HOLY MARY, THEOTOKOS

August 15 is the Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Many Protestant-minded Anglicans on hearing this take a deep breath and change the subject. They have the sense that the honor of Mary has been more liable to exaggeration and deviation than any other doctrine or practice in the Church of God.

This admitted, let us also accept that she has never been added – officially – to the Blessed Three Persons of the Holy Trinity to make a foursome. And let us recall that she is specifically called by the Ecumenical Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) the “Theotokos” (a word that has been usually translated into English as “Mother of God” [God the Son]).

Let us further agree that not only is Mary unique amongst women she is also, of all God’s creatures, angelic and human, the one with the greatest dignity and honor. She is above archangels, seraphim and cherubim, above the patriarchs and prophets of the old covenant and above the apostles of the new covenant in dignity and honor. And she is so because she was chosen by the LORD to be, and she readily accepted the vocation of, the Theotokos – the “birth giver of God”. She was the Temple of the Lord, the Son [see the Annunciation]. She carried in her womb for 9 months the Word of God incarnate, the eternal Son of God in human form, and then she gave birth to her son who is also the eternally begotten Son of the Father, whom she called “Jesus” [“the LORD is our salvation”].

Mary’s SON is her Savior and Lord but he is nevertheless her son, for his human nature was formed from her. Of course she did not give unto him his divine nature or his divine personhood for he is always the Second Person of the Blessed, Holy and Undivided Trinity from all eternity. Mary became the Temple in which the pre-existing divine Son received his human nature and began to live within his humanity. Mary’s conceiving him was His receiving [of human nature].

Jesus is thus God and Man, One Person made known in two natures, divine and human.

The original intent of the Mary Festival on August 15 in the fifth century in the eastern mediterranean was to celebrate her divine maternity, with no reference to the end of her life on earth. It may be regretted that it did not remain solely with this biblical and soteriological emphasis.

However, the emphasis later moved to what has been called her “Falling Asleep” or “Dormition” or “Koimesis” that is of her being exalted into heaven from the grave after her death in order to be with her Son – and not wait for the final resurrection of the body at the end of the age. Yet this emphasis – which some Protestants find difficult to accept since Scripture is silent on it – should not cause us to forget the original and basic theme of the Festival of August 15 -- her divine maternity, her being the “Theotokos.”

The Protestant Reformers of the 16th century accepted the title of “Theotokos” even if they rejected much of the late medieval devotion to “our Lady.” Hugh Latimer, who was burned at the stake in Oxford as a Protestant martyr, wanted his colleague, Archbishop Cranmer, to include in the BCP Gabriel’s acclamation to Mary, “Hail, Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee…” but it never got in.

Let us as Protestants keep this Marian Festival in its original intent, let us admire the grace of God in Mary and her willing submission to the divine will, let us remember that without Mary's cooperation there would have been no Incarnate Word, no Saviour of mankind and no redemption of the world, and thus let us magnify and glorify the Father, through His Incarnate Son, with the Holy Ghost.

The Rev’d Dr. Peter Toon
August 14 2001