B. Mary, the Mother of God

How did the scattered thoughts of the early Christian Fathers about Eve, Mary, the church and their mystical interrelation eventually come together in the theological definition of Mary as the “Mother of God”? Let us now trace this development, at the end of which the Christian goddess emerged in all her glory.^[794]

Christian theology started with Christology.

This lack of interest, however, was limited to the manner of the incarnation, i.e., the way in which Jesus Christ came into the world.

The early church did not elaborate on this latter point, but the problem of the relation between the divine and the human in Christ is present in the New Testament. Besides the birth narra­tives, the gospels are full of various Christological titles which are applied to Jesus and which contain in themselves answers to particular questions that arose concerning Jesus Christ. In the other books Christological definitions appear. Romans 1.2-4, for example, characterizes Jesus as the one “who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord...” The post-apostolic church then began to speculate on the person of Christ and the prevailing emphasis of the following centuries was upon the definition of the nature of Christ within himself, i.e., the relation of his divine and human nature, or the relation between Jesus the Son and God the Father.

The other solution is known as Docetism. We must remember, however, that Docetism was not a sect but a way of thinking which was employed particularly by the Gnostic theologians. Docetism (from dokein = to appear) held that Christ had no real body, but only appeared to be in flesh, only appeared to suffer on the cross; in fact he was completely spiritual. Naturally, then, his birth was not real; his body came through Mary’s as water flows through a tube, without taking with it anything of the substance of the tube. Docetism must have existed as early as New Testament times. Several passages in the Johannine letters are interpreted as combatting this kind of teaching. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, must have had Docetism in mind when he went to great lengths to emphasize that Jesus Christ was actually born and that he actually went through various human experiences. In this con­nection, Ignatius often referred to Mary as the mother of Jesus as proof of the reality of his flesh and humanity.

These early attempts served only as preludes to the later Chris­tological debates, which laid the basis and, so to speak, created the possibility of subsequent Mariological speculations.

in the struggle against Docetism, the church made very little use of her. In the same breath with Mary, Herod the Tetrarch or Pontius Pilate the governor could be mentioned in support of the claim that Jesus was indeed a real, historical person. That is basically the conviction held by Paul of Samosata, who however, injected a new emphasis into the debate. Paul, who was bishop of Antioch around 260, is sometimes called the forerunner of Nesto- rius because, as Eusebius says,^[802] “he held, contrary to the teaching of the church, low and degraded views of Christ, namely that in his nature he was a common man...” He used the word “homoou- sios” (consubstantial) in describing the relation between Father and Son but, curiously enough, the Synod which condemned him at Antioch in 268 rejected the term. He was an Adoptianist, i.e., he held that Jesus Christ was a human being upon whom the Holy Spirit descended. There was no room in his theology for a real incarnation because only Jesus, not the Logos, was born of Mary. “Mary did not bear the Word, for Mary did not exist before the ages. Mary is not older than the Word; what she bore was a man equal to us, but superior in all things as a result of holy spirit.”^[803] Paul of Samosata was the first theologian to hold to an Adoptianist Christology,^[804] but he touched on a relationship in Christology which thus far had been largely neglected, namely the divinity of Jesus Christ in relation to his mother. That Jesus Christ was a real human being and Mary was his mother is easy to understand. Nobody could quarrel with the statement that if a person had a human mother, he was a human being, too. But what about the divine nature of Christ? What was Mary's relation to that? If the Logos and Jesus Christ were one, then Mary, who certainly bore Jesus, bore the Logos. Paul rejected this concept and in so doing he focused attention on the problem of what did take place in the incarnation.

It was, as we see, Christological speculations in the post-aposto­lic church that gradually led to a clarification of Mary’s role in the incarnation. Let us now further explore this line of thought with special attention to the term theotokos, because the develop­ment of this term will shed light upon the basic characteristics of Mariology in its formative period.

