Why won't Protestants call Mary "Mother of God"

[ChristianWAB]

mercygate:

Fortunately, authentic Catholic teaching is readily accessible – all the more now that we have The Catechism of the Catholic Church. scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

Thank you for the link.

 

[Zooey]

linus:

Actually, you’re the one who took the discussion down that path by accusing me of being bigoted, prejudice toward Mary’s gender. And you protest too loudly - revealing the fact I struck a nerve.

What you “struck” was my refusal to let you impugn the integrity of my Lord’s mother. Don’t insult the lady.:nope:

You need to read the account from the Biblical text, Zooey. Not just RCC pamphlets.

I read my Bible every day. I’ve been reading it since I could read. “RCC pamphlets?” Like what??? Like St Luke’s gospel???That’s an :-0 “RCC pamphlet”???

Joseph was going to put her away secretly, but an angel of the Lord appeared to him and informed him of the situation. She was not left to the “fate” of Joseph’s decision.

She knew this how? She was the Mother of God, not the psychic friend’s network. She had no way to know this, Linus. She said “yes” without being given a blow=by-blow description of the Theology of the Atonement. No view of the next 30 odd years.
She took a leap into the unknown, & the Saviour came into the world.

God was with her.

God was IN her; that’s my point. Ergo: Mother of God.

Do you really think that was even a remote possibility with Mary and the Child to whom she would give birth???

Yes. Why not? The Child was crucified. The plan could have been for her to be stoned. It could have been anything. We have 2000 years of knowing. She had only the willingness to say “yes”.

Jesus was born into this world to become the unblemished, *Lamb of God *who would through the sacrifice of Himself take away the sin of the world.

She said “yes”.Without that “yes”, there is no sacrifice for sins, Linus. The fate of the world is hanging in the balance.
The first Eve rebelled.The second Eve must undo that, by agreeing. She has to say “yes” to God, where the 1st Eve said " I’m gonna do my own thing, God.I don’t care what you say, I want to eat the fruit…I will, I will, I will! I want, I want, I want!!". The 2nd Eve must say “Yes, God, yes.”…regardless of the cost.

She was told by Gabriel that she WOULD conceive and bear a Son and He WILL be great and God WILL give to Him the throne of His father David (Lk. 1:32-33).

So she was forced? Seriously do not go there!! Do *not *accuse the Holy Spirit of assault.
You’re confusing God with Zeus again.

This was divine assurance, Zooey.

Easy for you to say…

You’re being too dramatic.

I dunno…Giving birth to God just seems…well, I dunno, just, well…dramatic…but that’s me.

Stick to the Biblical account, Zooey, and you’ll see it’s about Jesus and God’s plan of redemption through HIM.

That’s what you seem to have a problem with…the Bible. That’s why I am sticking to it.

Not the “heroics” of Mary which you dramatically impose on the account.Actually, she said, “be it done to me according to your word.” It was more a faith response than one of permission.

The faith response was to give her permission.:banghead: You seem to have trouble with that part…

She was a woman of faith. You tell the story as if she was all on her own and God was off somewhere occupied.

No, I tell it like it was.
I know you don’t like it, but the truth is not contingent upon what we like. I would like all kinds of things that I can’t have. Such is life.
You are going to have to deal with the fact that you are on the wrong side of the fence.

Zooey, the Child she would give birth to was God. It was all according to HIS plan for your eternal welfare, and hers.

Again, this is the part that you seem to be having a problem with. If Mary is not the Mother of God, then Jesus was not God, and if Jesus was not God, we are all still lost and in our sins. We are all going to :bigyikes: hell, unless Mary is the Mother of God. He has to be born, not of an unwilling victim, but of a woman who says “yes” to the will of God, without counting the cost.
That’s why (sigh) I keep banging my head against the wall, here…

 

[Zooey]

linus:

You don’t know how old she was. One thing for sure is she was not a mere child playing with dolls. Where do you get this stuff???You read into it your own drama.

She was very, very young. You really need to get into the Early Church Fathers. There’s all kinds of information out there…You should:yup: try it sometime.
This was Judea 2000 years ago, Linus. Women married in their early teens right up into the 19th century.

Stick to the Biblical accounts, Zooey.

I am, Linus, I am trying to, but you keep carrying us away from the realities & into a world where nothing ever happened, nothing was ever known, unless it was somehow revealed to whoever wrote the notes in the bottom of your Bible in 19-0-something…
The facts don’t http://bestsmileys.com/clueless/4.gifseem to be enough, Linus. You have to keep inserting opinions. Opinions that nobody ever heard of in the history of Christianity, until-- when? The 17th century? The 19th??
A whole world of Christians, Catholic, Protestant, & Eastern Orthodox, lived their lives without rejecting history.

