Proof of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity in John 19

[Hodos]

Ambrose:
Behold the Virgin who conceived in her womb, the Virgin that bore a son… She is the gate of the sanctuary, which no one shall pass, only the God of Israel. This gate is the Blessed Virgin Mary, of whom it is written: ‘The Lord shall pass through Her’ and it shall be closed following the birth. For she conceived as a Virgin and gave birth as a Virgin” (Epist. 42,4 PL, XVI). Making reference to the gate of Ezekiel (44:2), he states: “What gate is this but Mary? A closed gate, because she is a virgin.

Right, which is completely foreign to Ezekiel’s usage and message, and was not an archetype proposed by any apostolic author to include Matthew and Luke who provide the birth narratives of Jesus. Not even John attempted to make that connection in his prologue. Eisegesis by a saint is still eisegesis and not sound basis for dogmatic formulas.

Note that the two people you cited are the two people I referenced as having made a definitive statement on the matter. The rest did not.

 

[Julius_Caesar]

for his side, other than Origen and Ambrose, never actually testified in their works that Mary was ever-virgin

• 354 AD: 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” [Hilary’s Commentary on Matthew 1:4]

• 360 AD: Athanasius

Identifies Mary as “Mary Ever-Virgin” in his Discourse 2 Against the Arians, Section 70

• 373 AD: Ephrem

“Because there are those who dare to say that Mary cohabited with Joseph after she bore the Redeemer, we reply, ‘How would it have been possible for her who was the home of the indwelling of the Spirit, whom the divine power overshadowed, that she be joined by a mortal being, and gave birth filled with birthpangs, in the image of the primeval curse?’” [Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron

 

[Julius_Caesar]

Right, which is completely foreign to Ezekiel’s usage and message, and was not an archetype proposed by any apostolic author to include Matthew and Luke who provide the birth narratives of Jesus.

Because they were writing about Jesus.

 

[Julius_Caesar]

And the fact that Justin Martyr and Irenaeus refer to Mary as Virgin clearly indicates that they do believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary. You’re also forgetting that Jerome probably had more access to their work than we do.

 

[Hodos]

Because they were writing about Jesus.

Great example. We should maintain our focus on that. I appreciate you acknowledgement that this was a novel development off the apostolic teaching.

And the fact that Justin Martyr and Irenaeus refer to Mary as Virgin clearly indicates that they do believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary. You’re also forgetting that Jerome probably had more access to their work than we do.

Or it clearly indicates the doctrine of the virginal birth. Which Jerome and Basil even indicate is what the scriptures are talking about. We affirm that by the way.

 

[Good_Fella]

You seem to forget that most Jews even in Judea would have known Greek and even be familiar with Greek texts like the Septuagint. So it’s kinda far fetched to say Matthew wouldn’t write in Greek in Judea.

Hebrew was widely used in formal writing. Aramaic was the widely spoken language which the Israelites adopted during their Babylonian captivity. Greek was used in particular circles but not within the general population. Theophilus was from Antioch. So, Luke wrote his gospel in Greek. Irenaeus states that Matthew wrote his gospel for the Hebrews “in their own dialect” which would be Hebrew. Greek wasn’t the native language of the Jews. Rabbis in Palestine did use the Septuagint (produced for the Hellenistic Jews). But they normally read the Hebrew Scriptures at Synagogue services.

 

[Good_Fella]

Or conversely, not one iota of what you just said is stated explicitly in any of John’s gospel, nor in his letters, nor in the greater canon of the New Testament and you are making an entire doctrine whole cloth out of speculation and allegory that the New Testament authors never use. What we see in John 2 is a prescriptive narration of Jesus first miracle, pointing toward his divinity as already stated explicitly in John 1.

The Gospel of John is a literary work that contains literary devices. What it isn’t is a catechism or conciliar document laid out in explicit definitive terms. Nor is it a history book chapter. Johns choice of the Greek word for servants proves my point. So, you mustn’t read the Scriptures solely in a literal sense. This is bad hermeneutics. The entire canon of the NT is “reviewed, assembled, and filtered” tradition, as Cardinal Shonborn puts it. The Gnostic works, therefore, weren’t included in the late 4th century. Scripture itself is Tradition. The written testimony transmits the oral word of God and the experience of faith among the first Christians in Palestine. Tradition has continued ever since as part of the deposit of faith as is manifested in the writings of the Patristic Fathers, the decisions reached in the Ecumenical Councils, and the teachings of the great Doctors of the Catholic Church. The passing down of Tradition is fidelity to the testimony of the first witnesses of the Gospels. Both Scripture and the experience of faith are contained in Tradition. But how would you know 1500+ years later outside the Catholic Church from whom we get the Canon of Scripture.

