the reason.