Once a Virgin, Always a Virgin? – 2

David: I join in affirming that celibacy can have great value, and celibacy is certainly the better way for those particular people whom God calls to celibacy.  In the hope that our readers will check you out on the Biblical examples and passages you cite, I’ll resist the urge to go tit-for-tat on your arguments that celibacy is somehow “higher” in a general sense, because I don’t think we need even to reach that question:  To state what should be obvious, celibacy is a gift for unmarried people.  It is an exception.  God’s general will for the human race in this age is to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”  (Gen. 1:28.)  God repeatedly pronounced His unspoiled creation as “good” and “very good (Gen. 1:431)-with one exception:  “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18), so God created woman, and then blessed human sexuality (Gen. 1:28, 2:24).  The normative human state is marriage and procreation—even for the clergy (1 Timothy 3:2-5, 11; Titus 1:6); and marital sex is “honored” and “pure” (Heb. 13:4).  Even if celibacy were in some sense a “higher” thing, we’re discussing here the supposed celibacy of a married couple.  You haven’t shown any reason why celibacy should be higher for married people, nor have you shown that Mary is somehow diminished if she consummated her marriage.

Let’s be clear about what it would mean for Joseph’s wife Mary to remain a virgin after Jesus’ birth: Even though, with angelic encouragement, Joseph “took Mary home as his wife” (Matt. 1:20, 24) in fulfillment of their having been “pledged to be married” (1:18); and even though thereafter Joseph was “the husband of Mary” (1:16) and she was his “wife” (1:20); and even though they lived together as husband and wife, and as a family together with the child Jesus (Matt. 2:14-23; Luke 2:39, 51)-despite all that, Mary and Joseph supposedly never consummated their marriage.  Instead, they lived under one roof but refrained from normal marital relations and vowed themselves to celibacy. So Jesus grew up in a household that we call “the Holy Family”—but which was really more a convent than a family, where the parents were never intimate with each other, and He, out of the corner of His eye, never saw them smile coyly at one another or linger over a kiss.

The basic questions are:  What is the evidence for this alleged marital celibacy? and, what was the reason for it? I know of no direct Biblical evidence for Mary’s perpetual virginity.  We have already observed that Mary was probably the source for Luke’s narratives of Jesus’ infancy, but Luke—so deliberate and emphatic about the Virgin Birth—finds no occasion to assert that Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth.  If Joseph was the source for his story in Matthew, then the only recorded information that he gave includes no direct statement as to whether the marriage was consummated after Jesus was born.  Thus, these two sources, which seem most probably derived from the only people who really knew, do not report that they remained celibate.

Dwight: Luke and Matthew may not have mentioned the perpetual virginity of Mary because it was assumed. The second century Church documents indicate that this assumption was widespread, and that the matter only needed clarification later. You are right in saying that the Gospels do not report Mary and Joseph’s marital celibacy, but neither do the Gospels report that Mary and Joseph did consummate the marriage physically. In fact the gospel record is inconclusive on the matter.

David:  I admit the Gospel accounts are not absolutely decisive on this point.  But recall the indirect Biblical evidence that tends against Mary’s perpetual virginity: (1) Matthew 1:25 asserts that Joseph “had no union with her until she gave birth to a son”.  (Does this imply that he did “have union” with her afterwards?)  (2) Luke calls Jesus Mary’s “firstborn” (2:7).  (Does this imply that others had followed?)  And (3) the New Testament includes several references to Jesus’ “brothers” and “sisters” (see, e.g., Matt. 13:5556).  (Were these Mary’s younger children by Joseph?)  As a reader of the English New Testament, I find that these details—even if they are not conclusive–add to my impression that Mary and Joseph consummated their marriage.

