{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/214/2140263.htm","path":"chr/ecf/214/2140263.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/214/2140263.htm","text":"Excursus on the Word \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 .\nThere have been some who have tried to reduce all the great theological controversies on the Trinity and on the Incarnation to mere logomachies, and have jeered at those who could waste their time and energies over such trivialities. For example, it has been said that the p. 207 real difference between Arius and Athanasius was nothing more nor less than an iota, and that even Athanasius himself, in his more placid, and therefore presumably more rational moods, was willing to hold communion with those who differed from him and who still rejected the homousion. But however catching and brilliant such remarks may be, they lack all solid foundation in truth. It is perfectly manifest that a person so entirely lacking in discrimination as not to see the enormous difference between identity and likeness is not one whose opinion on such a point can be of much value. A brilliant historian is not necessarily an accurate historian, far less need he be a safe guide in matters of theological definition. 247\nA similar attempt to reduce to a logomachy the difference between the Catholic faith and Nestorianism has been made by some writers of undoubted learning among Protestants, notably by Fuchs and Schr\u00f6ckh. But as in the case of the homousios so, too, in the case of the theotocos the word expresses a great, necessary, and fundamental doctrine of the Catholic faith. It is not a matter of words, but of things, and the mind most unskilled in theology cannot fail to grasp the enormous difference there is between affirming, as does Nestorianism, that a God indwelt a man with a human personality of his own distinct from the personality of the indwelling god; and that God assumed to himself human nature, that is a human body and a human soul, but without human personality.\n(Wm. Bright, St. Leo on the Incarnation, pp. 160, 161.)\nIt is, then, clear that the question raised by the wide circulation of the discourses of Nestorius as archbishop of Constantinople was not verbal, but vital. Much of his language was irrelevant, and indicated some confusedness of thought: much would, of itself, admit of an orthodox construction; in one of the latest of his sermons, which Garnier dates on Sunday, December 14, 430, he grants that \u201cTheotocos\u201d might be used as signifying that \u201cthe temple which was formed in Mary by the Holy Spirit was united to the Godhead;\u201d but it was impossible not to ask whether by \u201cthe temple\u201d he meant the body of Jesus, or Jesus himself regarded as a human individual existing \u1f30\u03b4\u03af\u1fb3, \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03ba\u1ff6\u03c2, \u1f00\u03bd\u1f70 \u03bc\u03ad\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2\u2014as Cyril represents his theory\u2014and whether by \u201cunion\u201d he meant more than a close alliance, ejusdem generis, in the last analysis, with the relation between God and every saint, or, indeed, every Christian in true moral fellowship with him\u2014an alliance which would amount, in Cyril\u2019s phrase, to no more than a \u201crelative union,\u201d and would reduce the Saviour to a \u201cTheophoros,\u201d the title claimed of old by one of his chief martyrs. And the real identity of Nestorius\u2019s view with that of Theodore [of Mopsuestia] was but too plainly exhibited by such statements as occur in some of the extracts preserved in Cyril\u2019s treatise Against Nestorius\u2014to the effect that Christ was one with the Word by participation in dignity; that \u201cthe man\u201d was partaker of Divine power, and in that sense not mere man; that he was adored together with the Word; and that \u201cMy Lord and my God\u201d was a doxology to the Father; and above all, by the words spoken at Ephesus, \u201cI can never allow that a child of three months old was God.\u201d\nIt is no part of my duty to defend the truth of either the Catholic or Nestorian proposition\u2014each has found many adherents in most ages since it was first started, and probably what is virtually Nestorianism is to-day far more widely held among persons deemed to be orthodox than is commonly supposed. Be this as it may, Nestorianism is clearly subversive of the whole Catholic Doctrine of the Incarnation, and therefore the importance of the word \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 cannot be exaggerated.\np. 208 I shall treat the word Theotocos under two heads; (1) Its history (2) its meaning, first however quoting Bp. Pearson\u2019s words on its Conciliar authority. (Pearson, Exp. of the Creed, Art. III., n. 37). \u201cIt is plain that the Council of Ephesus which condemned Nestorius confirmed this title \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2; I say confirmed it; for it is evident that it was before used in the Church, by the tumult which arose at the first denial of it by Anastasius [Nestorius\u2019s presbyter]; and so confirmed it as received before, because they approved the Epistles of St. Cyril, who proved it by the usage of those Fathers which preceded him.\u201d\nIt has not been unfrequently assumed that the word Theotocos was coined to express the peculiar view of the Incarnation held by St. Cyril. Such however, is an entire mistake. It was an old term of Catholic Theology, and the very word was used by bishop Alexander in a letter from the synod held at Alexandria in a.d. 320, 248 to condemn the Arian heresy (more than a hundred years before the meeting of the Council of Ephesus); \u201cAfter this, we receive the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, of which Jesus Christ our Lord became the first-fruits; who bore a body in truth, not in semblance, which he derived from Mary the Mother of God (\u1f10\u03ba \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5 \u039c\u03b1\u03c1\u03af\u03b1\u03c2).