by Nicholas Senz
Where do feast days come from? Often the answer to this question is simple. Usually feast days commemorate the life of a saint. Sometimes they commemorate events, like the dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran (the cathedral church of Rome). But a few feast days represent something much deeper than what might appear on the surface. For instance, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe was instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI during a time of increasing political unrest in Europe to reassert the fact that Our Lord is the true sovereign over all things.
The feast the Church celebrates on Jan. 1 (the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God) points us to an important doctrinal discussion more than a millennia-and-a-half ago that settled a controversy.
In the first few centuries of the life of the first Christians, the Church expended a great deal of time and energy wrestling with a central question: Who is Jesus? The Gospels clearly indicate both humanity and divinity in him — but how could this be? And if Jesus is divine, what is his relation to God the Father? Many theories sprang up that attempted to account for these facts, but they often swung too far toward one side or the other: that he only seemed to be human but was really divine (docetism); that he was nearly divine but was fundamentally a creature (Arianism); and so on. The Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 taught that Jesus and God the Father were of the same divine substance (homoousios), affirming that Jesus truly can be said to be God. This is what the Church means when she prays the Nicene Creed referencing Jesus as “consubstantial with the Father.” What then of his humanity?
Naturally when the question of Jesus’ humanity comes up, we cannot help but look to his mother, Mary. In the early fifth century, some began to refer to Mary as the theotokos, literally the “God-bearer” but often simply rendered as “mother of God.” The logic was simple: if Jesus is God, and Mary is the mother of Jesus, then Mary is the mother of God.
Some began to refer to Mary as the theotokos, literally the ‘God-bearer’.
Others, however, objected to this title, including those in high places. Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, wrote letters to both Pope Leo and Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, (both of whom would be revered as saints, fathers, and doctors of the Church) saying that Mary could not be the “mother of God” for what would seem an equally logical reason: “No one can bring forth a son older than herself.” That is, if Jesus is truly the eternal Son of God, then Mary, a finite creature, could not be the mother of the Son. Rather, Nestorius said, Mary is the mother of the human nature of Jesus, and the divine person was joined to this humanity only afterward. Thus Nestorius essentially splits Jesus into two persons and then cleaves them back together through a sort of “moral union.”
To answer this controversy, in A.D. 433 the Church called an ecumenical council in the town of Ephesus in Asia Minor, traditionally thought to be the town where St. John the Apostle took the Blessed Virgin to live with him. Spearheaded by Cyril, the council affirmed that in Jesus, the divine and human natures are joined not by “dignity or authority or power” as two separate entities, but rather are united in the one person of the Son of God, so that Mary is truly theotokos, truly the mother of God — because mothers give birth to persons, not natures.
Though this point was settled by the Church 1,500 years ago, still today we find that many of our Protestant brothers and sisters raise the same objections that Nestorius did: They say that it makes Mary sound too exalted, that a mere creature could not give birth to God, that she must be the mother of Jesus’ humanity.
But this doctrine and this feast provides us with an opportunity to clear up another common misconception — our doctrines about Mary are all ultimately not about her, but about Christ. By calling Mary the “mother of God,” we affirm that in Jesus humanity and divinity are truly united — not parsed out or glued together but integrated in the one person of the Son of God. Hailing Mary as the theotokos prevents us from dividing Christ. Just as Mary cared for and protected the infant Jesus, so our beliefs about Mary protect our beliefs about Jesus. In that way she continues to care for him through all eternity.
