Posted on 05/31/2011 11:53:33 AM PDT by marshmallow
The Protoevangelium of James
“And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by [St. Anne], saying, ‘Anne! Anne! The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive and shall bring forth, and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.’ And Anne said, ‘As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God, and it shall minister to him in the holy things all the days of its life.’ . . . And [from the time she was three] Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there” (Protoevangelium of James 4, 7 [A.D. 120]).
“And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of priests, saying, ‘Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, lest perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord?’ And they said to the high priest, ‘You stand by the altar of the Lord; go in and pray concerning her, and whatever the Lord shall manifest to you, that also will we do.’ . . . [A]nd he prayed concerning her, and behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him saying, ‘Zechariah! Zechariah! Go out and assemble the widowers of the people and let them bring each his rod, and to whomsoever the Lord shall show a sign, his wife shall she be. . . . And Joseph [was chosen]. . . . And the priest said to Joseph, ‘You have been chosen by lot to take into your keeping the Virgin of the Lord.’ But Joseph refused, saying, ‘I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl’” (ibid., 8–9).
“And Annas the scribe came to him [Joseph] . . . and saw that Mary was with child. And he ran away to the priest and said to him, ‘Joseph, whom you did vouch for, has committed a grievous crime.’ And the priest said, ‘How so?’ And he said, ‘He has defiled the virgin whom he received out of the temple of the Lord and has married her by stealth’” (ibid., 15).
“And the priest said, ‘Mary, why have you done this? And why have you brought your soul low and forgotten the Lord your God?’ . . . And she wept bitterly saying, ‘As the Lord my God lives, I am pure before him, and know not man’” (ibid.).
Origen
“The Book [the Protoevangelium] of James [records] that the brethren of Jesus were sons of Joseph by a former wife, whom he married before Mary. Now those who say so wish to preserve the honor of Mary in virginity to the end, so that body of hers which was appointed to minister to the Word . . . might not know intercourse with a man after the Holy Spirit came into her and the power from on high overshadowed her. And I think it in harmony with reason that Jesus was the firstfruit among men of the purity which consists in [perpetual] chastity, and Mary was among women. For it were not pious to ascribe to any other than to her the firstfruit of virginity” (Commentary on Matthew 2:17 [A.D. 248]).
Hilary of Poitiers
“If they [the brethren of the Lord] had been Mary’s sons and not those taken from Joseph’s former marriage, she would never have been given over in the moment of the passion [crucifixion] to the apostle John as his mother, the Lord saying to each, ‘Woman, behold your son,’ and to John, ‘Behold your mother’ [John 19:26–27), as he bequeathed filial love to a disciple as a consolation to the one desolate" (Commentary on Matthew 1:4 [A.D. 354]).
Athanasius
“Let those, therefore, who deny that the Son is by nature from the Father and proper to his essence deny also that he took true human flesh from the ever-virgin Mary” (Discourses Against the Arians 2:70 [A.D. 360]).
Epiphanius of Salamis
“We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things, both visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . who for us men and for our salvation came down and took flesh, that is, was born perfectly of the holy ever-virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit” (The Man Well-Anchored 120 [A.D. 374]).
“And to holy Mary, [the title] ‘Virgin’ is invariably added, for that holy woman remains undefiled” (Medicine Chest Against All Heresies 78:6 [A.D. 375]).
Jerome
“[Helvidius] produces Tertullian as a witness [to his view] and quotes Victorinus, bishop of Petavium. Of Tertullian, I say no more than that he did not belong to the Church. But as regards Victorinus, I assert what has already been proven from the gospel—that he [Victorinus] spoke of the brethren of the Lord not as being sons of Mary but brethren in the sense I have explained, that is to say, brethren in point of kinship, not by nature. [By discussing such things we] are . . . following the tiny streams of opinion. Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against [the heretics] Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus, held these same views and wrote volumes replete with wisdom. If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man” (Against Helvidius: The Perpetual Virginity of Mary 19 [A.D. 383]).
“We believe that God was born of a virgin, because we read it. We do not believe that Mary was married after she brought forth her Son, because we do not read it. . . . You [Helvidius] say that Mary did not remain a virgin. As for myself, I claim that Joseph himself was a virgin, through Mary, so that a virgin Son might be born of a virginal wedlock” (ibid., 21).
Didymus the Blind
“It helps us to understand the terms ‘first-born’ and ‘only-begotten’ when the Evangelist tells that Mary remained a virgin ‘until she brought forth her first-born son’ [Matt. 1:25]; for neither did Mary, who is to be honored and praised above all others, marry anyone else, nor did she ever become the Mother of anyone else, but even after childbirth she remained always and forever an immaculate virgin” (The Trinity 3:4 [A.D. 386]).
Ambrose of Milan
“Imitate her [Mary], holy mothers, who in her only dearly beloved Son set forth so great an example of material virtue; for neither have you sweeter children [than Jesus], nor did the Virgin seek the consolation of being able to bear another son” (Letters 63:111 [A.D. 388]).
