Perpetual virginity of Mary
The perpetual virginity of Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, and states that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin "ante partum, in partu, et post partum"—before, during and after the birth of Christ. In Western Christianity, the Catholic Church, some Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and a few other Protestant theologians adhere to the doctrine; Shenouda III, Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, affirmed the teaching; Eastern Orthodox churches recognize Mary as Aeiparthenos, meaning "ever-virgin". Modern Protestants have largely rejected the doctrine. The tradition of the perpetual virginity of  Mary first appears in a late 2nd century text called the Gospel of James. It was established as orthodoxy at the Council of Ephesus in 431, the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 gave her the title "Aeiparthenos", meaning Perpetual Virgin, and at the Lateran Synod of 649 Pope Martin I emphasised the threefold character of the perpetual virginity, before, during, and after the birth of Christ. The problem facing theologians who want to maintain Mary's perpetual virginity is that the New Testament explicitly affirms her virginity only prior to the conception of Jesus and mentions the brothers ("adelphoi")of  Jesus. This word only very rarely means other than a physical or spiritual sibling, and they may have been: (1) the sons of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Joseph (the most natural inference); (2) sons of the Mary named in Mark 15:40 as "mother of James and Joses", whom Jerome identified as a sister of Mary the mother of Christ; or (3) sons of Joseph by a former marriage. Origin and history. Old Testament foreshadowing. Although Mary's perpetual virginity is nowhere attested in the literal sense of scripture, several Church Fathers found it typologically prefigured in Old Testament  verses. First appearance: 2nd century. Mary's pre-birth virginity is attested in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Luke, but there is no biblical basis for the idea of her perpetual virginity. This first appears in a late 2nd century text called the Protoevangelium of James, in which Mary remains a life-long virgin, Joseph is an old man who marries her without physical desire, and the brothers of Jesus are explained as Joseph's sons by an earlier marriage. The Protoevangelium seems to have been used to create the stories of Mary which are found  in the Quran, but while Muslims agree with Christians that Mary was a virgin at the moment of the conception of Jesus, the idea of her perpetual virginity thereafter is contrary to the Islamic ideal of women as wives and mothers. Early uncertainty: 3rd century. Clement of Alexandria, writing soon after the Protoevangelium appeared, appealed to its incident of a midwife who examined Mary immediately after the birth ("after giving birth, she was examined by a midwife, who found her to be a virgin") and asserted that this was to be found in the Gospels ("These things are attested to  by the Scriptures of the Lord"), though he was referring to an apocryphal Gospel as a fact, and the 3rd century scholar Origen used the Protoevangelium's explanation of the brothers to uphold the perpetual virginity of Mary ("There is no child of Mary except Jesus, according to those who think correctly about her"). Tertullian, who came between Clement and Origen, denied Mary's perpetual virginity in order to refute the docetist idea that the Son of God could not have assumed a human body ("although she was a virgin when she conceived, she was a wife when she brought  forth her son"). Helvidius also argued that Victorinus believed that Mary had other children. However Jerome claimed that he was misinterpreting Victorinus. Epiphanus invented a name "Antidicomarians" for a group of people who denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, which Epiphanus attacked. They were active from the 3rd to the 5th century. The establishment of orthodoxy: 4th century. By the early 4th century the spread of monasticism had promoted celibacy as the ideal state, and a moral hierarchy was established with marriage occupying the third rank below life-long virginity and widowhood Eastern theologians generally accepted Mary as "Aeiparthenos", but  many in the Western church were less convinced. The theologian Helvidius objected to the devaluation of marriage inherent in this view and argued that the two states, of virginity and marriage, were equal. His contemporary Jerome, realising that this would lead to the Mother of God occupying a lower place in heaven than virgins and widows, defended her perpetual virginity in his immensely influential "Against Helvidius," issued c.383. Helvidius soon faded from the scene, but in the 380s and 390s the monk Jovinian followed him in denying Mary's perpetual virginity, writing that if Jesus did not undergo a normal  human birth then he himself was not human, which was the teaching of the heresy known as Manicheism. Jerome wrote against Jovinian but failed to mention this aspect of his teaching, and most commentators believe that he did not find it offensive. The only important Christian intellectual to defend Mary's virginity "in partu" was Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, who was the chief target of the charge of Manicheism. For Ambrose, both the physical birth of Jesus by Mary and the baptismal birthing of Christians by the church had to be totally virginal, even "in partu", in order to cancel  the stain of original sin, of which the pains of labor are the physical sign. It was due to Ambrose that "virginitas in partu" came to be included consistently in the thinking of subsequent theologians. Bonosus of Sardica also denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, for which he was declared a heretic. Jovinian was condemned as a heretic at a Synod of Milan under Ambrose's presidency in 390 and Mary's perpetual virginity was established as the only orthodox view, although it was not until the Council of Ephesus in 431 that a fully general consensus was established. Further  developments were to follow when the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 formally gave her the title "Aeiparthenos", and at the Lateran Synod of 649 Pope Martin I emphasised the threefold character of the perpetual virginity, before, during, and after the birth of Christ. Athanasius of Alexandria (d.393) declared Mary "Aeiparthenos", "ever-virgin", and the liturgy of James the brother of Jesus likewise required a declaration of Mary as ever-virgin. Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation saw a rejection of the sanctity of virginity, and as a result marriage and parenthood were extolled, Mary and Joseph were seen as a  normal married couple, and sexual abstinence was no longer regarded as a virtue. It also brought with it the idea of the Bible as the fundamental source of authority regarding God's word "(sola scriptura)", and the reformers noted that while holy scripture explicitly required belief in the virgin birth, it only permitted the acceptance of perpetual virginity. It was supported by Martin Luther (who names her ever-virgin in the Smalcald Articles, a Lutheran confession of faith written in 1537)., Huldrych Zwingli, Thomas Cranmer, John Wycliffe and later Protestant leaders including John Wesley, the co-founder of Methodism. The  view of John Calvin was more ambigious, and he believed that we cannot know what happened to Mary after the birth of Jesus.This was because these moderate reformers were under pressure from others more radical than themselves who held Jesus to have been no more than a prophet: Mary's perpetual virginity thus became a guarantee of the Incarnation of Christ, despite its shaky scriptural foundations. Notwithstanding the acceptance of the earliest reformers, modern Protestants have largely rejected the perpetual virginity of Mary and it has rarely appeared explicitly in confessions or doctrinal statements. Doctrine. The Second Council  of Constantinople recognised Mary as "Aeiparthenos", meaning "ever-virgin". It remains axiomatic for the Eastern Orthodox Church that she remained virginal throughout her Earthly life, and Orthodoxy therefore understands the New Testament references to the brothers and sisters of Jesus as signifying his kin, but not the biological children of his mother. The Latin Church, known more commonly today as the Catholic Church, shared the Council of Constantinople with the theologians of the Greek or Orthodox communion, and therefore shares with them the title "Aeiparthenos" as accorded to Mary. The Catholic Church has gone further than the Orthodox in making  the Perpetual Virginity one of the four Marian dogmas, meaning that it is held to be a truth divinely revealed, the denial of which is heresy. It declares her virginity before, during and after the birth of Jesus, or in the definition formulated by Pope Martin I at the Lateran Council of 649:The blessed ever-virginal and immaculate Mary conceived, without seed, by the Holy Spirit, and without loss of integrity brought him forth, and after his birth preserved her virginity inviolate. Thomas Aquinas admitted that reason could not prove this, but argued that it must be accepted because  it was "fitting", for as Jesus was the only-begotten son of God, so he should also be the only-begotten son of Mary, as a second and purely human conception would disrespect the sacred state of her holy womb. Symbolically, the perpetual virginity of Mary signifies a new creation and a fresh start in salvation history. It has been stated and argued repeatedly, most recently by the Second Vatican Council: This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ's virginal conception … then also at the birth  of Our Lord, who did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it... ("Lumen Gentium", No.57) Arguments and evidence. The major problem facing theologians wishing to maintain Mary's life-long virginity is that the Pauline epistles, the four gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles, all mention the brothers ("adelphoi") of Jesus, with Mark and Matthew recording their names and Mark adding unnamed sisters. The "Gospel of James", followed a century later by Epiphanius, explained that the "adelphoi" are Joseph's children by an earlier marriage, which is still the view of the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches . Jerome, believing that Joseph, like Mary, must be a life-long virgin, argued that these "adelphoi" were the sons of "Mary, the mother of James and Joses" (Mk. 15:40), who he identified with the wife of Clopas and sister of the virgin Mary (Jn 19:25). which remains popular in the Western church. A modern proposal considers these "adelphoi" sons of "Mary, the mother of James and Joses" (not here identified with the Virgin Mary's sister), and Clopas, who according to Hegesippus was Joseph's brother. Further scriptural difficulties were added by , which calls Jesus the "first-born" son of  Mary, and , which adds that Joseph "did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn son." Helvidius argued that first-born implies later births, and that the word "until" left open the way to sexual relations after the birth; Jerome, replying that even an only son will be a first-born and that "until" did not have the meaning Helvidius construed for it, painted a repulsive word-portrait of Joseph having intercourse with a blood-stained and exhausted Mary immediately after she has given birth - the implication, in his view, of Helvidius's arguments. Opinions on the quality  of Jerome's rebuttal range from the view that it was masterful and well-argued to thin, rhetorical and sometimes tasteless. Two other 4th century Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, following "a certain apocryphal account," and Augustine, advanced a further argument by reading as a vow of perpetual virginity on Mary's part; this idea, first introduced in the Protoevangelium of James, has little scholarly support today, but it and the arguments advanced by Jerome and Ambrose were put forward by Pope John Paul II in his catechesis of August 28, 1996, as the four facts supporting the Catholic Church's  ongoing faith in Mary's perpetual virginity.