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Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Addressing more objections to "mother of God"

The two most common huddles in my experience to people rejecting the Marian title "mother of God" is 1) poor education in logic, 2) poor education on Christology. The first is a fault of secular education, logic/philosophy is not generally taught in American education until college/university. The second is a general fault of Christian education, though Catholicism has a poorly educated laity, Protestant laity, with few exceptions like Lutheranism, have no real means of synthesizing doctrine. Consequently, Protestants will sometimes call Christ by terms high church Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox would generally object, but not necessarily out of heresy, but out of ignorance. For instance, I heard a radio Protestant preacher refer to Christ as a "human being," certainly he confessed Christ as fully God and fully man, but he likely lacked education behind the meaning of the term person. From experience, a more common issue is, many Protestants do not understand that Christ having two natures makes him both created and uncreated. As a man, Christ is a creature that was conceived of in time in the Virgin Mary. His flesh had a beginning in time and space. Colossians 1:15 recognizes Christ is a creature, the chapter also recognizes him as the Creator who always existed. Though, having a beginning, the created Flesh of Christ was divine itself by the Incarnation, John 1:14 says, "the Word became flesh." For this reason we can say "God died" since God experienced death in the person of the Son in His human nature. Luke 1:35 describes Mary not simply giving birth to the Messiah, but to the "son of God," which is a divine titles meaning He is born of God Himself (as God the Son, Christ is eternally born of the Father, hence the two births of Christ: temporal and eternal)

To deny the Virgin Mary as the mother of God, is to potentially imply a few things:

a) Christ is two persons, the Virgin birth the human one only, which was lately shared/replaced by the Divine person.

b) or that Christ sort of possesses a body in the sense a demon possess a body. Yet the Scriptures states, "the Word became Flesh." 

c) Christ is only "partly God" that is He is only the Son of God, but not God Himself, or that the three persons only collectively can be called "God"

Objection: Mary cannot be mother of God, since Christ is only one person of the Trinity, to be mother of God should have to birth the whole trinity, at most you can call her "mother of God the Son"

Reply: By this reasoning Jesus cannot be ever spoken of as "God" but only "God the Son" yet scripture at times simply calls him "God" as in John 1:1 and John 20:28. Likewise, this reasoning means the Father cannot be called God being only 1 of the 3 persons, same with the Spirit. Few Protestants will deny Christ is God, but they will redefine their terms for the sake of denying the term "mother of God."

To say Christ is only part of God or 1/3rd of God is partialism, which itself can be potentially tritheism.

Objection: God is eternal, Mary is not. She cannot give birth to an eternal being.

Reply: We recognize Mary is created and God is uncreated. We also recognize the Son to be eternally begotten of His Father, that is from before time began and without end into the future. In his humanity he made a birth in time of the Virgin. But since that flesh was the Word also according to John 1:14, and the flesh was brought forth from Mary, it can be said she bore God in a temporal manner, since in entering His creation the Divine joined himself to the created, he was born, suffered and died. 

By the same reasoning as the objection, Muslims say "God cannot die" "God cannot suffer" "God cannot poop" etc and conclude Jesus cannot be God. Yet in the incarnation the Word who is God became flesh, God experienced all these things including having a human mother.

Objection: Only "mother of Lord is biblical" since Luke 1:43 says "mother of my Lord." Again, a created being cannot birth the uncreated God!

Reply: Is the Lord uncreated? Why is it acceptable to say a created human woman is the mother of the uncreated Lord, but once you change the word Lord to God, it becomes objectionable? Lord and God are referring to the same thing, Deity. The terms are interchangeable in the Bible. Did the Spirit inspire Elizabeth to call Christ merely a human lord? The instances of Lord in Luke 1 are to the Lord God.

Objection: You built this doctrine around one single verse, Luke 1:43. Any doctrine should be established by more than one verse!

Reply: Read what the Angel Gabriel said to Mary:

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God"--Luke 1:35

The title "Son of God" when used in the New Testament for Christ is a term for his Deity, a son has the same nature as his father, likewise the Son of God shares the nature of the Father. 

The Angel said she will give birth to the Son of God, she is, therefore, "mother of the Son of God." Yet Mary is created and the Son of God is without beginning. The scripture did not object to terms like "mother of my Lord" yet those who object to "mother of God" pick at it accuse it of being imprecise, yet the Scriptures do not see the need to limit their words as some do. The scriptures could have said, "the flesh born to you will be called the son of man" which would be consistent with reasoning of some Baptists. 

Objection: The term mother of God is pagan.

Reply: This doesn't stop you from using pagan titles and terms for YHVH and Christ in the Bible. The Pagans also had people that were "sons of God." The pagans also has a god named "El." They also had a god they called "he who rides the clouds." The pagans also had people that were "the image of a god." There are many more examples. Pagan also had gods that could die, gods that were born of virgins, men that were divine,. This object is absurd and conveniently ignores the issue for titles found in the Bible.

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