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Posted on 05/13/2017 6:28:38 AM PDT by Salvation
Q. I know that the Church believes in Mary’s perpetual virginity, but what are we to make of the passages in the Gospel that refer to Jesus’ brothers and sisters?
Rose, via email
A. There are a number of places in the New Testament (see Mk 3:31-34; 6:3; Mt 12:46; 13:55; Lk 8:19-20; Jn 2:12; 7:3-10; Acts 1:14; and 1 Cor 9:5) where Jesus’ kinsfolk are mentioned using terms such as “brother” (adelphos), “sister” (adelphe) or “brethren” (adelphoi). But “brother” has a wider meaning both in the Scriptures and at the time they were written. It is not restricted to our literal meaning of a full brother or half-brother in the sense of sibling.
Even in the Old Testament “brother” had a wide range of meaning. In the Book of Genesis, for example, Lot is called Abraham’s brother (see 14:14), but his father was Haran — Abraham’s brother (Gn 11:26-28). So, Lot was actually a nephew of Abraham.
The term “brother” could also refer widely to friends or mere political allies (see 2 Sm 1:26; Am 1:9). Thus, in family relationships, “brother” could refer to any male relative from whom you are not descended. We use words like kinsmen and cousins today, but the ancient Jews did not.
In fact, neither Hebrew nor Aramaic had a word meaning “cousin.” They used terms such as “brother,” “sister” or, more rarely, “kin” or “kinsfolk” (syngenis) — sometimes translated as “relative” in English.
James, for example, whom St. Paul called the “brother of the Lord” (Gal 1:19), is identified by Paul as an apostle and is usually understood to be James the Younger. But James the Younger is elsewhere identified as the son of Alphaeus (also called Clopas) and his wife, Mary (see Mt 10:3; Jn 19:25). Even if James the Greater were meant by St. Paul, it is clear that he is from the Zebedee family, and not a son of Mary or a brother of Jesus (in the strict modern sense) at all.
The early Church was aware of the references to Jesus’ brethren, but was not troubled by them, teaching and handing on the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity. This is because the terms referring to Jesus’ brethren were understood in the wider, more ancient sense. Widespread confusion about this began to occur after the 16th century with the rise of Protestantism and the loss of understanding the semantic nuances of ancient family terminology.
Get back to us when you embrace the EO position on the Pope and original sin.
Which is not proof, but an assertion of authority based upon the the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, whereby RCs have assurance despite the lack of proof or warrant.
As Keating imagines,
: "...the mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true," Karl Keating, founder of Catholic Answers; Catholicism and Fundamentalism San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988, p. 275),
Yet as Ratzinger admits,
Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative... Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg¦had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the "apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared. " (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), pp. 58)
Like assumption supporter RC Lawrence P. Everett, C.Ss.R., S.T.D. confessed:
In the first three centuries there are absolutely no references in the authentic works of the Fathers or ecclesiastical writers to the death or bodily immortality of Mary. Nor is there any mention of a tomb of Mary in the first centuries of Christianity. The veneration of the tomb of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem began about the middle of the fifth century; and even here there is no agreement as to whether its locality was in the Garden of Olives or in the Valley of Josaphat. Nor is any mention made in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (431) of the fact that the Council, convened to defend the Divine Maternity of the Mother of God, is being held in the very city selected by God for her final resting place. Only after the Council did the tradition begin which placed her tomb in that city.
Also, Roman Catholic theologian, Ludwig Ott, states:
The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitus–narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries. Even though these are apocryphal they bear witness to the faith of the generation in which they were written despite their legendary clothing. (Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford: Tan, 1974), pp. 209–210).
More by God's grace.
