Hot and Holy

The Virgin Mary’s Sex Life (Part 1)

Olivia Hussey as Mary, in 1977’s Jesus of Nazareth

(This is Part 1 of a 3-part series. Click for Part 2 and Part 3.)

The titling of this article series, along with the above image, are obviously meant to be both cheeky and provocative.

But the subject is serious. If you’re willing to read on, you’ll find out why.

---

Sometime after the first “Christmas,” the virgin Mary lost her virginity.

That single line might be offensive to you, if you count yourself in the same camp as those who reacted very negatively to pastor and apologist Jeff Durbin’s Facebook post in December of ’22.  Durbin argued, in part:

Scripture couldn’t be more plain: Jesus had siblings.  Not only is the text plain, the ethical marital issue is key. . . .

In essence, the attempt to deny that Mary and Joseph followed God’s good purpose in marriage by being physically intimate would suggest that there is something unholy or not good in physical intimacy with a spouse. . . .

When Christians treat sex within marriage as dirty, gross, unrighteous, or not good, we are condemning God’s own holy and creative purpose.

I’m on the same page as Durbin.  And, when it comes right down to it, I just don’t get the whole “perpetual virginity of Mary” thing.  Even after we familiarize ourselves with the arguments, at the end of the day a supremely reasonable, pivotal question forces its way to the frontal lobe:

Why would anyone come up with this in the first place?

Especially when all Scriptural indicators point in the opposite direction?

There’s just no good reason for this doctrine.  Reasons, sure, but not reasonable reasons.  It’s not even an argument, really.  It’s an assumption (just like the Assumption is an assumption!).  That’s all it amounts to.  Because God’s never told us that sex in marriage would make it impossible for Mary to play her role in redemptive history.

Same goes for Mary’s alleged “immaculate conception.”  And I suspect the two ideas are intertwined.

Well, I didn’t expect the following deep dive on this issue, but it turns out there’s more going on here than I was counting on.  So “strap yourselves in—I’m gonna make the jump to lightspeed!”

---

Origins of a myth

Let me ask you a couple of questions that I hope will percolate in your mind long after you’ve read this article:

1. Do you think that after the Apostles had died off, nobody would ever come up with any cultic ideas?

2. Satan’s already got pagans and atheists in his back pocket; what do you suppose he’d want to see happen in churches, and how would he go about it?

Satan hates God, hates the Gospel, and hates God’s people.  He has always gone around inspiring false religion, and he always will, until he meets his end at the End of the Age. 

Therefore, it stands to reason that even after the Church had just barely got off the ground, there would be “false apostles”—“deceitful workers who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ.”  After all, “[e]ven Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:13-14)

This is the way it’s always been, and until the Second Coming, truth will be continuously hunted and hounded by falsehood.

Even in Paul’s own day Satan wasted no time worming his way into the churches, as demonstrated in the Apostle’s letter to the Galatians.  What this tells us is that cultic doctrine very quickly infiltrated the early Church.  Therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that, merely a generation later, some (professing) Christians started adopting bizarre, non-Biblical (or anti-Biblical) ideas, like exalting Jesus’ mother in a virtual competition with Jesus himself.

I feel compelled to issue a disclaimer here: I’m not suggesting that all such ancient theologians were necessarily “fake Christians,” or even that all Catholics, as individuals, are necessarily “unsaved.” 

What I’m saying is that in ancient times a new mentality, very subtle at first, began to infect the Church: the elevation of Mary beyond her rightful station, her name and person thereby misused in a way that began to obscure the centrality and uniqueness of Christ.  Over time, this has blown up into full-on Mariolatry, and those caught up in it do not have a genuine relationship with God through the Son.

What’s immediately obvious (or should be) is that Mariolatry didn’t come from Scripture: “There is no biblical basis for the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity.”¹

That being the case, how the notion was, uh, conceived is unclear.  Some believe the zygote of an idea came from The Odes of Solomon, dated by “[m]ost scholars” to “sometime around the middle of the 2nd century”—they certainly weren’t written by Solomon.  They seem to have been “heavily influenced by Jewish apocalyptic thought and especially the ideas in the Dead Sea Scrolls[.]”

