Lutheran Marian Theology - Perpetual Virginity

Perpetual Virginity

Some Lutherans believe that Mary did not have other children, and did not have any marital relations with Joseph, maintaining that the brothers mentioned in the Gospels were cousins. This is consistent with Luther's lifelong acceptance of the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Jaroslav Pelikan noted that the perpetual virginity of Mary was Luther's lifelong belief, and Hartmann Grisar, a Roman Catholic biographer of Luther, concurs that "Luther always believed in the virginity of Mary, even post partum, as affirmed in the Apostles’ Creed, though afterwards he denied her power of intercession, as well as that of the saints in general, resorting to many misinterpretations and combated, as extreme and pagan, the extraordinary veneration which the Catholic Church showed towards Mary." For this reason even a rigorously conservative Lutheran scholar like Franz Pieper (1852–1931) refuses to follow the tendency among Protestants to insist that Mary and Joseph had marital relations and children after the birth of Jesus. It is implicit in his Christian Dogmatics that belief in Mary's perpetual virginity is the older and traditional view among Lutherans.

Some American Lutheran groups such as the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod later "found no difficulty with the view that Mary and Joseph themselves together had other children". The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America holds the same belief.