Mary always a virgin?

Are you aware that your verses are meaningless to this conversation?

The verses I provided are clear indications that Mary was sexually active with Joseph. You have to perform mental gymnastics and create massive pretzels to make a different conclusion.

When the plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense.

In this case the RCC has opted to teach a mythical virginity of Mary as a twisted means of worshipping someone other than God.

 

It's implicit throughout the Gospels, like the life of Jesus. If you would like concrete proof from Scripture, we need simply look at St. Luke's annunciation narrative, which you reference, where Gabriel appears to Mary, who is already betrothed to Joseph. (Luke 1:27) Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive and bear a son. Mary's question to Gabriel is, "How will this be"? (future tense - Luke 1:34)

Why would Mary ask how will it be that she will become pregnant - in the future - if she is already betrothed to Joseph? If you called your mother to tell her you just got engaged, and your mother said to you in excitement, "Congratulations Rstrats. I am so happy for you and now I will finally be a grandmother!" Would it be logical to reply to her statement with, "How will this be?"

The reason for Mary's puzzlement to Gabriel is because her life was ordered toward something greater. Why did Mary, who was betrothed to Joseph, ask Gabriel how it will be (future tense) that she will have a child? It would be illogical to ask how it is you would have a child in the future if you were already betrothed, unless you were planning to live a conjugal life ordered not toward procreation, but toward heaven. Mary knew her conjugal life was not ordered toward procreation, but rather toward the Kingdom of God. Her marriage to Joseph would be the most unique marriage in the history of the world.

 

Scripture made it plain that Mary had at least 6 other kids after Jesus. I assume Joe was their dad. There's not one blip of Scripture to the contrary.

 

Do you happen to have a verse which states Mary had these six subsequent maternities you are asserting?

 

Sigh...verses have already been shared. At this point you are simply closing your eyes and telling us you can't see anything.
Go back through this thread and read the verses I provided.

 

Matt. 13:55Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas?56Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”

 

I'll go back through the thread and reply to the verses you provided.

 

Scripture does say Jesus had brothers (and sisters). However, Scripture clearly shows they were not uterine brothers. The "brothers" listed identify a different Mary as their mother. Mary the wife of Cleophas (Clopas) is called their mother in Matthew 27:56. This Mary is stated to be the mother of James and Joses and is also present at the Cross per St. John's Gospel (John 19:25). Ergo, when James, Joseph, Simon and Judas are called Jesus’ “brothers” in Matthew 13:55, this cannot mean uterine siblings based on the fact that St. Matthew names a different Mary as their mother later in his Gospel. (St. Matthew abbreviates this list by naming the oldest two.)

Additionally, Scripture does not call Jesus "a" son of Mary. Rather, He is called THE son of Mary.

In Jewish antiquity, "brother" had a much wider meaning than we modern Westerners use. You cannot impose a 21st century Western nuclear family structure with our own use of “brother” to that of Jewish culture in antiquity. The term had a much broader use in antiquity. Ancient Hebrew culture was tribal. They did not organized themselves into nuclear 'family units' like we do in the modern West. When you impose a Western notion of family (e.g. nuclear family unit) onto an ancient Eastern text, it makes for an extremely poor hermeneutic, and hopelessly skews the correct interpretation of these passages.

Here is the reality of ancient Hebrew culture...

"The units comprising the village mispahah, or kinship group, were the families of early Israel. Because these families were agriculturists, their identity and survival were integrally connected with their material world - more specifically, with their arable land, their implements for working the land and processing its products, and their domiciles - as well as with the human and also animal components of the domestic group. In many ways, the term family household is more useful in dealing with early Israelite families (although that would not be the case for the monarchical period and later, when domestic unites were more varied in their spatial aspects and economic functions). Combining family, with its kingship meanings, and household, a more flexible term including both coresident and economic functions, has descriptive merit. The family household thus included a set of related people as well as residential buildings, outbuildings, tools, equipment, fields, livestock, and orchards; it sometimes also included household members who were not kin, such as "sojourners", war captives and servants." - Families in Ancient Israel: The Family in Early Israel, Carol Meyers, pgs. 13-14


In describing early archaeological excavation of homes in Israel...

"These dwelling clusters constitute evidence for a family unit in early Israel larger than that of the nuclear family (or conjugal couple with unmarried offspring). Each pillared house in a cluster may represent the living space of a nuclear family or parts thereof, but the shared courtyard space and common house walls of the linked buildings indicate a larger family grouping. Early Israelite dwelling unites were thus complex arrangements of several buildings and housed what we might call extended families. Furthermore, thee compound dwelling unites were not isolated buildings within a settlement of single-family homes." - Ibid, pg. 16

"The family was never so 'nuclear' as it is in the modern West." - Families in Ancient Israel: Marriage, Divorce and Family in Second Temple Judaism, John J. Collins, pg. 106

Source


Once again, Jesus most certainly had brothers (and sisters). However, Scripture is clear they were not uterine brothers. Mary and Joseph's marriage was not ordinary in that its teleological end was not procreation, but rather to point to the Kingdom of God. Since they were in the presence of the Most High as the parents of the Incarnate Son of God, their life of continence, like that of their Son's, points to the heavenly Kingdom, as opposed to an earthly and carnal one.

