(Incidentally, it was also held by the founders of the Protestant faiths of Anglicanism, Methodism and Lutheranism: Luther, Latimer, Cranmer, Wesley, etc.)
So, to formally reject this is heresy, and involves rejecting the teaching authority which Christ guaranteed to His Church.
And that's a biggie. If you don't accept the virginity of Mary on the authority of the Church, why would you accept the doctrines of the Incarnation, or the Trinity, Baptism or the Lord's Supper or even the canon of Scripture on the authority of the Church? If you reject Christ's guarantees to His Church in principle, you've rejected what He constituted as the pillar and foundation of the Truth.
Whether one can be "saved" while rejecting the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, is another question. If one is in the mortal sin of heresy, no.
However, I don't think most theological dissenters are formal heretics. This is because they lack --- I think --- either the degree of knowledge or the degree of intentionality which would have to be there, to constitute a mortal sin. Denial of Mary's virginity is a material heresy ----an error --- but most who have fallen into this error don't reject the foundation of Truth formally, knowingly and contumaciously. That is, they are not willfully and obstinately disobedient to Christ.
At least, so I must assume in charity.
Which is not the same as the PERPETUAL virginity of Mary, which is what is under discussion.
We don't accept it on the authority of the church, or any church.
We accept it on the authority of the Word of God, which stands independent of any church and does not rise and fall on the Catholic church giving Scripture its stamp of approval.
Accepting the authority of Scripture does not by default mean accepting the authority of any one particular denomination.
If you reject Christ's guarantees to His Church in principle, you've rejected what He constituted as the pillar and foundation of the Truth.
The *church* is comprised of believers and is not an independent entity that can or does exist without people.
Nor has anyone ever proved that the CATHOLIC church is what Christ promised He'd build. The Truth is NOT Catholicism, it's Jesus, the WORD. Jesus is Truth, His WORD is truth.
The Holy Spirit gave to the church gifts of teaching but that does not establish the church as authoritative over all believers.
Whether one can be "saved" while rejecting the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, is another question. If one is in the mortal sin of heresy, no.
Thanks for your candid honesty.
However, I don't think most theological dissenters are formal heretics. This is because they lack --- I think --- either the degree of knowledge or the degree of intentionality which would have to be there, to constitute a mortal sin. Denial of Mary's virginity is a material heresy ----an error --- but most who have fallen into this error don't reject the foundation of Truth formally, knowingly and contumaciously.
Going out on a limb here, after having read most of the discussions over the years of the non-Catholic side, I'd have to say that we know fully well what we are rejecting and WHY we are rejecting it.
I am NOT rejecting the clear teaching of Scripture. I am rejecting the doctrines of men taught as truth. I am rejecting the rationalizations and justifications of the Catholic church on a teaching that has no clear basis in Scripture.
There is no reason whatsoever that Mary needed to remain a virgin after the birth of Christ. The prophecy was only that a virgin conceive and bear a son. There is NO prophecy that she would continue in that state. Nor was it necessary.
There is simply no Scriptural basis for presuming that was the case, no matter how many people believed it, no matter how early on in the church the teaching began.
Even in Paul's day heresies were creeping in. Many of his epistles address them. Simply because a teaching is ancient and close to the time of the actual events does not guarantee their integrity.
That is, they are not willfully and obstinately disobedient to Christ.
No, I (we) are not disobedient to Christ but I am "disobedient" to a church that claims to represent God and have authority over me.
JESUS never demanded that we adhere to either the perpetual virginity of Mary, NOR to submit to an ecclesiastical authority that claims authority over all mankind.
I do not disobey Christ, but I do disobey those who do not adhere to clear Scriptural teaching. They are then identified as false teachers, wolves in sheep's clothing.
My authority is the Lord Jesus Christ, not the pope, a priest, or anyone else who CLAIMS they have it over me.
A believer's relationship with God is direct, through the Holy spirit, not through an ecclesiastical organization.
I recognize the authority of God over me, not the claimed authority of a man established organization that CLAIMS authority over me. And that goes for any church that claims to have the power to damn me to hell. No man or church has that power.
Jesus promised that He would BUILD His body. He did not say He would establish an organization that throws its weight around, threatening with damnation those who refuse to submit to its teachings and to come under its authority.
I realize in your eyes and the eyes of most Catholics, that in effect damns me. Y'all are entitled to your opinion.
2 Timothy 1:12 But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.
I know what God has done in me, the new birth He has given me, the deposit of the Holy Spirit to seal me until the day of redemption. My conscience is clear before God.
IIRC, disagreeing with the CHURCH in this period could be quite detrimental to one's continued existence during this time.
Another Catholic invention. Pointed out for the sake of clarity.
I am willfully and obstinately disobedient to Rome's teaching on a LOT of things.
How well does THIS sit with the One True Church?
“If you reject Christ’s guarantees to His Church in principle, you’ve rejected what He constituted as the pillar and foundation of the Truth.” Using the typical faux conflation, you have spread the typical catholic bull skat.
And along with other errors., praying to created beings in Heaven was also held, which is utterly without even one example despite the Holy Spirit providing approx. 200 prayers in Scripture by believers, and in contrast showing only pagans making supplication to someone else in Heaven, and both are contrary what Scripture teaches, in which only God is shown able to hear from Heaven any and all the prayers from earth. Angels and elders offering prayers as a memorial before the final judgments will not do either.
However, Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares. Which fallacious premise is the basis for RC assurance of faith.
It is believed de fide (held an essential part of faith) by Catholics as well as by Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy,
And both declare each other to be in error.
The Orthodox Church opposes the Roman doctrines of universal papal jurisdiction, papal infallibility, purgatory, and the Immaculate Conception precisely because they are untraditional." - Orthodox apologist and author Clark Carlton: THE WAY: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church, 1997, p 135.
Both purgatory and indulgences are inter-corrolated theories, unwitnessed in the Bible or in the Ancient Church.. — http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith7076
Such a “vain deceit” is the teaching of the Immaculate Conception by Anna of the Virgin Mary, which at first sight exalts, but in actual fact belittles Her. Like every lie, it is a seed of the “father of lies” (John 8:44), the devil, who has succeeded by it in blaspheme the Virgin Mary. Together with it there should also be rejected all the other teachings which have come from it or are akin to it. — "Saint" John Maximovitch; http://preachersinstitute.com/2010/06/24/the-error-of-the-immaculate-conception/
Orthodoxy is not simply an alternative ecclesiastical structure to the Roman Catholic Church. The Orthodox Church presents a fundamentally different approach to theology, because She possesses a fundamentally different experience of Christ and life in Him. To put it bluntly, she knows a different Christ from that of the Roman Catholic Church.” — Clark Carlton, THE WAY: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church, 1997;
So, to formally reject this is heresy,
As your premise is false, so is your conclusion. Rome is indicted as heretical, and in the past obedience to the pope could mean one must exterminate all those she calls heretics, but obedience to God requires dissent to Rome just believing the message of some itinerant preachers of the first century did in dissent from the historical magisterial office and stewards of Divine revelation.
And that's a biggie. If you don't accept the virginity of Mary on the authority of the Church, why would you accept the doctrines of the Incarnation, or the Trinity, Baptism or the Lord's Supper or even the canon of Scripture on the authority of the Church? I Mrs Don-o! You have been on this forum for how long, and yet you resort to this most basic fallacy? Which is no more valid than requiring obedience to all the judgments of the Scribes and Pharisees since they who sat in the seat of Moses and so upheld basic truths that conditional obedience to them was enjoined by the Lord. (Mt. 23:2) But whom He reproved by Scripture in the case of errors. (Mt. 15:1-9; 22:41-45; 23:16-22)
Neither must we accept anything on the authority of Rome, but affirm such to the degree that they are warranted on the authority of Scripture, and thus dissent on such things as the sinless status of Mary, baptismal regeneration, the cannibalistic doctrine of the Lord's Supper, and the added books of the OT canon.
If you reject Christ's guarantees to His Church in principle,
Which again is based on a fallacious premise, for again the church actually began in dissent from those who sat in the seat of Moses over Israel, (Mt. 23:2) who were the historical instruments and stewards of Scripture, "because that unto them were committed the oracles of God," (Rm. 3:2) to whom pertaineth" the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Rm. 9:4) of Divine guidance, presence and perpetuation as they believed, (Gn. 12:2,3; 17:4,7,8; Ex. 19:5; Lv. 10:11; Dt. 4:31; 17:8-13; Ps, 11:4,9; Is. 41:10, Ps. 89:33,34; Jer. 7:23)
And instead they followed an itinerant Preacher whom the magisterium rejected, and whom the Messiah reproved them Scripture as being supreme, (Mk. 7:2-16) and established His Truth claims upon scriptural substantiation in word and in power, as did the early church as it began upon this basis. (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.)
you've rejected what He constituted as the pillar and foundation of the Truth.
Which is more error based on error, for Scripture does not teach that the church is the pillar and foundation of the Truth, or is speaking of one particular church body as being the "church of the living God," but which is what Caths extrapolate out of 1 Tim 3:15, which in the Greek simply says "church living God, pillar and ground the truth," with the word for "ground" (ground being what the Douay-Rheims uses, which trad. RC often prefer) being "hedraiōma," which is said to be unseen in Hellenistic Jewish literature or in the LXX or in secular Greek, or it is said to have meant fixed, steadfast, or immovable.
That the church of the living God both supports and is fixed on the Truth (though no word for "of" appears in the Greek, nor for "of" the truth) is substantiated in Scripture, the Lord Himself taking time to go thru Scripture and show the basis for His Messiaship and ministry, and opening the understanding of the disciples (more than just apostles being present) to them. (Lk. 24:44,45)
But the word used for "foundation" in the rest of the NT, such as "For other foundation [themelios] can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11) is not used here, yet Caths seem to invoke 1 Tim 3:15 as if it said that the church was the pillar and basis of the Truth, for RCs seem to imagine that the church was like a kind of "big bang" and did actually begin upon and flow from the foundation of Scripture, to which the NT abundantly quotes, references and appeals to.
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) (Romans 1:1-2) But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: (Romans 16:26)
However, I don't think most theological dissenters are formal heretics. This is because they lack --- I think --- either the degree of knowledge or the degree of intentionality which would have to be there, to constitute a mortal sin.
Well whatever other lack let me assure you that while it is possible, I do knowing reject, in obedience to God via Scripture, the Perpetual Virginity of Mary as binding doctrine, and reject the basis for the veracity of this, that being the novel premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, which is unseen and unnecessary in Scripture.
And thus your arguments for being an RC are refuted and are an argument against being one.