As far as we know the word theotokos was first used by Origen (f253/54). At least this is what we gather from Socrates’ Church History. ^[805] But the expression did not become popular until the time of the Arian controversies when Athanasius (295—373) frequently employed it. The Arian controversy centered on the problem of the relation between God the Father and the Logos; the problem of the mother of Jesus did not enter it. The Creed which was accep­ted at the Synod of Nicea in 325 contains no reference at all to Mary, but it made a significant statement which inevitably led toward further questioning. It sanctioned the use of the term homoousios (the Son is consubstantial with the Father) and this firmly established the divinity of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the position taken by Arius was so devoted to the monarchia of God that Jesus was reduced to a demi-god, which is not really the Christian concept. As it was, the Nicene fathers were no less monarchistic in their theology than was Arius, and we can easily understand that the term homoousios was not congenial to many of them. After all, if the Son is consubstantial with the Father, how are we to safeguard the unity and oneness of God? Moreover, how are we to explain the incarnation? The theologically uninitiated could logically draw the conclusion that since Jesus is of the same sub­stance as God, and since Mary bore Jesus, therefore, Mary bore God. But how could a creature give birth to her own creator? With respect to the divine and human natures of Christ, Nicea an­swered the question of divinity beyond any doubt, but concerning the humanity it left a great deal of confusion.

It is no surprise that the first great heresy after Nicea was inau­gurated by a devotee of the term homoousios and an ardent fighter against Arianism, Apollinarius of Laodicea (about 310-390). He was also a friend of Athanasius and consequently he began to develop his ideas as a defender of orthodoxy against the surviving influence of Paul of Samosata. But whereas Paul reduced Jesus Christ to a mere man, Apollinarius exalted him to such a degree that the humanity of Jesus all but disappeared. He rejected the idea that there could be a distinction between the Son of God and the Son of Mary because Christ is one person, and insofar as he is consubstantially united with God, even his body, which he re­ceived from the Virgin Mary, is divine.^[806] The vocabulary of Apollinarius is strangely reminiscent of the word theotokos, “God­bearer.” He speaks of Jesus not only as “God incarnate” but also as the “flesh-bearing God,” “θεός σαρκοφόρος,” and “God born of woman.” These are expressions which today are widely applied to Mary, only the order of words is reversed: “The woman of whom God was born,” “the flesh which carried God,” “σάρζ θεοφόρος” if we want to twist Apollinarius’ words, are among the many honorary expressions used in reference to Mary. Be that as it may, the heresy underlying Apollinarius’ subtle theology soon became apparent, for he acknowledged only one nature in Jesus Christ and in doing so overthrew the delicate balance between Christ’s divine and human natures. He de-emphasized the huma­nity of Jesus to such a degree that ultimately his Christology would have ended in Docetism. In 381 the Council of Constan­tinople condemned him and several laws were enacted against his followers by Emperor Theodosius.^[807]

Now the Christological debate swung back to the other pole. As a natural reaction against Apollinarianism the interest centered on the humanity of Jesus. Gregory Nazianzen (c. 329/30 - c. 390) gives us an excellent example of this in his second letter to Cledonius (Epistle 102) in which he writes: “And since a ques­tions has also been mooted concerning the divine assumption of humanity, or incarnation, state this also clearly to all concerning me, that I join in One the Son, who was begotten of the Father, and afterward of the Virgin Mary, and that I do not call him two sons but worship him as one and the same in undivided Godhead and honor.”^[808] The question in Gregory’s mind, as we see from this quotation, was not whether Jesus Christ was divine or not; this he held without any doubt, and apparently so did others. The question that called for an answer was how the divine could assume humanity, i.e., the incarnation. Gregory points here to the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary as an undeniable proof of his humanity. In his first letter to Cledonius against Apollinarius (Epistle 101) he writes: “For we do not sever the man from the God-head, but we lay down as a dogma the unity and identity (of person), who of old was not man but God and the only Son before all ages, unmingled with body or anything corporeal; but who in these last days has assumed manhood also for our salvation... that by one and the same (Person), who was perfect man and also God, the entire humanity fallen through sin might be created anew. If anyone does not believe that holy Mary is the Mother of God, he is severed from the God-head. If anyone should assert that he passed through the Virgin as through a channel, and was not at once divinely and humanly formed in her (divinely, because without the intervention of a man; humanly because in accor­dance with the laws of gestation), he is in like manner godless.”^[809]

