by Giuseppe Monno
From the earliest centuries, the Church has venerated the Virgin Mary with the title Theotókos, which literally means “She who gave birth to God.” This term expresses one of the central truths of Christological faith: Jesus Christ is one divine Person in whom two natures subsist—divine and human—both perfect and complete, united according to the hypostatic union without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.
THE NESTORIAN CONTROVERSY AND THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS
In the fifth century, the bishop Nestorius proposed replacing the title Theotókos with Christotókos, meaning “Mother of Christ,” arguing that Mary could not have given birth to God, but only to the man Jesus. This position, however, undermined the unity of Christ’s Person and called into question the doctrine that the eternal Word became flesh (John 1:14).
Against Nestorius rose Cyril of Alexandria, who vigorously defended the use of the title Theotókos. He maintained that to deny Mary’s divine motherhood was to deny the hypostatic union: the union, in the Person of the incarnate Word, of the two natures—divine and human—without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.
BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE DIVINE MATERNITY
The dogma of the divine maternity has a solid foundation in Sacred Scripture. The evangelist Luke recounts that Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaims: “Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord?” (Luke 1:43). The Greek expression Kyrios mou (“my Lord”) corresponds to the Hebrew Adonai, a sacred title used in place of the Tetragrammaton YHWH to refer to God Himself. This indicates that Elizabeth recognizes in Mary the Mother of the Lord Himself, thus anticipating the later dogmatic formulation.
Moreover, Saint Paul writes: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4), thereby affirming both the full humanity of the Word, assumed from Mary, and His divine origin.
THEOLOGICAL CLARIFICATIONS
As Saint Thomas Aquinas explains in the Summa Theologiae (III, q. 35, a. 4, ad 2), Mary is not the mother of the divinity as such, but she is the mother of a Person who is God. The Son of God did not assume a pre-existing human person, but rather a human nature in the unity of His divine Person. For this reason, it is affirmed that Mary gave birth to the eternal Son of the Father according to His human nature.
With the Incarnation, everything belonging to the assumed human nature becomes proper to the divine Person of the Son. Therefore, to affirm that Mary is the Mother of God does not mean that she generated the divinity, but that she gave birth, in time, to a Person who is eternal, divine, and consubstantial with the Father.
Mary is not the mother of God the Father nor of the Holy Spirit, but of the eternal Word, the Son, who shares indivisibly in the being of the Father (John 10:30; 16:15), according to the Trinitarian dogma: one divine substance in three distinct Persons.
THE CONSENSUS OF TRADITION AND AN ANCIENT PRAYER
Faith in the divine maternity does not originate with the Council of Ephesus, but is attested from the earliest centuries of Christianity. One of the oldest witnesses is the prayer Sub tuum praesidium (“Under your protection”), found in an Egyptian papyrus dating back to the third century A.D., in Greek, in which Mary is invoked as Theotókos:
Under your protection we seek refuge, Holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petitions in our time of trouble, but rescue us from every danger, O glorious and blessed Virgin.
This testimony shows that Marian devotion—and particularly faith in the divine maternity—was already deeply rooted in the piety of the early Church, well before the dogmatic definitions of the councils.
THE INSEPARABLE LINK BETWEEN INCARNATION AND DIVINE MATERNITY
The Incarnation of the Word and the divine maternity of Mary are two inseparable mysteries: to deny one is to compromise the other. Whoever professes that the Son of God became man must also recognize that Mary is the Mother of God, since she gave the Word His human flesh and the human nature in which He came into the world.
“Mother of God” is not merely a devotional title, but expresses an essential truth of Christology and of the Church’s faith. As the Second Vatican Council affirms:
“Mary is rightly acknowledged and honoured as truly the Mother of God… since she cooperated out of love so that there might be born in the Church the faithful, who are members of that Head” (Lumen Gentium 61).