Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hall@vice.ico.tek.com (Hal Lillywhite) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Book of Mormon Critical Text and the Mother of God Message-ID: Date: 18 Sep 90 08:48:07 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR. Lines: 55 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article emory!dragon!cms@gatech.edu writes: > This is in response to an earlier posting concerning whether Mary is >the Mother of God or the Mother of the Son of God. Mormons may >correct me, but it's my understanding that Mormons reject the notion >of Mary as Mother of God. I defended this position by stating that >the Book of Mormon refers to Mary as Mother of God in I Nephi 11:18; >this was refuted by statements to the effect that a correction was >made so that the passage reads Mother of the Son of God. Well, we're likely to get into semantics here. Normally when LDS members (Mormons) use the word "God" they are referring to God the Father. In this sense Mary is not the mother of God. However, it is, I believe, proper to refer to Jesus as God also and Mary is of course the mother of Jesus, so such terminology would not be improper. However, if you used it in a conversation with an LDS you might have a communicatin problem unless you were very clear about what you meant. I'm not sure which BoM printing you found that particular statement in (and don't know enough about the abbreviations in the critical edition to interpret them) but there have been some printers errors over the years. I checked 2 printings (one 1982, one probably about 1960 but with the title page torn out) and both of them say, "mother of the Son of God." The 1982 printing benefits from the availibility of the original hand written manuscripts so I tend to trust it. [In fact there's a certain indirectness in the way "Mother of God" is meant in orthodox statements as well. If you read the statement naively, it seems to say that God didn't exist until Jesus' birth. This is surely not what is meant. The real intent of the statement (which in the original Greek calls Mary "God-bearer") is to emphasize the completeness of God's identification with Jesus, so that it may truly be said that the eternal Logos deigned to experience human birth and death. This whole area is rather murky. There was a group called "patripassians" that believed that the Father suffered in the crucifixion. I don't think this is technically classified as a heresy, as it was a position taken in discussions before the terms were completely clarified. But I believe once the Trinity and Incarnation were formulated, it was taken for granted that it was the specifically the Son that suffered, and presumably also experienced birth through Mary. Thus I believe Mary was seen as the Mother specifically of the Son rather than the Father. However the Trinity envisions a unity among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit tight enough that all actions of any of them are actions of all three. Thus ultimately I think we must say that the Father participated in Christ's birth and death. It is not yet clear to me whether the LDS concept of the Godhead involves so close a unity among the three persons. I suspect that formally speaking LDS could accept the phrase "mother of God" in something like the orthodox sense, meaning by God specifically the Son. But whether it would have the same significance for them that it does for orthodox Christians depends upon whether they accept the concept that all actions of the Son are ultimately actions of the Godhead as a whole. --clh]