> [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.
yes well I don't think I'd rate Freud, Deutsch, et al. as having made very useful contributions, but influential I suppose
> [2] It would be a highly unorthodox opinion to consider the mother of
> Jesus divine.
Absolutely. But "unorthodox" is at the core of theology, of course -- without it it would have no place or motivating force
> The debate about her role as theotokos ("God-bearer" -- the
> more usual Western Christian phrase, as scandalous in its way, is "Mother
> of God")
but these are quite different one of the important things about theotokos in the debates around it was that it did *not* mean "mother" of god, but bearer of -- closer to the vessel than the mother models of the BVM
> 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.
Yes it was about a nexus of debates about defining divinity and the whoel "monotheism" deal. But, because it was more marginal and yet as popular, the ascension of Mary or the "virgin birth" status of Mary have been more frequent limit cases than the "personal" instance of Jesus
> [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.
But, and this is where I can't recall certainly. In the 4th c they didn't use that term, did they, there were other more varied labels/descriptions, the specific term is most prevalent in the 18th century isn't it? It could be 17th, but that seems too early to me.
Catherine
>
>
> 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...
>
>
>
>
-- Dr Catherine Driscoll School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry University of Sydney Phone (61-2) 93569503
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