From: "CE" 



>  wrote:
> > 

> > Here's a newsflash. Mary was Jesus's mother. Since Jesus is God,
> > specifically the Second Person of the trinity, Mary is the mother of
> > God. She didn't need a "promotion." She was already the
mother of God.
>
> **  If she was already the mother of God, why bother to issue some papal
> "Bull"  3-centuries after the fact  ?.

The formality of announcing the title, a title that had already been
applied to Mary for more than 200 years, was to clear up a discussion about
the nature of Jesus Christ. During that discussion, there was opposition to
the term Mother of God but it's interesting to note that the person who was
first opposed to the term later changed his mind.

So, as you can see, there's been no "promotion" of Mary. She was
recognized as the mother of our Lord even during her life, as shown by the
Gospel of Luke. Later, the term Mother of God, began to circulate and, in
431, it was formally accepted.

Formally recognizing something isn't the same as inventing it. I can
recognize that the earth is roundish in shape. That doesn't mean I invented
the roundish shape for the earth.

In the case of Mary, she was the Mother of God way before the church
bothered to formally recognize the fact.

Here's a little background on the subject from en.allexperts.com

Theology

The expression "Mother of God" or "Birth-giver of God"
should not be understood in the eternal sense; that is, Mary is not
understood as having eternally given birth to God the Son in the same way
that he is eternally begotten by God the Father (see Holy Trinity and
Nicene Creed). Rather, in the Incarnation, the divine person of God the Son
took on a human nature in addition to his divine nature, and it is through
Mary that this takes place. Since Jesus Christ is seen as both fully God
and fully human, to call Mary the Birth-giver of God is to affirm the
fullness of his Incarnation, and by extension, the salvation of humanity.

This stands in contrast to classical Greco-Roman religion in particular,
where a number of divine female figures appear as mother of other
divinities, demi-gods, or heroes. For example, Juno was revered as the
mother of Vulcan; Aphrodite, the mother of Aeneas.

Use of "Theotokos" [Mother of God] in the early Christian Church

Many Fathers of the early Christian Church used the title Theotokos for
Mary, at least since the third century AD.

The first documented use of the term is in the writings of Origen in AD 230.

Dionysios of Alexandria used the term in about 250, in an epistle to Paul
of Samosata.

Athanasius of Alexandria in 330, Gregory the Theologian in 370, John
Chrysostom in 400, and Augustine all used the term Theotokos.

Theodoret wrote in 436 that calling Virgin Mary Theotokos was an apostolic tradition.

Third Ecumenical Council

The use of Theotokos was formally affirmed at the Third Ecumenical Council
held at Ephesus in 431. The competing view (advocated by Nestorius, then
Patriarch of Constantinople) was that Mary should be called Christotokos,
meaning "Mother of Christ," to restrict her role to the mother of
Christ's humanity only and not his divine nature.

Nestorius's opponents, led by Cyril of Alexandria, viewed this as dividing
Jesus into two distinct persons, one who was Son of Mary, and another, the
divine nature, who was not. Such a notion was unacceptable, since (in the
Orthodox view) it sabotaged the fullness of the incarnation and, by
extension, the salvation of humanity. Nestorius's view was anathematised by
the Council as heresy, (see Nestorianism), and the title
"Theotokos" for Mary was affirmed.

By the end of his life, Nestorius had agreed to the title Theotokos,
stating the apparent communication of the attributes (idiomata).

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