MDYK: Was Mary a Perpetual Virgin?

In this, first, episode of "Mary: Did YOU Know?", we look at the question of "Was Mary a Perpetual Virgin?" Did Jesus have brothers? Would proving that Jesus had brothers matter in terms of this issue? Was Jesus the firstborn Son of Mary? Would it matter for this issue if Jesus was the firstborn Son of Mary? Did Joseph know Mary not until the birth of Jesus? Does it matter for this issue that Joseph did not know Mary until the birth of Jesus? See how the Protestants (Jason Morrison, Steven Anderson, and Mike Winger) try to cover up the Christian belief that Mary WAS a perpetual virgin.

LEARN MORE:

Spot the Fakes:

The Authorities:

Meaning and Interpretation:

Mike Winger's Adventures in Protestantism:

Christian vs. Protestant: on Deuterocanonical Books:

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#MaryDidYouKnow #Bible #Christian

[m.murdock]

I have been a fan of this show. I have been pursued by the arguments in past episodes. However this episode is bringing it all into question. The reasoning in this episode is disgustingly fallacious. Grasping for straws. The part when Mary stating that at that time she was a virgin somehow implied her perpetual virginity was worse than any Protestant interpretation derided on this show. Extremely disappointed.

[laciesmith]

As a Baptist being drawn to Catholicism, and still studying and researching, I can’t wait! 🤗

[johnharkness]

Major argument: if Mary had other children, or even another child, after Our Saviour, why then did He commend Mary to the care of St John (at the foot of the Cross) rather than to His (imaginary) brother, or sister for that matter.

[nm]

Also an important point that adds to this. She was betrothed to Joseph, soon to be married. If she was planning for it to be a normal marriage consummated in the typical way, she would have known that in the near future she would have a chance at conceiving. The fact that she was betrothed to be married, and still wondered how she could possibly conceive a child due to her virginity makes the point even stronger.

[HeavnzMiHome]

Matt Fradd pointed out your channel. You are my new favourite apologist!! Love your sense of humour. Even the title How to be Christian is provocative to non Catholics.

[deusimperator]

You missed an important part. The brethren of Christ mentioned by name are also mentioned to be the sons of Mary of Cleophas in an apostation at the foot of the cross. Cleophas was the father of Matthew, Simon, Jude, Joseph (Jose) and James the Lesser. Cleophas was understood to be the brother of St. Joseph. Also, Mary of Cleophas was a "sister" of the BVM but we know from tradition the BVM was an only child. Sister could mean a close relative, a cousin perhaps. Zebedee was married to Salome.

[thatonecatholicgirl]

This is the best video about Mary's Perpetual Virginity... I have never seen a video explain it as clearly as y'all did. This was great! 
Thank you, How To Be Christian for doing what you guys do.

[takmaps]

For people who say scripture is infallible and should not be added into, Pastor Mike and some of these protestant pastors sure do add definitive statements to scripture and then complain when tradition does the same through inspiration of God The Holy Spirit.

[energie]

Super imposing an english understanding of the term until to a symmetric language is naive. I am Arabic and this term is still used regularly without an afterthought that it means what Protestants insist it means. Kinda like Peter and the rock saga.

[deusimperator]

HTBC Firstborn is a Hebraism, the firstborn has to be purchased from the Lord by a koban. Such a child purchased by a korban was designated as the firstborn. The poor would purchase by two doves. This is known as pidyon haben in Judaism. Remember the firstborn male of everything was given to the Almighty. Lambs, kids, calves all belonged to the kohen. In case of a firstborn male son he had to be purchased back.

[ELECTRICBIGE]

The production quality of your videos is insane

[stevekay]

This channel takes all my old Protestant arguments and completely dismantles them with logic and the Bible. I learned the scriptural reasons that support the perpetual virginity of Mary - eventually - the hard way. I wish I would have seen this video in the beginning and all of it would have made more sense. I was stunned how much of current day Protestantism even disagrees with Calvin and Luther. Some Protestant groups claim Luther and Calvin were correct on all the things in which they disagreed with Catholic doctrine, but for all the issues in which they continued to agree in some way (like the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist in some way, and the perpetual virginity of Mary) then later Protestants disagreed with Luther and Calvin. It was kind of like they were protestors against the first Protestants. They were protestors of the protestors. Then there were protestors, of the protestors, of the protestors. And then it never ends. Once someone decided to seek schism from the Church that Jesus established it set off a chain reaction of schism. One thing the almost terrorized me as a Protestant was Paul's writing that places schism from the Church as sin in Galatians 5:19 - 20.



So this begged the question, did the Reformers need to rip the Church apart and start another brand new Church? And thereby set off an absolute deluge of other schismatics who claimed they were the one true church. The main issue of the Reformation about Forensic Justification was never taught before then. But suppose that it was a clearer elucidation of a Bible teaching, why could not Luther stay in the Church and work out the difference of opinion instead of doing something that the Bible says is a sin that can damn you? Jesus clearly started a Church. He said he would be with the Church to the end of the age. He said that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. It said that he would send the Holy Spirit to guide it in all truth. I suggest to you that His Church did not fail like Protestants say that it did. I would challenge everyone to examine the claims of Catholicism themselves and not believe anti Catholic teachers. Let us keep the unity and keep discussing refinements to theological positions instead of bolting off and starting another church every single day.

