Theotokos, revisited

I try to avoid engaging guests of the monastery in discussions of theology; that's a job best left to the professionals. But the other day a woman who was part of a tour group from a local church confronted me in the gift shop in order to explain to me why we are wrong to refer to Mary as the Mother of God. "God doesn't have a mother," she insisted. "He's eternal." I briefly laid out in clear terms (or what I thought were clear terms) why it is that we affirm that it is entirely proper, in fact necessary, to call Mary, not only the Mother of God, but the Birthgiver of God, or Theotokos.

"I've heard all those arguments before," she muttered, as she waved me off and walked away.

Okay. I know she won't be reading this, but I'll write it as if she will.

We certainly don't shy away from calling Mary the Mother of God (she is identified on icons with the letters ΜΡ ΘΥ. which is an abbreviation of Μητηρ Θεου, the Greek for "Mother of God"). But dogmatically, the Church takes it one step further. According to the Third Ecumenical Council:

If anyone will not confess that the Emmanuel is very God, and that therefore the Holy Virgin is the [Birthgiver] of God (Θεοτόκος), inasmuch as in the flesh she bore the Word of God made flesh [as it is written, “The Word was made flesh”] let him be anathema.

So calling Mary Mother of God is all well and good, but if you stop there, you might be tempted to think that Mary had simply adopted Jesus and raised Him as His mother. But that's not what we believe. We believe that, from the very instant of His conception in the womb, Christ was fully God. He didn't become God some time later, which is the teaching that got Nestorius in so much trouble. So, when Mary gave birth to Jesus, she didn't give birth to a child who would someday take on divinity. She actually gave birth to God.

We don't belive that Mary is coeternal with God or that she is the mother of the Trinity. She didn't give Jesus his divinity, but she did give Him his humanity. They actually shared DNA. I heard recently that when a woman gives birth to a child, she carries some of that child's cells inside her body for the rest of her life.

Just give that a second to sink in.

Is it any wonder that we celebrate and marvel at this awesome mystery, that even the angels themselves don't fully comprehend! Who isn't awestruck at the very thought!

"He whom the entire universe could not contain was contained within your womb, O Theotokos."

And is it possible really to belive in the Incarnation and reject the belief that Mary is the Birthgiver of God? And how does one explain the reaction of Elizabeth, who was "filled with the Holy Spirit," if Mary isn't the Mother of God?

"And why is it granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1.43)

So, in short, insisting that Mary is not the Birthgiver of God makes one a Nestorian heretic, a denier of the Incarnation, and a rejecter of Holy Scripture. Basically, a non-Christian.