Is Mary the Mother of God? or The Truth about the Incarnation

HOLY CROSS TRACTS

by Father S. C. Hughson OHC

Is the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God? She most certainly is. Now, there may be some who, reading this Tract, will shrink from so categorical an answer. But let us look at the grounds for it. You are not a Unitarian, are you? If you are not, then, of course, you believe that Jesus Christ is God. Well, we are told in the Gospels that Mary is the Mother of Jesus. There is but one conclusion possible. If Mary is the Mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God, then she must, indeed, be the Mother of God. "But," you say, "of course, I believe that Jesus is God, and that St. Mary is His Mother. But this title is a new one to me, and seems to me peculiarly blasphemous. I should like to know what authority you have for its use, and what it means."
Well, now, that is a fair question, and we must try to answer it.

To keep the matter clear of misunderstanding, we must always remember two things:

(1) That the title Mother of God refers only to our Lord's human Conception and Birth. It does not refer to His Eternal Generation from the Father. It does not mean the same thing as if we said, "The Mother of the Godhead," which would indeed be blasphemous. Her Motherhood was human, carrying with it no higher prerogative than can belong to human Motherhood. We say God was born of Mary, not in the sense that His Divine Nature and Person received a beginning of existence from her, but in the sense that her Child was verily God the Eternal Son.

(2) We must remember also that the title Mother of God was not primarily used to honor the Mother. It was an ancient expression upon which a heretical attack was made, and it was insisted upon because it was the one best suited to set forth in terms that were incapable of being misunderstood, the truth of the Deity of her Son. The chief emphasis is laid on the word God, not on the word Mother.

"But how did we get hold of such a title? What is its history?"

One moment, and I will tell you. About A. D. 430 there was a Bishop of Constantinople named Nestorius. He invented a new heresy. He said that the Child Jesus who was born of the Virgin Mary was not divine, but was just an ordinary human child. He taught, however, that God entered into Him, and acted through Him, while He remained a separate human person.
Nestorius preached a sermon on the subject, in which he said: "Whoever shall say that the Virgin Mary is the Bearer of God, let him be accursed." (See Jeremy Taylor, Works, X, 312.)
Mind you, he was not preaching about the Blessed Virgin, but about her Son. What he meant to do was to pronounce an anathema against those who said that the Baby born of Mary was God.
Of course, the true Christian belief was that Jesus was always God. God the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, "came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man."He was made man, but not for a moment did He cease to be God. He gave up nothing that He possessed of His Nature and attributes as God, but taking human nature (though not a human personality), He became both God and Man, and will so remain for all eternity—one Divine Person in these two Natures.

Ever and always, from the first moment of His con­ception in Mary's womb, as a Baby, as a Boy, as a Man, Jesus was "Very God of Very God, of one Substance with the Father." This had always been the Church's belief, but Nestorius said, "No; and accursed be any man who says it."
Of course, this blasphemy roused great indignation everywhere. A Council of the Church was called to meet in the city of Ephesus in June, 431. A great throng of Bishops came from all over the world to witness against this heretical doctrine. They took up this expression, Mother of God, and found that it, or expressions with practically the same meaning, had been used by the pastors of the Church cer­tainly as far back as the time of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who, as an old man, was martyred only ten years after the death of St. John.

This Council condemned Nestorius, and expressly de­clared that the Blessed Mother was Theotokos, which is the Greek word for Mother of God, or, more literally, She who gave birth to God. Twenty years later another Council met at Chalcedon and repeated the declaration that Mary was the Mother of God. Now, there is an important thing to be noted just here. Our Church has always held both of these Councils to be among the true Councils of the Universal Church, to which she especially appealed at the Reformation. And she has ever required that their decrees concerning Christian belief be accepted. To deny the truth of this title, therefore, is to reject the teaching of the Anglican Church.

But there is a question you might here wish to ask. Have the best theologians of our Church accepted the words, Mother of God, as a proper translation of the Greek word Theotokos? Well, let us see. Did you ever hear of Bishop Pearson? If not, go and ask your clergyman who he was. He will tell you that he was a great English Bishop, who wrote a book on the Apostles' Creed, which stands superior to any other work on the subject. He will probably show you the book in his library.

"By the general consent of the Church," writes this great Bishop, "the Virgin was plainly named the Mother of God"; and this was, he declares, "because He which was so born of her was God."
Dear old Jeremy Taylor! How our grandmothers loved his two beautiful books, "Holy Living" and "Holy Dying"! We should be better men and women if we loved them, too. Surely he will not lead us astray. "Though the Blessed Virgin Mary," he says, "be not in Scripture called Theotokos, the Mother of God [you see it does not occur to him that there can be any other translation], yet that she was the Mother of Jesus, and that Jesus Christ is God, and yet but one Person, that we can prove from Scrip­ture, and that is sufficient for the appellative." (Works, IX, 637.)

Again, Archbishop Bramhall never dreamed of questioning this title. "The union of the two Natures, divine and human, in Christ," he says, "is a fundamental truth. That the Blessed Virgin is the Mother of God, that Christ hath both a human and divine will, are evident consequences of this truth." (Works, II, 90.)

George Bull, the great Bishop of St. David's, was one of the most powerful champions the Anglican Church has had since the Reformation. Like another St. George, he was invincible against the dragons of Protestant error on the one side and Roman error on the other. He preached a sermon on "The Lowliness and the Ex­altation of the Blessed Virgin," defending the title Mother of God as one that is needful for the right expression of the fact of our Lord's Deity, and demonstrates that the origin of the title is to be found in the New Testament itself.
He wrote two hundred years ago, and his English is a little crabbed, but I am going to quote him at length, for no writer of our Church shows us so fully the history and rea­sonableness of the term.