Dwight: Matthew 1:25 does not necessarily mean that Mary and Joseph did “have union” after Jesus’ birth, since “until” does not always mean that a change took place after the noted event.  (When I tell my children to “be good until I return home”, I don’t mean that they can start being bad when I arrive.) In the fourth century a fellow called Heldivius brought up these same points, and Saint Jerome wrote a long treatise in reply. About the “firstborn” question Jerome answered, “the divine Scriptures are accustomed to call someone firstborn, not because other siblings come after him, but because he is born first.” An only child is therefore called “the firstborn” because he is the one who “opens the womb”. (Ex.13:2.)

Did Jesus have brothers and sisters? The Protoevangelium of James says that Joseph was a mature widower, and that the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus were the children of Joseph’s first marriage. Other writers in the early church said they were simply Jesus’ cousins or the kinsmen of his extended family. The terms for “brothers” and “kinsmen” in the original languages are ambiguous.  Several times in the Bible “kinsmen” are referred to as “brothers.” (Gen. 29:10; Gen. 14:14; Deut. 23:7; et al.) Furthermore, when Jesus, Mary, and Joseph go up to Jerusalem with the twelve-year-old Jesus, there is no mention of younger brothers and sisters.  And when Jesus is dying on the cross, he commends his mother to the Apostle John (John 19:26), something he would not have done if he had younger brothers and sisters to look after Mary.

David:  I think these arguments from details in the Gospel stories miss the forest for the trees, and ignore the main Biblical problem with the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity:  Simply put, sexual union is definitional to marriage, and Mary and Joseph are said to have been “married” as “husband” and “wife”.  This fact raises a natural presumption that, as a married man and woman, they consummated their marriage. This leaves me assuming confidently that Mary and Joseph did have normal marital relations, and leaves me with no reason to suppose otherwise–unless other credible evidence is brought forward.

Dwight: Your assumptions are natural, and the Protoevangelium of James was written partially to address these same questions that the second and third generation Christians had. The Protoevangelium explains that Mary was a consecrated Virgin.  That explains her surprise at the angel’s announcement that she will have a child.  She says, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” This is not the response one would expect from a typical engaged woman, who would have simply been thankful that in time she would be blessed with a child. Mary’s surprise may well show that she did not expect to have a normal marriage relationship with Joseph, despite their engagement.

Mary had been set aside for God in two ways. If she had taken a vow of celibacy, then she was committed to God. According to the Protoevangelium, Joseph knew of this commitment and the obligation for the marriage to be a “guardianship” from the beginning. I will get into this topic in more detail in the next chapter, but Mary was also set aside for God by virtue of what happened at the Annunciation. In effect she was “married to God” in an astounding new way, and that also confirmed that her marriage to Joseph could only ever be a legal and pastoral necessity.

I agree with you that sex within marriage is a good and wholesome thing. It is the norm for a husband and wife to make love, but Mary and Joseph’s relationship was not the norm. How could their relationship be “normal” when Mary had participated in the totally unique event of the Incarnation of God’s Son?

Saint Jerome asks, “Would he [Joseph], who knew such great wonders, have dared touch the temple of God, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, the Mother of his Lord?”

David: This is another argument based on what may seem fitting (or not), but we simply can’t calculate what would be fitting in the event of an Incarnation of God.   Would anyone who understood the Incarnation have dared treat Jesus like a human being?  But when Peter did the “fitting” thing and declined to have Jesus wash his feet, Jesus chided him.  (John 13:8.)  Evidently, when God became a man, He expected to be treated as a man.  And there’s every reason to suppose that He likewise expected His mother to be treated as a woman.

If Mary and Joseph were vowed to celibacy, then just what was Mary and Joseph’s betrothal?  Even assuming that Joseph was an older man, the relationship that you propose for him and Mary sounds like foster care, or an adoption, not an engagement.  What was the “pledge” that Mary and Joseph made when the Bible says that they were “pledged to be married”?  It seems, rather, that according to the Protoevangelium, and in your view, Mary and Joseph had pledged never to be married. Even if the Protoevangelium were not a pseudonymous grab-bag of unlikely tales, it would not be sufficiently weighty to overcome this difficulty. Continue Reading