If Mary is not the mother of God then Jesus is not divine. Are you espousing Adoptionism?
@Randy I know you would appreciate this!
I wrote about the church councils some years ago. One of the monophysite churches (they believe that Jesus has just one nature, a divine one) is the Armenian Church. I figure this is as good a time as any to share some pictures Iâve been meaning to post. I hope you find this interesting!
The American Museum of Natural History isnât just for bones and butterflies; they also have many fine cultural halls. In their Hall of Asian Peoples, they have a wonderful display of sacred objects from the Armenian Church. and they even include a recording of their beautiful liturgical music.
Armenia was the first state to adopt Christianity. Conversion resulted primarily from the preaching of St. Gregory the Enlightener, who converted the Armenian King Tiridates III, about A.D. 301. Early in the 5th Century the Armenians developed an alphabet and thus made possible the translation of the Bible, and also development of other literature, principally religious works.Armenian Christianity rejects the concept of purgatory, does not accept the papacy, and allows clergy to marry. The liturgy is in ancient Armenian. There are other differences from Roman Catholic practice, but the 7 sacraments of Roman Catholic and Armenian practice are essentially the same.
The beautiful vestments of a Bishop:
An old Armenian Bible:
Chalice and other altar furnishings:
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Mary being the mother of God would be logically incoherent as it would make her causative to God.
If you look at the trinity in a logic coherent way you should see the problem in making Jesus equal to God, as him being confined into material space wont work. logically you can look as Jesus being a subset of the divine, that means he is all divine but not all of the divine is in him.
Your model of the divine seems to say that Gods word can not make anything devine, as from sinners only sin can arise. To me the divinity of Jesus comes from the fact that his existence is not based on human will but on obedience to Gods word, thus divine.
I am addressing what I perceive to be the thrust of your comment(s). It is my intention to argue that for the word God to be the meaning that we attribute to that word, we need to be capable of containing such a meaning within self. By appealing to revelation, we still require that we, as human beings revealed unto, can comprehend such revelation within our possibilities as human beings.
When considered in a formal fashion, the meaning of God appears complicated, or to the sceptical mind contradictory. Intellectual honesty has often forced people to agree that there are many examples when âgod was created by manâ and specifically desired meaning(s) often attached to the term god for political (or other) reasons. Yet when the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, (and indeed the Bible) are read as a means of communicating beliefs on the matter of faith in Christ, formal logic, or scientific methodology of the time, was not utilised. Christ did not teach his disciples logic, nor did they appear to have undertaken philosophical debates. This suggests at least, that although formalism may appear complicated, sensible discussions may take place . Is philosophy inadequate for the task?
We note that Western and Eastern theologians laboured with matters pertaining to the Godhead for many centuries, culminating in the Patristic writings and later works such as those of Aquinas and his proofs of (or five ways to) Godâs existence. Western philosophy has developed over the centuries from Hellenistic roots, especially from the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Although theological discussions were not continuations of Hellenistic philosophy, certain aspects were considered close to the thinking of prominent theologians. The nature of such schemes appears to gravitate about the idea as the ultimate reality, and the categories providing the foundation of knowledge (understanding), particularly empirical knowledge.
On the question of Mary and how we understand Jesus Christ, she is correctly spoken as the Mother of God and receptive of the Grace of God. Jesus is clearly the Son of Man (100% human), and the Son of God (100% divine).
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I do not support Adoptionism. What I think is that Mary was not the source of the divine side and therefore not fully Mother of God, although she gave birth to the Son of God. She gave birth and Jesus inherited biological stuff from her. In that sense, she was the biological mother of Jesus although she was not the source of the divine side of Jesus.
The double nature of Jesus (100% human, 100% divine) is a mystery and so is his development within Mary. 100% human fetus within his human mother and yet something much more. Mary herself could not give anything divine to Jesus although the fetus grew inside her.
Mary was a blessed woman, thanks to God. An ordinary but blessed woman. How we name her affects how people treat her memory. If we call her Mother of God, we inadvertently lead some people to rely on her, pray her and wait that she will respond like a semi-goddess. That is the problem. If we did not have this problem, I would not see as a problem that some call her the Mother of God.
