Recently on X, a user who goes by Redeemed Zoomer has been making a bit of a splash. He is known primarily for his position regarding the apostate PCUSA, arguing that the best course of action is to remain within it to reform it from the inside.
In addition to this, he often engages in so-called hot takes which seem designed only to drive controversy and engagements. He has carved out a bit of a niche for himself, which includes polarized factions of those who really like him and those who really do not.
I don’t have much of a dog in the fight, but he is getting enough algorithm love that he is showing up in my feed quite a bit. Today I spotted an argument he made that I thought bore some response.
This argument actually bears a pretty strong pedigree. Augustine makes more or less the same argument in section IV of Of Holy Virginity.
It also bears saying that the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary (PVM) itself has many surprising adherents throughout Protestant history. Many of the first-generation reformers in both the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Magisterial Reformation held this doctrine, so we ought not to dismiss it frivolously.
All that said, I think that Redeemed Zoomer’s argument is easy enough to rebut. Although some of what I will hereafter provide serves as arguments against PVM itself, this is primarily intended to be an argument in response to Redeemed Zoomer specifically.
What Happens When We Assume
At the end of the day, Zoomer’s argument is not even just an argument from silence. It’s an argument against what is stated. Zoomer assumes, without warrant I might add, that had Mary not been under a vow of virginity, she would have assumed that the promised child would come about as a result of natural conception.
Assumptions are not arguments. Assumptions about assumptions are not arguments.
Let’s pretend that they are though, just for a second.
Why wouldn’t it be equally warranted in assuming that Mary assumed that this conception and birth would take place immediately? After all, it did take place immediately. Why wouldn’t we assume that Mary actually understood what the Angel was saying, including that this special miraculous birth would be special and miraculous? Even if she had assumed that some time would pass, why wouldn’t she still understand the momentous and miraculous nature of the birth of the Messiah?
Why would we assume that she would think there would be some kind of delay in this conception when the Angel says nothing of the sort? The “overshadowing” of the Holy Spirit was not some outwardly sensible event. There was no special experience that Mary had, at least not one that the Holy Spirit saw fit to preserve for us. The text presents this as though the event that the Angel proclaimed happened in the moment it was proclaimed. Mary asked how it would take place, and the Angel told her. When she asked how this would take place, the Angel pointed to a current reality as the validation. Mary understood this and immediately left to see the sign which the Angel provided. She did not delay, because she understood that the described events were already taking place.
It’s not Greek to Zoomer
While this may seem like a nit-picky response, it is important to note that the Bible was not written in English. Although it may be proper to make an argument based on the tense of a verb, it certainly is not wise to do so if you do not have a proper mastery of Greek itself. It is never proper to make that argument from the English, which is precisely what Zoomer does.
In fact, the phrase “I am a Virgin” is not even in the original Greek text, which uses the idiomatic phrase “I do not know a man” or more literally “I am not knowing a man.” While in English, the Present tense does convey simple present, Greek is far more nuanced. It may convey simple present tense, it may convey continual action (most common), and it may convey something which is called Imperfective Aspect.
While there may have been some merit to this if the actual grammatical construction was “I am a virgin,” it isn’t. The actual grammar refers to a specific action rather than a state. Mary does not say “I am a virgin.” She says, in an idiomatic sense, that she is not engaging in the activity that ordinarily leads to the conception of a child. Were she making a statement about the state she is in, perhaps Zoomer would have a point, but to stretch the idea that because she is not currently engaged in a particular activity that she was saying that she would never be engaged in that activity is simply too far a bridge to cross.
What appears to have happened here is that Zoomer either came up with this argument or read it somewhere else… looked at the ESV and said “yup, that’s present tense!” and then it was off to the races. There could obviously have been more to the story, but when one makes an argument based on a predicated nominative that doesn’t even exist in the Greek text, it’s questionable at best.
The Problem of the Rest of the New Testament
The common Protestant response to the PVM from Matthew 1:25 that argues that since the text says that Joseph knew her not until after Jesus was born, therefore he knew her after Jesus was born is not a good one. The Greek word underlying the English “until” elsewhere in the NT clearly refers to a state of affairs that continues after the “until.” However, words only have meaning in their usage and context.
While it is true that this word does not entail or imply that the state of things changed after that point of time, the immediate context of this usage does.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18, ESV)
Matthew here makes a point to identify that Mary was found to be pregnant “before [Mary and Joseph] came together.” This is obviously idiomatic language to refer to the consummation of the marriage in sexual intercourse.
The PVM, and Zoomer’s argument, relies on the presupposition that Joseph was betrothed to Mary, whom he knew to be under a vow of virginity, and that he had no expectation of sexual intercourse or the siring of children as a result of the marriage to Mary.
If this were the case, then we must ask the question as to why Matthew seems to assume that the reader expected Mary and Joseph to “come together” and is compelled to identify that the pregnancy happened ****before that eventuality.
While “until” may be ambiguous, “before” is not. Zoomer’s argument has to ignore this clear statement by the Holy Spirit that there was a “before” they came together, which necessarily entails that there was an “after” they came together. As I said before, my response here is to Zoomer’s argument, not to the PVM as a whole. That said, Zoomer’s argument is a “Good and Necessary” argument —although, as I explained in the first section, his conclusions are neither good nor necessary— and therefore any text that cannot be integrated into his theory invalidates it.
While I’m sure that Zoomer would be ready to answer the typical “until” argument, I’m not sure that he has even taken time to think through the rest of the text.