Virginity: Return to Eden

[David_Zampino]

With further research, I have found more support in the mystical tradition for what the Fathers affirm. Our Lord reveals to St. Bridget how procreation would have come about. Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich also seems to support this notion:

St. Bridget of Sweden
The Prophecies and Revelation of St. Bridget of Sweden Bk 1, Ch 26.

But now, my bride, for whose sake all these things are being said and shown, you might ask, how children would have been born by them if they had not sinned? I shall answer you: In truth, by the love of God and the mutual devotion and union of the flesh wherein they both would have been set on fire internally, love’s blood would have sown its seed in the woman’s body without any shameful lust, and so the woman would have become fertile. Once the child was conceived without sin and lustful desire, I would have sent a soul into the child from my divinity, and the woman would have carried the child and given birth to it without pain. When the child was born, it would have been perfect like Adam when he was first created. But this honor was despised by man when he obeyed the devil and coveted a greater honor than I had given to him. After the disobedience was enacted, my angel came over them and they were ashamed over their nakedness, and they immediately experienced the lust and desire of the flesh and suffered hunger and thirst. Then they also lost me, for when they had me, they did not feel any hunger or sinful fleshly lust or shame, but I alone was all their good and pleasure and perfect delight.

But when the devil rejoiced over their perdition and fall, I was moved with compassion for them and did not abandon them but showed them a threefold mercy: I clothed them when they were naked and gave them bread from the earth. And for the sensuality the devil had aroused in them after their disobedience, I gave and created souls in their seed through my Divinity. And all the evil the devil tempted them with, I turned to good for them entirely."

Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich
The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ 3

"The glittering beams on Adam’s head denoted his abundant fruitfulness, his connections with other radiations. And all this shining beauty is restored to glorified souls and bodies. Our hair is the ruined, the extinct glory; and as is this hair of ours is to rays of light, so is our present flesh to that of Adam before the Fall.

The sunbeams around Adam’s mouth bore reference to a holy posterity from God, which had it not been for the Fall, would have been effectuated by the spoken word."

I fail to see how either quote completely precludes the possibility of sexual intercourse. Sin, particularly lust, is precluded, but not physical intimacy.

 

[David_Zampino]

I don’t think so.
Some of the Fathers did (Manicheanism was a constant temptation in the Easrly Church) but I believe mainstream thought finally went against this tendency.

As Per Genesis:

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28God blessed them; and God said to them,** “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth**, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God clearly intended Adam and Eve to reproduce before Sin reared its ugly head .
We were created with genitals (male and female he made them) for a reason.

Sadly, remnants (and more than remnants) of Manicheanism remain in the Church. Blessed John Paul the Great’s “Theology of the Body” was a true gift to the Church.

 

[David_Zampino]

Found this nice succinct summary of the position of the Fathers and Scholastics by Von Balthasar:

I’d be really careful here. You have, so far, failed to convince me that a single, set position exists or ever has existed.

What is essential in their arguments can be summarized in two sentences. The first is negative: Since paradise is the realm of virginity, marriage, as we know it, has no place there; it came into being only after man’s fall into sin. The second is positive: Men would have multiplied in paradise in a way that the Fathers term “spiritual” and compare with the way in which the angels multiply, but which does not, for that reason, unconditionally exclude the cooperation of the body. This manner of multiplication is no longer comprehensible to fallen man. It is better simply to admit our ignorance of it.

.

Seems von Balthasar’s last two sentences is the key to the entire question!

 

[David_Zampino]

I feel compelled to respond… very interesting topic and one great historical perspective. One thing that we may need to consider is that the Fathers existed at a time when it was believed that sexual desire was inherently disordered and was considered sinful. Heck, St Augustine preached more than once that sex, even within marriage, was at best a venial sin. So we would have to consider the overarching mindset of the authors in this area, before forming an opinion…

EXCELLENT! I couldn’t agree more!

 

[ContraJovinius]

the Church as far as I know, does not authoritatively teach that Mary gave birth to Jesus without pain.

The Church has always maintained that Mary gave birth both virginally and painlessly. If you would like to counter this claim, then please quote any Father, Doctor, or Magisterial teaching that claims the contrary position. The Fathers and Church teaching is completely consistent on the matter.

e.g.

It was fitting that she who saw her Son die on the cross, and received in her heart the sword of pain which she had not felt in childbirth, should gaze upon Him seated next to the Father. (St. John Damascene, Second Homily on the Dormition of the Mother of God)

Of Him then His mother’s burden was light, the birth immaculate, the delivery without pain, the nativity without defilement, neither beginning from wanton desire, nor brought to pass with sorrow. For as she who by her guilt engrafted death into our nature, was condemned to bring forth in trouble, it was meet that she who brought life into the world should accomplish her delivery with joy." (St Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on the Nativity)

To Eve it was said: ‘In pain you shall bring forth children’ (Gen. 3:16). Mary was exempt from this law, for preserving her virginal integrity inviolate, she brought forth Jesus the Son of God, without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of pain. (The Catechism of Trent “The Creed” Article III)

In fact such a teaching would deny the literal sense of Genesis which states the Fall **greatly increases **pain - which therefore means that some pain was always part of childbirth.

I learned in basic catechism that both suffering and death are consequences of sin. How then do you state that “some pain was always part of childbirth”?

Jesus and Mary are not the only humans “born without original sin.” I believe you really meant “conceived without original sin.”

