Well it certainly is one opinion.

We all have mothers, and we are all Gods.

Once again, that certainly begs the question, "Who created the creator?"

If you're going to conjure up a god, one would think you would need to fabricate a better back story than "He...um...was...he was always there."  Of course, Christianity's popularity proves this isn't necessarily true.

It all sounds kind of nutty to me but then I don't really like to get into that virgin Mary thing.  I believe that Jesus was a man who was filled by the Holy Spirit just like many men and women have been filled with the Spirit throughout the ages.  Yes he had a mom.  That mom has been named Mary in the Bible.  In parts of the Bible she was really supportive in other parts she was really unsupportive (wanting to put him in a home - which frankly seems like a logical response given what he was doing at the time).  I doubt very highly that Mary was the most powerful woman who ever existed.  She was without a doubt though one of the most courageous of women as she with Mary Magdalene (and other women depending on the account) sat with Jesus during his death and then went to his grave site to tend his body when such an act would have put her in mortal peril.  I think that Marys are wonderful role models and show how feminist the Bible is even though the Church has chosen generally not to interpret it like that.  

The Goddess is mentioned in the OT as Sophia/Sapienta, a.k.a. Wisdom.

In Proverbs 8:28,30,31, Wisdom says of herself: "When he prepared the heavens, I was there. Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men."

This, of course, is metaphorical. To me, God is the eternal self-generative Kosmos.

Only when someone attempts to make the utterly ridiculous seem normal, such as the superstition Dr. Shultz describes, can we clear, breath deep the fresh air, re-enter our meditations and get on with our true connexion with the unfolding.

Hi crazyheart,

This is going to be embarrassing.

There it is.  Embarrassing.  Mary is not the Mother of God.  Mary is the mother of Jesus.  Jesus is God.  Self-contradiction or really weak grasp of the concept of the Trinity?

Why pick either/or.  It could be a both/and proposition.

A Trinitarian Christian would say, "Mary is the mother of God.  The Son is as much God as is the Father but the Son is not the Father nor is the Father the Son.

Whoever the "we" is that Dr. Thomas Schultz is speaking for I am not included.

Some Nestorian leftovers and they smell as bad as one would expect something left to rot that long would smell.  How a self-professing Protestant, Evangelical comes to take up an Assyrian theological position would be an interesting story I'm sure.

Grace and peace to you.

John

How can Mary be the mother of God when she is human?  According to Biblical tradition Mary had nothing to do with fact that Jesus was growing inside of her anyway she was just a surrogate because she was a woman she had nothing to say about her own body.

The Catholics believe that Mary was born by immaculant conception so she was divine.  The Protestants (while believing the conception of Jesus was immaculent also) do not believe that Mary was born without sin.  They believe the sin nature is inherited from the father (which proves my theory that it is men that are the root of all eveil not women ) and that is how Jesus could be born of a woman but born without sin.  But a human woman cannot give birth to a God that is kind of like the story of Hercules.

Mary, the mother of God.  I have trouble with that concept - but I leave it for the Roman Catholic church.  It is their belief - not mine.

I believe that Jesus was fully human - that is he had a mother, and most likely a human father.  And most likely his mother's name was Mary.  Weren't half the women in the NT named Mary or Miriam?  So I can agree:  Mary was the mother of Jesus.  That is, the very human Jesus, born as a human baby.

The next question is:  was Jesus God?  And I would have to answer with another question:  what do we mean if we say that Jesus was God, the second person of the Trinity?    And what do I personally believe?  I believe that throughout his lifetime Jesus grew in 'wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man', that he grew in his understanding of and his relationship with God, until after his death the disciples and followers of Jesus realized that they saw the Spirit of God in Jesus.  If God dwelt in Jesus, can we say that Jesus was God?  I don't know.

But I do believe that Jesus life on earth was as a very human person.  And that Mary was his mother. 

well, I don't think that Jesus was born, lived, suffered and died, to convince the world had a great mother. It seems to me there were surely other points he had to make that were even more important.

graeme

I'm happy I don't have to worry about trying to reconcile such things as a "Son of God"  or a "Mother of God" or a "Son of God's Mother".

All very confusing stuff lol.

As-Salaamu alaikum

-Omni

Great letter.  I totally agree.  Mary was powerful....and perhaps the most humble.  (take note, you heathens)

Hi Serena,

Being human isn't what makes you the mother of God or not the mother of God.  What you give birth to does.

Classical Trinitarian thought which should be understood even if it is not agreed with claims that Jesus was both fully God and fully human.  Both natures are fully present in the one person.  Hence Mary gives birth to God the Son who is, again according to Trinitarian thought God.

Which proves what exactly?  That Jesus wasn't there or that she couldn't give birth to an individual who was both fully God and fully human?

Roman Catholics believe that.  It is completely irrelevant to the question of who Jesus is.

Protestants are also catholics.  Catholic is equivalent to Christian.  While I agree with your point I fail to see how it is relevant to the fact that Dr. Thomas Schultz is advocating the Nestorian heresy.

Apart from your dubious use of the theory of inheritance to bolster your prejudism it does not even begin to come close to proving your support of Dr. Thomas Schultz's foray into the Nestorian heresy.

A point in your favour is that you don't claim the title theologian.

Grace and peace to you.

John

At the end of the day I think this is most true. I struggled for a long time in my younger days with understanding not to take the Bible literally (my parents were never that kind of Christian), but wondering that if we can't "believe" the main source we have, why then follow the religion based upon it? And the virginity of Mary was one of those sticking points. Obviously I have a more sophisticated understanding now ('true' vs. 'real' etc.) and while I won't out and out disavow any individual supernatural/miraculous story of the Bible (who knows), I don't buy any one given story whole cloth necessarily either so much as look at the whole thing as pointing to a greater Truth.

To that end I respect Mary as I would any woman for stepping up while scared, young and alone and obviously raising a highly intelligent, capable and good-hearted son, building a good and loving family for him, and consider her on that level important to Christianity. But to start quibbling about the specifics of the immaculate conception I think is to lose the forest for the trees - Jesus' message and life and works here on earth go beyond convincing us how special/divine his mother was. His life and works stand as a testament to what kind of woman he was raised by, and so much more.

RevJohn wrote:

Protestants are also catholics.  Catholic is equivalent to Christian.  While I agree with your point I fail to see how it is relevant to the fact that Dr. Thomas Schultz is advocating the Nestorian heresy.

--------------------------------------------------

how can Mary Give birth to a nature that alreay is? she cant, all at teh same time , we cannot devide, so where does the plumline fall? at the end of the day its really a mistery

 RevJohn wrote:

Protestants are also catholics.  Catholic is equivalent to Christian. 

* * *

It is so nice to live in an age that we can say these things.  

A few hundred years ago we would have been locked up for it,.  during the Reformation.

well that is because RevJohn is saying it, altho i also agree, you wont get the vatacan saying so