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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

The saving vine has been brought to birth today, which will flower with the pure cluster that pours out divine sweetness, from which all who mystically drink will gather divine and saving joy.

WHAT'S THIS POETRY SAYING?

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

Ruth Bell Graham.

Billy Graham's wife. Franklin Graham's mom.

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There is in us human beings a potent receptivity,; a receptivity for which the word passivity is not accurate, though it has often been used for feminint receptivity. We have to find ways in which our will learns to work togther with the will of God, as Mary did at the Annunciation. It requires of us a receptivity to the Presence of God and what he asks of us. It may have to come via the earthly sanity of doubt; "How shall this be, since I know not a man?" . . . That receptivity belongs to the capacity to receive God.

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... What does that mean for us... "Virgin" carries with it a spiritual meaning, which is that of total givenness to God. "She learned what she was FOR," a student once said.

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... Here we sense that virginity is not a state, and is certainly not a possession, but is rather an eschatollgical reality. It is a reality that calls to us from the fulness of time, from the pleroma, from the way things will be because that is how they truly are ontologically.

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... How can we make real the total givenness to God. . . . We can discover again and again that the touch of God retores virginity, our capacity for total givenness to God, when we come in tears, in sorrows, with a desire for metanoia"

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Originally posted by Tigress

POW, It only matters what the Bible says....

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Originally posted by feelinahole

POW isn't very big on scripture in this sort of area (perhaps that is the problem...hmmm).

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Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.
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1 Peter 2:5
...you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

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Originally posted by feelinahole

POW isn't very big on scripture in this sort of area (perhaps that is the problem...hmmm).

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I'd have thought that the THEMES would have jumped right out. Hide scripture in your heart!!!

Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.
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1 Peter 2:5
...you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Soooooooooooooooo......... feelinhole, the ONLY THING that matters is YOUR LIFE are your "annuciations."


How 'bout it?

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The idea that virginity is somehow a more holy state than marriage is contrary to God's original design in creating man and woman, as well as the clear testimony of Scripture (e.g., 1 Cor. 7). Would Christ have performed his first miracle at a wedding if marriage was somehow not something God blessed?

Much of the obsession with "perpetual virginity" or the supposed saintliness of the virginal state comes via Augustine's perverted ideas about sexuality; i.e., the sinful nature being propagated through coitus, even married sexual relations.

Matthew 1:25 indicates that Joseph "knew her not until after" Jesus was born. If it were true that Joseph and Mary never ever had normal marital relations after Christ's birth, the inspired writers of the Gospels had a very plain way of saying that.

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Originally posted by feelinahole

POW, once again you are changing the subject when called upon to actually dialogue on an issue. The basic fact as far as the "evervirgin" Mary is that you can only catch them in your "net" if they accept tradition on the same level as scripture. If not, you have no proof.
BTW, those scriptures you have quote have nothing to do with the subject. One can not annuciate a falsehood. A falsehood is a sin against God.

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T. S. Elliot in Four Quartets points out that there is not one annunciation, but a "lifetime of annunciations." (Robinson, pp. 202)

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... What does that mean for us... "Virgin" carries with it a spiritual meaning, which is that of total givenness to God. "She learned what she was FOR," a student once said. ... Here we sense that virginity is not a state, and is certainly not a possession, but is rather an eschatollgical reality. It is a reality that calls to us from the fulness of time, from the pleroma, from the way things will be because that is how they truly are ontologically. ... How can we make real the total givenness to God. . . . We can discover again and again that the touch of God retores virginity, our capacity for total givenness to God, when we come in tears, in sorrows, with a desire for metanoia"

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel
You surprised me.

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... What does that mean for us... "Virgin" carries with it a spiritual meaning, which is that of total givenness to God. "She learned what she was FOR," a student once said. ... Here we sense that virginity is not a state, and is certainly not a possession, but is rather an eschatollgical reality. It is a reality that calls to us from the fulness of time, from the pleroma, from the way things will be because that is how they truly are ontologically. ... How can we make real the total givenness to God. . . . We can discover again and again that the touch of God retores virginity, our capacity for total givenness to God, when we come in tears, in sorrows, with a desire for metanoia"

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Look beneath the surface!

