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Attributes and actions, belonging properly only to Christ's humanity, were ascribed recklessly to His divinity. The test phrase "theotokos," invaluable as a protest against Nestorianism, became a precedent for all sorts of doctrinal extravagancies.
The monophysite, by identifying the natures, forfeits the right to use the term "Theotokos" and the Trisagion addition. On his lips their inevitable implication is a finite suffering God. Monophysitism was not originally or per se a Trinitarian heresy. Equally with catholics and Nestorians its adherents accepted the Nicene definition. They professed to believe in one God in three co-equal persons.
Thus the whole controversy of the Catholic Church with the Arians finally gathers itself up in a single word, 'homoousion; that with the Nestorians in another, 'theotokos. One might be bold to affirm that the entire secret of Buddhism is found in 'Nirvana'; for take away the word, and it is not too much to say that the keystone to the whole arch is gone.
The progressive exaltation of the Virgin Mary, the work of Catholic piety, having its beginning in the expression Mother of God, theotokos, deipara, has culminated in attributing to her the status of co-redeemer and in the dogmatic declaration of her conception without the stain of original sin. Hence she now occupies a position between Humanity and Divinity and nearer Divinity than Humanity.
The proper conditions for the development of a mother cult within Christianity existed within the church by the end of the second century. The question of the nature of Mary then came to the fore. The eastern fathers, Athanasius, Ephraim Syrus, Eusebius and Chrysostom, made frequent use in their writings of the term Theotokos, Mother of God.
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