In Ode 19:2-8 we find these bizarre lines:

The Son is the cup, and the Father is He who was milked; and the Holy Spirit is She who milked Him;

Because His breasts were full, and it was undesirable that His milk should be ineffectually released.

The Holy Spirit opened Her bosom, and mixed the milk of the two breasts of the Father.

Then She gave the mixture to the generation without their knowing, and those who have received it are in the perfection of the right hand.

The womb of the Virgin took it, and she received conception and gave birth.

So the Virgin became a mother with great mercies.

And she labored and bore the Son but without pain[.]

Um . . . okay.

Can you imagine the author sharing this with someone else for the first time?  When he did so, the first thing any reasoning person should’ve done was to level a good long stare . . . until the author grew very uncomfortable . . . and then ask him: “Where are you getting this?”

If more people asked simple questions like that on a regular basis, how many cults and sloppy doctrine could’ve been avoided over the years . . . ?

In any case, apparently the bodily mechanics implied by the notion that Mary “bore the Son without pain” in turn sparked the thought in somebody’s head that Mary’s virginity may have continued beyond Jesus’ birth.  After all, if she avoided labor pains, that could be taken to imply that her birth canal remained “pristine” during and after labor.

Right?

Yeah, sure.

But the earliest documented claim that Mary kept her virginity was by the author of the Protevangelium of James.²  This second-century document, purporting to be from James the half-brother of Jesus, claims that

Mary’s own conception [w]as a direct act of God’s providence (1.2–4.4). . . . When she is twelve years old . . . Mary is given in marriage to Joseph, an elderly widower who has several sons by his previous marriage.  The Protevangelium stresses, however, that theirs is not a true marriage; rather, Mary is given to Joseph only to be protected by him, and he does not live with her (9.1-2[-3]).³

Sex is “dirty.”  According to David G. Hunter, the Protevangelium is “the ultimate source of almost all later Marian doctrine.”  It “presents an extended narrative of Mary’s entire life, from her own miraculous conception to the birth of Jesus, as a testimony to the purity of virginity.”⁴

The Protevangelium is preoccupied entirely with Mary and with her consecration to a life of perpetual virginity.  Furthermore, within the focus on Mary, the concern is entirely with her sexual purity.  No other virtue is mentioned: not her faith at the annunciation, nor her devotion to Jesus at the crucifixion.  Mary’s sole merit, according to the Protevangelium, is her sexual chastity, and the sole purpose of the narrative is to express and defend sexual purity.⁵

Very intriguing: this implies that the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity actually stems from an extrabiblical mindset that views sex as “tainted” or “dirty.”  This inference is reasonable because it jives with the development of ancient monasticism:

. . . [T]he spread of the monastic movement increased the popularity of the ascetic ideal.  Many Christians began to see marriage as greatly inferior to celibacy.  Although some Christians resisted this development, a moral hierarchy eventually was established: faithful Christian marriage was regarded as occupying a third rank, below perpetual virginity and widowhood.⁶

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) likewise indicates that he had adopted an unbiblical view of sex in marriage, referring to “Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, [and] brought forth disobedience and death.”⁷  Justin’s wording (whether he intended this or not) logically implies that if Eve had had sex while in the Garden of Eden—though already in a God-ordained marriage (Genesis 2:18-25) with the only man available, and having been told, along with her husband, to “[b]e fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28)—she would have somehow been “defiled.”

This same notion was later picked up by 3rd-century theologian Origen, who wrote that the few who, in his own day, argued for Mary’s perpetual virginity did so because they “wish[ed] to preserve [her] honour[.]”  And to Origen this made sense because “purity . . . consists in chastity.”

Origen thus exhibits the same mentality as Justin Martyr and other like-minded theologians: virginity is somehow “more pure” than sexual experience in the sanctified context of marriage.

