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Virgin Birth
VIRGIN BIRTH. The teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus was a virgin both when she conceived and when she gave birth to Jesus, the child who was Immanuel (“God with us”). The source of this doctrine is threefold: (1) The account in
Although the conception of Jesus was miraculous and unique, his growth within the womb of Mary and his birth were “normal.” The writers of Matthew and Luke probably got their information from Joseph and Mary, and they recorded it with reverence and reticence. Within their accounts several theological motifs may be recognized. First, they record the facts in such a manner as to convey the idea that conception by a virgin was the appropriate way for the eternal Son to become a man, “bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh.” Second, as the Holy Spirit had “hovered” over the old creation (
Bibliography: J. Orr, The Virgin Birth of Christ, 1907; J. G. Machen, The Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, 1932.——PT
VIRGIN BIRTH
Definition.
Virgin birth, as here considered, is a specific term. It refers only to Jesus Christ and the manner in which He came into the world, as described in Matthew and Luke, as believed by the Early Church, and as it has been held in the creeds through the centuries. The unique person and mission of Christ, as well as the specific manner of His incarnation, put this event in a class by itself. Comparison with other miraculous births, discoveries of birth myths, or even scientific experimentation and achievement in human methods of reproduction would neither support nor invalidate this unique and divine act of incarnation. This is the virgin birth in which, it is claimed, the Word was made flesh (
The fact.
The gospel accounts are not presented as myths, legends, didactic devices, or “noetic” patterns to popularize Christianity to the naive masses (cf. Boslooper, The Virgin Birth, 227-230). They purport to state factually data needed to solve a crucial problem in the minds of believers: How could Jesus, a man, be the Son of God and Savior? The two parts of the explanation occur in the two gospels that the Early Church considered the earliest. The report was accepted as factual. The explanations were not repeated in later works. Before long, no one was baptized into the faith without expressing faith in the virginborn Christ. In the earliest lit. that reflects direct confrontation with pagan, Jewish, and heretical contenders, the fact of the virgin birth is defended as both true and fundamental.
Presupposition.
Only in a certain context, of course, could this position be held. Both the Scriptures and the believers assumed the supernatural. God was no myth. He was the sovereign, transcendent Being, who was also Creator. He who made man in the beginning could accommodate to him and communicate with him. The early Christians saw no problem in a God who acts and speaks and redeems. In the context of Scripture and the faith of a regenerate and Spirit-filled Church, the virgin birth of Christ was no more unthinkable than the other three ways by which people have come into the world (Adam with neither father nor mother, Eve with no mother, and others with both father and mother). God was utterly real. His acts and words were fact and truth. Gnostics, Docetists, pagans, and unconverted Jews did not always share this context of faith. Therefore, they did not share the Christian belief in an actual incarnation by the virgin birth, but the belief survived in orthodox Christianity.
Importance.
It is not contended that God could not have sent the Savior in any other way. It is simply affirmed, on the basis of Scripture, that this is how He did it. The virgin birth is consistent with the other great facts of redemption in a way that no other explanation is. Consistent orthodoxy demands the virgin birth. As Briggs says (Charles A. Briggs, “The Virgin Birth of Our Lord,” AJT, XII, 2 [April 1908], 201),
Undoubtedly the divinity of Christ is the most essential doctrine, the incarnation is secondary to this, and the virgin birth of a third grade of importance. I have already recognized that a man may doubt or deny the third without, in his own mind, denying the second, or the first. And yet, from a historic and dogmatic point of view, he surely has put himself in an untenable position, which he cannot maintain. Historically and logically the divinity of Christ and incarnation are bound up with the virgin birth, and no man can successfully maintain any one of them without maintaining them all.
In the Early Church.
Accordingly, it is not strange that “there is no fact, no Christian doctrine that is more emphasized by the early Christian writers than that of the virgin birth of our Lord” (Briggs, op. cit., 199). They considered it essential, used it in the baptismal formula and the earliest creed, and vigorously defended it in the debates with non-believers. No voice of doubt or protest is recorded within the Early Church.
In modern times.
