Was Mary a Perpetual Virgin?

The Matthean Data for a Marian Dogma

When I was in Paris a few weeks ago for summer break, I went to google restaurants nearby and found the notice: The Assumption of Mary may affect Working Hours.

The Assumption is one of four Marian dogmas held by the Catholic Church, alongside the idea that Mary is theotokos (the mother of God), her immaculate conception (being born without sin) and her perpetual virginity (she never had sex, even after marriage.)

Almost all protestants would agree with the first of these descriptions. Since Jesus is God, and Mary was Jesus’ mother, it follows quite straightforwardly that Mary was the mother of God. To deny that Mary is theotokos is to deny the Incarnation.

Yet other doctrines like the immaculate conception, perpetual virginity and (most recently) the Assumption seem to most Protestants to go far beyond the biblical evidence. This is especially true of the doctrine of the perpetual virginity, which some have taken to be explicitly contradicted by Matthew’s infancy narrative.

A Fly in the Ointment?

Upon reading the gospels, the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity has a fly in the ointment. Matthew 1:25 reads: ‘but [Joseph] had no marital relations with her until (heos) she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.”

Reading this in English, it seems to imply that Joseph did have relations with Mary after she had given birth. Yet many commentators, from ancient times to the present, have contested that the Greek word ‘until’ necessarily imply a reversal of conditions: in this case, a reversal of Mary’s virginity.

Consider these comments from some prolific Protestant scholars. Frederick Dale Bruner states that “The important ‘until,’ though it naturally suggests a termination [of the preceding state], does not always have to do so.”¹ Similarly, Ulrich Luz concludes that “The Catholic thesis of the perpetual virginity of Mary cannot be cogently refuted even here by means of exegesis.”²

A key argument in favour of this ambiguity is that Matthew was simply confirming that Joseph had not had sex with Mary prior to Jesus’ birth. He was not concerned at all with what happened after Jesus was born. Take this argument from John Chrysostom:

“[Matthew] has used the word until here, not that you should suspect that after these things [Joseph] knew [Mary], but to inform you that before birth the Virgin was completely untouched. He said the word until to secure what happened before the birth, but what happened after these things he has left you to infer.” (Homilies on Matthew 5.3)

What are we to make of this argument, that Matthew’s ‘until’ is ambiguous?

Was Mary was a Perpetual Virgin… Until a Recent Study?

It is true that the word ‘until’ does not always denote the end of state of affairs. To see this, we only need to Jesus’ words in the Great Commission, also found in Matthew.

Jesus tells his disciples: ‘Observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always until the close of the age.” We are not to imagine here that the preceding state – Jesus being with his disciples – ended at the close of the age! There are many instances in which ‘until’ does not require the negation of the previous state.

Yet there are also instances of ‘until’ which do mark the end of a previous state and beginning of a new one. Take John 9:18: ‘So then the Jews did not believe concerning him that he was blind and received sight until they called his parents.’ The Jews did not believe he had received his sight – but then their disbelief came to an end.

To translate this into rough linguistic terminology, we can distinguish two uses of ‘until’. The durative ‘until’ is the one above: it does not necessarily cancel the previous conditions. The punctual ‘until’ marks a situation which does not begin until a certain point. That is, the punctual ‘until’ means ‘after, but not before.’

If Matthew 1:25 contains a punctual until, then it means that Joseph did know Mary after, but not before, Jesus was born. Yet the problem with many discussions of this topic is that they have not devised a feasible method to distinguish between these two forms of ‘until.’ The ‘until’ is therefore left ambiguous by many commentators.