Mary the Theotokos

Around the beginning of the second century, the patristic fathers began to view the advent of Christ as interwoven with the mystery of Mary. Between the fall of Jerusalem (ad 70) and the Council of Nicaea (ad 325), theologians developed the symboli fidei, which summarize the elements of the mystery of Christ. Mary’s role is part of the understanding of the mystery of the incarnation.

Many of the patristic fathers stressed Mary’s role as the human instrument for the incarnation and expanded on the idea of the virginal conception. Irenaeus of Lyons developed the theological implications of Mary’s role in the economy of salvation to the point that he is considered to be the father of Mariology. He used profound analogies to argue for the acceptance of the virginal conception and miraculous birth of Jesus. One of these compares Adam and Jesus: Adam, the first man, was created from a virgin ground, while the new Adam, Christ, comes from a virgin flesh. Thus, Christ is the firstborn of the virgin, through whom all humanity is justified (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3.18.7). The writings of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Ephrem the Syrian, the three Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus), John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, and others offer similar ideas (Toniolo, “Padres de la Iglesia,” 1522–41).

The idea of Mary as Theotokos, meaning “God-bearer,” arose out of this context. This concept is based on the belief that the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, possesses two natures through the incarnation—one divine, one human. These two natures residing in one hypostatic union means that what is true of one nature can be applied to the other. In other words, affirming that Mary gave birth to the human Jesus means affirming that Mary gave birth to the divine Jesus. Basil the Great expressed this idea in his Letter 360, and the idea began to appear elsewhere before the Council of Ephesus (ad 431; Buby, Mary, 239; Price, “Theotókos,” 89–91; Gambero, Mary and the Fathers, 234–36). A Marian homily spoken at the council provides an example of how the church understood Mary: “The reason we have gathered here today is the holy Theotókos Virgin Mary, inoculate pressure of virginity, spiritual paradise of the second Adam, workshop of the union of Christ’s two natures, marketplace of the saving exchange, bridal chamber in which the Word was wedded to the flesh” (Proclus, Oratio 1.1).

Nestorius, an Antiochian monk who was the patriarch of Constantinople from ad 428–431, was opposed to calling Mary the Theotokos, not because he denied the virgin birth but because of theological issues. Nestorius articulated that Mary cannot be the mother of God because the trinitarian God is infinite and eternal, so no human being can be the mother of God. In his view, the affirmation of Mary as Jesus’ mother could be applied only to the human nature of Jesus, not to the divine person of the Logos. Therefore, he believed it is more appropriate to call Mary anthropotokos, meaning “man-bearer,” or Christotokos, meaning “Christ-bearer” (Gambero, Mary and the Fathers, 234–36; Toniolo, “Padres de la Iglesia,” 1538; Price, “Theotókos,” 91–93).

Christian theologians contemporary to Nestorius ultimately rejected his position. In response to Nestorius’ position, Cyril of Alexandria wrote a letter to explain the theological notion of Theotókos. This letter became the crucial document used by the Council of Ephesus to proclaim the dogma of the Theotókos. Cyril affirms that the qualification of the virgin Mary as Theotókos is not problematic because the epithet does not signify that the divine nature of the Logos has a beginning, but that the incarnation of the Logos needed to assume the human condition through the virgin. In his letter, Cyril proclaims that “the holy fathers do not hesitate to call the holy Virgin Theotókos, not in the sense that the divine nature of the Word took its origin from the holy Virgin, but in the sense that he took His holy body, gifted with a rational soul from her. Yet, because the Word is hypostatically united to this body, one can say that he was truly born according to the flesh” (Cyril of Alexandria, Epistle to Nestorius 4). This understands that the hypostasis of the Logos makes the divine motherhood of Mary possible because the son who carries her own flesh, truly born from her, is the same second person of the Trinity (Gambero, Mary and the Fathers, 236–38; Toniolo, “Padres de la Iglesia,” 1538–39; Price, “Theotókos,” 93–96).