As I wrote, I see Mary as an ordinary pious hebrew woman who got an exceptional grace from God. I do not believe that the sins of our ancestors would somehow doom us to hell (Hesekiel 18 writes about this with strong words), so I see no need to declare Mary as somehow sinless human. Just a young woman who accepted the will of God.
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Hello Miekhle. I like the âessentialâ (I think) focus of your message . That is, you want to reduce some of the controversy (?) between followers of Jesus by de-emphasizing belief â or the insistence â on certain particular points of doctrine. Yes, these things do, and always have, caused controversies, both large and small. And not always pleasant. The concept of a triune (or complex) nature for the One deity (for one thing)âgoes back to the time of Jesus and before. The wrestling with it and all that went on and which eventually led to the council that you refer to â I am sure that it was tough. God is complex and we argue about a lot of things as people. I do commend your basic desire for peace and harmony though. But people âwillâ always insist strongly on things they see as essential to belief in the God of the Bible. Itâs just how it goesâŚAnd for all I know, the re-vision of things (no trinity etc) may have led (in some cases over the past 2000 years) to other deviations from biblical teaching. These would have been even more difficult to just :ignore". Religion is not the only subject that is filled with conflicts.
Hmmm⌠There seems to be some disagreement in regards to the Armenian church. While some Catholic references refer to them as monophysite, the Armenian church is not listed in other references as such. Seems monophysite is a label put on them which they do not agree with.
Like all Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Armenian Church has been referred to as monophysite by both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians because it rejected the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon, which condemned the belief of one incarnate nature of Christ (monophysis). The Armenian Church officially severed ties with Rome and Constantinople in 554, during the Second Council of Dvin where the Chalcedonian dyophysite christological formula was rejected.
However, again like other Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Armenian Orthodox Church argues that the identification as âmonophysitismâ is an incorrect description of its position. It considers Monophysitism, as taught by Eutyches and condemned at Chalcedon, a heresy and only disagrees with the formula defined by the Council of Chalcedon. The Armenian Church instead adheres to the doctrine defined by Cyril of Alexandria, considered as a saint by the Chalcedonian churches as well, who described Christ as being of one incarnate nature, where both divine and human nature are united (miaphysis). To distinguish this from Eutychian and other versions of Monophysitism this position is called miaphysitism. Whereas the prefix âmono-â (< Greek Οονο- < ÎźĎνοĎ) means âsingle, alone, onlyâ, thus emphasising the singular nature of Christ, âmiaâ (Οίι âoneâ FEM), simply means âoneâ unemphatically, and allows for a compound nature.
From Wikipedia on the Armenian Apostolic Church.
So instead they are miaphysite and would ironically agree with beagleladyâs description of Christ as having natures that were blended together.
was it not written on earth as it is in heaven so yes i may be espousing Adoptionism i was not the one to write the words nor .
as far as Jesus being the divine one that is where humans have it wrong no one creature is more divine than another NO MAN IS ABOVE ANOTHER MAN , NO WOMAN IS ABOVE ANOTHER WOMAN NO CHILD IS ABOVE ANOTHER CHILD âThe student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for a disciple to be like his teacher, and a servant like his master.
It is not about that. Jesus taught that he who would be great would be a servant to others and even a servant of servants. What does that say about the greatness of God?
I rejected Adoptionism precisely because of what the Christian view says about God. That God comes down to us and that we do not and cannot elevate ourselves to Him.
Furthermore, we cannot take this âno man is above anotherâ in any absolute sense because the plain fact is that people are NOT equal in every way. Instead we vary a great deal in so many different measures. For most of my life I was taught that intelligence was the most important measure. But now AI have shown that intelligence is not as big a thing as we thought - machines can do that! It is Jesusâ teaching about greatness which really nails it down â that real greatness is found in serving others. Thus the way in which humans have usually treated greatness as being entitled to the service of others⌠is a bit backwards.
Nobody ever said that Mary is the source of Jesusâ s divinity. I donât know any mainline churches that have a problem with calling Mary the theotokos (mother of God, of God-bearer.)
We shouldnât confuse the issues and we need understand different theological points of view. Only Roman Catholics believe that Mary was sinless, but her sinlessness was only because God preserved her from sin, making her a suitable person to bear Jesus. This is not what I believe, and neither do the Eastern Orthodox.
