Against Helvidius: On the Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary 1–15

Some time ago I was asked by the brothers to reply to a pamphlet by a certain Helvidius, and I put it off. Not because it was difficult to refute on the truth a rustic fellow barely acquainted with even the first elements of learning, but so that he should not become worthy of defeat by my answering him. There was also this: a turbulent man, the only one in the whole world who is both layman and priest to himself (who, as that writer says, thinks talkativeness eloquence, and holds that slandering everyone is the mark of a good conscience), once given matter for dispute, would begin to blaspheme further, and as though from a lofty place pass sentence on the whole world; and, since he could not tear me to pieces with the truth, he would tear me with abuse. But since all these just reasons for my silence have come to a more just end because of the scandal to the brothers, who were being stirred up by his madness, the axe of the Gospel must now be laid to the roots of the barren tree and, together with its fruitless foliage, handed over to the flames, so that he who never learned to speak may at last learn to be silent.

So I must call on the Holy Spirit to defend, by his meaning and my mouth, the virginity of blessed Mary. I must call on the Lord Jesus to guard the lodging of the sacred womb, in which he dwelt for ten months, from every suspicion of intercourse. God the Father himself must also be entreated to show that the mother of his Son was a virgin after childbirth, she who was a mother before she was married. We do not want the open field of rhetorical eloquence, nor do we seek the snares of the dialecticians or the thorny thickets of Aristotle. The very words of the Scriptures must be set out: let him be refuted by the very testimonies he has used against us, so that he may understand that he was able to read what is written, but was not able to recognize what has been established by godliness.

His first proposition was: "Matthew says: 'Now the birth of Christ was thus. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, since he was a just man and did not wish to expose her, wanted to put her away secretly. But while he was thinking this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for what is born in her is from the Holy Spirit.' See," he says, "you have her betrothed, not entrusted, as you say; and certainly betrothed for no other reason than that she would one day marry. For the evangelist would not have said of people who were never going to come together, 'before they came together'; for no one says of a man who is not going to dine, 'before he dined.' Next, she is called wife by the angel, and joined to him. Let us now hear what Scripture declares: 'Joseph,' it says, 'rising from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took his wife, and did not know her until she bore her son.'"

