Summa III, Q28 a.3–4: Mary Ever-Virgin, Christ's 'Brothers', and Mary's Vow of Virginity

Orientation #

He opens by asking which article they are up to and answers: the third. The class ends because they must go to a meeting of the trustees of the Trivium. The previous class covered q. 28, aa. 1–2, on Mary’s virginity in conceiving and in giving birth.

The class, in order #

1. The six objections of article 3 (“did not remain a virgin after the birth”) #

He reads the objections that Mary did not remain a virgin after giving birth:

1. Matthew 1:18, “before Joseph and Mary came together”: one would not say “before” unless the coming together were certain — as no one says “before he dined” unless he dined. He compares this to the “firstborn” objection, which will return: you call him firstborn even if he is the only one.
2. The angel’s word to Joseph, “do not fear to take Mary as your spouse” — and marriage is consummated through fleshly union.
3. “He did not know her until (donec) she brought forth her firstborn.” Donec signifies a determined time, after which what did not happen begins to happen. His example: “if I read comic books until I read Thomas,” I must eventually have read Thomas. And “know” means fleshly union, as Adam knew his wife (Genesis 4).
4. “Firstborn” is said only of one with later brothers — Romans 8, “that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
5. John 2: Christ went down to Capernaum “and his mother and his brothers”; brothers are those generated from the same parent. (He notes this was the objection “my neighbor had.”)
6. Matthew 27: among the women by the cross was “Mary of James and Joseph”; and John 19 says his mother stood by the cross — so this Mary is Christ’s mother, who then had other sons.

2. Sed contra: the closed gate of Ezekiel (“this gate was closed, and not opened”) #

Ezekiel 44: the gate is closed, no man goes through it, because the Lord God of Israel entered through it. Augustine, in a sermon, expounds: the closed gate is Mary always intact; “no man passes through” is that Joseph did not know her; the Lord alone entered and went forth is that the Holy Spirit made her pregnant; closed forever is that she was a virgin before giving birth, in giving birth, and after birth. He stresses that this is why Thomas has these three articles: to explain the words of the great Augustine.

3. The four reasons against Helvidius (“presumed to say that the Mother of Christ was known”) #

Thomas: the error of Helvidius is to be detested — “who presumed, that’s pride, who presumed.” The work to point to is Jerome, Contra Helvidium.

1. It takes away from the perfection of Christ: as by his divine nature he is the only-begotten of the Father, perfect in all things, so it befits that he be the only-begotten of his mother, as her most perfect offspring.
2. It injures the Holy Spirit, whose holy place was the virginal womb in which he formed Christ’s flesh; unfitting that it be violated by male mixture. His gloss: “a sacred workshop of the Holy Spirit — and no one else should be in there. Keep off my computer.”
3. It takes from the dignity and holiness of the Mother of God, who would seem most ungrateful if not content with so great a son, and would spontaneously lose a virginity miraculously conserved in her.
4. It imputes the greatest presumption to Joseph, if he attempted to pollute her whom the angel revealed to have conceived God of the Holy Spirit. Conclusion: as she conceived a virgin and gave birth a virgin, so she remains a virgin after giving birth forever.

4. Reply to obj. 1–2: “before” and “spouse” (“before I eat in the gate”) #

• Ad 1 (Jerome): “before” often indicates things following, but shows only what was thought; the thought need not come about, since something may intervene. Jerome’s example: “before I eat in the port, I shall navigate” — not that he eats in the port after navigating, but that he thought to eat there. So: when they were seen to be about to come together, the conception of the Holy Spirit occurred, from which it came about that they did not later come together.
• Ad 2 (Augustine, On Nuptials and Concupiscence): she is called coniux (wife) from the first faith of betrothal, a joining not known by fleshly union nor to be so known. Ambrose on Luke: the celebration of the nuptials declared not the interruption of virginity but the testimony of the union.
• Aside: a stained-glass window downtown (a French shop, now closed) shows Joseph and Mary being betrothed.

