Posted on 08/28/2008 9:21:36 AM PDT by Ottofire
Us premils have always known that origen was given to flights of fancy.
I was teaching Isaiah’s new heavens and new earth last week. Same as Revelation’s.
Didn’t really need to refer to Origen at all.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
Sometimes, it seems like . . .
?modern? ?man?
intensely goes from the extreme of wishing to be a perpetual virgin to the extreme of wishing to be the abject opposite.
Both miss the uhhhh goal.
Neither spirit devoid of FITTING respect for, care for our earthly life in the flesh—as this bootcamp IS our thrownness for our learning and training to rule and reign with Christ . . .
NOR
the flesh UNruled by Holy Spirit . . . both are off the track.
People believe what they want to believe, sadly.
AMEN, Manic! You got that right. Hallelujah, Jesus.
Says who? You? How did you get to be an authority on the sources of Catholic doctrine?
Both Jerome and Pope Damasus slapped down Helvidius over the issue, and neither one referred to Epiphanius in their refutation.
The doctrine is pretty easy to prove from the Scriptures anyway; Jesus had no right to give Mary to John if he had younger (living) siblings. Mary's question to the angel makes no sense if she planned to have relations with her husband, etc.
Says who? You? How did you get to be an authority on the sources of Catholic doctrine?
Both Jerome and Pope Damasus slapped down Helvidius over the issue, and neither one referred to Epiphanius in their refutation.
The doctrine is pretty easy to prove from the Scriptures anyway; Jesus had no right to give Mary to John if he had younger (living) siblings. Mary's question to the angel makes no sense if she planned to have relations with her husband, etc.
UNMITIGATED NONSENSE.
Vaticon a priori ASSUMPTIONS are showing again.
Jesus WAS GOD, IS GOD. HE HAD "THE RIGHT" TO GIVE HIS MOM TO THE CARE OF ANYONE HE SAW FIT TO GIVE HER TO THE CARE OF! DOH!
CUSTOM was not LAW. And there were plenty of reasons that custom and even law were sometimes made exception to. Sheesh!
If I'd had a bunch of half siblings, most of whom didn't know what to do with my unprecedented ministry and identity vs John the Beloved who leaned on my breast, getting as close to God and Paragon Love as he could . . . soaking up all that I had to give him--I'd have been foolish to have given her to LESS than John regardless of whether my siblings had been blood quadruplicates or whatever.
Sounds like Vaticon rubber logic struck again.
I have no clue where you're coming from with the illogic of Mary's question to the angel. Has nothing to do with future sexual relations with hubby fulfilling her role as wife honorably as St Paul outlined rather clearly . . . the wife's body not being her own--certainly not exclusively . . . though I gather the Vatican would have Mary disobeying Scripture on that score. What balderdash.
The real question is why, from the Patristic era on, was trying to show “perpetual virginity” so important?
If sex within marriage is holy and a good thing, then why should it prove Mary as somehow more holy if she refused to have normal relations with her husband (just like St. Paul commanded of all married couples) after Jesus’ birth?
The answer is easy: Early pagan prejudices creeping into the Church, which made otherworldly chastity seem more holy and righteous. Gnostic influences were strong (body/material is bad....soul/spiritual is good...) and since sex, and specifically women, were associated with the “prison” of the material body, naturally, the most holy woman of all time, MUST have refrained from dirty, nasty, sex...FOREVER!
Of course the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) know nothing of this, and neither did the Apostles who wrote the New Testament, but hey, if later bishops of Rome and other sages said it, it has to be true, right?
I think you’re absolutely correct.
Though those without ears to hear or eyes to see will never admit it short of a Damascus road level miracle.
Please see my post#28 above.
It didn't become an issue until pagans came into the Church by the tens of thousands--and it is amazing the anti-sex attitudes some had in those days.
St. Augustine in about AD 400 had to deal with a controversy between those who actually said real Christians must all be celibate, and those who said (as modern Protestants do) that celibacy or married made no difference to one's spiritual state as a Christian. St.'Augy split the difference, saying that celibacy was indeed the higher state, but that married people too could be acceptable Christians.
This became the standard view in the Middle Ages and is more or less what the Roman Catholic view still is today. If one just reads Paul in I Cor. 7 one could conclude this...but only without tensioning that instructional passage against the whole of the rest of the scriptures.
