What does Mother of God mean to you?

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Here is what it means to me:

Mary is the mother of the incarnate Jesus.

Christ has two natures - Divine and human, but only one Person which is Divine.
Jesus is fully human and fully God.
When Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, he did not lose his Divinity.

Here is what it meant to Pope John Paul II:

**CHURCH PROCLAIMS MARY MOTHER OF GOD
Pope John Paul II **
The Council of Ephesus taught that Mary is truly the Mother of God, since she gave birth to the Second Person of the Trinity who became man for our sake
The Church “also contemplates with wonder and celebrates with veneration the immense greatness conferred on Mary by the One who wanted to be her Son”, the Holy Father said at the General Audience of Wednesday, 27 November, as he discussed the Blessed Virgin’s title “Mother of God”. Here is a translation of his catechesis, which was the 37th in the series on the Blessed Mother and was given in Italian.
  1. Contemplation of the mystery of the Saviour’s birth has led Christian people not only to invoke the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of Jesus, but also to recognize her as Mother of God. This truth was already confirmed and perceived as belonging to the Church’s heritage of faith from the early centuries of the Christian era, until it was solemnly proclaimed at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
In the first Christian community, as the disciples became more aware that Jesus is the Son of God, it became ever clearer that Mary is the Theotókos, the Mother of God. This is a title which does not appear explictly in the Gospel texts, but in them the “Mother of Jesus” is mentioned and it is affirmed that Jesus is God (Jn 20:28; cf. 5:18; 10:30, 33). Mary is in any case presented as the Mother of Emmanuel, which means “God with us” (cf. Mt 1:22-23).

Already in the third century, as can be deduced from an ancient written witness, the Christians of Egypt addressed this prayer to Mary: “We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God: despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us from all evil, O glorious and blessed Virgin” (from the Liturgy of the Hours). The expression Theotókos appears explicitly for the first time in this ancient witness.

In pagan mythology, it often happened that a certain goddess would be presented as the mother of some god. For example, the supreme god, Zeus, had the goddess Rhea as his mother. This context perhaps helped Christians to use the title "Theotókos ", “Mother of God”, for the Mother of Jesus. It should nevertheless be noted that this title did not exist but was created by Christians to express a belief which had nothing to do with pagan mythology, belief in the virginal conception in Mary’s womb of the One who had always been the eternal Word of God.

Council of Ephesus proclaimed Mary as the Mother of God
  1. By the fourth century, the term Theotókos was frequently used in the East and West. Devotion and theology refer more and more to this term, which had by now become part of the Church’s patrimony of faith.
One can therefore understand the great protest movement that arose in the fifth century when Nestorius cast doubt on the correctness of the title “Mother of God”. In fact, being inclined to hold that Mary was only the mother of the man Jesus, he maintained that “Mother of Christ” was the only doctrinally correct expression. Nestorius was led to make this error by his difficulty in admitting the unity of Christ’s person and by his erroneous interpretation of the distinction between the two natures—divine and human—present in him.

In 431 the Council of Ephesus condemned his theses and, in affirming the subsistence of the divine and human natures in the one person of the Son, proclaimed Mary the Mother of God.

-continued on next post-
 
JPII continued
  1. Now, the difficulties and objections raised by Nestorius offer us the opportunity to make several useful reflections for correctly understanding and interpreting this title. The expression Theotókos, which literally means, “she who has begotten God”, can at first sight seem surprising; in fact it raises the question as to how it is possible for a human creature to give birth to God. The answer of the Church’s faith is clear: Mary’s divine motherhood refers only to the human begetting of the Son of God but not, however, to his divine birth. The Son of God was eternally begotten of God the Father, and is consubstantial with him. Mary, of course, has no part in this eternal birth. However, the Son of God assumed our human nature 2,000 years ago and was conceived by and born of Mary.
In proclaiming Mary “Mother of God”, the Church thus intends to affirm that she is the “Mother of the Incarnate Word, who is God”. Her motherhood does not, therefore, extend to all the Trinity, but only to the Second Person, the Son, who, in becoming incarnate, took his human nature from her.