St. Luke quotes St. Gabriel --- God's Ambassador -- am convinced that the Church has explained the matter rightly,
You have no choice but to believe what God decrees, yet among others, here is part of an extensive examination of the basic argument by one who has quite a resume of scholarship, Robert Dean Luginbill, Ph.D. Greek:http://ichthys.com/mail-Mary-full-of-grace.htm
The phrase "hapax legomenon" is applied to the unique occurrence of a word in a corpus. It is not applied to the every specific form a word may take. In Greek, any given verb can potentially have hundreds of different forms (depending upon how one counts these). Therefore in any highly inflected language – like Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and virtually all of the ancient languages – trying to carry this concept which rightly belongs to core words over to individual forms is ludicrous. The word charitoo is not a true "hapax" in the Bible because it occurs more than 'once' (which is what hapax means), and because of the wide variety of forms any verb or substantive in Greek can manifest it makes no sense to apply this term to an individual form of a word and call it a "hapax" (or, alternatively, one can say such a thing, it's just that saying such a thing is meaningless). The point behind identifying a word as a hapax legomenon" (i.e., "mentioned/said only once [in the corpus]") is generally that one has very little information about what the word might mean precisely because it only occurs "once".
If a word is a "hapax" only in a particular author or specialized corpus but appears elsewhere in the language, then the value of this "uniqueness" is greatly reduced. When one has multiple contexts to judge from, one is not in the same position as in the case of a true "hapax" where there is indeed only one single context on which to base one's decision about what a word might mean. As the matter at hand actually stands, moreover, in the case of charitoo, we have an abundance of riches: 1) it occurs elsewhere in the NT; 2) it occurs widely in the literature elsewhere; 3) it is a simple verbal formation on a very well attested noun – so much so as to make its essential meaning so crystal clear that even if this verb only occurred here in all of Greek literature there would still not be any serious doubt as to its meaning.
Your correspondent does not really quibble with the essential meaning of the verb as reflected in every dictionary and every version, namely, "to bestow grace/favor upon". Where you correspondent falls down – and where he over-reaches the Greek scholars he is consulting – is in his attempt to take a simple verb form and make it bear a meaning it cannot bear. You mention that this fellow "really didn't mean that the Greek perfect form here meant that Mary was "perfect", but that is the essence of his argument. His translation is "Having been Graced with all Possible Grace both past present and future." Further he says that the "past" part means that "Mary was saved before ever falling in to sin". Clearly, this person's argument is entirely dependent upon making the perfect tense "magical" in the sense of infusing 'perfection,' even if he is trying to couch this lunacy in grammatical-sounding expressions:
Hi Dr. Luginbill--Once again, I have a question for you about "full of grace". You pointed out that Eph. 1:6 uses the same verb and it doesn't mean "full of grace" there, and therefore, "sinless". A Catholic correspondent has found this by some scholar or other; what do you think of his argument?
This argument is silly. Tense stems in Greek (and there are really only three which matter in such things: aorist, perfect, present) reflect 'aspect', which is something we have in English too (i.e., 'I go' = simple point action akin to the Greek aorist stem, vs. 'I am going' = repetitive action akin to the Greek present stem). These are not "magic", and investing them with layers of meaning invisible to the human eye and untranslatable into English is always a huge mistake (or a deliberate attempt to deceive). The Greek perfect has a meaning very similar to the English perfect, while the Greek aorist is very similar in meaning to the English past. By very similar I mean "essentially indistinguishable in the indicative mood". The only reason this issue of aspect even comes up is because Greek uses the different tense stems in places where we are no longer able to do so in English (i.e., while English users are generally unaware they even use a subjunctive, in Greek we can choose between present and aorist subjunctives in all contingent subordinate clause situations). This person's argument seems to rest entirely upon his quotation of Smyth. However, he misquotes Smyth by leaving out a critical part of the statement.
..If the perfect tense could do all the author claims, then every time it says anything about "knowing" in scripture (for oida is perfective in all of its forms), it would mean "knowing with a perfect knowledge that was conceived in eternity past": such a convention of translation would lead only to utter nonsense (cf. Acts 16:3).
More here , by God's grace.
Then you have RC apologist Akin on whether kecharitomene literally and uniquely mens "full of grace:"
A reader writes:
I was watching EWTN earlier and it was mentioned that only two people in the New Testament are referred to as “full of grace” – Jesus (John 1:14) and Mary (Luke 1:28). Of course I thought this would be a really neat thing to mention to my Protestant friends (especially if we’re talking about Jesus and Mary being the New Adam and New Eve).