We have quoted this passage more fully so that the clarity of Gregory’s thought may not be obscured. Unfortunately, some­times the sentence: “If anyone does not believe that holy Mary is the Mother of God, he is severed from the God-head,” is quoted out of context as if it were a “Mariological statement as a test of ortho­doxy.”^[810] As it is, however, the statement is not Mariological but Christological, and its purpose is to emphasize the fact of the incarnation, or, in other words, the fact that God really became man. Gregory employs here the word theotokos, and for him this means only one thing, that God really assumed humanity through a human birth. That Mary is theotokos expresses the Christological idea that he who was born of her is real God and real man. In this sense the term theotokos means exactly the oppo­site of what it later came to mean.^[811] Later, when the term was used, everybody understood it as a kind of royal title underscor­ing Mary’s privileged position and honor. However, when these fathers used the term, they did not think of Mary; they thought of Christ.

The other Gregory, the Bishop of Nyssa (f394) used the word theotokos five times in his works in a similar meaning. In his struggle against Apollinarius he was also anxious to emphasize that “Christ really was present in the human compound, and so to leave no room for their surmise who propound that a phantom or form in human outline and not a real Divine Manifestation, was there.”^[812] For this reason he emphatically rejected the term anthro­potokos, “man-bearer,” and declared that Mary indeed was theoto­kos, because “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, always changeless, always imperishable, though He comes in the changeable and the perishable...”^[813]

The Christological debate with respect to the human side of the incarnation continued in the works of the contemporary theolo­gians, especially Theodore of Mopsuestia (j-428). For our purpose, however, it is sufficient to know the precise meaning of the term theotokos on the eve the Council of Ephesus. It is important to remember that the meaning was Christologial and not Mario- logical.

The council of Ephesus (431) was convened by Emperior Theo­dosius II to resolve the dispute which arose between Nestorius (348 -451) and Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444). The dispute itself started over Nestorius’ definition of the two natures of Christ and his insistence that the divine nature in Christ cannot really have a human mother. Nestorius was forced to give a definition of his Christology when he became bishop of Constantinople in 428 and discovered that public opinion was sharply divided on the issue.^[814] In his sermons he made clear that the union of the two natures must be kept intact but without confusion; therefore, the incarna­tion should be described by calling Mary “Christbearer,” Christo- tokos, i.e., neither anthropotokos, “man-bearer” nor theotokos, “God­bearer.” Because of this position he soon found himself under attack by Cyril. When he discovered that Cyril was in communi­cation with Bishop Celestine of Rome on this issue, Nestorius also wrote to Celestine. In his first letter he proposed that the term theotokos leads to a corruption of Christology similar to Apollina­rius’ and Arius’ “blending together the Lord’s appearance as man into a kind of confused combination.”^[815] What he meant by this statement is that if we employ the term theotokos then we can mean only one of two things. Either the Son is a creature, which is Arianism, or the humanity of Christ is imperfect, which is exactly what Apollinarius taught. Some of his own clergy, Nesto­rius continued, “openly blasphemed God the Word consubstantial with the Father, as if he took his beginning from the Christ- bearing Virgin... they refer the Godhead of the Only-begotten to the same origin as the flesh joined (with it), and kill it with the flesh, and blasphemously say that the flesh joined with the Godhead was turned into deity by the deifying Word which is nothing more nor less than to corrupt both. They even have to treat the Christ-bearing Virgin in a way as along with God (or: include the Virgin in the topic of theologia),^[816] for they do not scruple to call her theotokos, when the holy and beyond-all-praise Fathers at Nicaea said no more of the holy Virgin than that our Lord Jesus Christ was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, not to mention the Scriptures, which everywhere, both by angels and apostles, speak of the Virgin as mother of Christ, not of God the Word.” The term theotokos is not appropriate for Mary, Nestorius argues, because a mother is of the same essence as what is born of her, and Mary could not give birth to God the Word who was older than she herself. Therefore, Theotokos may be used in reference to the humanity of Christ, that is, only in the sense that what was born of the Virgin was the “inseparable temple of God the Word,” but not to imply that Mary is the mother of God the Word.

