Praying and Believing in Early Christianity by Maxwell E. Johnson

Author:Maxwell E. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8146-8284-5
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Published: 2013-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Christ and Mary

The church’s liturgical and other prayer, as we saw in the previous chapter, played a significant role in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity at the councils of Nicea and Constantinople. The question this chapter addresses is whether and to what extent the same claim might be made for the next two ecumenical councils of Ephesus (431 CE) and Chalcedon (451 CE), which dealt with further christological issues in coming to formulations about the relationship of Christ’s human and divine natures. On the one hand, the question is rather moot since these councils obviously are not concerned with the question of worshiping Christ or glorifying the Holy Spirit equally with the Father and, in fact, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed had made that liturgical practice part of Orthodox doctrine already. Hence, the issues here might be said to be more doctrinal and philosophical than liturgical.

On the other hand, the liturgical and devotional question does come to the fore with the christological title officially given to the Virgin Mary at Ephesus, Theotokos (God-Bearer), and, together with the christological formula of “one Person, two natures” adopted at Chalcedon, there are certainly liturgical implications. Thus, the term Theotokos as a product of the church’s worship and precisely those liturgical implications of these christological decisions are the emphases that will shape the focus of this chapter.

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