Is John Mcarthur guilty of heresy?

[The Liturgist]

I'm just asking for a single quote from someone like Ignatius or Clement or Polycarp from whomever knows of one. Not a whole huge essay. I've already gotten enough of those. And no hard feelings at all. I consider disagreements and spats with my brothers and sisters in Christ to be just that, passing family spats. I love you all very much.

I actually dug up several pages of resources on this subject recently, so when I get back from the doctor, if my migraine headache is any better, I will share those with you.

 

[Mark Quayle]

@dzheremi is Oriental Orthodox, not Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox, for reasons which were at the time quite justifiable, did reject the Council of Chalcedon. Now this is in the distant past, and there has been considerable ecumenical rapprochement, in particular between the Syriac Orthodox (OO) and Antiochian Orthodox (EO) and between the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the much smaller Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria and All Africa, and also between the Copts and the Church of Sinai which is an autonomous church under the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, in charge of St. Catharine’s Monastery, which has a fantastic library from which the Codex Sinaiticus was stolen, as well as some of the oldest and most beautiful icons, and the celebrated Burning Bush from Exodus, which by its very existence was a typographic prophecy of the Theotokos. And of course the Coptic Orthodox Church has the oldest monasteries in the world, in the form of the Monasteries of St. Paul the Hermit and St. Anthony the Great. The Australian convert Fr. Lazarus el Antony currently lives as an anchorite in the hills above St. Anthony’s and celebrates the Divine Liturgy nightly in St. Anthony’s Cave. Also, the Armenian Orthodox Church enjoys very good relations with most of the Eastern Orthodox churches, except perhaps some of the Greek Orthodox and a few other EO churches which are extremely opposed to ecumenical reconciliation and continue to believe the erroneous myth that the Oriental Orthodox are monophysites (in fact, the Monophysite cult founded by Eutyches degenerated into Tritheism and later became extinct, so the true heirs of the Monophysites at present are the Mormons; Eutyches was anathematized by the Oriental Orthodox for heresy, and the Christology of the Oriental Orthodox is more correctly called Miaphysite, although I myself prefer to call it Cyrillian, for it follows precisely the terminology used by St. Cyril of Alexandria in opposition to Nestorianism).

Now, there are some Ethiopian Orthodox monasteries which are not keen on ecumenical reconciliation with the Eastern Orthodox, because they continue to suspect the Chalcedonians of crypto-Nestorianism. The Oriental Orthodox are greatly opposed to Nestorianism, and this thread is basically about whether or not Rev. MacArthur is a Nestorian.

By the way, conventionally, the definition of a heretic is someone who propagates false teachings which contradict the Nicene Creed, or which involve altering the contents of Scripture, or violating the dogmatic definitions of the Ecumenical Councils. The first three ecumenical councils, of Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus, are agreed upon by not only the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, but also the Lutherans and Anglicans, thus accounting for the four largest Christian denominations, and a considerable majority of all Christians worldwide. Of course, most of the above also agree with Chalcedon, which the Oriental Orthodox reject, but what wound up happening with Chalcedon is the influence of the Theopaschite party during the early years of Justinian’s reign had the effect of neutralizing and negating the attempts of crypto-Nestorians like Ibas to push a Nestorianizing interpretation of Chalcedon, and in particular, the introduction of the hymn Ho Monogenes, originally written by the great Oriental Orthodox theologian St. Severus of Antioch, into the Eastern Orthodox divine liturgy, ultimately had an effect that I would argue promoted equivalence between Oriental Orthodox and Chalcedonian Christology, so that the differences can be reduced to semantics. And likewise, starting with Mar Babai the Great, the Church of the East began to move away from Nestorianism, so that at present while they still venerate Nestorius, they agree with the Oriental Orthodox and the Chalcedonians that the humanity and divinity of Christ exist without change, confusion, separation, or division, the latter two points being particularly important, because at its core, Nestorianism is an error that separates and divides the divinity and humanity of our Lord, so that the principle of communicatio idiomatum breaks down.

Thank you for this.

So, it can be pretty easily established that MacArthur is not Nestorian, and did not mean anything against the Scripture, nor did he use private interpretation of Scripture. He had a good point to make, and in context it is pretty obvious he made it. It seems to me that the cat-calls and jeers of his opponents are unwarranted. At the worst, he misspoke, or used hyperbole.

 

[dzheremi]

I'm still waiting for a scripture verse or quote from an early church father that says God wants us to pray to people who are in the afterlife up in heaven.

Here's an idea:

Many things in the Bible that are shown to be acceptable before the Lord are not described as you would apparently like them to be in order for them to be evidence of those practices in the nascent Church. Think about it: Does Christ tell people "Remember: You must fast on these days, in this specific way, etc.", or does He give guidance like "Moreover, when you fast..." (emphasis added)? On that particular example, recall also "This kind can only come out by prayer and fasting."

What does it mean that many things in the Bible are presented this way, with the presupposition that the audience who is hearing Christ say these things (and, eventually, the audience who would hear them read in liturgy) will understand that they are things to be done in following the examples of Christ and His glorious apostles and disciples? A few things: Many of the beliefs and practices that are not explicitly or exhaustively covered in the scriptures are nonetheless treated in such a way as to make it clear to all who hear them or read them that we are to do them, without explicit instruction in exactly how, when, or with what specific justification. Such things are present, but not in the Bible itself, and not necessarily even in the fathers (as not all fathers, for instance, left behind canons which would govern the churches, or composed anaphoras which would shape our worship). Nevertheless, we know that they are there because we can infer just the same things that our fathers and mothers grasped when first hearing those words spoken, or reading them written down: That fasting is to be normative (it's not some kind of 'extra' or especially 'hardcore' form of devotion, as many Christians who don't do it in the first place may see it as), that the fight against the demons is a real thing and not some sort of superstition, and so on.

