Pints With Aquinas - 50: Should we call Mary the "Mother of God"?

Episode Date: March 28, 2017

In today's episode we chat with Thomas about Mary, and whether or not it's appropriate to call her the Mother of God (instead of the Mother of Jesus or something). In this episode I read from Aquinas's Shorter Summa published by Sophia Institute Press.  --- SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, episode 50. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we'll ask St. Thomas the question, is it right to call Mary the mother of God. Hey, good to have you with us here at Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. And can you believe that it's been 50 episodes? Maybe you've been listening to Pints with Aquinas from the beginning or close enough. My goodness, 50 episodes. It's really cool. It's a good thing that Thomas Aquinas and us have breaks in between these drinking sessions or else we'd be rather plastered by now, I dare say. If you are new to Pints with

Aquinas, I'd like to invite you to go back and begin listening from the very beginning. A lot of podcasts out there today depend upon, you know, events of the day or are based upon events of the day, like the election or, you know, who won the Super Bowl, blah, blah, blah. But these aren't. These are perennial questions. Every episode of Pints with Aquinas revolves around a question Aquinas answers in the Summa and in other of his works. So, great to have you with us and I'm happy to be doing this topic on Mary, the Mother of God, for our 50th episode. I want to say, too, a big thank you to over 50 of you, as of the recording of this, who have begun donating to keep Pints with Aquinas going. You'll forgive me for saying this every week, but look, this takes time out of my schedule.

I got four kids. I'm studying on the side. I've got a wife who would rather me not have to spend different evenings recording these things for us. And so the way to make this work, to keep it going is to support the show financially. So if you can do that, even for as little as $2 a month, here's how you would do it. Go to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner, and you can begin supporting the show, even for as little as $2 a month. And I'm so thankful and honored, really, that many of you think the show is worth that. So let's get into today's discussion. Mary, the mother of God. I want to read directly from what Aquinas says regarding this topic.

I want to read directly from what Aquinas says regarding this topic, but before we do, why don't we figure out exactly what we're talking about and read directly from the Council of Ephesus, which was declared, this statement was declared in 431, this ecumenical council. And it has to do with Mary being the Theotokos. What is the Theotokos? Well, Theotokos is a Greek word meaning God-bearer. And this title is the first and greatest of all Mary's titles. Here is a quote from Father John Harden, and I think this sums it up. He says, Christology is unintelligible without knowing the role of Christ's mother. I'll say that again. Christology is unintelligible without knowing the role of Christ's mother. In other words, if you believe something false about Mary, then you may end up believing something false about Christ. If you reject Mary as being the mother of God, then your Christology will get messed up very quickly. Here's what the Council of Ephesus declared in 431.

quickly. Here's what the Council of Ephesus declared in 431. Quote, if anyone does not confess that God is truly Emmanuel, and that on this account the Holy Virgin is the mother of God, for according to the flesh she gave birth to the word of God, become flesh by birth, let him be anathema. According to the council fathers, this Marian dogma presupposes what all Christians believe, Jesus Christ is God. All right, this is the foundational truth, right? And it would follow that Mary is the mother of God, necessarily. I don't know why many Protestants are so upset about this. We'll get into that later on the discussion. You might be a Protestant, you might be listening, and you think to yourself, well, look, I'm not upset about it. I just think it complicates things, or it's inaccurate. Well,

we'll get to some of those objections. But before we do, why don't we read directly from St. Thomas Aquinas. Now, what I'll be reading from today is from St. Thomas' Shorter Summa, published by Sophia Institute Press. Now, my understanding is that one of Aquinas' brothers said to him, essentially, look, I get that the Summa was written for Dominican novices, right? Beginners. That said, it would be really good if you could kind of write a summary of the Summa. By the way, the word Summa means summary. So, this individual, I believe it was Brother Reginald, said to him, could you write a summary of the summary? So, I highly recommend that you get this book if you're interested in learning more about

St. Thomas Aquinas. Okay, so this comes from chapter 221. This is, by the way, this isn't someone writing about what St. Thomas said. These are his own words. Okay, I think I got that chapter wrong. It's 2.22. Here's what he says. The error of Nestorius, who refused to acknowledge that Blessed Mary is the mother of God, is likewise excluded. Both creeds assert that the Son of God was born or was made flesh of the Virgin Mary. The woman of whom any person is born is called his mother, for the reason that she supplies the matter for human conception. It's pretty straightforward, isn't it, dear listener?