"The Fathers of the third General Council at Ephesus," he says, "approved the title Theotokos, the Mother of God, given to the Blessed Virgin Mary. . . . They them­selves, in their synodical epistle, say that the holy Fathers before them doubted not to call the Blessed Virgin Theotokon, Deiparam, the Mother of God. Indeed, a whole age before that Council we find Eusebius giving that title to the Sacred Virgin. And Socrates, a most credible witness in this matter, assures us that Origen [A. D. 253] long before Eusebius largely explained and asserted that title as applied to the Blessed Virgin. And, to go yet higher, we have Irenaeus [A. D. 187], who was a scholar to a scholar of the Apostles, magnifying the Virgin on this account, that she did portare Deum, bore God within her. If she did portare Deum, she did parere Deum; if she bore God, she brought him forth, too, and so was Theotokos, the Mother of God, that is, of Him that was God. Nay, the blessed martyr and disciple of the Apostles, Ignatius [A. D. 110], in his epistle to the Ephesians feared not to say, "Our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived of Mary."

He then declares that in this matter we do not need to seek after human authorities, because it is recorded in St. Luke's Gospel that "the inspired Elizabeth, in her divine rap­ture, plainly gives the Blessed Virgin the same title—'and whence is this to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to me.' " (St. Luke 1: 43.) For, he continues, "the Mother of our Lord is, doubtless, of the same import with Theotokos, the Mother of God." "Now, the necessary consequence of this dignity of the Blessed Virgin's is," continues Bishop Bull, "that she re­mained forever a virgin, as the Catholic Church hath always held and maintained. For it cannot, with decency, be imagined that the most holy vessel which was once thus consecrated to be a receptacle of the Deity should after­wards be desecrated and profaned by human use." (Bull, Works, I, 97, sqq.)

Time would fail us to summon all the Anglican wit­nesses for this title, but we must see what the theologians of our own time have to say. There is an excellent book on the Incarnation of our Lord by the Rev. H. V. S. Eck, published in the "Oxford Library of Practical Theology." He quotes Dr. Wm. Bright, the great theologian and poet (he wrote our beautiful Communion hymn, "And now, O Father, mindful of the Love"), as approving the words Mother of God, being careful to give them, of course, the proper explanation. Mr. Eck himself says, "If Mary was not the Mother of God, then that holy Thing that was born of her was not God." This book is published under the editorship of Canon Newbolt, of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and Dr. Darwell Stone, of Pusey House, Oxford. These two eminent scholars passed upon the theology of it, and even if Mr. Eck's own name and reputation were not sufficient, their names are a guarantee that it contains nothing but sound doctrine.

So, grounded upon both reason and authority, the con­clusion is inevitable. Jesus is God. If Jesus was born of Mary, God was born of Mary. If Jesus died on the Cross, God died on the Cross; for though the Deity, as such, could not die, yet He who in His Human Nature endured the Cross was verily God the Eternal Son.

This is repeatedly declared in the New Testament. St. Paul says it was the Blood of God that redeemed the Church. (Acts 20:28.) And, again, that it was the Lord of Glory who was crucified. (I Cor. 2:8.) And St. John says it was the Blood of God the Son which cleanseth us from all sin. (I St. John 1 : 7.) But we must not lose sight of what we said at the first. Unspeakable honor as the title Mother of God is to the Holy Virgin, whom, next to our Lord, we venerate above all human beings, yet primarily it was intended not to praise her, but to show the Deity of Her Son. And this title is of peculiar and incalculable value in our own day. Many men are willing to honor our Lord in their own way, but they will not say Jesus is God. They believe that He was a wonderful and holy man; they believe that God dwelt in Him as in no one else; they will even say, in a vague, hesitating way, that He wrought as God. But they are afraid to say with the Catholic Church that it was God who dwelt in Mary's womb, and who lay in the manger; that God worked in the carpenter shop, and was weary and went to sleep in a boat; that God died on the Cross; that God lay in the grave, and, rising from the dead, ascended into heaven, taking with Him that Human Body, that complete Man-Nature, from which He will never for all eternity be separated. They are afraid to say these things because in their hearts they do not believe that Jesus is God.

When we say that the Blessed Virgin is the Mother of God, we make such shilly-shallying about the Deity of Christ impossible. The great Council of Ephesus made this title the test of the true believer. He who, with Nestorius, refuses to use it is shrinking from a simple, emphatic declaration of the Deity of Jesus, which is the one indispen­sable and essential belief without which the Christian religion would cease to exist. So we glory in the bold declaration that Mary is the Mother of God. In saying this we pronounce her Child to have been from the first moment of His Conception in her womb, and henceforth for all eternity, the Incarnate Jehovah.

THE SON AND THE MOTHER

The Blessed Mary is to be honored only in her divine Son. Every thought of her should be associated with Him. The very titles of love and honor we bestow on her should declare also His glory and majesty.

What better name, then, could we give her than Mother of God? He who uses this title crowns her with the loftiest honor that can be conceived; and at the same time with every mention of the Mother, by the use of a term that is incapable of being misunderstood, he declares the divine dignity of the Son, bearing witness before men that Jesus is God. So, like the holy Fathers of old, let us not fear to use the term Mother of God freely. Our thought often takes form from our speech. If men in their mention of Blessed Mary habitually spoke of the Mother of God, their hearts would not easily turn away from the truth of the Deity of her Son.