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

Ruth Bell Graham.

Billy Graham's wife. Franklin Graham's mom.

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Originally posted by JEE


Into the ontological mystery of perpetual virginity, right? If virginity is somehow holier than marital sexual relations, then why did God create Eve?

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Originally posted by moon_river_j

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Originally posted by JEE


Into the ontological mystery of perpetual virginity, right? If virginity is somehow holier than marital sexual relations, then why did God create Eve?

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Ummm, that's not why God created Eve. He created her to be a companion, to share in the love of the triune community of Father, Son, and Spirit, to be equal in spirituality, but also because the Father did not want Adam to be alone. The loving union is part of that design - a beautiful, God honouring union of spirit, soul and body.

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Originally posted by JEE

As far as PoW's comments about "noble Joseph" (which I of course agree with that he was indeed noble, righteous and good), his argument sounds good until we face what the Scriptures actually say: "He knew her not until..."

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But the word "until" does not signify that Mary remained a virgin only until a certain time. The word "until" and words similar to it often signify eternity. In the Sacred Scripture it is said of Christ: In His days shall shine forth righteousness and an abundance of peace, until the moon be taken away (Ps. 71:7), but this does not mean that when there shall no longer be a moon at the end of the world, God's righteousness shall no longer be; precisely then, rather, will it triumph. And what does it mean when it says: For He must reign, until He hath put all enemies under His feet? (I Cor. 15:25). Is the Lord then to reign only for the time until His enemies shall be under His feet?! And David, in the fourth Psalm of the Ascents says: As the eyes of the handmaid look unto the hands of her mistress, so do our eyes look unto the Lord our God, until He take pity on us (Ps. 122:2). Thus, the Prophet will have his eyes toward the Lord until he obtains mercy, but having obtained it he will direct them to the earth? (Blessed Jerome, "On the Ever-Virginity of Blessed Mary.") The Saviour in the Gospel says to the Apostles (Matt. 28:20): Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Thus, after the end of the world the Lord will step away from His disciples, and then, when they shall judge the twelve tribes of Israel upon twelve thrones, they will not have the promised communion with the Lord? (Blessed Jerome, op. cit.)

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a) In the Gospels there are named four "brothers" (James, Joses, Simon and Jude), and there are also mentioned the "sisters" of Jesus—no fewer than three, as is evident in the words: and His sisters, are they not ALL with us? (Matt. 13:56).

On the other hand, b) in the account of the journey to Jerusalem of the twelve-year-old boy Jesus, where there is mention of the "kinsfolk and acquaintances" (Luke 2:44) in the midst of whom they were seeking Jesus, and where it is likewise mentioned that Mary and Joseph every year journeyed from faraway Galilee to Jerusalem, no reason is given to think that there were present other younger children with Mary: it was thus that the first twelve years of the Lords earthly life proceeded.

c) When, about twenty years after the above-mentioned journey, Mary stood at the cross of the Lord, she was alone, and she was entrusted by her Divine Son to His disciple John; and from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home (John 19:27). Evidently, as the ancient Christians also understood it, the Evangelists speak either of "half' brothers and sisters or of cousins.

It is likewise incorrect to think that the brothers and sisters of Christ were the children of His Most Holy Mother. The names of "brother" and "sister" have several distinct meanings. Signifying a certain kinship between people or their spiritual closeness, these words are used sometimes in a broader, and sometimes in a narrower sense. In any case, people are called brothers or sisters if they have a common father and mother, or only a common father or mother; or even if they have different fathers and mothers, if their parents later (having become widowed) have entered into marriage (stepbrothers); or if their parents are bound by close degrees of kinship.

In the Gospel it can nowhere be seen that those who are called there the brothers of Jesus were or were considered the children of His Mother. On the contrary, it was known that James and others were the sons of Joseph, the Betrothed of Mary, who was a widower with children from his first wife. (St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, Panarion, 78.) Likewise, the sister of His Mother, Mary the wife of Cleopas, who stood with Her at the Cross of the Lord (John 19:25), also had children, who in view of such close kinship with full right could also be called brothers of the Lord. That the so-called brothers and sisters of the Lord were not the children of His Mother is clearly evident from the fact that the Lord entrusted His Mother before His death to His beloved disciple John. Why should He do this if She had other children besides Him? They themselves would have taken care of Her. The sons of Joseph, the supposed father of Jesus, did not consider themselves obliged to take care of one they regarded as their stepmother, or at least did not have for Her such love as blood children have for parents, and such as the adopted John had for Her.

