The Perpetual Virginity of Mary
by Dr. Robert Schihl (Roman Catholic Theologian)
Fathers of the Church
Church
Fathers from at least the fourth century spoke of Mary as having remained a
virgin throughout her life:
Athanasius (Alexandria,
293-373);
Epiphanius (Palestine,
315?-403);
Jerome (Stridon, present
day Yugoslavia, 345?-419);
Augustine (Numidia, now
Algeria, 354-430);
Cyril (Alexandria,
376-444);
and others.
We note here that in
this very precise and scholarly list of Apostolic Fathers speaking of Mary
remaining a virgin, that this theologian did not include the quotes for some
reason. – We would suggest that the context quite possibly spreads some doubt
to this notion.
Another thing we note in this list is
that in the 4th century from the writings of all of the bishops that
only one a minor bishop is cited as
teaching this false doctrine and that universally all of the bishops of renown – at
that time neither knew nor spoke of any such thing.
And this can be said
also of the Bible scholars of the third century and the second century.
Certainly if the Immaculate Conception or the perpetual virginity of Mary was
as important doctrinally a virtual keystone upon which the whole of the
doctrine of Christ and the church is founded upon – then Peter and Paul would
have preached it in their epistles, – (The 11 Apostles absolutely knew Mary and
it would have been impossible for Paul to not have known if these things were
so as he had commissioned Luke to write a Gospel for the churches he founded.)
– Therefore
their silence on these doctrines is an unquestionable attestation that this
doctrine was neither known nor taught in the early church.
And if the Immaculate Conception or the
perpetual virginity of Mary was as important doctrinally a virtual keystone
upon which the whole of the doctrine of Christ and the church is founded upon
-- Christ would have preached it as the center piece of the gospel, or at least
when the women cried out blessed are the Paps of the women that fed you. – So Christ’s silence in the Gospels on these doctrines is an unquestionable
attestation that the things stated in these doctrines are not so.
Moving on to
the apostolic fathers, for over 300 years after the death of Christ or over ten
generations (As defining a biblical generation by 30 years) Not one bishop for
ten solid generations is recorded as having believed in or made mention
disparagingly against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and the
perpetual virginity of Mary.
Justin Martyr
To begin with
Justin Martyr during his 25 years of ministry wrote gigantic treatises to the
Roman senate and the roman emperor in which he describes in great detail the
beliefs of Christians – he even details how the Eucharist or Holy Communion was
received.
And we
also have from Justin Martyr the recounting of a two day debate between him and
the head of a Jewish Synagogue in Rome named Trypho – In which the prophecies
concerning Christ’s coming his birth, his ministry his death and resurrection
and his deity are discussed in minute detail. As I have read these writings
over several times I can say that the debate between Trypho and Justin Martyr
is very sharp on the issue of the Virgin Birth of Christ -- so that if
the Immaculate Conception or the perpetual virginity of Mary was as important
doctrinally a virtual keystone upon which the whole of the doctrine of Christ
and the church is founded upon – Justin Martyr would have included this in the
debate. His silence here
both to Trypho, the Roman Senate and to Caesar is an unquestionable attestation
that the things stated in these doctrines are simply not so, and that they were
not a part of the Christian faith whatsoever in 155-170 AD.
In his
ten or so epistles entitled Irenaeus Against All Heresies he systematically
writes against all heresies that existed in his day. If the Immaculate
Conception or the perpetual virginity of Mary was as important doctrinally a
virtual keystone upon which the whole of the doctrine of Christ and the church
is founded upon, Irenaeus would have made its defense the center
piece of his writings and you would think that he would have been able to cite
one or two pastors or some cult that did not believe in that doctrine as stated
– Irenaeus
silence both pro and con here in a work that is designed to speak out against
all heresies is once again an unquestionable attestation that the things stated
in these Roman Catholic doctrines concerning Mary are simply not so, and were
not any part of the Christian faith whatsoever in 180-AD.
Tertullian
was not just another Bishop he is according to the Roman Catholic church to
have been one of their greatest theologians and has been given the title of
Roman Catholic Doctor of Divinity. In 200 AD he wrote an immense number of
epistles touching on all areas of doctrine in the church and his writings are
the foundation of many Roman Catholic doctrines that Augustine later cast in
stone as part official Roman Catholic Doctrine from the 6th century
on. If the Immaculate Conception or the perpetual virginity of Mary was as
important doctrinally a virtual keystone upon which the whole of the doctrine
of Christ and the church is founded upon, Tertullian would have
made it the center piece of his writings – But here a Roman Catholic Doctor of
church doctrine, and in his voluminous writings he does not speak a single word
for or against such teachings, because they were neither known or heard of at
such time in the pre-Roman Catholic Church of 200 AD.