I stand corrected in regard to St. John the Baptist.

If you also hold that Mary never died then this also demonstrates a deep Platonic theology. Unfortunately that too is at odds with mainstream piety if not Church Doctrine.

I never addressed this issue, but it is well known that both positions are tenable - definitely not against Church Doctrine. Neither is “mainstream”, even if you would like your position to be the official position of the Church.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

The Church has always maintained that Mary gave birth both virginally and painlessly. If you would like to counter this claim, then please quote any Father, Doctor, or Magisterial teaching that claims the contrary position. The Fathers and Church teaching is completely consistent on the matter.

e.g.

It was fitting that she who saw her Son die on the cross, and received in her heart the sword of pain which she had not felt in childbirth, should gaze upon Him seated next to the Father. (St. John Damascene, Second Homily on the Dormition of the Mother of God)

Of Him then His mother’s burden was light, the birth immaculate, the delivery without pain, …nor brought to pass with sorrow. For as she who by her guilt engrafted death into our nature, was condemned to bring forth in trouble, it was meet that she who brought life into the world should accomplish her delivery with joy." (St Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on the Nativity)

To Eve it was said: ‘In pain you shall bring forth children’ (Gen. 3:16). Mary was exempt from this law, for preserving her virginal integrity inviolate, she brought forth Jesus the Son of God, without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of pain. (The Catechism of Trent “The Creed” Article III)

I learned in basic catechism that both suffering and death are consequences of sin. How then do you state that “some pain was always part of childbirth”?

CJ, on further research I concede that there is far wider and more evident unanimity amongst both the Fathers and Doctors (including Aquinas) concerning Mary’s lack of labour pains than your thesis wrt procreation without the Fall.

Your quote from Trent appears to be the most salient of recent times. Your other quotes get very indirect in places (eg. a sword in Mary’s heart obviously refers to mental grief not physical birth pangs so that one’s a stretch).

Re Trent I it is my understanding that simply pronouncing something is “anathema” does not alone amount to a doctrinal teaching of the opposite view. A statement of anathema certainly is a disciplinary ruling (ie the condemned view is not to be publicly taught/discussed). Actually, rereading your source, I see it may not even be an anathema. It is simply in a Catechism commissioned by Trent? That would appear to have less authority than an anathema. It certainly isn’t in more recent Catechisms.

So I believe we would need much more than this single statement of Trent to raise this teaching to the level of assent required of, say, The Immaculate Conception. Yet the Church, from what I can see, has not directly or formally taught as doctrine that this popular piety and tradition of Mary’s painless birth of Jesus must be assented to as a matter of Catholic faith. Perhaps you can find a Magisterial statement in the last 400 years that clearly does?

Obviously no article of the Creed stands or falls on how we see this matter. Obviously it is related to the Creed’s phrase “born of the Virgin Mary” and also to the constant doctrinal teaching of the perpetual virginity of Mary even during birth.

Indeed the latter is still stated in the CCC, but there is nothing about a teaching on Mary’s birth pains.

499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” and so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin”.

It is clear to see that in the culture of the time of the Fathers (and even into Medieval times) it was felt that the doctrine of Mary as perpetual Virgin could not be logically maintained without also teaching that both (excuse me Mary for being somewhat explicit) her corporeal integrity (hymen) remained intact during childbirth but also that Jesus did not pass down the birth canal. That is why it was further felt that Mary would not have felt any pain during the nativity.

What does the CCC mean when it says “virginity even in the act of giving birth”.
And why does the CCC report this “teaching” in such an indirect and reported fashion.
Must we still hold that Mary retained her corporeal, biological evidence of virginity during and after birth?
I suggest that we must if our Age believes that her moral and sexual virginity cannot be upheld if we deny it. However I also humbly suggest that most 1st world Catholics do not link virginity with an intact hymen anymore. Obviously if the Catholic Church comes out and states this also is de fide I will be the first to assent.

However if you go along with this biological necessity then you must accept the whole package. You must also accept that the Father and even Aquinas are fairly unanimous in speculating also that Jesus did not “open the seal of the womb”, he did not go down the birth canal. he passed through Mary’s womb as the ressurected Jesus passed through the wall of the tomb/cave. That is what the tradition equally tells us (along with the lack of birth pains). That is why there was no birth pain, no rupturing of the hymen or dilating of the cervix.

Personally I have serious difficulties with that package. I don’t see how that Platonic logicalism can be called “birth”. Jesus is starting to look more angelic than human if we go down this track too far (which is the essence of excessive Platonist Christianity).

Frankly, I believe the CCC agrees with this position. It remains silent wrt the biological necessities (esp the ancient Greek ones that were considered to necessarily flow from Mary being “ever a virgin”). And, unlike the Catechism of Trent, it says nothing about Mary experiencing no pain. And it certainly makes no reference to Jesus not being born in the usual manner (via birth canal).

 

[Blue_Horizon]

"Quote: BlueHorizon
In fact such a teaching would deny the literal sense of Genesis which states the Fall greatly increases pain - which therefore means that some pain was always part of childbirth. "

I don’t understand why you see mutual exclusion operating here.

Yes Paul said suffering and death follows upon sin.
He didn’t seem to say that there couldn’t be other causes of suffering as well.
An open reading of Genesis appears to state that in pre-Fall Eden some suffering was associated with childbirth as part of the natural order there from what I can see.