Was Jerome an Innovator in his Defense of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary?
A response to an accusation of dishonesty
Hey everybody!
I've been thinking about making a blog for a while, where I can write out some posts from my compulsive notetaking for posterity. I hadn't really gotten around to it until now, but I think this is as good a reason as any to finally kick it off:
On Twitter, a clip was taken from my interview with James White dealing with his engagement with Roman Catholic apologetics from the 90s to today.
You can find that interview here:
The clip that this post is written in response to was taken by an individual named Samuel, a Sedevacantist Roman Catholic who is the founder of Catholic Dogmatics Press, and was used to accuse James White of being a liar due to his claim that, in Jerome's treatise supporting the Perpetual Virginity against Helvidius, "Jerome never once even tries to suggest that anyone in the Church before him had ever held the position that he presented."
Here is Samuel's tweet:
https://twitter.com/unmovediguana/status/1739737494529147210?t=PvzswPd_4582H6_kt5XOdw&s=19
Samuel said that, "White frequently spouts outright lies and illogical nonsense with a supremely puffed up air of confidence that's meant to alleviate the anxiety of his Protestant followers and give them their daily boost of faux confidence. For people who thirst for lies and heresy, this kind of sophistical performance is very convincing." James and I were both then accused of dodging for not immediately answering to this post.
I was pretty busy during this holiday season and I must've just completely missed the original post. Thankfully, Samuel was courteous enough to tag both myself as well as James again in the replies to the original tweet. So I thought it would make for easier reading for me to briefly address his accusation here as opposed to having to make a 47-part tweet thread.
Samuel seems to have misunderstood James' point in the clip that was taken. The point is NOT that there are zero supporters of the perpetual virginity prior to Jerome. The point, rather, was this: the way that Jerome argues for the perpetual virginity of Mary IS a clean break with his predecessors. The approach that Jerome takes is completely foreign to those who came before him, and it shews forth from his dismissal of the Protoevangelium of James (which served as the main point of "evidence" presented for those who came before him on this issue).
I was actually reading a Master's thesis tracing out the history of the defense of the perpetual virginity with a focus on Jerome lately, which I would like to make reference to in order to flesh out this point.
In his Master's Thesis, Ancient & Medieval Historian Andrew Koperski provides a summary of the history of attitudes regarding this doctrine in the following helpful and succinct way:
"In the first century, it appears that no one knew or cared enough about Mary’s permanent sexual integrity for it to be included among the earliest Christian writings. In fact, the narratives of the New Testament seem to suggest that Mary did not always remain a virgin—most keenly in the various mentions of Christ’s siblings. By the later second century, we have evidence that the situation had begun to change in some Christian communities. The apocryphal Protevangelium of James laid the foundation of the Marian perpetual virginity tradition, asserting and implying that Mary remained a virgin physically in giving birth to Jesus and that hers was not a true marriage to Joseph. Nevertheless, into the third century, this tradition was not yet established as the unquestioned position of Christian orthodoxy.
Two important (and relatively ascetic) figures from that period, Tertullian and Origen, prove through their writings that there was a spectrum of permissible views in this period concerning Mary: Some clearly advocated the positions of the Protevangelium, some thought Mary had a normal marriage that produced children, and some were somewhere in the middle. In the following century, as Christian asceticism came into its own, the tradition of perpetual virginity concomitantly grew into the favored position. Here Hilary of Poitiers marks an important point on the timeline. He does not show any of the doubts or hesitations of his third century predecessors. Instead, drawing upon the apocryphal traditions (without naming them), his language presumes that the perpetual virginity is the orthodox position; after all, only crooked men suggest otherwise. (One does wonder if he read much of Tertullian.) Enter now the Marian and ascetic controversies that erupted in the late fourth century, when a new set of expectations and pressures once again shifted the theological landscape."1
Koperski breaks each of these figures down and comments on them in a pretty thorough way throughout this paper, so feel free to check it out -- it's free to access! That being said, there is a pretty clear development that happens throughout the first several centuries of Church History regarding this doctrine, with key players seeing it as more and more important as time progresses, although with a variety of views; however, the uniting thread for all of this doctrine's apologists leading up to Jerome is one and the same: heavy reliance upon the Protoevangelium of James.
