Patristic sources who affirm that Mary’s Perpetual Virginity was taught by the Apostles include:
• the author of the Protoevangelium of James: “And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by [St. Anne], saying, ‘Anne! Anne! The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive and shall bring forth, and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.’ And Anne said, ‘As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God, and it shall minister to him in the holy things all the days of its life.’ . . . And [from the time she was three] Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there.”
“And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of priests, saying, ‘Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, lest perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord?’ And they said to the high priest, ‘You stand by the altar of the Lord; go in and pray concerning her, and whatever the Lord shall manifest to you, that also will we do.’ . . . [A]nd he prayed concerning her, and behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him saying, ‘Zechariah! Zechariah! Go out and assemble the widowers of the people and let them bring each his rod, and to whomsoever the Lord shall show a sign, his wife shall she be. . . . And Joseph [was chosen]. . . . And the priest said to Joseph, ‘You have been chosen by lot to take into your keeping the Virgin of the Lord.’ But Joseph refused, saying, ‘I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl.’ “
“And Annas the scribe came to him [Joseph] . . . and saw That Mary was with child. And he ran away to the priest and said to him, ‘Joseph, whom you did vouch for, has committed a grievous crime.’ And the priest said, ‘How so?’ And he said, ‘He has defiled the virgin whom he received out of the temple of the Lord and has married her by stealth.’”
“And the priest said, ‘Mary, why have you done this? And why have you brought your soul low and forgotten the Lord your God?’ . . . And she wept bitterly saying, ‘As the Lord my God lives, I am pure before him, and know not man.’ “
• Origen: “The Book [the Protoevangelium] of James [records] that the brethren of Jesus were sons of Joseph by a former wife, whom he married before Mary. Now those who say so wish to preserve the honor of Mary in virginity to the end, so that body of hers which was appointed to minister to the Word . . . might not know intercourse with a man after the Holy Spirit came into her and the power from on high overshadowed her. And I think it in harmony with reason that Jesus was the first fruit among men of the purity which consists in [perpetual] chastity, and Mary was among women. For it were not pious to ascribe to any other than to her the first fruit of virginity.”
• Hilary of Poitiers: “If they [the brethren of the Lord] had been Mary’s sons and not those taken from Joseph’s former marriage, she would never have been given over in the moment of the passion [crucifixion] to the apostle John as his mother, the Lord saying to each, ‘Woman, behold your son,’ and to John, ‘Behold your mother’ (John 19:26–27), as he bequeathed filial love to a disciple as a consolation to the one desolate.”
• Athanasius: “Let those, therefore, who deny that the Son is by nature from the Father and proper to his essence deny also that he took true human flesh from the ever-virgin Mary.”
• Epiphanius of Salamis: “We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things, both visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . who for us men and for our salvation came down and took flesh, that is, was born perfectly of the holy ever-virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.”
“And to holy Mary, [the title] ‘Virgin’ is invariably added, for that holy woman remains undefiled.”
• Jerome: “[Helvidius] produces Tertullian as a witness [to his view] and quotes Victorinus, bishop of Petavium. Of Tertullian, I say no more than that he did not belong to the Church. But as regards Victorinus, I assert what has already been proven from the gospel—that he [Victorinus] spoke of the brethren of the Lord not as being sons of Mary but brethren in the sense I have explained, that is to say, brethren in point of kinship, not by nature. [By discussing such things we] are . . . following the tiny streams of opinion. Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against [the heretics] Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus, held these same views and wrote volumes replete with wisdom. If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man.”
“We believe that God was born of a virgin, because we read it. We do not believe that Mary was married after she brought forth her Son, because we do not read it. . . . You [Helvidius] say that Mary did not remain a virgin. As for myself, I claim that Joseph himself was a virgin, through Mary, so that a virgin Son might be born of a virginal wedlock.”
• Didymus the Blind: “It helps us to understand the terms ‘first-born’ and ‘only-begotten’ when the Evangelist tells that Mary remained a virgin ‘until she brought forth her firstborn son’ [Matt. 1:25]; for neither did Mary, who is to be honored and praised above all others, marry anyone else, nor did she ever become the Mother of anyone else, but even after childbirth she remained always and forever an immaculate virgin.”