Let's say that again. The woman of whom any person is born is called his mother for the reason that she supplies the matter for human conception. Hence, the Blessed Virgin Mary who provided the matter for the conception of the Son of God should be called the true mother of the Son of God, as far as the essence of motherhood is concerned. The energy whereby the matter furnished by a woman is formed does not enter into the question. formed does not enter into the question. She who supplied matter to be formed by the Holy Spirit is no lesser mother than a woman who supplies matter that is to be formed by the energy latent in male seed. And here, Aquinas is about to address a common objection. He says, if anyone insists on maintaining that the Blessed Virgin ought not to be called the Mother of God He says, A woman is not called a mother for the reason that everything that is in her child is derived from her. Man is made up of body and soul, and a man is what he is in virtue of his soul rather than in virtue of his body.

But no man's soul is derived from his mother. is derived from his mother. The soul is either created by God directly, as the true doctrine has it, or if it were produced by transplanting, as some have fancied, it would be derived from the father rather than from the mother. For in the generation of other animals, according to the teaching of philosophers, the male gives the soul, the female gives the body. All right, we're going to continue to see what Aquinas said there. Aquinas is certainly not advocating that latter view that the father is the one who gives the soul and the woman gives the body. He's just saying, you know, if you want to deny that God creates the soul, then fine, I can argue on your grounds as well. But what's he

saying? You know, if someone says, look, she's not the mother of God, she's just the mother of his body, right? His human nature, not his divine nature. But look, that's like saying your mother, right, dear listener, is just the mother of your body. She's not responsible for your soul. That's something God created at the moment of your conception. Well, yeah, that's true, but it doesn't follow in any way from that, that your mother isn't actually your mother. Aquinas continues, consequently, just as any woman is a mother from the fact that her child's body is derived from her, so the Blessed Virgin Mary ought to be called the mother of God if the body of God is derived from her. But we have to hold that it is the body of God if it is taken up into the unity of the person of God's Son,

who is true God. Therefore, all who admit that human nature was assumed by the Son of God into the unity of His person must admit that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of God. But Nestorius, who denied that the person of God and of the man Jesus Christ was one, was forced by logical necessity to deny that the Virgin Mary was the mother of God. Look, let's just take a look at a syllogism. Earlier, we looked at, we did three different episodes, didn't we, on logic and argumentation. I forget the numbers of them, but if you scroll back down through previous episodes, you'll see I did three different episodes. One was on how to argue, what an argument is, and then the next two were on common logical

fallacies. But in there, we talked about a sort of deductive argument. And we can create, construct a deductive argument to show that Mary is the mother of God. Well, how might that look? that Mary is the mother of God. Well, how might that look? Well, it would look like this, all right? You know, Jesus is God. The second premise, the minor premise would be Mary is the mother of Jesus. Conclusion, Mary is the mother of God. But I've seen some Protestant apologists in the past try to show with a counter-syllogism why this can't be so. And it went like this. Okay. And I'll share the argument and then I'll show you why it's fallacious. God is Trinity. Second premise. Mary is the mother of God. Conclusion, therefore Mary is the mother of the Trinity. Let me say that again and you pause for a moment and see if you can figure out what's wrong with that argument. Okay, I'll say it again. in. Premise one, God is Trinity. Second premise, Mary is the mother of God. Conclusion, Mary is the mother of the Trinity. Doesn't that follow necessarily? Well, no, it doesn't, and we'll see

why. When we Catholics and Orthodox Christians and other Christians say that Mary is the mother of God, we mean that Mary is the mother of the second person of the blessed Trinity, right, who became incarnate, not that she's the mother of the Father or the Holy Spirit, since they didn't become incarnate. The problem with the syllogism is that it commits the fallacy of the undistributed middle term. The term God, right, in the title Mother of God has to be clarified or distributed properly as referring only to the second person of the Blessed Trinity who is God, but who isn't the Trinity. Okay. Jesus Christ is God, but Jesus Christ isn't the Trinity. So when we say God, we may be referring to all three persons of the blessed Trinity, but not necessarily so. So that argument doesn't work, but the first one does. I'll say it again. Jesus Christ is God.