"The apocryphal Protevangelium of James launched traditions concerning Mary and Jesus’s siblings that would loom large in Christian theology and Scriptural exegesis well into the late fourth century. Indeed, the Protevangelium traditions were still favored by the proponents of the perpetual virginity in Jerome’s day. As we shall see, Jerome’s own friend and ally in the Origenist controversy, Epiphanius of Salamis, confidently espoused the basic Mariological features of the Protevangelium. At the same time, by the last few decades of the 400s, the church still found itself hotly disputing some of the major philosophical and doctrinal assumptions closely related to the issue of Mary’s virginity. Two important controversies mark a turning point in Western asceticism and Mariology: the so-called Helvidian and Jovinian controversies. The first, sparked by Helvidius, revolved around the matter of Mary’s virginity post partum, while the second, spawned by Jovinian, partly concerned her virginity in partu. Chiefly, both called into question the superiority of sexual renunciation, and both drew fierce responses from Jerome and other Christian elites who favored asceticism. In part, the outcome of these fights was the establishment of a new doctrinal consensus in favor of asceticism and its version of Mary. Indeed, one of the overarching themes in David Hunter’s work is that the doctrinal points of Christian asceticism and Mary’s virginity were never truly settled issues for the church until well past the polemical battles involving Helvidius and Jovinian, and that the result of those fights was the entrenchment of a new 'orthodoxy.'
These theological affrays would give Jerome—equally at home in nasty polemical exchanges as he was in the study of the Bible—a platform to enunciate his own nuanced views and defense of Mary’s perpetual virginity. In his own way reflective of the larger tensions and trends of late antiquity, Jerome would pose a point of continuity but also a simultaneous and rather remarkable break with prior centuries. For while he would largely endorse Mary’s perpetual virginity in accord with the apocrypha, he would simultaneously reject the apocryphal work-around for the problem of the Lord’s 'brethren,' substituting his own novel interpretations of the New Testament. So doing, Jerome would break the well-published views of at least one of his major allies, Epiphanius of Salamis, who had explicitly endorsed the apocryphal narratives."2
Jerome breaks cleanly with this tradition when he gears up to defend the Perpetual virginity in his own context. I want to emphasize this point again:
"In his own way reflective of the larger tensions and trends of late antiquity, Jerome would pose a point of continuity but also a simultaneous and rather remarkable break with prior centuries. For while he would largely endorse Mary’s perpetual virginity in accord with the apocrypha, he would simultaneously reject the apocryphal work-around for the problem of the Lord’s 'brethren,' substituting his own novel interpretations of the New Testament. So doing, Jerome would break the well-published views of at least one of his major allies, Epiphanius of Salamis, who had explicitly endorsed the apocryphal narratives."3
And
"By far his most important argument, Jerome tackles the question of Jesus’s brethren head-on. On one hand, Contra Helvidium agrees with prior defenders of the perpetual virginity: Mary did not have relations with Joseph after the birth of Jesus, and so she remained a virgin forever. Therefore, the brothers and sisters mentioned in the Bible cannot be true blood relations. In this, Jerome’s claims are unremarkable, in lockstep with the existing perpetual virginity tradition from the Protevangelium of James up through his friend Epiphanius. But Jerome’s argument also contains a new turn, as he actually attacks the apocrypha that hitherto had lent credence to the perpetual virginity. In rebutting Helvidius’s reading of Matthew 1.25 ('and he did not know her until. . .'), Jerome states: 'There was no midwife there: No womanly officiousness intervened. [Mary] herself wrapped the infant in clothes. She herself was both mother and midwife. And she placed him, it says, in a manger, because there was no room for him in the inn. That sentence both refutes the apocryphorum deliramenta, since Mary herself wrapped the infant in clothes, and also it does not allow for Helvidius’s desire to be fulfilled, since there was no place in the inn for nuptials.' This, of course, is a veiled reference to the Protevangelium of James and the various apocryphal spin-offs it produced, as it recalls the episode of the midwife Salome, who manually put the virginity of Mary to the test. [...] Essentially, in calling the apocryphal narratives 'nonsense' (deliramenta), Jerome was here rejecting the main support for the perpetual virginity, cutting the original legs out from under it. After all, the apocrypha had overcome the problem of Jesus’s siblings rather tactfully, suggesting that Joseph had begotten a number of children with a different woman before his faux-marriage to Mary. Recall that Epiphanius had himself appealed to these stories as 'historical accounts' that proved the perpetual virginity." 4