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beaglelady has spoken of mainline churches before. In order to seek some understanding of this term I looked up what Wikipedia has to say about it.
The mainline Protestant churches (also called mainstream Protestant and sometimes oldline Protestant) are a group of Protestant denominations in the United States that contrast in history and practice with evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic Protestant denominations. Some make a distinction between âmainlineâ and âoldlineâ, with the former referring only to denominational ties and the latter referring to church lineage, prestige and influence. However, this distinction has largely been lost to history and the terms are now nearly synonymous.
Mainline Protestant churches have stressed social justice and personal salvation, and both politically and theologically, tend to be more liberal than non-mainstream Protestants. Mainstream Protestant churches share a common approach that often leads to collaboration in organizations such as the National Council of Churches, and because of their involvement with the ecumenical movement, they are sometimes given the alternative label of âecumenical Protestantismâ (especially outside the United States). While in 1970 the mainstream Protestant churches claimed most Protestants and more than 30 percent of the American population as members, as of 2009 they are a minority among American Protestants, claiming approximately 15 percent of American adults.
But I guess I would add to this that these are the longer and more well established churches and thus there are some good reasons to look to them for examples of Christian belief as opposed to the evangelical churches which sometimes are a bit erratically variant and short lived â just being honest as an evangelical myself.
i like what you wrote, i believe that no creature man / woman human/ angel / spirit is a devine person or creature not that we can see .because it was written in one of the gospels if any man shall see me wait , the verse was in Exodus 33:20 I will cause all My goodness to pass before you,â the LORD replied, âand I will proclaim My nameâthe LORDâin your presence. I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.â 20But He added, [âYou cannot] i look at divinity like i do with success you can be the most best and richest political scientist in the world but in order to be sucessful you still require practice for oned once said it is practise that makes perfect oh wait that person who wrote practyise makes perfect was most likely a non beliver
thanks. I perceive the word of God - or his command to order the chaos is the law to love thy neighbour like thyself, on which hang all the law and the prophets. What doesnât destabilises and collapses.
Regarding Mary she canât be the mother of God as God precedes everything, so she is the mother of Jesus and strictly speaking, like we all, a child of God. That Jesus is divine is not down to her as Jesus was not created under her authority, but she submitted to God. She herself was born of human will as for being the daughter of her parents.
What makes Jesus 100% diving is not his genetic material. but the fact that he is born of the will of God and not humans. So she is the mother of the hardware, but the software came from elsewhere. So she is mother to the part of God that was in Jesus, but that is nor all of God
Jesusâ divinity is not, and was not, ever dependent upon Mary.
I donât think of evangelical churches (as a whole) as âerratically variant and short lived.â Most mainline churches have an evangelical past of some sort. But many have moved in different directions, and I do not get the impression that church attendance is all that high among them (see various studies of church attendance decline). Itâs been awhile since I regularly attended a mainline church. But evangelical churches tend to place more emphasis on worship and on biblical teaching â and the need for a born-again experience, which is something taught by Jesus, and hardly an erratic thing. In the town I grew up in, the minister of one prominent mainline church became a born-again Christian â a thing that caused some controversy in his church. Itâs been decades now, and that particular âmainlineâ church is still evangelical â not erratic and certainly not (50 years later) short lived. The other church of same denomination in that town is also still around, still a very mainline, smaller congregation.
Neither do I, which is why I didnât say that. I said SOMETIMES! Or if you want a clarification I mean some (few) evangelical churches are a bit erratic and short lived.
It is the benefit of time. Older religions and churches learn what works well and what is not so well advised. On the negative side, you can also say that they tend to be more hidebound and lifeless, which is why so many people have abandoned the mainline churches and have gone over to the evangelical churches. In many ways the evangelical movement is like a second reformation. But one aspect to that phenomenon other than the increased diversity is that of âcounter reformation.â And just as the Catholic church has learned a bit from seeing how Protestants have rebelled against some things, so also the mainline churches (and the Catholics) have learned a bit from evangelical churches. They see what works well and try some of that for themselves.
I have attended MANY of both mainline and evangelical (1983-1993) and I testify that on average there are definitely more attending the evangelical churches. And the statistics agree
I think more on those doctrines that defines much more detail than what is revealed in the bible. For me, much of our understanding of God contains many mysteries and should remain so unless reveal clearly by Scriptures.