Notice that Origen makes no mention of any Apostolic tradition on the subject.⁸  This is because there wasn’t any.  In light of that crucial fact, someone in his day should have immediately hit Origen with the question: “Where are you getting this??”

Augustine of Hippo (4th century)—widely considered one of the greatest theologians in Christian history—certainly didn’t challenge Origen’s thinking.  Instead he picked up the ball and ran with it, arguing that sexual desire even in marriage is a

shameful lust of the flesh which comes from sin, and . . . every one who is born of sexual intercourse is in fact sinful flesh, since that alone which was not born of such intercourse was not sinful flesh.

Yet somehow he went on to insist that “conjugal intercourse is not in itself sin[.]”  Well, Augustine, you could’ve fooled me!

In context, though, what he meant was that godly marital sex is performed with a view toward procreation, and, in the minds of the husband and wife, that goal overrides their “sinful” desire for pleasure.  Sexual desire, in Augustine’s view, is actually an “obscenity in sinful men,” but “a necessity” for reproduction.  He went on to argue that the Apostle Paul was okay with marriage “when [spouses] have not the gift of continence.”

In other words: sex is dirty, because it’s lustful, but God lets it slide in marriage for the sake of procreation.

There are a couple of problems with Augustine’s argument.  First off, in Paul’s brief discussion of sex in marriage he says he “wish[es that] everyone were single, just as I am”—because then they could do the kind of ministry work Paul was doing.  “Yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another.” (1 Corinthians 7:7, 32-34)

Paul is implying here that marriage—no less than singleness—is also a “gift.”  This directly rebuts Augustine’s insinuation that spouses are stuck with marriage as their only rightful option because they lack “the gift of continence.”  No: in God’s eyes, they too have a gift; just a different kind of gift.

Secondly, “lust” isn’t always bad—even Jesus “lusted”!

Yeah, I said that to make sure I had your attention.  But note the quotation marks: in English the term lust has negative connotations, but in New Testament Greek the verb epithūmĕō and the noun epithūmia can be positive as well as negative.  And it just so happens that both the noun and the verb are applied to Jesus in a single verse: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke 22:15)  Much more literally this can be translated: “With desire [epithūmia] I have desired [epithūmĕō] to eat this passover with you[.]”

As you can see from this example, these Greek words don’t always refer to sex, but more broadly to any intense desire, whether physical or spiritual.⁹

Thirdly, when those words do mean sexual desire, that desire is considered good in the context of marriage.  In Psalm 45, which celebrates a royal wedding, the bride is told:

Listen, daughter, pay attention and consider: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty.  Bow down to him, for he is your lord. [vv. 10-11]

In the Greek version, the word “desire” is epithūmĕō.  There isn’t a shred of evidence in this psalm that such a desire is “evil.”

And in the Song of Solomon, a relatively explicit (by Biblical standards) poem exalting the marital relationship, the same two Greek words are used twice:

• “Among the young men, my lover is like an apple tree in the woods!  I enjoy [Greek: “I desired,” epithūmĕō] sitting in his shadow; his fruit is sweet to my taste.” (2:3)

• “His mouth is sweet to kiss, and I desire him very much [Greek: “a total desire [epithūmia]”].” (5:16)

Since this is what the Bible teaches about sex in marriage, we know that post-Biblical theologians were wrong when they began to view it as dirty—and therefore they were equally wrong when they got it in their heads that Mary “wouldn’t” have had sex with her husband.

Mary’s alleged “vow of chastity.”  Despite the above Scriptural evidence, Augustine asserted that “Mary was the first to take the vow of perpetual virginity.”¹⁰  “This is shown by the words which Mary spoke in answer to the Angel announcing to her her conception”—“But how can this happen?  I am a virgin” (Luke 1:34)—“[w]hich assuredly she would not say, unless she had before vowed herself unto God as a virgin.”¹¹

Of course, there’s no evidence whatsoever that Mary took such a vow.  If we take Luke 1:34 by itself, without considering any other Biblical factors, then Augustine’s inference is logically possible—but just as logically improbable, given that Mary “would, in that case, have committed treachery by allowing herself to be united to a husband[.]”¹²

I have to say: it saddens me when this great lady’s character is implicitly—and quite ironically!—besmirched by the Catholic theory of a “prior vow of chastity.”