It is impossible not to sympathize with Nestorius’ concern for a healthy Christology because so much that he dreaded from a vague and uncontrolled use of theotokos was realized in later Mariological speculations. Yet Nestorius was wrong, but not be­cause he recognized the dangers latent in the term theotokos; in this he was all too right. The orthodoxy of his intentions cannot be doubted either. But he was unable to resolve the relationship of the two natures in Christ in a way that would guarantee the unity of Christ. As he presented it, his Christology was open to attack, and his enemies took full advantage of this fact.

Cyril of Alexandria attacked Nestorius on the grounds that the union of the two natures which Nestorius proposed was not a real union at all. If the person of Christ is not understood correctly, Cyril maintained, then Christ’s work of redemption is in danger, too, for this must be understood as the work of God incarnate. From this viewpoint one could only conclude that when Nesto­rius, even in a limited sense, rejected the use of the term theotokos, he became guilty of a great heresy. Cyril presented his opinions in sermons and in various letters. When Bishop Celestine sided with him in 430, Cyril composed a long letter to Nestorius to which were added twelve anathemas. He called upon Nestorius to subscribe to these. In the course of the letter he declared: “Since the holy Virgin gave birth after the flesh to God who was united by hypostasis with flesh, therefore we say that she is theotokos, not as though the nature of the Word had the beginning of its existence from flesh... (nor that the Word needed human birth, but that by accepting it he blessed the beginning of our existence, and removed the curse from it)... ” Consequently, the first of the twelve anathemas reads: “If anyone does not confess that Em­manuel is God in truth, and therefore the holy Virgin is theotokos - for she bore in the flesh the Word of God become flesh-let him be anathema.”^[817] The Antiochene theologians did not like this formulation and in 432 Cyril was seriously charged with Apolli- narianism, a charge from which he had to clear himself by explaining his position. However, the Council which met in

Ephesus in 431 officially approved Cyril’s position and Nestorius was excommunicated. The term theotokos was subsequently in­cluded in the “Formula of Union of 433” which was intended to bring together the Antiochene theologians who leaned toward Nestorius, and the Alexandrian group, which was represented by Cyril.^[818]

After the case of Eutyches (born around 378), who was excom­municated because of monophysitism in 448, the Christological debate was finally settled by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. In this council the fathers referred to the incarnation in the follow­ing way: "... begotten before ages of the Father in Godhead, the same in the last days for us; and for our salvation (born) of Mary, the virgin theotokos, in manhood, one and the same Christ.”^[819] Thus the term theotokos was firmly established.

We are accustomed to think of the council of Ephesus as having made a major Mariological declaration. One theologian states: “A bishop had questioned Mary’s most precious prerogative, and his brother bishops had banned him from their fellowship.”^[820] Another says: “The controversy was at an end. Mary had solemnly been affirmed to be Theotokos."^[821] This view must un­dergo some revision. First of all, the circumstances under which the Council met and approved the term theotokos were such that no true Christian could recount them without embarrassment.^[822] Yet the fact that Mary was officially declared to be theotokos in Ephesus, where “the temple of the great goddess Artemis” stood, must not be set aside as insignificant. The people of Ephesus reacted to the Council in much the same way their ancestors had almost 400 years before when they thought that the honor of Artemis was at stake (Acts 19). Although they probably had little understanding for the Christological issue, they demonstrated in the streets and shouted “Praised be the Theotokos!"⁹ just as their ancestors had shouted “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.” This display of popular pious use of the term theotokos should have been sufficient warning to Cyril and the other Council fathers of where the real source of the problem lay, but they did not, or could not, face that problem. The fact is that even today “Mother of God” is a very subtle theological term, a popular and careless use of which is likely to result in the conclusions indicated by the Ephesian populace. In their minds, there was probably little or no difference between Artemis and Mary.

