Is Mary really the Mother of God?

[MelanieM]

John 1:1-2 & 14 [1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] He was in the beginning with God. [14] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

If Jesus existed from the beginning of time, and if Jesus is God, then what does it mean when Catholics call Mary the mother of God? Wouldn't that mean she had to have created God to be His mother?

[Stephen Spiteri]

Although Mary is the Mother of God, she is not his mother in the sense that she is older than God or the source of her Son’s divinity, for she is neither. Rather, we say that she is the Mother of God in the sense that she carried in her womb a divine person—Jesus Christ, God "in the flesh" (2 John 7, cf. John 1:14)—and in the sense that she contributed the genetic matter to the human form God took in Jesus Christ.

[DavidObeid]

That's right.

The Person born of Mary was none other than God the Son.

This is from the Lumen Verum Apologetics article on the subject:


The term “Mother of God” was defined by the Council of Ephesus (431AD) in response to the Christological controversy ignited by Nestorius, then Patriarch of Constantinople. The heresy attributed to Nestorius held that in Christ there existed not one divine Person with two natures, human and divine, but two separate Persons, one human and one divine, with two natures, human and divine. Consequently, the Virgin Mary, as she supplied only Christ’s human flesh and not His divinity, was only mother of Christ’s humanity and therefore in no sense could be called Mother of God. The Church, upholding that Christ was one divine Person only, and noting that the Virgin Mary was the mother of this divine Person, defined dogmatically that she could properly be called “Mother of God.”

http://www.lumenverum.org/apologetics/DefendtheFaith/page180.html

[Kylie Maroun]

Jesus is God.

The Blessed Virgin is His mother.

Therefore, Our Lady is the Mother of God.

[MelanieM]

So does that make Mary's parents the Grandparents of God? If so, then why don't we honour them as we honour Mary?

[Matthew]

Answer to the first is yes.

The grandmother of God isn't the living tabernacle of the Son of God in whose womb he was conceived and was herself conceived immaculately.

[DavidObeid]

That's right.

The Ark of the Covenant was venerated in the Old Testament, but not so much the tree the wood came from or the mine the gold came from.

[MelanieM]

Thanks :)

God Bless

[Stephen Spiteri]

I just wanted to add something to this thread that occured to me during the week as I was going over Luke 1 with my students (we're studying Mariology at the moment), this verse in particular:

"And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" - Luke 1:43 (D-R)

As the Book of Luke was written in Greek, the word for "Lord" used would have been "Kurios" ("Adonai" in Hebrew), the title given to God and the Messiah. This verse is often looked over when objections are made by fundamentalists in use of "the mother of God" in reference to the Blessed Virgin.

In the Old Testament God is often referred to as "Lord", and when a Jew was speaking of the Lord or calling upon the name of the Lord they were always referring to God (YHWH). The [Koine] Greek word "Kurios" is used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint.

It is completely scriptural to refer to Mary as the mother of God as Elizabeth herself did.