[ToxicallyMasculinelol]

I'd like to point out that even if there wasn't scriptural evidence to support the argument for perpetual virginity, that wouldn't prove that the Catholic Church's teaching is false. As a recent convert to Catholicism from atheism, I've been very careful not to look anachronistically at the Bible, or doctrine, or Church history. I think modern people have a very hard time imagining what the period between Jesus and the 4th century was like. We tend not to think about it much, and imagine the Catholic Church has just always been the way it is. Because the Bible doesn't tell the full story of the first few hundred years of Christianity. The record of inspired text stops within the lifetime of the Apostles. But we need to put ourselves in their shoes, and I think if we do that, we can see why the Church has these beliefs about Mary that aren't necessarily explicit in the Bible.

This is precisely why I felt the need to join the Church. It's because it preserves traditions that nobody thought to write down. It's a remnant of the Church's antiquity, a small piece of evidence that men of the Church, at one time, knew Mary personally. They took care of her. They knew what she did after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended. This is what people never seem to talk about when debating this issue. They talk about Mary like she's a fictional character, like we're some fandom arguing about whether a Lord of the Rings character remained a virgin or didn't. Mary was a real person. She had real friends. She was a member of the Church. Jesus commanded John to take care of her. And John went all over the Near East, preaching and taking disciples under his wing.

Polycarp was a disciple of John, and a friend of Papias who was himself a disciple of John for even longer. Polycarp passed down his knowledge to Ignatius and others. It's reasonable to believe that Polycarp, Papias and their brothers and spiritual sons knew Mary personally. They took care of her in her elder years and would _obviously_ have been responsible for her burial. Burial was an extremely important and potentially taboo thing for Second Temple Jews. You not only needed to bury the person, you needed to collect their bones after a decade or two and place them in an ossuary. Probably the #1 thing that John could have done to disappoint Jesus would have been to fail to take care of his mother and her funeral arrangements. Imagine you're John. Can you imagine yourself neglecting the mother for whom Jesus made you _personally_ responsible?

So John, Papias, and Polycarp, and probably several other people, would have had a very good reason to stay in touch with Mary until her death. This is why they knew what happened throughout her life. They were in a position to know whether she remarried (or fornicated, God forgive me for even imagining such a thing) and what happened at the end of her earthly life. This is why there are early Church records describing her Assumption into heaven. The Bible tells us most of the facts that are important for our salvation, but it's not a Church history textbook. The Church compiled it for its own use, but that doesn't mean it imparted all of its institutional memory into the Bible. After all, only the word of God was fit for the Bible. Only inspired words could be included. These men needed to be highly selective about what they included, and they couldn't just attach every note someone made into the Bible.

So, plenty of the memories of the Apostles and their disciples were not included in the Bible. But those memories became Church tradition. In 1500 years, it's easy to lose touch with the past, and begin asking yourself whether your traditions are genuine memories, or merely urban legends and tall tales. That's natural. But that doesn't mean that ALL tradition is nonsense. And at a certain point, you need to ask yourself whether you have faith in Jesus Christ's ability to steer his Church towards the truth. So far, I'd say it's worked out pretty well. Despite wars, plagues, famine, bad popes, schisms, competing papal claims, and all manner of things that toppled every contemporary empire in the world, the Church has remained. No institution has survived longer.

I don't know about you, but for me, that speaks louder than words. After all, why should I believe the words in the Bible? I know the Bible demonstrates that Jesus is God, but first you need to accept that the Bible is more authoritative than other written works. And why should you? Clearly, plenty of atheists don't. I didn't, until quite recently. I treated it as no different from the Quran or the Rigveda. It was a human literary achievement, no more, no less. But I came to believe in Jesus, somehow. Why? I wound up researching the historical evidence for the Resurrection and for the reliability of the New Testament canon. That didn't prove that the Bible was true, but it proved that _something crazy_ happened in Israel around ~30 AD.

And what happened next is pretty difficult to explain naturalistically. 12 Jewish peasants spread out all over the Mediterranean and beyond and managed to conquer the greatest empire the world had ever seen, or will ever see. How on _Earth_ did that happen? How the hell do skeptics explain this? Not only that, how does anyone explain the Jews surviving as a distinct ethnic, cultural, and religious minority, everywhere they went, for nearly 4000 years, despite genocide after defeat after slavery? None of this makes much sense. And then this Church that conquered Rome managed to spread globally and capture the hearts and minds of a _quarter_ of the human population. Either the Jews are freaks of nature and the story of Jesus is the greatest story ever composed, or something supernatural is supporting it, or both.

