Posted on 12/23/2010 11:08:38 AM PST by marshmallow
Not every birth is as tough as others. There are still rare occurences today of women giving birth that have very little pain. Of course most have pain and some a lot of pain and trouble, but could I perceive God lessening the pain of childbirth for Mary? Sure. Does it matter as a critical issue of my faith? Of course not.
Da bible sez......da bible sez.....
We all know what the Bible says.
The important question is what the Bible means. And quite clearly it means different things to different people all of whom have in common the "sola scriptura" mantra.
To understand the Bible, it's important to have some understanding of tradition and we get this from those who were taught by the Apostles and their successors. Dismissing the teaching of the Church Fathers and two millenia of tradition in favor of a purely personal interpretation is unwise in the extreme.
The Church gave us the Scriptures, not vice versa. It is the Church which interprets them.
What is that supposed to mean? I am not making up doctrine out of thin air.
“It is very clear from the original greek words, they had normal marital relations, but had children.”
Not so. Here is how the KJV renders the passage.
“Then Joseph being raised
from sleep did as the angel of
the Lord had bidden him, and
took unto him his wife.”
What does ‘took unto him his wife mean?
The actual Greek word is “parelaben” - to accept. So Joseph Accepted Mary as his wife.
“If he’s an only child Scripture would say “only” rather than “firstborn”, as “firstborn” would be misleading.”
Matthew is referring to the birth of Jesus. Why would he refer to Jesus as her only son? He’s her firstborn. He’s not making an editorial comment here, ‘btw, Jesus was her only son’. No, not at all. He’s referring to Christ’s birth in the present tense.
Exactly what it says on the tin.
Mary was a Virgin her whole life.
But men wrote the bible too. Why do you trust men to scribe the words correctly but not to interpret the words correctly?
>>Is Apostle Paul perverse?<<
No. I think Paul understands human nature. After all,
1 Corinthians 7: 8-9
8Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Roboy translation of 9: If you’re horny, get married, or you’ll find yourself sleeping around or, worse, if you are a Catholic priest, you could find yourself answering to some pedophilia charges.
No where in Scripture does it say that!
Translation: I didn't read St. Jerome's words.
If a Doctor of the Church holds no water for you, I fear I have little chance.
>>Does it matter as a critical issue of my faith? Of course not.<<
Excellent! I just get a feeling it does for some. I’m still trying to figure out why it even matters. It is as relevant as whether she ever had a period or defecated in her life. And, based on scripture, just as hard to argue against her having sex with her husband.
Let’s not even get into the scripture about “your body is not your own, but your spouses...”
In sales that is called a “Big Fat Claim” (BFC). It is a very effective tool, IF YOU CAN PROVE IT.
Well, read this and tell me what you think. Some snippets.
But in any event, by the end of the fourth century and into the fifth, Mary’s in partu virginity is upheld unanimously. We can see this in the declarations of various ancient synods and papal letters especially. Here is a list of authorities I have taken from Juan Luis Bastero’s book Mary, Mother of the Redeemer (by the way, I recommend Bastero as the best book on Mariology that can currently be purchased. It’s a must buy):That’s where belief in a “real and perpetual virginity” gets you.…
According to Church tradition and the teaching of the Magisterium it is not enough to accept just that Jesus’ conception was virginal; his virginal birth must also be professed. (If the “virgin birth” just meant the sort of birth a woman underwent who conceived virginally (which is what our modernists are saying), it would be superfluous and redundant for the tradition to make a point out of how the virginal birth is a distinct marvel from the virginal conception. If the former is reducible to the latter, why bother mentioning it?)
…
Mary is exempt from the curse of original sin. Even death itself comes to her in as much as she is naturally mortal, not as a punishment for sin. So if pain in child birth is a result of original sin, then why would Mary have to undergo this curse? She is not cursed. She is blessed above all women because she is the immaculate Mother of God.
…
Physical integrity as a constitutive element in virginity is explicitly mention in canon 3 of the Lateran Synod: “The ever-virgin Mary conceived without seed through the action of the Holy Spirit…and incorruptibiliter gave him birth without any detriment to her virginity, which remained inviolable even after his birth”. You really can’t get around the word incorruptibiliter. It upholds the traditional understanding of Mary’s in partu virginity. Other texts could be cited to the same effect.
Honest, I’m not making this stuff up.
Enjoy!
