See, the way you divide up divinity and humanity like that reeks of Nestorianism.
Never heard of the guy, and I just got used to being a gnostic. Maybe some people grasp things in the Bible that others do not? Does it really matter who is right and who is wrong?
So would you be okay with the title "Theotokos" (literally "God-bearer", frequently translated "Mother of God")?
This teaching can be taken two ways:
The CHURCH is wrong?
There is a GOD and Mary is the mother?
I could be wrong, but the scholars and historians of the 300's and 400's had as much 20/20 hindsight as I do. What do you think the people before them held? Why do you think that the church even had to make it an issue? I do not need the church doing my interpretation, do you? When Jesus said that I and my father are one, did those who hear it understand? If they did, did they re-act? I think that the religious leaders of Judaism sorta got upset and claimed that Jesus was being blasphemous. Did they know something that the disciples did not? If they did it was the law and the prophets that they had to diligently read and live by. The disciples seemed to just accept what he said and followed Jesus. Now go forward 300 years, why does the church have to make this issue dogma? There was already an estabished view. The churches seemed to have accepted that Mary was the mother of Jesus and that Jesus was God. Why did they "add" the fact that NOW Mary is the mother of God. It seems to be that this Nestor guy was just explaining things the way he saw it and in a re-actionary move the church "thought" he was wrong.
Unless you can prove to me that any of the disciples taught theotokos, I can only see it as an addition in response to Nestorius. This seems to point to the fact that the church no longer accepted the trinity as pointed out in the NT already established previously. If Mary is the Mother of God, then God would have had to leave heaven and be reborn, or Jesus is not a distinct person of the Trinity and thus nulifying the Trinity itself. Jesus is both the son of and God and human by the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit Jesus would not have been born. Without Mary, Jesus would not have been human. But no where in the Bible does it say that Mary was the mother of God.
In fact the re-actionary view against Nestorius took away Jesus' humanity and incorporated it into the divine. If there was no longer a third part of the Trinity why have a Trinity any more? Seems like they were already batting at straws trying to keep a governing authority afloat which was not the intention of the church at all. Just because the church was persistent and capable of creating a legalistic frame work that would eventually hold kings and rulers in a death grip does not make it RIGHT.
How is Mary not the Mother of God, since Jesus is God, and she's Jesus' mother?
That is simple: Mary was the vessel that gave the Word his humanity. She had no effect on his divinity. Jesus was 100% man and 100% God. I also believe that from conception he had the full benefit of the Holy Spirit as well. Mary cannot ever be the mother of God, but only the fact that Jesus was God can people use the thought process that became theotokos.
An interesting side note. When God breathed into Adam the breath of life, he became a living soul. When Adam disobeyed God, it was the breath of life the soul that was lost. Humans were no longer the sons of God. It was the Holy Spirit that came again and allowed Jesus (by Mary's obedience) to be the first born Son of God. When, we as humans allow the Holy Spirit to be the guiding factor we can be the sons of God. Jesus will always have a perfect body that is in the image of God. One day those who allow the Spirit to control them will also have perfect bodies like the one Adam had that was the image of God. The early church did understand Mary's importance in the process which was no small task in Judaism standards. But she was only human and from a human lineage. There is no need to put her above any other human at the time.
Now before any one calls me a Stoic and a Pentacostal, I will have to add the disclosure that I do not hold to either teachings if any apply. One does not have to be filled and sinless to be considered a follower of God. If one wants to have heaven on earth, then they should look into the prospect. However, the only thing that places one in the "right direction" is accepting that Jesus is the only good person that God sees and that no one can be as good as Jesus was.