Even the classical doctrine of original sin Augustine understood as being the result of "concupisceny" (Lust) which, since it was unavoidable during the sex-act--passed on sin to the conceived child. (logically I guess he would have speculated in vitro concieved children as not having original sin....)Of course many accept (as to I) the doctrine of original sin without that explanation.
The literal physical perpetual virginity of Mary was seen as so incredibly important that theories abounded (not kidding now...) on how Jesus was born without passing through the birth canal....(thereby physically preserving the hymen). Many believed that part of the miracle of His birth was the baby Jesus just suddenly appearing in Mary's arms--skipping the hard part.
I have to say though, while this is a classic example of a fully extra-biblical doctrine added because of cultural bias and notions...and kept due to slavishness to Tradition, still, it really isn’t that huge of a deal. I’d fight a battle with the Romanists over much more important territory than this.
Besides that, odd as it may seem today, so strong was this tradition, that even the 1st generation of Protestants—huge intellects who went back to the bible for everything—and risked murder by burning every day for that, still clung to the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity. While they abandoned praying to her, or treating her like a goddess like 4th person of the Trinity, however, both Luther and Calvin couldn’t bear to think of Mary as ever having relations with Joseph.
In fact Luther’s home church was St. Mary’s and he was well known for his high respect and veneration (in the proper sense of the term) for Mary, even while leaving Rome’s obsession with her behind...
I venture psychologically is must be something like never wanting to think of your own mother (shudder) having relations....and perhaps that’s a big reason why the Romanists have kept the dogma all these centuries still.
†Paul said it is a debt owed to the spouse.
The protestant obsession with Mary's sex life is creepiness in action.
All the details I mentioned above originated from Roman Catholic apologists for PV, not Protestant ones. All we maintain is that after Jesus’ birth, the blessed mother of God lived the normal life, in the most godly way possible, of a wife and mother.
The protestant obsession with Mary’s sex life is creepiness in action.
Amen. See Ps.69:8.
Speaking the Truth is important to the Catholic Church. It is what She does.
What an utterly OUTRAGEOUSLY DUPLICITOUS, HYPOCRITICAL, DOUBLE-STANDARD, PARADOXICALLY ABSURD assertion.
Elements of The Vatican/Roman edifice/institution/organization/church has spent centuries concocting fantasy after fantasy . . . then trumping up false inference, extrapolation, assumption, pretending to be evidence supporting such fantasies ABOUT MARY'S SEX LIFE.
Yet Biblers are supposed to be the ones with an obsession about such? We have definitely fallen down the ultimate Alice's rabbit hole--where unreality to the max has become "holy doctrine!"??????
WHAT UNMITIGATED BALDERDASH!
It is various Vatican departments which have for centuries, bent over backwards so far concocting false UNBIBLICAL pseudo-'evidence' about Mary's sex life that they are in perpetual back-flips!
God have mercy.
I'm beyond flabbergasted--beyond shocked. I wouldn't have thought that any Vaticon reps could have shocked me any further. Boy was I wrong.
Further: Paul asserted Holy Scripture. Is it now the Vatican perspective that Holy Scripture is NOT A COMMAND FROM GOD????
Oh, that's right, without the red wax seal of the Vaticon magicsterical, and the Papal nod, God Himself dare not assert anything. /s
God have mercy. What an outrage!
For I endure scorn for your sake, and shame covers my face. I am a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my own mother's sons; for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
Actually, this Scripture should settle the whole issue 100% conclusively. The whole blasphemous rotten fantasy of Mary's purported PV crashes in ashes on this one Scripture alone.
It's particularly interesting that Holy Spirit went to great emphasis to articulate
SHOULD settle once and for all the nonsense about the New Testament refs purportedly referring to cousins, uncles etc. What a bureaucratic lie that is! MY OWN MOTHER'S SONS is clearly BROTHERS! Sheesh!
The whole bureaucratic power-mongering socially manipulative self-serving deception is shown for what it is by this one Scripture--100% UTTERLY FALSE--an institutional concoction to further the political, social goals and coffers of the institution.
God have mercy. What an insult to the authentic Mary and her devoted BIBLICALLY OBEDIENT wifely motherly duties post Christ's earthly walk. INCREDIBLE.
has been putting forth fantasies, concocted assumptions, deliberate falsehoods for centuries.
Denial of that is also not exactly the most honest perspective.
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