Many times, when someone hears a Catholic call Mary the mother of god they are scandalized by the expression. And if the expression meant what many people think it meant, they should be scandalized! What does the title “mother of God” mean what you think it means?

First of all, let me say what the phrase does not mean. It does not mean that Mary created God. Any Catholic you talk to who has any education at all will tell you that is a false teaching. In fact the opposite is true. Jesus is the only infant who created his own mother!

Some would say that Mary is only the mother of the human part of Jesus, but that requires believing in a heresy for it to be true. Jesus is one person, and one person only. That person is fully divine and fully human and is not able to be separated into 2 persons. To do so takes us over into Gnosticism and it’s teaching of the spirit and flesh being separate beings. At no time was Jesus only reacting as a human or only reacting as a spirit. He was always reacting as both.

Well then, how can someone become the mother of a baby? Just as in natural conception, the child is both hers and the Holy Spirit’s. She became the “Mother if God” by giving birth to the person. No true Christian would ever dispute that Mary gave birth to Jesus. In doing so, she gave birth to the complete Jesus who was both 100% God and 100% man. So even though her own child created Mary, she is still “The mother of God” because Jesus is fully God and as a person who is both God and man he went through the birthing process.

So in spite of any misunderstandings, Mary truly does have the title mother of God once you know what that phrase means and does not mean. To say otherwise is to risk falling into heresy where Jesus can divide his natures from each other and is 50% God and 50% human instead of 100% both as one being. I hope that clears things up!