Pope Siricius I
“You had good reason to be horrified at the thought that another birth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had ever judged that she would be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord’s body, that court of the eternal king” (Letter to Bishop Anysius [A.D. 392]).
Augustine
“In being born of a Virgin who chose to remain a Virgin even before she knew who was to be born of her, Christ wanted to approve virginity rather than to impose it. And he wanted virginity to be of free choice even in that woman in whom he took upon himself the form of a slave” (Holy Virginity 4:4 [A.D. 401]).
“It was not the visible sun, but its invisible Creator who consecrated this day for us, when the Virgin Mother, fertile of womb and integral in her virginity, brought him forth, made visible for us, by whom, when he was invisible, she too was created. A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this, O man?” (Sermons 186:1 [A.D. 411]).
“Heretics called Antidicomarites are those who contradict the perpetual virginity of Mary and affirm that after Christ was born she was joined as one with her husband” (Heresies 56 [A.D. 428]).
Leporius
“We confess, therefore, that our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, born of the Father before the ages, and in times most recent, made man of the Holy Spirit and the ever-virgin Mary” (Document of Amendment 3 [A.D. 426]).
Cyril of Alexandria
“[T]he Word himself, coming into the Blessed Virgin herself, assumed for himself his own temple from the substance of the Virgin and came forth from her a man in all that could be externally discerned, while interiorly he was true God. Therefore he kept his Mother a virgin even after her childbearing” (Against Those Who Do Not Wish to Confess That the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God 4 [A.D. 430]).
Pope Leo I
“His [Christ’s] origin is different, but his [human] nature is the same. Human usage and custom were lacking, but by divine power a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bore, and Virgin she remained” (Sermons 22:2 [A.D. 450]).
THANKS MUCH.
It certainly looks interesting.
No I scorn those who somehow think that their understanding of what the Church has always taught is superior to what the historical record of the Fathers’s understanding.
INDEED.
Whoops my reply to you came out a bit garbled. Way too tired to redo it right now.
It’s incredibly laughable that anyone would seriously believe that the Vatican Cult has taught much of anything very consistently for even 160 years, much less 1600 years!
Quite correct -- the tendency to just quote randomly leads to numerous errors as seen in our hot under the collar fellow freeper's post there.
Quite true brother has shades of meaning because Aramaic and other Semitic languages do not differentiate between a blood brother/sister and a cousin or other
For example
The NT was written in Greek, ok -- not all and we must remember also that the words of Jesus were mostly Aramaic or Hebrew or maybe even GReek -- as already shown in SEmitic languages like Aramaic/hebrew there is no differntiating term between a blood brother and a cousin, if one examines the GReek ouch outos estin o tekton o uios Marias adelphos de Iakobou Iose kai Iouda kai Simonos
If the term is that the adelphoi have the same mother then it would be ho adelphos But that is not used. Without the article adelphos is non-specific and non-exclusive and can mean kinsmen, relatives
.
If one goes to the Middle-East you can see where a guy will call his cousin his brother. This is true of this clan society just as it was in the time of Christ.
The one thing that strikes me is that if they were the children of Mary, then why did Jesus tell John to take care of His mother? that's a classic affront if he had any brothers through Mary.
At the very best, your statement, Newwoman that things are ambiguous just by looking at one source is a sound statement for peace.
Jesus Christ was 100% God and 100% man. To be man, He went through the normal gestation and birth process of mankind, God experiencing what it is to be a human from birth to death.
if I understand you correctly you were discussing that if she gave birth then technically she was no longer a virgin in your opinion, correct (note: I'm trying to understand what you wrote and personal interpretation is always faulty)?
That is not strictly true as virginity is rather dependent on the committing of the sexual act.
We all of course agree that she was virgin before and at the time of birth of her son Jesus Christ.
Now post that, just by reading scripture for direct references, you can only be ambiguous one way or the other if one ignores what others a the same time observed and believed.
We hold that she gestated the Lord for 9 months in a normal birth where like a normal mother and child the blood and nutrients were shared (hence the need for her own protection to be free from sin as in the presence of God in His purest form, sin cannot stand and we are stained with sin -- Mary was, for her own protection cleansed of the stain by God before her birth (just as we are cleansed of the stain of original sin by Christ's blood, so too was she, albeit in a different way)
Post the birth did she have sexual relations? the Bible is silent on this and Joseph disappears from the Gospel narrative post the Passover visit to the temple (mentioned in Luke alone).
The way the early Christians believed was that Mary was devoted to God, jsut as Samuel or Anna (Luke 2:36-37) were and that Joseph was already old at the time of the marriage and he an elderly man, a widower to be her protector and spouse
As the protector of this consecrated virgin of God he performed his duty and a devoted father to this strange child born to a virgin.
As a person consecrated to the service of God, Mary would not have had sexual relations post this
Finally, it's a niggling point, but the Gospel does not actual mention their marriage -- did he or didn't he? We know Joseph was a good protector and father, but yet years later, Jesus is called the son of Mary, not the son of Joseph. Even if Joseph were dead, wouldn't they call Jesus the son of Joseph (even an adopted one?)
