Patristic Teaching for the Day

St. John of Damascus

St. John of Damascus (c. 676 - December 5, 749) is the last of the Greek Fathers of the Church.  He is also a Doctor of the Church, and was an early opponent of the iconoclast heresy.   The following is taken from St. John of Damascus's "Exposition of the Orthodox Faith," (full text here) in which he defends, against Nestorian attack, the teaching that Mary is Theotokos, or Mother of God:

Moreover we proclaim the holy Virgin to be in strict truth the Mother of God. For inasmuch as He who was born of her was true God, she who bare the true God incarnate is the true mother of God. For we hold that God was born of her, not implying that the divinity of the Word received from her the beginning of its being, but meaning that God the Word Himself, Who was begotten of the Father timelessly before the ages, and was with the Father and the Spirit without beginning and through eternity, took up His abode in these last days for the sake of our salvation in the Virgin’s womb, and was without change made flesh and born of her. For the holy Virgin did not bare mere man but true God: and not mere God but God incarnate, Who did not bring down His body from Heaven, nor simply passed through the Virgin as channel, but received from her flesh of like essence to our own and subsisting in Himself