Starwars Jedi are just as proven to be biblical entities by scripture as the premise of this thread.
Maybe one of the three wise men following a star was a small green muppet.
>>Translation: I didn’t read St. Jerome’s words.
If a Doctor of the Church holds no water for you, I fear I have little chance.<<
No. I read them, or at least enough to see where he was going, and what evidence he was using. I reject that I must read every apologetic thoughts just because they commit them to print. So I am coming from a position of ignorance on the last half of the OP, but not the first half.
It is intellectual gymnastics attempting to prove something via over-complex language (more in vogue back then than it is now) and an attempt to push down as “irrelevant or scant”, arguments agianst your position, no matter how compelling they are, and propping up the “proofs” of your own position, regardless of the mountain of inference required to accept them as anything more than wild speculation.
IOW, I read enough to realize that he gives NO reasonable proof, whatsoever, to believe a single word he is saying regarding the point he is attempting to make.
I don’t need to read every page of Mein Kampf to know where Hitler was coming from and attempting to go either. And it was not as painful to read as this was.
>>We all know what the Bible says.
The important question is what the Bible means.<<
Yeah. I’ll say. :)
There was a visiting pastor to my place of work about twelve years ago. I thought it was odd that a private company would allow a pastor to have a “bible study” at their place of business. And the subject was “homosexuality and the Bible”. And two of the guys I worked with, who were known homosexuals, highly recommended it, so I went.
It was a homosexual preacher using scripture to “prove” that homosexuality was ok.
Yep, it’s all about what the bible “means”, and if you have to spend 40 pages twisting scripture to support your position, you may want to re-evaluate your position. Especially on something as basic as whether or not Mary was a perpetual virgin or homosexuality is a sin. These are not lofty complex discussions of biblical prophesy, and other “through a glass darkly” issues.
One can see what the bible says about it and take it at face value. The language is, after all, unlike the original post, pretty conversational.
>>Why do you trust men to scribe the words correctly but not to interpret the words correctly?<<
Are you a Mormon? Do you believe in modern prophets? I believe it ends with the Bible. Everything I hear or read after that is someone’s interpretation of scripture. I have the right to accept it as reasonable or throw it out, thanks to the spirit and intellect with which my Creator endowed me.
Did you know that the Church of Christ does not believe in using musical instruments in church? They have nice lengthy explanations for it, similar to the OP. It doesn’t mean they are correct. Frankly, I think it’s comical.
But none of this stuff is what a friend calls “bullet doctrines”*.
*A Bullet doctrine is a doctrine you would die - take a bullet - for.
It’s only relevent if you want to turn her into deity and pray to her and believe she is the path that God uses to give graces to the rest of us.
You focus on the wrong verse. Verse 25 says he did not KNOW Mary UNTIL Jesus was born.
To deny what this passage says is to deny the entire context of why this passage was written. It is an affirmation that Jesus was not conceived by normal means, because Joseph had not KNOWN his wife before that. AFTER THAT, he did. It would not have to be explained as UNTIL if they never had sex (which is what KNOW means in this sentence, and everywhere else the issue of sexual relations is discussed, it’s “KNOW” or “WENT INTO HER”). If they never KNEW each other this sentence would not have said UNTIL Jesus was born, but it would have simply been “Joseph did not EVER know Mary” period.
Your post demonstrates the problem with adding beliefs to scripture, even with good intentions. When you make stuff up, you end up having to explain ramifications.
It reminds me a bit of the end of the movie “The Invention of Lying”, where the first man able to lie, comes up with a god to help his mother cope with her dying. Word gets out and the whole world wants to know more about this god. As he expands the lie, it brings people to incredible joy, happiness and peace until they start asking questions about ramifications. And then the complexity bites him and the whole race, as the negatives start popping up en-mass.
The bible does not have those problems. People’s inaccurate interpretations do. It is one reason LDS is unraveling. I think it is why this belief, as it becomes more public and easily debated, is unraveling. Man made religious beliefs cannot survive the spotlight of the internet.
>>It’s only relevent if you want to turn her into deity and pray to her and believe she is the path that God uses to give graces to the rest of us.<<
I suspected something like that. And it hit me as I read that, that this means it is LITERALLY anti-Christian and, by definition, evil teaching.
After all the only thing that governs is that Mary was the mother of Jesue, Son of God, the Word made man. She was with Jesus from birth to the cross. Behold your mother.
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