According to one man, by the name of Nestorius (who lived during A.D. 400), the Virgin Mary was not the Mother of God. According to him, Jesus Christ was both God and Man, but Mary was not the mother of God, only the mother of Christ. According to the Nestorian teaching there were two distinct person's within Jesus, so that His God nature (or personhood) and His man nature (personhood) were divided. (See illustration below.)
I definitely do not agree that Jesus is a "double yolked" personality...man and God both within the shell of Jesus but divided in nature. Jesus is FULLY God and FULLY man, these two natures not being divided or separated. "The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man." (The Westminster Confession of Faith; Chapter VIII; Section II)
"For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily," (Col 2:9)
Yet, though I do not agree with the Nestorian side of the argument, I find it hard to say that Mary was the "Mother of God". Because God, being God, cannot have a mother, because He is eternal. Since God has no beginning, (someone not born of a mother has no beginning right?) for God to have a mother is impossible and absurd. When Jesus Christ, the God-man was born into this world the God part of Him did not begin to be at conception as did the man part of Him. For the God part of Jesus was and always has been from all eternity, the second person of the Trinity, "begotten, not made." Therefore, God did not stop being God, and then begin to be God again at the conception of Jesus, so as to create a beginning of God thus providing that God would have a mother, a woman from out of whom God was created and born. However, this does not discount the incarnation, as many say that this argument does. I cannot comprehend how saying that Mary was not God's mother makes them react by saying that I do not believe that the incarnation was real! I understand it rather to the effect that God never stopped being the omnipresent God, and yet Christ definitely is fully God and fully man in one whole nature, and not divided.
Therefore, rather than taking one side or the other on this complicated issue which has caused much dispute over the years, in Roman Catholic and Reformed circles, and even though many men for whom I have the utmost respect, men such as John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Melanchthon, believed in the latter position, I myself cannot agree to either with a clear conscience. For I cannot contradict Scripture by saying that Christ has a divided nature and is not wholely one, nor can I agree that the eternal Creator of all has a mother. In my own mind I do not find it very difficult to understand Christ's being as wholly one, and yet that Mary was not the mother of God.
So is Mary the Mother of God? Or was Nestorius right in saying that Christ's personhood is divided?
What do you think?