Hippolytus – His silence both pro and con here
is once again an unquestionable attestation that the things stated in this
Roman Catholic doctrine are simply not so and were not any part of the
Christian faith whatsoever –230AD
Origen – Origen was another Roman Catholic
Doctor and wrote about a great many doctrinal issues in his epistles and His
silence both pro and con here is once again an unquestionable attestation that
the things stated in this Roman Catholic doctrine are simply not so and were
not any part of the Christian faith whatsoever –230AD
Cypian
– Wrote almost
200 epistles he is revered by the Roman Catholic Church as one of the great
defenders of the faith and one who was key to preserving the teachings of the
church. Yet in all these epistles Cypian is utterly silence both pro and con
here to the Immaculate Conception or the perpetual virginity of
Mary was as important doctrinally a virtual keystone upon which the whole of
the doctrine of Christ and the church is founded upon. -- Once
again this is an unquestionable attestation that the things stated in this
Roman Catholic doctrine are simply not so, and were not any part of the
Christian faith whatsoever –250 AD
And
perhaps most important of all is Eusebius – who was commissioned by Constantine
to chronicle the first three centuries of Church History and doctrine for the
emperor and the church – and he did so. All church historians today use
Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History as their main source for what occurred during
that time period and what the church doctrinally believed. In His entire
chronicling and he begins the work with the days leading up to Christ’s birth,
and includes the virgin birth as well Eusebius does not allude in the slightest
to any belief whatsoever of an Immaculate Conception or the perpetual virginity of
Mary as a church doctrine or keystone upon which the whole of the doctrine of
Christ and the church is founded upon. –Had he flagrantly
overlooked such and important doctrine Constantine would have had Eusebius
executed just as he had other heretical bishops executed. So that Eusebius silence here is an
unquestionable attestation that the things stated in this Roman Catholic
doctrine are simply not so and were not any part of the Christian faith
whatsoever in 330 AD.
So
what happened here? And where did this doctrine come from? The answer is in the
catholic encyclopedia that under Constantine the flood gates of pagans calling
themselves believers were opened and they brought all their pagan beliefs and
idols with them and soon these pagan beliefs and idols were made a part of a
church that had become doctrinally weak through centuries of not having had
bibles to preach from, and that tradition was continued after the canon of
scripture was created and under Constantine 300 bibles were made and
distributed one to every sizeable church.
2
Timothy 4:3-5 For
the time will come when they (The Church) will not endure sound
doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers,
having itching ears; And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto
fables. (We are categorically stating that this did occur – however
we will not cast the burden of this at the feet of the Roman Catholic Church
alone for the many of the things that the catholic Church is blamed for were in
full swing and recorded as such by the apostolic fathers a full hundred years
before the catholic church was ever a glimmer in anyone’s eye.)
2 Peter 1:15 –17 Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease (Death) to have these things (What Peter considers most important doctrinally) always in
remembrance. (Nowhere in the Apostle Peter’s first or second epistle does Peter
cite a whisper a word about the Immaculate Conception or the perpetual virginity of
Mary and what he says in the next sentence is that whatever is not included in
these epistles as the most important things for believers to seek and follow
after are “Cunningly devised
fables”.) For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God
the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the
excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Teaching of the Universal Church
The Council of
Constantinople II (553-554) twice referred to Mary as "ever-virgin." (Note here that this doctrinal change officially
occurred in the 6th century some 17 generations after the death of
Christ some 16 generations after the death of Paul and Peter and some 15
generations after the death of John.)
Protestant Reformers
The protestant reformers
affirmed their belief that Mary, while remaining every-virgin, was truly the
Mother of God. Here are only a few examples:
Martin Luther
(1483-1546), On the Divine Motherhood of Mary, wrote:
In this work whereby she
was made the Mother of God, so many and such great good things were given her
that no one can grasp them. ... Not only was Mary the mother of him who is born
[in Bethlehem], but of him who, before the world, was eternally born of the
Father, from a Mother in time and at the same time man and God. (Weimer's The
Works of Luther, English translation by Pelikan, Concordia, St. Louis, v. 7, p.
572.)
Luther wrote on the
Virginity of Mary:
It is an article of
faith that Mary is Mother of the Lord and still a virgin. ... Christ, we
believe, came forth from a womb left perfectly intact. (Weimer's The Works of
Luther, English translation by Pelikan, Concordia, St. Louis, v. 11, pp.
319-320; v. 6. p. 510.)
The French reformer John
Calvin (1509-1564) also held that Mary was the Mother of God.
It cannot be denied that
God in choosing and destining Mary to be the Mother of his Son, granted her the
highest honor. ... Elizabeth called Mary Mother of the Lord, because the unity
of the person in the two natures of Christ was such that she could have said
that the mortal man engendered in the womb of Mary as at the same time the
eternal God. (Calvini Opera, Corpus Reformatorum, Braunschweig-Berlin,
1863-1900, v. 45, p. 348, 35.)
Calvin also up held the
perpetual virginity of Mary, as did the Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli
(1484-1531), who wrote:
I firmly believe that
Mary, according to the words of the gospel as a pure Virgin brought forth for
us the Son of God and in childbirth and after childbirth forever remained a
pure, intact Virgin. (Zwingli Opera, Corpus Reformatorum, Berlin, 1905, v. 1,
p. 424.)