The facts have not changed, only the climate. The authority of the Bible is still involved. Those who accept the Scriptures as the fully reliable Word of God do not doubt the virgin birth. The factual account must still be accepted or rejected. It is true or false. If redemption is not based on the kind of incarnation that is reported in the Scriptures, what can be believed about it? As Lange says of the virgin birth, “Its positive denial robs every other doctrine of Christianity of its full value. Neither the death of Christ nor His resurrection can be known in their whole significance, if His birth is positively misconceived. In this case, there is a crack in the bell, and its pure, full, penetrating sound is gone” (The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, I, 279). Or, as Machen says, “Let it never be forgotten that the virgin birth is an integral part of the New Testament witness about Christ, and that that witness is strongest when taken as it stands” (The Virgin Birth of Christ, 396).
Source of the doctrine.
It is often said that the doctrine of the virgin birth comes from the 2nd cent. This can hardly be true.
Earlier than creeds.
The virgin birth was as explicit in the early Rom. form of the Apostles’ Creed as in the 5th- or 6th-cent. Gallican form. Tertullian and Irenaeus used the creed; therefore, it must have been extant by the middle of the 2nd cent. Indeed, Kattenbusch placed it at about a.d. 100 (Das Apostolische Symbolum, ii [1900], 328) and Zahn supposes that the baptismal formula attained essentially the form which it has in the old Rom. symbol at some time between 70 and 120 (Das Apostolische Symbolum, 2te Aufl. [1893], 47). Since no new, strange, or debatable doctrine would be incorporated into the baptismal formula or into so brief and elementary a creed, the doctrine must have been old when the creed was established. This places the doctrine well back into the 1st cent.
Earlier than Apostolic Fathers.
Apostolic fathers, in the first half of the 2nd cent., are as explicit as the creeds. Justin Martyr defends the virgin birth at length against Jewish and pagan objections and shows familiarity with its mention in Christological summaries, such as are used in exorcism (Machen: The Virgin Birth of Christ, 5). Ignatius, who died in a.d. 117, in debate with Docetists who deny the real body of Jesus, insisted not only on Jesus’ birth but also on its having been a virgin birth (Smyrna I, 1). Harnack says that “Ignatius has freely reproduced a ‘kerygma’ of Christ which seems, in essentials, to be of a fairly historical character and which contained, inter alia, the Virgin Birth, Pontius Pilate, and the ἀπέθανεν” (“Apostolisches Symbolium,” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirke, I [1896], 751).
The testimony of each is unequivocal. They are not dealing with a new doctrine. No protest within the Church has to be answered. The only objectors are on the outside. All believers were baptized in this faith. The one alleged and much publicized exception to universal agreement within the Church is in Justin Martyr’s statement (Dialogue with Trypho) when Justin argues that some Jews accept the messiahship of Jesus without accepting His preexistence and virgin birth. This has been misread as saying “our race” instead of “your race” and so has been applied to Christians. Harnack exposed the error. Machen explains and confirms his findings (op. cit., 15, 16). The situation is clear. The virgin birth was already an old and long-established distinctive of the Christian Church early in the 2nd cent.
In the family.
The time and manner of the first public statement about the virgin birth is a matter of conjecture. It cannot be later than the gospels that bear the account (Matthew and Luke). The facts may have been known earlier, at least by some. The moves from Nazareth to Bethlehem, to Egypt, to Nazareth may have permitted Mary and Joseph to keep the secret from all but the most trusted confidants until God’s own time of vindication. When faith in Christ had already been demonstrated, the explanation solved a problem. Where such faith was lacking, the account would have been abused or rejected if given prematurely. Orr thinks the two gospels are the source of any public knowledge of the birth of Christ (The Virgin Birth of Christ, 67). Sooner or later the facts had to be shared by Mary and Joseph. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the report would be given to the leaders of the Church and esp. to those who were committing the Gospel to writing?
Gospel accounts.
The whole NT presents a divine-human Savior. Only Matthew and Luke explain the means of the Incarnation. Repetition is unnecessary. Consistency with the revelation is sufficient.
Linguistic factors.
Literary factors.
