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"How can this be, for I know not man?",
Perpetual virginity of Mary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: On the other hand, Mary's response to the angel, when told that she will conceive, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?", has been interpreted, at least since the time of Gregory of Nyssa, as indicating that Mary had taken a lifelong vow of virginity, even in marriage
- For if Joseph had taken her to be his wife, for the purpose of having children, why would she have wondered at the announcement of maternity, since she herself would have accepted becoming a mother according to the law of nature?
This interpretation, although upheld by many, is rejected by writers such as Howard Marshall. and is considered implausible by Raymond E. Brown.
A passage used to support the doctrine of perpetual virginity is of the sayings of Jesus on the cross, i.e. the pair of commands first to his mother "Woman, behold your son!" and then to his disciple "Behold, thy mother!" in John 19:26-27. The Gospel of John then states that "from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home". Since the time of the Church Fathers this statement has been used to reason that after the death of Jesus there was no one else in the immediate family to look after Mary, and she had to be entrusted to the disciple given that she had no other children. This passage was one of the arguments Pope John Paul II presented in support of perpetual virginity. John Paul II also reasoned that the command "Behold your son!" was not simply the entrustment of Mary to the disciple, but also the entrustment of the disciple to Mary in order to fill the maternal gap left by the death of her only son on the cross.
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Like the title to a car,
Mary was passed along
from
her family to Joseph to Jesus to his disciple John.
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