Realizing that a great deal of the Bible requires this kind of in-context reading to understand how it is that we have arrived at what we are to do also answers questions that persist about praxis among those Protestants whose worship has only the most minimal structure, since that minimal structure is arguably all that a bare reading of the Biblical text would provide with regard to how to conduct a Christian worship service. Since we can't get to any real liturgy as we know it (and have known it since the days of Addai and Mari, Basil, Mark/Cyril, and so on) by simply opening the Bible and saying "Aha! It says here that we need something called an 'altar call', and something else called a 'Sinner's prayer'..." (and many other things that it does not explicitly endorse or require, yet those same Protestants have no trouble saying are in keeping with the worship of the early Church), we have relied upon the prayers of the Church fixed in some order according to the anaphora (liturgical text) that is used in whatever particular time in the liturgical calendar that we may find ourselves in. This undoubtedly results in more 'stuff' that is 'not in the Bible' (a nonsense charge considering the above about the Bible's not being composed for the purposes of teaching us the specifics of how to conduct services, or how exactly we should fastk etc.), which looks bad to a certain kind of Protestant, but keep in mind how we got here: We (well, our fathers) saw that there are a great many things in the Bible that are not commanded, as such, but assumed given the background of the hearers at the time. So for instance, the Bible does not tell us how to conduct a liturgy. Why? Because the earliest Christians would've already had the background of Jewish temple and synagogue practices to draw from, which were already known and accepted by everyone within the Jewish milieu from which the earliest Christianity would emerge. This is why, for instance, that at the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem, the debate was not over "How are we supposed to conduct a worship service", or even "What are we to believe and teach" (at least not directly), but rather "Has the Church adopted everything it ought to from Judaism, or should it also require its gentile converts to take up Jewish religious norms and customs in order to become Christians?" (In other words, do you need to be Jewish first, since obviously we're following a Jewish messiah, and so many of our practices are inherited from Judaism and baptized into the Church?)

That this was even the question tells us that other crucial aspects of life and practice in early Christianity were not a source of controversy for those involved in the council, because again, they had the necessary background to know what was a potential problem vs. what did not to be spelled out in order to be taken as or continued as the norm in early Christian worship.

If you keep this in mind when you read the Bible and meditate upon it, it starts to make a lot more sense why we don't find so many commands that address specific practices like intercession, or viewing St. Mary as especially blessed, etc. What is already accepted, what is already shown in a normal and positive light where it does occur (e.g., Tobit, Revelation, etc.), does not then also need to be spelled out exhaustively, as though the people who wrote, read, and heard these books wouldn't themselves know from their own practices that these things are normal and good. As a rather gruff friend of mine from church once put it when I younger in the Orthodox faith and still suffered from some transitional scrupulosity, "Why do you need to be told what to do before you can do anything? Are you going to call up Fr. Marcus and say 'O, abouna, I stepped on an ant today! Please tell me what to do about it!', or 'O, abouna, how should I dress myself today?' Grow up, man!"

Following that shock treatment, I would say that the impulse to want to know what kind of backing a particular long-established norm of Christian practice or belief has is a good one (of course, it's good to know why we do what we do, instead of being like robots who do things just because), but also that rejecting everything that cannot be found explicitly in the Bible or within a specific and narrow range of the Fathers (NB: unlike some other churches, in Oriental Orthodoxy, the 'age of the Fathers' has never been limited to a specific period, but remains open today, with saints-in-all-but-name like Fr. Matthew the Poor and Tamav Irini who departed only in the 2000s bearing witness) is really not the sign of spiritual maturity or purity that those who approach the scriptures and the Fathers in this way may think it is.

TL; DR summary (since I know you hate long posts, even though we are discussing the substance of our religion, which is the point of this entire website): You're not following the Bible or the Fathers better than others are -- you're just understanding them worse than those who came before you, by applying a mindset to them and prepositions to them that no one before the modern era ever had. It's the Holy Bible, not the Holy Manual on How to be Religious.

 

[dzheremi]

As soon as I get feeling better

May the Physician of our souls and our bodies heal and comfort you, friend.

 

[dzheremi]

Thank you for this.

So, it can be pretty easily established that MacArthur is not Nestorian, and did not mean anything against the Scripture, nor did he use private interpretation of Scripture. He had a good point to make, and in context it is pretty obvious he made it. It seems to me that the cat-calls and jeers of his opponents are unwarranted. At the worst, he misspoke, or used hyperbole.

It should be obvious by the discussion of what was wrong with his statement that has occured in this thread that it is entirely possible to more or less blunder one's way into a Nestorian-type view without ever intending to do so. Indeed, this is what Nestorius did to begin with, and obviously many people at the time thought that he was raising a good question and making a good point about it too. Sometimes the question that often goes unasked in situations like this is more informative than trying to determine someone else's intent: What does it mean that this particular stance is embraced so readily in response to questions about St. Mary in some modern Protestant circles, when it's neither necessary nor particularly illuminating? Does that say something about the level or type of education that Protestants (sometimes even their leaders, like McArthur) receive on Christian history and the emergence of heresies in their Bible studies, seminaries, or wherever else such talk happens?

I ask this not to make Protestants feel as though they should be on the defensive (I'm fine with saying that this man was at most scratching a peculiar itch by addressing this topic), but to ask how it might be that things are improved so as to make this vomit so clearly understood to be so that no one of any rank or particular Protestant tradition will have to worry about waking up one day to find that the leader of their local church has decided that Nestorianism really makes some good points about the nature of God.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Here's an idea:

Many things in the Bible that are shown to be acceptable before the Lord are not described as you would apparently like them to be in order for them to be evidence of those practices in the nascent Church. Think about it: Does Christ tell people "Remember: You must fast on these days, in this specific way, etc.", or does He give guidance like "Moreover, when you fast..." (emphasis added)? On that particular example, recall also "This kind can only come out by prayer and fasting."

What does it mean that many things in the Bible are presented this way, with the presupposition that the audience who is hearing Christ say these things (and, eventually, the audience who would hear them read in liturgy) will understand that they are things to be done in following the examples of Christ and His glorious apostles and disciples? A few things: Many of the beliefs and practices that are not explicitly or exhaustively covered in the scriptures are nonetheless treated in such a way as to make it clear to all who hear them or read them that we are to do them, without explicit instruction in exactly how, when, or with what specific justification. Such things are present, but not in the Bible itself, and not necessarily even in the fathers (as not all fathers, for instance, left behind canons which would govern the churches, or composed anaphoras which would shape our worship). Nevertheless, we know that they are there because we can infer just the same things that our fathers and mothers grasped when first hearing those words spoken, or reading them written down: That fasting is to be normative (it's not some kind of 'extra' or especially 'hardcore' form of devotion, as many Christians who don't do it in the first place may see it as), that the fight against the demons is a real thing and not some sort of superstition, and so on.