After all, according to Luke, Mary was betrothed to Joseph before finding out that she was to bear the Messiah; therefore it’s not as if Joseph agreed to marry her because of the annunciation.  If she’d already sworn to remain a virgin, Mary would have had the best possible reason to refuse the betrothal.  And if Joseph had known of her vow, he would never have proposed—which seems to imply that Mary didn’t tell him!

Bottom line: in this case, Luke 1:27 would never have been written. 

It’s not just that it would be very strange for Luke—who “carefully investigated everything from the beginning” (1:3)—to omit a prior vow of chastity if in fact Mary had made one.  The entire series of events leading up to Jesus’ birth would have been very different: Luke would have told us Mary was sworn to chastity; she would not have already been engaged; and her engagement to Joseph would have occurred after the annunciation, in order to protect her reputation and legitimize Jesus’ birth in the context of Jewish law.

But that’s not what happened.

Augustine’s theory of a prior vow of chastity notwithstanding, another logical and more likely possibility is “that the angel had foretold Mary’s immediate conception in advance of her marriage.”¹³  This would naturally prompt Mary’s question as to how such a thing could happen.

Brothers or cousins?  In the late-4th/early-5th centuries, Jerome of Stridon built on the Protevangelium’s thesis by suggesting that Joseph himself was also a lifelong virgin, and that Jesus’ so-called “brothers” were actually his cousins.  But we should note that “Jerome was open about his extreme preference for virginity and negative view of sexual intercourse,”¹⁴ so it’s obvious where his bias lay.¹⁵

Which demonstrates one of my main points in this article: when you do theology piggybacking on a faulty worldview, you’ll be carried off to strange places.

It’s important to note, as well, that the Protevangelium was not only condemned by Pope Innocent I in 405,¹⁶ it was also included in a 500 AD Church list of “writings which have been compiled or been recognised by heretics or schismatics the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church does not in any way receive[.]”

That being the case, one wonders how the Protevangelium’s views about anything ever caught on.

More broadly—and this is key—in the first few centuries of Christianity, there was simply no discernible universal view on Mary’s sex life (or “lack” thereof), or on Mary generally.  She just wasn’t “all that and a bag of chastity.”

. . . [T]he development of a Mariology is difficult to trace clearly. . . . [W]hile this enigmatic document emphasized Mary’s eternal sexual purity, what became [Pg. 228]known as aeiparthenos, it does not clearly fit into the broader contemporary discourse of the mother of Christ and cannot perhaps be considered representative of broader Marian thought. . . .

     . . . . . . . .

     Up until the last quarter of the fourth century . . . Mary’s precise status remained relatively fuzzy.  Just as with the writers of the second century, the nature of her virginity was not clearly defined in the third: While she was virginitas at time of conception, other questions about her virginity in partu and post-partum were left largely unanswered.  Much before the fourth century, these questions were not focused upon, in no small part because her virginity at conception was the key component in understanding the nature of Christ.¹⁷

     As we move into the later fourth century, it is important to keep in mind that the doctrine of Mary’s virginitas in partu had remained a marginal feature in the intervening years, especially in the West.  None of the significant writers of the third or early fourth centuries endorsed the idea: it is not found in Cyprian, Novatian, Arnobius, or Lactantius[ or e]ven Jerome . . . . Therefore, when Jovinian opposed this doctrine, he stood squarely within the mainstream of the Christian tradition, as it had developed by the later fourth century.  The docetic associations of the teaching, its origins in the apocryphal scriptures, and its lack of support in the prior Christian tradition would have enhanced Jovinian’s claim that the notion was heretical.¹⁸

When Mary’s hypothetical sex life eventually became the issue du jour, “Helvidius’ polemic against the perpetual virginity of Mary . . . shows that around the year 380 even Mary’s virginitas post partum was not universally accepted by Christians in the West.”¹⁹

But such notions are what you get when you ignore the revelation of Scripture and instead magnify human imagination.²⁰  It is absolutely crucial that God’s people be continuously developing a Biblical worldview; a Biblical mindset.

