Does Matthew 1:25 Really Disprove Mary's Perpetual Virginity?

One of the dogmas of the Catholic Church that is often disputed by Protestants is the one concerning Mary’s perpetual virginity. An argument that they use to try to “disprove” it is in Matthew 1:25, which says that Joseph did not know Mary until after Jesus was born. They claim that the word “until” implies that after Jesus was born, Joseph did indeed know Mary and she was no longer a virgin. However, this is not necessarily the case.

There are several other cases in Scripture where the word “until” is used to describe a certain scenario that was true up until a certain point, but that certainly wouldn’t have changed after that point. For example, in 1 Corinthians 15:25, St. Paul says “For He (Jesus) must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.” Certainly St. Paul does not mean that Jesus will no longer reign after His enemies are conquered, since in Revelation 11:15 we are told that Jesus will reign “forever and ever.” In Acts 8:40, we read “But Philip was found at Azotus, and passing on he preached the Gospel to all the towns till he came to Caesarea.” This cannot mean that once he reached Caesarea he stopped preaching the Gospel, because Philip was one of the twelve apostles and we know that they all, except for Judas and John, were martyred for the Faith.

As we can see, the word “until” can mean that some scenario did change after a certain point or it can simply be used to emphasize what was going on up to a certain point. The examples I used are not exhaustive and there are many more in Scripture to illustrate the error of interpreting Matthew 1:25 to mean that Mary was not a virgin after Jesus’s birth. In my next post, I will look at whether the “brothers” of Jesus described in Scripture were actually biological ones.