Let us go through it point by point, and, following his impiety along the very tracks by which it came in, show that he has said things that contradict each other. He admits she was betrothed, and at once wants her to be the wife whom he has admitted to be a betrothed bride. Then the one he calls wife he says was betrothed for no other reason than that she would one day marry. And lest we think this too little: "You have her," he says, "betrothed, and not entrusted, that is, not yet a wife, not yet joined by the bond of marriage. As for his saying, 'For the evangelist would not have said of people who were never going to come together, before they came together, for no one says of a man who is not going to dine, before he dined', I do not know whether to grieve or to laugh." Shall I charge him with ignorance or accuse him of rashness? As if, should someone say, "Before I dined in port, I sailed for Africa," the statement could not stand unless he were at some time to dine in port! Or if we should wish to say, "The apostle Paul, before he went to Spain, was thrown into chains at Rome"; or certainly this: "Helvidius, before he repented, was overtaken by death": must Paul at once go to Spain after his chains, or Helvidius do penance after death, when Scripture says, "But in hell who will confess to you?" Should it not rather be understood that the preposition "before," though it often indicates a sequence, yet sometimes shows only what was previously intended? So it is not necessary that what was intended should happen, since something else intervened to prevent what was intended from happening. So when the evangelist says, "before they came together," he points to the time close to the wedding, when matters had already reached the point that she who had before been a betrothed bride was beginning to be a wife. It is as if he said: before they mingled kisses and embraces, before they consummated the marriage, she was found to be with child. And she was found by no one else than Joseph, who with the eyes of one almost already a husband, with a husband's freedom and attention, noticed the swelling womb of his betrothed. Yet it does not follow, as we have shown by the earlier examples, that he came together with Mary after the birth, since his desire to come together was taken away by the conception in her womb. As for what is said to Joseph in his sleep, "Do not fear to take Mary your wife," and again, "Joseph, rising from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took his wife," this ought to disturb no one, as though, from being called a wife, she had ceased to be a betrothed bride; for we know that it is the custom of divine Scripture to call betrothed women wives. This is proved by the following testimonies of Deuteronomy: "If anyone," it says, "finds a virgin betrothed to a man in the field, and lies with her by force, he shall surely die, because he has humbled his neighbor's wife." And in another place: "But if a girl is betrothed to a man, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, you shall bring them both out to the gates of that city, and they shall be stoned with stones and shall die: the girl because she did not cry out when she was in the city, and the man because he humbled his neighbor's wife; and you shall root out the evil from among you." And elsewhere too: "And who is the man to whom a wife is betrothed, and he has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another man take her." And if anyone is troubled by the question why a virgin conceived when betrothed, rather than without a bridegroom, or (as Scripture calls him) a husband, let him know that there were three reasons. First, so that through the genealogy of Joseph, to whom Mary was related, Mary's descent too might be shown. Second, so that she should not be stoned by the people as an adulteress under the law of Moses. Third, so that in fleeing to Egypt she might have the comfort of a guardian rather than a husband. For who at that time would have believed the Virgin that she had conceived by the Holy Spirit, that the angel Gabriel had come and brought God's command? Would not everyone rather have condemned her by their sentence as an adulteress, after the example of Susanna, when even today, with the whole world now believing, the Jews argue that where Isaiah says, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son," the Hebrew has "young woman," not "virgin," that is, almah, not bethulah? We will discuss this more fittingly against them in another place. In short, except for Joseph, Elizabeth, Mary herself, and a very few whom we may suppose to have heard it from them, everyone thought Jesus the son of Joseph; so much so that even the evangelists, expressing the opinion of the crowd (which is the true law of history), called him the Savior's father, as in this: "And he came in the Spirit into the temple" (Simeon, no doubt), "and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the law." And elsewhere: "And his father and mother were marveling at the things that were said about him." And again: "And his parents went every year to Jerusalem at the solemn day of the Passover." And then: "And when the days were completed, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know it." And listen to what Mary herself, who had answered Gabriel, "How shall this be, since I do not know a man?", says about Joseph: "Son, why have you done this to us? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow." This is not, as many argue, the voice of Jews mocking. The evangelists call Joseph father; Mary acknowledges him as father. Not that (as I indicated above) Joseph was truly the Savior's father, but that, to protect Mary's good name, he was thought by everyone to be his father. Before he was warned by the angel, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for what is born in her is from the Holy Spirit," he was thinking of putting her away secretly; so sure was he that the child conceived was not his. But enough has been argued, more out of a desire to teach than to answer, about why Joseph is called the Lord's father and why Mary is called his wife; and in this is also briefly contained why certain people are called his brothers.

But since we are reserving its proper place for this little question, and the discussion hurries on to the rest, we must now discuss how Scripture says, "Joseph, rising from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took his wife, and did not know her until she bore her son, and he called his name Jesus." Here, first, our opponent sweats with needless labor to show that the verb "to know" is to be referred to intercourse rather than to knowledge, as if anyone had denied this, or as if any sensible person could ever have imagined the absurdities he refutes. Then he wants to show that the adverb "until," or "up to," signifies a fixed time, at whose completion that happens which did not happen up to the time prescribed, as in the present case: "And he did not know her until she bore her son." "It is plain," he says, "that she was known after the birth, since only the begetting of the son postponed knowing her." And to prove this he heaps up very many examples from the Scriptures, brandishing his sword in the dark like the blindfolded gladiators, and clashing the noise of his tongue only to pierce the limbs of his own body.

To this we answer briefly that both "knew" and "until" are understood in two ways in the holy Scriptures. As for "knew," he himself has argued that it is to be referred to intercourse, while no one doubts that it is often referred to knowledge, as here: "The boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know it." Now it must be shown that, just as there he followed the custom of Scripture, so also with "until" he is broken by the authority of the same Scripture, which, in using it, often signifies a fixed time (as he himself argued), but often an unlimited one, as in what God says to certain people in the Prophet: "I am, I am, and until you grow old, I am." Will God cease to be after they have grown old? And the Savior says to the apostles in the Gospel: "Behold, I am with you all days until the consummation of the age." So after the consummation of the age will the Lord depart from his disciples, and at the time when they are to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, will they be deprived of the Lord's company? The apostle Paul too, writing to the Corinthians, says: "Christ the firstfruits; then those who are Christ's, who believed at his coming; then the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has destroyed every principality and every power and might. For he must reign until he puts all enemies under his feet"; for he has subjected all things under his feet. Granted that it is said of the man; we do not deny it is said of him who suffered the cross, who is afterwards bidden to sit at the right hand. What does he mean by saying, "For he must reign until he puts all enemies under his feet"? Will the Lord reign only until his enemies begin to be under his feet, and after they are under his feet, cease to reign, when surely he will then begin to reign the more, when the enemies have begun to be under his feet? David too, in the fourth psalm of the steps: "As the eyes of a maidservant are on the hands of her mistress, so our eyes are on the Lord our God, until he has mercy on us." So will the Prophet keep his eyes on the Lord only until he obtains mercy, and after obtaining mercy turn his eyes to the ground? Yet he says in another place: "My eyes have failed for your salvation and for the word of your righteousness." I could heap up countless examples on this point and cover all the insolence of my assailant with a cloud of testimonies; but I will add a few more, so that the reader may find similar ones for himself.