Mary is the mother of Jesus. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God. Now, suppose you have somebody who says, no, no, no, no, that's not true. She's not the mother of God. If somebody says that to you, I want you to ask them this question. Okay. Well, to whom did Mary give birth then? To whom did Mary give birth? And the answer is likely to be, well, Jesus. And who is Jesus? God. Okay, so Mary is the mother of Jesus' human nature, not his divine nature. Well, we covered that in the beginning. Aquinas covered that in the beginning. But listen to me here. Mothers don't give birth to natures. They give birth to persons.

And Jesus Christ is a divine person, not a human person. He is a divine person in whom there are two natures. So, I hope that's a help. What might another objection be? Well, someone might say, okay, I guess technically, okay, technically you're right, and Mary is the mother of God, sure. Technically, you're right. Mary is the mother of God. Sure. But look, it's very confusing when you say that. When you Catholics say that Mary is the mother of God, even though technically you might be right, you run the risk of confusing people. They might end up thinking that Mary precedes God, you know, ontologically. Just like that bad analogy, bad syllogism with the Trinity. So, someone might argue, because it's so confusing, people will end up worshipping Mary, and that's not good. Okay. My response to that would be, just because a doctrine My response to that would be just because a doctrine confuses people or is complicated or can be misunderstood, that is not a reason to reject it or even celebrate it.

Let me show you why. Think of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. Christians believe in three persons, right? And these three persons is one God. So, there is one God, one being, and three persons, right? Good luck. I mean, trying to explain that to a Muslim, for example, they just sort of shake their head and say, you're talking about polytheism. And we're saying, no, we're not. But if I said to you, well, look, it's confusing. People end up thinking we believe in three gods. They might end up being polytheists and worshiping three gods. Therefore, we should get away with the doctrine or not talk about it. Well, that's ridiculous. It's been revealed to us that God is three persons. So we ought to hold fast to it and

teach it. And likewise, it has been revealed to us that Mary is the Theotokos, the mother of God, the God-bearer, and therefore we ought to believe it. Now, on a side note, moving away here from this idea of Mary being the mother of God, would it follow that the Holy Spirit is the father of Jesus? I mean, if you want to say Mary's the mother of God and, you know, technically it didn't have something to do with the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary, well, okay, do you want to say that the Holy Spirit is the father of Jesus? Well, here's what Aquinas says in paragraph, chapter rather, 223 in the Shorter Summa. He says, 2.23 in the Shorter Summa. He says,

Although the Son of God is said to have been made flesh and to have been conceived by the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary, we are not to conclude that the Holy Spirit is the Father of the man Christ, even though the Blessed Virgin is called His Mother. The first reason for this is that everything pertaining to the idea of mother is verified in the Blessed Virgin Mary. She furnished the matter to be formed by the Holy Spirit for the conception of Christ, as the idea of motherhood requires. But not all the elements required for the idea of fatherhood are found on the part of the Holy Spirit. The idea of fatherhood requires that the father produce from his nature a son who is of like nature with himself. Therefore, if some agent would make a thing that is not derived from its own substance and would not produce such a thing unto the likeness of its own nature, that agent could not be called the thing's father. We do not say that a man is the

father of the things he makes by plying an art, unless perhaps in a metaphorical sense. The Holy Spirit is indeed conatural with Christ as regards the divine nature. In this respect, however, he is not the Father of Christ, but rather proceeds from him. With respect to the human nature, the Holy Spirit is not connatural with Christ, for the human nature in Christ is other than the divine nature, as we said above. Let's take a quick break now, and when we come back, I want to share with you two or three quotations from the early church fathers that are very beautiful and insightful about why we call Mary the mother of God. and I'm the co-host of Catching Foxes. Foxes. Fo-fo-fo-foxes. Catching Foxes. Foxes. I would like to tell you about something more important than my podcast.

What? Pints with Aquinas. Pint, pint, pa-pa-pa-pa-pints with Aquinas. Matt Fradd actually wrote a book on 50-plus deep thoughts from the angelic doctor. Pints with Aquinas. Here's the deal. Beer is easily lovable, but medieval monastic philosophers, they can be quite intimidating. Yet in this short pithy book, and I don't use that