\u201d 249 The same word had been used by many church writers among whom may be mentioned St. Athanasius, who says, \u201cAs the flesh was born of Mary, the Mother of God, so we say that he, the Word, was himself born of Mary\u201d (Orat. c. Arian., iij., 14, 29, 33; also iv., 32). See also Eusebius (Vit. Const., iij., 43); St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat., x., 9); and especially Origen, who (says Bp. Pearson) \u201cdid not only use, but expound at large the meaning of that title \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 in his first tome on the Epistle to the Romans, as Socrates and Liberatus testify.\u201d 250 (Cf. Origen in Deut. xxii., 23; vol. ij., p. 391. A; in Luc. apud Galland, Bib. Patr., vol. xiv., append., p. 87, D). A list is given by Dr. Routh, in his Reliqui\u00e6 Sacr\u00e6. Vol. ij., p. 215 (1st Ed.), 332 (2d Ed.).\nIn fact Theodore of Mopsuestia was the first to object to it, so far as we know, writing as follows: \u201cMary bare Jesus, not the Word, for the Word was and remained omnipresent, although from the beginning he dwelt in Jesus in a peculiar manner. Thus Mary is properly the Mother of Christ (Christotocos) but not the mother of God (Theotocos). Only figuratively, per anaphoram, can she be called Theotocos also, because God was in Christ in a remarkable manner. Properly she bare a man, in whom the union with the Word was begun, but was still so little completed, that he was not yet called the Son of God.\u201d And in another place he says: \u201cIt is madness to say that God is born of the Virgin.\u2026Not God, but the temple in which God dwelt, is born of Mary.\u201d 251 How far Theodore had departed from the teaching of the Apostolic days may be seen by the following quotations from St. Ignatius. \u201cThere is one only physician, of flesh and spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true Life in death, Son of Mary and of God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.\u201d 252 Further on in the same epistle he says: \u201cFor our God, Jesus the Christ, was borne in the womb by Mary etc.\u201d 253 With the first of these passages Bp. Lightfoot very aptly compares the following from Melito. \u201cSince he was incorporeal, he fashioned a body for himself of our likeness\u2026he was carried by Mary and clothed by his Father, he trod the earth and he filled the heavens.\u201d 254\nTheodore was forced by the exigencies of his position to deny the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum which had already at that early date come to be well understood, at least so far as practice is concerned.\np. 209 (Hefele, Hist. of the Councils, Vol. iii., p. 8.)\nThis doctrine, as is well known is predicating the same properties of the two natures in Christ, not in abstracto (Godhead and manhood), but in concreto (God and man). Christ himself had declared in St. John iii., 16: \u201cGod\u2026gave his only begotten Son\u201d (namely, to death), and similarly St. Peter declared (Acts 3.15): \u201cye\u2026killed the Prince of Life,\u201d when in fact the being given up and being killed is a property (\u1f30\u03b4\u03af\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1 = predicate) of man, not of God (the only begotten, the Prince of Life). In the same way Clement of Rome, for example, spoke of \u201cthe sufferings of God\u201d (\u03c0\u03b1\u03b8\u03ae\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6) (1 Ad Cor. 2), Ignatius of Antioch (Ad Ephes., c. 1, and Ad Rom., 6) of an \u03b1\u1f37\u03bc\u03b1 and \u03c0\u03ac\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6, Tatian of a \u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c0\u03b5\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd\u03b8\u1f7c\u03c2 (Ad Gr\u00e6cos, c. 13); Barnabas teaches (c. 7) that \u201cthe Son of God could not suffer except on our behalf\u2026and on our behalf he has brought the vessel of his Spirit as a sacrifice.\u201d Similarly Iren\u00e6us (iii., 16, 6) says, \u201cThe Only-begotten impassible Word (unigenitus impassibilis) has become passible\u201d (passibilis); and Athanasius, \u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03c5\u03c1\u03ce\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd \u03b5\u1f36\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03bd (Ep. ad Epictet., n. 10, t. j., p. 726. ed. Patav.)\nIt is, however, to be remarked that the properties of the one nature were never transferred to the other nature in itself, but always to the Person who is at the same time both man and God. Human attributes were not ascribed to the Godhead, but to God, and vice vers\u00e2.\nFor a full treatment of the figure of speech called the communicatio idiomatum the reader is referred to the great works on Theology where it will be found set forth at large, with its restrictions specified and with examples of its use. A brief but interesting note on it will be found in St. John Damascene\u2019s famous treatise De Fide Orthodoxa, Book III., iij. (Migne\u2019s Pat. Gr\u00e6c., col. 994).\n(2) Meaning of the Word \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2.\nWe pass now to the meaning of the word, having sufficiently traced the history of its use. Bishop Pearson says: \u201cThis name was first in use in the Greek Church, who, delighting in the happy compositions of that language, called the blessed Virgin Theotocos. From whence the Latins in imitation styled her Virginem Deiparam et Deigenitricem.