The Reformers on Mary's Perpetual Virginity

The Protestant Church in Strasbourg, Saint

Pierre-le-June, displays this beautiful

statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Every Christian, and every ecclesial body, has their own traditions. They all have their own unique approaches to doctrine and practice. They also tend to esteem individuals whom they emulate as expressing the values which they themselves hold dear -- in other words, to some degree or another, they all have saints.

This is true even for the non-Orthodox and non-Catholic Christians, as the Protestant world was recently in the midst of celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformarion. Their traditions include such things as the sixty-six book canon for the Bible, the Five Solas, and the formulation of "Statements of Faith." (Calvinists have T.U.L.I.P, etc.)

In appeal to the Protestant's sensitivity on the issue of Mary's virginal status, rather than invoking the authority of my saints, I would like to invoke the authority of his saints -- those who witnessed to his doctrines. The heaviest heavyweights of Protestantism, much like the Church Fathers, had enough familiarity with the Biblical records, which they (rightly) esteemed as precious, to see how the Perpetual Virginity of Mary does not contradict them. Being advocates of, and adherents to, the doctrine of Sola Scriptura (a hallmark for Protestants, which Catholics and Orthodox do not affirm), they found the concept of "Blessed Mary, Ever-Virgin" wholly compatible with their own readings of the Sacred Texts.

John Calvin

John Calvin

We will begin with the one who was least emphatic on the issue among the early Protestants. A man who truly "searched the scriptures," John Calvin wrote a copious amount of Biblical commentaries. In one section of his Harmony of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, he briefly references the debate between St. Jerome and Helvidius over the virginity of Mary. Commenting on Matthew 1:25 ("he knew her not until she brought forth her firstborn"), Calvin writes:

This passage afforded the pretext for great disturbances, which were introduced into the Church, at a former period, by Helvidius. The inference he drew from it was, that Mary remained a virgin no longer than till her first birth, and that afterwards she had other children by her husband. Jerome, on the other hand, earnestly and copiously defended Mary’s perpetual virginity. Let us rest satisfied with this, that no just and wellgrounded inference can be drawn from these words of the Evangelist, as to what took place after the birth of Christ. He is called first-born; but it is for the sole purpose of informing us that he was born of a virgin. It is said that Joseph knew her not till she had brought forth her first-born son: but this is limited to that very time. What took place afterwards, the historian does not inform us. Such is well known to have been the practice of the inspired writers. Certainly, no man will ever raise a question on this subject, except from curiosity; and no man will obstinately keep up the argument, except from an extreme fondness for disputation.
(Commentary on Matthew, Mark and Luke, Matthew 1:25)

We can see that, in his own reading of the Holy Gospel, Calvin sympathized not with Helvidius, but with Jerome. He recognized that the words "firstborn" and "until" do not somehow necessitate that Mary in fact bore other children besides Jesus. He deemed such an inference neither "just" nor "well-founded", for they are included for informing the reader of Virgin Birth. That said, he does not argue the point any further, but he does denounce any desire to speak contrariwise as stemming "from an extreme fondness of disputation." He would think of the idea of raising a dispute around this text as merely arguing for argument's sake, stemming from unhealthy desire.

Now, onto the more explicit witnesses.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther

In truth, we will find our most copious amount of affirmation for Mary's constant virginity in none other than the original Protestant himself, Martin Luther.

Much academic study has been done on the life and teachings of Martin Luther. Reputable historians of Luther, both Protestant (Franz Pieper; Jaroslav Pelikan) and Catholic (Hartmann Greisar) alike report that the man adhered to this Marian doctrine for the whole of his life -- before, during, and after his break with Rome.

On the issue of inferring subsequent offspring from the words "firstborn" and "until," Luther speaks more strongly than Calvin. He adamantly dismisses those who would interpret Mt. 1:25 as inferring Mary would have bore other children.

