THE LOW DOWN ON THE CHURCH FATHERS

If we were to decide what to believe by examining the traditions of the early church, what would we believe about whether Mary was a perpetual virgin? (By “the early church,” I’m referring to the church after the passing of the Apostles.)

Let’s go to the writings of the church father Tertullian of Carthage in North Africa (ca. 155-240 AD ca.). He denied that she was a perpetual virgin.

OK. Does Tertullian settle the matter for us? Not at all. The church father Jerome of Northern Italy (347-420 AD) argued that she was, and attempted to explain away the references to Jesus' "brothers and sisters" in Matthew 13:55-56 by changing the meaning of “brothers” and “sisters” to “cousins.”

The church father Epiphanius of Cyprus (310-403 AD) agreed with Jerome that Mary was a perpetual virgin and tried to explain away the "brothers and sisters" by saying that they were children of Joseph from a former marriage. In this, he too followed the practice that if Scripture doesn’t fit your theory, change the Scriptures.

So, if we want to establish doctrine-based tradition, which view of Mary do we accept? The church fathers give different views. Which one is correct if tradition is your guide? When we compile the writings of the church fathers, we see there is no internal consistency in what their quills produced.

When we let the Bible speak for itself, the obvious conclusion is that while Mary was a virgin until Christ's birth, she had other children later. The Koine Greek of the New Testament has words for "cousin" and "relative” and its authors used them. When referring to Jesus' "brothers and sisters," though, they used words with a primary meaning of those with a shared parentage.

FUN GUYS

There’s an old joke about a classics professor on his deathbed who said that he’d devoted his life to a study of the nominative case, but wished that he’d devoted more time to the genitive. Sounds like a real fun guy. There are those who devote their scholarly lives to studying the thousands of pages left behind by the church fathers. They too sound like fun guys to sit down have a Dr. Pepper with. It would be more fun to have a drink with an accountant.

WOLF AGAINST WOLF

Paul warned the elders of the Ephesian church about the coming of just such people as the church fathers arising within the church in Acts 20:29. He called them wolves. To paraphrase Julius Caesar, the wolves came, they saw, they influenced.

THE POINT, PLEASE

Before all this gets to be way over the top pedantic, let’s get to the point. The point is that the Scriptures are consistent, whereas the church fathers are inconsistent and don’t agree with one another. (This is one reason why their writings aren’t included in the canon.) I’ve chosen only one issue where those wolves disagreed among themselves; there are myriads of other examples, but again, we don’t want to become ostentatiously pansophic.

A FINER POINT

The Scriptures are consistent all over the place—from one author to another, from one book to another, most living at different times and places--a gentile and many Jews; fishermen, tax collectors, a doctor, a herdsman, a former member of the palace in Egypt, a fellow taken into slavery in Babylon. Yet, even in the “little bits” of the Bible, we still find a consistency we find nowhere else.

We go from the grand statement, “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6) to a former Pharisee’s statement before a ruler, recounting the risen Christ’s words to him, “that they may received forgiveness of sins . . . those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” (Acts 26:18) Then we go to a story Jesus told where He said that Satan snatches away the good news, “so that they will not believe and be saved.” Then we can listen to a fisherman tell us the same thing 99 more times when we read the Gospel of John where he says that faith alone saves. Internal consistency in the “little parts” of the Bible and the “big parts.”

A former member of a palace in Egypt wrote the first quote, a former Pharisee wrote the second, and doctor wrote the third, and the aforementioned fisherman consistently referred to faith alone for salvation all those times in his book. They all agree: faith alone saves. When we total up all the consistency factor regarding faith alone, the total number of verses reaches 200 in the New Testament alone.

Consistency, thy name is “Bible.”