Mary

Mary is the young Jewish woman of Nazareth, betrothed to Joseph of the house of David, who responded to the angel Gabriel's announcement with the fiat mihi of Luke 1:38: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word." In her, the eternal Son of God took human flesh from her own substance. She bore him in Bethlehem, fled with him to Egypt, raised him in Nazareth, witnessed his ministry, stood at the foot of his cross, and (in the testimony of Acts 1:14) was among the disciples gathered in the upper room before Pentecost.

The Christological significance of Mary was articulated at the Council of Ephesus in 431 against the teaching of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Nestorius wanted to call Mary "Christ-bearer" (Christotokos) rather than "God-bearer" (Theotokos), on the grounds that Mary had borne the human nature of Christ but not his divine nature. Cyril of Alexandria responded that this divided the one person of Christ into two persons. If Mary did not bear God incarnate, then the man Jesus is not God incarnate; if the man Jesus is God incarnate (as the Church confesses), then Mary is the Theotokos. The Council of Ephesus made the definition canonical. "Theotokos" is not primarily a statement about Mary — it is a statement about Christ.

The Marian dogmas distinguish Catholic teaching from both Orthodox and Protestant traditions. The Immaculate Conception (defined by Pius IX in 1854) holds that Mary was preserved from original sin from the moment of her conception — a doctrine the Eastern Orthodox tradition broadly rejects on the grounds that it would separate Mary from the rest of humanity Christ came to save. The Assumption (defined by Pius XII in 1950) holds that Mary was taken up bodily into heaven at the end of her earthly life — a doctrine the Eastern tradition also holds (under the name Dormition) but does not require dogmatically. The Protestant Reformers generally retained the language of Mary as Theotokos and Ever-Virgin but rejected later medieval devotional accretions.

Mary's lasting place in the Christian imagination has been the icon of the disciple who receives God's word into her body and her life — the type of every Christian's vocation. The Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) is one of the great theological poems of Scripture: "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away." The early Church remembered her, the Fathers preached her, the medieval West built cathedrals to her, the Orthodox East venerated her in countless icons, and the Reformers — Luther most explicitly — continued to address her as the Mother of God. Across the major Christian traditions, the place of Mary is one of the truest markers of how the Christian tradition has read the Incarnation.