All alleged ambiguity vanishes when the passages are read in full. Specifically, it was “before they came together” that Mary “was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit” (
Documentation.
The facts formed a network of interlocking prediction and data that broadened the witness and reduced the normal probability of chance fulfillment to absurdity. What if Elizabeth or Mary had borne a girl? Or what if something else had broken the predicted pattern? Abundance of detail guaranteed the authenticity of the accounts. This birth is not only an event in time; it is the event from which, as if arranged by a true instinct, time is reckoned forward and backward. It is a historical fact full of the mysteries of both the divine and the human. It is the handle by which one can take hold of God’s greatest self-revelation in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of man. If this is not the true explanation, no one will ever know how the Redeemer came. No other adequate explanation has been given.
Alleged silence.
It has been objected that the virgin birth cannot be true in view of the silence of the rest of the NT.
Doubtful silence.
Reasons for silence.
Conclusion.
The faith of the Early Church included belief in the virgin birth because it was a clear teaching of the NT. To reject it would have been tantamount to denying the Word of God and being aligned with the pagans, heretics, and unbelieving Jews. The virgin birth was not a stumbling block. It was a pillar of their faith. So it has continued.
Bibliography
J. Lange, The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ (1872) I, 276-302; A. Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1886) I, 144-159; W. Ramsay, Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? (1898), 73-91; L. Sweet, The Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ (1906); J. Orr, The Virgin Birth of Christ (1907); C. Briggs, “The Virgin Birth of our Lord,” AJT, XII, 2 (1908), 189-201; F. Ramsay, The Virgin Birth (1926); J. Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930); D. Edwards, The Virgin Birth in History and Faith (1943); D. Moody, “
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)
|| I. DEFINITION
II. THE TEXTUAL QUESTION
III. THE HISTORICAL QUESTION
1. Statement Not Dogmatic but Vital as History
2. Its Importance to Leaders of the Early Church
3. Hypothesis of Invention Discredits the Church
IV. THE CRITICAL QUESTION
1. Basis of Virgin-Birth Statement
2. Interrelationship of Narratives
3. Sources, Origin and age of Documents
V. THE DOCTRINAL QUESTION
1. In the New Testament
2. Portrait of Jesus in Synoptic Gospels 3. In Rest of the New Testament
4. Oppositions to the Doctrine
5. Its Importance to Modern Thought
LITERATURE
I. Definition.
"Virgin-birth" is the correct and only correct designation of the birth statement contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. "Immaculate conception" is of course manifestly a blunder due to the confusion of one idea with another. "Supernatural or miraculous birth" will not do, because there is no intimation that the process of birth was in any way exceptional. "Supernatural or miraculous conception" is equally unsatisfactory as it involves a question-begging comparison between the birth of Christ and the exceptional births of the Sons of Promise (e.g. Isaac, John the Baptist, etc.). The only statement which is sufficiently specific is "virgin-birth," inasmuch as according to the New Testament statement Mary was at the time of this birth virgo intacta.
II. The Textual Question.
We may deal with this division of our subject very briefly, because if we are to allow any weight at all to textual evidence there is no question as to the infancy narratives, either in whole or in part. Their position is flawless and unassailable. There is a voluminous literature devoted to the discussion of the subject, but it is notably jejune even for critical writing, and much more impressive for ingenuity and dialectic skill in arguing a poor case than for anything in the way of results. We do not hesitate to refer the reader who is interested in discussions of this sort to entirely satisfactory reviews of them found elsewhere (see Machen, Princeton Review, October, 1905; January, 1906; and Orr, The Virgin Birth of Christ). We may summarize the entire discussion in the words of Johannes Weiss (Theologische Rundschau, 1903, 208, quoted by Machen, ut sup.): "There never were forms of Mt and Lu without the infancy narratives." One point only we shall consider in this connection; namely, the disputed reading of
(1) that the genealogy as deposited in public or private record would read: "Jacob begat Joseph, Joseph begat Jesus,"
(2) that the person who used the genealogy in the Gospel and placed it in connection with
(a) had Mary particularly in mind and inserted the names of women to prepare the way for the mention of Mary, all of which was a departure from usual and orderly procedure;
(b) that he used the word "begat" in the legal sense throughout (1:8,12; compare
(c) that he believed in the virgin-birth as evinced by the connection and the use of names of women including Mary’s.
