Posted on 05/31/2011 11:34:50 AM PDT by sigzero
Mary was a virgin who was to conceive by being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God. Few in Christian realms would deny Mary was a virgin and remained a virgin through pregnancy and the birth of Christ. This was the ultimate fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah:
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14, emphasis added)
However, Mary’s virginity after the birth of Christ can become a heated debate in some circles. Though some may think this is a Roman Catholic versus Protestant view, it is not. Many Protestants, including people like Martin Luther and John Calvin, have held to Mary remaining a virgin for the duration of her life. Let’s look at the issues in a little more detail.
(Excerpt) Read more at answersingenesis.org ...
Apologies in advance if someone else has already posted this, but wouldn’t a sexless marriage violate 1 Corinthians 7 (The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband)?
You believe I am not in Christ because I do not belong to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is an organization of believers. I am a believer in Christ. I see no requirement to join any particular church denomination in the Scripture.
>>Can you accept that the passage CAN BE read as I do?<<
The fact that people do read it that way is proof of the truth of your statement. Likewise, homosexuals read some scripture to support a homosexual lifestyle. On it’s own the fact that some read scripture a certain way does not make their interpretation more valid.
I have even heard that it remained intact through the birth of our Lord - ‘like light passing through a window’.
Sheesh. “Virgin” itself might be a mistranslation of ‘young maiden’, the writers of the Bible didn't dwell on the marital relations of Mary and Joseph but I hope they led a full and rewarding marital life and provided Jesus with “brothers” (although that might be a mistranslation of ‘close kinsman’).
Nothing sinful about sex within marriage - it is part of the full and rewarding life that God has planned for us - and we should be grateful for that.
Does this Scripture no longer apply today? If it does, where do you find your "local gathering"?
>>hmm, never thought Pentecostals believed in baptism for the remission of sins. i thought they believed in asking Jesus into their heart and then they are “saved”. am i wrong?<<
Well, it does bring up the interesting question: What happens when one accepts Jesus as their savior and then, on their way to the baptismal, they have an aneurism and die?
Dear Sister,If you read Scripture with the understanding of typology as the early Christian did you would understand that the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament regarding many things including the perpetual virginity of Our Blessed Mother.
Reading the Bible this way(typology) would open your eyes to so many things
Here is a good explanation of the perpetual virginity from an Orthodox site that shows the typology and how the early church understood this
I) Typology and the Foreshadowing of the Relationship of Mary to Christ and Christians
A) The Fathers of the Church held Mary to be “blessed” (Luke 1:48) and that “God had done great things for her” (v.49) and that God had “exalted the humble and meek” (v.52). Mary, in saying to God “Behold the bondslave of the Lord, be it done to me according to Your will”, is an example to all Christians to humble ourselves before the will of God and that “God resists the proud but gives abundant grace to the humble” (James 4:6)
B) The early Church Fathers recognized the reality that it was through Mary, in her submissive humility before the will of God, that our salvation was manifested in the flesh of Christ, and that flesh was taken from her alone and no one else.
C) It is often stated that “Mary is never mentioned in the Bible by Paul” and she is never exalted in the Scriptures. However, both Luke and Matthew spend almost 10% of their Gospels telling about the relationship of Mary to God and Christ. And MOST of the things told about in the Gospels are never mentioned by St. Paul in his epistles, nor are there any quotes from Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels repeated in Paul’s epistles except the Eucharistic fomulas. Does this mean Paul never taught what Christ taught? Does it mean Paul was totally ignorant of the teachings and ministry of Christ? Of course not. So, it would be a mistake to base a doctrine or even a view of the relationship of Mary to Jesus based on silence in St. Paul’s epistles.
1) The Orthodox view of Mary is solidly biblical and like any other “commentary” on scripture that goes beyond the words of the Bible itself, tells the believer about the relationship of Mary to our salvation in Christ. Just as modern Biblical expositors have looked at the Old Testament and understand that there were types and shadows of Christ, the early Church Fathers also say the same Christological types but also saw a typology that included the Mother of our Savior.
D) Ultimately the Orthodox Church sees the “exaltation of Mary” as an exaltation of Christ.
1) Mary in Orthodox iconography is always portrayed with Christ. Mary’s place in salvation history is due to Christ and not herself. Apart from bearing Christ, she is no different from any other believer. To deny the maternal “Mother/Son” relationship of Mary and Jesus is to deny His humanity. To deny Jesus’ love for His Mother and her’s for Him as she wept at the foot of His cross is to deny their human and divine love for one another.
2) It is with a deep reverence for the mystery of the Incarnation, God become flesh in Mary, that the early Fathers approached Mary. These are some of the excerpts from Orthodox hymnography that teaches the Christian about who Mary is, her role in our salvation, her relationship to Christ and her purity, humility and perpetual virginity.
II) OT Prophecy and Mary in the Church Fathers
A) The Church Fathers understood Ezekiel 44:2 to be a typology of the perpetual virginity of Mary: “And the LORD said to me, "This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter by it, because the LORD God of Israel has entered by it; therefore it shall be shut." The gate of the womb of Mary (the God bearer) was left sacred. For another to enter it would not be proper.