Realizing that a great deal of the Bible requires this kind of in-context reading to understand how it is that we have arrived at what we are to do also answers questions that persist about praxis among those Protestants whose worship has only the most minimal structure, since that minimal structure is arguably all that a bare reading of the Biblical text would provide with regard to how to conduct a Christian worship service. Since we can't get to any real liturgy as we know it (and have known it since the days of Addai and Mari, Basil, Mark/Cyril, and so on) by simply opening the Bible and saying "Aha! It says here that we need something called an 'altar call', and something else called a 'Sinner's prayer'..." (and many other things that it does not explicitly endorse or require, yet those same Protestants have no trouble saying are in keeping with the worship of the early Church), we have relied upon the prayers of the Church fixed in some order according to the anaphora (liturgical text) that is used in whatever particular time in the liturgical calendar that we may find ourselves in. This undoubtedly results in more 'stuff' that is 'not in the Bible' (a nonsense charge considering the above about the Bible's not being composed for the purposes of teaching us the specifics of how to conduct services, or how exactly we should fastk etc.), which looks bad to a certain kind of Protestant, but keep in mind how we got here: We (well, our fathers) saw that there are a great many things in the Bible that are not commanded, as such, but assumed given the background of the hearers at the time. So for instance, the Bible does not tell us how to conduct a liturgy. Why? Because the earliest Christians would've already had the background of Jewish temple and synagogue practices to draw from, which were already known and accepted by everyone within the Jewish milieu from which the earliest Christianity would emerge. This is why, for instance, that at the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem, the debate was not over "How are we supposed to conduct a worship service", or even "What are we to believe and teach" (at least not directly), but rather "Has the Church adopted everything it ought to from Judaism, or should it also require its gentile converts to take up Jewish religious norms and customs in order to become Christians?" (In other words, do you need to be Jewish first, since obviously we're following a Jewish messiah, and so many of our practices are inherited from Judaism and baptized into the Church?)

That this was even the question tells us that other crucial aspects of life and practice in early Christianity were not a source of controversy for those involved in the council, because again, they had the necessary background to know what was a potential problem vs. what did not to be spelled out in order to be taken as or continued as the norm in early Christian worship.

If you keep this in mind when you read the Bible and meditate upon it, it starts to make a lot more sense why we don't find so many commands that address specific practices like intercession, or viewing St. Mary as especially blessed, etc. What is already accepted, what is already shown in a normal and positive light where it does occur (e.g., Tobit, Revelation, etc.), does not then also need to be spelled out exhaustively, as though the people who wrote, read, and heard these books wouldn't themselves know from their own practices that these things are normal and good. As a rather gruff friend of mine from church once put it when I younger in the Orthodox faith and still suffered from some transitional scrupulosity, "Why do you need to be told what to do before you can do anything? Are you going to call up Fr. Marcus and say 'O, abouna, I stepped on an ant today! Please tell me what to do about it!', or 'O, abouna, how should I dress myself today?' Grow up, man!"

Following that shock treatment, I would say that the impulse to want to know what kind of backing a particular long-established norm of Christian practice or belief has is a good one (of course, it's good to know why we do what we do, instead of being like robots who do things just because), but also that rejecting everything that cannot be found explicitly in the Bible or within a specific and narrow range of the Fathers (NB: unlike some other churches, in Oriental Orthodoxy, the 'age of the Fathers' has never been limited to a specific period, but remains open today, with saints-in-all-but-name like Fr. Matthew the Poor and Tamav Irini who departed only in the 2000s bearing witness) is really not the sign of spiritual maturity or purity that those who approach the scriptures and the Fathers in this way may think it is.

TL; DR summary (since I know you hate long posts, even though we are discussing the substance of our religion, which is the point of this entire website): You're not following the Bible or the Fathers better than others are -- you're just understanding them worse than those who came before you, by applying a mindset to them and prepositions to them that no one before the modern era ever had. It's the Holy Bible, not the Holy Manual on How to be Religious.

Double winner.

 

[Mark Quayle]

It should be obvious by the discussion of what was wrong with his statement that has occured in this thread that it is entirely possible to more or less blunder one's way into a Nestorian-type view without ever intending to do so. Indeed, this is what Nestorius did to begin with, and obviously many people at the time thought that he was raising a good question and making a good point about it too. Sometimes the question that often goes unasked in situations like this is more informative than trying to determine someone else's intent: What does it mean that this particular stance is embraced so readily in response to questions about St. Mary in some modern Protestant circles, when it's neither necessary nor particularly illuminating? Does that say something about the level or type of education that Protestants (sometimes even their leaders, like McArthur) receive on Christian history and the emergence of heresies in their Bible studies, seminaries, or wherever else such talk happens?

I ask this not to make Protestants feel as though they should be on the defensive (I'm fine with saying that this man was at most scratching a peculiar itch by addressing this topic), but to ask how it might be that things are improved so as to make this vomit so clearly understood to be so that no one of any rank or particular Protestant tradition will have to worry about waking up one day to find that the leader of their local church has decided that Nestorianism really makes some good points about the nature of God.

You make a good point, right up til you reference "this vomit". Really? Pretty obviously all he was saying is that God the Son did not begin with Mary. He no doubt could have said it different and better. But, "vomit"? Would I be misrepresenting you to call that, "flaming"? I certainly don't see it as helping to stop the yelling. And here, I was about to congratulate you.

 

[dzheremi]

You make a good point, right up til you reference "this vomit". Really?