There is therefore no basis for the idea that the genealogy, even without the strongly attested relative clause of
III. The Historical Question.
1. Statement Not Dogmatic but Vital as History:
The twofold birth announcement of Matthew and Luke is a statement of historical or, more strictly speaking, biographical fact. The accounts, as we shall see, are very rigidly confined to the matter of fact concerned. It is not a dogma and receives very little doctrinal elaboration even in the infancy narratives themselves. It is an event, wholly real or wholly imaginary. The statement of it is wholly true or entirely false. But as a historical statement this narrative is of peculiar quality and significance.
(1) It touches upon the most delicate matters, at a place where the line between that which is most sacred and that which is most degraded in human life is closely drawn. To discredit it leaves the most intimate mystery of our Lord’s earthly life under the shadow of suspicion. It is therefore a statement of the greatest personal moment in the evangelic record.
(2) It involves the secret history and public honor of a family most dear and sacred to the entire Christian body. It records the inner and outer experiences of the mother of the Lord and of His brethren, themselves honored leaders in the church.
(3) It touches upon the central mystery of the Lord’s person in such a way as to involve either a very important contribution to the doctrine of the incarnation or a very serious mutilation of the truth. We may dismiss altogether the contention of many, that whether true or not the fact is of no great importance. It must be of importance. No fact in which the relationship of Jesus to His ancestors according to the flesh, to His mother, to the laws of life in the race at large, are so evidently and so deeply involved can possibly be a matter of indifference. The nature of His experience in the world, the quality and significance of His manhood, the fundamental constitution of His person, the nature and limits of the incarnation are necessarily and vitally concerned in the discussion. It is impossible to begin with the acceptance or rejection of the fact and arrive by logical processes at like convictions on any fundamental matter in the region of Christology.
2. Its Importance to Leaders of the Early Church:
All this must have been as patent to the earliest believers as to ourselves. The men who incorporated this incident into the gospel narrative could not possibly have been blind to the importance of what they were doing (compare
3. Hypothesis of Invention Discredits the Church:
Moreover, this hypothesis demands that this fabrication must have met with instantaneous and universal success. It passed the scrutiny of the church at large and of its authorized teachers, and was never challenged save by a small group of heretics who disliked it on purely dogmatic grounds.
To whatever origin in the way of suggestion from without one may attribute the story--whether one may ascribe it to the influence of Old Testament prophecy, or Jewish Messianic expectations in general, or to ethnic analogies, Babylonian. Egyptian or Greek--the fact remains that the story had to be invented and published by those who ought to have known better and could easily have known better had they possessed sufficient interest in the cause of truth to have made even casual inquiries into the credentials of such an important statement offered for their acceptance. It is fairly true to say that ethnic analogies for the birth of Christ fail (see article on "Heathen Wonder-Births and the Birth of Christ," Princeton Review, January, 1908). It is also true that the rooted Sere conviction shared by the Hebrews, that family descent is to be traced through the male line only, so persistent even among the New Testament writers that both evangelists, on the face of them, trace the lineage of Joseph, would have acted as an effectual barrier against this particular legendary development. It is further true that no passage of the Old Testament, including
One may venture at the close of this section of the discussion to point out that everything which the inventor of this story must have been, the narrators of it are not. Both narratives exhibit a profound reverence, a chaste and gracious reserve in the presence of a holy mystery, a simplicity, dignity and self-contained nobility. of expression which are the visible marks of truth, if such there are anywhere in human writing.
IV. The Critical Question.
1. Basis of Virgin-Birth Statement:
The infancy narratives evidently stand somewhat apart from the main body of apostolic testimony. The personal contact of the disciples with Jesus, upon which their testimony primarily rests, extended from the call of the disciples, near the opening of the ministry, to the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances. It is hyper-skepticism to deny that the substance of the gospel narrative rests upon the basis of actual experience. But all four evangelists show a disposition to supplement the immediate testimony of the disciples by the use of other well-attested materials. Luke’s introductory paragraph, if it was written by an honest man, indicates that he at least was satisfied with nothing less than a careful scrutiny of original sources, namely, the testimony, written or oral, of eyewitnesses. It may reasonably be surmised that this was the general attitude of the entire group of apostles, evangelists and catechists who are responsible for the authorship and circulation of the Gospels.
