Audio only:
In this episode, Trent takes on the higher level objections Protestant apologists make to the standard Catholic defense of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity.
Transcript:
In a recent Tweet James White criticized what he called the standard Catholic Answers response to the evidence against Mary’s perpetual virginity. In today’s episode I’m going to show that’s wrong with the allegedly sophisticated Protestant response to these arguments. Let’s start with the opening moves of this debate.
Protestants often say Mary was not a perpetual virgin because Jesus had brothers and Matthew 1:25 says Joseph took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.” In response Catholics say the word brother can mean cousin and the word until, or in Greek heos, does not always include a reversal of condition like in 2 Samuel 6:23 which says, “Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death”, which of course doesn’t mean she started having children after her death.
And here is what James White says about this:
“This is the stock Catholic Answers style response. Unfortunately, this is actually a phrase, not a single term, ἕως οὗ, and there is good reason to believe the phrase, rather than just the singular term ἕως (as is found in the LXX of 2Sam 6:23 ), does, in fact, refer to a point in time where there is a reversal of the preceding condition. And, of course, the fact that the normative meaning of the term “brothers” further establishes the obvious meaning of the NT on the matter.”
And this is just the stock early 2000’s response to the Catholic Answers response. It mostly comes from Protestant apologist Eric Svendsen’s 2001 book Who Is My Mother? So let’s take a look at what Svendsen says about Matthew 1:25. He writes “The literary evidence suggests that the Greek speaker of Matthew’s time would have understood the phrase heos hou to imply cessation of action of the main clause after the action of the subordinate clause.”
In other words, Svendsen says that the single Greek word heos can be used in a continuing sense, like in Matthew 28:20 when Jesus says “I am with you always, to (heos) the close of the age”, but that doesn’t mean Jesus will reverse and not be with the disciples after the close of the age. However, Heos hou during Matthews time always included a reversal of condition. But here’s what’s wrong with his argument.
First, it’s not clear the New Testament’s use of heos hou always includes a reversal. In Acts 25:21 Festus tells King Agrippa, “when Paul had appealed to be kept in custody for the decision of the emperor, I commanded him to be held until I could send him to Caesar.” If this means Paul appeals to be kept in “Roman” custody, then there is no reversal since Paul was perpetually in Roman custody after that point.
Second, Svendsen is cherry picking the data by only restricting the use of heos hou to a narrow time-period between 100 BC and AD 100. When we look at the entire Greek Old Testament, we see that 1 out of ten uses of heos hou don’t have any reversal. Since heos hou is used 15 times in the New Testament, we’d expect 1 to 2 of those cases to not include a reversal, like we find in Matthew 1:25 even if it is the only case of this happening.
The Church fathers also used heos hou in a continual sense. In the third century Clement of Alexandria wrote “Thus thirty years were completed until [heos hou] He [Jesus] suffered”, which doesn’t mean Jesus kept suffering after he died. (Stromateis, 1.21; Patrologia Graeca, 8.885a). St. John Chrysostom, a native speaker of Greek, says this about Matthew 1:25:
Matthew has here used the word until not that you should suspect that afterward Joseph did know her but to inform you that before the birth the Virgin was wholly untouched by man. But why then, it may be said, has he used the word until? Because it is common in Scripture that this expression is used without reference to specific, limited times. Here are three examples. First, in the narrative of the ark it was said that “the raven did not return until the earth was dried up,” yet the raven did not return even after that limited time. Second, when discussing God the Scripture says, “You are from everlasting to everlasting,” but there is no implication here that some limit is being fixed—rather the opposite. Third, when preaching the gospel beforehand and saying, “In his days may righteousness flourish, and peace abound, until the moon be no more!” it is not thereby setting a temporal limit to this beautiful part of creation. So then here likewise, it uses the word until to make certain what was before the birth, but as to what follows, it leaves some further inference to be made.
In this passage Chrysostom cites Genesis 8:7, Psalm 90:2, and Psalm 72:7 but the first two verses only use heos, not heos hou. From Chrysostom’s perspective, the two terms were interchangeable and so heos hou doesn’t have the special meaning Svendsen claims it has.
Finally, we have evidence of heos hou being used in the continual sense in literature that falls within Svendsen’s search range. In his book, Svendsen handwaves away 4 Maccabees 7 which says “Eleazar kept the rudder of godly living straight until he sailed into the harbor of immortal victory” which doesn’t mean he stopped being godly after he died. Svendsen also fails to cite a Jewish text dated from that same period: Joseph and Asenath. It says “Asenath was left alone with the seven virgins , listless and weeping till the sun set” even though her mourning continued after that time.
