What is the teaching of the Church about Mary that she is the Mother of God?

Answer 1

It has always been the Tradition of the Church to refer to Mary as the Mother of God. This was defined formally at the third ecumenical Church council of Ephesus in 431 AD when Mary was confirmed as the "Theotokos" or "Mother of God". The teaching is that Mary is the mother of Christ, giving to Him His human nature which thus allowed Him to become a true member of the human race even though He possessed, as well, a divine nature. Mary is thus Mother of the whole Person of Jesus Christ, having given birth to a complete Person, not just a human nature. The title of "Theotokos" was chosen over "Christotokos" which meant "birth-giver of Christ" by the council fathers as "Christotokos" was favoured by Nestorius (who soon became a heresiarch). They saw "Christotokos" as belittling the perfect union of the divine and human natures in Christ, the fullness of the Incarnation and, by extension, the salvation of humanity as affected through Mary's motherhood.

from A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, by Dave Armstrong, Sophia Institute Press, © 2003

1) Mary the "Mother of God" (Theotokos) The official, dogmatic proclamation of this dogma was made at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431, in response to the heresy of Nestorianism.

Scripture implicitly affirms Mary’s Divine motherhood by attesting, on the one hand, the true Divinity of Christ, and on the other hand, Mary’s true motherhood. Thus Mary is called: "Mother of Jesus" (John 2:1) ... "Mother of the Lord" (Luke 1:43). Mary’s true motherhood is clearly foretold by the Prophet Isaiah: "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel" (Isaiah 7:14) . . . . the woman who bore the Son of God is Progenitress of God, or the Mother of God [ see also Matt. 1:18, 12:46, 13:55; Luke 1:31, 35; Gal 4:4]. (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 196-197)

The doctrine of Mary as Theotokos flows consistently and straightforwardly from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus. Cardinal Gibbons explains:

We affirm that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word of God, who in His divine nature is from all eternity begotten of the Father, consubstantial with Him, was in the fullness of time, begotten, by being born of the Virgin, thus taking to Himself, from her maternal womb, a human nature of the same substance with hers.

But it may be said the Blessed Virgin is not the Mother of the Divinity. She had not, and she could no have, any part in the generation of the Word of God, for that generation is eternal; her maternity is temporal. He is her Creator; she is His creature. Style her, if you will, the Mother of the man Jesus or even of the human nature of the Son of God but not the Mother of God.

I shall answer this objection by putting a question. Did the mother who bore us have any part in the production of our soul? Was not this nobler part of our being the work of God alone? And yet who would for a moment dream of saying "the mother of my body," and not "my mother"? . . . (Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, 137-138)

In like manner . . . the Blessed virgin, under the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, by communicating to the Second Person of the Adorable Trinity, as mothers do, a true human nature of the same substance with her own, is there really and truly His Mother.

2) The Immaculate Conception of Mary Pope Pius IX (in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus) infallibly defined this doctrine as binding upon all Catholics on December 8, 1854.

Genesis 3:15

(known as the "Protoevangelion"): "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." Ludwig Ott expounds this verse:

The literal sense of the passage is possibly the following: Between Satan and his followers on the one hand, and Eve and her posterity on the other hand, there is to be constant moral warfare. The posterity of Eve will achieve a complete and final victory over Satan and his followers, even if it is wounded in the struggle. The posterity of Eve includes the Messiah, in whose power humanity will win a victory over Satan. Thus the passage is indirectly messianic.

The seed of the woman was understood as referring to the Redeemer, and thus the Mother of the Redeemer came to be seen in the woman. Since the second century, this direct messianic-Marian interpretation has been expounded by individual Fathers, for example, St. Irenaeus, St. Epiphanius .... St. Cyprian ... St. Leo the Great. However, it is not found in the writings of the majority of the Fathers . . . According to this interpretation, Mary stands with Christ in a perfect and victorious enmity toward Satan and his following. Many of the later scholastics and a great many modern theologians argue, in the light of this interpretation . . that Mary’s victory over Satan would not have been perfect, is she had ever been under his dominion. Consequently she must have entered the world without the stain of Original Sin. (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 200)

Most Protestant Bible translations follow the King James, or Authorized, Version’s lead in rendering kecharitomene, the Greek word, as "favored," as indeed also some recent Catholic versions. The favored (no pun intended!) Traditional Catholic rendering (actually the more literal rendering) is "Hail, full of grace" (for example, Douay, Confraternity, Knox). The word Mary (after hail) is not in the text, but strongly implied, as the angel is addressing her by title; thus we arrive at the phrase "Hail, Mary, full of grace,"

The Bible speaks only implicitly of many things that Protestants strongly believe, such as the proper mode of Baptism (immersion, sprinkling, or pouring?). The Immaculate Conception is entirely possible within scriptural presuppositions.

Luke 1:35

(The Annunciation; Mary as a type of the ark of the covenant): "And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the pow3er of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

Overshadow is derived from the Greek, episkiasei, which denotes a bright cloud or cloud of glory. It is used in reference to the cloud at the transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:34) and hearkens back to instances of the Shekinah glory of the God in the Old Testament (Exod. 24:15-16, 40:34-38; 1 Kings 8:10).

The Septuagint uses episkiasei in Exodus 40:34-35. Mary, as Theotokos, becomes, in effect, the new temple and holy of holies, where God dwelt in a special, spatially located fashion. In particular Scripture seems to be making a direct symbolic parallelism between Mary and the ark of the covenant. She is the bearer and ark of the New Covenant, which Jesus brings about (Heb. 8:6-13; 12:24).