.
NOPE!
Not by a long shot. Certainly not true in my case nor in the case of any Proddys I'm aware of.
Posted on 05/31/2011 11:53:33 AM PDT by marshmallow
The Protoevangelium of James
“And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by [St. Anne], saying, ‘Anne! Anne! The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive and shall bring forth, and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.’ And Anne said, ‘As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God, and it shall minister to him in the holy things all the days of its life.’ . . . And [from the time she was three] Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there” (Protoevangelium of James 4, 7 [A.D. 120]).
“And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of priests, saying, ‘Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, lest perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord?’ And they said to the high priest, ‘You stand by the altar of the Lord; go in and pray concerning her, and whatever the Lord shall manifest to you, that also will we do.’ . . . [A]nd he prayed concerning her, and behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him saying, ‘Zechariah! Zechariah! Go out and assemble the widowers of the people and let them bring each his rod, and to whomsoever the Lord shall show a sign, his wife shall she be. . . . And Joseph [was chosen]. . . . And the priest said to Joseph, ‘You have been chosen by lot to take into your keeping the Virgin of the Lord.’ But Joseph refused, saying, ‘I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl’” (ibid., 8–9).
“And Annas the scribe came to him [Joseph] . . . and saw that Mary was with child. And he ran away to the priest and said to him, ‘Joseph, whom you did vouch for, has committed a grievous crime.’ And the priest said, ‘How so?’ And he said, ‘He has defiled the virgin whom he received out of the temple of the Lord and has married her by stealth’” (ibid., 15).
“And the priest said, ‘Mary, why have you done this? And why have you brought your soul low and forgotten the Lord your God?’ . . . And she wept bitterly saying, ‘As the Lord my God lives, I am pure before him, and know not man’” (ibid.).
Origen
“The Book [the Protoevangelium] of James [records] that the brethren of Jesus were sons of Joseph by a former wife, whom he married before Mary. Now those who say so wish to preserve the honor of Mary in virginity to the end, so that body of hers which was appointed to minister to the Word . . . might not know intercourse with a man after the Holy Spirit came into her and the power from on high overshadowed her. And I think it in harmony with reason that Jesus was the firstfruit among men of the purity which consists in [perpetual] chastity, and Mary was among women. For it were not pious to ascribe to any other than to her the firstfruit of virginity” (Commentary on Matthew 2:17 [A.D. 248]).
Hilary of Poitiers
“If they [the brethren of the Lord] had been Mary’s sons and not those taken from Joseph’s former marriage, she would never have been given over in the moment of the passion [crucifixion] to the apostle John as his mother, the Lord saying to each, ‘Woman, behold your son,’ and to John, ‘Behold your mother’ [John 19:26–27), as he bequeathed filial love to a disciple as a consolation to the one desolate" (Commentary on Matthew 1:4 [A.D. 354]).
Athanasius
“Let those, therefore, who deny that the Son is by nature from the Father and proper to his essence deny also that he took true human flesh from the ever-virgin Mary” (Discourses Against the Arians 2:70 [A.D. 360]).
Epiphanius of Salamis
“We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things, both visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . who for us men and for our salvation came down and took flesh, that is, was born perfectly of the holy ever-virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit” (The Man Well-Anchored 120 [A.D. 374]).
“And to holy Mary, [the title] ‘Virgin’ is invariably added, for that holy woman remains undefiled” (Medicine Chest Against All Heresies 78:6 [A.D. 375]).
Jerome
“[Helvidius] produces Tertullian as a witness [to his view] and quotes Victorinus, bishop of Petavium. Of Tertullian, I say no more than that he did not belong to the Church. But as regards Victorinus, I assert what has already been proven from the gospel—that he [Victorinus] spoke of the brethren of the Lord not as being sons of Mary but brethren in the sense I have explained, that is to say, brethren in point of kinship, not by nature. [By discussing such things we] are . . . following the tiny streams of opinion. Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against [the heretics] Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus, held these same views and wrote volumes replete with wisdom. If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man” (Against Helvidius: The Perpetual Virginity of Mary 19 [A.D. 383]).
“We believe that God was born of a virgin, because we read it. We do not believe that Mary was married after she brought forth her Son, because we do not read it. . . . You [Helvidius] say that Mary did not remain a virgin. As for myself, I claim that Joseph himself was a virgin, through Mary, so that a virgin Son might be born of a virginal wedlock” (ibid., 21).
Didymus the Blind
“It helps us to understand the terms ‘first-born’ and ‘only-begotten’ when the Evangelist tells that Mary remained a virgin ‘until she brought forth her first-born son’ [Matt. 1:25]; for neither did Mary, who is to be honored and praised above all others, marry anyone else, nor did she ever become the Mother of anyone else, but even after childbirth she remained always and forever an immaculate virgin” (The Trinity 3:4 [A.D. 386]).
Ambrose of Milan
“Imitate her [Mary], holy mothers, who in her only dearly beloved Son set forth so great an example of material virtue; for neither have you sweeter children [than Jesus], nor did the Virgin seek the consolation of being able to bear another son” (Letters 63:111 [A.D. 388]).
Pope Siricius I
“You had good reason to be horrified at the thought that another birth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had ever judged that she would be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord’s body, that court of the eternal king” (Letter to Bishop Anysius [A.D. 392]).
Augustine
“In being born of a Virgin who chose to remain a Virgin even before she knew who was to be born of her, Christ wanted to approve virginity rather than to impose it. And he wanted virginity to be of free choice even in that woman in whom he took upon himself the form of a slave” (Holy Virginity 4:4 [A.D. 401]).