Most
Protestants know nothing about Luther and Calvin except the revisionist
paragraph blurb that their denomination has created to lionize these men as the
Apostles of Protestantism. Actually
there were three major reformers and in the Catholic Encyclopedia concerning
the protestant reformation two are mentioned Martin Luther who is reviled, and
John Calvin who is loved as a great doctor of theology but since he denied left
the Roman Catholic faith he is still a heretic, and Meno Simons who is ignored
as the head of the Ana-Baptist movement.
What is not
conveyed in these protestant cleansed blurb histories of these men is that all
three were Roman Catholic Priests and as such were thoroughly indoctrinated in
Roman Catholicism.
Meno
Simon’s against the wishes of the church embarked on a path in which he began
to study scripture and church history and began to see how the churches
doctrines had been systematically altered. When his brother became an
Ana-Baptist leader and this seemed to greatly effect Simons. And at that point
he seems to have begun preaching what
could be termed as favorable sermons towards the movement, laced with scripture
references, and he offered the leaders advice on several occasions. But when his
brother was slaughtered in Muenster, Germany along with 100,000 believers by
the Roman Catholic Army, this event threw Simon’s over the edge and this is
reflected in his writings. Simons states that while still a Priest he desired
greatness and wanted to rule over the church – so that later when the remaining
leaders of the Ana-Baptists bowed the knee to Simons and asked him to take the
helm he was all to glad to do so.
Luther and
Calvin on the other hand were Augustinian monks – they were sworn to seek to
restore their order within the Catholic Church and to see that Augustine would
once more be heralded as the authority for church doctrine. So what the writer asserts here concerning
Luther and Calvin believing in the Immaculate Conception or the perpetual virginity of Mary as a church
doctrine or keystone upon which the whole of the doctrine of Christ and the
church is founded upon.The
writer here is not telling the half of it, as Luther and Calvin both prayed to
Mary and the whole host of Roman Catholic saints as well.
Both Luther
and Calvin were Roman Catholic, Priests and
Doctors of Roman Catholic Law and taught at Roman Catholic Universities
that in those days were theological seminaries
What has
escaped historians is why Luther and Calvin were doing the things they were
doing and saying the things that they were saying. Both men are depicted by
their respective denominations as having light beams from heaven shining upon
them as they received divine inspiration.
This is
simply untrue and from the writings of both men they were virulently against
any thing that would be termed as a spiritual experience, they were against
dreams visions angels appearing prophesy or any exercise of the gifts of the
spirit -- and thus both men hated and
killed with impunity Ana-Baptists any where they were found and sought to slay
Meno Simons.
Simply put
what Luther and Calvin sought to do was not leave the Roman Catholic Church but
to roll back 850 years worth of what they deemed as bad doctrine and have the purer
Roman Catholic Church of the sixth century re-emerge
So when
Luther preached against indulgences it was not that he hated that from purely a
doctrinal stance – he hated it because it was not Augustine Doctrine.
When Luther
came against the rule of the Papacy it was because Augustine a bishop in
Algeria had in his day run circles around the Pope and the Bishops or Rome and
took doctrinal preeminence over all of them and for this he was awarded an
order of monks. Both Luther and Calvin in their writings did not at all want to
leave the Roman Catholic Church both instead coveted having their own order of
monks as their predecessor. So when
Luther nailed up his 95 thesis on the door of the Wartburg Roman Catholic
Church, Luther has simply looked through his Augustinian lens at current
catholic doctrine and lo and behold he found his 95 thesis. And simply put these 95 things that were not
Augustine, and therefore unacceptable to him or any of his order.
Speaking a
little more on this Augustine believed both in predestination and eternal
security. So it should come as no
surprise that Luther and Calvin championed these doctrines. Luther preached
them first and preached them under the guise of justification by faith. His
doctrine bears no resemblance to what is taught in bible believing
denominations today. In his own words
Luther could murder a thousand men a day and commit adultery with a thousand
women a day because he was justified by faith -- Both Luther and Calvin were
murderers and presumably both men were adulterers as well. The doctrines of predestination and eternal
security to both men became central to their holding power because their
followers had eyes to see and ear to hear of their evil deeds, so that when
questioned on their acts these did not say the devil made me do it, they
declared under Augustinian doctrine that they were doctors or and had taught
for a decade or more in Roman Catholic Universities that God had made them do it and thus to disagree with them was
to fight against God himself – So both men raised armies and slaughtered
Ana-Baptists or drove the Ana-Baptists into Roman Armies to be destroyed.
So what
Luther and Calvin were a part of was not a reformation in any terms that is
what is preached today – they did not bring the church back to the bible and
biblical teaching as they had all this light and revelation and discovered the
bible was filled with all these lost truths – they simply rolled back Roman
Catholicism to the 6th century were Augustine and all Roman
Catholics were still allowed to read scripture. And the doctrines that Luther
and Calvin taught were simply sixth century Augustinian doctrine – So for the
most part The Protestant Movement is 6th century Roman Catholicism –
or as we have called it previously Roman Catholic Lite.
Now granted
both Lutheranism and Calvinism have evolved and cleansed their histories
repeatedly over the last 450 years so that all of this is hidden today form the
eyes and ears of nominal believers. – But a horse will always be a horse no
matter how you dress it. No more than
if you confess yourself to be a car day and night for a week and sleep in a
garage will make you into a car.