Do note also that this does not date only to 400 AD but to earlier, the 2nd century. You can find references as well in Origen (Ad 248)
If you want to be precise, at the best one can state it is ambiguous but something that has been believed since the time of the Early Christians
Actually for us Christians we believe that Jesus Christ was persecuted, died, rose from the dead and is not sitting at the right hand of God the Father -- because Jesus Christ IS God
Now, I realise that it is difficult for many to acknowledge that, it is the central mystery of our Christian faith which is not only that Christ DIED, but more importantly that HE TRIUMPHED OVER DEATH, He rose again from the dead, He IS/WAS/will always be GOD
Non-Christians cannot acknowledge this fact of Jesus's resurrection and that Jesus Christ is God.
laschance -- let's leave the non-Christians here to debate with the non-Trinitarian non-Catholics and the Trinitarian non-Catholics. Judith anne is correct, there is a point beyond which the other posters do not show any propensity to sensibly discuss and here we have the normal suspects that spout bile and will not acknowledge Jesus Christ as God -- let's not waste time on this any more
WWPS? (What would Polycarp say?)
Mine too.
Wait a minute — HD, do you believe in the Rapture? Is it unBiblical?
But then that's what happens with individuals -- we make small mistakes. However, when we work as a team under Christ we make less and when we work as The Church under Christ our Head Priest, His Bride, His Church stretching back 2000 years with the store of wisdom poured in by the Apostles and the refining over the centuries, we make lesser errors
Presently no screeno said: Jesus Christ was persecuted and died - that is the only focus for a Christian
Actually for us Christians we believe that Jesus Christ was persecuted, died, rose from the dead and is NOW sitting at the right hand of God the Father -- because Jesus Christ IS God
Now, I realise that it is difficult for many to acknowledge that, it is the central mystery of our Christian faith which is not only that Christ DIED, but more importantly that HE TRIUMPHED OVER DEATH, He rose again from the dead, He IS/WAS/will always be GOD
Non-Christians cannot acknowledge this fact of Jesus's resurrection and that Jesus Christ is God.
Lastchance -- take note if a person refuses to acknowledge the resurrection of the Lord that signifies a non-Christian belief denying the divinity of Christ.
where exactly is the Biblical proof for double predestination?
On the contrary, this is strongly refuted by Ezekiel 33:12-17
| 12 “Therefore, son of man, say to your people, ‘If someone who is righteous disobeys, that person’s former righteousness will count for nothing. And if someone who is wicked repents, that person’s former wickedness will not bring condemnation. The righteous person who sins will not be allowed to live even though they were formerly righteous.’ 13 If I tell a righteous person that they will surely live, but then they trust in their righteousness and do evil, none of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered; they will die for the evil they have done. 14 And if I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ but they then turn away from their sin and do what is just and right— 15 if they give back what they took in pledge for a loan, return what they have stolen, follow the decrees that give life, and do no evil—that person will surely live; they will not die. 16 None of the sins that person has committed will be remembered against them. They have done what is just and right; they will surely live. |
| >What Calvin did was this. He took what is one of the oldest and most perilous directives of mankind, the sense of Fate. He isolated it, and he made it supreme, by fitting it, with the kneading of a powerful mind, into the scheme which Christian men still traditionally associated with the holiness and authority of their ancestral religion. God had become Man, and God had become Man to redeem mankind. That was no part of the old idea of Inevitable Fate. On the contrary, it was a relief from that pagan nightmare. We of the Faith say that the Incarnation was intended to release us from such a pagan nightmare. Well, Calvin accepted the Incarnation, but he forced it to fit in with the old pagan horror of compulsion: “Ananke.” He reintroduced the Inexorable. Yes, God had become Man and had died to save mankind; but only mankind in such numbers and persons as He had chosen to act for. The idea of the Inexorable remained. The merits of Christ were imputed, and no more. God was Causation, and Causation is one immutable whole. A man was damned or saved; and it was not of his doing. The recognition of evil as equal with good, which rapidly becomes the worship of evil (the great Manichean heresy, which has roots as old as mankind; the permanent motive of Fear) was put forward by Calvin in a strange new form. He did not indeed oppose, as had the Manichean, two equal principles of Good and of Evil. He put forward only one principle, God. But to that One Principle he ascribed all our suffering, and, for most of us, necessary and eternal suffering. Again, the Catholic Church had called the soul of man immortal. Calvin accepted that doctrine; but under his hands it becomes an immortality of doom, and for the few who shall have doom to beatitude, doom it yet is, as doom is is to the myriads for whom it shall mean despair. |
It will be noted that the Confession sharply contradicts the view popularized today by the neo-Pentecostal movement. In essence this view would have us believe that we can have the same charismatic gifts that we read about in the age of the Apostles - such as prophecy, speaking in tongues, and healing - today. Never again will there be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit such as took place on the day of Pentecost.Well, of course, this is in line with them saying that your philosophy is a damnable heresy.
The sending of the Holy Spirit is just as much an unrepeatable event as the birth of Christ was.
So, they do say that your beliefs are " such wholesale gross UNBiblical deceptions from hell"
What do you two, Harley and Quix think of his experiences?
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