Response to Jerome's Response to Helvidius - Part 6

Jerome wrote a response to Helvidius regarding the virginity of Mary.  This post is the sixth in a series of responses to what Jerome wrote.

Jerome wrote:

Our reply is briefly this,—the words knew and till in the language of Holy Scripture are capable of a double meaning. As to the former, he himself gave us a dissertation to show that it must be referred to sexual intercourse, and no one doubts that it is often used of the knowledge of the understanding, as, for instance, “the boy Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and his parents knew it not.” Now we have to prove that just as in the one case he has followed the usage of Scripture, so with regard to the word till he is utterly refuted by the authority of the same Scripture, which often denotes by its use a fixed time (he himself told us so), frequently time without limitation, as when God by the mouth of the prophet says to certain persons, “Even to old age I am he.” Will He cease to be God when they have grown old? And the Saviour in the Gospel tells the Apostles, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Will the Lord then after the end of the world has come forsake His disciples, and at the very time when seated on twelve thrones they are to judge the twelve tribes of Israel will they be bereft of the company of their Lord? Again Paul the Apostle writing to the Corinthians says, “Christ the first-fruits, afterward they that are Christ’s, at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.” Granted that the passage relates to our Lord’s human nature, we do not deny that the words are spoken of Him who endured the cross and is commanded to sit afterwards on the right hand. What does he mean then by saying, “for he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet”? Is the Lord to reign only until His enemies begin to be under His feet, and once they are under His feet will He cease to reign? Of course His reign will then commence in its fulness when His enemies begin to be under His feet. David also in the fourth Song of Ascents speaks thus, “Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look unto the Lord our God, until he have mercy upon us.” Will the prophet, then, look unto the Lord until he obtain mercy, and when mercy is obtained will he turn his eyes down to the ground? although elsewhere he says, “Mine eyes fail for thy salvation, and for the word of thy righteousness.” I could accumulate countless instances of this usage, and cover the verbosity of our assailant with a cloud of proofs; I shall, however, add only a few, and leave the reader to discover like ones for himself.

Jerome's point is valid inasmuch as it establishes that sometimes the endpoint specified by "till" is not the endpoint of the action described.  Jerome fails, however, to take this argument to the next step of analysis: if the expression sometimes indicates that the action ceases at the endpoint, and other times it does not, how can we tell the difference?

Notice we do not need to dispute the examples Jerome provides.  They are not truly counter-examples to Helvidius' or our argument.  Sometimes the "till" or "unto" is followed by a term that is equivalent until "forever," such as "unto old age" or "unto the end of the world."  However, these counter examples are what we usually describe by the adage, that the exceptions prove the rule.

The expression in the gospels is not like those examples.  It's unlike those examples in two ways: first, the endpoint is expressed generally as a very distant time point, such as the end of the world, the triumph of Christ over all his enemies, or old age.  Second, those statements are prospective: they point to some future time.  By contrast, the Evangelist points us back retrospectively.  It is not, "he shall not know her until ..." but "he knew her not until ...."  The former statements may -- even often do -- tell us nothing about the state after the terminus.  The former statements are - at least usually - providing an endpoint to the described action.

Eric Svendsen did a great job of providing an analysis of the Greek data, and providing categorizations of all the usage of Greek data.  As Svendsen pointed out, the examples where the meaning of specific Greek phrase used here is "until [and continuing]" or "until [with no reference to continuation or discontinuation]" are a tiny minority, namely seven examples.   However, these are all examples from the Septuagint, rather than being examples from Greek literature within a century or two of the composition of Matthew.

In short, there are ways to understand the difference between the exceptional cases and the rule.  The use of "till" here follows the rule, not the exception.  So, Jerome wasn't wrong in what he said, but in what he left unsaid.

 

-TurretinFan