So this argument against Mary’s perpetual virginity simply doesn’t work. That’s why the Protestant Reformer John Calvin said “ . . . no just and well-grounded inference can be drawn from these words of the Evangelist, as to what took place after the birth of Christ.”
Alright, so that’s one argument down. But what about the bretheren of the Lord? Protestant apologists will say that even if the Greek word brother, or adelphoi can mean cousin, that’s not how it’s normally used in the New Testament so we should go with the normal use of the term.
But what is the “normal” use of adelphoi? In the Edgar Alan Nutt’s research on the Greek Old Testament shows that in about 500 cases the word refers to full siblings, same mother and same father. But Protestants don’t believe Jesus brethren are full siblings because Jesus was born of a virgin. Instead, they believe that Jesus and his brethren have the same mother but different fathers. But in the Greek Old Testament adelphoi is never used this way. When a parent is different it is always the mother, not the Father.
In the Eastern church the common view of the bretheren of the Lord is that they are Jesus’ adoptive siblings from Joseph’s first marriage. This explains why Jesus is called the Son of Mary instead of the Son of Joseph in Mark 6:3, in order to distinguish him from Joseph’s other wife. And adoptive sibling is the more common understanding of adelphoi in the New Testament.
When we read that two people were adelphoi in the New Testament, we cannot assume they have the same mother, which is what Protestants rely on when they say the bretheren of the Lord disproves Mary’s perpetual virginity. The point is that they have the same father, in either a legal or biological sense.
In Matthew 1:2 Jesus’ genealogy refers to “Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” but these brothers came from multiple mothers, namely Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. In Mark 6:7 it says “Herod had sent and seized John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Hero′di-as, his brother Philip’s wife; because he had married her.” But while Herod Antipas and Herod Phillip had the same Father, Herod the Great, the guy who tried to kill baby Jesus, they had different mothers. Herod Antipas was the son of Malthace the Samaritan and Philip was the Son of Mariamne II of Jerusalem.
In fact, the frequent references to Christians being brothers in the Lord, must be read in an adoptive sense. The word adelphoi is mostly used to describe adoptive siblings, not biological ones. Even though we have different biological mothers through baptism we all have the same spiritual father in heaven. That’s why Paul says in Galatians 4:5 that Christ came “to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
So, if you hold to the Eastern view that Jesus’ brethren were his adoptive brethren from Joseph’s first marriage, then none of these references are problems. Just as Joseph’s brethren in Genesis did not come from the same womb but were still called brothers, and Herod Philip and Herod Antipas did not come from the same womb but were still called brothers, the same is true of Jesus brethren, they are brethren even though they did not come from the same womb.
But if Jesus had older adoptive siblings, then why did he entrust Mary to John at the foot of the cross instead of to his siblings? The answer is that Jesus’ adoption by Joseph would make these people Jesus’ adoptive siblings, but that would not make them Mary’s adopted children. They were not sons and daughters of Mary and thus they would not have obligations to Mary that Jesus would have to respect as a part of Jewish law, since Jesus upbraided his fellow Jews who failed to honor their mother and father.
However, even if you hold to the Western view that Jesus’ brethren were cousins or some other kind of relative, the use of adelphoi in the New Testament supports that view. In Jesus genealogy Matthew 1:11 calls Josi′ah, “the father of Jechoni′ah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.” But the Old Testament says Jeconiah only had one brother, not brothers plural, which leads biblical scholars to hold the view that the brothers in this verse probably refer to uncles or related kin.
So to summarize, the Greek phrase translated until, heos hou, like heos, does not always imply a reversal, so it cannot be used to prove Mary and Joseph had marital relations. And the Greek words Adelphoi and adelphe, brother and sister, normally refer to adoptive siblings, such as how Christians are siblings through our same adoptive heavenly father. That means when we read Matthew 13:55 that describes Jesus’ brothers and sisters we cannot know if the word refers to siblings that all come from the same womb, or siblings that come from different wombs but have the same father like the children of the patriarchs or the sons of Herod the great.
This is probably why the Protestant Reformers like Martin Luther agreed that Mary remained a virgin throughout her whole life and that the Bible did not deny this truth. He said, “We should be satisfied simply to hold that she remained a virgin after the birth of Christ because Scripture does not state or indicate that she later lost her virginity. We certainly need not be so terribly afraid that someone will demonstrate, out of his own head apart from Scripture, that she did not remain a virgin.”
Such an idea was not unbiblical to them and so it shouldn’t be unbiblical to modern Christians either. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.