word often. In fact, I never use the word pithy, but I'm going to use it here and you're going to agree with me. Matt Fradd made the greatest mind in the history of the church as easily accessible as your favorite beer. You'll laugh, you'll cry. Well, you won't cry, but you'll laugh and you'll discover that this old school philosopher's wisdom is just as relevant today as it was back then. So do yourself a favor, get a copy of this enlightening, pithy little book from Amazon right now. And when it arrives, pour yourself a frothy pint and dig in. You'll be glad you did. Okay, welcome back. Now, let's take a look at three quotations from the early church fathers that testify to Mary being the most holy Theotokos, and then I will suggest to you a book if you'd like to learn more. So, this first quotation, let's see here, I've got a bunch of books I'm throwing around, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. First book I want to share, sorry,

first quote I want to share with you comes from Saint Cyril of Alexandria. He says, I've been amazed that some are utterly in doubt as to whether or not the Holy Virgin is able to be called the mother of God. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, how should the Holy Virgin who bore him not be the mother of God? And this is from his letter to the monks of Egypt around the year AD 427. Here's a great quote from St. John Cassian. He says, and so you say, O heretic, whoever you may be, who deny that God was born of the Virgin, that Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, ought not to be called Theotokos, that is, mother of God, but Christotokos, that is, only the mother

of Christ, not of God. For no one, you say, brings forth what is anterior in time, and of this utterly foolish argument by which you think that the birth of God can be understood by carnal minds, and fancy that the mystery of his majesty can be accounted for by human reasoning, we will, if God permits, say something later on. In the meanwhile, we will now prove by divine testimonies that Christ is God and that Mary is the mother of God. Hear then how the angel of God speaks to the shepherds of the birth of God. You cannot then help admitting that the grace comes from God. It is God then who has given it, but it has been given by our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ is God.

But if he be, as he certainly is God, then she who bore God is Theotokos, that is, the mother of God. And finally, I want to read something more of a spiritual reflection, which still gets to this point about Mary being the mother of God. And this comes from a sermon, a rather famous ancient sermon from Cyril of Alexandria. He was the main guy at the council of Ephesus before the arrival of the papal legates. And he preached this sermon, and the sermon's called Theotokos, Cause of Joy for the Whole World. Now, I won't read the whole thing, obviously, but here's a little bit. He says, I see the assembly of the saints all zealously gathered together, invited by the Holy Mother of God, Mary of a Virgin. Hail, we say, O holy and mystic Trinity who have called us together in this church dedicated to Mary, Mother of God. We hail you, O Mary,

Mother of God, venerable treasure of the entire world, inextinguishable lamp, crown of virginity, scepter of orthodoxy, imperishable temple, container of him who cannot be contained. Hail you who held the uncontainable one in your holy and virginal womb. Through you, the holy trinity is glorified. The precious cross is celebrated and adored throughout the whole world. Heaven exalts, the angels and archangels rejoice, the demons are put to flight, the devil, the tempter, falls from heaven. The fallen creation is brought back to paradise. All creatures trapped in idolatry come to know of the truth. But who among men is capable of celebrating Mary most glorious, the virginal womb? Such a great wonder.

So my challenge would be, if you are a non-Catholic Christian listening, you should begin calling Mary the mother of God. Why not? You know, stir things up in your local church and you can make that argument. You don't have to become a Catholic to recognize that Mary is the mother of God. The problem is when you stop saying that she is the mother of God, you start running into errors. Now, look, we don't have time to get into this great deal because I'm already around 20-something minutes, but I want to suggest that you get this book. It's called Behold Your Mother, a biblical and historical defense of the Marian doctrines by Tim Staples. and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines by Tim Staples. Tim was actually my boss at Catholic Answers, where I worked for three years. He was an evangelical youth pastor in the Assemblies of God Church and converted to Catholicism. And he wrote this fantastic book.

It's the best book that I know of, which argues for the dogmas of Mary. And he goes into great detail about the kinds of errors we fall into once we begin denying that Mary is the mother of God. So get that book, okay? Behold Your Mother, A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines by Tim Staples. You can get that at catholic.com by clicking the shop tab. And then also a friend of mine wrote a book. His name is Jimmy Akin. It's called The Fathers Know Best, Your Essential Guide to the Teachings of the Early Church. And basically, among other things, it's a compilation of what the early church fathers said on different doctrines.

And what you discover is, well, surprise, they were Catholic. So check that out too. You can get that from the same shop site at catholic.com. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for all of your support, brothers and sisters. I want to ask you to do me a favor. Two things. One, we have a closed Facebook group called Pints with Aquinas.

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going. Keep going. All right. God bless you. And I will chat with you next week.