Remember the critical question: “Where are you getting this?”

We must echo Isaiah, who declared: “Look to God’s instructions and teachings!  People who contradict his word are completely in the dark.” (Isaiah 8:20)

---

Back to Biblical Basics

As I pointed out earlier, the “perpetual virginity” of Mary is built on purely extrabiblical foundations.  Had ancient post-Apostolic theologians based their understanding of, not only Mary herself, but more broadly of sex and marriage, exclusively on God’s word, their theological coloring would have stayed within the following lines.

1. Sex is God’s idea.  The central problem with the inventors and promoters of Mary’s “perpetual virginity” is that they lack divine authority.  In contrast to the Bible itself, there’s no objective reason to believe that their ideas about Mary were inspired by God.  When we look to God’s own testimony, however, we’re reminded that He’s the One who invented sex:

This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.  Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame. [Genesis 2:24-25]

And:

Everything God made is good, and nothing [God made] should be refused if it is accepted with thanks, because it is made holy by what God has said and by prayer. [1 Timothy 4:4-5]

Therefore—St. Jerome notwithstanding—marital sex is good.  This, we could say, puts to bed the view of the Catholic Encyclopedia, which refers to “veneration for the sanctity . . . of Mary”—as if sex between a husband and wife is unholy.  By stark contrast, God’s word explicitly tells us that “nothing [created by God] should be rejected” when “it is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer.”

And because of its divine origin and goodness, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure” (Hebrews 13:4).  If there were anything “impure” about sex in marriage, that verse would be impossible to fulfill.  But God tells us, “Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure.” (Titus 1:15).

Assuming Mary herself was pure—not sinless, of course, but broadly living her life within the parameters of a covenant-relationship with God—then her post-”Christmas” sex life was pure.

We don’t know if it was “hot,” but we can be sure it was holy.

Indeed, in a marital context, what would have made her impure would be if she refrained from sex with her husband.  In that case Mary would’ve been violating a God-ordained obligation:

The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs.  The wife gives authority over her body to her husband,²¹ and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife.  Do not deprive each other of sexual relations, unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer.  Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you [1 Corinthians 7:3-5].

Even more important is the fact that the institution of marriage—including its sexual component—serves a very lofty purpose:

As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”  This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. [Ephesians 5:31-32]

One commentator reflects:

The ultimate point of marriage isn’t your emotional satisfaction, but to make visible the gospel reality of Christ’s love for the church and the church’s love for Christ. . . . The marriage covenant illustrates the New Covenant; the marriage union points to that even more profound union between Christ and the church.

Tell me, those of you who “venerate” Mary: Do you believe she would have dishonored the Lord, dishonored her husband, and spoiled her Christian witness . . . ?²²

2. The Bible teaches that Mary and Joseph had other children.  First of all, Matthew tells us plainly that Joseph “did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born.” (1:25)  That little word “until” is hugely important: it naturally implies that Joseph and Mary did have sex after Jesus’ birth.  Note Matthew’s use of the same Greek preposition, hĕōs, closeby in both directions: in 1:17 and 2:9, 13, 15.

The word “until” therefore delineates a limited time frame, after which a different circumstance comes into play—as anyone would expect in a normal marriage. 

And it was a normal marriage, as far as being a union between a man and a woman.  What was unique was Mary’s pregnancy, followed by the raising of God-the-Son in his human form.

These are not grounds for supposing that Mary and Joseph themselves, as a couple, were in an “unusual” marriage that required them to abstain from sex.  They just had an “unusual” child.