Yes, really. In truth, this is a rather mild thing to be calling abject heresy like denying that St. Mary is the mother of God, and the fact that it is being returned to (which was the entire point of that post) when it really ought to be considered cast aside forever already (as all Christians who have a proper head on their shoulders about the incarnation already do -- including, it should be pointed out, many Protestants) says all anyone should have to wonder about why it might be referred to that way. Mor Severus once referred to the heretic Eutyches as being like a dog returning to his vomit after going back on the acceptable confession given at Ephesus I in order to continue teaching his pet-belief concerning the nature of Christ, and that was over 1,500 years ago. Why should any modern situation involving returning to ancient heresy be treated any differently? Rejecting St. Mary as Theotokos is just as wrong now as it was when Nestorius did it, so that doesn't (and won't) change, and it has already been taken as granted by me, and I think (without going back to double-check, because this thread is very long) also The Liturgist, Hedrick and others in this thread that Mr. McArthur did not intend to support or preach heresy by saying what he said, so I don't know what the problem is. The heresy is still a heresy, and is still as harshly condemned as it ever has been (with reason), with the person who unknowingly (?) parroted it being allowed wide latitude to educate themselves on why it is wrong, what the correct stance is, and why this is an important thing to keep straight (especially if they are going to be in a place of leadership in a congregation, as I understand McArthur is).

Pretty obviously all he was saying is that God the Son did not begin with Mary. He no doubt could have said it different and better. But, "vomit"?

Yes, vomit. Vomit. Would you prefer "lies birthed from the loins of the devil" or something more along those lines?

Would I be misrepresenting you to call that, "flaming"? I certainly don't see it as helping to stop the yelling. And here, I was about to congratulate you.

You can call it whatever you'd like. It is undeniably Biblical (Proverbs 26:11; 2 Peter 2:22) and patristic (yes, Mor Severus is as dependable a Church Father as anyone is for millions of Syrians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Eritreans, and even if the Chalcedonians would balk at this, I doubt they'd have anything bad to say about his calling Eutyches of all people a vomit-chewing dog), and that is all it needs to be for me to consider it entirely proper.

I don't seek congratulations for anything. If people agree with anything I post, then I'm happy to have found that it's not just me who thinks this way; if they don't agree, that is also fine. It is far more important to me that the reasons why certain stances are upheld as unchangeable are understood, because it is not really possible to continue to accept error once you know why certain ideas which may still be quite popular have nevertheless been rejected ever since they first showed up, and are still rejected today by all traditionally-minded Christians. This is why I've asked in another post if something can be done to raise the level of historical learning involved in being a Protestant minister of the type that McArthur is (or really any of these who may be struggling with very basic theological concepts), as he deserves better than to be left to blunder into one of the most infamous and obvious heresies ever, and the reaction of "well, he probably didn't mean that" of course wouldn't be necessary in the first place if it were recognized in the first place that the entire line of argument being presented is a retread of something that no one should be teaching or believing in the first place.

 

[Servus]

TL; DR summary (since I know you hate long posts, even though we are discussing the substance of our religion, which is the point of this entire website):

Wall of text posts aren't a discussion, they're a sermon. And unfortunately in many cases a sermon that's hard to follow.

Actual discussion, especially in debates, consists of concise comments being traded back and forth.

You're not following the Bible or the Fathers better than others are -- you're just understanding them worse than those who came before you, by applying a mindset to them and prepositions to them that no one before the modern era ever had.

You're going to have to provide what the Fathers of the Apostolic Church said about praying to Mary and the saints in the afterlife, before it can be determined how I'm understanding them regarding that matter.

It's the Holy Bible, not the Holy Manual on How to be Religious.

What is the Holy Bible then?

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

What you are ‘getting at’ is something no Catholic or Orthodox or Traditional Protestant would EVER even think of as a possibility. Simply the Eternal Son of the Father became a human in real time, with a real human mother who birthed a human yet divine person. Not aeons ago but about 2029 years ago give or take a handful. It is craziness to object to this on the basis of a non-existent theoretical heresy that has zero current proponents and may have never had more than a dozen actual proponents ever.

If John MacArthur says that Mary is the Mother of Jesus but not the mother of God and intends thereby to mean that Mary is not the mother of the divine nature he would be combating a belief that does not exist, probably never has existed, and if it has any purchase in any minds then it is in the minds of those who think that they are combatting a heresy that in reality no one holds.

Mary is the mother of God because she is the mother of Jesus. That is all that need be said. There is no implication that Blessed Mary was God, or became God, or ever will be God. It ought to be obvious to all that God was, is, and always will be God; it is not possible to become God.

 

[Servus]

If John MacArthur says that Mary is the Mother of Jesus but not the mother of God and intends thereby to mean that Mary is not the mother of the divine nature he would be combating a belief that does not exist, probably never has existed, and if it has any purchase in any minds then it is in the minds of those who think that they are combatting a heresy that in reality no one holds.

Mary is the mother of God because she is the mother of Jesus. That is all that need be said. There is no implication that Blessed Mary was God, or became God, or ever will be God. It ought to be obvious to all that God was, is, and always will be God; it is not possible to become God.

How about "the mother of God Incarnate"? Does that work out alright?

 

[dzheremi]

Wall of text posts aren't a discussion, they're a sermon. And unfortunately in many cases a poorly constructed sermon.

Just as "I don't want to read this, but I do still want to respond about how much I don't want to read this because it's too long for my liking" isn't an actual response to anything that is presented in a discussion, right?

Actual discussion, especially in debates, consists of concise comments being traded back and forth.

Says you. If you want to have a TV soundbite-style discussion of complex theological issues and the very long histories behind them, I'm sure there are many people who would be more comfortable with that than with longer, more involved discussions. I hope you will find such people, wherever they are. I am clearly not one. Bite-sized theology certainly has its place, but when "if A, then B, therefore C" was already tried and rejected for God knows what reason in this very discussion, is it really all that surprising that the discussion progressed beyond that?

I personally have no problem with "The child that St. Mary gave birth to is God, so St. Mary is the Theotokos (lit. birth-giver to God)." In a certain sense, nothing more than than ever needed to be said. It is the birth of heresies that denied this truth that made it so that "Beneath Thy Protection" was added to by many, many other hymns and prayers to combat the errors of Nestorius and his ilk (which itself is a continuation of a preexisting tradition, as when St. Ephrem earlier composed his hymns and prayers to combat the popularity of the hymns of Bardaisan among his fellow Syrians).