5. Reply to obj. 3: three readings of “he did not know her until” (“usque dum in scriptures in two ways”) #

• Some (Augustine): not fleshly knowledge but knowledge of worth — Joseph did not know before she brought forth of what dignity she was; afterwards he knew, because through her offspring she was more beautiful and more worthy than the whole world: whom the whole world cannot contain, she alone received in her narrow womb.
• Others: knowledge of sight — as Moses’ face was glorified so the sons of Israel could not look on it, so Mary, overshadowed by the clarity of the Most High, could not be known by Joseph until she brought forth; after, she is known by the beauty of her face, not by the touch of lust.
• Jerome: it is about coition, but usque dum has two senses: a determined time (Galatians: the law was laid down until the promised seed came) and an infinite time (Psalm 122: “our eyes are to the Lord our God until he have mercy” — our eyes are not then averted from God). In the second way it names what one might doubt if unwritten, leaving the rest to be understood: she was not known up to the bringing forth — much more, then, not after.
• A student notes the footnote’s further example: “it rained until the ice under his feet” [ed.: sense unclear in recording] — it does not mean the rain then ceased.

6. Reply to obj. 4: “firstborn” without later brothers (“this is our first one”) #

Scripture calls firstborn not only one whom brothers follow but one who is first-born. Otherwise: the law commands the firstborn be redeemed within the first month — you offer him to God and get him back — which would be impossible if no one were firstborn until a second child came. “That’s true. It’s a good argument.” His own example: waiting at the hospital at his second child’s birth, another man, more nervous, was asked “Is this your first?” and answered yes — though he had no second. “Dangerous these words, aren’t they? Especially in the hands of a heretic.”

7. Replies to obj. 5–6: the brothers of the Lord (“natura, gente, cognatione, effectu”) #

• Ad 5: Some (Jerome on Matthew) suspect the brothers of the Lord to be sons of another wife of Joseph; but Jerome holds they are cousins, sons of Mary of Cleophas, the aunt. Scripture says “brothers” in four ways — natura, gente, cognatione, effectu — which, he notes, they had already seen in a text of Jerome. So they are brothers not by nature, from the same mother, but by kinship, as consanguineous. Joseph too, Jerome says (Contra Helvidium), is rather to be believed to have remained a virgin: no other wife is written of him, and fornication does not fall in a holy man.
• Aside: he stresses how Thomas “so reverenced the Church Fathers that he seems to have inherited the mind of them all.”
• Ad 6: the Mary called mother of James and Joseph is not the Lord’s mother, who in the Gospel is named only by the dignity “mother of Jesus”; this Mary is the wife of Alphaeus, whose son is James the Less, called the brother of the Lord.
• Aside with a student: James was the apostle men looked at to see what Christ looked like — a cousin’s family resemblance. He recalls a text (in Augustine, he thinks; locus not found) about things one would have liked to have seen: Christ in the flesh, Rome in its glory, and a third — and James was the nearest thing one could see.

8. Article 4, objections: did she vow virginity? (“whether she vowed virginity”) #

1. Deuteronomy 7: “there will not be among you anyone sterile of either sex”; sterility follows virginity; the old law still stood before Christ was born; so she could not lawfully vow virginity then.
2. 1 Corinthians 7 on virgins: “I do not have a command of the Lord, but I give a counsel.” The perfection of the counsels ought to begin from Christ, who is the end of the law.
3. Jerome’s gloss on 1 Timothy 5: for those who have vowed virginity, not only to marry but to wish to marry is damnable; Mary committed no damnable sin; yet she was betrothed (Luke 1). Sed contra: Augustine, On Holy Virginity: she would not have answered the angel “How can this come about, since I do not know man?” unless she had vowed herself a virgin to God.

9. The body of a. 4: desire, condition, then absolute vow (“committed her will to the divine judgment”) #

Works of perfection are more praiseworthy if done from a vow (as in the Second Part), and virginity ought especially to flourish in the Mother of God for the reasons already given; so it is fitting her virginity was consecrated by a vow. But in the time of the law generation had to be insisted on, since the worship of God was propagated by fleshly origin from that people, of whom Christ would be born. Hence it is not believed that before she was betrothed to Joseph she absolutely vowed virginity, though she had it in desire; above this she committed her will to the divine judgment. Afterwards, having taken a spouse as the custom of the time required, she at the same time emitted the vow of virginity.

10. Replies of a. 4, and Joseph’s vow (“she absolutely vowed it”) #

• Ad 1: because the law seemed to prohibit not leaving seed upon the earth, she did not vow virginity absolutely (semper) but under the condition “if it be pleasing to God”; after it became known to her that this was acceptable to God, she vowed it absolutely — before the angel’s announcement.
• Ad 2: as the fullness of grace is perfectly in Christ yet some beginning of it preceded in his Mother, so the observance of the counsels is begun perfectly in Christ but in some way begun in the Virgin his mother. “That’s another excellence there in Mary.”
• Ad 3: the Apostle’s word concerns those who absolutely vow chastity, which she did not do before the betrothal; after it, from a common will with her spouse, she sent forth the vow of virginity together with him. He draws the point out: “So he’s saying Saint Joseph took the vow too. That’s what he says here.”