The divine word says in Genesis: "And they gave Jacob the foreign gods that were in their hands and the earrings that were in their ears. And Jacob hid them under the terebinth that is in Shechem, and lost them up to this present day." Likewise at the end of Deuteronomy: "And Moses the servant of the Lord died in the land of Moab by the word of the Lord, and they buried him in Geth near the house of Phegor, and no one knows his tomb up to this day." Certainly "this day" must be reckoned as the time at which the history itself was composed, whether you wish to call Moses the author of the Pentateuch or Ezra the restorer of the same work; I do not object. The question now is whether what is said, "up to this day," refers to that age in which the books were published or written. Let him show, then, that after that day, so many years having passed down to us, either the idols hidden under the terebinth have been found or Moses' tomb discovered; for he stubbornly maintains that after "until" and "up to" that begins to be which was not, so long as the "up to" and "until" were being fulfilled. Rather let him notice the idiom of holy Scripture and understand with us the point on which he was hesitating: that things about which there could be doubt if they had not been written are noted, while the rest is left to our understanding. For if, at a still recent time, while those who had seen Moses were alive, his tomb could be unknown, much more after so many centuries have passed. On the same principle we are to understand also the statement about Joseph: the evangelist pointed out the matter about which offense could arise, that she was not known by her husband up to the birth, so that we might understand all the more that she was not known after the birth, since he abstained from her at a time when he could still be in doubt about the vision.

In sum, I ask why Joseph abstained up to the day of the birth. He will of course answer: because he had heard the angel saying, "For what is born in her is from the Holy Spirit." To which we reply: surely he had also heard, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife." He had been forbidden to leave her, forbidden to think his wife an adulteress. Had he also been separated from relations with his wife, when surely he had rather been warned not to be separated? "And did a just man," he says, "hearing that the Son of God was in her womb, dare to think of intercourse with his wife?" Excellent! So the man who had believed a mere dream so far as not to dare touch his wife: after he had learned from the shepherds' voices that an angel of the Lord had come from heaven and said to them, "Do not be afraid; behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people, for to you is born today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David," and that with him the heavenly host had sung praises, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will"; who had seen righteous Simeon, with the infant in his arms, proclaiming, "Now you let your servant depart, Lord, according to your word, in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation"; who had seen Anna the prophetess, the magi, the star, Herod, the angels; this man, I say, who had known such great wonders, dared to touch the temple of God, the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the mother of his Lord? And certainly Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. And lest you shamelessly deny that Joseph knew these things: "And his father and mother," says Luke, "were marveling at the things that were said about him." You maintain, with amazing shamelessness, that these words are corrupted in the Greek manuscripts, though not only nearly all the Greek commentators have left them in their volumes, but some of the Latins also have adopted them as they stand in the Greek. Nor is there now any need to discuss the variety of copies, since the whole body of both the Old and the New Scripture has been translated from there into the Latin tongue, and the water from the spring must be believed to flow much purer than from the streams.

"These things," you say, "are trifles, and superfluous arguments, and a disputation more curious than true. Could Scripture not have said, 'And he took his wife, and did not dare to touch her any more,' as it said of Tamar and Judah? Or did Matthew lack words to express what he wanted to be understood? 'He did not know her,' he says, 'until she bore her son.' So after the birth he knew her, whose knowing he had put off until the birth."