You’ll see the beauty of her FAITH, but even more, God’s FAITHFULNESS toward her.

You need to remember her faithfulness, Linus. You need to remember that, for the first time since the garden of Eden, a real human being is saying “yes” to God every single time He asks her for anything.

You WAY overestimate her, which is your problem.

No, Linus, you underestimate her…And what is even :nope: sadder, you underestimate her Son, the Lord & Saviour.
You keep wanting to ignore the way He chose to come into this world. He didn’t arrive as a conquering hero. He arrived as a tiny, wee, helpless baby. He laid aside all the glories of Heaven, to live here among us.
There is this story, Linus: The artist J. Whistler was complimented on his famous painting of his mother, & he said, “Well, you know how it is; you try to make your mum look as beautiful as you possibly can”.
God:yup: made His mother, Linus; and he made her as beautiful as He possibly could.
He made the world over. The 1st Eve had brought disaster to us all; the new Eve was the Theotokos. She was the woman who bore God the Son.

Stick to the Scriptures, Zooey. You won’t be led astray.

I do, Linus, I do.
Would that you might do the same. There are wonders in there, Linus, wonders you will never see, until you cease the need to always prove yourself right & humbly accept the wonder of a woman who never refused her Son anything. A woman who STOOD at the foot of Calvary’s cruel cross, Linus; stood, when you & I, poor ornery creatures that we are, would have run away…

Why would I say that? She can’t hear me.I’m not a “sinner,” I’m a “saint” by calling (1 Cor. 1:2).

She is not dead, Linus. She is not dead. She is living in the Father’s house. She is more alive than you or I can understand. She is alive forever. She is home, really home, where there is no more pain, no more sorrow, no more parting…No more sickness, no more fear.
She is home, Linus, in the city foursquare, where with all the saints of the ages, she has healing for those hours that she spent, watching her Son die on a Roman cross.
She has left death far behind her…There is no death there, Linus. There is nothing more alive than that!!
Mary, the Mother of God is reunited with her beloved Son. She will never have to see Him bleed and die again.

How is it Zooey you haven’t converted to Catholicism? What holds you back? What are you afraid of?

Afraid, Linus? Of what?? I have no need to fear. I have put myself into the Wounded Hands of Jesus.
Why are you afraid, Linus?? What is there to lose??? Why are you so angry that you cannot even call her what she is: the Mother of the Saviour. The Mother of Jesus.
Mary, the Mother of God.

God bless you, Linus.

 

[BarrenCross]

Just my 2 cents worth.

(We) Protestants do not worship Mary, we worship God. Mary was blessed by God in that she was the vessel God chose to make himself incarnate in the flesh. A lot of protestants don’t understand why others pray, or at least seem to pray, to Mary. We acknowledge her role, and that she fulfilled her part, but she is not any part of God the Trinity. I would no more pray to her than I would to my grandmother.

 

[mercygate]

BarrenCross:

Just my 2 cents worth.

(We) Protestants do not worship Mary, we worship God. Mary was blessed by God in that she was the vessel God chose to make himself incarnate in the flesh. A lot of protestants don’t understand why others pray, or at least seem to pray, to Mary. We acknowledge her role, and that she fulfilled her part, but she is not any part of God the Trinity. I would no more pray to her than I would to my grandmother.

Hm. Your third post. Betcha haven’t read this thread. Nobody here is talking about worshiping Mary. Anyway, that would be another thread.

BTW, in case you haven’t caught this fact: Zooey, our able defender of the Mother of God, is a Protestant!

 

[Mickey]

ChristianWAB:

My opinion of the Catholic Church is, indeed, influenced by the actions of its people, because they derive their beliefs from the church.

People sin, doctrine does not.

 

[Mickey]

Zooey:

She is not dead, Linus. She is not dead. She is living in the Father’s house. She is more alive than you or I can understand. She is alive forever. She is home, really home, where there is no more pain, no more sorrow, no more parting…No more sickness, no more fear.
She is home, Linus, in the city foursquare, where with all the saints of the ages, she has healing for those hours that she spent, watching her Son die on a Roman cross.
She has left death far behind her…There is no death there, Linus. There is nothing more alive than that!!
Mary, the Mother of God is reunited with her beloved Son. She will never have to see Him bleed and die again.

Hi Zooey,

Your posts are beautiful, poetic, and always enlightening.

Thank you and God Bless you,
Mickey

 

[Mickey]

quote=BarrenCross Protestants do not worship Mary, we worship God.
[/quote]

Then we have much in common! We Catholics also worship only the Holy Trinity.