1) Psalm 67: "the mountain of God is a fertile mountain, a bedewed mountain, a fertile mountain; why gaze you with envy, O ye bedewed mountains? for this is the mountain in which God hath deigned to dwell." Mary, according to the exposition of the Church, is the"mountain fertile, and bedewed by the Spirit” a prophecy of the virgin birth.
2) Christ’s Mother would come from the clan of David: "a staff shall spring forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up from his root; and the Spirit of God will rest upon him." (Isaiah. 11, 1, 2; 53, 2). The Church understands the Virgin Mary to be that "staff." "A staff did Isaiah call Thee: from it did a beauteous blossom -- Christ [our] God come forth unto us." The expression: "the root of Jesse," coming from the Hebrew for: a stump, a log, gives rise to the thought of the humbled state of David's descendants at the time when that staff -- the Virgin Mary-- was springing forth from it. St. Paul relates this prophecy to Jesus Christ (Rom. 15:12)
3) (Song of Solomon) "The garden is enclosed -- O My sister, My bride, -- the fountainhead is sealed, -- the fountainhead of the garden and the well-spring of living water." "Thy garden is enclosed, O Virgin Mother, and Thy fountainhead is sealed by the Spirit of God, thus did the most-wise one sing in his songs." The word "sealed," according to St. John of Damascus, is a type of the ever-virginity of the Mother of God. And the Church teaches: "The choir of prophets did truly call Thee the sealed fountainhead and the locked door, describing for us the manifest signs of Thy virginity, O All-Hymned One, which Thou didst preserve even after having given birth."
B) Other Examples of Typology from The Fathers
1) The "Temple of God" She is the Holy of Holies in which God dwelt, and where God met Israel for their salvation. (Ephraim the Syrian, Ambrose, Gregory Nazianzen)
2) The "Rod of Jesse" from whom blossomed Christ (Irenaeus of Lyons, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Jerome, Ephraim the Syrian)
3) The "East Gate" (Jerome)
4) The "King's Palace" (the place which God dwelt) (Ephraim the Syrian, Ambrose)
5) "More Spacious than the Heavens", which is also the name of the icon of Mary over the altar in an Orthodox Church. This means her womb contained the uncontainable God. (Athanasius of Alexandria, Ephraim the Syrian, Epiphanius of Salamis, Proclus of Constantinople)
6) The "Imperishable Wood" from which the Ark of the Covenant was fashioned (Hippolytus)
7) The "Source of the Bread of Life" (Ephraim the Syrian, Peter Chrysologus)
8) The "Burning Bush that is Not Consumed" a reference to the burning bush of Moses and Hebrews 10, our God is a consuming fire. Mary contained God and was not consumed by the fire of His holiness. (Gregory of Nyssa)
9) The Untilled Paradise, the Tree of Life: like the Tree of Life in Paradise which grew with no man tilling the soil or planting the seed, Mary bore Christ with no man, and the seed planted by God. She was the tree which bore the Fruit which we eat to gain eternal life, an antitype of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden which bore the fruit of eternal life. (Luke 1:42 “Blessed is the fruit of your womb!”)
http://www.ourlifeinchrist.com/Program%20Notes/mary2_121904.htm
I said no such thing, nor does the Church teach that.
All who have been baptized share some form of union with Christ's church.
Lol! I guess we can pray for them in purgatory. ;)
>>i would say 1,500 years of unanimous belief makes for a “strong consensus” :)<<
I wouldn’t, since most of the members of that church could not read and were similar in their beliefs to modern Muslims are in theirs. Heck, the pictures in the leaded glass of the Catholic churches are from the day when they were basically “the bible in comics” for the masses. It does not mean there were not many devout Catholics, but I believe much of what they believed was baloney foisted upon them by flawed men, some merely misguided and others corrupt in their motives.
And Catholicism is not the only “ancient” Christian church.
A simple “No, I’m right and you’re wrong” will do.
You want me to read the typology but dismiss the plain reading about Mary being a virgin until Jesus was born. Okay.
Meant to ping you to post 267
Interesting discussion. I am out. Need to attend to my family. Blessings to all!
OK. So which "body of belivers" is THE body of belivers? Which "body of belivers" always taught the truth, even for the hundreds of years without a complete Bible? And how did they teach the Truth WITHOUT a Bible?
>>Does this Scripture no longer apply today? If it does, where do you find your “local gathering”?<<
It varies. Some meet in homes. Some in temporary digs that they have to set up every week. Some in huge mega-churches. Some in bars and restaurants even. Kinda like the first believers. Fortunately, we don’t have to hide out in this country. Yet.
Many Catholic nuns DO follow her example!
>>A simple “No, I’m right and you’re wrong” will do.<<
I disagree. One must back up his comments.
What is this slur about? Never mind, don't elaborate.
Heck, the pictures in the leaded glass of the Catholic churches are from the day when they were basically “the bible in comics” for the masses.
The condescension drips from your fingers. I guess it has to, when your model of Christianity is completely incompatible with the reality of human existence for most of history.
Yes, sneer at the illiterate and the tools used to catechize them.
Obviously you don’t want to examine the evidence about this or you would have spent more time thinking over what was posted.
It’s your prerogative , but one would think you woud want to be able to defend your non historical position by showing some history to prove something wrong.
Nothing surprise me around this forum though.
I wish you well in your search or truth
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