But, to say nothing of the infancy narratives, for one of which Luke himself is responsible, these writers have embodied in the narrative the ministry of John the Baptist, the baptism and temptation of Jesus, all of which events happened before their fellowship with Jesus, strictly speaking, began. In particular, assuredly no disciple was an eyewitness of the temptation. None the less the narrative stands, simply because imaginative invention of such an incident in the absence of accredited facts cannot reasonably be considered. The fact that the birth narratives do not rest upon the testimony of the same eyewitnesses who stand for the ministry of Jesus does not discredit them as embodying reliable tradition, unless it can be proved that they contradict the rest of the apostolic testimony or that no reliable witness to the events in question was within reach at the time when the documents were composed. In the present instance such a contention is absurd. The very nature of the event points out the inevitable firsthand witnesses. There could be no others. In the absence of their decisive word, bald invention would be necessary. To charge the entire church of the time (for this is what the hypothesis amounts to) as particeps criminis in its own official and documentary deception is an extreme position as unwarranted as it is cruel.
The internal harmony of the facts as recorded points in the same direction. The silence or comparative lack of emphasis with reference to the birth of Christ on the part of the other New Testament writers is to be explained partly on the basis of doctrinal viewpoint (see V, below) and partly because an ingrained sense of delicacy would naturally tend to reticence on this point, at least during the lifetime of Mary and the Lord’s brethren. The following intimately corresponding facts are sufficiently significant in this connection:
(1) that the fact of Jesus’ unique birth could not be proclaimed as a part of His own teaching or as the basis of His incarnate life;
(2) that He was popularly known as the son of Joseph;
(3) that the foster-fatherhood of Joseph, as embodied in the genealogy (see Genealogy of Jesus Christ), was the recognized basis of His relationship to the house of David. All these facts appear just as they should in the narrative.
The very fact that the genealogies, ending with the name of Joseph, and the current representations of Jesus as Joseph’s son, are allowed to appear in the same documents in which the virgin-birth statements appear, together with the entirely congruous facts that the main synoptic narrative does not emphasize the event, and that neither Paul nor John nor any other New Testament writer gives it a prominent place, is indication enough that it rested, in the opinion of the entire witnessing body, on a sufficient basis of evidence and required no artificial buttressing. Internal harmonies and incidental marks of truthfulness are of the utmost importance here because in a narrative so complex and vital it would have been easy to make a misstep. Since none was made, we are constrained to believe that the single eye to truth filled the apostolic mind with light. Every item, in the infancy narratives themselves, as well as in the more strictly doctrinal statements of other New Testament books, is as we should expect, provided the birth statement be accepted as true. Internal evidence of truthfulness could not be stronger.
2. Interrelationship of Narratives:
This general conclusion is confirmed when we come to consider the relationship of the two narratives to each other. To begin with, we have two narratives, differing greatly in method of treatment, grouping of details, order and motive of narration, and general atmosphere. It is evident that we have two documents which have had quite a different history.
In two points, at any rate, what might be considered serious discrepancies are discoverable (see Biblical Discrepancies). These two points are:
(1) the relationship of the Massacre of the Innocents and the journey to Egypt, as related by Matthew, to Luke’s account, which carries the holy family directly back to Nazareth from Bethlehem after the presentation in the temple;
(2) the discrepancy as to the previous residence at Nazareth (Luke) and the reason given for the return thither (Matthew).
As to (1) it is quite clear that Matthew’s account centers about an episode interpolated, so to say, into the natural order of events (see Massacre of the Innocents). It is also clear that the order of Luke’s narrative, which is in the highest degree condensed and synoptic, does not forbid the introduction of even a lengthy train of events into the midst of
We are now free to consider the remarkable convergence of these two documents. The following particulars may be urged:
(1) the synchronism in the Herodian era; (2) the name "Jesus" given by divine authority before birth;
(3) Davidic kinship;
(4) the virgin-birth;
(5) the birth at Bethlehem;
(6) residence at Nazareth.