You're going to have to provide what the Fathers of the Apostolic Church said about praying to Mary and the saints in the afterlife, before it can be determined how I'm understanding them regarding that matter.

Recall the point I made in that post: explicit positive instruction to do something is often not given because it is not necessary. That's true of both the Holy Bible (which, for instance, doesn't tell us to worship the Holy Trinity) and of the writings of the Fathers. Defining the character of whatever it is we are doing generally does not happen until there is a serious challenge to what was up until that point already accepted (recall the point about "Beneath Thy Protection" predating in the written record the birth and rise of Nestorius by quite a number of years). This is how we ended up with the Nicaean Creed (which deals with the heresy of Arius), the revision and expansion of the same at Constantinople in 381 (where subsequent material was added against the errors of the Pneumatomachi, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit), and the defense of Theotokos as a Christological title at Ephesus in 431 (against Nestorius and those of his party).

With that in mind, here is what some of the Fathers have said concerning the Theotokos St. Mary:

"But we, O my friends, resorting to the garden of the Saviour, let us praise the Holy Virgin; saying along with the angels in the language of Divine grace, "Rejoice thou and be glad." For from her first shone forth the eternally radiant light, that lighteth us with its goodness.
The Holy Virgin is herself both an honourable temple of God and a shrine made pure, and a golden altar of whole burnt offerings. By reason of her surpassing purity [she is] the Divine incense of oblation, and oil of the holy grace, and a precious vase bearing in itself the true nard; [yea and] the priestly diadem revealing the good pleasure of God, whom she alone approacheth holy in body and soul. [She is] the door which looks eastward, and by the comings in and goings forth the whole earth is illuminated. The fertile olive from which the Holy Spirit took the fleshly slip (or twig) of the Lord, and saved the suffering race of men. She is the boast of virgins, and the joy of mothers; the declaration of archangels, even as it was spoken: 'Be thou glad and rejoice, the Lord with thee'; and again, 'from thee'; in order that He may make new once more the dead through sin.

-- St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213 - c. 270), Homily Concerning the Holy Mother of God (tr. Conybeare, 1896); accessible via the ever-helpful Tertullian Project. Emphasis added to show at what an early date it was considered entirely ordinary to offer praises to the Theotokos St. Mary, and to encourage all who hear or read your homily to do the same.

Interesting aside: While it seems that Conybeare is saying in the first of the footnotes to this translation that St. Gregory did not use the literal term Theotokos within it, he also points out that this term would've been consistent with the saint's description of St. Mary, and that his contemporary, HH Pope Dionysius of Alexandria, had already been using that very term by this time. Since the papacy of HH Pope Dionysius began in 248 and ended with his departure in 265, we can view this as another evidence that the Orthodox use of the term Theotokos, with that this entails (Christologically, etc.), was firmly established long before the arrival of Nestorius, who again was not even born until c. 386.

“It is essential for us to confess that the holy Ever-Virgin Mary is actually Theotokos, so as not to fall into blasphemy. For those who deny that the Holy Virgin is actually Theotokos are no longer believers, but disciples of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

-- St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306 - 373), "To John the Monk" (I found this snippet on a Serbian Orthodox website, because some Greek dunderheads saw fit to make stephrem.org into a website for selling their book of English translations of the Greek corpus of St. Ephrem, rather than a repository from which to learn the saint's works, as the name and 'org' status might suggest. Boo hiss he wasn't a Greek! )

St. Ephrem is with reason considered to be the greatest poet-theologian ever produced within the world of Syriac Christianity (some might say all Christianity, and I would not for a second disagree), and is venerated by East and West alike, and always has been. There is practically no Father from his time and place who can be said to be as universally held-up as an expositor of the Orthodox faith.


"The prophets, the apostles, the martyrs & the priests who were gathered together, also the teachers & the patriarchs & the righteous ones of old!

In heaven, the watchers; & [in] the depths, man; in the air, glory: when the Virgin Mary was buried as one deceased.

A light shone on that company of disciples, also on her neighbors & her relations & her kindred.

The heavenly company performed their “Holy, Holy, Holy,” unto the glorious soul of this Mother of the Son of God.

Fiery seraphim surrounded the soul of the departed & raised the loud sound of their joyful shouts.

They shouted & said: 'Lift up, O gates, all your heads, because the Mother of the King seeks to enter the bridal chamber of light.'"

-- St. Jacob of Serugh (c. 451-521), "On The Dormition of the Mother of God" (as reproduced here)

Etc., etc., etc.

These and copious others all work as answers to the request for approval of the practice of praying to saints more generally (not just the Theotokos), given that what is established in any reference you can name is "this is what is done" (only the quote given from St. Ephrem here is the focus on "This is what we must believe and preach", and predictably it is over and against opposition from those who claim to be among us but are not, by virtue of what they embrace instead), showing once again that we can tell what is approved by what is presented without being argued for, since it doesn't need to be in the first place. Obviously Mor Jacob is not making the point that the gathered ones in heaven must therefore make an intellectually-satisfying case for praying "Holy Holy Holy" to the soul of St. Mary! Heaven does not and cannot contain even one speck of sin or falsehood, so if it wasn't meant to happen there, obviously it wouldn't. If the argument is then "Well that's there, and this is here" (cf. your earlier reaction to Tobit -- i.e., that's from an archangel), the question ought to be asked straightforwardly why we ought to entertain any such division whereby God wants us to behave and believe differently on Earth than in Heaven. That's obviously wrong, as anyone who has ever prayed the Lord's Prayer (which, lest we lose track of this, was given to us from the very mouth of God) can readily recognize, having prayed that God's will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

That's what keeping the remembrance of the saints (via petitions for intercession, or naming our children and churches alike after them, or venerating icons of them, or any other thing we do) is all about; so much so, in fact, that the portion of the most widely-celebrated liturgy in my own Church that contains the commemoration of the saints (those explicitly named as part of the set liturgical text; there is variation, as in all things) begins in its English translation "As this, O Lord, is the command of Your Only-Begotten Son, that we share in the commemoration of Your saints..." (so what'dya know, we do have an explicit command to positively do something! Good thing it comes from Jesus Christ our God and not someone here on CF, lest it might be seen as fit to be argued about when it very much is not):

What is the Holy Bible then?