11. Closing digression: the Marian century and the prominence of Joseph (“it’s called the Marian century”) #

De Koninck’s remark: the Marian century runs from the definition of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 to the declaration of the mystery of the Assumption in 1950 under Pius XII. Why so late, nearly two thousand years after Christ? Perhaps providence willed the mysteries of Mary fully proclaimed only after the mysteries of Christ were well established; and now, the Marian mysteries having been proclaimed from beginning (Immaculate Conception) to end (Assumption), perhaps the mysteries of Joseph will come forward — as one sees a little in this ad tertium. He says he notices books on Joseph advertised and wonders whether to get them.

• He recalls that in the earlier ad secundum they spoke of three stages of Mary’s grace: at her conception, the grace by which she could become the Mother of Christ; the grace received when she actually became his mother; and the grace received when she was assumed into the glory of heaven (the coronation).
• A student adds: in Against Jovinian Jerome argues from Joseph — a just man, spoken to by an angel more than once, who knew the king sought the child’s life, who heard the shepherds and saw the magi, would have had holy fear; knowing Mary as holy as she could be he would have stayed away and never insisted on consummating; and they had to wait forty days after the birth until her purification. Christ was obedient to him, and Mary too. He agrees.
• He notes that in his edition of the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum there are six principal litanies: three of our Lord (Sacred Heart, Precious Blood, Holy Name), one of Mary, one of Joseph, one of all the saints — Mary and Joseph each get their own.
• Boyhood memory: the Church of the Nativity in St. Paul, and seemingly every church then, had side altars or chapels, one for Mary and one for Joseph — a sign of Joseph’s prominence. “Unfortunately, our Lord doesn’t take prominence in a lot of churches.”

His words #

• donec / usque dum — “until”; the disputed adverb of Matthew 1:25; two senses, a determined time or an infinite time.
• “came together” — the euphemism of Matthew 1:18, i.e. fleshly union.
• coniux — “wife here”; Mary so called from the first faith of betrothal, not from fleshly union.
• “sacred workshop of the Holy Spirit” — his gloss on the virginal womb as the Spirit’s sacrarium.
• natura, gente, cognatione, effectu — the four ways Scripture says “brothers.”
• “counsel” — 1 Corinthians 7, opposed to a command.
• sponsata / “betrothed” — her state when the vow was emitted.
• “emitted the vow” — his literal rendering of emisit votum, sending forth the vow.
• “Marian century” — De Koninck’s name for 1854–1950.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 28, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 28, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Within these: Matthew 1:18, 1:20, 1:25; Matthew 27; John 2; John 19; Genesis 4; Romans 8; Ezekiel 44; Galatians (the law until the promised seed); Psalm 122; Deuteronomy 7; 1 Corinthians 7; 1 Timothy 5 (Jerome’s gloss); Augustine, sermon on Ezekiel’s gate; Augustine, On Nuptials and Concupiscence; Augustine, On Holy Virginity; Ambrose on Luke; Jerome, Contra Helvidium; Jerome on Matthew.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Second Part, on works of perfection from a vow (locus as he gives it: “as is had in the second part”)
• Jerome, Against Jovinian (student’s contribution)
• Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, its six litanies
• De Koninck, on the Marian century (no work named)

His questions #

• Would the evangelist say “before they came together” if they never came together? No: “before” shows only what was thought, and the conception intervened so that they never did.
• Does donec (“he did not know her until”) imply she was known afterwards? No: in Scripture it can signify infinite time, as in “until he have mercy”; much more is she not known after.
• How can a man call a child his firstborn if he has no second? He can, and does: the law commands redemption of the firstborn within a month, and fathers say “this is our first.”
• Who then are the “brothers of the Lord”? Not sons of Mary or of Joseph, but cousins, kinsmen by blood — Scripture says “brothers” in four ways.
• Is the Mary “of James and Joseph” at the cross the mother of Christ? No: she is the wife of Alphaeus; the Gospel names Christ’s mother only by her dignity.
• Did Mary vow virginity, and when? She desired it, vowed it conditionally (“if it please God”), and vowed it absolutely once she knew it acceptable to God — after the betrothal, together with Joseph.
• Why was the Marian century so late, almost two thousand years after Christ? Perhaps providence willed Mary’s mysteries proclaimed only after Christ’s were well established — and Joseph’s may come next.