Matthew Crawford: Theotokos between Christians and Pagans: Julian, Cyril, and Nestorius on the Mother of God(s)

The Emperor Julian was raised as a Christian, and, despite his abandonment of the faith, still engaged in Church disputes regarding the divinity of Christ, agreeing with the bishop Photinus, for example, that it is absurd to imagine the deity inhabiting a human womb (Letter55). In his Contra Galileos, Julian even twice mentioned the term theotokos, acknowledging its frequent usage by Christians and denying its suitability as a description of Mary. In one of the two fragments containing the term, Julian once again named the same Photinus as being a part of a contemporary debate over the identity of the one born from Mary. In order to contextualize these statements from Julian, this paper will examine the usage of the term theotokos prior to the Nestorian controversy when it became a topic of intense debate between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople. It will then ask whether there is any continuity between Julian’s repudiation of the idea of theotokos and Nestorius’s rejection of the term, as well as any continuity between Cyril’s rebuttal to Julian’s CG and his defense of the term against the bishop of Constantinople. Finally, the paper will address the recent suggestion from Susanna Elm that Julian’s own Hymn to the Mother of the Gods may be read as a sort of rival, pagan version of the Christian idea of Mary as theotokos.