What is the Anglican Church's view of the perpetual virginity of Mary?

Discussion in 'Theology and Doctrine' started by Tom, May 30, 2017.

  1. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    Consideration of context, such as to whom a letter was addressed, is a valid hermeneutic methodology. An additional example would be Paul's admonition (1 Cor. 11) that women cover their heads when praying or prophesying, a matter of social custom which today's society disregards; God never commanded nor did the Bible elsewhere teach that uncovered female heads are sinful. Women were to remain silent in the church (1 Cor. 14) but now we have female lectors and singers (and sometimes more than those). Paul made a vow and had his head shaved, but we no longer do that. None of these things which are localized in time or place have ever been thought to negate the inspired nature of the scriptures containing them.
     
  2. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Not the way you are using it, which is at odds with patristics (tradition) and reason and therefore also adverse to traditional Amglicanism. Indeed this localization approach is a preferred technique of liberal theologians like Borg, Spong, Pagels and Ehrman to bypass Pauline scripture they dislike.


    On the contrary, hair covering remains the norm not only in the Eastern churches and in traditional Roman Catholicism, but even, in the more relaxed fashion of hats, relatively mainstream Anglicanism (recall the dressing down Samantha Cameron received in the Telegraph and elsewhere for being soleley hatless among the women at the Royal Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge).

    Nor did St. Paul. But they can be immodest.

    And this is wrong in my view. It is admirable that Anglicanism historically relied on the boys choir, and in this manner adhered more fully to the Pauline standards than, for example, the Russian church or the Syrian churches. The Coptic Church likewise has only male psaltis and readers, and this is quite appropriate. Whereas there is historical precedent for female lectors, their removal as well as the removal of women from choirs is an appropriate response to the intransigence of those who would have female priests and bishops, which is a great evil.

    On the contrary, every apostolic church continues to practice a form of ecclesiastical tonsure. Not the radical extreme of shaving the head popular in the medieval Roman church, but rather, the custom is the cutting of the head in a cruciform pattern.

    Thus every case you have cited as an instance where the Pauline epistles are not literally followed can be considered a grave error of praxis from which Anglicanism and the Eastern churches have historically not had, addressing these Pauline injunctions in different but equally valid ways. For the instructions St. Paul gave to each church, while prompted by the conditions at each church, are generally applicable to all Christians and all churches, and to say otherwise is to deprecate the oldest part of the New Testament and the bulk of the Apostolic kerygma, which is contained either in the Pauline epistles or in the Catholic epistles of the other Apostles whose writings survived and were handed down in the canon.
     
  3. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    You're entitled to your opinion.
     
  4. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I mentioned that a few apostolic doctrines didn't receive a strong reception among the Reformers; although on the balance the recovered doctrine at the Reformation was much stronger than what was there before. But one of the struggles with re-appropriating some of the more valid concepts (eg. continence, celibacy, sexual control) is how immersed they were in the culture of (say) the Roman Catholic middle ages. Thus to re-appropriate some of that would feel very awkward to a Reformation-minded person. With integrity, I still believe we have to do that, but our struggle is to pull out the doctrine from the cultural envelope it is sometimes in.

    One example of that is the new emerging concept of protestant monasticism, in such figures as Shane Clairborne, and the New Monasticism movement:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Claiborne

    What they do is re-appropriate the model of John the Baptist, hairshirts, self-deprivation, in a way that isn't culturally tied to the middle ages.
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
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  5. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    I must have missed it but what doctrines did you mention?
     
  6. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    Yep and this is why I am against contraceptives also. Nothing wrong with foreplay, even oral foreplay, but the sex act as to end the right way. Also I do believe it is contraceptives that eventually paved the way to gay marriage. One you sterilize the sex act then sex and by default marriage starts to move away from family.
     
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  7. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    This one:

     
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  8. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    @Stalwart Thanks. I agree that sometimes us protestants do very little to support our single and chaste friends and think of marriage and children as the ideal.
     
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  9. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    We have to understand that we will all be chaste in heaven. We have to start getting prepared for it now. Conquering one's body is one of the hardest things there is to do.
     
  10. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Yes.

    We also have to recognize that we are calling our same-sex attracted brothers and sisters to a lifelong continence. If that virtue isn't well-understood and celebrated among us, then we're effectively calling those people to torture, by stopping them from the pleasure which we avail ourselves with everyone we can, but forbidding them to.

    This is actually their greatest objection to our rejection of the gay lifestyle. They see that we have embraced a sex-saturated culture, but for some reason they can't indulge it while we can just have our fun.

    We have to recapture an ideal of chastity, modesty, and incredible self-restraint, for our whole culture. We release our continence within the bounds of marriage, and we call our gay brothers to never release the bounds of continence, but we have to altogether be imprisoned within the same restraining jacket of self-restraint. We have to make it celebrated among us.

    This was the way the Early Church made it work in a sex-saturated culture of the Late Roman Empire. They made the virgin ideal beat out the sex-saturated ideal. There is no other way.
     
  11. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Wisdom.
     
  12. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    There will be no struggling with our bodily desires in the next life. You sort of make it sound as if we have to get 'bulked up' with willpower so we can persevere in heaven. That's not the case. Chastity will be a complete non-issue after we pass from this life.
     
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  13. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    I disagree. The Holy Spirit inspires people to be unselfish and have children. You will find more children in a Protestant family that uses contraceptives than an atheist one. I know several. In fact, some Protestant families who accept the use of it may have up to four or five children, maybe more. Whereas Atheistic, irreligious families will have maybe one or two children, if even that. Countries that are secular and man-centered have poor birthrates. A contraceptive does not affect whether or not a person will want to have children at some point if they have the holy spirit working in them to consider someone other than themselves, and of course regular sex for pleasure can be done unselfishly to a partner to express a greater connection which the act tends to foster in committed relationships.
     
  14. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    All true. I made that emphasis because even Catholics now so struggle to disassociate from a sex-filled worldview, that they bring it into heaven, as one of primary elements of the heavenly life. Peter Kreeft comes to mind:
    http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/sex-in-heaven.htm
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO4_JCnybq0

    This is the degree to which the ideal of chastity is dead in the West, that we can’t even imagine heaven with it. I wanted to remind us that it’s definitely the reigning reality in heaven.
     
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  15. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    Yikes! Peter Kreeft's ideas are Pretty Kreepy! That guy needs to pick up a Bible and read it! He could start with Matthew 22: Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
     
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  16. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    This is indeed disturbing.
     
  17. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    That article by Kreeft is rather disturbing, I must say. It's speculation run rampant.
     
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  18. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    My reading of what Kreeft's words didn't leave me with any impression that he was unaware at all of the text that you quoted though. He even mentioned it in passing. A highly speculative piece of writing on his part but not indicative of Biblical ignorance, in my opinion. Quite the contrary in fact. Thought provoking but obviously not dogmatic.
    .
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2021
  19. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    His trinitarian speculations, which I won't quote here, were genuinely creepy. He's actually put sustained periods of thought into this. Personally, I've always found his writings to be a bit superficial. After this, I don't anticipate ever seeing the need to read any of his books again.
     
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