\u201d 255 In the passage to which the words just quoted are a portion of a footnote, he says: \u201cWherefore from these three, a true conception, nutrition, and parturition, we must acknowledge that the blessed Virgin was truly and properly the Mother of our Saviour. And so is she frequently styled the Mother of Jesus in the language of the Evangelists, and by Elizabeth particularly the \u2018Mother of her Lord,\u2019 as also by the general consent of the Church (because he which was so born of her was God,) the Deipara; which being a compound title begun in the Greek Church, was resolved into its parts by the Latins and so the Virgin was plainly named the Mother of God.\u201d\nPearson is mistaken in supposing that the resolution of the compound Theotocos into \u03bc\u03ae\u03c4\u03b7\u03c1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 was unknown to the early Greek writers. Dionysius expressly calls Mary \u1f21 \u03bc\u03ae\u03c4\u03b7\u03c1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5 (Contr. Paul. Samos., Qu\u00e6st. viij.); and among the Latins Mater Dei and Dei Genetrix were (as Pearson himself confesses in note 37) used before the time of St. Leo I. It is not an open question whether Mater Dei, Dei Genetrix, Deipara, \u03bc\u03ae\u03c4\u03b7\u03c1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 are proper equivalents for \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2. This point has been settled by the unvarying use of the whole Church of God throughout all the ages from that day to this, but there is, or at least some persons have thought that there was, some question as to how Theotocos should be translated into English.\nThroughout this volume I have translated it \u201cMother of God,\u201d and I propose giving my p. 210 reasons for considering this the only accurate translation of the word, both from a lexico-graphical and from a theological point of view.\n(a) It is evident that the word is a composite formed of \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 = God, and \u03c4\u03af\u03ba\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd = to be the mother of a child. Now I have translated the verbal part \u201cto be the mother of a child\u201d because \u201cto bear\u201d in English does not necessarily carry the full meaning of the Greek word, which (as Bp. Pearson has well remarked in the passage cited above) includes \u201cconception, nutrition, and parturition.\u201d It has been suggested that \u201cGod-bearer\u201d is an exact translation. To this I object, that in the first place it is not English; and in the second that it would be an equally and, to my mind, more accurate translation of \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c6\u03cc\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 than of \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2.\nAnother suggestion is that it be rendered \u201cthe bringer forth of God.\u201d Again I object that, from a rhetorical standpoint, the expression is very open to criticism; and from a lexicographical point of view it is entirely inadequate, for while indeed the parturition does necessarily involve in the course of nature the previous conception and nutrition, it certainly does not express it.\nNow the word Mother does necessarily express all three of these when used in relation to her child. The reader will remember that the question I am discussing is not whether Mary can properly be called the Mother of God; this Nestorius denied and many in ancient and modern times have been found to agree with him. The question I am considering is what the Greek word Theotocos means in English. I do not think anyone would hesitate to translate Nestorius\u2019s Christotocos by \u201cMother of Christ\u201d and surely the expressions are identical from a lexicographical point of view.\nLiddell and Scott in their Lexicon insert the word \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 as an adjective and translate \u201cbearing God\u201d and add: \u201cespecially \u1f21 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03c4\u03cc\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2, Mother of God, of the Virgin, Eccl.\u201d\n(b) It only remains to consider whether there is from a theological point of view any objection to the translation, \u201cMother of God.\u201d It is true that some persons have thought that such a rendering implied that the Godhead has its origin in Mary, but this was the very objection which Nestorius and his followers urged against the word Theotocos, and this being the case, it constitutes a strong argument in favour of the accuracy of the rendering. Of course the answer to the objection in each case is the same, it is not of the Godhead that Mary is the Mother, but of the Incarnate Son, who is God. \u201cMother\u201d expresses exactly the relation to the incarnate Son which St. Cyril, the Council of Ephesus, and all succeeding, not to say also preceding, ages of Catholics, rightly or wrongly, ascribe to Mary. All that every child derives from its Mother that God the Son derived from Mary, and this without the co-operation of any man, but by the direct operation of the Holy Ghost, so that in a fuller, truer, and more perfect sense, Mary is the Mother of God the Son in his incarnation, than any other earthly mother is of her son.\nI therefore consider it certain that no scholar who can and will divest himself of theological bias, can doubt that \u201cMother of God\u201d is the most accurate translation of the term Theotocos.\nCf. Bp. Lightfoot\u2019s criticism on Gibbon as an historian, The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. I., p. 46 n. Macaulay\u2019s History of England will of course instantly present itself to the reader as a sample of the brilliant variety of histories referred to in the text.\n208:248\nThe date is not certain, it may have been a year or so different.\n208:249 208:250\nPearson, An Expos. of the Creed, Art. III., n. 36.\n208:251\nI take this passage as cited by Hefele, Hist. Counc., Vol. III., 9,\n208:252 208:253 208:254\nMelito, Fragm. 14 (ed. Otto); cit. Lightfoot, Apost. Fath., II., 1, p. 48, n.\n209:255","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XIV: The Th...","type":"page"}