It is important to think about this through the lens of the Incarnation.

'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.'" (Ezekiel 44:1–2)

In Ezekiel 44:1-2, the prophet was given a vision of the holiness of “the gate” of the temple, which would be fulfilled in the perpetual virginity of Mary. No Christian would deny that in the New Testament Jesus is revealed to be the fulfillment of the temple. In John 2:19, when Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” the Jews thought he was speaking of the enormous stone edifice that stood in Jerusalem. But, as John tells us two verses later, he was actually speaking of his own body. So if Christ is the prophetic temple of Ezekiel 44 into which God himself has entered for our salvation, who or what is this prophetic gate that is the conduit for God to enter into his temple? Mary is the natural fulfillment. She is the gate through which not just a spiritual presence of God has passed but God in the flesh. How much more would the New Testament gate remain forever closed? The verse says that the door is already shut. And the only reason for it being shut is because the Lord has entered by it; And because of this reason It shall remain shut. Mary is ever virgin. The reason why Mary is virgin is because Jesus was born through her. And because of that reason she will remain a virgin for ever (i.e., her womb will be shut, no one else will enter or exit it).

 

Do you work at a pretzel factory? Cause that's the most convoluted bunch of mumbo jumbo I have ever read. The abuse of Ezekiel 44 in an attempt to make it say what you want it to mean is just stellar twisting and misshapening. The use of utterly worthless texts outside of scripture is breathtakingly painful.
All because... why? How does Mary, having sex with Joseph and giving birth to multiple children take away from God choosing a young girl from the line of David in which to become a human being?
The only possible reason I can see for such a need is so you can worship Mary as a god. How perverted is that? To place sinful Mary in a pantheon of gods is just disturbing. May all Christians run from such a horrid thought.
Come now, be reasonable and let go of this idol worship taught by the Roman Catholic Church and found nowhere in the Bible.

 

Revelation 22:v.11-15and 18
Get ready

11 He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: (it won't be clean, no, never more) and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
12 Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
15 For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever LOVETH and MAKETH A LIE.

Matthew 25:v.10-12
10 And they that were ready went in with Him to the marriage: and the door was shut.
11 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
12 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Who to the right, to the right, who to the left, to the left.

Get ready

 

Where will you spend Eternity, in heaven or in the hell's fire?

At midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to MEET Him. The foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. Go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. While they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with Him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Mattew 25

As everyone can see, both those who were selling oil (out of time), and all who went to buy oil from them, perished forever and ever, and forever, and forever, in the hell's fire.

Get ready

 

In Matt. 13, the Nazarenes wondered how Jesus acquired the power to heal & His great wisdom that His siblings didn't have.. In Verse 55, they're equating Him with His siblings, as all had grown up in Nazareth. They called Him "the carpenter's son". They believed Jesus & His bros. & srs. had the same parents, but wondered why Jesus was so superior to them in power & wisdom.

And the names Joseph (Joses), Mary, James, John, etc. were VERY-common names among the Jews of the time. They were differentiated by surnames or handles, such as "Mary Magdalene", which IDd her as coming from the town of Magdala. Thus, a different Mary, wife of Cleophas, coulda had sons with the same first names as Jesus' bros.

Again, there's not a quark of Scripture saying Jesus' bros had any other mom besides the same Mary who bore Jesus.

As was said above, RCs try to make excuses to try to sustain the false doctrine that Mary was a perpetual virgin in order to support some of their other false doctrines such as the "Immaculate Deception". The idea of "perpetual visgin" came from the Greek belief that their goddess Athene was a perpetual virgin, which came from the old "mystery, Babylon" religion.

 

No, I do not work at a pretzel factory.

In Ezekiel 44, the prophet is given a vision of the holiness of the East gate of the Temple. We know our Blessed Lord said that His body is the true temple. (cf. John 2:19-21) Hence if Christ is the true temple prophesied by Ezekiel, then the gate by which He entered into this temple is Mary. She is thus the gate through which the God came in the flesh. The prophet says the East gate (quite significant) is shut because the Lord has entered by it. For this reason it shall remain shut.

The reason Ezekiel 44:1-2 is compared to the idea that Mary remained a virgin even in the act of giving birth is because that is how the birth is presented or shown in the source for that idea. If you look closely, almost every messianic prophecy is a context to something else. For example the prophesy "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel" of Isaiah 7:14. In its immediate context, this is a sign to King Ahaz of Judah promising the king that God will destroy his enemies even before that child grows up (Is 7:16). But Matthew holds that this as fulfilled in Jesus Christ (Mt. 1:23). Such difference of context was the main point of contention between Jews and Christians from the early onset of Christianity. Even Jesus had to explain this to his disciples (Luke 24:27).