• Ambrose of Milan: “Imitate her [Mary], holy mothers, who in her only dearly beloved Son set forth so great an example of material virtue; for neither have you sweeter children [than Jesus], nor did the Virgin seek the consolation of being able to bear another son.”
• Pope Siricius I: “You had good reason to be horrified at the thought that another birth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had ever judged that she would be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord’s body, that court of the eternal king.”
• Augustine: “In being born of a Virgin who chose to remain a Virgin even before she knew who was to be born of her, Christ wanted to approve virginity rather than to impose it. And he wanted virginity to be of free choice even in that woman in whom he took upon himself the form of a slave.”
“It was not the visible sun, but its invisible Creator who consecrated this day for us, when the Virgin Mother, fertile of womb and integral in her virginity, brought him forth, made visible for us, by whom, when he was invisible, she too was created. A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this, O man?”
“Heretics called Antidicomarites are those who contradict the perpetual virginity of Mary and affirm that after Christ was born she was joined as one with her husband.”
• Leporius: “We confess, therefore, that our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, born of the Father before the ages, and in times most recent, made man of the Holy Spirit and the ever-virgin Mary.”
• Cyril of Alexandria: “[T]he Word himself, coming into the Blessed Virgin herself, assumed for himself his own temple from the substance of the Virgin and came forth from her a man in all that could be externally discerned, while interiorly he was true God. Therefore he kept his Mother a virgin even after her childbearing.”
• Pope Leo I: “His [Christ’s] origin is different, but his [human] nature is the same. Human usage and custom were lacking, but by divine power a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bore, and Virgin she remained.”
• and the dogmatic teaching of the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople: Canon 2: “If anyone does not confess that God the Word was twice begotten, the first before all time from the Father, non-temporal and bodiless, the other in the last days when he came down from the heavens and was incarnate by the holy, glorious, God-bearer, ever-virgin Mary, and born of her, let him be anathema.”
And they’re only the beginning. For the entirety of Christian history until roughly the seventeenth century, Christians agreed with them—except for two guys.
Those two guys are:
• Tertullian, a fierce North African lawyer and defender of the faith who lived in the late-second and early-third century. He fell prey to a spiritual disease that sometimes afflicts those who come to love apologetics more than they love Jesus: Tertullian got so intent on building up antibodies against heresy that he eventually contracted a sort of spiritual auto-immune disease and started building antibodies against the Body of Christ itself. Eventually, he abandoned Christianity for Montanism. But along the way, Tertullian wrote some brilliant—and virulent—stuff. He did nothing by halves, and he was no stranger to the deep end when it came to contradicting his opponents. And so, when he encountered Docetists (people who denied Jesus was truly human), Tertullian countered by arguing that not only was Jesus human, but his mother, being herself fully human, must have had a bushel of other kids, too! True to form, Tertullian didn’t argue this from biblical evidence (because, as we’ve seen, there isn’t any), but from his own polemical needs at the moment. In fact, Tertullian’s passionate opposition to Docetism also prompted him to argue that Jesus was ugly! He was an extremist with an axe to grind and a blinding need to win an argument at any cost, not a very reliable witness to the constant faith of other Christians.
• Helvidius, who lived in the fourth century. He wrote a pamphlet (lost to history) that argued most of the same things that Evangelicals argue against Mary’s Perpetual Virginity. How does Helvidius know Mary had other kids? He doesn’t. He just cites Tertullian and says that it seems to him she must have had them, using all the misreadings of Scripture we have previously looked at and discredited.
It’s worth noting that when Jerome wrote his famous refutation Against Helvidius in defense of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity, his argument was seen by all his contemporaries as completely non-controversial: It was Helvidius who was universally regarded throughout Christendom as the kook. Jerome’s view was regarded as simply normal by Christians everywhere. And that remained true right down through the Reformation, whose leading lights, such as
• Luther: “Christ, our Savior, was the real and natural fruit of Mary’s virginal womb . . . This was without the cooperation of a man, and she remained a virgin after that”
“Christ . . .was the only Son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary bore no children besides Him . . . I am inclined to agree with those who declare that ‘brothers’ really mean ‘cousins’ here, for Holy Writ and the Jews always call cousins brothers.”
