Yes ... sorry about that ...
But, as ever, it's all about what it
assumes we believe, rather than what we believe ... and relying on a disgruntled voice is always going to lead to a distortion of the truth.
But really:
Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, not in the Fathers, nor the Councils, nor the Catechism, nor anywhere else, does Christian doctrine
ever present the Theotokos
as God, but the 'bearer' (the etymological meaning of the term Theotokos) of God as man, as the Prophets are the bearers of the Word of God as messages from God ... so I can only wonder where that notion came from ...
Likewise nowhere do we ever speak of 'two gods besides God'. There is only God, God is One, revealed in Three.
Not to get into a long critique, but there are a number of statements that are patently false. In the
link to more rebuttals it states:
Maybe according to Islam, but not the Bible. The Bible is explicit: He died on the Cross.
Where in the Bible? I can't find it.
These myths were promulgated by the gnostics in the 2nd century, but never by orthodoxy.
Where its wrong, it's flat wrong. Where it misinterprets doctrine, it's
eisegis, reading an interpretation onto a text that's not implicit, let alone explicit, in the text, and a reading that was never endorsed by any Father, Council or dogma. This is just over-zealousness on the part of Moslem believers.
In many places the argument is illogical:
Well the Quran can condemn what it likes, but it's pointless condemning something that no-one 'is familiar with', that is, no-one says in the first place ...
There's a famous saying of St Maximus the Confessor. During the Christological disputes of the 4th century, a devious schemer tried to tell St Maximus that the Pope held, as a dogma, a 'fact' about The nature of Jesus which St Maximus knew was not the case. He declared, "Then the Church is wrong, and I am the Church!" A very clever rebuttal of a falsehood.
I echo that sentiment.
+++
I am ready to acknowledge that a Marian devotion can
seem like the deification of the Theotokos, but it isn't, and I have never heard of any Christian, anywhere in the Tradition, that presents Mary as God.
The Rosary, a classic example, accords Mary the Biblically-founded status as 'full of grace' and 'the Lord is with thee'. It goes on to say 'blessed art thou among women' meaning she is a woman, just that, a woman chosen to be the bearer of the Incarnate Word. It goes on to ask her intercession in her prayers – to God – on our behalf.
But the Mysteries of the Rosary, which we are to contemplate between the prayers, are the Mysteries of God, not the mysteries of Mary, and the Rosary is a contemplate cycle through those Divine Mysteries ... that has always been the source of its efficacious value.
On devotions:
The Christian Church believes itself to be a communion that transcends time, space, and the world. A communion that transcends life and death, in that the dead live on in God. So in the Liturgy we pray to God as God, and we pray to the living and the dead, the angels and saints, 'and to you, my brothers and sisters' to pray for me, to Almighty God', that is, to remember me kindly in their prayers to God.
Mary is absolutely human. Our Lord took His humanity from her, not His divinity, that came, and can only come, from God, and can only be God. We reverence her because of her absolute faith in God: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38). In that, she was the 'first Christian' and 'the Mother of the Church' because she is the mother of Christ who founded the Church. But her words refute any notion of her being God.
We revere her because she
could have said 'no' – in the same way that the Prophet (PBUH)
could have told the angel to 'go away'.
In short:
No Creed, Council, Church Father, Pope, Patriarch or Christian ever declared that Mary is God, and ...
No Creed, Council, Church Father, Pope or Patriarch ever
refuted the idea that Mary is God, because no-one ever declared she was ...
