What are facts about Mary the mother of God?
Mary was born without original sin.
Mary said yes to God to be the Mother of Jesus Christ.
Mary is our Mother in Faith and our Spiritual Mother.
Catholic Answer
There are four defined dogmas concerning the Blessed Virgin
Mary:
1) She was the Mother of God.
2) She was Immaculately Conceived
3) She was assumed into heaven at the end of her mortal
life.
4) She was a perpetual virgin.
from A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, by Dave Armstrong,
Sophia Institute Press, © 2003
1) Mary the "Mother of God" (Theotokos) The official, dogmatic
proclamation of this dogma was made at the Ecumenical Council of
Ephesus in 431, in response to the heresy of Nestorianism.
Scripture implicitly affirms Mary's Divine motherhood by
attesting, on the one hand, the true Divinity of Christ, and on the
other hand, Mary's true motherhood. Thus Mary is called: "Mother of
Jesus" (John 2:1) ... "Mother of the Lord" (Luke 1:43). Mary's true
motherhood is clearly foretold by the Prophet Isaiah: "Behold a
virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and his name shall be called
Emmanuel" (Isaiah 7:14) . . . . the woman who bore the Son of God
is Progenitress of God, or the Mother of God [ see also Matt. 1:18,
12:46, 13:55; Luke 1:31, 35; Gal 4:4]. (Ott, Fundamentals of
Catholic Dogma, 196-197)
The doctrine of Mary as Theotokos flows consistently and
straightforwardly from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the
Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus.
Cardinal Gibbons explains:
We affirm that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the
Word of God, who in His divine nature is from all eternity begotten
of the Father, consubstantial with Him, was in the fullness of
time, begotten, by being born of the Virgin, thus taking to
Himself, from her maternal womb, a human nature of the same
substance with hers.
But it may be said the Blessed Virgin is not the Mother of the
Divinity. She had not, and she could no have, any part in the
generation of the Word of God, for that generation is eternal; her
maternity is temporal. He is her Creator; she is His creature.
Style her, if you will, the Mother of the man Jesus or even of the
human nature of the Son of God but not the Mother of God.
I shall answer this objection by putting a question. Did the
mother who bore us have any part in the production of our soul? Was
not this nobler part of our being the work of God alone? And yet
who would for a moment dream of saying "the mother of my body," and
not "my mother"? . . . (Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers,
137-138)
In like manner . . . the Blessed virgin, under the overshadowing
of the Holy Ghost, by communicating to the Second Person of the
Adorable Trinity, as mothers do, a true human nature of the same
substance with her own, is there really and truly His Mother.
2) The Immaculate Conception of Mary Pope Pius IX (in the papal
bull Ineffabilis Deus) infallibly defined this doctrine as binding
upon all Catholics on December 8, 1854.
Genesis 3:15 (known as the "Protoevangelion"): "I will put
enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her
seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."
Ludwig Ott expounds this verse:
The literal sense of the passage is possibly the following:
Between Satan and his followers on the one hand, and Eve and her
posterity on the other hand, there is to be constant moral warfare.
The posterity of Eve will achieve a complete and final victory over
Satan and his followers, even if it is wounded in the struggle. The
posterity of Eve includes the Messiah, in whose power humanity will
win a victory over Satan. Thus the passage is indirectly
messianic.
The seed of the woman was understood as referring to the
Redeemer, and thus the Mother of the Redeemer came to be seen in
the woman. Since the second century, this direct messianic-Marian
interpretation has been expounded by individual Fathers, for
example, St. Irenaeus, St. Epiphanius .... St. Cyprian ... St. Leo
the Great. However, it is not found in the writings of the majority
of the Fathers . . . According to this interpretation, Mary stands
with Christ in a perfect and victorious enmity toward Satan and his
following. Many of the later scholastics and a great many modern
theologians argue, in the light of this interpretation . . that
Mary's victory over Satan would not have been perfect, is she had
ever been under his dominion. Consequently she must have entered
the world without the stain of Original Sin. (Ott, Fundamentals of
Catholic Dogma, 200)
Most Protestant Bible translations follow the King James, or
Authorized, Version's lead in rendering kecharitomene, the Greek
word, as "favored," as indeed also some recent Catholic versions.
The favored (no pun intended!) Traditional Catholic rendering
(actually the more literal rendering) is "Hail, full of grace" (for
example, Douay, Confraternity, Knox). The word Mary (after hail) is
not in the text, but strongly implied, as the angel is addressing
her by title; thus we arrive at the phrase "Hail, Mary, full of
grace,"
The Bible speaks only implicitly of many things that Protestants
strongly believe, such as the proper mode of Baptism (immersion,
sprinkling, or pouring?). The Immaculate Conception is entirely
possible within scriptural presuppositions.
Luke 1:35 (The Annunciation; Mary as a type of the ark of the
covenant): "And the angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come
upon you, and the pow3er of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of
God.
Overshadow is derived from the Greek, episkiasei, which denotes
a bright cloud or cloud of glory. It is used in reference to the
cloud at the transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke
9:34) and hearkens back to instances of the Shekinah glory of the
God in the Old Testament (Exod. 24:15-16, 40:34-38; 1 Kings
8:10).
The Septuagint uses episkiasei in Exodus 40:34-35. Mary, as
Theotokos, becomes, in effect, the new temple and holy of holies,
where God dwelt in a special, spatially located fashion. In
particular Scripture seems to be making a direct symbolic
parallelism between Mary and the ark of the covenant. She is the
bearer and ark of the New Covenant, which Jesus brings about (Heb.
8:6-13; 12:24).