Looking at the history of the Church, it became patently obvious to me that the Church is supernatural in nature. Its ascendancy is inexplicable otherwise. And that accords very well with what I learned about the historical evidence for Jesus and the Gospels. So, I gave them a read. And it's very apparent throughout the entire New Testament that Jesus intended to build a Church, not write a book. He never gives any indication that he wants his disciples to write a book about him, or even mentions the possibility that someone might write about him in the future. Instead, he wants his followers to preach about him, baptize people, get people to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and ultimately join a single, over-arching collective organization that settles all disputes until such time as he returns.

Given this, coupled with the historical background, it seems very clear to me that the Church Jesus built was not founded on literature, but on memorized stories preached by his Apostles. Everything he did was memorable. Every story he told was in the form of a memorable homily or allegory. And they also lent themselves very well to being illustrated, not merely written down. That's why, for much of the Church's history, the Gospels were taught via icons — illustrations of the narrative. Whether painted on wood or immortalized in stained glass, those spoke to the 95% of the population who could neither read nor write. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? (1/3)

[candyclews]

Why have I only just discovered you? Binge watching. Loving the videos.

[eucharistenjoyer]

While I can understand the wish among protestants of knowing the truth behind doctrines (since magisterium or tradition has no or little authority to them), I still feel a bit sad to see how some protestants seem to have a "devotion" to seek every way they can to make Mary to be some kind of surrogate uterus of no importance.

[robertdunbar]

Hey HTBC, I want to add to your argument on Mary's vow of virginity. She was betrothed to Joseph. Imagine you're betrothed to someone, and an angel tells you that you're going to have a child and he's going to be the president of the United States. Your normal reaction would be like, "Oh. Cool. That makes sense, considering the fact that I'm about to get married to this person and it's likely that we're going to have children." If you're someone who has taken a vow of virginity, however, you'd be like, "Okay, so God tells me I'm going to have children. How is this going to happen because I've vowed to God to be a virgin?" The literal Greek is "Pos estai touto epei andra ou ginosko?" Which in its original order says, "How will be this since a man not I know." My Bible translates this as "I know not man." Another way you could possibly render this is "I do not have sexual relations with men." This goes to show that Mary likely had taken a vow of virginity. God bless How to be Christian, and keep up the good work!

[jvlp]

Matthew 1:25... narrates that "he (Joseph - husband of Blessed Mary) KNEW (had marital sex) her not until she brought forth a SON and he (Joseph) called/named Him Jesus."

The English word "KNEW or KNOWN" in the context of the Holy Scripture (Word of God) is a modest way to say "had Marital Sex."... nothing is CLEARER than this Biblical passage...

However, since God took her VIRGINITY with her consent at a younger age (perhaps not even of legal age of 18 years old in our time), I firmly believe that God Almighty had RESTORED (gave back) Blessed Mary's Virginity before she died even after having other Biological Children from her husband Joseph...

Nothing is Impossible with God if God wills it... When God takes something, God also gives it back... When God closed the Door, God also opened another Door... When God allowed the 1st Temple to be destroyed, God also allowed the 2nd Temple to be restored...

This "VIRGINITY RESTORATION" of Blessed Mary falls under the SPOKEN/ORAL TRADITION of the early CHURCHES in Asia Minor of the 1st Century A.D. and not under the written/epistle Tradition taught by the Apostles of Christ...

Blessed Mary is Spiritually Married to God, just like the CHURCH (male/female), but her literal body/flesh was not, that was why the Angel said to Joseph in his dream, not to be afraid to "TAKE" Mary to be his wife (flesh/body), and he obeyed God and TOOK her... and KNEW her only after she gave birth to a Son, which he named him Jesus (Yeshua)...

This became the Roman Catholic Doctrine of "Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary, " which I firmly believe is God's sole doing and not Blessed Mary's self-doing alone...

Glory, Praise, and Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus... Amen and Amen...

[josephbednarz]

Your logic for Mary being a virgin is sound. Your logic for Mary being a perpetual virgin is just as lacking as the Protestant view that she was not. You do admit that the passage does not prove your point, and that it only opens up the conversation.
If we were going on assumptions, I would fall on the side that she was not a perpetual virgin.
The Bible does say that Joseph was going to divorce her because she was pregnant already. The angel convinced him to stay with Mary. So we do know that at one point she was a virgin, and she did know for the foreseeable near future that she was going to be a virgin. Most likely she knew that at some point she had an expectation to consummate her marriage. I see your point, but it is just as loose assumption as the Protestant view. You are correct, scripture does not prove either side.
I would say that this is not a huge issue. I am not sure why it would be a stumbling block between denominations.
Each denomination has beliefs that are derived from the authorities. These are topics of research and interpretation. I am not sure how this would cause a split or schism between denominations.

[catholiceverinchrist]

The reason her virginity matters is because she has been revealed by God as Ark of the Covenant and the New Eve.

[ericgatera]

Hahahahahaha ... I laughed and laughed. I got side-tracked for a moment. C'mon Ferris, you don't punch an Iconic reformer. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