“It was not the visible sun, but its invisible Creator who consecrated this day for us, when the Virgin Mother, fertile of womb and integral in her virginity, brought him forth, made visible for us, by whom, when he was invisible, she too was created. A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this, O man?” (Sermons 186:1 [A.D. 411]).
“Heretics called Antidicomarites are those who contradict the perpetual virginity of Mary and affirm that after Christ was born she was joined as one with her husband” (Heresies 56 [A.D. 428]).
Leporius
“We confess, therefore, that our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, born of the Father before the ages, and in times most recent, made man of the Holy Spirit and the ever-virgin Mary” (Document of Amendment 3 [A.D. 426]).
Cyril of Alexandria
“[T]he Word himself, coming into the Blessed Virgin herself, assumed for himself his own temple from the substance of the Virgin and came forth from her a man in all that could be externally discerned, while interiorly he was true God. Therefore he kept his Mother a virgin even after her childbearing” (Against Those Who Do Not Wish to Confess That the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God 4 [A.D. 430]).
Pope Leo I
“His [Christ’s] origin is different, but his [human] nature is the same. Human usage and custom were lacking, but by divine power a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bore, and Virgin she remained” (Sermons 22:2 [A.D. 450]).
I’ve tried LOTS.
IF AND WHEN one of y’all puts what I said AND MEANT accurately in y’all’s own words . . .
Perhaps
then
I’ll try and restart a dialogue.
I try to limit my head on brick walls more on Sunday.
Quix is a friend
...And which post would that be???
NOPE!
Not by a long shot. Certainly not true in my case nor in the case of any Proddys I'm aware of.
Perhaps you missed this part . . .
I realize that God knows every sparrow that falls . . . and the number of hairs on every head.
I was talking about prioritized FOCUS.
Of course I believe God is infinite in a long list of respects.
If one thinks that God does NOT prioritieze HIS focus—particularly in His RELATIONSHIP with HIS KIDS,
then I’d suspect that person had not read any of the Bible at all.
Nonsense on a list of counts.
Christ put the whole
looming ISHTAR-MARY farce in proper perspective when he said
MY MOTHER, BROTHERS, SISTERS
ARE THOSE WHO
DO
THE WILL OF MY FATHER.
Of course all Scripture is true.
I don’t know that we can articulate very robustly about what that verse MEANS.
Jesse Duplantis’ Heaven visit revealed a visual experience at The Throne vis a vis Christ being in The Father and The Father being in Christ that portrayed it about as well as I’d ever heard of.
Nevertheless, I think Jesse also had a big problem trying to articulate what he’d seen.
I don’t think that verse has much to say about what I was trying to articulate.
LUB TOO BRO.
Thanks for your kind words.
Start suspecting.
OR let's find some more and other words.
It's amazing to watch you guys jump the thru hoops to try to convince us and probably each other that your beliefs have some sort of basis in scripture...
Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. --John 21:25What do you suppose John was saying here? That the rest of what Christ did was unimportant, not valuable? Or that Tradition is a must for continuing the Church? Here's another verse:
So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. --2 Thessalonians 2:15
I can’t make out what you’re disagreeing with in stfassisi’s post.
Refute post #2249 and why you disagree with it,otherwise you have no case against it.
People are led to truth because they see your error and lack of defense
“”I can’t make out what you’re disagreeing with in stfassisi’s post.””
Quix, can you please explain to us what your thoughts are?
NO! I’m not at all a Docetism believer. Nor any of the rest of the 4 heresies mentioned. I’m Not a Nestorian. etc.
As I’ve noted relentlessly, I take Scripture at face value.
I do appreciate your candid insights in this post.
It’s interesting how the knee-jerk reactionaries of your cohorts absolutely seem to have NO CLUE what I was trying to say—re Christ focusing on HIS CREATOR GOD roles and priorities and negligibly on the past-and-done-with aspects of His mortal life and less than eternal aspects of his blood kin relationships.
I wonder if YOU understood what I was trying to articulate with such little success.
One thing about RC’s . . . maybe it’s from centuries of trying to pin down every nuance etc. . . . it seems that if there’s the slightest hair askew in an idea, presentation or argument—the main points get left in the dust so there can be a cat fight about the chaff. Sheesh.
Much I can agree with in that.
I don’t think it touches what I was trying to articulate, however.
Throughout the Old and New Testament God demonstarted that
HE
HAD HIGHER PRIORITIES AND LOWER PRIORITIES
in HIS RELATIONSHIP with individuals, with Israel, with the world.
His Word declares He’s not changed.
I can’t imagine that He no longer has priorities.
I can’t imagine that He sits on His Throne uttering one interminable monotoned endless
OOOOHHHHMMMMMMMMMMMM.
I'll cop,on behalf of the Catholic Church to trying to nail down every little nuance, but I say again, that was because controversies arose and in their arguing it was clear that the Good News would be compromised. The nuance nailing was in response to controversy and in order to protect the Gospel.
Consequently, IMHO, it's not a waste of time.
YOU're saying, I think, leave those dusty volumes and attend to my intuition: "Jesus was in some ways less than God."
WE're saying, "Indeed, in some ways he was. We went over that in pretty much detail about 1,500 years ago. You might be interested in what we concluded and why we concluded it. But, regrettably, it does involve dusty volumes."
Proddys do not see as remotely part of history or reality
that
Mary was in any sense
immaculate.
We see that as nonsense, heresy, rubberized history, fable, fantasy,
and hideous glorifying idolatry of the ISHTAR-MARY caricature.
Uhhhhhhhhhhh hello?
I think I know very well what I believe and don’t believe.
I don’t believe any of those heresies.
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