Hi Todd,
I will put your words in bold. I will also be ignoring your side comments, which you include for rhetorical effect without appeal to reason and which lack the Christian charity our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ exhorts us to emply in the Word.
"Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15)
Examples in your initial response above include:
your exegesis is laughable and your hermeneutics are horrible
Your PC Greek program
Immediately you demonstrate your lack of understanding of the Greek language.
I apologize for the slip-up. I was typing too fast for my own eyes to edit. I meant to say that kecharitomene is a perfect past participle. That is, it is indicative of an action that has been fully completed in the past.
I encourage you to refrain from haughty and disdainfully proud conclusions and to keep the discussion on a level befitting a Christian pastor.
Couldn't there have been just a wee little chance that Mary was a virgin when she conceived and bore Jesus and that she enjoyed a beautiful, conjugal relationship with Joseph after that?
From the Scriptures alone, there is a chance that this happened. There is also a very good chance that this did not happen. That is my thesis, and it is what I am here to defend: that Mary's Perpetual Virginity is not denied by the Scriptures and that it is a real possibility.
History, my brother, is not an exact science. It entails probabilities. And, I intend to successfully demonstrate that it is probable - from Scripture alone - that Mary remained a virgin her entire life.
You find one passage that affirms Mary's virginity, and then you look to church history to affirm her "perpetual virginity."
Again, I'm not here to discuss Apostolic Tradition, which you do not accept. This thread is not about discussing the sources of divine revelation; it's about whether or not Scripture demands that Mary not be a Perpetual Virgin.
of course her statement would have made perfect sense even if she didn't retain her virginity throughout her lifetime.
No, it is not of course. In due course, Mary's statement is a bit enigmatic. If Mary is betrothed to a Man with whom she is planning on having conjugal relations and start a family, then Gabriel's assertion that her future child is going to be the King of Israel does not account for her response.
Mary's response is one of "How?" Mary knows where babies come from. Mary knows she is going to have babies with her bethrothed in the near future. Mary's response is a non sequitur if she had not taken a vow of virginity.
This is pure logic applied to Scripture's historical-literal sense.
The verse says absolutely nothing of her virginity beyond the birth of Christ!
I don't claim that the passage explicitly speaks of Mary's subsequent virginity, and neither is this necessary. I claim that it implicitly affirms that Mary took a vow of virginity, and that is a logical conclusion.
Man, are you listening to yourself. You are making absolutely no sense at all.
It makes sense if you have a clear mind. Perhaps if you would lay down your Anti-Catholic prejudice and step outside of your assumptions and look at the text from a distanced perspective, you will see the rationale for my exegesis.
Grant is able to understand this. It's clear as a whistle.
And though betrothal was seen as being very close to marriage in those days, the one thing that it certainly did not include was sex.
No one here is disputing the nature of First-Century Jewish Betrothal customs. In addition to what you have written, a bill of divorce was necessary to exit a betrothal. Sex is imminent. If Mary's sexual relationship with another man with whom she is betrothed is imminent, then she need not ask how she will conceived: Sex is on the way.
By the way, no one throughout this string ever even cared to mentioned when the perpetual virginity of Mary was officially recognized as Catholic dogma - do you think they're all embarressed, or do they even know?
Why would I be embarrassed about the date of the proclamation of a dogma? The Dogma of the Hypostatic Union wasn't proclaimed until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. Are you embarrassed about that? The Dogma of Christ's divinity wasn't proclaimed until the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. Are you embarrassed about that? The very table of contents of the New Testament to which you adhere didn't appear until the end of the fourth century. Are you embarrassed about that?
The Lateran Synod of 649 under Pope Martin I. stressed the threefold character of Mary's virginity. Pope St. Siricius affirmed her perpetual virginity in 392, and the Fifth General Council in 552 gave Mary the title of honor: "perpetual virgin" [aeipartheos].
Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Epiphanius, Basil [the Great], John Damascene, and Peter Chrysologus were champions of this de fide doctrine.
My, my - how conveniently you left out the part about John being the "disciple whom Jesus loved." Would you have wanted your mother entrusted to the care of those who may not have even believed that you were the Messiah?
Are you denying the omniscience of the God-Man? You follow this question with, "I know that at least James became a believer following Christ's death and resurrection," which drains your argumentative question above from any import. Even if this was a consideration of Jesus, Jesus would only had to give his Mother to James, he whom you know ... became a believer.
entrusting His mother to the care of John proves nothing about Mary's perpetual virginity
Yes, it does. It proves a likelihood. It shows that it is very likely that Mary did not have any other children.