Unfortunately, the Protestant revolutionaries in the 16th century called Tradition into question. They presumed that they could return to the original Gospel by bypassing Tradition and going directly to Scripture. However, until then, Tradition was understood to be the hermeneutical means of interpreting the Scriptures. Scripture was to be interpreted in light of Tradition and the living experience of faith that was passed on. This was replaced by the subjective experiences of the so-called “Reformers” who re-interpreted Scripture apart from the living memory of Tradition. Luther’s false doctrine of justification by faith alone was unheard of by then and is based on his own personal suppositions. What we now have is the inverse: traditions of men proceeding from Scripture that’s resulted in tens of thousands of independent Protestant denominations of disparate persuasions on matters of faith and morals: the principle of private judgment and the individual believer making themselves out to be the arbiter of truth or the magisterium of the Church.

 

[Good_Fella]

You realize a millennia is a 1000 years right? How about something explicitly taught by the apostles themselves since you are alleging that this is an apostolic doctrine.

Sacred Tradition is the unwritten word of God and thus is a source of divine revelation from which even sacred Scripture (the written word of God) proceeds (Lk 1:1-4). By unwritten or verbally unspoken, we mean all the divine mysteries that are revealed or declared by the Holy Spirit to the Church in the passage of time (Jn 16:12-13). It’s because Tradition or God’s unwritten word is infallible that Scripture, God’s written word, is infallible, since both sources of divine revelation originate from the Holy Spirit under the Spirit’s guidance (Tradition) or by the Spirit’s inspiration (Scripture). And since the written word proceeds from the initial unwritten word, Scripture must be interpreted in light of Tradition. The former medium serves as an objective norm or confirmation of the latter. Thus, these two mediums of divine revelation comprise two sides of the same coin, and so they mustn’t be divorced from each other or placed in opposition to each other. This isn’t an either/or proposition.

Tradition literally means “handing on” referring to the passing down of God’s revealed word from the beginning under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, Tradition means all divine revelation from the dawn of human history to the end of the apostolic age from one generation of believers to the next which is safeguarded by the Church (the Rule of Faith) until Christ returns in glory (Mt 28:20). Tradition may also be said to contain all that is materially presented in Scripture either explicitly or implicitly. It’s because Scripture isn’t always explicit that, as a sole rule of faith, it is formally insufficient. And so, Tradition often reveals or exposes what is explicitly lacking in Scripture but is there nonetheless as a representation of the verbally unspoken word: the declaration of the Holy Spirit. The written word and the unwritten word of God mutually support each other in a complimentary way, having originated from the same Divine Author and guarantor of the truth.

Since the beginning, the one, hierarchical, and visible Church founded by Christ himself has believed that sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition are bound closely together and correspond with one another towards the same goal in a form of symbiotic relationship, and that these two mediums of divine revelation flow from the same source, viz. the Holy Spirit ( Jn 14:16, 26; 16:12-13). The Church, therefore, has never drawn its certainty about the revealed divine truths from only sacred Scripture. The apostles understood that their preaching was guided by the Holy Spirit, who protects the Church from error (Acts 15:27-28). And it was Paul who wrote that the Church - not Scripture - is “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15).

APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY AND SUCCESSION - Scripture Catholic

SCRIPTURE ALONE ("SOLA SCRIPTURA") - Scripture Catholic

 

[hope]

You keep saying the “natural reading” but that “natural” depends on today’s society not the society that existed then. Like this statement ignores the society of that day

But again, this also ignores that Joseph was already engaged

They were not engaged but betrothed. They are not interchangeable. In their society it meant they were married but not living together. It is because you insist on reading scripture with today’s meaning that you loose the true meaning of what is being said. When they talked about “brothers” it meant something different than today’s meaning. When you insist on saying that it is the natural meaning you dismiss the scriptures which show that it doesn’t mean the same as today. Those brothers you say read “natural” do not for that culture. The culture would not allow a younger sibling to give an advise to an older sibling which is what the “brothers” of Jesus did. Showing that they were older not younger than Jesus. It is not “natural” to assume that brother’s mean the same as in today’s society. Your “natural” reading ignore the cultural implications such as Jesus providing for His mother by giving her to John. Unheard of in that society unless He was her only child.
Mary states that she knows not man. Not she didn’t know Joseph, her husband, but she knows not man.
Matthew says that Joseph was a righteous man. Would a righteous man dare to touch the place where God had been? A guard was killed just for trying to stop the ark from overturning. How much more holy would Mary who bore Jesus in her womb be? Joseph would not be righteous if he touched Mary. The natural reading is not to assume that something changed after the birth of Jesus. The natural reading it to understand that Jesus was not conceived in the natural way and nothing more as that is what the writer intended.
You ignore these for your “natural” reading when in fact it isn’t a natural reading at all.