Connecting the prophesy of Ezekiel to Mary is not something I made up. The early Church also saw Ezekiel 44:1-2 as a prophesy pertaining to Mary's perpetual virginity. For example...

Some quite emphatically understand this closed gate through which only the Lord God of Israel passes … as the Virgin Mary, who remains a Virgin before and after childbirth. In fact, she remains always a Virgin, in the moment in which the Angel speaks with her and when the Son of God is born. - St. Jerome (Commentarium in Evangelium Lucae, PL 25, 430.)

Only Christ opened the closed doors of the virginal womb, which continued to remain closed, however. This is the closed eastern gate, through which only the high priest may enter and exit and which nevertheless is always closed. - St. Jerome (Dialogus contra Pelagianos 2, 4)

“Who is this gate (Ezekiel 44:1-4), if not Mary? Is it not closed because she is a virgin? Mary is the gate through which Christ entered this world, when He was brought forth in the virginal birth and the manner of His birth did not break the seals of virginity.” - St. Ambrose (The Consecration of a Virgin and the Perpetual Virginity of Mary , 8:52)

"She is closed because she is a virgin; she is a gate, because Christ has entered through her......This gate faces east, because she has given birth to him who rises, the sun of justice.....Mary is the good gate that was closed and was not opened. Christ passed through it, but did not open it." - St. Ambrose (De Institutione Virginis, 8, 57. PL 16, 334)

As another poster stated early on in this thread, the attack on Mary's perpetual virginity stems from a lack of understanding of the Incarnation and a low Christology. Joseph and Mary's marriage was not ordinary in that its teleological end was not procreation, but rather to point to the Kingdom of God. Since they were in the presence of the Most High as the parents of the Incarnate Son of God, their life of continence, like that of their Son's, points to the heavenly Kingdom, as opposed to an earthly and carnal one. Mary knew her conjugal life was not ordered toward procreation, but rather toward the Kingdom of God. Her marriage to Joseph would be the most unique marriage in the history of the world.

The reason this is important is because it is the truth. The idea that Mary had multiple subsequent maternities and thus Jesus had uterine siblings is completely alien to Scripture and the regula fidei.

 

Sorry, Chief-the perpetual virginity thingie is all imagination and guesswork. Scripture PLAINLY states in Matt.13:55-57 that Mary had at least 6 more children. Like many other RC thingies, this'n's all made up. I believe SCRIPTURE, not a human pope.

 

Once again, St. Matthew identities James and Joses as the sons of Mary of Clopas. (Mt. 27:56). To support your assertion that there are two different pairs of men named "James and Joses" in Matthew's Gospel, you would need to show me an example of two other pairs with the same names and same age orders, e.g. show me two different Mary and Marthas in one gospel, two James and Johns in one gospel, etc. Such an improbable occurrence must show evidence of elsewhere in Scripture to be credible.

And there's not a quark of Scripture saying Mary had other children and thus Jesus has uterine siblings. None.

There is no comparison between Athena and Mary. Mary is virgin and mother.

The Incarnation, by definition, requires a mother.

 

I am still waiting for you to post the verse(s) which states Mary had six subsequent maternities.

Unless you have support, this dogma-like belief in Mary's subsequent maternities is nothing more than imagination and guesswork.

(RE: Mt. 13:55 This has been addressed --> Those "brothers" are identified as sons of Mary of Clopas. Hence they cannot be uterine siblings of Jesus.)

 

As we close out the Advent season and prepare enter into the Christmas season, I would like to point out something important about the nativity narratives in St. Luke's and Matthew's Gospels:

Given these accounts are written after the actual occurrence of the event, along with the fact that neither St. Luke nor St. Matthew were present when they occurred, the only possible source for these narratives was Mary herself, the great Mother of God.

"But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." (Luke 2:19)


Prayers for a blessed and Merry Christmas for all of you.

 

No, you are going beyond what scripture states, because you wrongly think it leads to the worship of Mary. So you assume an erroneous interpretation. You are wrong on both counts. Even the reformers say Mary was ever virgin, and that those who held different were ignorant.

Christianity has always held to Mary’s perpetual Virginity.

 

Oh, pshaw! There are several Marys mentioned in the same time frame.
Matt. 27:56among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.
Matt. 27:61And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb.
Mark 15:409There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome,
Luke 10:39And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word.
Martha's sister)
AND HERE'S THE CLINCHER:John 19:25Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
Clopas is another name for Cleophas! So your supposition goes "POOF!"

Why, there IS, TOO! I recently posted Matt. 13:55-57!

And also, Mary was a real person. But the IDEA that Mary remained a virgin came from Athene-worship.

And Mary was that mother. She was also the mom of other children.