Chapter 12 [XI.]—Marriage Does Not Cancel a Mutual Vow of Continence; There Was True Wedlock Between Mary and Joseph; In What Way Joseph Was the Father of Christ.

But God forbid that the nuptial bond should be regarded as broken between those who have by mutual consent agreed to observe a perpetual abstinence from the use of carnal concupiscence. Nay, it will be only a firmer one, whereby they have exchanged pledges together, which will have to be kept by an especial endearment and concord,—not by the voluptuous links of bodies, but by the voluntary affections of souls. For it was not deceitfully that the angel said to Joseph: “Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife.”41    Matt. i. 20. She is called his wife because of her first troth of betrothal, although he had had no carnal knowledge of her, nor was destined to have. The designation of wife was neither destroyed nor made untrue, where there never had been, nor was meant to be, any carnal connection. That virgin wife was rather a holier and more wonderful joy to her husband because of her very pregnancy without man, with disparity as to the child that was born, without disparity in the faith they cherished. And because of this conjugal fidelity they are both deservedly called “parents”42    Luke ii. 41. of Christ (not only she as His mother, but he as His father, as being her husband), both having been such in mind and purpose, though not in the flesh. But while the one was His father in purpose only, and the other His mother in the flesh also, they were both of them, for all that, only the parents of His humility, not of His sublimity; of His weakness, not of His divinity. For the Gospel does not lie, in which one reads, “Both His father and His mother marvelled at those things which were spoken about Him;”43    Luke ii. 33. So the Vulgate as well as the best Greek texts, instead of the “And Joseph and His mother marvelled,” etc., of the common text. and in another passage, “Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year;”44    Luke ii. 41. and again a little afterwards, “His mother said unto Him, Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? Behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing.”45    Luke ii. 48. In order, however, that He might show them that He had a Father besides them, who begat Him without a mother, He said to them in answer: “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”46    Luke ii. 49. Furthermore, lest He should be thought to have repudiated them as His parents by what He had just said, the evangelist at once added: “And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them; and He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.”47    Luke ii. 50, 51. Subject to whom but His parents? And who was the subject but Jesus Christ, “who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God”?48    Phil. ii. 6. And wherefore subject to them, who were far beneath the form of God, except that “He emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant,”49    Phil. ii. 7.—the form in which His parents lived? Now, since she bore Him without his engendering, they could not surely have both been His parents, of that form of a servant, if they had not been conjugally united, though without carnal connection. Accordingly the genealogical series (although both parents of Christ are mentioned together in the succession)50    Matt. i. 16. had to be extended, as it is in fact,51    Compare Luke iii. 23 with Matt. i. 16. down rather to Joseph’s name, that no wrong might be done, in the case of this marriage, to the male, and indeed the stronger sex, while at the same time there was nothing detrimental to truth, since Joseph, no less than Mary, was of the seed of David,52    Luke i. 27. of whom it was foretold that Christ should come.

CAPUT XI.

12. Mutuum continentiae votum conjugium non dirimit. Verum conjugium inter Mariam et Joseph. Joseph quomodo pater Christi. In matrimonio Mariae et Joseph omnia fuere conjugii bona. Quibus vero placuerit ex consensu, ab usu carnalis concupiscentiae in perpetuum continere, absit ut inter illos vinculum conjugale rumpatur: imo firmius erit, quo magis ea pacta secum inierint, quae charius concordiusque servanda sunt, non voluptariis nexibus corporum, sed voluntariis affectibus animorum. Neque enim fallaciter ab angelo dictum est ad Joseph, Noli timere accipere Mariam conjugem tuam (Matth. I, 20). Conjux vocatur ex prima fide desponsationis, quam concubitu nec cognoverat, nec fuerat cogniturus: nec perierat, nec mendax manserat 0421 conjugis appellatio, ubi nec fuerat, nec futura erat carnis ulla commixtio. Erat quippe illa virgo ideo et sanctius et mirabilius jucunda suo viro, quia etiam fecunda sine viro, prole dispar, fide compar. Propter quod fidele conjugium parentes Christi vocari ambo meruerunt, et non solum illa mater, verum etiam ille pater ejus, sicut conjux matris ejus, utrumque mente, non carne. Sive tamen ille pater sola mente, sive illa mater et carne, parentes tamen ambo humilitatis ejus, non sublimitatis; infirmitatis, non divinitatis. Neque enim mentitur Evangelium, ubi legitur: Et erant pater ejus et mater mirantes super his quae dicebantur de illo. Et alio loco: Et ibant parentes ejus per omnes annos in Jerusalem. Item paulo post: Et dixit mater ejus ad illum: Fili, quid fecisti nobis sic? Ecce pater tuus et ego dolentes quaerebamus te. At ille ut ostenderet habere se praeter illos patrem, qui eum genuit praeter matrem, respondit eis: Quid est quod me quaerebatis? Nesciebatis quia in his quae Patris mei sunt, oportet me esse? Et rursum, ne hoc dicto parentes illos negasse putaretur, Evangelista secutus adjunxit: Et ipsi non intellexerunt verbum quod locutus est ad illos. Et descendit cum eis, et venit Nazareth, et erat subditus illis (Luc. II, 33, 41, 48-51). Quibus subditus, nisi parentibus? Quis autem subditus, nisi Jesus Christus, qui cum in forma Dei esset, non rapinam arbitratus est esse aequalis Deo? Cur ergo illis subditus, qui longe infra formam Dei erant, nisi quia semetipsum exinanivit formam servi accipiens (Philip. II, 6, 7), cujus formae parentes erant? Sed cum illo non seminante illa peperisset, profecto nec ipsius formae servi parentes ambo essent, nisi inter se etiam sine carnis commixtione conjuges essent. Unde et series generationum, cum parentes Christi connexione successionis commemorantur, usque ad Joseph potius sicut factum est, fuerat perducenda (Matth. I, 16, et Luc. III, 23); ne in illo conjugio, virili sexui utique potiori fieret injuria, cum veritati nihil periret quia ex semine David, ex quo venturus praedictus est Christus, et Joseph erat et Maria.