Holy Mary, Ever Virgin, Theotokos

I was recently “instructed” by a Protestant to “Read God's word in His New Testament and God tells us the names of Jesus brothers, biological blood related brothers and says he also had a sister. Man continues to ignore God and deny God's word saying idolize the virgin. Mary was a virgin appointed by God for only one virgin birth. There after Mary had normal births, multiple normal births. No longer a virgin.”

In the same offering, this person called the Catholic church a “cult”, and claimed that “Look further at worshiping idols, Jesus Christ died, was taken OFF THE CROSS and buried but catholicism [sic] keeps Christ hanging.”

Taking that second screed first, worshipping idols issue was resolved at the seventh ecumenical council, which took place in 787 AD. Protestants are either ignorant of this or ignore it because it doesn’t agree with their agenda. As for keeping Christ hanging, the most important feast of the Roman Catholic church, as well as the Eastern Orthodox church is the feast of Easter, called Pascha by most of the non-English speaking world. This is the feast of the resurrection. The writer clearly knows nothing of actual Catholic teaching, but instead relies on Calvinist propaganda to inform him.

I find it disingenuous for Protestants to claim that the Catholic church innovated doctrines and then almost in the same breath they go on to innovate their own doctrine. I’m not denying the Roman Catholic church has done some innovation. The infallibility of the Pope, the Filioque controversy, the doctrine of the immaculate Conception, which follows from a misunderstanding of the nature of original sin – all of these are doctrines developed since the Great Schism of 1054 (except for the Filioque, which was the proximate cause of the schism).

 But the virgin nature of Mary throughout her life is a foundational belief among Christians since the dawn of Christianity. It’s interesting how simple statements of fact to those proximate to the events become beliefs as generations pass. What Protestants miss in their blinkered sola scriptura frame of reference is that there is copious documentation of nearly every aspect of Christianity by the Early Church Fathers, who were prolific writers. Early Christianity didn’t base their belief or practices on the Bible. That would have been absurd, since the Church had been established and thriving for decades before the first Gospel was written. The divine liturgy of St. James the Greater, from which the modern divine liturgy of St. John Chrysostom derived, was practiced by the actual Apostle St. James long before Mark wrote the first Gospel.

As time passes, facts which are taken for granted by the eyewitnesses become beliefs, and then become articles of faith, which become doctrine. If there’s a question of whether a belief of early Christians was correct or not (never mind Biblical), we simply look to the writings of the Early Church Fathers, and then to the ecumenical councils. The writings of the Early church fathers provide a touch point of when a belief was first documented – not necessarily when the belief was first introduced. After that, if the Early church had a problem with that belief, it was addressed in an ecumenical council. One need only review the conclusions of the ecumenical councils to understand that they would debate and establish doctrine on the most arcane minutia of faith that one can imagine. So if someone popped up and said, “Hey, I think Mary was ever-virgin!” and it wasn’t generally accepted as a fact, there would have been a discussion and an article of faith established by an ecumenical council.

Mary is only discussed in the third ecumenical council, the council of Ephesus of 431 AD, which was convened to address the Nestorian heresy. In this council Christ was declared the incarnate Word of God and declared that Mary was the Theotokos – the God-bearer. There was no discussion of her perpetual virginity. Indeed, in the divine liturgy of St. John Chrysostom which dates sometime between 397 and 407 makes several references to the ever-virgin Mary. This is the most widely used liturgy today among the Eastern Orthodox. This wasn’t a fringe concept of Early Christianity, it was a core belief, never called into question in an ecumenical council.

Where did this idea of Mary having other children come from? The first record was promoted by Helvidius sometime before 383, but was soundly refuted by Jerome (The same Jerome who translated the New Testament to Latin, which became the authoritative Latin Vulgate, the basis of most modern western Bibles). Jerome writes that Ignatius (100 AD), Polycarp (150 AD, disciple of John the Apostle), Justin Martyr (160 AD), and Irenaeus (200) all “held these same views” of Mary’s perpetual virginity and “wrote volumes replete with wisdom” (in his The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary: Against Helvidius, section 19). No writings from these four men survive that unambiguously identifies their belief in this doctrine, but we assume Jerome had access to some of their many works that did not survive until the modern day. After Jerome’s thorough rebuttal of Helvidius, the subject wasn’t raised again until after the Protestant movement tossed out pretty much everything except the Bible.

 In 248 AD, Origen wrote, "Mary, as those declare who with sound mind extol her, had no other son but Jesus" [Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John (Book I), Section 6].

In 354 AD: Hilary of Poitiers wrote, "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"” [Hilary's Commentary on Matthew 1:4]

Around 360 AD: Athanasius identifies Mary as "Mary Ever-Virgin" in his Discourse 2 Against the Arians, Section 70.