Motherhood is a relationship of person to person: a mother is not only mother of the body or of the physical creature born of her womb, but of the person she begets. Thus having given birth, according to his human nature, to the person of Jesus, who is a divine person, Mary is the Mother of God.

Blessed Virgin’s consent precedes Incarnation
  1. In proclaiming Mary “Mother of God”, the Church in a single phrase professes her belief regarding the Son and the Mother. This union was already seen at the Council of Ephesus; in defining Mary’s divine motherhood, the Fathers intended to emphasize their belief in the divinity of Christ. Despite ancient and recent objections about the appropriateness of recognizing Mary by this title, Christians of all times, by correctly interpreting the meaning of this motherhood, have made it a privileged expression of their faith in the divinity of Christ and their love for the Blessed Virgin.
On the one hand, the Church recognizes the Theotókos as guaranteeing the reality of the Incarnation because—as St Augustine says—“if the Mother were fictitious, the flesh would also be fictitious … and the scars of the Resurrection” (Tract. in Ev. Ioannis, 8, 6-7). On the other hand, she also contemplates with wonder and celebrates with veneration the immense greatness conferred on Mary by the One who wanted to be her Son. The expression “Mother of God” refers to the Word of God, who in the Incarnation assumed the lowliness of the human condition in order to raise man to divine sonship. But in the light of the sublime dignity conferred on the Virgin of Nazareth, this title also proclaims the nobility of woman and her loftiest vocation. God in fact treats Mary as a free and responsible person and does not bring about the Incarnation of his Son until after he has obtained her consent.

Following the example of the ancient Christians of Egypt, let the faithful entrust themselves to her who, being the Mother of God, can obtain from her divine Son the grace of deliverance from evil and of eternal salvation.
Taken from:
L’Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
4 December 1996, page 11
 
lak611 said:
Do you believe that Jesus is God?
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I believe Jesus is of the Triune God and cannot be separated. I believe what He said… The Father and I are one.

Do you believe Jesus and the Father are one?
 
believers said:
Do you believe Jesus and the Father are one?
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They are of one substance, but they are different persons. The heresy of Modalism is that they are also one person. Oneness Pentecostals have revived this erroneous doctrine in modern times.
 
Genesis315 said:
They are of one substance, but they are different persons. The heresy of Modalism is that they are also one person. Oneness Pentecostals have revived this erroneous doctrine in modern times.
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👍 Thanks for answering the question before I had a chance. That’s my answer as well.
 
Genesis315 said:
They are of one substance, but they are different persons. The heresy of Modalism is that they are also one person. Oneness Pentecostals have revived this erroneous doctrine in modern times.
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Genesis,

He is preaching the heresy of Modalism. Hey, believers a modalists! I finally get it.

Believers,

Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity. The Trinity is One indeed, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Mary gave birth to the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ who became Flesh through the Virgin Mary.

So since Jesus is God, and Mary is his Mother. Mary is the Mother of God, the Second Person of the Trinity.
 
believers said:
I believe Jesus is of the Triune God and cannot be separated. I believe what He said… The Father and I are one.
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Of course Jesus and the Father are one. With the Holy Spirit, they are one God.

However, that is not the issue.

Can the divine nature and the human nature of Jesus be separated?
 
believers said:
It is even simpler than that.
The triune God has no mother.
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The General Council of Ephesus, condemned the heresy of Nestorius, who separated Christ’s humanity and his divinity by claiming that Mary should not be called Mother of God but only Mother of Christ.

Believers, doesn’t it bother you that you are supporting an early Christian Heresy?

It is kind of like the Jehovah’s Witness supporting the Arian heresy (denial of Christ’s divinity) which was condemned at the First General Council of Nicaea.
Are you going to tell me that you reject the divinity of Christ also, or do you pick and choose which church councils you want to believe in.
If the council agrees with you then it was guided by the Holy Spirit in it’s decision, but if it disagree with you then it wasn’t guided by the Holy Spirit?

