Transcript

Welcome back to Shameless Potpourri.

I'm Joe Heschmeyer, and I wanna talk about how we can know that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

And particularly, I wanna respond to Ryan from needgod.net who claims that the only reason anybody would believe this is

It's not because the Bible says it, but because he's bound to hold onto whatever the Roman Catholic Church teaches.

Now, of course, that's hardly going to explain why the Eastern Orthodox, why Coptic Christians, and even why the Protestant Reformers believed that Mary was perpetually a virgin.

And Ryan has to know that, at least in part, because he actually mentions in one of his videos against the Eastern Orthodox.

Secondly, they believe that she was an ever virgin for her whole life, despite being married to Joseph.

So I hope that sparks some intellectual humility and curiosity.

Wait, what's the real reason that so many Christians throughout the ages have been convinced that the Bible teaches that Mary remained a virgin for her whole life?

So here are three things to know which will open your eyes to the true Biblical teaching on Mary's perpetual virginity.

But before I do that, I wanna answer three Protestant arguments against this Biblical teaching.

But before I do even that, I need to say a quick thank you to all of you who are contributing over on Patreon.

You know, in the past, I've done one weekly livestream answering patrons' questions.

Those days are over.

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All right.

So when people argue that Mary couldn't have been a perpetual virgin, there are really three arguments you're gonna hear a lot, and each of them distort the Bible in the same way.

The first argument is, well, doesn't Mark 6 say that Jesus has other brothers and sisters?

And that's true.

People like James and Joses are mentioned as Jesus' brothers, plus an untold number of sisters.

But just as Jews used father to refer to distant ancestors like Abraham, so too they used terms like brother to refer to more distant relationships, like when Abraham and his nephew Lot are referred to as brothers.

So Mark 6 could mean brothers and sisters in the way we use that term, or it could mean something more different.

Well, which clues do we have in the text to tell us what it means?

Well, for starters, we know that these can't be Jesus' full siblings because Jesus doesn't have a biological father.

But then when you turn from Mark 6 to Mark 15 verse 40, you can see that James and Joses are listed as the sons of another Mary.

So clearly, not brothers and sisters in the way modern readers assume.

If that wasn't enough, Ryan actually points to a Bible verse that undermines the Protestant argument here.

You might remember when Jesus got left behind in the temple at the age of 12.

We see that Mary says to Jesus, Son, why have you treated us so?

Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.

How striking.

Luke 2 describes Jesus going up with Mary and Joseph to the temple, and then Mary and Joseph looking for him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances when he's lost.

On a Protestant reading, it would seem they lost a lot more than Jesus.

They lost a bunch of kids.

Where did James and Joses and Judas and Simon and all of those sisters run off to?

Erase from existence.

Because it sure looks like it's just a family of three in Luke chapter 2, and Jesus is already 12.

So unless you imagine they waited a weirdly long time to have the rest of their huge family, I think it's fair to say, no, these are not brothers in the sense we would use that term in English.

The second argument against Mary's perpetual virginity is what's sometimes called the until argument.

The scripture says that Joseph knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

Until, which implies that afterwards Joseph knew his wife, like Adam knew Eve.

This is another argument that only sounds good on a surface reading.

In First Timothy chapter 4, when St. Paul, using the same Greek word for until, says 'Til I come, attend to the public reading of scripture, to preaching, to teaching, is he really telling Timothy that he wants people to stop preaching, teaching, and reading scripture when he's around?

Of course not.

Sometimes until means until but not after, but it doesn't always mean that, and it clearly doesn't mean that here.

If you read Matthew 1 in context, it is perfectly clear what's going on because St. Matthew tells us.

His claim is that Jesus' birth fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 7, which says that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, that this prophecy is only true if Mary is a virgin from the moment of Jesus' conception until she gives birth to Jesus on Christmas.

And so he clarifies that she remains a virgin from the start to the end.

The prophecy has been fulfilled.

He's clearly not suggesting or even hinting that the couple had sex on Christmas after Mary had just given birth.

Okay, but that leaves a third argument, this idea that Mary and Joseph had to have had sex either because it was necessary to consummate their marriage, wasn't, as we're going to see, or else because it's not fair to expect celibacy from St. Joseph.

Now Ryan actually offers his own spin on this.

He goes so far as to actually say it would be sinful for them not to sleep together.

Joseph knew his wife.

That's what's expected of married couples.

In fact, Paul commands it in First Corinthians 7, that husbands and wives should not be abstaining from one another.

