Theotokos

On the feast of the annunciation, I've been reflecting on the incarnation of the Son of God.  In their defence of the genuine divinity and humanity of Christ, the orthodox church fathers used the term Theotokos to describe the virgin Mary - best translated 'God-bearer' (rather than 'Mother of God', which just has uncomfortable resonances with the Father).  Mary is God-bearer because the child in her womb, whilst genuinely and fully human, was also genuinely and fully God.  The eternal Son of God was personally united to the human nature of Jesus Christ, even in the womb; Mary wasn't the bearer of the human being who would be God incarnate, but actually bore in her womb God-in-the-flesh.

Two reflections:

1.  The grace of God is displayed, in that God the Son is willing to take to himself human nature in its most powerless, vulnerable, and dependent state.  To put it bluntly, the eternal Son was a human foetus.  Here is already a prefiguration of his condescension at the cross, when he was given into the hands of sinners, defenceless, and finally entombed.

2.  This is basically where a Christian pro-life commitment flows from.  The incarnate Son did not unite to himself a part of the virgin's body; he united to himself a fully human nature.  The person in the womb was God in the flesh.  That means both that we know when human life 'begins' and has significance, and it means that God cares about this stage of human life, sanctifying it by his presence.  Obviously, this isn't an argument for being pro-life (the argument I would deploy with people who don't accept my theological positions would be simply 'are you sure?  are you sure this isn't a human being?  don't you think you ought to be 100% sure before this becomes okay?') - but it is the underlying rationale for valuing human life in the womb.