What do the Fathers teach about Mary’s perpetual virginity? Do they teach, as the Protestants do, that she was the mother of a number of children after Jesus?
St. Hippolytus of Rome in Against Beron and Helix makes an unambiguous assertion of Mary’s perpetual virginity.
But the pious confession of the believer is that, with a view to our salvation, and in order to connect the universe with unchangeableness, the Creator of all things incorporated with Himself a rational soul and a sensible body from the all-holy Mary, ever-virgin, by an undefiled conception, without conversion, and was made man in nature, but separate from wickedness: the same was perfect God, and the same was perfect man; the same was in nature at once perfect God and man. [ANF 5: 234; fragment VIII]
The powerful defender of Nicene Christology, St. Athanasius gives us the following in his work Against the Arians:
Therefore let those who deny that the Son is from the Father by nature and proper to His Essence, deny also that He took true human flesh of Mary Ever-Virgin; for in neither case had it been of profit to us men, whether the Word were not true and naturally Son of God, or the flesh not true which He assumed. [NPNF 2-04: 386-7; ch. XXI; par. 70]
St. Ambrose of Milan makes the point very plainly in To the Church at Vercellæ.
Imitate her, holy mothers, who in her only dearly beloved Son set forth so great an example of maternal virtue; for neither have you sweeter children, nor did the Virgin seek the consolation of being able to bear another son. [NPNF 2-10: 473; Epistle LXIII; par. 111]
In referring to Ezekiel 44:2, Rufinus tells us that this prophecy applies to the Virgin Mary in his A Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed.
What could be said with such evident reference to the inviolate preservation of the Virgin’s condition? That Gate of Virginity was closed; through it the Lord God of Israel entered; through it He came forth from the Virgin’s womb into this world; and the Virgin-state being preserved inviolate, the gate of the Virgin remained closed for ever. [NPNF 2-03: 547; sect. 9]
In Peter of Alexandria’s That Up to the Time of the Destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews Rightly Appointed the Fourteenth Day of the First Lunar Month, he asserts the same thing as above.
[T]he Creator and Lord of every visible and invisible creature, the only-begotten Son, and the Word co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and of the same substance with them, according to His divine nature, our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, being in the end of the world born according to the flesh of our holy and glorious lady, Mother of God, and Ever-Virgin, and, of a truth, of Mary the Mother of God; and being seen upon earth, and having true and real converse as man with men, who were of the same substance with Him, according to His human nature…. [ANF 6: 282; frag. V, par. 7]
John Cassian speaks of the Virgin Mary’s perpetual virginity in The Seven Books of John Cassian on the Incarnation of the Lord, Against Nestorius.
For He did not begin to exist from the Virgin, but He who was already in existence, came into the Virgin.” Again on Christmas Day: “See the miracle of the mother of the Lord: A Virgin conceived, a Virgin brought forth. She was a Virgin when she conceived, a Virgin when with child, a Virgin after the birth. [NPNF 2-11: 617-8; bk. VII, ch. XXV]
In the introduction to Ecclesiastical History of Salaminius Hermias Sozomenus, written sometime before the middle of the Fifth Century, we find this very clear statement on this doctrine.
This clearly referred to the reign of Herod, who was an Idumean, on his father’s side, and on his mother’s, an Arabian, and the Jewish nation was delivered to him by the Roman senate and Augustus Cæsar. And of the rest of the prophets some declared beforehand the birth of Christ, His ineffable conception, the mother remaining a virgin after His birth, His people, and country. [NPNF 2-02: 239; bk. I, ch. I]
Finally the words of the Second Council of Constantinople (Fifth Ecumenical Council) in the Anathemas against the "Three Chapters" sets conciliar approval upon the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The “nativity of these latter days when the Word of God came down from the heavens and was made flesh of holy and glorious Mary, mother of God and ever-virgin, and was born from her….” [from http://www.dailycatholic.org/history/5ecumen2.htm]
Again as with many of the other subjects which we have examined, it becomes pretty clear that the Early Church believed in something that we have since discounted totally. Strangely, even the Reformers of the Sixteenth Century believed in the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. So the question arises as to why the modern Protestants don’t believe this. Why have we rejected the Early Church and even the Reformers who supposedly brought the Church back to where it was supposed to be? It would be interesting to hear the answers that would be proffered to this query.
