Mariolatry?

[jas3]

I've made my positions clear--you just failed to see them apparently?

Your position is not clear when you say on the one hand that there is nothing wrong with the title "Mother of God" in itself, but on the other say that "your use of the term 'Mother of God' is a blatant form of Mariolatry." (post #71)
Nor is your position clear when people then insist on the propriety of the title and you respond by saying that the title only applies to God the Son in the Incarnation, not God the Father, or even that "God Himself does not have either a father or a mother" and that "Mary gave birth to a man-God--not to God." (post #77)

 

[George95]

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So mother of God does not mean she gave birth to God. Or as catholics and others of the same belief write Mother of God

So you do not believe in Mary's womb the two natures were combined by God, so God could bring forth the God-man to humanity.

You believe that in Mary's womb from The Holy Spirit the God-man came to Mary already one nature. So Jesus' divine and human nature were not brought to a union in Mary's womb.

I believe exactly what the Nicene Creed says.

 

[Jipsah]

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Do you do this often, say people wrote and accuse them of saying something they did not write or say.

You said that Mary didn't give birth to God.
Jesus Christ is God.

 

[Jipsah]

Nobody in this thread, that I'm aware of, has a problem with saying that Mary mothered a divine representative. She was mother of a form of God.

So much for the Incarnation.

 

[Joseph101]

Who respects the king, respects the king's mother. Jesus Christ, the Son of God is God. For that reason Mary is mother of God.

“Then the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High…Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” (Luke 1, 30-36). Jesus Christ is God and man at the same time: he is the Son of God made man. (John 1,1-14).

Isabel, filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaimed with a strong voice: “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1, 42-43).

I venerate, that is, I have great respect and honor for Mary for being the Mother of Jesus Christ and because filled with the Holy Spirit, Mary prophesied: “…from now on will all ages call me blessed” (Luke 1, 48). Mary will never stop being honored because it is prophecy. All ages, are all ages. I honor her but I do not worship her because only God is worshiped.

Mary is the blessed one and mother of the Blessed One.

 

[The Liturgist]

Do you find any place in scripture where someone prays to a person that has died?

Jesus died and we pray to Him.

The fact of the matter is that the Theotokos and the other saints are not dead, but are alive in Christ.

 

[RandyPNW]

So much for the Incarnation.

So much for *your version* of the Incarnation. You may not believe that Jesus took on humanity to represent a form of Deity, but for me, that's the Incarnation. I have no wish to argue this further, since I've already argued it.

Phil 2.
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,

 

[The Liturgist]

So much for the Incarnation.

Yep, that’s Nestorianism, or worse.

 

[RandyPNW]

Jesus died and we pray to Him.

The fact of the matter is that the Theotokos and the other saints are not dead, but are alive in Christ.

That's a good question I've long had. When I pray to Jesus am I really praying to Jesus, the man, or am I praying in his name to the Father. Since he is the source of my redemption I pray through him. But when he taught his disciples to pray, he directed them to pray to the Father.

It may be of little consequence since when we pray to God the Father we are also praying to the same Deity expressed in Jesus, the man. Just curious what your take is on this, whether it is simply the unity of the Trinity or a matter of praying to people who have died?

 

[The Liturgist]

Rev 5:8

By the way @Jipsah my pious and excellent friend, as a high church Anglican do you find the suggestion that the proper veneration of the Theotokos is specific to Roman Catholics as annoying as I find it?

 

[The Liturgist]

That's a good question I've long had. When I pray to Jesus am I really praying to Jesus, the man, or am I praying in his name to the Father. Since he is the source of my redemption I pray through him. But when he taught his disciples to pray, he directed them to pray to the Father.

It may be of little consequence since when we pray to God the Father we are also praying to the same Deity expressed in Jesus, the man. Just curious what your take is on this, whether it is simply the unity of the Trinity or a matter of praying to people who have died?

Jesus is fully man and fully God, united in the incarnation in one hypostasis and one person, without change, confusion, separation or division, consubstantial with the Father and Holy Spirit and also consubstantial with mankind.

You cannot pray to Him without praying to both His humanity and His divinity.

By the way this is not me who is speaking, but every church father - even the Church of the East after the Christological reforms of Mar Babai the Great and its fathers such as St. Isaac the Syrian agree with the above.

The only ones who disagreed with it read like a rogues gallery of false teachers: Sabelius, Valentinus, Cerinthus, Paul of Samosata, Arius, Eunomius, Apollinarius, Nestorius, Eutyches, John Philoponus, and finally Pope Honorius and the Monothelites (actually that last entry sounds like the name of a band).

