Mary Def. Had Other Children...

[ICTHUS]

Would anyone care to respond to this?

This was my defense of Mary's perpetual virginity

[quote]Objection 1: It seems that Mary was not perpetually a virgin, for, it is written in the Gospel of Luke (1:24-25): When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Reply Obj. 1: The Protestant here reads the word "until" in the modern sense of the word, that is, that it denotes a stopping or beginning of an action after a specified event. However, we find its usage in Scripture in places where one would expect the action to continue. The word "until" in this sense can imply that Mary and Joseph had no relations before the birth of Christ. It does not necessarily speak of consumnation AFTER Jesus' birth. However, let us look at other examples of where the word "until" is used in Scripture.

The Apostle says (1 Cor 15:23-26): But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

I ask the question, then: Will not Christ continue to reign after His enemies have been trampeled under His feet?

As Moses writes: (Genesis 8:4-5)
and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

I ask the question, then: Did the waters not continue to recede after the tenth month? I assert emphatically that they did, for it is written that the waters did not completely recede until the first month of Noahs six hundred and first year. Recall that Noah was instructed to build the boat in his six-hundredth year. If the standard, modern usage of the word "until" were applied here, the floodwaters would have stopped receding in the tenth month, leaving the earth still partially covered with water. Therefore, the usage of the word "until" in Matthew 1:25 does not imply anything other than that an action did not occur up to a point in time, and does not mean that the action occured after said point in time. [/quote]

And this was my opponents rebuttal

[quote name='swordfish7']The Greek word for "until" in Matthew 1:25 is: "heos", and it really does mean "only up to this point in time". It is this same word, "until", that refers to the star that moved ahead of the wise men until it stood over the place where Jesus lay, then it stopped moving. Again, it is used in Matthew 2:13 to show that Joseph and Mary were to remain in Egypt until receiving a revelation from God, and then they could return.

You incorrectly state that 1 Corinthians 15:26 uses the same word "until" that is used in Matthew 1.25. The Greek word used in 1 Corinthians 15:26 is actually "achri", meaning both "while" and "up to".

It is not good form to rely on the surface English word to attempt to prove a point about syntatical and grammatical comparisons. It would be better to rely on the underlying Greek or Hebrew.

It is entirely proper to understand Matthew 1:25 to mean "Joseph kept Mary a virgin only until after she gave birth to Jesus" based on the actual rendering of the original words.

Cheers.[/quote]

[Hananiah]

[quote]The Greek word for "until" in Matthew 1:25 is: "heos", and it really does mean "only up to this point in time". It is this same word, "until", that refers to the star that moved ahead of the wise men until it stood over the place where Jesus lay, then it stopped moving. Again, it is used in Matthew 2:13 to show that Joseph and Mary were to remain in Egypt until receiving a revelation from God, and then they could return.

You incorrectly state that 1 Corinthians 15:26 uses the same word "until" that is used in Matthew 1.25. The Greek word used in 1 Corinthians 15:26 is actually "achri", meaning both "while" and "up to".

It is not good form to rely on the surface English word to attempt to prove a point about syntatical and grammatical comparisons. It would be better to rely on the underlying Greek or Hebrew.

It is entirely proper to understand Matthew 1:25 to mean "Joseph kept Mary a virgin only until after she gave birth to Jesus" based on the actual rendering of the original words.[/quote]
One would get laughed out of the university if one cliamed that [i]heos[/i] necessarily terminated the action of the main clause, as this Protestant is doing. It is common knowledge that [i]heos[/i] means only that the action continues up to the specified point, and that whether or not it then terminates is dependent on context.

But that is irrelevant to this particular argument. To be more precise, it is not [i]heos[/i] which is used in Matt 1:25 but [i]heos hou[/i]. Eric Svendsen's doctoral thesis is that [i]heos hou[/i] always terminates the action of the main clause, or at least it did when the gospel of Matthew was written. It has been refuted to my satisfaction. See [i]heos hou central[/i] at [url="http://www.catholic-legate.com"]http://www.catholic-legate.com[/url]

[cmotherofpirl]

I notice our person has not responded to all these excellent points yet, hope he at least reads them..

Phatcatholic, can we put some of these in the apologetic section?