I know that you hold to sola scriptura, but even sola scriptura holds that you can refer back to the Church fathers and the church councils for insights into the truth of the bible.

The church didn’t invent this dogma, as it never invents dogma.
The church proclaimed the truth when confronted with a false teaching.

This is where the Holy Spirit comes into place, to guide the church to all truth, just as Jesus promised in the Gospel of John:

John 16:13
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

We see this promise evident in the first Church council held in Jerusalem found in the book of Acts chapter 15 when the Apostles were sending their letter to all the churches, they tell how they came to this decision about circumcision.

Acts 15:28
For it has seemed good to the **Holy Spirit **and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things:

We see that the council of Jerusalem was guided to this truth by the Holy Spirit, and when the council of Ephesus taught that Mary was the mother of God, it was also guided by the Holy Spirit.
 
Believers is evidently the pope of his very own church. He is infallible in his Biblical interpretations. Whatever he thinks is true, is true to him, simply because he thinks it. No one else is capable of interpreting Bible better than believers, because no one else has the same authority believers has to interpret the Bible. Simple as that. Believers: A Church of One.
 
believers said:
I believe Jesus is of the Triune God and cannot be separated. I believe what He said… The Father and I are one.

Do you believe Jesus and the Father are one?
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As JESVS CHRIST proclaimed Himself, “I and the Father are One.”

So then, JESVS is God, Our Lady is the mother of JESVS, therefore, Mary is the Mother of God.

fisheaters.com/mary.html
 
believers said:
So since the Father and Son are ONE… then, Mary is the Mother of the Father and the Son. 🤷

John 10:30 I and [my] Father are one.
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No 🙂​

They are distinct Persons - not, BTW, separate Persons: “distinct” =///= “separate”. There is union of Persons without confusion of their distinctness, & unity in a single Nature, of God, so that each Person fully indwells & is indwelt by the Others, & infinitely expresses the Divine Nature - as does each, & as do both, of the others.

The Eternal Word of God Who is without origin in time, took to Himself a created, human, origin, in time, by being born of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the man Jesus. As He is Eternal God in Person & Nature, what was born of Mary had her created, human nature - & that of the Eternal Word.

So:

Jesus Christ is
  • a Divine Person
  • eternally God
  • Who has taken to Himself our human nature
  • so as to be “truly, really & substantially”
  • God & man
  • in the unity of a single Divine Person
  • Which the Person of God the Word
  • which is why the source of His human nature is called His Mother
for His human nature is wholly from her, alone - so that He differs from other men in having no human father. Otherwise, He is as unmbiguously human as any of us. And humans have mothers. So he has a mother.

She did for Him all that mother does for her child:
  • His Body is from hers
  • as is His Blood
  • as is His created nature
  • as is everything human about Him - apart from His Soul, which is as God-given as ours are.
    He is unlike us in three respects:
    1. He is totally free from all sin whatever (Hebrews 4)
    2. He had no human father, because His Father is God
      • so the Holy Spirit without Whom there can be no human fertility at all (He is “the Lord, the Giver of Life”) did in Mary what He does in all women to cause them to be mothers: in other men’s conceptions, He does this through the activity of a human father; but in the Conception of Jesus no human father was involved.
        As for the “effect” of the Incarnation of the Word on the unity & Spirituality & changelessness of God - the change, is in the nature assumed in the Incarnation; that is, the human nature: it is raised to a supernatural dignity by being united with that of the Word, but the Word is not affected, any more than He is affected by the Sacaments. They, like the Incarnation, are His deeds; neither in them, nor in it, is anything “done to” Him. God is not affected by the conception of the Word in the womb of Mary in anyway at all.
    As nothing is done to the Word by His being conceived, nothing is done to the Father either. Only one Person, the Word, assumes a human nature. Human nature was not (as it were) “stuck onto” that of the Word, but in an inconceivable manner was taken up into, was united with, it.
 
