The Roman Catholic Church has a great deal to say about the virginity of Mary, indeed, much
more than God ever did. Not content with what has been revealed, Roman Catholic theologians
and scholars have allowed their imaginations to run wild resulting in an elaborate doctrine that can
be called "The Perpetual Virginity of Mary." This belief involves three stages of Mary's virginity:
her conception of Jesus without the co-operation of man, giving birth to Christ without violating
her integrity, and remaining a virgin after Jesus was born. This belief did not come into being in
it's entirety all at once, but rather gradually developed over a period of hundreds of years. In this
article we will examine that development, notice exactly what these beliefs concerning Mary
involve, and determine whether or not they are purely the speculation of man or if they have their
basis in divine truth.
THE DEVELOPMENT
Very early in the existence of the Church, Christians found it necessary to defend the virgin birth
of the Lord because of it's denial by various groups. In the second century the Gnostics, under
Cerinthus, voiced opposition to the revealed truth that Jesus was born of a virgin. In the third
century opposition came from a group led by Celsus. In response to these denials the early
Christians stood firmly upon the Word of God. Such men as Ignatius of Antioch and Justin
Martyr uniformly defended the accounts of the virgin birth as given by Matthew and Luke in their
gospels. What they defended was what had been revealed. Jesus had been miraculously conceived
in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit. She was a virgin when this occurred and remained a
virgin until the birth of our Lord. Had men been content with what God had revealed, there would
be no such thing as the doctrine of the "perpetual Virginity of Mary." But they were not.
As time went on, the revealed truth was taken a step further by uninspired men. Some began to
teach that not only did Mary conceive without carnal intercourse, but her physical virginity was
also not violated in giving birth to Christ. As early as 390 A.D., we can find the synod at Milan
condemning the proposition that "a virgin conceived, but a virgin did not bring forth." Without
going into physiological detail, this proposition was not teaching that after the conception, but
prior to the birth, Mary had relations with Joseph. Rather it was teaching that, in the natural
course of things, during the birth the passage was opened. Uninspired men denied that this was
true.
Augustine wrote in Sermons: "For as a virgin she conceived, as a virgin she gave birth, a virgin
she remained." In DeTrinitate, he wrote: "For neither do we know the countenance of the Virgin
Mary, from who, untouched by a husband, not tainted in the birth itself, He was wonderfully
born."
In Commentary of the Apostles' Creed, from the 5th century, Rufinus wrote: "The gate which
was shut (Ezech. 44,2) was her virginity. Through it the Lord God of Israel entered; through it He
advanced into this world from the virgin's womb. And, because her virginity was preserved intact,
the Virgin's gate has remained shut for ever."
Collier's Encyclopedia, Vol. 15, tells us, "Ancient writers such as Ambrose, Augustine, and
Jerome employ various analogies - the emergence of Christ from the sealed tomb, the penetration
of light through glass, or human thought leaving the mind" to explain how Jesus could have been
born and yet Mary remain intact.
Having taken this step in their thinking, uninspired men took yet another one. Since Mary
conceived as a virgin, and since she remained "intact" in the birth of Christ, they reasoned that she
surely must have remained a virgin for the rest of her life, never engaging in normal marital
relations with her husband, Joseph. From the 4th century we find these words from Basil; "The
friends of Christ do not tolerate hearing that the Mother of God ever ceased to be a virgin." By
the Fifth General Council of Constantinople in 553 Mary had received title "Perpetual Virgin."
Today the Baltimore Catechism says, "Mary, the Mother of God, remained a virgin not only in
the conception of Christ but also in His birth and during the rest of her life."
Besides forcing Roman Catholic authorities to do a great deal of explaining concerning New
Testament passages that speak of the "brethren of the Lord," such as Matt. 12:46-50, the doctrine
of the "perpetual virginity of Mary" raises another very serious question. The Bible teaches that
the marriage bed is undefiled (Heb. 13:4) and that a husband and wife have the God-given
responsibility to tend to the sexual needs of each other (1 Cor. 7). If Mary remained a virgin
throughout her life, then she and Joseph were married in appearance only and were recreant to
one another in clear violation of God's decrees concerning this holiest of human relationships. We
can get an idea of the type of thinking that gave rise to this doctrine in a letter from the 4th century
from Siricius. He wrote: "We surely cannot deny that you were right in correcting the doctrines
about children of Mary, and Your Holiness was right in rejecting the idea that any other offspring
should come from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For
the Lord Jesus would not have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had judged that she would be so
incontinent as to taint the birthplace of the body of the Lord, the hope of the eternal king, with the
seed of human intercourse." Truly, there would have been absolutely nothing incontinent about
Mary fulfilling her obligations as a wife. Not to do so would have been sinful.
It is interesting, and revealing, that the idea of the "perpetual virginity" of Mary is not found in the scriptures. That Jesus was conceived in the womb of a virgin by the Holy Spirit is to be found there. The rest of the Roman Catholic doctrine concerning her virginity springs not from the mind of God, but from the imaginations of men. (From "Catholicism Examined," Edited by Greg Litmer and David Riggs, p. 123-125).