But the council of Ephesus was not interested in Mary and that is the point to keep in mind. It approved of the term theotokos not as a prerogative of Mary, but as an expression of the doctrine of the two natures of Christ. “Theo-tokos” unites the idea of God (“theo” ) with the ideal of human birth (“-tokos” ) and thus presents the Christian idea of the incarnation in a well balanced way. This balance between the two natures had been scrupulously observed by Cyril, especially in the later debate that led to Chalcedon. The references in this debate to the human side of the incarnation make it clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that the fathers were not interested in conferring privileges upon Mary; their only concern was to give adequate expression to their faith about the person of Jesus Christ. However, in their struggles for a correct formulation of their faith, they referred more and more to Mary. Thus, to use Nestorius’ words, Mary was included “in the topic of theologia” Once this happened, the way was opened for a shift in emphasis. Even in Ephesus, the fathers who said “theotokos” were concerned about him who was born. But it is very easy, indeed, to place the emphasis on her who bore him, and when this happens a Christological statement immediately becomes a Mariological title.

As soon as Mary was included as a theological argument in the Christological debates, Mariology became a theological disci­pline. Now let us investigate the outstanding characteristics of this early Mariology.

The Christological debates were centered on the problem of the natures of Jesus Christ. While the New Testament is basically concerned with the question of what God has done in Christ, and not who Christ was, the fathers of the church were forced to discuss the issue because the incarnation was not easy to accept or to explain. The statement “God became man” contains a contra­diction to which Celsus logically objected that if God were to come down to men he would have to “undergo a change, a change from good to evil, from virtue to vice, from happiness to misery, and from best to worst.”^[823] In the face of such criticism Christian theologians had no alternative but to defend what Origen called “the condescension (katabasis) of God to human affairs.” The issue had to be clarified for the benefit of the church as well, for questions similiar to those Celsus raised were also asked within the church. The union of the human and the divine in Jesus had to be explained in some way. In this endeavor the fathers made extensive use of Philippians 2:5 -11: “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”^[824]

The means by which the self-emptying takes place is the birth from the virgin’s womb. The second century fathers referred to Mary in this way.^[825] In the later controversies Mary was again represented as the means of the kenosis. This motif played an important role in the Arian controversy and afterwards even Apollinarius used it when he wrote, “Incarnation is self-empty­ing.”^[826] According to Gregory of Nazianzen, the kenosis was God’s way of liberating mankind from the bondage of sin. “For in truth he was in servitude to flesh and to birth and to the conditions of our life with a view to our liberation, and to that of all those whom he has saved who were in bondage under sin. What greater destiny can befall man’s humility than that he should be inter­mingled with God, and by this intermingling should be deified, and that we should be so visited by the day-spring from on high that even that holy thing that should be born should be called the Son of the Highest and that there should be bestowed upon him a name which is above every name? And what else can this be than God - and that every knee should bow to him that was made of no reputation for us, and that mingled the form of God with the form of a servant, and that all the house of Israel should know that God has made him both Lord and Christ? For all this was done by the action of the begotten, and by the good pleasure of Him that begot him.”^[827]

A similar position was also taken by Cyril of Alexandria who made extensive use of the kenotic motif in his writings against the Antiochean theologians.^[828] In his letter to John of Antioch, accepting the so called “Formula of Union of 433” which sought to reconcile the two groups separated at Ephesus, Cyril wrote: “For you must surely clearly understand that almost all our fight for the faith was connected with our declaring that the holy Virgin is theotokos. But if we say that the holy body of Christ the Savior of us all was from heaven and not of her, how could she be thought of as theotokos ? For whom indeed did she bear, if it was not true that she bore Emmanuel after the flesh...? But since God the Word, who descended from above and from heaven, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and is styled Son of Man, while remaining what he is, that is, God, there is one Lord Jesus Christ, although the difference of the natures is not ignored, out of which we say that the ineffable union was effected.”^[829]

