Foundations

This section establishes the two things everything else in the collection depends on: what the Church calls the Mother of God, and where she stands in its life. It surveys her principal titles and their Christological meaning, and it sets out the crucial distinction between the veneration owed her and the worship owed to God alone.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Orthodox Mariology is not an independent devotion but a function of the confession of Christ. Every title given to the Virgin Mary — Theotokos, Aeiparthenos, Panagia, New Eve — is finally a statement about her Son, and every honor paid to her is referred, by the tradition’s own logic, past her to Him. These two files lay that groundwork before the collection turns to Scripture (§02), the dogma of Ephesus (§03), and the later doctrinal and liturgical developments.

Contents

File Focus
Names and Titles of the Mother of God Theotokos (and the rejected Christotokos), Aeiparthenos, Panagia, Despoina, Mother of God (Dei Genetrix / Mater Dei), the Slavonic Bogoroditsa / Vladychitsa, Blessed Virgin, and New Eve — their meaning, their Greek/Latin/Slavonic forms, and why Marian titles are always Christological in intent.
The Place of the Mother of God in Orthodoxy Veneration vs. worship: latreia, dulia, and hyperdulia; the communion of saints and intercession; New Eve, Temple, and Ark; the honor-passes-to-the-prototype principle; and the Reformation objection with the Orthodox reply.

See Also