The Holy Bible is a great many things. It is indisputably authored by inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit (see here Agathangelos' recording of the teachings of St. Gregory the Illuminator, 4th century, which is notable for being an early work that goes into the composition of the scriptures; this is available in an English translation from Thompson 1970, under the title of An Early Armenian Catechism), but obviously the fact that we can and do all agree on that, but very much disagree on the 'use' of the Holy Bible (for lack of a better way to put it) shows that it is not that simple.

I take a more 'macro' way of looking at this question, because I don't imagine you would find very much variation among different types of Christians if you looked at what the individual is doing with it. Whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, or even Nestorian, we all read it, we all gather to read it, we all meditate upon it, etc.

On a macro level, however, neither Orthodox nor Catholics (nor I'm sure a great many Protestants, though they are harder to generalize about, by design) approach the scriptures as something outside of or above the Church. Not only is that just incorrect in a historical sense, it is also alien to the way that we would traditionally think of the Bible as a part of the faith. This is important to point out because any hermeneutic that pits the Church against the Bible which the Church herself authored, canonized, interpreted, preached, and continues to interpret and preach is bound to be a non-starter for us. So every time we read "Where is that in the Bible?", "I'm going to need a verse to prove that", or anything like that, it's like a shorthand that tells us that we are interacting with a person who places the Bible above the Church, which again is really not possible, since the Bible one of the many collections of writings produced by, for, and within the Church. It's not something separate from the Church, or above it, or that sits in judgment of the Church.

By contrast to this, I would say that the Holy Scriptures are exactly what they are said to be in 2 Timothy 3:16-17

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

+++

Nothing in that says that they are:

1) An exhaustive and explicit list of what we can or cannot do or believe
2) A manual on how to be religious, e.g., how to conduct a worship service, or answer a particular religious controversy, etc.
3) Self-interpreting, such that you or I who are following what the text obviously means are right, and anyone who has a different interpretation is wrong
4) Written for western people in the English language (obvious, I know, but so many debates about "what the Bible REALLY says" tend to degenerate into why this or that translation is right or wrong, as a kind of surrogate for what people mean but maybe don't often feel like they can say because the version of the Bible that they prefer instead likely has very similar problems as the ones they criticize: "I don't trust this because this reading prejudices the reader towards/away from a particular reading in a way that feels weird relative to what I've always accepted as being 'what the Bible says')

Put simply, whatever we can say about what the Bible is, what it really is in terms of how we encounter it is a collection of books to be read, understood, and lived out within the bosom of the Church. The Ethiopian eunuch recognized this when he asked Philip "How can I understand unless someone will instruct me?"

 

[The Liturgist]

You make a good point, right up til you reference "this vomit". Really? Pretty obviously all he was saying is that God the Son did not begin with Mary. He no doubt could have said it different and better. But, "vomit"? Would I be misrepresenting you to call that, "flaming"? I certainly don't see it as helping to stop the yelling. And here, I was about to congratulate you.

I have to confess I am with @dzheremi on this one, because as a fellow Orthodox Christian, as I grew in the faith, I reached a point where I found the Christology of Nestorius and certain other Nestorians to be literally nauseating, for example, a particular hymn of Mar Narsai that attributes different deeds of Christ to His divinity and humanity respectively that I find absolutely sickening. I would argue that Nestorianism is extremely theologically and Christologically dissonant, indeed, its beyond dissonant, almost like someone scratching a chalkboard with a rusty nail. It breaks communicatio idiomatum, Theopaschitism, and all of the five soteriological models simultaneously embraced by the Orthodox, leaving only a form of penal substitutionary atonement which looks particularly cruel since God isn’t the one who suffers, but rather a human being who happens to be in a union of will or a union of personal identity with the Logos. And in so doing it clashes with the Scriptural model of Christ our God, who entered the furnace with the three youths condemned by Nebuchadnezzar, keeping them alive, and who calms us by His mere presence, because He is God and Man, the greatest Man and the only begotten Son and Word of God, born of a woman in 1 AD yet begotten of the Father before all ages, who puts on our mortal human nature in order to restore it to immortality thorugh His own death and resurrection, who sacrifices Himself voluntarily to free us from the ultimate self-inflicted penalty of our sins, and who then descends into Hell to save those who had died before His incarnation who were willing to hear Him; a God-man of ultimate humility by whom the universe was both created countless ages ago, and recreated in His passion and resurrection, the uncontainable logos contained in the womb of the Theotokos and in the Holy Sepulchre, before rising again in glory and ascending to Heaven, trailblazing the path that we will follow.

Nestorianism is incompatible with what the most ardent defender of the Incarnation against Arius taught, that God became man so that man could become god, or as Fr. John Behr expresses it, that God died in order to show us what it means to be human.

This is why I find the Christology of Nestorius, especially as expressed by some Nestorian poets such as Mar Narsai, to literally upset my stomach. It makes me queasy and I suspect I would throw up if I dwelled on it for too long.

That said, I love the Assyrian Church of the East, but I pray that eventually they will stop venerating Nestorius just as they long ago discarded his fundamentally broken Christology.

 

[The Liturgist]

On a macro level, however, neither Orthodox nor Catholics (nor I'm sure a great many Protestants, though they are harder to generalize about, by design) approach the scriptures as something outside of or above the Church.

Certainly not Anglo Catholics. I would be interested to know how @Via Crucis and @MarkRohfrietsch , our high church Evangelical Catholic Lutheran friends, feel about this. To my surprise I’ve discovered that the high church Lutherans agree with the Orthodox on most things.

 

[Servus]

Certainly not Anglo Catholics. I would be interested to know how @Via Crucis and @MarkRohfrietsch , our high church Evangelical Catholic Lutheran friends, feel about this. To my surprise I’ve discovered that the high church Lutherans agree with the Orthodox on most things.