If you are so contentious, you will now be overcome by your own reasoning. I do not want you to put any interval between the birth and intercourse. I do not want you to say: "Any woman who has conceived and borne a male child shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of her separation and purification she shall be unclean; and on the eighth day he shall circumcise the flesh of his foreskin, and for thirty-three days she shall remain in the blood of purification and shall touch nothing holy," and the rest. Let Joseph fall on her at once; let him at once hear through Jeremiah: "They have become to me like maddened horses after the mares; each neighed after his neighbor's wife." Otherwise how can "He did not know her until she bore her son" stand, if he waits for the time of purification, if lust long delayed is put off forty more days? Let the newly delivered mother be defiled with blood; let the midwives receive the wailing infant; let the husband hold his exhausted wife. Let the marriage begin so, lest the evangelist have lied! But far be it that this should be thought of the Savior's mother and of a righteous man. There was no midwife there; no busy attendance of women intervened. She herself wrapped the infant in swaddling cloths; she was both mother and midwife. "And she laid him," it says, "in a manger, because there was no place for him in the inn." This statement both refutes the ravings of the apocrypha, since Mary herself wrapped the infant in swaddling cloths, and does not allow Helvidius's lust to be satisfied, since in the inn there was no room for a marriage.

Since we have now answered fully and amply what he had proposed, "before they came together" and "he did not know her until she bore her son," we must come to the third question, so that the order of our reply may follow the order of his argument. For he wants Mary to have borne other sons too, on the basis of what is written: "And Joseph went up to the city of David to be registered with Mary his wife, who was with child. And it happened that while they were there, the days were fulfilled for her to give birth, and she bore her firstborn son." From this he tries to prove that no one can be called firstborn unless he also has brothers, just as he is called only-begotten who is his parents' only son.

We, however, define it thus: every only-begotten is a firstborn; not every firstborn is an only-begotten. A firstborn is not only one after whom others come, but one before whom none came. "Everything," says the Lord to Aaron, "that opens the womb of all flesh that is offered to the Lord, from man to beast, shall be yours; only they shall redeem with a price the firstborn of men and the firstborn of unclean beasts." The word of God has defined what a firstborn is: "Everything," it says, "that opens the womb." Otherwise, if no one is firstborn except one whom brothers follow, the firstborn are not owed to the priests until others have been born, lest perhaps, if no birth follows, he be an only son and not a firstborn. "His redemption," it says, "shall be from one month; the valuation five shekels; the shekel, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, is twenty obols. Only the firstborn of calves, the firstborn of sheep, and the firstborn of goats you shall not redeem, because they are holy." The word of God compels me to dedicate to God everything that opens the womb, if it is of clean animals, and if of unclean, to redeem it by paying a price to the priest. I could answer and say: "Why do you tie me down to the narrow span of one month? Why do you call firstborn one whom I do not know whether brothers will follow? Wait until a second is born. I owe the priest nothing until the one is born through whom he who was born before begins to be firstborn." Would not the very letters speak to me and convict me of folly, saying that he is called firstborn who opens the womb, not he who also has brothers? Finally, I ask about John, who is known to have been an only son: was he also a firstborn? Was he too, according to the law, liable to the law on every point? There can be no doubt. Certainly Scripture speaks thus of the Savior: "When the days of their purification were fulfilled according to the law of Moses, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, 'Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord,' and to offer sacrifices according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons." If this law concerns only firstborn sons, and those who come after make a firstborn, then one who knew nothing about those who would come after ought not to have been bound by the law of the firstborn. But since even he whom no other brothers follow is bound by the law of the firstborn, it is concluded that he is called firstborn who opens the womb and before whom there was none, not he whom a brother born later follows. Moses writes in Exodus: "And it happened about midnight that the Lord struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the captive woman who was in the pit, and every firstborn of the cattle." Answer me: were those who were then slain by the destroyer firstborn sons only, or only sons as well? If only those are called firstborn who have brothers, then only sons were spared from the slaughter. But if only sons were slain as well, it happened contrary to the sentence, that only sons died among the firstborn. Either you will free only sons from the punishment, and be ridiculous; or, if you admit that they were killed, we shall prevail against your will, and only sons too are called firstborn.

