I just have to ask a question. No one is saying that Mary is not to have a place of honor. Truly she is blessed among women.. I would just like to ask and i know this has been brought up before. Why is there no more mention of Mary in the scriptures after the gospels by the apostles? Also is there any letters from the early church fathers mentioning a Marion doctrine before 500 AD. or before Constantine? If so please post it
Can some one tell me when did the Marian doctrine begin? The closest I get to it is maybe the Council of Ephesus 421 AD, but i couldn't find anything that was very specific. The question is when where and why? Who decided that there was a Marian doctrine. I believe these questions are important in establishing why you even believe this doctrine. It doesn't have a stamp of the apostles on it. it does not have a stamp the any of the early church fathers on it. So how did we get this doctrine? How did it get an official stamp of the church of Rome four hundred years after the church was born?. Did someone just decide it was a doctrine out of the blue. There had to be a reason for this doctrine that served some purpose. What was that purpose? I mean other than just honoring Mary.
Even if you have no answer for me then just think about it. Why do you believe it? Is it because someone gave a reason that sounds good? Or just because the church if Rome says that it is a true doctrine over 400 years after the church was born and no evidence of it prior. Lets think now. Seriously
I don’t know which particular doctrine you are referring to but since you mention the Council of Ephesus (431) let’s take the dogma defined there that Mary was the mother of God (
theotokos = God bearer). This was not defined to honour Mary, although it does, but to refute the Nestorian heresy. This claimed that that Mary did not carry God but only carried Christ’s human nature in her womb. But a woman carries a person in her womb, not just a human nature. Mary carried, and gave birth to, the person of Jesus Christ, and that person was God, the second person of the Trinity.
Nestorians claimed that Mary did not give birth to a unified person but tried to separate Jesus’ human nature from his divine nature, creating two separate persons, one human and one divine in a loose affiliation.
The Council of Ephesus was defining the unity of Christ as one person, both truly man and truly God.
Here are some quotes from early fathers:
"The Virgin Mary, being obedient to his word, received from an angel the glad tidings that she would bear God" (Iranaeus - Against Heresies, 5:19:1 [A.D. 189]).
"[T]o all generations they [the prophets] have pictured forth the grandest subjects for contemplation and for action. Thus, too, they preached of the advent of God in the flesh to the world, his advent by the spotless and God-bearing (theotokos) Mary in the way of birth and growth, and the manner of his life and conversation with men, and his manifestation by baptism, and the new birth that was to be to all men, and the regeneration by the laver [of baptism]" (Hippolytus - Discourse on the End of the World 1 [A.D. 217]).
"While the old man [Simeon] was thus exultant, and rejoicing with exceeding great and holy joy, that which had before been spoken of in a figure by the prophet Isaiah, the holy Mother of God now manifestly fulfilled" (Methodius - Oration on Simeon and Anna 7 [A.D. 305]).
"We acknowledge the resurrection of the dead, of which Jesus Christ our Lord became the firstling; he bore a body not in appearance but in truth derived from Mary the Mother of God" (Peter of Jerusalem - Letter to All Non-Egyptian Bishops 12 [A.D. 324]).