I agree with the Orthodox on most things. Just about the only youtube channel I'm subscribed to is one that belongs to an Archmandrite. Praying to Mary and the saints in the afterlife is probably one of the few Orthodox practices I can't see myself doing. And I wish I could have had an actual conversation with some members here regarding the subject, but alas that didn't work out.

 

[The Liturgist]

I agree with the Orthodox on most things. Just about the only youtube channel I'm subscribed to is one that belongs to an Archmandrite. Praying to Mary and the saints in the afterlife is probably one of the few Orthodox practices I can't see myself doing. And I wish I could have had an actual conversation with some members here regarding the subject, but alas that didn't work out.

I pledged to have a conversation with you on that, and you can even PM me if you wish to arrange a real time discussion. I owe you a huge apology as I said earlier, because I prejudged where you were going with the conversation, and that was mean and stupid of me, and for that I beg your forgiveness.

By the way your prayers earlier are greatly appreciated, as I am feeling better, although apparently there is a shortage of an expensive medication I take for a hereditary vascular illness; my usual pharmacy did not have any, and so your prayers would be greatly appreciated on that.

 

[Servus]

I pledged to have a conversation with you on that, and you can even PM me if you wish to arrange a real time discussion. I owe you a huge apology as I said earlier, because I prejudged where you were going with the conversation, and that was mean and stupid of me, and for that I beg your forgiveness.

It wasn't all that bad. It certainly didn't cause me any distress. And I apologize if I was too terse, which I probably was. And I didn't mean for my comment to be directed at you. I was speaking of the overall experience with a few. But definitely certainly no biggie to me.

By the way your prayers earlier are greatly appreciated, as I am feeling better, although apparently there is a shortage of an expensive medication I take for a hereditary vascular illness; my usual pharmacy did not have any, and so your prayers would be greatly appreciated on that.

My prayers are with you dear brother.

 

[Servus]

Just as "I don't want to read this, but I do still want to respond about how much I don't want to read this because it's too long for my liking" isn't an actual response to anything that is presented in a discussion, right?

I have cognitive disabilities that make it difficult and time consuming to get through posts like the one below.

Says you. If you want to have a TV soundbite-style discussion of complex theological issues and the very long histories behind them, I'm sure there are many people who would be more comfortable with that than with longer, more involved discussions. I hope you will find such people, wherever they are. I am clearly not one. Bite-sized theology certainly has its place, but when "if A, then B, therefore C" was already tried and rejected for God knows what reason in this very discussion, is it really all that surprising that the discussion progressed beyond that?

I personally have no problem with "The child that St. Mary gave birth to is God, so St. Mary is the Theotokos (lit. birth-giver to God)." In a certain sense, nothing more than than ever needed to be said. It is the birth of heresies that denied this truth that made it so that "Beneath Thy Protection" was added to by many, many other hymns and prayers to combat the errors of Nestorius and his ilk (which itself is a continuation of a preexisting tradition, as when St. Ephrem earlier composed his hymns and prayers to combat the popularity of the hymns of Bardaisan among his fellow Syrians).



Recall the point I made in that post: explicit positive instruction to do something is often not given because it is not necessary. That's true of both the Holy Bible (which, for instance, doesn't tell us to worship the Holy Trinity) and of the writings of the Fathers. Defining the character of whatever it is we are doing generally does not happen until there is a serious challenge to what was up until that point already accepted (recall the point about "Beneath Thy Protection" predating in the written record the birth and rise of Nestorius by quite a number of years). This is how we ended up with the Nicaean Creed (which deals with the heresy of Arius), the revision and expansion of the same at Constantinople in 381 (where subsequent material was added against the errors of the Pneumatomachi, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit), and the defense of Theotokos as a Christological title at Ephesus in 431 (against Nestorius and those of his party).

With that in mind, here is what some of the Fathers have said concerning the Theotokos St. Mary:

"But we, O my friends, resorting to the garden of the Saviour, let us praise the Holy Virgin; saying along with the angels in the language of Divine grace, "Rejoice thou and be glad." For from her first shone forth the eternally radiant light, that lighteth us with its goodness.
The Holy Virgin is herself both an honourable temple of God and a shrine made pure, and a golden altar of whole burnt offerings. By reason of her surpassing purity [she is] the Divine incense of oblation, and oil of the holy grace, and a precious vase bearing in itself the true nard; [yea and] the priestly diadem revealing the good pleasure of God, whom she alone approacheth holy in body and soul. [She is] the door which looks eastward, and by the comings in and goings forth the whole earth is illuminated. The fertile olive from which the Holy Spirit took the fleshly slip (or twig) of the Lord, and saved the suffering race of men. She is the boast of virgins, and the joy of mothers; the declaration of archangels, even as it was spoken: 'Be thou glad and rejoice, the Lord with thee'; and again, 'from thee'; in order that He may make new once more the dead through sin.

-- St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213 - c. 270), Homily Concerning the Holy Mother of God (tr. Conybeare, 1896); accessible via the ever-helpful Tertullian Project. Emphasis added to show at what an early date it was considered entirely ordinary to offer praises to the Theotokos St. Mary, and to encourage all who hear or read your homily to do the same.

Interesting aside: While it seems that Conybeare is saying in the first of the footnotes to this translation that St. Gregory did not use the literal term Theotokos within it, he also points out that this term would've been consistent with the saint's description of St. Mary, and that his contemporary, HH Pope Dionysius of Alexandria, had already been using that very term by this time. Since the papacy of HH Pope Dionysius began in 248 and ended with his departure in 265, we can view this as another evidence that the Orthodox use of the term Theotokos, with that this entails (Christologically, etc.), was firmly established long before the arrival of Nestorius, who again was not even born until c. 386.

“It is essential for us to confess that the holy Ever-Virgin Mary is actually Theotokos, so as not to fall into blasphemy. For those who deny that the Holy Virgin is actually Theotokos are no longer believers, but disciples of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

-- St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306 - 373), "To John the Monk" (I found this snippet on a Serbian Orthodox website, because some Greek dunderheads saw fit to make stephrem.org into a website for selling their book of English translations of the Greek corpus of St. Ephrem, rather than a repository from which to learn the saint's works, as the name and 'org' status might suggest. Boo hiss he wasn't a Greek! )

St. Ephrem is with reason considered to be the greatest poet-theologian ever produced within the world of Syriac Christianity (some might say all Christianity, and I would not for a second disagree), and is venerated by East and West alike, and always has been. There is practically no Father from his time and place who can be said to be as universally held-up as an expositor of the Orthodox faith.


