St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

In paragraph 466, the Catechism speaks of the Nestorian heresy, a heresy important both in terms of the Church’s teaching on Christ as well as the Church’s teaching on Mary. Paragraph 466 says:

The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine person of God’s Son. Opposing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus in 431, confessed “that the Word, uniting to himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man.” Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: “Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh.”

Nestorianism represents a development in Christological thinking. Whereas the early heresies we spoke of could be boiled down to either denying Christ’s humanity while accepting his divinity (Docetism), or vice-versa (Adoptionism and Arianism), Nestorianism accepted both Christ’s divinity and his humanity. In other words, Nestorius would have no problem saying that Jesus is true God and true man. If that’s the case, where did he go wrong?

While it’s true that Nestorius taught that Jesus had both a divine nature and a human nature, it is also true that Nestorius taught that Jesus has both a divine person and a human person. Recall paragraph 464; it said that some Christological heresies taught that Jesus was part God and part man, while others confused the relationship between Christ’s divine and human natures. Simply put, by saying that Jesus had two persons, Nestorianism confuses this relationship.

Due to the work of St. Cyril of Alexander, at the Council of Ephesus (431) the Church taught that Jesus has two natures, a human nature and a divine nature, but only person, that of the Son of God. In other words, we do not believe that the Son of God possessed a man, but, rather, that the Son of God became a man.

Why is this important? If Jesus had two persons, a divine and human person, then there would be questions as to which person was responsible for a particular action. Was it the divine person who suffered on the cross, or only the human person? So in saying that Jesus is only one person, the Church is also saying that whatever we see Jesus doing, we see God doing. Thus, God really walked the shores of Galilee; God really fed the multitudes; God really suffered and died for us; and God really rose from the dead.

It’s because we believe that Jesus Christ is one divine person that we believe that Mary is the Mother of God. If we say that God really walked the shores of Galilee, fed the multitude, suffered, died, and rose again, then we can also say that God was really born of a woman. And the woman who bore God in human form would consequently be called the Mother of God. Hence, Mary is truly the Mother of God.

This great truth about Mary says more about Jesus than it does about Mary. Protestants, in denying that Mary is the Mother of God, do so because they misunderstand both the historical context as well as the theological implications of the title. To say that Mary is the Mother of God is to preserve the teaching that in Jesus Christ there is one person, the person of the eternal Son of God, and two natures, human and divine.

Next up: Monophysitism

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