His last proposition was (though he wanted to show this very thing in dealing with the firstborn) that brothers of the Lord are named in the Gospels, as here: "Behold, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, seeking to speak with him." And elsewhere: "After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers." And here: "So his brothers said to him: Leave here and go into Judea, so that your disciples too may see the works that you do. For no one who does anything in secret seeks himself to be in public. If you do these things, show yourself to the world." John adds from above: "For not even his brothers believed in him at that time." Likewise Mark and Matthew: "And he taught them in their synagogue in his own country, so that they were astonished and said: Where did this man get all this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?" Luke too reports thus in the Acts of the Apostles: "These all were persevering with one mind in prayer, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers." And the apostle Paul as well agrees with one voice in the same truth of history: "But I went up by revelation, and saw no one except Peter and James the brother of the Lord." And again in another place: "Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take wives about with us, as also the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?" And lest anyone should refuse to accept the testimony of the Jews, who also gave the names of his brothers, asserting that they were deceived by an error about the brothers like the one by which "they slipped in supposing the father," he cleverly took precautions and said: "These same names are given by the evangelists in another place, and the same men are the brothers of the Lord, the sons of Mary." Matthew says: "There were also there" (no doubt before the Lord's cross) "many women watching from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." Likewise Mark: "There were also women watching from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joseph, and Salome"; and a little after: "and many others who had come up with him to Jerusalem." And Luke as well: "There were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them."

We have repeated these passages so that he cannot falsely cry out that what supports him has been withheld by us, and that his opinion was overthrown not by the testimonies of the Scriptures but by slippery argument. "See," he says, "James and Joseph, sons of Mary, the same whom the Jews called brothers. See Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses. And James the less, to distinguish him from the greater, who was the son of Zebedee, as Mark also puts it in another place: 'Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses saw where he was laid; and when the Sabbath was over they bought spices and came to the tomb.'" And of course he says: "How wretched and impious it would be to think this of Mary: that while other women took care of Jesus' burial, we should say his mother was absent, or invent some other Mary, I know not who; especially since the Gospel of John testifies that she was present there, when the Lord from the cross commended her, now a widow, to John as his mother. Or are the evangelists deceived and deceiving, so as to call Mary the mother of those whom the Jews said were the brothers of Jesus?"

O blind fury, and a mind mad for its own destruction! You say that his mother was present at the Lord's cross; you say she was commended to the disciple John because of her widowhood and loneliness: as if, on your view, she did not have four sons and countless daughters whose company she could enjoy! You also call her a widow, which Scripture does not say. And though you set out all the passages of the evangelists, only John's words do not please you. You say in passing that she was present at the Lord's cross, so as not to seem to have passed over it deliberately; and yet you are silent about which women were with her. I would forgive you if you did not know, but I see you keeping silent on purpose. So hear what John says: "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene." No one doubts that there were two apostles called by the name James: James son of Zebedee and James son of Alphaeus. This James the less, whoever he is, whom Scripture records as the son of a Mary, but not of the Lord's mother: do you want him to be an apostle or not? If he is an apostle, he will be the son of Alphaeus and will believe in Jesus, and will not be one of those brothers of whom it is written, "For not even his brothers believed in him at that time." If he is not an apostle but some third James, how is he to be thought the brother of the Lord, and how will a third be called "the less" to distinguish him from the greater, when "greater" and "less" usually mark a distinction not among three but between two; and when the brother of the Lord is an apostle, as Paul says: "Then after three years I came to Jerusalem to see Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I saw no other of the apostles except James the brother of the Lord"? And in the same letter: "And when they knew the grace that was given to me, Peter and James and John, who seemed to be pillars." And lest you think this James is the son of Zebedee, read the Acts of the Apostles: he had already been killed by Herod. The conclusion remains that this Mary, who is written to be the mother of James the less, was the wife of Alphaeus and the sister of Mary the Lord's mother, whom John the evangelist calls Mary of Cleophas, giving her the name either from her father or from the clan of her family or for some other reason. But if they seem to you to be different women because in one place she is called "Mary the mother of James the less" and here "Mary of Cleophas," learn the custom of Scripture, that the same person is called by different names. Moses' father-in-law is called both Raguel and Jethro. Gideon, with no reason for the change of name given beforehand, is suddenly read as Jerubbaal. Ozias king of Judah is in turn called Azariah. Mount Tabor is called Itabyrium. Again, the Phoenicians call Hermon Sanior, and the Amorite calls it Sanir. The same quarter of the sky is called by three names, Nageb, Theman, Darom: read Ezekiel. Peter is called both Simon and Cephas. Judas the Zealot is called Thaddaeus in another Gospel. And the reader will be able to gather for himself from all the Scriptures many other things of the same kind as these examples.