It’s claimed that it is “better and more blessed to remain in virginity.” According to the Council of Trent, if you deny that claim, you are anathema—that is, formally condemned.1
That conviction is related to a popular teaching about Mary the mother of Jesus: that she remained a virgin her entire life, even after she married Joseph. One of the best-known miracles in the Bible is the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit produced a baby in the womb of a young woman who did “not know a man” (Luke 1:34). Today, people still refer to her as the “Virgin Mary,” as they believe it would have corrupted her holiness if she and her husband Joseph ever shared a bed together.
Earlier in this series, we saw that the most respectful thing you can do for Mary is take her at her word. In this study we’re using the Bible to answer two questions:
- Did Mary stay a virgin forever?
- Is lifelong virginity actually holier than a faithful, fruitful marriage?
The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Jesus, for the rest of her life, and church councils were affirming it by the sixth and seventh centuries.2 The Eastern Orthodox Churches have the same teaching. So how do they explain the Bible’s references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters?
Let’s be fair to their best arguments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the “brothers” were close relatives, and it points out that two of them, James and Joses, are elsewhere called the sons of another Mary (see Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40).3 Others, drawing on a second-century book called the Protoevangelium of James, say the brothers were Joseph’s sons from an earlier marriage.4 That book isn’t Scripture, but it is evidently quite influential. It’s also true that in the Old Testament, the word “brother” can describe a close relative, like when Abraham called his nephew Lot his brother in Genesis 13:8. And some ask a reasonable question: If Mary had other sons, why did Jesus entrust her to John from the cross in John 19:26–27? Those are fair points. Now let’s look at the text.
Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife, and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son. And he called His name Jesus.
Matthew 1:24–25
To be fair, the word “till” by itself doesn’t always tell you what happened afterward, but the natural reading of this text is that Joseph and Mary consummated their marriage sometime after Jesus was born.
In Mark 6, the people of Nazareth, where Jesus was raised, described Mary and Joseph’s family.
“Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” So they were offended at Him.
Mark 6:3
These are the neighbors. They name His mother, name four brothers, and mention His sisters, all as one household. Yes, Mark later mentions a different Mary with sons named James and Joses. But in Mark 6, the neighbors are describing Jesus’ brothers and the family of “the Son of Mary.” Throughout the gospel accounts, His brothers keep showing up with His mother.
After this He went down to Capernaum, He, His mother, His brothers, and His disciples; and they did not stay there many days.
John 2:12
What about the claim that “brother” sometimes means “cousin” in the Old Testament? The New Testament was written in Greek, unlike the Hebrew Old Testament. Greek has a separate word for “cousin.” Paul uses it for Mark, the cousin of Barnabas in Colossians 4:10. It isn’t the same word used for Jesus’ brothers.5
In 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul says:
Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?
Here’s another passage that claims that Jesus had brothers, and they also were married men who traveled in ministry with their wives.
If Mary had other sons, why didn’t Jesus expect them to take care of Mary after He died? At that point, His brothers didn’t yet believe in Him (see John 7:5), and John was a faithful disciple standing right there. His brothers, as far as we know, were nowhere near Golgotha on that day. It’s not until after Jesus’ resurrection that we see His brothers believing in Him (see Acts 1:14). It makes sense that Jesus would entrust His mother to a man who shared her faith.
If it is so evident that Mary and Joseph had a faithful, fruitful marriage, why did the idea that Mary stayed a virgin become so important? A big part of the answer is that, as time went on after the New Testament was complete, many people came to see virginity as holier than marriage. The issue is not that Catholicism officially calls marital sex sinful. It doesn’t. The issue is that a strong ascetic tradition developed in Catholicism which perpetual virginity came to be regarded as a higher state than marriage, and Mary increasingly became the supreme model of that ideal. It’s another example of the Catholic Church building a doctrine on tradition, rather than the word of God.
In about AD 383, Jerome—the scholar best known for translating the Latin Vulgate—wrote one of the earliest defenses of Mary’s perpetual virginity. In a famous letter to a young woman, he wrote, “I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins.”6 In the same letter, he argued that virginity is natural, “while wedlock only follows guilt.” He went on to claim that Eve was a virgin in paradise and only began her married life after the fall.7
When a monk named Jovinian taught that a faithful wife was just as holy as a virgin, he was condemned by religious leaders in Rome and Milan in the early 390s. He was also accused of denying Mary’s perpetual virginity.8 The two ideas traveled together.
If it is true that “wedlock only follows guilt” then that would mean God never intended Adam and Eve to be married or consummate their marriage. In that case, if the fall had never happened, then Adam and Eve would have remained the only two humans to ever exist, because we know where babies come from, right? What does the Bible actually say?
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:27–28
The first words Scripture records God speaking to human beings were a blessing and a command: Be fruitful and multiply. This was before the fall, before sin, and before guilt of any kind.
Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Genesis 1:31
God looked on the world He had made—including man and woman, the command to multiply, and the marriage union He had established—and called it “very good.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Genesis 2:24–25
It’s not until the next chapter that sin enters the world. Sex isn’t a concession to the fall. It’s part of God’s very good creation.
There are a couple of passages that address singleness. In Matthew 19:12, Jesus speaks of some who remain unmarried for the sake of the kingdom. But He said this while teaching on divorce and remarriage, so this would include those who remain single for the rest of their lives after marriage and divorce.
In 1 Corinthians 7:7, regarding Paul’s singleness, he says, “For I wish that all men were even as I myself.” It could be easy to build a doctrine on this one statement out of context. But look at the context and see his reasoning: an unmarried person can serve the Lord without distraction (see vv. 32–35). The reason isn’t that sex is unholy. It’s that marriage brings responsibilities, and singleness frees some people for undivided service. Paul actually calls singleness and marriage a gift.
For I wish that all men were even as I myself. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that.
1 Corinthians 7:7
Some people might then say that at least the leaders in the church should remain single. But the same apostle Paul says that both bishops and deacons must be married with children, as having a family prepares a leader for church service (see 1 Timothy 3:1–13). Some people respond by saying, “But what about Paul’s singleness?” Look at the text and the life of Paul carefully. Paul was neither a bishop nor a deacon.
Sexual purity is a virtue. Saving yourself for marriage honors God.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.
1 Thessalonians 4:3–5
If you are not rightly married to someone, you should not engage in sexual acts with them. Period. That is a sin, and it will keep you out of the kingdom of God.
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.
1 Corinthians 6:9–10
Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
Hebrews 13:4
Marriage is honorable. The right path is to remain a virgin until marriage. But virginity isn’t holy in itself. What is holy is faithfulness. For an unmarried person, faithfulness means abstaining. For a married person, faithfulness means giving yourself to your spouse.
Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
1 Corinthians 7:3–5
A marriage kept sexless for life isn’t a higher form of holiness, and there’s no reason to believe that Mary and Joseph chose that path for themselves. In fact, a sexless marriage is the very thing God warns married couples not to do.
Teaching that Mary remained a virgin doesn’t honor her. It implies that the good gift God designed in Genesis would have diminished her purity. And it erases her children, whose story is one of the most beautiful in the New Testament. John 7:5 says:
For even His brothers did not believe in Him.
Then came the resurrection. Acts 1:14 says:
These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
After Jesus’ death and resurrection, Mary and her sons prayed together as His disciples. James (Jesus’ brother) went on to become a leader of the church in Jerusalem (see Galatians 1:19 and Acts 15:13). He is also traditionally identified as the author of the letter of James. Notice how he introduces himself.
James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
James 1:1
He could have called himself the brother of Jesus. He called himself His servant. Like Jesus’ other brother, Jude:
Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James.
Jude 1:1
Their mother once called herself the maidservant of the Lord. Like mother, like sons. Denying that those sons existed takes one of the sweetest chapters of Mary’s life and tears it out of her story.
Here’s how to respect Mary on this point: Honor her as the faithful wife and mother Scripture shows her to be. Honor the marriage God gave her. And honor the God who designed it, because what He made is good, including the marriage bed.
Whether you’re married or single, the gift you have is from God. If you’re married, love your spouse the way He designed. If you’re single, keep yourself pure and serve Him with undivided devotion. Whatever your situation, come to the Savior Mary rejoiced in. Believe in Him, repent of your sins, confess His name, and be baptized into Him.
In the fourth study of this series, we’ll put all of it together and answer the objection that is already coming: “Jesus wouldn’t like you disrespecting His mom.” We’ll read what Catholics actually pray, and ask why it very much looks like they’re worshiping Mary. Study it here.
- Council of Trent, Session 24, canon 10, in The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent, ed. and trans. J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), 195, https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct24.html; see also Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann et al., 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012), no. 1810 (hereafter DH). ↩︎
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §499; Second Council of Constantinople (553), canon 2 (DH 422); Lateran Synod (649), canon 3 (DH 503). ↩︎
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, §500. ↩︎
- Prot. Jas. 9. ↩︎
- Col 4:10 uses ἀνεψιός (“cousin”), while Mark 6:3 calls Jesus’ brothers ἀδελφοί. See Frederick W. Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. “ἀνεψιός.” ↩︎
- Jerome, Epist. 22.20 (NPNF² 6:30), https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/jerome-marriage.asp. Jerome’s defense of Mary’s perpetual virginity is his treatise Against Helvidius (ca. 383). ↩︎
- Jerome, Epist. 22.19 (NPNF² 6:29). ↩︎
- Jerome, Jov. 1.3, preserves Jovinian’s claim that virgins, widows, and married women who have been baptized are of equal merit. Ambrose, Epist. 42, reports the synod at Milan’s condemnation. See David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). ↩︎