In the West, Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 315-367) used the kenotic- motif: “Christ abode in the form of God when He assumed the form of a servant, not being subjected to change, but emptying Himself; His unbounded might contracted itself, until it could fulfil the duty of obedience even to the endurance of the body to which it was yoked. But since He was self-contained even when He emptied Himself, His authority suffered no diminution, for in the humiliation of the emptying He exercised within Himself the power of that authority which was emptied.”^[830] Similar notions are also found in the works of Ambrose (339-397), who used the words exinanire (emptying) and celare (hiding) concerning the divinity of Christ in the incarnation. “For of a truth He died in that which He took of the Virgin, not in that which He had of the Father... For He took on Him that which He was not that He might hide that which He was.”^[831] It is possible that these two men influenced Leo, bishop of Rome between 440-461, in the formation of his own Christology. Becoming involved in the Christological controversies through the Eutychian heresy, Leo composed a letter, the so called “Tome of Leo,” which was in­tended to end the controversy at the Council of Ephesus of 449.^[832] The letter, however, was suppressed. It was not officially approved until the Council of Chalcedon in 451, although not as the official document of the Council. Nevertheless, the letter is significant because it is respresentative of Western thinking on the Christo­logical issue. In it, Leo made several references to the kenotic- motif. It seems that his mind constantly returned to the formu­lation of Philippians 2:5 ff.: “He took on him the form of a servant without the defilement of sins, augmenting what was human, not diminishing what was divine; because the ‘emptying of himself,’ whereby the Invisible made himself visible, and the Creator and Lord of all things willed to be one among mortals, was a stooping- down of compassion, not a failure of power. Accordingly, the same who, remaining in the form of God, made man, was made Man in the form of a servant. ” ^[833] Leo is clear that the kenosis, the humiliation of Christ, lies in his being “made of a woman, made under the law,”^[834] i.e., being born of Mary. The Son of God descended from heaven and entered this lower world: the Lord of the universe allowed his infinite majesty to be overshadowed and took upon him the form of a servant.^[835] The Virgin supplied the matter of Christ’s flesh; the divine power is manifested by the new mode of birth in which the incarnation took place. That is the true significance of the Virgin birth of Christ, since to deny his true flesh is also to deny his bodily sufferings.^[836]

What, then, were the outstanding characteristics of Mariology as it first emerged from the Christological controversies? It is characterized by the words “condescension” (katabasis) and “self­emptying” (kenosis). Mary supplied the means by which this con­descension and self-emptying took place. Incarnation, being born of Mary, was a humiliation for Christ which made him of no reputation. What he received from her was “the form of a ser­vant” and thus we see that the fathers spoke of Mary in closest connection with Heilsgeschichte, that is, with Christ’s obedience in condescending to human affairs. For them, to speak about Mary was meaningful only in view of God’s revelatory actions.^[837] Her significance lay not in her being, but in her involvement in a particular πλήρωμα του χρόνου (“fullness of time”) in redemp­tive history, when God sent forth his Son, born of woman.^[838]

This is the crucial point, the point at which the Council fathers failed. Ephesus was a victory for the theologians and priests, who successfully defended orthodoxy from pagan influences, especial­ly from the dreaded idea of polytheism. In the process, however, they failed to recognize the rapid progress of an already deeply rooted popular religion which adopted and baptized innumerable pagan practices. The veneration of martyrs, saints, statues, relics and amulets became accepted expressions of pious devotion. AU of these, however, faded in comparison with the devotion accorded to the Virgin Mary. The excellent fathers of orthodoxy did their best to secure the full humanity and full divinity of Jesus Christ. But they did not adequately deal with Mariology. Only if Mary is part of sinful mankind could she supply to Christ the “form of a servant.” But the questions raised by such a union were so great that the most specious reasoning could not answer them all. The solution came when the concept of Mary’s “immaculate concep­tion,” i.e., complete sinlessness, including freedom from original sin, was fully developed. Then incarnation could be understood as a true cosmic event paralleling the primeval “communio dei et homi­nis/' In Mary, the Immaculate, the divine united himself with mankind prior to sin and thus the new creation could take place. The adoption of the title theotokos paved the way toward this development, but it was, as a theological definition, several steps behind popular piety, which already depicted Mary clothed with the sun and accorded her all the honor that pagans gave to their Queen of Heaven.

Thus the theological definition of Mary’s role in the incarna­tion and consequently in the history of salvation came about in a remarkably absurd way. In their attempt to avoid polytheism, theologians included Mary in their Christological debates as an argument for the humanity of Jesus. The results, however, were exactly the opposite of what they intended, for once having in­cluded the mother of Jesus in the “topic of theologica/' the wheels were set in motion that would lead to the declaration of the theo­tokos title. But a theotokos who is human is a contradiction, and so the church entered upon the long and arduous journey toward the final conclusion: the Mother of God must be the Queen of Heaven.