DAY 129
CHALLENGE
“Catholics shouldn’t say Mary is the mother of God. God is eternal and so can’t have a mother. Mary merely gave birth to Jesus’ human nature.”
DEFENSE
This misunderstands the title “mother of God.” You can’t have a correct view of Christ and still deny this title.
A person’s mother contributes genetic matter to him, carries him in her womb, or both.
Normally, a mother is older than her child, but Mary is an exceptional case, as the Virgin Birth shows.
Mary did not exist before the Second Person of the Trinity, who has always existed in the eternal now outside of time, but she did become his mother by contributing genetic matter to him (cf. Rom. 1:3) and by carrying him in her womb (Matt. 1:18; Luke 1:35).
Mary was Jesus’ mother in the true sense. As the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus is God, and so Mary is the mother of God. Mary did not merely give birth to Jesus’ human nature. Mothers do not give birth to natures. They give birth to persons, and Jesus was a divine person. To deny that Mary gave birth to the Second Person of the Trinity would be to commit the heresy Nestorianism.
In the fifth century, Nestorius—the patriarch of Constantinople— objected to the title “mother of God” (Greek, theotokos, “God-bear- er”). His position was rejected by the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) because the council fathers recognized that the true understanding of the person of Christ was at stake. If Mary can’t be said to give birth to the Second Person of the Trinity, then a wedge is driven between Christ’s humanity and his divinity, so he is no longer one person.
This is recognized by many theologians, including Protestants. Martin Luther wrote: “Mary, the mother, does not carry, give birth to, suckle, and nourish only the man, only flesh and blood—for that would be dividing the Person—but she carries and nourishes a son who is God’s Son. Therefore she is rightly called not only the mother of the man but also the Mother of God” (Luther’s Works 24:107).
TIP
Although Scripture does not use the phrase “mother of God,” it uses an equivalent when Mary’s cousin Elizabeth asks: “Why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me” (Luke 1:43).