"The prophets, the apostles, the martyrs & the priests who were gathered together, also the teachers & the patriarchs & the righteous ones of old!

In heaven, the watchers; & [in] the depths, man; in the air, glory: when the Virgin Mary was buried as one deceased.

A light shone on that company of disciples, also on her neighbors & her relations & her kindred.

The heavenly company performed their “Holy, Holy, Holy,” unto the glorious soul of this Mother of the Son of God.

Fiery seraphim surrounded the soul of the departed & raised the loud sound of their joyful shouts.

They shouted & said: 'Lift up, O gates, all your heads, because the Mother of the King seeks to enter the bridal chamber of light.'"

-- St. Jacob of Serugh (c. 451-521), "On The Dormition of the Mother of God" (as reproduced here)

Etc., etc., etc.

These and copious others all work as answers to the request for approval of the practice of praying to saints more generally (not just the Theotokos), given that what is established in any reference you can name is "this is what is done" (only the quote given from St. Ephrem here is the focus on "This is what we must believe and preach", and predictably it is over and against opposition from those who claim to be among us but are not, by virtue of what they embrace instead), showing once again that we can tell what is approved by what is presented without being argued for, since it doesn't need to be in the first place. Obviously Mor Jacob is not making the point that the gathered ones in heaven must therefore make an intellectually-satisfying case for praying "Holy Holy Holy" to the soul of St. Mary! Heaven does not and cannot contain even one speck of sin or falsehood, so if it wasn't meant to happen there, obviously it wouldn't. If the argument is then "Well that's there, and this is here" (cf. your earlier reaction to Tobit -- i.e., that's from an archangel), the question ought to be asked straightforwardly why we ought to entertain any such division whereby God wants us to behave and believe differently on Earth than in Heaven. That's obviously wrong, as anyone who has ever prayed the Lord's Prayer (which, lest we lose track of this, was given to us from the very mouth of God) can readily recognize, having prayed that God's will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

That's what keeping the remembrance of the saints (via petitions for intercession, or naming our children and churches alike after them, or venerating icons of them, or any other thing we do) is all about; so much so, in fact, that the portion of the most widely-celebrated liturgy in my own Church that contains the commemoration of the saints (those explicitly named as part of the set liturgical text; there is variation, as in all things) begins in its English translation "As this, O Lord, is the command of Your Only-Begotten Son, that we share in the commemoration of Your saints..." (so what'dya know, we do have an explicit command to positively do something! Good thing it comes from Jesus Christ our God and not someone here on CF, lest it might be seen as fit to be argued about when it very much is not):

The Holy Bible is a great many things. It is indisputably authored by inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit (see here Agathangelos' recording of the teachings of St. Gregory the Illuminator, 4th century, which is notable for being an early work that goes into the composition of the scriptures; this is available in an English translation from Thompson 1970, under the title of An Early Armenian Catechism), but obviously the fact that we can and do all agree on that, but very much disagree on the 'use' of the Holy Bible (for lack of a better way to put it) shows that it is not that simple.

I take a more 'macro' way of looking at this question, because I don't imagine you would find very much variation among different types of Christians if you looked at what the individual is doing with it. Whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, or even Nestorian, we all read it, we all gather to read it, we all meditate upon it, etc.

On a macro level, however, neither Orthodox nor Catholics (nor I'm sure a great many Protestants, though they are harder to generalize about, by design) approach the scriptures as something outside of or above the Church. Not only is that just incorrect in a historical sense, it is also alien to the way that we would traditionally think of the Bible as a part of the faith. This is important to point out because any hermeneutic that pits the Church against the Bible which the Church herself authored, canonized, interpreted, preached, and continues to interpret and preach is bound to be a non-starter for us. So every time we read "Where is that in the Bible?", "I'm going to need a verse to prove that", or anything like that, it's like a shorthand that tells us that we are interacting with a person who places the Bible above the Church, which again is really not possible, since the Bible one of the many collections of writings produced by, for, and within the Church. It's not something separate from the Church, or above it, or that sits in judgment of the Church.

By contrast to this, I would say that the Holy Scriptures are exactly what they are said to be in 2 Timothy 3:16-17

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

+++

Nothing in that says that they are:

1) An exhaustive and explicit list of what we can or cannot do or believe
2) A manual on how to be religious, e.g., how to conduct a worship service, or answer a particular religious controversy, etc.
3) Self-interpreting, such that you or I who are following what the text obviously means are right, and anyone who has a different interpretation is wrong
4) Written for western people in the English language (obvious, I know, but so many debates about "what the Bible REALLY says" tend to degenerate into why this or that translation is right or wrong, as a kind of surrogate for what people mean but maybe don't often feel like they can say because the version of the Bible that they prefer instead likely has very similar problems as the ones they criticize: "I don't trust this because this reading prejudices the reader towards/away from a particular reading in a way that feels weird relative to what I've always accepted as being 'what the Bible says')

Put simply, whatever we can say about what the Bible is, what it really is in terms of how we encounter it is a collection of books to be read, understood, and lived out within the bosom of the Church. The Ethiopian eunuch recognized this when he asked Philip "How can I understand unless someone will instruct me?"

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

How about "the mother of God Incarnate"? Does that work out alright?

Seems unnecessary since it is very obvious that Jesus is incarnate; the whole nativity story is about the incarnation of God as a human being named Jesus.

 

[dzheremi]

I have cognitive disabilities that make it difficult and time consuming to get through posts like the one below.

Okay. Thank you for letting me know about this. I'm sorry that my posting style is difficult to process given the disabilities you are dealing with. I don't want to add to your difficulties. I had no idea of this before, but now that I do, I am happy to modify my posting to make it easier to digest. I hope you will consider the quoted portions from St. Gregory and the others to see what a few of the saints have said about the Theotokos, since that's what really matters.