“A new lie about me is being circulated. I am supposed to have preached and written that Mary, the mother of God, was not a virgin either before or after the birth of Christ . . . “
“Scripture does not say or indicate that she later lost her virginity . . .When Matthew[1:25] says that Joseph did not know Mary carnally until she had brought forth her son, it does not follow that he knew her subsequently; on the contrary, it means that he never did know her . . . This babble . . . is without justification . . . he has neither noticed nor paid any attention to either Scripture or the common idiom.”
• Calvin: “Helvidius displayed excessive ignorance in concluding that Mary must have had many sons, because Christ’s ‘brothers’ are sometimes mentioned,”
[On Matt 1:25:] “The inference he [Helvidius] drew from it was, that Mary remained a virgin no longer than till her first birth, and that afterwards she had other children by her husband . . . No just and well-grounded inference can be drawn from these words . . . as to what took place after the birth of Christ. He is called ‘first-born’; but it is for the sole purpose of informing us that he was born of a virgin . . . What took place afterwards the historian does not inform us . . . No man will obstinately keep up the argument, except from an extreme fondness for disputation.”
“Under the word ‘brethren’ the Hebrews include all cousins and other relations, whatever may be the degree of affinity.”
• Zwingli: “I firmly believe that Mary, according to the words of the Gospel as a pure Virgin brought forth for us the Son of God and in childbirth and after childbirth forever remained a pure, intact Virgin.”
• and even John Wesley: “I believe . . . he [Jesus Christ]was born of the blessed Virgin, who, as well after as she brought him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin.”
also accepted Mary’s Perpetual Virginity as clear and unarguable biblical teaching. Far from “contradicting” Scripture, the dogma of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity is at least as well attested, both biblically and historically, as the dogma of the Trinity.
Comments
Post a Comment
There is NO dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity. At times, there has been deliberation about whether Mary was a perpetual virgin or not but it was decided long ago by popes, cardinals and bishop theologians that there is too much controversy to declare this as an official doctrine of the Church. Please do the research yourself if you need proof.
Rosanne,
Your statement is false. It is dogma of our Church. Please reread the quote from 2nd council of Constantinople above. Anathemas refer to statements of dogma.
Also Mark would it be possible to provide references to your quotes? Doing this adds to the credibility of you article.
Roseanne,
I am not sure what angle you’re coming from with that statement, but I must respectfully disagree.
From the Catholic News Agency website (http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resources/mary/general-information/the-four-marian-dogmas/) on the four Marian dogmas:
“2) Perpetual Virginity
The expression perpetual virginity, ever-virgin, or simply “Mary the Virgin” refers primarily to the conception and birth of Jesus. From the first formulations of faith, especially in baptismal formulas or professions of faith, the Church professed that Jesus Christ was conceived without human seed by the power of the Holy Spirit only. Here lies the decisive meaning of expressions such as “conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary,” “Mary’s virginal conception,” or “virgin birth.” The early baptismal formula (since the 3rd century) state Mary’s virginity without further explaining it, but there is no doubt about its physical meaning. Later statements are more explicit. Mary conceived “without any detriment to her virginity, which remained inviolate even after his birth” (Council of the Lateran, 649).
Although never explicated in detail, the Catholic Church holds as dogma that Mary was and is Virgin before, in and after Christ’s birth. It stresses thus the radical novelty of the Incarnation and Mary’s no less radical and exclusive dedication to her mission as mother of her Son, Jesus Christ. Vatican II reiterated the teaching about Mary, the Ever-Virgin, by stating that Christ’s birth did not diminish Mary’s virginal integrity but sanctified it . The Catechism of the Catholic Church ponders the deeper meaning of the virgin bride and perpetual virginity (499-507). It also maintains that Jesus Christ was Mary’s only child. The so-called “brothers and sisters” are close relations.”
We are obliged as Catholics to believe this.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as found online at USCCB.org:
#499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever–virgin.”
The perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary IS dogmatic. Please see the quotation from the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople cited above. Why this is problematic for some people is completely beyond me. It generally goes hand-in-hand with a rather frightful level of hatred of the Virgin Mary which I find mystifying.
I believe that this comes from the same root and origin as hatred of God in general—St. Thomas Aquinas notes in his commentaries on the Seven Deadly Sins that hatred of God is one of the consequences of the deadly sin of Lust. When people are confronted with the fact that the sexual function is to be used only within divinely-ordained limits (within the confines of valid sacramental marriage, and leaving the potential for conception of children entirely open), some people cannot handle the limitations on sexual “freedom” so-called, and their rage knows no bounds.
