Who Knew?!? The Perpetual Viriginity of Mary is orthodox doctrine...

While talking to a Catholic friend last week, the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary came up.  I began explaining what I thought was historic, orthodox Christian doctrine on the topic, mentioning several of the references to Jesus' brothers and sisters.  (Mt 12:46-50; 13:54-58; Jn 2:12; 7:2-10; Acts 1:14; I Cor 9:5; and Gal 1:18-19 are the main ones, along with their cross references.)  But since I didn't have anything conclusive, I decided to do some brief study on it yesterday morning.  After reading the above references, I was fairly convinced that Jesus did have natural (half-)brothers and sisters.

And then, I decided to look up the history of the doctrine, and things got interesting.  Martin Luther, John Calvin (Harmony of the Evangelists, 215), Ulrich Zwingli, and John Wesley (in "to a Roman Catholic") at least held to the perpetual virginity of Mary.  These references do not include the many church fathers who are known or cited as supporting the doctrine.  The explanation of the above passages is that these "brothers and sisters" were either close relatives of Jesus or step-brothers from a previous marriage of Joseph.  Apparently Protestants have, by and large, ceased to hold this doctrine during the last several centuries due to the uncertain Biblical evidence. 

Anyways, I found it very odd that I have never come across this before in my studies.  And while the weight of Scripture seems to rest most naturally with Joseph and Mary having children after Jesus' birth, it certainly would not be unthinkable that they did not.  Indeed, this is not a particularly important issue of faith as long as we accept all that the Bible says.  Nevertheless, it piqued my interest and I thought I'd share it and see if anyone else had come across it before.

Arizona

This post and others on this blog present a constructive view of the immigration law passed in Arizona, for people of faith.

Some of the boycotts going on regarding Arizona are rather ridiculous, but while Arizona certainly has the right to seek to enforce its borders, I do think that everyone else has the right to expresss their dismay about how it does so... that's what we are doing to N. Korea and Iran...