Secondly, Luke 2:7 tells us that Jesus was Mary’s “firstborn son.”  This logically implies that she had other sons, which she did (Matthew 12:46; 13:55; John 2:12; 7:3-5; Galatians 1:19).  “All mention Jesus’ mother with His brothers.  If they were His cousins, or the sons of Joseph from a previous marriage, why were they mentioned with Mary so often?”²³

Commentator Steven Cole makes a very perceptive argument that takes into account the Jewish legal context: “If [the step-brothers] were Joseph’s children by an earlier marriage”—as suggested by the Protevangelium—”one of them, not Jesus, would have been heir to the throne of David.”  This is important, because Jesus had to fulfill prophecies that the Messiah would be the heir of King David.

Thirdly, the Greek nouns adelphŏs and adelphē mean “brother” and “sister,”²⁴ respectively, either in a literal sense—siblings with the same parent(s)—or in a metaphorical sense, as in “All men are brothers,” or when disciples of the same religion talk about the “brethren.”  This metaphor, of course, extends to national or ethnic “brotherhood,” as well, such as when Israelites in the Bible refer to their “brothers.”

Even the figurative meaning, however, piggybacks on the literal sense of “brother/sister”: siblinghood within a single household, whether literal or figurative.  Metaphorically Paul calls Abraham “the father of all who believe [in Christ]” (Romans 4:16), making believers, logically enough, “brothers and sisters.”  We talk this way because believers are part of the same “family”: God as our Father, Jesus as our “big Brother” (Matthew 12:48-50; Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:11), and each other as “siblings.”

It’s unreasonable and out-of-context to interpret adelphŏs or adelphē, in relation to Jesus, as “cousin.”  There’s another Greek term, anepsiŏs, that does mean “cousin.”²⁵  Had Matthew or other NT writers wanted to tell us that Jesus’ “brothers” were in fact his cousins, well, they had an appropriate word they could’ve used.

They didn’t.  Because they meant “brothers.”²⁶

There’s no Biblical evidence that “brothers” or “sisters,” in reference to Jesus’ family, means anything other than “birthed from the same womb.”  In fact, adelphŏs and adelphē partially derive from delphus, “womb.”  Naturally this implies that Mary bore Jesus’ siblings as well as the Lord himself.²⁷

Even Catholic theologian John McHugh doesn’t blame Protestants for rejecting the “cousin” idea:

Honesty compels us to admit that this ‘interpretation’ of the word ‘brother’ stretches its meaning to the breaking point, and one cannot seriously expect those unconvinced of the perpetual virginity of Mary to accept [the “cousin” view].²⁸

This is a revealing statement: McHugh is basically admitting that if you don’t already have the notion of Mary’s “perpetual virginity” in your head, Scripture on its own won’t point you in that direction.

So, absent any Biblical or historical documentation—and since Joseph’s own firstborn son from a “previous marriage” would have been King David’s heir—somebody needed to come up with a different theory.  And somebody did.  Of course: “the anepsioi [“cousins” of Jesus] would have become adelphoi [“brothers”] when Clopas took over Joseph’s family after the death of Jesus’ adoptive father.”²⁹

Again—I cannot stress this enough—there’s no Biblical or historical evidence for this.  It is pure supposition.

Which naturally begs the question: If one has to believe in Mary’s “perpetual virginity” before considering what Scripture says about Jesus’ family, then why would anyone “need” to believe such a notion in the first place? 

What’s driving this . . . ?

Stay tuned!

†

1. Regina A. Boisclair, “Virginity of Mary (Biblical Theology),” in Orlando O. Espín and James B. Nickoloff, eds., An Introductory Dictionary of Theology and Religious Studies (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007), 1465 (italics mine).

2. See also Bernhard Lohse, A Short History of Christian Doctrine (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966, 1985), 200.

3. David G. Hunter, “Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late Fourth-Century Rome,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1.1 (Spring 1993), 63-64.  One translation of the Protevangelium, also known as the Infancy Gospel of James, may be read here.

4. Hunter, 63 (emph. mine).

5. Hunter, 64 (emph. mine).

6. David G. Hunter, “Marriage, Early Christian,” in Robert Benedetto, ed., The New Westminster Dictionary of Church History (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 412-13 (emph. mine).