This entire rage against the perpetual virginity of the BVM appears to really hit a “sore point” with some people—if the BVM could maintain lifelong virginity and chastity, then so can the rest of us. This is apparently entirely too much for some people.
Thank you, Mr. Shea, for addressing this in detail.
TeaPot562
I’ve been following these very intetresting posts. And it seems that what we have is this:
1. One side are those arguing that Mary was ever virgin, and as evidence they assert persuasively that biblical citations to the contrary are merely misinterprations of the text. They make an excellent if not entirely conclusive case that Mary had no other children. They submit a few alleged “clues” that suggest Joseph might have been reluctant to have a normal marital relationship with his wife. Highly dubious. They cite ample evidence that the idea of the PVOM is very old one indeed among Christians. (But then, so was the idea that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Two-thousand years ago, there were lots of wrong ideas that that were widely accepted.)
2. On the other side are those arguing she wasn’t and citing as evidence those misinterpreted biblical texts.
Certainly the pro-PVOM side has made a great case that many people have long believed in the PVOM, and that we have nothing in the Biblical text to disprove it. What it has not done is prove the PVOM.
Jon,
I have debated this question a great deal over the past few years and one thing I would recommend to you is go to www.NewAdvent.org and read St. Jerome’s treatise on “The Perpetual Virginity of the Virgin Mary”. The fact of the matter is that it has never been questioned as it has been by those today who question it for only one purpose and that is to discredit our Blessed Mother as being who we as Catholics know her to be. In fact before the emergence of Protestantism the few men who even questioned Mary’s perpetual Virginity were met with only ridicule, similar to the ridicule that flat earthers get today in society.
Jon:
Given that no point of supernatural revelation can be proven, while every objection can be rebutted (as it has been here) I’m not sure what were expecting: a handwritten certificate of perpetual virginity from the Virgin herself? Appeals to “ancients thought the sun went around the earth” are silly. The PVoM actually mattered to the early Church. Geocentrism did not. When the early Church testifies with almost complete unanimity to the Virginity of the Virgin and says it is significant, the burden is on the innovator to explain why the overwhelming bulk of Christianity is wrong about a point they say is actually crucial to the Faith, not on the ancient tradition to satisfy the innovator.
Well, we don’t need a handwritten note on, say, the Immaculate Conception or on the rise of Christ three days after his Crucifixion. These events are unambiguously described in Scripture. People witnessed them and wrote about what they had witnessed. Now, a person can deny them, but the person who denies them can not deny that there is unambiguous source material that describes the events in question.
Before you accuse me of being a devotee of Solo Scriptura, note that I’m open to accepting non-Scriptural, historical documentation. Indeed, I was hoping that there was some.
But the simple fact (and please do correct this statement if it is wrong) appears to be this: As far as we know, during the time of Mary’s life, no one in a position to know ever breathed an unambiguous word about the status of Mary’s virginity after the birth of Christ. Not she. Not Joseph. Not Jesus.
Many people claimed that she was, but none of them had firsthand knowledge. Those who might have or would have had firsthand knowledge are not recorded as having said anything clearly on the subject.
I am not an innovator, I’m a skeptic. I don’t deny the PVOM. It’s a theory and a perfectly defensible one. It may very well be true. But the source material from those in a position to have known is simply too thin to settle the question, except for those inclined to believe that something is true because the Church says it is and don’t understand why anyone would care to waste time asking questions after that.
You are confusing the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. And as this makes clear, nobody breathed an unambiguous word about a lot of things the Church (including Evangelicals) accepts as the clear teaching of the New Testament. Not just the PVoM, but the canon of Scripture, the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception, monogamy, the Trinity, and the closure of Public Revelation with the death of the apostles are all unclear on the basis of the bare text of Scripture alone. All are very clear when read through the lens of Sacred Tradition. The simple fact is the PVoM is not a “theory”. It’ is the apostolic tradition of the Church, passed down with the same authority that the deity of the Holy Spirit or the canonicity of Ecclesiates is attested. Junk the Church’s authority on the PVoM and you junk the Church’s authority on everything else. So yes, from a Catholic perspective you are indeed an innovator. And not just with the Catholic Church. Ever apostolic communion is against you here, Jon. Every single apostolic communion says that Mary was perpetually a virgin. That *could* be because those Church’s are 2000 years stupider than you and all managed to all get it wrong in exactly the same way. But the far more reasonable explanation is that every ancient Church across the whole Mediterrean world, spanning dozens of cultures, language, and ethnicities all have the same tradition because that’s how the apostles taught them to regard Mary—as perpetually a virgin. Since, as we have seen, there is nothing in Scripture to really establish the contrary and plenty to support this broadly shared memory of the Church, the wise thing is to assume that we are not, in fact, 2000 years smarter than the early Church and not adopt a new and baseless innovation.
