But . . . but . . . but "never" does it much better if they are to be forever celibate. "Until" is just too iffy to build a dogma on.
I've wondered myself. I know in some cases, humans have a problem of looking for answers where God doesn't give any.
Yet. That's what progressive revelation was about. Now it's progressive interpretation, made clear after time and the scientific method cut in. See Daniel 12:8,9,13
It seems pretty clear. Born of a virgin. David's heir. Is there something else I'm missing?
Yes. Mary needed to retain observably the tokens of her virginal appearance right up until birth. But she as no longer considered a virgin after the babe's exit through the birth canal. After that, no other proof is needed for Jesus' miraculous birth narrative.
But Joseph needs to be the husband of record when Jesus is born into Joseph's household. The royal pedigree by primogeniture of sonhood from a father tracing back to Solomon is where Jesus' right to the throne is transferred, once and for all time.
Jesus was credited as being Joseph's son by those familiar with the family (Luke 4:22), who were present at Jesus' reading from Isaiah when He announced Himself as the fulfillment of that passage.
. . . hypotheticals . . .
Occurrences fulfilling prophecies are not hypotheticals.
I always try to separate personal ideas from scriptural truths.
Not if the ideas are prompted by the Holy Spirit by a prophet giving a Word as from God, "Thus saith the LORD . . ." or a Spirit-given interpretation (1 Cor. 2:9-16).
Was Jesus Joseph's son genetically? There is no reason that the Holy Spirit couldn't have used Joseph's DNA as a template when Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Joseph's flesh was DNA-derived cellular material, infected with sin, and able to transmit only soul-life, but not physical or Spiritual life. His heritage was condemnation--death of the body and disunity from fellowship with Jehovah Elohim.
I believe Scripture says that Jesus was the Second Adam, not a second Joseph cloned from Joseph's sin-stained tissue. Nor from any part of Mary's either.
Everyone knows that Jesus' body needed to be of sin-free, but human, genetic matter. If not from Joseph or Mary, then where? Speculating, why not of the very same never-dying perfect tissue of which the body of the First Adam was made, into which Elohim breathed?
"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen 2:7 AV).
If, by a manner not yet known to us, God invested Himself into such a fragment of perfect flesh, then implanted that Being into the willing, trusting Mary (Heb. 11:6), what then? (Implanting a living zygote foreign to a host mother's womb, even a virginal one, is something we do now know how to accomplish, isn't it?)
Not willing to admit their ignorance--being unlike faithful Daniel who accepted the limits placed on himself--in their false pride and "infallible" logic they reasoned out their own plan for this. And now, unwilling to walk this unnatural concept back, they are saddled with a dogma that is just as insupportable as the ignorance that invented a figment of the imagination called "transubstantiation" to explain a statement that needed no explanation when given the proper linguistic framework.
Ponder on this for a while, eh? Jesus was/is yet fully God and fully human, as human as Adam was before his faith crumbled under the serpent's devious capture of Eve's trust, when she became perfidious.
Says who? You really need to be careful adding to scripture and using human reasoning to understand the mysteries of God.
No, I do not accept the human rationalization that Mary's virginal status was changed because of birth. As a confessional Lutheran, I reject that idea.
Solid Declaration of the Book of Concord VIII: The Person of Christ: 24. On account of this personal union and communion of the natures, Mary, the most blessed Virgin, bore not a mere man, but, as the angel [Gabriel] testifies, such a man as is truly the Son of the most high God, who showed His divine majesty even in His mother's womb, inasmuch as He was born of a virgin, with her virginity inviolate. Therefore she is truly the mother of God, and nevertheless remained a virgin.
This declaration does not deal with Mary's perpetual virginity, but it does confess that she remained a virgin after the birth.