Gaius Marius Victorinus (290-364) vs. the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

Commenting on Gal 1:19, Marius Victorinus wrote the following, showing he is an early Christian witness against the perpetual virginity of Mary:

 

But I saw no one else of the apostles. Because when he said he saw no one else of the apostles except James, the reason was also included why he saw James: the Lord’s brother, the one regarded as his brother according to the flesh. (Stephen Andrew Cooper, Marius Victorinus' Commentary on Galatians [Oxford Early Christian Studies; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], 266, emphasis in bold added)

 

In a footnote to the above, Stephen Andrew Cooper noted:

 

Like modern scholars, Victorinus maintains that James was Jesus’ blood brother (his comment on 2: 12 states this without ambiguity). The later Latin commentators—Ambrosiaster (CSEL 81/3, 16, 3–16), Jerome (PL 26, 330A–331A [354–55C]), Augustine (Exp. ad Gal. 8. 5; CSEL 84, 63, 5–7), Pelagius (Souter, 311, 5–8)—all deny that James could have been Mary’s son. This fits with the fact that, as David Hunter has noted, ‘the doctrines of Mary’s virginity post partum and in partu have only a fragile basis in the tradition of the first three centuries’ (‘Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late-Fourth Century Rome’, JECS 1 (1993), 47–71, 69). (Ibid. 266 n. 76)

 

This is a faithful translation of the Latin original ("fratrem domini, qui frater est habitus secundum carnem."):

(the above is taken from Marii Victorini Opera, Pars II: Opera Exegetica [Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Editum Consilio Et Impensis Academiae Scientiarum Austricae LXXXIII, Pars 2; Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986], 110)

The perpetual virginity of Mary cannot be preserved if one holds to the Eastern Orthodox view (the Epiphanian view) of the brothers/sisters of Jesus, wherein they are adopted brothers/sisters from a previous marriage of Joseph, as James is said to be a biological brother of Jesus.

 

Other witnesses against the perpetual virginity of Mary include Irenaeus of Lyons, Hegesippus, and Tertullian. On this, and the biblical evidence against the perpetual virginity, see pp. 83-138 of Behold the Mother of My Lord: Towards a Mormon Mariology.