“You are confusing the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth.”
I meant only that the IC was attested by Mary herself (not that someone literally witnessed the actual conception.)
“And as this makes clear, nobody breathed an unambiguous word about a lot of things the Church (including Evangelicals) accepts as the clear teaching of the New Testament. Not just the PVoM, but the canon of Scripture, the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception, monogamy, the Trinity, and the closure of Public Revelation with the death of the apostles are all unclear on the basis of the bare text of Scripture alone.”
True. One key difference is that the PVOM concerns the actual facts of a person’s life. It is an assertion about that person’s biography. It stands apart intrinsically from the other items on your list.
“Junk the Church’s authority on the PVoM and you junk the Church’s authority on everything else.”
Agreed.
“Every single apostolic communion says that Mary was perpetually a virgin. That *could* be because those Church’s are 2000 years stupider than you and all managed to all get it wrong in exactly the same way.”
This has nothing to do with who is stupider than whom, and I think you know that, so I won’t bother to respond to this, except to note that it would hardly be the first time that a broad consensus formed around an erroneous view. In this case, we’re relying on that consensus itself as evidence of its accuracy. It’s classic circular logic: “It’s true.” Really? Why do you think so? “Because everyone says so.” And why do they say so? “Because it’s true.”
“But the far more reasonable explanation is that every ancient Church across the whole Mediterrean world, spanning dozens of cultures, language, and ethnicities all have the same tradition because that’s how the apostles taught them to regard Mary—as perpetually a virgin.”
Lots of people thought it was true, so it must be. Got it.
“Lots of people thought it was true, so it must be. Got it.”
Don’t dismiss this too quickly. It depends on who you trust to say what is true. Otherwise who are we to guess at whether all the books of Scripture are even inspired? Or whether this or that doctrine is actually the correct interpretation? These are similar questions to PVoM whose evidence is the consensus of Orthodoxy in the early Church; otherwise you might as well make up your own opinions about any collection of texts and doctrines and put them together as many have already done.
@ Stephanus, that is absolutely correct. It comes down to whom you trust. No religion has much capital built up in the trust bank, at least not mine. There have been too many lies, too much abuse, too much hypocrisy, for too many decades (centuries, likely) spanning too much of the world for me to simply believe the things they say because they are the ones saying those things.
I refer not merely to the Catholic Church but to all religions, Christian and non-Christian. And I refer not simply to the child abuse scandal. I left the Catholic church years before I knew anything about it, because had a chance to inspect the church leadership of my local parish up close, and came away ... let’s say uninspired. In the intervening years since, I’ve gone from being uninspired by them to frequently appalled by them.
So, in the absence of trust, I am forced to examine the thought process. I have to look at how they arrived intellectually at the place where they arrived, and ask myself: Does that make sense? Yes or No? And you’re right, Stephanus, that does leave me, often, substituting my judgment for theirs. What choice does one have when there is no trust?
I believe I have faith in God. But I have little faith in men, myself included, and less still in the particular group of men who call themselves men of God, and claim divine inerrancy on all the important questions.
Ah, that makes much more sense. I can only say that this theistic-looking agnosticism, however strongly-based in a desire for certainty from the beginning and however rational, is not something I find fulfilling, having tried it myself. I trust the Church because it has shown itself to be a “truth-telling thing” to paraphrase Chesterton, and because I think it will lead me to Truth. At some point when one is confronted with a number of different consistent and compelling philosophies, he just needs to try one and work through it - because it is not who is in charge that matters, but whether there is present the fullness of Truth, or not. The ultimate alternative is no less than nihilism, and that is just too abysmal to contemplate.
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.