at least that's my dim recollection.
On Monday, January 20, 2003, at 11:54 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> Someone thought it funny when I once said that I read LBO for the
> theological discussions, but we've concretized the hyperbole, I think,
> Catherine. Nevertheless, thanks for your response; here are three
> comments:
>
> [1] The question that came up was the role of virginity (not the
> Virgin)
> in the vast social movement that is Christianity, and I suggested that
> the
> congeries of motives, interests, ideas and concerns that pertained to
> the
> subject needed a variety of intellectual tools to disentangle --
> including, for a topic both psychic and somatic, attention to
> unconscious
> aspects, hence the reference to psychoanalysis.
>
> [2] It would be a highly unorthodox opinion to consider the mother of
> Jesus divine. The debate about her role as theotokos ("God-bearer" --
> the
> more usual Western Christian phrase, as scandalous in its way, is
> "Mother
> of God") was a debate about the nature of Jesus, whom orthodox
> Christianity came to consider at once entirely human and entirely
> divine.
> The term, in use since the 3rd century, was attacked in the 5th by
> those
> (Nestorians) who, so to speak, wanted to divide Jesus a bit. So the
> argument was only secondarily about Mary.
>
> [3] "Mariolatry" is a pejorative -- it means erroneously offering
> divine
> honors to Mary. Groups said to hold that view were condemned in the
> early
> church (4th century) and by the RC church in the 18th century. In the
> 16th century and afterwards, Protestant attacks on Catholic notions of
> human solidarity called technically "the communion of saints" (not just
> about saints) included the charge that Catholics commit mariolatry,
> although the word doesn't seem to appear in English until the 17th
> century. --CGE
>
>
> On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Catherine Driscoll wrote:
>
>> ...I don't get the reference to psychoanalysis...
>>
>> ...theotokos was massively contentious because for some it erased the
>> divinity of the Virgin and made her a vessel only and for others it
>> made her godlike because mortal flesh could not bear God -- that was
>> only possible for Christ...
>>
>> ...I can't recall a date for "mariolatry" but I think it's quite late
>> but yet as a polemical debate reprises debates around the separation
>> of the Roman and Greek churches...
>
>
>