What the Early Church Believed: Mary Is the Mother of God

The argument

A woman is a man's mother if she carried him in her womb, or supplied half his genetic material, or both. Mary did both, and supplied all of Jesus' human genetic material, since through her he was descended from David according to the flesh (Romans 1:3). If Mary is Jesus' mother and Jesus is God, Mary is the Mother of God.

She is not older than God or the source of his divinity. She is his mother because she carried a divine person, God in the flesh (2 John 7; cf. John 1:14), and gave him his human body.

The Nestorian objection

Some say Mary carried only Christ's human nature. This revives Nestorianism. Mothers do not give birth to natures but to persons, and the person Mary bore was God. Nestorianism splits Christ into two persons, which even the Reformers rejected: Luther and Calvin both affirmed Mary's divine maternity. Nestorius himself may not have held the heresy, and the "Nestorian" church has signed a joint declaration with the Catholic Church recognizing Mary's divine maternity. Since denying the title implies doubt about Jesus' divinity, Christians until recent times were unanimous in proclaiming it.

The witness of the early Church

• Irenaeus (189): Mary received the tidings that she would bear God.
• Hippolytus (217) calls her theotokos, God-bearer.
• Gregory the Wonderworker (262), Peter of Alexandria (305, 324), Methodius (305), Cyril of Jerusalem (350), Ephraim (351), Athanasius (365), Epiphanius (374) and Ambrose (377) call her the Mother of God.
• Gregory of Nazianz (382): whoever denies Mary is Mother of God is at odds with the Godhead.
• Jerome (401, 409): a Virgin gives birth to God.
• Theodore of Mopsuestia (405): Mary is both mother of man and Mother of God.
• Cyril of Alexandria (427–430): if Christ is God, the Virgin who bore him is the Mother of God, not because the Word began from her but because the Word, united to the flesh born of her, was born according to the flesh (John 1:14); whoever denies it is anathema.
• John Cassian (429): since Christ is God, she who bore God is the Mother of God.
• The Council of Ephesus (431) confesses one Christ, perfect God and perfect man, and the holy Virgin as Mother of God.
• Vincent of Lerins (434) explains that Nestorius, making two persons of Christ, called Mary Mother of Christ rather than Mother of God.