Which is what I said at the start.
Okay, but I really have no interest in debating Orthodox theology. I'm not Orthodox, never been Orthodox, have no desire to become Orthodox, and have zero interest in trying to tell Orthodox people what they should or should not believe. Maybe someone else will come along who has an interest in the debate you seem to desire.
Please forgive me, then. I do not want to debate. The point of the post is as I've written: "It appears that we differ on X." A statement of where the difference appears to be, not an argument.
Although that being the case, is it really an Orthodox belief that not praising the creation (Mary) is tantamount to denying the Incarnation? Or is that more of a personal opinion.
Well, that is my personal paraphrase, but not a personal
opinion in the sense of being able to discard the theology involved because I'm just some guy. Our common father HH St. Cyril, of the victorious party which defended the Orthodox faith against the Nestorians at Ephesus, did write an entire tome which is translated as
Against Those Who Are Unwilling to Confess that the Holy Virgin is Theotokos, so we can tell what is required belief as outlined in this and other patristic literature. That is the entire context in which this title was deemed most necessary: there are these people (the Nestorians) who are messing with Orthodox Christology and the Orthodox understanding of the incarnation; to counter this, we will outline how it is that St. Mary is Theotokos (which was by no means 'invented' or otherwise arrived at for the first time the council, just by the way; the earliest extant hymn to St. Mary as Theotokos is called "Beneath Thy Protection" and is found in paypri of the Coptic Nativity liturgy dating back to
250 AD, whereas the council was held in 431 AD).
We have even after the schism at Chalcedon twenty years later strong witnesses on the Oriental Orthodox side that we have always kept this belief, as I'm sure the Eastern Orthodox also do (I just don't know them as well, since I'm not EO). For instance:
"In the days of Babai the Catholicos, this Mari emerged (as) the teacher of the heresies of the followers of Paul of Samosata and Diodorus [of Tarsus] in Beth Aramaye. And Babai the Catholicos, the son of Hormizd who was the secretary of Zabercan the Marzban of Beth Aramaye, received the doctrine from him. Anyone who does not confess that Mary is Theotokos, let him be anathema!"
-- Letter of 6th century (d. before 548) Syriac Orthodox bishop Simeon of Beth Arsham (near Seleucia, the patriarchate of the Nestorians)
With declarations like this, it is safe to say that, yes, it is considered to be an indisputable point of dogma/belief that St. Mary is Theotokos, and we must openly proclaim so.
I have to say, in all my previous decades in the RCC where praising Mary is like professional sport, I've never heard that one before.
It's strange that you wouldn't have ("Beneath Thy Protection" is still sung in traditional Latin Catholic masses, I thought), but I was also Roman Catholic for years and don't remember hearing it put in quite those terms, either. The RCC is somewhat fungible on theology these days, as they admit the descendants of the Nestorians in India and Iraq (the Syro-Malabar and Chaldean Catholics, respectively) without
explicit repudiation of the Nestorian heresy, as you can even find in some Catholic-led discussions about their different rites some admission that these groups still use an anaphora written by "Mar Nestorius" (
gross), though they tend to call it by a different name nowadays.