I’ve always believed Mary=Mother of God even before I got all obsessed with Catholicism.

I thought it was a fairly simple equation, but admittedly I do have a Bible thumper’s tendency to want everything to be “a simplified gospel” so…🤷
 
Hello,
believers said:
It is even simpler than that.
The triune God has no mother.
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Did anyone here claim that Mary was the Mother of the Trinity? I said, and I quote:
JMJ_coder said:
Mary is not the source of the Trinity. Mary is not the originator of the divinity of God. But she is the mother of Jesus Christ. She gave birth to His humanity, and that humanity is hypostatically united to the divinity of Christ. Thus, Mary is the Mother of God.
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JustinApologist said:
What does Mother of God mean to you?

I keep it simple.

Word is God.
Jesus is the Word made flesh.
Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary.
Jesus is the Son of Mary.
Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God (the Second Person of the Trinity).

Non-Catholic Christians please reframe from using the word blasphemy when you heard this title. This title is Christocentric because Jesus is God, and since Mary is the Mother of Jesus, she is also the Mother of God.
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Yes! We do believe all that the Word of God tells us of Mary. We believe that Mary was a virtuous woman, chosen by God to be the mother of Jesus Christ. Moreover, she was a virgin at His birth.🙂
 
JMJ_coder said:
Hello,

Did anyone here claim that Mary was the Mother of the Trinity? I said, and I quote:/QUOTE

let us look at Mary, the mother of Jesus, a real woman like many of you who are reading this. We believe that she was a fine woman, because God chose her for a very special task which would bring her to prominence and cause her to be held up as an example. There is, however, no reason to believe that she was conceived without sin, because after the birth of Christ we find her in the temple offering a sacrifice for her purification (Luke 2:22-24). This is the same action that all the Hebrew women took after childbirth (Leviticus 12). In addition, in her prayer of thanksgiving for being chosen to be the mother of Christ, Mary calls God my Savior (Luke 1:47). Had she been born without sin, she would not have needed either an offering for purification, or a savior.
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truthnlight said:
JMJ_coder;2360963:
Hello,

Did anyone here claim that Mary was the Mother of the Trinity? I said, and I quote:
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That’s a different subject of discussion. It has nothing to do with Mary, the Mother of God. If you wish to make a topic on the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, open a new thread.

Thank you for your time.
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I’m not sure there is a connection, and someone knowledgeable, please correct me as needed. But, Jesus didn’t need to be baptized, either. Still, he said, let it be so in order to fulfill all righteousness, words to that effect, as I recall.

I take this to mean that the mere fact that Mary did all that required under Mosaic law has no meaning in terms of her Immaculate Conception.
 
truthnlight said:
In addition, in her prayer of thanksgiving for being chosen to be the mother of Christ, Mary calls God my Savior (Luke 1:47). Had she been born without sin, she would not have needed either an offering for purification, or a savior.
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“Let’s take the second citation first. Mary, too, required a Savior. Like all other descendants of Adam, she was subject to the necessity of contracting original sin. But by a special intervention of God, undertaken at the instant she was conceived, she was preserved from the stain of original sin and its consequences. She was therefore redeemed by the grace of Christ, but in a special way—by anticipation.”

You can read the rest here:
catholic.com/library/Immaculate_Conception_and_Assum.asp
 
We need to be careful with language and theological concepts. Jesus was the union of divine and human nature, in a perfect way. Jesus was the Word of God, but Mary does not beget the Word of God. Only the Father begets the Son. Jesus was conceived in Mary through the Holy Spirit, and as the Word of God he consented to become incarnate in her, ‘for our sake and our salvation.’ Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ, who is both man and God, but she is not the mother of God in the sense she is the mother of the Holy Trinity. To suggest so is blasphemous.
 
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