When did Mary the mother of Jesus begin to be worshipped
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EastTN said:MJ, I do apologize - I did not intend to make light of your tradition.
Apology accepted. I know you're intentions were good ... its just that the 5,438,543rd time one has to explain that the Catholic and Orthodox do NOT worship or pray to Mary, it gets a bit tiresome. Especially when it's the 327,432nd time in the same forums ... okay, the numbers might be a wee bit exaggerated.
EastTN said:Having said that, these things do look very different when seen through Protestant eyes.
Having been raised in a conservative Protestant (Stone-Campbell) Church, with my father the elder, my late-grandfather the preacher, my great late-late grand uncle the founder of several such churches in the area, and on my mother's side a long line of Congregational preachers ending at her grandfather, I assure you there was no lack of understanding or charity. I recognize the standard "talking points" because I was taught them. Comparing the issues theologians find separate us when they are in ecumenical talks actually trying to understand each other to the nuggets laity were taught and repeatedly toss out, I think "willful ignorance" is an apt description. My favorite example was on a discussion of canon. Person A and myself agreed we lacked a common vocabulary. We had a pleasant exchange working out a common vocabulary to use. We start the discussion of canon. Person A in their very first statement interprets the Westminster statement in a way that violates the common vocabulary. That is what I mean by "willful ignorance" - an unwillingness to give up the meaning of a word in your particular tradition to understand what it means in another tradition.
EastTN said:There have been generations of devout and sincere Christians on both sides of these disagreements who have simply been unpersuaded by the arguments raised by the other "side." If that weren't so, these arguments would have been consigned to the dustbin of history
I wish I believed this but what I see are disagreements that preserve cultural differences that the laity value while the theologians find unity. As we saw during the heyday of ecumenical mergers - leadership agreement does not mean laity will follow.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Friedrich said:
THAT SAID, I'm curious, do you know of any Logos works that wrestle with how the humanity and divinity of Jesus intersect from an orthodox position?
Athanasius On the Incarnation is a solid starting point. Not in Logos but a useful sidekick is Thomas G. Weinandy's Athanasius: A Theological Introduction.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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These issues could be debated passionately Ad infinitum, but that probably is beyond the scope of this forum or the desire of Faithlife.
Just sayin.
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Friedrich said:
if one says it is Christological that it can only mean that the child became God at a later date? As for "theotokos," I think I get what it means,
I suspect my distinction is too stringent - being very thoroughly post-Nestorian:
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We proclaim the Holy Virgin the Theotokos, because it is she who bore God when the Lord truly became incarnate of her. We know that she is the Christotokos, because she bore Christ. But since the snake-bit Nestorius abused this latter term to the detriment of the word Theotokos, we do not call her Christotokos at all, but look only to the more excellent and call her Theotokos.
W. A. Jurgens, trans., The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 3 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1970–1979), 348.
[quote]Cyril, rightly or wrongly, interprets Nestorius’s reluctance to describe Mary as theotokos as a threat to the reality of the union of God with human nature, a reluctance that in turn threatens the benefits obtained through such a union. For it is through the appropriation of human nature that the benefits of salvation are communicated to that nature by God and no other. In Cyril’s words: “since it was his own [the Word’s] and personal flesh, that of the incorruptible God, he set it beyond death and corruption.” Hence, all human nature, or, as Cyril puts it, “human bodies,” can be revitalized through “participation in his holy flesh and blood.”
Christopher A. Hall, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2002), 90.[quote]
1.5 Theotokos or Christotokos?
The virginal birth of Christ is not called into question in the dogmatic controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries. We should however investigate in what way theologians call upon the virginal birth to express their conviction regarding the divinity of Christ or his unity. Let us look here at two quite different forms of the Christological theme.
In his apology for the incarnation of the Word, Athanasius appeals to the virginal birth as a not to be neglected proof for the divinity of Christ: “He who made that body is also the author of the other bodies”. His birth in the flesh is “inexpressible generation” (Is. 53:8), for no one can speak of his father according to the flesh, if his body be not born from a man but from a virgin only. For Athanasius, it is the Word of God who is born of a virgin in this way, or who moulds his own body to himself. Not only is the Word himself working in Mary, but he proceeds from her in this world. In one word, the virginal birth is expressed in the Alexandrine title Theotokos.
Nestorius, on the contrary, rejects the title Theotokos and affirms that according to the scriptures God has passed through the holy Virgin, mother of Christ (Christotokos), for he has not taken the origin of his birth in her in the way in which his body is born from her. There is one Christ, who is born of the Father according to divinity and of the holy Virgin according to humanity, since there is union of the two natures.
A. Houssiau, “The Virginal Birth of Christ,” in The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed A.D. 381, ed. Thomas F. Torrance (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1998), 115–116.Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Yes, this is one of the best books ever written on prayer ... should be required reading for every Christian [;)] ... not like I am fond of it or anything.David Ames said:Do you mean: "Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home", Richard J. Foster ?????
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MWW said:
These issues could be debated passionately Ad infinitum, but that probably is beyond the scope of this forum or the desire of Faithlife.
Just sayin.
Noted. I will take more care to keep answers Logos oriented.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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