Though the concept of a triune God emerged much later in 2nd to 3rd century AD, the fact that Jesus is God had created tension in the early church (during apostolic church). What about âGod is oneâ? Then whether Jesus and the Father are one? There was tension there, but neither Paul nor other apostles discussed this issue beyond what was revealed to them and they left it at that. The issue was unsolved and it remained a mystery in the early church.
Of course what makes mainline churches become liberal was/is their view of the bible. They donât believe it is the word of God and thus lost the only anchor for the truth and drifted toward whatever is blowing in the wind.
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The fate of revival movements within a church are interesting cases because they give some understanding of what happens as a revival or âreformationâ gets older. I have some experience of revivalist movements within the Finnish lutheran church and have made some mental comparisons with revival movements outside the church.
A revival movement starts burning with a zeal that comes from God and often accompanied by special acts or gifts of the Holy Spirit (dig deep enough and you find them even in the least charismatic movements). Prayer is active. Those joining the movement feel Godâs work on a very personal level. Preaching and testimonies demonstrate this and are often uncompromised challenges to repent. Outsiders are at least mildly opposed to the movement, partly because of the direct challenge to repent (attack towards their lifestyle and way of thinking), partly because of âtoo muchâ zeal or strange happenings.
Then comes the second generation. They do not necessarily have a direct contact to the revival, they experience it as something that happened to their parents. They have less zeal and can see the flaws of the first generation more clearly. It seems sensible to guide actions to a more balanced and rational direction. As the peak times of the revival have passed, the movement has switched to the phase were everything is more organized and extreme behaviors are cut out.
With every generation that passes, the movement becomes less ârevivalâ and more âculturalâ. People speak about the past but may forget some early parts of the story. Theological tradition gets stronger but interpretations more rational, humane, liberal. Prayer becomes more and more âby the bookâ, guided instead of spontaneous talking to Father or Jesus. The movement glides towards the state where the participants are those who oppose new radical revival movements.
Old churches have hope but they need frequent revivals or reformations, otherwise they stagnate to a cultural institution with strong organization and tradition but little life. New revival movements have life and acts of God, which is the reason they tend to attract people from congregations that have stagnated.
Thanks Miekhle for the clarification, Yes, there have been and are some great points of âdiscussionâ in the Bible. Irenaeus, in about 180 CE/AD wrote a treatise on the three-in-one aspect of God. .
Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp who learned his theology from the apostle John. This âgenealogyâ is often cited by those looking for a history of the Trinitarian DeityâŚand worth considering, along with the complexity-of-God belief that preceded John within the culture of ancient Judea/Galilee.
Tertullian first used the word âtrinitasâ around 200-225 CE, from what I have read. But Jewish writers of our era who note that Judaism, in the period of Jesusâlifetime and maybe a century before, was contemplating some sort of âdualityâ of the One God. They obviously would not have named it âtrinityâ or similar. But the discussion arose, among them, because of the visions and images in Daniel and some intertestamental texts. My understanding is that Judaism dropped this hot potato once they saw what the emergent Jesus-follower groups did with it. So a discussion about the complexity of the nature of One God would have been in the air in the time of the first followers of Jesus and before them, regardless of what ânameâ they may have given the doctrine or idea. Jesusâ use of the I Am phraseology to refer to Himself (âI and the Father are OneâŚHe who has seen Me has seen the FatherâŚAnd the Spirit descended and a voice said 'This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleasedâ etc etc-- and the common understanding that this equated Him with the God of the Exodus (and creation)âprobably led to a few intense discussions among Jesus followers â witness the problem of Marcion etc âearly on.
And yesâŚa mystery (ultimately) is what and Who God is. Paul and the apostles referred to the issueâthough not naming it a âdoctrine of the Trinityâ, per se. âŚâFor this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with Godâ (John 5:18) âThen Peter saidâŚhow is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit?..â Acts 5:3)
While it is still difficult for you and me to comprehend a âthree-in-One,â I would not say that the matter was unsolved in the early church â especially if we find no in-depth theological papers on it dating to 70 CE and if the concept of a complex nature to the God of Israel existed, in some form at least, at the time. They may have tossed it about, but not much data remains.
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