Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Incarnation as Social Protest 106
scale! But he could not sit on the scale unless he had become a man like us, so that
it could be called God’s dying, God’s martyrdom, God’s blood, and God’s death.
For God in his own nature cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one
person, it is called God’s death when the man dies who is one substance or one
person with God. 28
This quote clearly shows the importance that the doctrine carries for an incarnational
understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Moreover, Luther strongly ties the
death of Jesus, the death of God, and the incarnational cycle of upward and downward
movement. Lanyer’s approach to the trial and death of Jesus requires the same weight
behind it when she uses the treatment of Jesus by the authorities for her call for the
freedom of women.
In addition to ‘communication of attributes’, a reader must also remember the
concept of theotokos, or the belief that Mary was the mother of God, not just the mother of
Jesus. Since Mary was the mother of both the human and divine in Jesus, then she carried
God in her womb. Once again, it is Martin Luther who provides a good summary of the
implications of this belief when he states
Thus it should also be said that Mary is the true natural mother of the child called
Jesus Christ, and that she is the true mother of God and bearer of God, and
whatever else can be said of Children’s mothers, such as suckling, bathing, feeding
– that Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God,
etc. 29
28 On the Councils and the Church, pp. 103-04.
29 On the Councils and the Church, p. 100.