In 373 AD: Ephrem wrote, “Because there are those who dare to say that Mary cohabited with Joseph after she bore the Redeemer, we reply, 'How would it have been possible for her who was the home of the indwelling of the Spirit, whom the divine power overshadowed, that she be joined by a mortal being, and gave birth filled with birthpangs, in the image of the primeval curse?'" [Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron]

Around 375 AD: Basil of Caesarea wrote, "...the lovers of Christ do not allow themselves to hear that the Mother of God ceased at a given moment to be a virgin..." [Basil’s Homily: On the holy generation of Christ 5; PG 31, 1468 B]

In 375 AD: Epiphanius wrote, "For I have heard from someone that certain persons are venturing to say that [Mary] had marital relations after the Savior’s birth. And I am not surprised. The ignorance of persons who do not know the sacred scriptures well and have not consulted histories, always turn them to one thing after another, and distracts anyone who wants to track down something about the truth out of his own head.” [The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: De fide. Books II and III, page 620, 7.1]

In 386 AD: Didymus the Blind wrote, "Mary... remained always and forever an immaculate virgin" [Didymus's The Trinity 3:4]

In 388 AD: Ambrose of Milan identified prophecy of Ezekiel 44:2 as proof of Mary's perpetual virginity in his De Institutione Virginum 8.52

In 401 AD: Augustine wrote, "A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this, O man?" [Augustine, Sermons 186:1]

The issue wasn’t raised again until the Protestants resurrected it hand in hand with their Sola Scriptura heresy. The claim that Mary had other children is based References to Jesus’ brothers (Matthew 12:46-47 and Matthew 13:55, Mark 3:31-32, Luke 8:19-20, John 2:12, John 7:1-10) Most of these reference the same event, first referenced in the Gospel of Mark and promulgated in the other gospels that drew on Mark as a primary source.

There’s a romantic modern Western misunderstanding of Mary and Joseph as a young couple, in love, and Joseph patiently acting as foster-father to the Christ. This isn’t supported by tradition or the deuterocanonical written sources. The Protoevangelium of James, which the Eastern Orthodox Church accepts as authoritative, goes into great detail about the life of Mary and her betrothal to Joseph.

In summary, Joachim and Anna, Mary’s parents, were childless, and pledged their child to the temple if Anna were allowed to conceive. An angel appeared to Anna and said, “Anna, 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.”

Mary was born, and true to their word, her parents consecrated her to the temple as one of the temple virgins when she was two years old. Years later when she reached marriageable age, it was determined that she could no longer serve in the temple and should be married. All the bachelors of Judea were assembled, their rods were taken and consecrated. When their rods were returned to them, a dove flew out of Joseph’s and alighted on his head. The high priest proclaimed him to be chosen by God to take the virgin into his keeping, but he refused, stating, “I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl. I am afraid lest I become a laughing-stock to the sons of Israel.” The priests prevailed, and the betrothal was made.

The Protoevangelium continues in detail about the annunciation and the drama that ensued when Joseph discovered Mary was with child, the Birth of Christ, and the murder of Zacharias by Herod. It’s worth reading, but not central to the issue at hand, as to whether Mary had other children herself.

Under Jewish law and custom, Joseph’s children from his first wife would have been considered the brothers and sisters of Christ. The last we hear of Joseph is in Luke 2:41-50 when Jesus was about 12 years old. His death after that went without remark as he was an old man. His children from his first marriage would have felt no obligation to Mary as their mother. The plight of a widow with no children to care for her in first century Israel was dire. This is why Christ entrusted her care to John from the cross, (John 19:26-27), further indication that Mary had no other children.

Protestant apologetics claim that the church was corrupted, and that the Protestant breakaway corrected the error. It would be nice if the Protestant churches could agree on exactly which Protestant church was correct. This claim is also based on the assumption that the church had fallen into apostasy. If that actually happened, then Jesus would be a false prophet, and should not be followed, for he prophesied that his church would stand and not even the gates of hell would overpower it (Matt 16:18). Also, if such an apostasy happened, then the Bible cannot be taken as authoritative, for such apostasy must have happened before the final canon of the Bible was established. Protestants cannot resolve this dilemma logically, and they resort to Orwellian doublethink to maintain their illogical, ahistorical position.

A fundamental tenet of Protestantism is to reject all “Innovations” by the Roman Catholic church. While the Roman Catholic church is guilty of some innovations, when determining if a teaching is an innovation, one need only compare the Roman Catholic church to the Eastern Orthodox. If the two churches agree on an article of faith, it’s certain that that understanding is rooted in the earliest practices of Christianity. Indeed, every church that maintains an unbroken line of apostolic succession to the twelve apostles, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Chaldean, Coptic and Thomas churches of India all maintain that Mary was perpetually a virgin. The writings of the Early church fathers and the absence of any debate in ecumenical councils on the question supports this. The Protestant position of Mary having other children is in itself an innovation, and evidence of why one should not interpret scripture outside of the frame of reference of the church that wrote and compiled and canonized it.