A friend asked me this this question today…
Actually she asked “Do you believe that Mary had other children?”
I wrote the following reply…
————snip from email————–
Short answer… yes.
Actually I never gave it much thought because of this passage in Matthew 13:
54 Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. "Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?" they asked. 55 "Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? 56 Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?" 57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor." 58 And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.
and this passage from Galatians 1:
18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles–only James, the Lord’s brother.
Seems pretty clear to me… and I think it is reasonable to believe that he was a leader of the early Jerusalem church and most likely wrote the book of James.
However… when you asked me I remembered that you mentioned before about being Roman Catholic. And… I’m not that up on the particulars of Roman Catholic doctrine, but I figured that Mary having other kids might be a problem due to her supposed perpetual virginity.
So… I looked around a bit and probably didn’t find anything that you haven’t already seen, but I did like how this guy put it.
He admits that there are some translation issues and historical issues that we might quibble over when addressing the question of if Jesus had brothers and sisters or not… but comes to the same conclusion as I do… that Mary and Joseph probably had a pile of kids just like all the other 1st century Jewish families did.
————snip from email————–
My friend wrote back with a bit of discussion… a few insults regarding my seeming inability to read long articles in one sitting (lol)… and with this link…
After reading that one… I found this one…
In the end… I just don’t see how this matters?
What am I missing?
I’m hoping that those from the area around Rome itself might jump in with a comment or two…
I know Catholics believe that Mary was sinless… but why would having other kids be a sin in any way?
Just to be clear… I’m not arguing one way or the other… I’m declaring my ignorance and apathy about this subject. I can’t see how this “doctrine” matters one way or the other to anybody… but it must be very important to be so controversial?
Any thoughts? Does this matter to you? Should it matter to me?
5 responses so far ↓
1 Josh Furnal // Oct 22, 2008 at 5:14 am
SQJ, I haven’t ever found CARM sympathetic or fruitful for dialog with Catholics.
One possible way that this might be of interest or relevance is in how far one would want to press the “only begotten” phrase in John 1.18 and to whom it refers grammatically . Is Jesus the ‘only begotten’ of God or of Mary? I think there’s room to say that Jesus is the only begotten of both, being the whole incarnation thing…
So the question then becomes, does God have more sons or does Mary?
Also, “brothers” can refer to more than just blood siblings. It can mean also step-siblings or half-siblings, or even close relative.
Historically, the Eastern Church interpreted Mary as having step-children, while the West interpreted it as cousins.
I would highly recommend Tim Perry’s book Mary for Evangelicals, if you wanna chase this rabbit further down the rabbit-hole…
- A reply near to home sweet rome
2 sqjtaipei // Oct 22, 2008 at 12:31 pm
@Furnal
But should this matter to me? It seems like the Catholic church goes through a lot of work to maintain the teaching that Mary didn’t have other children. I think that the text (of the Bible) is unclear on the matter… making me think it isn’t important one way or the other. But it seems to be important to Catholics. Is it important with your friends in Italy? If so, why?
3 Josh Furnal // Oct 22, 2008 at 10:09 pm
In my experience, the kind of Italian Catholics that have held tightly to this sort of doctrine has been voiced on two extremes: 1) those people who could really care less about religion, but if they feel threatened by your presence, know how to immediately resort to being uber-religious, and 2) the uber-religious who are not ecumenically oriented.
So, in short, to you SQJ, it shouldn’t have to matter. Alot of these ‘doctrinal’ issues that come up are defense mechanisms. That’s the function of doctrine in general, and why the Church has it: to ward off those who aren’t like us.
I’m sure there are several different dialects in Chinese. It would be like the more provincial Chinese person demanding that all those who don’t speak their province’s dialect, should in fact speak it, for it’s the REAL chinese language. And when an outsider rolls into town who speaks with a different tone, suspicion greets them and defenses go up.
But the bottom line is, you have your thoughts on mary, and your friend has theirs. Who’s right? I guess that depends if you’re the outsider rolling into town, or the provincial person greeting them with suspicion.
4 Saturday, October 25, 2008 » don furnaloni // Oct 26, 2008 at 6:58 am
[...] recent blog exchange about The Virgin Mary at SQJTaipei, caused me to recommend a book to him that upon later reflection I felt several others of you could [...]
5 Darren Petrie // Nov 14, 2008 at 5:58 am
K.I.S.S.
The answer is yes.
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