Precious Blood of Jesus Christ Save

SAINT JEROME DEFENDED MARY’S PERPETUAL VIRGINITY (MARIOLOGY)

⚜ Saint Jerome Defended Mary’s Perpetual Virginity

The opinion that Mary, after the virgin birth of Jesus, did not have a marital relationship with her husband Joseph, or have other sons, is professed in unison by the Fathers of the Church of the 4th to 6th centuries. There were only a few isolated voices and protesters like Jovinien, Bonose, and Helvidium.

Saint Jerome’s response to these objections:

Among the Fathers of the Church, St Jerome is the one who has confronted exegetical difficulties the most openly for the defense of “virginitas post partum.” He too wanted to confirm a belief already present within the Church. In defeating the attacks against Mary’s perpetual virginity by the layman Helvidium (a disciple of the Aryan bishop Maxence of Milan), Jerome addressed a Mariological letter to him in which he dealt with all Helvidium’s objections:

1) Mary is called “woman” (mulier coniunx), Mt 1:20-24, elsewhere in Scripture to describe a virgin bride, for example in Dt 22:23.

2) If the evangelists speak of Jesus’ “parents” (Lk 2:27, 41-43) or if Mary called Joseph “Jesus’ father” (Lk 2:48), this was not because Joseph was really the biological father of the Redeemer, but because Joseph had let people believe so to defend Mary’s good reputation.

3) Concerning the statement: “before (antequam) they came to live together” (Mt 1:18), Jerome demonstrated that this preposition, although it often indicated what happened next, sometimes emphasizes in Scripture what did in actual fact not happen.

4) As for the “until (donec) she gave birth to a son” (Mt 1:25), Jerome, recalling other biblical passages as in Jr 7:11, Mt 28:20, 1 Cor 15:25, Dt 34:6 and others, tried to show that this word in the Holy Scripture has a double meaning and may indicate a fixed or indeterminate time.

5) When questioned about the meaning of the word “first-born” (primogenitus), in Mt 1:25 and Lk 2:7, Jerome objected to his opponent with this argument: “The law (Nm 18:15) on the first-born included the child who would have no siblings. The title of first-born belonged to any child who opened the womb from which no one else has been born, and not only one who would be followed by other siblings.” If in the story of the exterminating angel of Egypt (Ex 12:29), only the eldest child who had siblings was indicated then “only-children would have been spared death.”

6) As for Helvidium’s reference to Jesus’ “brothers”, the exegete explained that this indication in Scripture often meant a relationship based on “friendship” between people, as in the example of Psalm 132:1, and in the New Testament sometimes all Christians are called “brothers” (Jn 20:17; 1 Cor 5:11), or it indicates those who have a different degree of kinship as Gn 27:46; 29:1-12; 31:17.

7) Jerome challenged the solution suggested by the Protogospel of James (i.e “brothers” are sons of Joseph’s first marriage) and offered another plausible explanation. He explained that in the case of the Lord, “brothers” were “cousins” (sons of brothers and sisters on the mother’s side). He supported his argument on the fact that philologically, Hebrew and Aramaic do not have a word for “cousin” and use the word “brothers” to designate “cousins” as well (Gn 13:8; 14:14; Lev 10:4; 1 Chr 23:22). Simeon is the Lord’s cousin: this Jerome knew, even if he did not use the quote from the story of Eusebio (written around the year 180 A.D.) where it was written that Simeon was a “son of Cleophas, an uncle of the Lord.” Saint James the Lesser is also the Lord’s cousin as the son of that Mary (Mk 15:40; Mt 27:56), who was the wife of Alphaeus (cf. Mt 10:3; Acts 1:13) and the sister of Mary the mother of Christ.

Jerome also made this remark to Helvidium:

“You confess that Mary did not remain a virgin. On the contrary I will go even further and say: Joseph, following the example of Mary, was a virgin too, so that the virginal son was generated by a virginal marriage. This means that if a holy man cannot be suspected of extra-marital relationships, and if he is not written that he had another wife, if ultimately He was for Mary, who in people’s opinion was considered his wife, more a protector than a spouse, then one can only conclude that the man they called the father of the Lord, has lived chastely with Mary.”

In conclusion:

This is why the Fathers of the Church put the “lily of virginity” in Saint Joseph’s hand, not as a biblical theological anachronism, but as the consequence of a rigorous refusal of the Protogospel (apocryphal) of James. The New Testament says nothing of Joseph’s first or let alone second marriage and Jerome could therefore say:

“We believe that God was born of a Virgin because we read it; we do not believe that Mary, after the birth of Jesus, had a marital relationship, because we have not read it.”