BUT I wanted to go beyond the English and examine the original Greek – but I don’t know a lot about Greek! So I have two twofold questions:
(1) does John 1:14 use kecharitomene as fully (pardon the pun) as Luke’s usage in 1:28 or does John 1:14 follow more closely to Acts 6:8 when Stephen is referred to as “full of grace and power”?
John 1:14 says that Jesus was plErEs charitos, which literally means "full of grace." (Those capital Es arepresent etas, so pronounce them like the e in "they"; the word is thus pronounced PLAY-RACE).
Luke 1:28 uses kecharitomene, which literally means "one who has been graced" or "woman who has been graced" (since the gender is female). It doesn't literally mean "full of grace," though that is defensible as a free translation.
Acts 6:8 refers to Stephen as plErEs charitos, so again it's literally "full of grace" and just the same as the description used of Jesus in John 1:14.
If it is the latter, (2) does that mean there really isn’t a literal “full of grace” parallel between Luke 1:28 and John 1:14 or can I find that literal parallel somewhere else in the New Testament?
Not that I'm aware of, and I'd almost certainly be aware of it if there were. http://www.jimmyakin.org/2005/10/kecharitomene_q.html
Also from Akin on Luke 1:28 and kecharitomene:
"This is a Greek term that you could use in that exact grammatical formation for someone else who wasn't immaculately conceived and the sentence would still make sense" like Mary's grandmother). He went on to say, "This is something where I said previously, we need the additional source of information from tradition and we need the guidance of the magisterium to be able to put these pieces together." (http://tquid.sharpens.org/akin_full.mp3)
Meaning the text does not teach the IM, nor is that necessary, but tradition becomes binding doctrine under the ultimate presumed authority of Rome. Nor is "blessed art thou among women" a title, or a unique type of appellation, for as Scripture also says, "Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent." (Judges 5:24)
It remains that while Mary is highly blessed among women, and is to be honored according to what is written, this does not translate in the type of supererogation of praise seen in Catholicism, in which humble Mary is made into an almost almighty demigoddess !
We can line up every Greek scholar on the planet to explain this and the Catholic will still disregard the lesson. Their indoctrination is very strong.
“Grace is God’s favor. It is given and received in the interior life within the Blessed Trinity itself, eternally.
The good angels, too, are not sinners and yet they receive God’s grace. They could not *be* without it, for their very existence arises from this source. His graciousness is grace.”
I’m unfamiliar with verses that say this. Would you share them please?
“We can line up every Greek scholar on the planet to explain this and the Catholic will still disregard the lesson. Their indoctrination is very strong.”
+1
Catholicism is not about facts. It is about belief in whatever is claimed.
But it's to be expected.
You’ve offered nothing but a statements of generic talking points from a group your church disagrees with. Please.
To ise your logic....someone speaking Latin can never issue a false statement. I sure hope you’re not an attorney.
You’re quoting a fictional movie character to support your position??? LOL! Now I know the argument has been won.
Where are the historical pieces of evidence from before 100 ad???
Otherwise it is simply an assertion.
Tradition only works when Holy Scripture confirms its validity. Your tradition of Mary violates the Holy Word of God that a husband and wife shall not withhold themselves from each other thus your tradition is wrong according to God perfect example is Mark 7:!3.
Jack Sparrow! LOL!!! I can't stop from laughing. Oh, man. That's rich.
I'm getting tired of hearing this untruth over and over again. The word "biblos" where the word Bible comes from most certainly IS in the Bible! It means a written book, a roll, a scroll. Scripture in numerous places uses the words meaning WRITTEN books or scrolls both in the Hebrew and the Greek. See HERE and HERE. Can we agree that the word Bible IS in the Bible or is this just one more word game?
I see...
Your assertion is that the modern Orthodox Church asserts that they always asserted it, so that’s proof.
OK then.
“Can we agree that the word Bible IS in the Bible or is this just one more word game?”
You’re assuming facts have any relation to the assertions being made.
After reading this thread, I’m convinced that Catholicism is a fact free zone.
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