 

[revbrothomas]

Ok let me try this one;

The involvement of Mary in the Incarnation of Christ is limited to His humanity and does not extend to His Divinity, for that always was! Therefore Mary’s “Motherhood” extends only to the human nature of Christ, not His eternal Divine nature; Therefore Mary is the “mother” of Christ, not the “Mother of God” which of course has no “mother”.
The whole term Theotokos has nothing to do with the "semi-divinity’ of Mary but is a statement reinforcing the dual nature of Christ, that He is fully human and fully divine. The term Theotokos means “God bearer” meaning the one through whom God was made incarnate in human form, not “Mother of God”.
Perhaps a better question would be; “What is Rome’s preoccupation with deifying Mary?” And better yet I would hope that every Roman catholic would stop and ask themselves “Is adherence to the Marian Doctrines Essential for My Salvation?” I mean really, its a “Yes” or “No” Question.

 

[Mickey]

revbrothomas:

The involvement of Mary in the Incarnation of Christ is limited to His humanity and does not extend to His Divinity

Hark! The voice of Nestorius has been revived once again.

 

[mercygate]

revbrothomas:

Ok let me try this one;

The involvement of Mary in the Incarnation of Christ is limited to His humanity and does not extend to His Divinity, for that always was! Therefore Mary’s “Motherhood” extends only to the human nature of Christ, not His eternal Divine nature; Therefore Mary is the “mother” of Christ, not the “Mother of God” which of course has no “mother”.
The whole term Theotokos has nothing to do with the "semi-divinity’ of Mary but is a statement reinforcing the dual nature of Christ, that He is fully human and fully divine. The term Theotokos means “God bearer” meaning the one through whom God was made incarnate in human form, not “Mother of God”.
Perhaps a better question would be; “What is Rome’s preoccupation with deifying Mary?” And better yet I would hope that every Roman catholic would stop and ask themselves “Is adherence to the Marian Doctrines Essential for My Salvation?” I mean really, its a “Yes” or “No” Question.

OK, Bro. You haven’t read the thread, have you? All of the issues you mount here are addressed competently (mostly by our Protestant apologist, Zooey).

As for “Rome’s obsession with deifying Mary” – get a grip. Who gave you *that *idea? That is a frightening statement from someone who claims to be a “minister,” even an Ante-Nicene minister.

Mary does not give birth to the *natures *of Christ, she gives birth to his Person, which is one divine person. The terms Theotokos and Mother of God are specifically equated in the Council of Constantinople (Where, o where is my reference???)

Aw. Go read Zooey the Methodist’s formidable posts; she says it better than I can.

These are difficult dogmas. I counsel to approach them by *Fides querens intellectum *(faith seeking understanding) – that’s Anselm’s way of saying, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” It means we trust the promise of Christ to send the Holy Spirit to guide the Church into all truth, and if we personally have a problem with a given doctrine, the Church gets the benefit of the doubt as knowing better than we do, and we pray that by faith we will be led into understanding.

And yes: for us, as Catholics, adherence to the Marian dogmas is essential for our salvation, because we embrace the fullness of truth embodied in the entire *Verbum Dei, *not just that part of the Word found in the Book, not just that part of the truth that was defined before the year 326.

 

[ChibiBarako]

revbrothomas:

Ok let me try this one;

The involvement of Mary in the Incarnation of Christ is limited to His humanity and does not extend to His Divinity, for that always was! Therefore Mary’s “Motherhood” extends only to the human nature of Christ, not His eternal Divine nature; Therefore Mary is the “mother” of Christ, not the “Mother of God” which of course has no “mother”. .

So you’re separating Jesus’ divine nature from His human nature? Not a new heresy; Nestorius’ followers were preaching that Jesus and Christ were two different entities back in the 400’s AD. However, the council of Ephesus in 431 – accepted by 99% of existing Christian churches as teaching valid doctrine (the notable exception would be the Assyrian Church of the East, and I think even they’ve redefined) – condemned Nestorianism as a heresy and stated that Jesus Christ is completely God and completely man and cannot be subdivided (okay, that’s rough phrasing, but that’s the gist of it). Therefore, to deny that Mary is the Mother of God is in some respect to deny that Jesus is God.

As stated quite succinctly on the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry site, carm.org/heresy/nestorianism.htm (and so far as I know they’re not Catholic!), another problem with Nestorianism is that it threatens the atonement. If Jesus is two persons, then which one died on the cross? If it was the “human person” then the atonement is not of divine quality and thereby insufficient to cleanse us of our sins.

revbrothomas:

The whole term Theotokos has nothing to do with the "semi-divinity’ of Mary but is a statement reinforcing the dual nature of Christ, that He is fully human and fully divine. The term Theotokos means “God bearer” meaning the one through whom God was made incarnate in human form, not “Mother of God”…

Okay, I’m not tracking here … you are making a distinction between the woman who gave birth to the God-made-Man and the Mother of God??? Again, you’re trying to deny that Jesus is God on some level or another. He’s 100% God, 100% man, 100% of the time!

revbrothomas:

Perhaps a better question would be; “What is Rome’s preoccupation with deifying Mary?” And better yet I would hope that every Roman catholic would stop and ask themselves “Is adherence to the Marian Doctrines Essential for My Salvation?” I mean really, its a “Yes” or “No” Question.