Also, all learned Protestant reformers including Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, Philip Melancthon, John Wesley, and for that matter John Calvin agreed with the Church Fathers on Christology.

 

[The Liturgist]

It is heartening to see a devout Anglican advocate for the appropriateness of praying to the saints, and particularly through Saint Mary, the Blessed Mother of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ.

Also the ultra high church parish of St. Magnus the Martyr in the City of London worships liturgically in a manner that I think is much closer to what was envisaged at Vatican II in Sacrosanctum Concilium than the deeply problematic Novus Ordo Missae.

 

[Always in His Presence]

Jesus died and we pray to Him.

The fact of the matter is that the Theotokos and the other saints are not dead, but are alive in Christ.

Jesus rose from the dead - we pray to a risen Savior -

Mary did not

 

[The Liturgist]

You do have the differences between them and EO.

If I'm not mistaken, the Oriental Orthodox, who would avoid using the expression "two natures" and would instead say "one incarnate nature," also call Mary the mother of God. The justification for the title is not the two natures of Christ, but the hypostatic union.

The difference is really nominal. It comes down to saying that our Lord is from two natures rather than in two natures. The Oriental Orthodox fully agree with the Eastern Orthodox on the hypostatic union, the status of Christ as theanthropos, and that Christ is fully man and fully God without change, confusion, separation or division.

Also, one fact not well known among Eastern Orthodox is that the hymn Ho Monogenes, used by all Oriental Orthodox churches, and which I think is the best confessional hymn of Christological Orthodoxy, and which was added to the Eastern Orthodox liturgy by Emperor Justinian*, was actually written by Mor Severus of Antioch, which is why it opens the Syriac Orthodox liturgy**. Thus it is known among the Oriental Orthodox as “the Hymn of St. Severus”, except among the Armenians, for some of them also embrace apthartodocetism or something similiar, and so they attribute it to St. Athanasius the Great, which is not liturgiologically credible, as much as I love St. Athanasius as the Pillar of Orthodoxy and expect he would agree with it.***

Also the Oriental Orthodox have been blessed to not have experienced any of their churches from being hijacked by patriarchs who adhered to Iconoclasm, and also have always rejected Monothelitism.

* Justinian also championed Theopaschitism until for unknown reasons he embraced the widely discredited alternative of Apthartodocetism (which is not the same as Docetism, it is Chalcedon-compliant, but extremely complex, and I don’t know of any contemporary canonical Eastern Orthodox bishops who believe it).

** Thus we know it was not written by Justinian because of the violent reprisals conducted in his name against Syriac Orthodox bishops from Antioch, where only Mor Jacob bar Addai was able to avoid arrest.

*** Interestingly, there is an Eastern Orthodox version of the Athanasian Creed, which while not written by St. Athanasius, is largely a synthesis from two of his letters, and this version, which can be found in A Psalter for Prayer, published by Holy Trinity Monastery (ROCOR) in Jordanville, is clearly the original, as it lacks the filioque. Not only is it found in Russian psalters, but Greek editions of the Horologion also include it.

 

[The Liturgist]

Jesus rose from the dead - we pray to a risen Savior -

Mary did not

She was assumed bodily into Heaven.

Also with regards to any Christians who are saved, since the World to Come is eternal, they are resurrected.

 

[Always in His Presence]

She was assumed bodily into Heaven.

Sorry, that is certainly tradition, but is absolutely no place in scripture.

Praying to Mary also contradicts 1 Timothy 2:5

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,

 

[Jipsah]

As my young'uns used to say (and still do for that matter), "Noing!".

 

[Jipsah]

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,

Then presumably you never ask anyone else to pray for you, ever.

 

[Jipsah]

Who respects the king, respects the king's mother. Jesus Christ, the Son of God is God. For that reason Mary is mother of God.

Seems self evident, doesn't it?

I venerate, that is, I have great respect and honor for Mary for being the Mother of Jesus Christ and because filled with the Holy Spirit, Mary prophesied: “…from now on will all ages call me blessed” (Luke 1, 48). Mary will never stop being honored because it is prophecy. All ages, are all ages. I honor her but I do not worship her because only God is worshiped.

Mary is the blessed one and mother of the Blessed One.

Well said.

 

[Always in His Presence]

Then presumably you never ask anyone else to pray for you, ever.

I ask people to pray with me. They are exclusively living when I ask.

This is a difference we have. I am not trying to convert you. And there is no way for you to convert me to thinking that way again.

Much love and respect.