Leaving aside that First Corinthians is written long after St. Joseph was dead, St. Paul not only doesn't give a command on the matter in First Corinthians 7, he even tells us, I say this by way of concession, not of command, and then adds that he wishes that all were able to live celibately as he does.

So hopefully it's clear that the arguments commonly raised against the perpetual virginity of Mary are weak and they distort the Bible in the same way, by forgetting that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived in a different culture, speaking a different language, and that we shouldn't automatically assume that we can guess what they meant by brothers or intel, or that their marriage customs looked the same as our own.

So what is the case for the perpetual virginity of Mary?

Number one, Mary was already a married virgin.

The first thing we need to know is that Mary and Joseph were already married.

If you read Matthew 1, you might notice that it says Mary was betrothed, in many translations, but then calls Joseph her husband in the very next verse.

What's going on?

Well, there are two stages to a Jewish wedding.

After the first stage, you were legally married, and you were actually allowed to sleep together.

In fact, the Talmud points out that you could actually enter that first stage of marriage by sleeping together.

We see this in Genesis 24 when Isaac marries Rebekah.

There's no special ceremony.

They just sleep together and thus are married.

The consummation of the marriage, the second stage, isn't sex.

It's when the bridegroom prepares a place for his bride and then moves the bride in to live with him.

So when the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary, she is already married.

That first stage is done.

Which makes Mary's response to Gabriel really bizarre.

When the angel announced to her that she would have a child, Mary said to the angel, How will this be since I am a virgin?

Simply describing her current state of being a virgin at that time, not that she will always be.

Now, Ryan is so focused on trying to say that Mary doesn't say she's always going to be a virgin, but he's not asking the obvious question.

Why is this married woman a virgin?

Why is she acting confused about how it could even be possible that she might get pregnant and bear a son?

An angel has just told her she's going to bear the Messiah, and the part she seems most surprised about is that she's gonna be bearing a child at all.

Now, many of the early Christians, including Saint Augustine, point out that this response only makes sense if she'd given some kind of vow of virginity to God already.

Now, that would also make sense of the end of Matthew 1. Remember the until argument.

From the start until the end of Mary's pregnancy, this married couple isn't having sex, and this is true even after Mary comes to live with Joseph.

Now, Ryan, again, is so focused on trying to get the passage to say something that it doesn't, that they had sex on or after Christmas, that he's not asking the obvious question.

Why were they not having sex before Christmas?

The angel doesn't tell them that they're not allowed to.

Gabriel seemingly knows he doesn't need to say anything and that Mary is going to be a virgin, both at the conception and at the virgin birth of Christ.

Two, Jesus acts as if Mary has no other children.

If that's not enough, jump forward to Good Friday.

Jesus is on the cross and he looks down and he sees his mother, Mary, and his disciple, John, a non-relative.

And he says to her, Woman, behold your son, and then to John, Behold your mother.

And John takes her into his home.

Mary's a widow, so one of the things going on here is that Jesus is taking care of her by entrusting her to John.

But this proves that she has no other children.

Why?

Because the commandment to honor your father and mother meant for the Jews that they had to take care of their aging parents.

Similarly, Christians are told in 1 Timothy 5:8 that if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

So the idea that Mary's got a bunch of other sons and daughters running around and not one of them obeys the Ten Commandments or the Gospel beggars belief.

Number three, Mary's perpetual virginity was prophesied.

The final reason I'm gonna mention today involves Old Testament prophecy.

So the last nine chapters of Ezekiel are all about the coming of a supernatural temple.

For instance, streams of living water flow from the side of this temple.

Now, on the surface, that looks like a prophecy about a building, but we realize that the true temple is the body of Christ, which is why he can say, Destroy this temple and in three days I'll build it up.

Read in that light, we realize that this isn't a prophecy of the coming of a building, but of the incarnation of Jesus, the Messiah.

But what does that have to do with Mary's perpetual virginity?

Because the temple, again, the body of Jesus, is described as being surrounded by a gate.

Ezekiel 44 says, This gate shall remain shut.

It shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it, for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it.

Therefore, it shall remain shut.

We find early Christians going back at least to the 300s, understanding what this meant.

The temple of our Lord's body was surrounded by the gate of Mary's womb.

He entered the world in this way, and so the gate remained shut forever.

No other children.

But the big difference is right here.

If you're content with a surface reading of Scripture, then you're going to end up misinterpreting these passages in the exact same way as Jesus' listeners did in John chapter 2, by thinking the temple prophesies are about a building instead of a body.

It's only when you learn to read Scripture as the early Christians did that the meanings of-