Some people are caught off guard to learn that not only does devotion to Mary go back to before there was any separation in the Christian Church, but so too does belief that she remained virgin throughout her life.
In his 2007 book The Real Mary, Scot McKnight (a Protestant) observes that "with very few exceptions, all Christians from the second or third century onward believed that Mary was perpetually virginal...This surprises many of us. What may surprise us even more is that three of the most significant Protestant leaders - Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley - who in their own way were also very critical of what Catholics believed about Mary, each believed in Mary's perpetual virginity."
It's noteworthy that we don't see opposition to that until recent centuries.
When it comes to the early Church, we know which beliefs were contested and what heresies arose precisely because they generated debate. That was documented through letters and councils as the Church hammered them out and ultimately took a position on what was true, versus what was false, versus what was unknowable. When it comes to the perpetual virginity of Christ's mother, we see none of that.
People back then were far from prude, expected husbands and wives to have lots of kids, and knew Mary was married... so it seems worthwhile to ask why the belief in her remaining forever virgin became so ubiquitous, does it not?
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When the angel Gabriel visited Mary to inform her of God's plan for virginal conception, she and Joseph were already betrothed. Many today take that to mean they were engaged, but it actually means more: Betrothal effectively meant a couple was married, albeit with the woman still residing in her father's house while the man finished building/establishing their own.
There was no ending a betrothal the way we might break off an engagement if we get cold feet. Ending a betrothal required a divorce, which was scandalous and hard to come by. This explains why, upon hearing Mary was "with child," Joseph "resolved to divorce her" and needed his own visit from an angel to change his mind by assuring him "that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:18-20).
Mary's reaction is even more telling than Joseph's. When a young woman who is already essentially married is told "you have found favor with God" and "will conceive in your womb and bear a son," it seems odd for her to respond by asking "how" rather than "when," yet that is exactly what Mary did. According to Luke 1:34 she "said to the angel, 'How will this be, since I am a virgin?'" That statement makes no sense unless she was planning to always be one.
Modern Westerners are inclined to wonder why two humans would marry while planning to forego sex, and men are particularly curious why Joseph would take a bride under circumstances that would, at least ostensibly, consign him to an entire lifetime without sex. But Mary and Joseph obviously weren't your normal couple - seeing as how they were both addressed by angels, and she was chosen to bear and nurture God in human form, and he was charged with protecting God in human form along with God's mother - so should we really be surprised by the thought of them looking at things from different perspectives than us?
In any event, chastity vows, including among spouses, were not unheard of. The Torah itself uses the phrases "afflict yourselves" (Leviticus 16:29) and "afflict herself" (Numbers 30:13) in ways that are widely acknowledged as referring to adults voluntarily vowing to abstain from sex. In On the Contemplative Life, Philo of Alexandria (circa 20 B.C. to 50 A.D.) wrote of a contemporaneous sect called the Therapeutae whose members swore themselves to celibacy. These kinds of arrangements were not normal, but neither were they absent.
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The argument given most often and most persuasively for rejecting the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity is the fact that the Bible makes reference to Jesus having brothers and sisters. Matthew 13:55 even names said brothers: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas.
While that seems compelling at first glance, let's face it: If it actually was compelling, it would not have sat there for more than 15 centuries with nobody bothering to use it as an argument against the doctrine. Nevertheless, sit there it did. Unused. And that long, enduring silence ought to make today's critics think twice.
Though we automatically think of the words "brothers" and "sisters" as meaning biological siblings, ancient Hebrews did not, for they also used those words to identify relatives who were not siblings. This was especially true for relatives you and I would call cousins, as their language and culture had no word for cousin.
We know Jesus and John the Baptist were cousins not because the Bible calls them that, but because we connect the dots when Gabriel refers to Elizabeth (John's mother) as Mary's "relative." From that, we intuit that Jesus and John must have been cousins to one degree or another.
Likewise, we know Abram and Lot were uncle and nephew because Genesis 14:12 says Lot was "the son of Abram's brother." However, two verses later, when Abram gets news of Lot's capture in Genesis 14:14, the Hebrew word for brother (ach) is used to describe their relationship to one another. Many modern English translations tidy the verse up for us by substituting other words - e.g., the NLT uses "nephew" and the ESV "kinsman" - but it cannot be stressed enough that the translators made that decision not because of what 14:14 says, but because of the context clue provided in 14:12.
There are plenty other examples of this sort of thing in the Bible. Including some in which there is no blood whatsoever between between the people (e.g., David called Jonathan "my brother") and some in which the familial titles are something other than sibling (e.g., your grandfather, great-grandfather, etc. would each be called your "father," and collectively called your "fathers," since there was no designated word for paternal predecessors more than a generation removed).
But I digress, for what I alluded to five paragraphs above is strong enough on its own. Church leaders down through history were no fools, and many of them were intellectual and philosophical titans. They all saw the words "brothers" and "sisters" in print, describing peoples' linkage to Jesus, yet they all believed his mother was perpetually virgin and never bore another child. None of them cited the words "brothers" and "sisters" as a reason to second-guess her perpetual virginity. The only explanation for this is that they knew those words were not referring to biological siblings - just like you and I know Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield weren't siblings even though everyone calls them the Righteous Brothers.
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The doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity has been around as far back as we call tell, whereas opposition to it did not begin until more than three-fourths of the way into Christian history.
The doctrine survived intact on both sides of a schism in the fifth century, and intact again on both sides of another schism in the eleventh, and, as I showed in Part IV of this series, it remained a core belief of some Protestant Reformers even into the eighteenth century - which, if you're counting, was eighty-five percent of the way into Christian history.
Her perpetual virginity is the official belief of all Catholics, all Orthodox, and some Protestants. If it was good enough for Wesley, it ought to be good enough for all non-Cartholic, non-Orthodox Christians to consider without rejecting it out of hand.
And frankly, when the full and combined weight of history, logic, and Scripture are taken into account, the arguments against it are genuinely weak.
Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
Part I: Introduction
Part II: The New Eve
Part III: Genesis to Revelation
Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
Part IV: Historical Perspective
Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Notre-Dame de la Garde in Marseilles, France. Courtesy of Diane Kelly.
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