The Mother of God is not a Goddess

There is an abismal and indisputable difference between the Mother of God, the Theotokos, Mother of the Word Incarnate, and the "mother of the gods", as Saint John Damascene (8 A.D.) explains:

"[...] Let us celebrate the feast of the departing of the Mother of God, not with flutes nor with the songs of Corybantes, nor by the orgiastic thiasoi (cult associations) of her who is called the "mother of the (so-called) gods": the foolish, in their farfetched imagination, attribute to her many children, while the truth shows that she didn't have any. These are only demons, ghosts as vain as shadows, stupidly feigning to be what they are not, in which they are helped by the misleading folly of men.

Mary is not a goddess, she is a human being with a body of flesh and blood!

Can a being without a body beget? How would it unite itself to another? And how could we call a god what once did not exist, and appears with birth? That the race of the gods must indeed be incorporeal is obvious for everybody, even for those whose spiritual eyes are blind. For Homer thus describes, in a passage taken from his works, the complexion of the gods that are worthy of him: "They do not eat bread nor drink the fire-coloured wine; they are therefore bloodless and called immortals. They do not feed themselves with bread, he said, they do not drink the warmth-giving wine. That is why they don't have any blood and are called immortals." He says very justly: "They are called immortals, but they aren't what people say they are, for they died a man's death."

By incarnating Himself, He is born of this sacred Virgin without a human union, remaining himself wholly God and becoming wholly man; fully God with his flesh and fully man with his infinite divinity

As for us, since the One we adore is God, a God who hasn't come from a non-being state into existence, but who is Eternal begotten by Eternal, who surpasses all cause, word or idea, either temporal or natural, it is the Mother of God whom we honor and venerate.

We do not mean that He draws from her the intemporal birth of His divinity, but we profess a second birth, by voluntary incarnation, and of that one we know the cause and we proclaim it: He becomes flesh, the One who is eternally incorporeal, "because of us and for our salvation", to save the like by the like. And by incarnating Himself, He is born of this sacred Virgin without a human union, remaining himself wholly God and becoming wholly man; fully God with his flesh and fully man with his infinite divinity.

We acknowledge Mary as the Mother of God Incarnate

It is thus in acknowledging this Virgin as Mother of God that we celebrate her dormition: we do not call her a goddess; far from us are these fables from the Greek imposture, since we also announce her death. But we acknowledge that she is the Mother of God Incarnate.

Let us celebrate her today, with sacred songs, we who have been enriched to the point of being the people of God and of bearing that name! Let us honor her by nightly stations! Let us rejoice her by the purity of the body and the soul, she who really is purer than all the beings without exception after God: for the like is well pleased in the like. Let us pay her homage by our mercy and compassion toward the destitutes. If nothing honors God as much as mercy, who will contest that His Mother is filled with the same sentiments, she who provided us with this ineffable abyss, the love of God for us? [...]

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St John of Damascus