‍Mary can't be the Mother of God because God has no beginning

  Gary Hoge  ·  October 17, 2026

‍I know the phrase “Mother of God” makes many Protestants uncomfortable, but that’s usually because it sounds as if Catholics are saying Mary created God, or that Mary is part of the Godhead, or that she is pre-existent, like God.

‍But the phrase “mother of God” doesn’t mean any of that, and the concept it expresses is something almost all Protestants agree with:

‍1. Mary is the mother of Jesus (cf. Matthew 2:11, John 2:5).

‍2. Jesus is God. 

‍Therefore, 

‍3. Mary is the mother of God. 

‍She is the mother of the person who is God. That’s literally all it means. Mothers are mothers of persons, not of natures. And calling Mary God’s mother doesn’t mean that she created God or that his divine nature originated from her.

‍We who believe in the Incarnation believe that God the Son took on human flesh and a human nature in Mary’s womb. That means she carried God in her womb, she gave birth to God, and she is therefore God’s mother.

‍The phrase “mother of God” is nothing to balk at. In fact, Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, embraced it:

‍God did not derive his divinity from Mary; but it does not follow that it is therefore wrong to say that God was born of Mary, that God is Mary’s Son, and that Mary is God’s mother… She is the true mother of God and bearer of God … Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God, etc. For God and man are one person, one Christ, one Son, one Jesus, not two Christs … just as your son is not two sons … even though he has two natures, body and soul, the body from you, the soul from God alone.¹

‍She is rightly called not only the mother of the man, but also the Mother of God…  It is certain that Mary is the Mother of the real and true God.²

‍Catholics believe as Luther did. We certainly don’t claim that God had his beginning in Mary’s womb. Obviously, he had no beginning at all. It was he who created Mary, not the other way around.

‍But given the possibility of confusion, why insist on the title “mother of God”? What’s the big deal? Well, nowadays it probably isn’t a big deal, but in the fifth century it was.

‍Back then, Mary was called Theotokos (Θεοτόκος), literally “God-bearer” or “the one who gives birth to God,” traditionally rendered “Mother of God.” This was to emphasize that the baby in her womb was God in the flesh. In the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Trinity took on a human nature and became man in Mary’s womb.

‍But Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople, objected to calling Mary Theotokos. He preferred Christotokos (Χριστοτόκος), or “Christ-bearer,” because he believed that calling Mary “Mother of God” improperly attributed Christ’s human birth to his divinity. His way of distinguishing Christ’s humanity from his divinity, however, was judged to divide Christ in a way that compromised the unity of his person.

‍As you probably know, the orthodox Christian belief, shared by both Catholics and Protestants, is that Jesus was a single “person,” a divine person. We believe that at the Incarnation the second Person of the Trinity took on a human nature, in addition to His divine nature. He became the “God-man,” one person with two natures. 

‍The Council of Ephesus, in 431, reaffirmed the orthodox doctrine that there was only one “person” in Mary’s womb, the second Person of the Trinity. Thus, because Mary carried God in her womb, they said it was proper to continue to refer to her as Theotokos, or “God-bearer.” The title “mother of God,” then, was not given primarily to honor Mary, but to protect the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation. As Martin Luther wrote,

‍So, then, this council established nothing new concerning the faith, as was said above, but defended the old faith against the new opinions of Nestorius…. This article was in the church from the very beginning and was not newly created by the council, but was preserved through the Gospel or Holy Scripture…. These texts, I know for sure, hold firmly enough that Mary is mother of God.³

‍The point, then, is not that Mary is the source of Christ’s divinity or that God somehow began to exist in her womb. The point is that the person whom Mary conceived, carried, gave birth to, and raised was the eternal Son of God. If Jesus is truly God, and Mary is truly his mother, then calling Mary the “Mother of God” simply affirms who Jesus is.

‍__________

^‍1 Martin Luther, On the Councils and the Church, 1539.

^‍2 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, (St. Louis: Concordia), 24:107.

^‍3 Martin Luther, “On the Councils and the Church” (1539), in Luther’s Works, vol. 41, Church and Ministry III, ed. Eric W. Gritsch, trans. Charles M. Jacobs, rev. Eric W. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 105; WA 50:591.25–28.