And since he summed it up much better than I probably could, I will let Koperski explain the main thrust of Jerome's argument here too:
"Jerome goes on to build an entirely new interpretation of Christ’s 'brethren' that would preserve Mary’s virginity but also diverge radically from the standard apocryphal explanation. Taking Helvidius’s challenge directly, Jerome himself recalls a smattering of passages from the New Testament that reference siblings of Jesus, including Matthew 13.55, where the Nazarenes mention Jesus’s many brothers and sisters. The series of arguments that follows occupies the bulk of Contra Helvidium, and little of the direct text bears repeating here, as Jerome explains his larger contention in an extremely convoluted fashion. In short, Jerome attempts to surmount the mention of siblings by suggesting that the Bible frequently uses the word 'brother' in a loose sense that does not always mean blood-sibling. Indeed, between the Old and New Testaments, 'brother' denotes a brother in a spiritual, ecclesiastical sense, or to signify a countryman, or even to refer to non-nuclear family relations. Suffice it to say that he directs much of his focus to the named 'brothers' of Jesus attempting to connect them to other, similarly named figures in the New Testament. To wit, the identity of the New Testament’s various 'Jameses' receives special treatment in Contra Helvidium, as a certain James is repeatedly called Christ’s brother. In a complex set of exegetical maneuvers, Jerome posits that this James was in fact Jesus’s cousin, not a blood-brother or step-brother. Reduced to bullet-point premises, his argument looks like this: A) There are only two Jameses in the New Testament: Zebedee’s son and Mary Clophas’s son; B) James 'the brother of the Lord' mentioned by Paul in Galatians cannot be a third because Paul explicitly calls him an apostle, meaning he must be one of the two Jameses listed in Acts 1:13 and one of the original Twelve; C) 'James of Alphaeus' and 'James of Mary Clopas' must be the same person, because they clearly are not James son of Zebedee; D) Mary Clopas, one of the women present at Christ’s death, must be the sister of Jesus’s mother Mary, making this James the cousin or 'brother' of Jesus. This complicated reasoning allows Jerome to surmount the prooftexts of Helvidius: Jesus’s alleged brothers and sisters were family, but cousins, not siblings. Thus, contra Helvidius, Mary never had other children besides Jesus, and she always remained a virgin."5
All of this to say, in conclusion: while Jerome cites Fathers who generally agree with his perspective that Mary remained perpetually a virgin, he is unable to cite any Fathers who make the specific argument that he is making in support of that perspective -- because his argument is novel and a break with the arguments that have been presented by those who came before him.
I could sit here and further discuss the rest of Koperski's excellent paper as well as analyze the actual validity of Jerome's argument myself -- but that is beyond the scope of this article. I simply wanted to respond to the charge of dishonesty and dodging, which is something I do not take lightly. I will admit that James' passing remark in our video together could have been a little bit clearer on the point he was making; however, I think Samuel’s false charge could have been avoided with some more careful and charitable listening on his part.
Hopefully this article helps clear up any misconceptions there were regarding this clip, and, Lord-willing, y'all can look forward to other articles on this Substack as well!
May the Lord bless you and keep you all in His good graces.
Proverbs 18:17 ESV "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him."
Koperski, Andrew. "Breaking with Tradition: Jerome, the Virgin Mary, and the Troublesome “Brethren” of Jesus." Master's thesis, Ohio University, 2018. P. 34-35. Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1524837953738555
Koperski, Andrew. "Breaking with Tradition: Jerome, the Virgin Mary, and the Troublesome “Brethren” of Jesus." Master's thesis, Ohio University, 2018. P. 36-37. Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1524837953738555
Koperski, Andrew. "Breaking with Tradition: Jerome, the Virgin Mary, and the Troublesome “Brethren” of Jesus." Master's thesis, Ohio University, 2018. P. 37. Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1524837953738555
Koperski, Andrew. "Breaking with Tradition: Jerome, the Virgin Mary, and the Troublesome “Brethren” of Jesus." Master's thesis, Ohio University, 2018. P. 45-47. Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1524837953738555
Koperski, Andrew. "Breaking with Tradition: Jerome, the Virgin Mary, and the Troublesome “Brethren” of Jesus." Master's thesis, Ohio University, 2018. P. 45-47. Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1524837953738555