7. Italics mine.

8. I am grateful to Radostin Marchev for making this simple but pivotal observation in his online paper “Belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary in the first four centuries and its implications for Orthodox-Protestant dialogue“ (no date).

9. In Jesus’ case, at the Last Supper, he had the spiritual in mind: he wasn’t just saying he was really, really hungry!

10. Bernhard Lohse, A Short History of Christian Doctrine (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966, 1985), 200.

11. Augustine, Of Holy Virginity, para. 4.

12. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary on the Bible (1840-57), Luke 1 (accessed 16 Jan. 2023).

13. James Burton Coffman, Coffman’s Commentaries on the Bible (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 1983-1999), Luke 1 (accessed 16 Jan. 2023).

14. Laurent A. Cleenewerck, Aiparthenos: Ever-Virgin? (Washington, DC: Euclid Univ. Press, 2015), 170 (footnote).

15. One wonders how the Inventor of sexual intercourse felt about that.  Think Jerome was embarrassed after he got to Heaven and met Mary and Joseph and their kids?

16. Sharon Betsworth, Children in Early Christian Narratives (London/New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 169.

17. Geoffrey Nathan, “The Jovinianist Controversy and Mary Aeiparthenos: Questioning Mary’s Virginity and the Question of Motherhood,” Saeculum 68/II (2018), 227-28.

18. David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford University Press, 2009), 187 (emph. mine).

19. Hunter, ibid.

20. Jesus didn’t think much of “cancel[ing] the word of God for the sake of your own tradition.” (Matthew 15:6; cf. Mark 7:3-13; Colossians 2:8).

21. A godly husband does not take or demand such authority.  A godly wife gives it out of love, first for God, then for her husband.

22. Some of Jeff Durbin’s opponents on Facebook accused him of ignoring the reality that, for various reasons, marital sex is sometimes impossible.

But it should be obvious that when Paul wrote to the Corinthians he had in mind the purposeful withholding of sex in marriage.  Similarly, when Paul wrote that “if a man does not work, he should not eat,” it’s not as if he was being cruel to those who are physically incapable of working!  He was targeting those who refuse to work.

Another respondent accused Durbin of “diminish[ing] the institution of marriage to mere physical intimacy.”  This is flatly ridiculous: Durbin merely addressed that particular element in marriage, without implying that marriage is “only” that.

23. “Is the perpetual virginity of Mary biblical?”  GotQuestions.org (n.d.; © 2002-2023 Got Questions Ministries; updated 4 Jan. 2022) (accessed 14 Jan. 2023).

24. Jesus had those too.

25. See Colossians 4:10, and, in the Greek Old Testament, Numbers 36:11.

26. See also Matt Slick, “Did Mary have other children?“  Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, 3 Dec. 2008 (accessed 15 Jan. 2023).

27. Now, given that Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ father, whereas he was the father of Jesus’ brothers and sisters, it would be reasonable to call them Jesus’ half-siblings.  Biblically that’s not a problem. 

In fact, it complements my belief that Jesus didn’t get his humanity—his genetic makeup—from his mother.  Some believe he did, and that having only Mary’s genes (albeit male) is why he was sinless: because, so the theory goes, sinfulness is passed on by human fathers, not mothers.  But of course there’s no evidence for that supposition whatsoever.

I think it far more likely that Jesus’ human nature was wholly created by the Holy Spirit “from scratch,” as it were, and implanted in Mary’s womb.  She carried the Lord as a surrogate today would carry another couple’s child.  This view would seem to be more consistent with Luke 1:35 and 3:38.  Luke indicates that Jesus (in his humanity) was the “Son of God” in the same way Adam was: having only God as his “Parent.”  No genetic contributor needed.

But this doesn’t require us to leap to the conclusion that Jesus’ half-siblings “must” have come from a different mother.

28. John McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament, 246.  Quoted in Laurent A. Cleenewerck, Aiparthenos: Ever-Virgin? (Washington, DC: Euclid Univ. Press, 2015), 177.

29. Cleenewerck, 177.