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That the Virgin Mary did what Romans 12:1 and 1 Peter 2:5 say at "The" Annunciation" and that WE are called to do the same at the many "annunciation's" in our lives should be plain.

That is, after all, THE issue. (Not one changed to.)


And that (for us, as for her), "virginity is ...an eschatollgical reality....that calls to us from the fulness of time...because that is how they truly are ontological" is nicely said by Robinson.

That any dialog that is truly "on the issue" is about that "virginity" -- whether before, during, or after -- "carries with it a spiritual meaning, which is that of total givenness to God" is also nicely said by Robinson.

Any understanding of "tradition" that does not begin there, is misguided. Even if it is a modernist tradition, and looks only at scientific exteriors. The REAL story is in the heart.

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Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.
.
1 Peter 2:5
...you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

Wendy Robinson wrote:

Quote:
There is in us human beings a potent receptivity,; a receptivity for which the word passivity is not accurate, though it has often been used for feminint receptivity. We have to find ways in which our will learns to work togther with the will of God, as Mary did at the Annunciation. It requires of us a receptivity to the Presence of God and what he asks of us. It may have to come via the earthly sanity of doubt; "How shall this be, since I know not a man?" . . . That receptivity belongs to the capacity to receive God.

Quote:
... What does that mean for us... "Virgin" carries with it a spiritual meaning, which is that of total givenness to God. "She learned what she was FOR," a student once said.

Quote:
... Here we sense that virginity is not a state, and is certainly not a possession, but is rather an eschatollgical reality. It is a reality that calls to us from the fulness of time, from the pleroma, from the way things will be because that is how they truly are ontologically.

Quote:
... How can we make real the total givenness to God. . . . We can discover again and again that the touch of God retores virginity, our capacity for total givenness to God, when we come in tears, in sorrows, with a desire for metanoia"

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T. S. Elliot in Four Quartets points out that there is not one annunciation, but a "lifetime of annunciations." (Robinson, pp. 202)

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

Ja-anne: Can you imagine God choosing Mary to be the mother of Jesus, knowing that she would likely never fulfill her husband's God given desires or needs? I don't think so.

STT: Now twenty-first century Americans get to JUDGE God.


Joseph, as it comes down to us, had had plenty of children. And he was older.

Not only that, his MINISTRY is herolded long and wide in the Christian world. "Noble Joseph."

You demean, perhaps, HIS ministry. You perhaps ridicule it?

No doubt being the parents of God is a unique ministry. God chose the right people, asked them, and they responded with "yes."

Whether that offends certain twenty-first century Americans with rigid and legalistic notions about what is substandard humanity is mute.


Many hauty Protestants RIDICULE those who choose to be monastics. I count them as being colleagues teaching special needs children at my school.

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Originally posted by JEE

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Originally posted by moon_river_j

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Originally posted by JEE


Into the ontological mystery of perpetual virginity, right? If virginity is somehow holier than marital sexual relations, then why did God create Eve?

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Ummm, that's not why God created Eve. He created her to be a companion, to share in the love of the triune community of Father, Son, and Spirit, to be equal in spirituality, but also because the Father did not want Adam to be alone. The loving union is part of that design - a beautiful, God honouring union of spirit, soul and body.

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Hi Jo-Anne,

I agree that Eve's creation was about more than just sex. However, God could have simply created humans genderless, and that would have satisfied the need for fellowship.

As far as PoW's comments about "noble Joseph" (which I of course agree with that he was indeed noble, righteous and good), his argument sounds good until we face what the Scriptures actually say: "He knew her not until..." Had God wanted to make it clear that Joseph and Mary NEVER had marital relations, one has to wonder why He didn't say of Joseph, "He NEVER knew her all her life." Very odd that PoW would think that this is a "Protestant" objection; it seems to me that God's own word makes it clear: Joseph and Mary didn't have sex UNTIL AFTER Christ was born.

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