Letter to the English Churchman on Theotokos and a Prayer of the Church Militant

Dear Sir,
RE: THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AS MOTHER OF GOD

I agree wholeheartedly that the title, “Mother of God (Theotokos)” ascribed by the holy ecumenical council of Ephesus (431 AD) to Our Blessed Virgin Mary has led to many errors (doctrine) and superstitions (practices). Nonetheless, the designation by itself – being the theological reflection of the Church on the essentials of the Faith - is wholly appropriate in expressing the concrete Unity of the Two Natures of Christ in One Person (i.e. the Hypostatic Union), over against the teachings of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople (of the school of Antioch in the tradition of Theodore of Mopsuestia). The “Nestorian” heresy has often been inaccurately described as a Two Person/Sonship Christology. However, both Nestorius and the Nestorians maintained an orthodox understanding of the Incarnation.

The defining issue arose out of the differences over the propriety of interchanging appellations and peculiar properties belonging to one nature with the other (i.e. the communicatio idiomatum). Nonetheless, the occasion for Nestorius’s condemnation was set in the context of ecclesiastical rivalry, instigated in particular by St. Cyril, the great 5th-century defender of Catholic doctrine. The Antiochene school was concerned (see for example, the “Second Epistle of Nestorius to Cyril”) to safeguard the integrity of the Divine Nature and by extension, the Godhead against implications of passibility.

On the Alexandrian side, to deny that sufferings of the Gospel Figure could be referred or transferred to His Divinity weakens the intrinsic oneness - in Identity - of the composite Union and by extension, the impeccability of His Humanity which is absolutely necessary for our redemption. Therefore, Nestorianism amounted to a denial of the complete human experience of Our Lord “for what is not assumed (in the fullest sense) is not saved”, as per the Cappadocian fathers. So, Christ’s Human Nature (including the rational soul or mind) does not subsist apart from the Ego or Self-Consciousness of His Divine Person.

Convinced by that truth, the Orthodox party paid appropriate reverence to the Virgin Mary by addressing her as “Theotokos” (lit. “God-bearer”). This article of faith has always been implicit in the Catholic creeds before Ephesus (431 AD) and the Chalcedonian Definition (451 AD), alongside the lesser status of Mary’s perpetual virginity (“Aeiparthenos”). But, the voice of the broader Ecumenical Church does not condemn, for pastoral reasons, congregations or individuals who refuse to subscribe to this venerable tradition for conscience’s sake, partly because of its association with Mariolatry. The elevation of “Theotokos” as dogma relates only to its Symbolic Representation of the Hypostatic Union and NEVER for its own sake.

Hence, for instance, Luther and his true disciples (i.e. the Gnesio-Lutherans) held to the ubiquity of the God-Man - in relation to His “definitive” presence in the consecrated species – on the basis of “Logos non extra carnem est" (i.e. the Logos is not apart from His flesh). Luther’s phrase that “God died on the Cross” is not Patripassianism precisely because it was not God the Father who was the Subject of the bloody agony and precious death.

Let it be known, that the Church of England (Continuing), alongside the Traditional Protestant Episcopal Church and the Anglican Orthodox Church, in common with the Reformation Churches do utterly denounce the detestable enormities of the Bishop of Rome and confess him as Anti-Christ, and Enemy of the Catholic Faith. We hereby also condemn the false professors of Anglicanism within the Canterbury Communion and the Continuum (for example, the Traditional Anglican Communion – TAC) for their irrefragable movement towards the Man of Sin in fulfilment of the great apostasy of the last days.

“Almighty and ever-living God, Who hast predestined unto glory a Church elected in Christ, we thy unworthy servants, in communion with the Church Triumphant above, continue to beseech Thee for the increase of Thy Holy Spirit in us, that being grounded in the abiding Baptism of Pentecost, assured of the triumphant advance of the Gospel, armed with the Sword of the Spirit, that is, Thy most holy Word and looking for the great and glorious appearing of the Son of Man, our blessed hope: the militant Church here on earth, the pillar and ground of the Truth, would ever contend for the faith once for all delivered unto the saints for the gathering, defence and preservation of the same Catholic Church in all ages; through the one and only Intercession of Our Lord Jesus. Amen”.