The Assumption of Mary
Pope Pius XII, in his Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus
Deus, of November 1, 1950, proclaimed this dogma in the following
carefully selected words:
By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the blessed
apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we proclaim,
declare, and define as a dogma revealed by God: the Immaculate
Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, when the course of her earthly
life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of
Heaven. (CCC, pars. 996, 974; Hardon, CC 154-155, 160-163; Hardon,
PCD, 32)
Ludwig Ott presents some of the biblical indications of the
Assumption:
Direct and express scriptural proofs are not to be had. The
possibility of the bodily assumption before the second coming of
Christ is not excluded by 1 Corinthians, 15:23, as the objective
Redemption was completed with the sacrificial death of Christ, and
the beginning of the final era foretold by the prophets commenced.
Its probability is suggested by Matthew 27:52-53: "And the graves
were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose,
and coming out of the tombs after His Resurrection came into the
holy city and appeared to many." According to the more probable
explanation, which was already expounded by the Fathers, the
awakening of the "saints" was a final resurrection and
transfiguration. If, however, the justified of the Old Covenant
were called to the perfection of salvation immediately after the
conclusion of the redemptive work of Christ, then it is possible
and probable that the Mother of the Lord was called to it also.
From her fullness of grace spoken of in Luke 1:28, Scholastic
theology derives the doctrine of the bodily assumption and
glorification of Mary. Since she was full of grace, she remained
preserved from the three-fold curse of sin (Gen. 3:16-19), as well
as from her return to dust . . .
Modern theology usually cites Genesis 3:15 in support of the
doctrine. Since by "the seed of the woman" it understands Christ,
and by "the woman", Mary, it is argued that as Mary had an intimate
share in Christ's battle against Satan and in His victory over
Satan and sin, she must also have participated intimately in His
victory over death. It is true that the literal reference of the
text is to Eve and not Mary, but already since the end of the
second century (St. Justin), Tradition has seen in Mary the new
Eve. (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 208-209. For the "New
Eve" typology, see Catechism of the Catholic Church, pars. 411,
494, 511, 726, 975.)
Lest one think that a bodily ascent into Heaven (of a creature,
as opposed to Jesus) is impossible and "biblically unthinkable,"
Holy Scripture contains the examples of Enoch (Heb. 11:5; cf. Gen
5:24), Elijah (2 Kings 2:1, 11), St. Paul's being caught up to the
third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2-4), possibly bodily, and events during
the Second Coming (1 Thess. 4:15-17), believed by many Evangelicals
to constitute the "Rapture," an additional return of Christ for
believers only. All of these occur by virtue of the power of God,
not the intrinsic ability of the persons.
The Assumption of the Blessed virgin flows of necessity from the
Immaculate Conception and Mary's actual sinlessness....
The Perpetual virginity of Mary
Pope Paul IV, in his Constitution, Cum Quorumdam Hominum, of
1555, expressed the constant teaching of the Catholic Church
concerning both the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and the perpetual
virginity of Mary:
We question and admonish all those who . . . have asserted,
taught, and believed . . . that our Lord . . . was not conceived
from the Holy Spirit according to the flesh in the womb of the
Blessed Mary ever Virgin, but, as other men, from the see of Joseph
. . . or that the same Blessed Virgin Mary is not truly the mother
of God and did not retrain her virginity intact before the birth,
in the birth, and perpetually after the birth. (In Neuner and
Dupuis, The Christian Faith, 217. See CCC, pars 484-486, 496-498,
502-506, 510, 723 (for the virgin birth); pars 499-501, 507, 510,
721 (for the perpetual virginity of Mary))
The Greek word for brother in the New Testament is adelphos. The
well-known Protestant linguistic reference An Expository Dictionary
of the New Testament Words defines it as follows:
1. Male children of the same parents . . .
2. Male descendants of the same parents, Acts 7:23, 26; Hebrews
7:5 . . .
4. People of the same nationality, Acts 3:17, 22; Romans 9:3 . .
.
5. Any man, a neighbor, Luke 10:29; Matthew 5:22, 7:3;
6. Persons united by a common interest, Matthew 5:47;
7. Persons united by a common calling, Revelation 22:9;
8. Mankind, Matthew 25:40; Hebrews 2:17;
9. The disciples, and so, by implication, all believers, Matthew
28:10; John 20:17;
10. Believers, apart from sex, Matthew 23:8; Acts 1:15; romans
1:13; 1 Thessalonians 1:4; Revelation 19:10 (the word sisters is
used of believers, only in 1 Timothy 5:2) . . . . (Vine, An
Expository Dictionary of New testament Words, Vol. 1, 154-155.)
It Is evident, therefore, from the range of possible definitions
of adelphos, that Jesus' "brothers" need not necessarily be
siblings of Jesus on linguistic grounds, as many commentators,
learned and unlearned, seem to assume uncritically. Be examining
the use of adelphos and related words in Hebrew, and by comparing
Scripture with Scripture ("exegesis"), one can determine that most
sensible explanation of all the biblical date taken collectively.
Many examples prove that adelphos has a very wide variety of
meanings:
In the King James Version, Jacob is called the "brother" of his
Uncle Laban (Gen. 29:15; 29:10). The same thing occurs with regard
to Lot and Abraham (Gen. 14:14; 11:26-27). The Revised Standard
Version uses "kinsman" at 29:15 and 14:14.
Use of brother or brethren for mere kinsmen: Deuteronomy 23:7; 2
Samuel 1:26; 1 Kings 9:14, 20:32; 2 Kings 10:13-14; Jeremiah 24:9;
Amos 1:9).
In Luke 2:41-51, ... it is fairly obvious that Jesus is the only
child....
Jesus himself uses brethren in the larger sense: Matthew 23:8,
23:1; 12:49-50.
The term Firstborn means pre-eminent and nowhere assumes later
siblings, etc.