Such carnal interpretations miss the meaning and purpose of the evangelist. As we have said, the evangelist, like the prophet Isaiah, wishes to set before our eyes this mighty wonder, and point out what an unheard-of thing it is for a maiden to be with child before her husband brings her home and lies with her; and further, that he does not know her carnally until she first has a son, which she should have had after first having been known by him. Thus, the words of the evangelist do not refer to anything that occurred after the birth, but only to what took place before it. ... Therefore, one cannot from these words [Matt. 1:18, 25] conclude that Mary, after the birth of Christ, became a wife in the usual sense; it is therefore neither to be asserted nor believed. All the words are merely indicative of the marvelous fact that she was with child and gave birth before she had lain with a man. (That Jesus was Born a Jew) 

And elsewhere, in the collection of his sermons on the Gospel of John:

"Christ, our Savior, was the real and natural fruit of Mary's virginal womb . . . This was without the cooperation of a man, and she remained a virgin after that. […] Christ . . . was the only Son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary bore no children besides Him . . . I am inclined to agree with those who declare that 'brothers' really mean 'cousins' here, for Holy Writ and the Jews always call cousins brothers." (Sermons on John)

Ulrich Zwingli

Luther was not alone among the early Protestant reformers to be unabashed in his rejection of Helvidianism. On the other prominent side of the original movement, this belief also found an adherent in Ulrich Zwingli, who also upheld this doctrine.

Ulrich Zwingli

In his famous doctrinal dispute with Martin Luther concerning the Holy Eucharist, the Swiss Reformer wrote an exposition of his position in response a year after their famous meaning. In it, we find his giving witness to his stance on the perpetual virginity of Mary.

I give an example: taught by the light of faith the Christ was born of a virgin, we know that it is so, that we have no doubt that those who have been unambiguously in error have tried to make a figure of speech of a real virgin, and we pronounce absurd the things that Helvidius and others have invented about perpetual virginity.
(Friendly Exegesis, that is, Exposition of the Matter of the Eucharist to Martin Luther, February 1527)

He deems the position advocated by Helvidius as "absurd." He says elsewhere in his works:

I firmly believe that Mary, according to the words of the gospel as a pure Virgin brought forth for us the Son of God and in childbirth and after childbirth forever remained a pure, intact Virgin.
(Ulrich Zwingli, sämtliche Werke) 

John Wesley

One other foundational figure of Protestantism shall be cited in our favor. Also among these names is the founder of Methodism, John Wesley. In his Letter to a Roman Catholic in which Wesley seeks to establish a spirit of friendship and an acknowledgement of common ground (and by so doing, consciously goes against the sensitivities of his coreligionists), he frames part of this mutual agreement in a format which holds resemblance to the historic Christian creeds. In the section affirming their common Christological convictions, those which he would hold as a Protestant, Wesley writes:

"I believe that He [Jesus] was made man, joining the human nature with the divine in one person; being conceived by the singular operation of the Holy Ghost, and born of the blessed Virgin Mary, who, as well after as before she brought Him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin."
(Letter to a Roman Catholic 7)

John Wesley

Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley all unambiguously gave their assent to the doctrine of Mary's constant abstinence; Calvin, at the barest minimum, implicitly acknowledged its plausibility. One can neither label these men "papists", nor accuse them of being unfamiliar with the testimony of Holy Writ; Yet even with their consciences informed by the Protestant conviction of Sola Scriptura ("Scripture Alone"), they found nothing scandalous in this teaching.  The sheer fact of the matter is this: among the most prominent men in Protestantism, this concept of Mary's perpetual virginity was neither foreign nor opposed to their own respective ideologies, and it did not occasion them with a point of dissension against Rome.

It should then be evident: one need neither be Orthodox nor Roman Catholic in order to see the idea of Mary's unwavering abstinence as one worthy of credit. It has not only a place within classical Christianity, but it also holds a place within the history of Protestantism. The Protestants of today who would wish to condemn this doctrine are departing from the ground upon which stood their forefathers.