And, as noted above, it is essential to believe that Mary gave birth to Jesus the Son of God and Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, because if she didn’t, and he wasn’t, the atonement was useless and we’re all still dead in our sins. You see, Marian doctrines are all about Jesus. What is the preoccupation with insulting Jesus by trying to suggest that Mary wasn’t his mother, or that she was only the mother of his human side, not his divine side? (sounds more like Mr. Spock from Star Trek than the Bible!) Besides, Elizabeth addressed “the mother of my Lord”!

Little Rosie

 

[Glenn_Lego]

Church Militant:

This is something that I’ve noticed myself. It’s odd that they not only (generally) do not know squat about Christian history (except biased modern sources like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs), but do not know what the original reformers believed (even if they founded their own denom!.)

Then there are those who apparently believe that anything 'traditional" is bad. like you can only sing contemporary worship choruses by Integrity music in their services, no hymns. Been there done that.

 

[Zooey]

Mickey:

Hark! The voice of Nestorius has been revived once again.

For a guy whohttp://bestsmileys.com/sad/6.gif died in 451, he seems to behttp://bestsmileys.com/clueless/4.gif extraordinarily active lately, doesn’t he?http://bestsmileys.com/sad/6.gif

 

[Milliardo]

Zooey:

For a guy whohttp://bestsmileys.com/sad/6.gif died in 451, he seems to behttp://bestsmileys.com/clueless/4.gif extraordinarily active lately, doesn’t he?http://bestsmileys.com/sad/6.gif

The even sadder part is that they follow him around and are not aware that they do so, and even if told that they are following him so, would deny it. Hhmm…seems kinda familiar in this thread…

 

[bookgirl]

THEOPHILUS†:

Mary is the mother of the INCARNATED Son of God. The Son is not SEPARATED from the Father and the Holy Spirit.

But aren’t you separating them right there? The nature of God I mean? You claim she’s the mother of the incarnate Son of God, if the incarnate Son of God is different than the Divine Son of God – which would have to be the case if your logic were to work – than the Divine Son of God was NEVER incarnate in the first place . . . Are you going in circles here or is it just me?

 

[bookgirl]

Why would I say that? She can’t hear me.

Linus, how do you know she can’t hear you?

 

[linus]

Why would I say that? She can’t hear me.

Linus, how do you know she can’t hear you?

The real question is, “on what authority do you know she can?”

Can you show me, by example, where any of the Apostles appealed to Mary to intercede for them during their Apostolic ministries? Especially Paul, Peter or John. You would think there would many examples of such intercession by the “theotokos” since they (the Apostles) had the huge burden of first communicating the message of salvation to the world. Certainly if we’re instructed to pray to her now for intercession they, her contemporaries, must have done so frequently in person, while she was still living. But, alas, no example, nothing, zilch, nada - not one mention in Scripture of an Apostolic path to Mary’s door. And not even one Apostolic instruction for *us * to do so, either. Is this simply Apostolic irreverence toward the “theotokos?,” or actually enlightening truth?

 

[as-a-child]

Death is not enough to separate the members of the body of Christ.

Now, all of us can be spritually grafted to the body of christ, yet there is only one person in all of history who has truly been “physically” attached to GOD.

So the flesh and blood that HE gave her has now become HIs flesh and blood. So the place where GOD became incarnate is the womb of a virgin. The holy of holies became Mary’s womb, and the incarnate son passed through the veil and walked among us.

An a simple response why the apostles never wrote about this is because in there wildest dreams it never occured to them that a discussion like this would take place.

 

[MonicaC]

linus:

The real question is, “on what authority do you know she can?”

Can you show me, by example, where any of the Apostles appealed to Mary to intercede for them during their Apostolic ministries? Especially Paul, Peter or John. You would think there would many examples of such intercession by the “theotokos” since they (the Apostles) had the huge burden of first communicating the message of salvation to the world. Certainly if we’re instructed to pray to her now for intercession they, her contemporaries, must have done so frequently in person, while she was still living. But, alas, no example, nothing, zilch, nada - not one mention in Scripture of an Apostolic path to Mary’s door. And not even one Apostolic instruction for *us *to do so, either. Is this simply Apostolic irreverence toward the “theotokos?,” or actually enlightening truth?

I think that you are forgetting one time that is quoted at the wedding feast in Canna, when Mary told all do as he says.