In addition we may urge the essential and peculiar harmony of descriptive expressions (see V, below) and the correspondence of the inner and outer experiences of Mary.
See MARY, II.
3. Sources, Origin and Age of Documents:
We have now reached the final and crucial point of this phase of our discussion when we take up the question as to the sources, origin and date of these narratives. Our method of approach to the general question of their credibility delivers us from the necessity of arguing in extenso theories which have been framed to account for the narrative in the absence of historical fact. We resort to the simple and convincing principle that the story could not have been honestly composed nor honestly published as derived from any source other than the persons who could have guaranteed its trustworthiness. Every indication, of which the narratives are full, of honesty and intelligence on the part of the narrators is an argument against any and all theories which presuppose a fictitious origin for the central statement. Negatively, we may with confidence assert that wide excursions into ethnic mythology and folklore have failed to produce a single authentic parallel either in fact or in form to the infancy narratives. In addition to this, the attempt to deduce the story from Messianic prophecy also fails to justify itself. In addition, there are two considerations which may justly be urged as pointing to trustworthy sources for the narrative: First, the strongly Hebraic nature of both narratives. It has often been pointed out that nowhere in the New Testament do we find documents so deeply tinged with the Hebraic spirit (see Adeney, Essays for the Times, number XI, 24 f; and Briggs, New Lights on the Life of Christ, 161 f). This statement involves both narratives and is another evidence of profound internal unity. A second important fact is that the doctrinal viewpoint is Jewish-Christian and undeveloped. The term "Holy Spirit" is used in the Old Testament sense; the Christology is undeveloped, omitting reference to Christ’s preexistence and interpreting His sonship as official and ethical rather than metaphysical. The soteriology is Jewish and Messianic, not unfolding the doctrine of the cross. All these facts point in one direction, namely, to the conclusion that these documents are early. It is impossible reasonably to suppose that such documents could have been composed in the absence of sources, or by persons devoid of the historical spirit, after the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus had shed such light upon His person and mission as to transform both Christology and soteriology through the ideas of incarnation, atonement and the Trinity.
It is still asserted, in the face of the most convincing evidence to the contrary, that the infancy narratives are late addenda to the gospel tradition as a whole. This idea is due, primarily, to a confusion of thought between origin and publication. The latter must have been coincident with the original issue of the Gospels in their present form. The textual evidence here is convincing. On the other hand, the main body of testimony incorporated into the Gospels at the time of their publication had been in the hands of the apostles and their helpers for some years, as evidenced by the Pauline letters and the Book of acts. In all probability the sources upon which the infancy narratives rest, which had their origin and received the impress which characterizes them in the period antecedent to the public ministry of Jesus, came into the hands of the Gospel writers toward the end of the formative period at the close of which the Gospels were issued. In other words, the story of the Lord’s birth was withheld until the time was ripe for its publication. Two occasions may have served to release it: the death of Mary may have made it possible to use her private memoirs, or the rise of anti-Christian calumny may have made the publication of the true history imperative. At any rate, the narratives show every indication of being contemporary documents of the period with which they deal. This fact puts an additional burden of proof, already heavier than they can bear, upon those who would antagonize the documents. We may reasonably affirm that the narratives will bear triumphantly any fair critical test.
V. The Doctrinal Question.
1. In the New Testament:
The discussion of the doctrinal significance of the virgin-birth statement falls naturally into three parts:
(1) Its doctrinal elaboration in the New Testament;
(2) its historic function in the development of Christian doctrine;
(3) its permanent value to Christian thought.
We begin with the narratives themselves. As has just been said, they were incorporated into the Gospels at a time when the New Testament Christology had reached maturity in the Pauline and Johannine writings and the Epistle to the Hebrews. The doctrine of the incarnation was fully unfolded. It had been unequivocally asserted that in Jesus all the fullness of the Godhead was historically and personally manifested (
The detailed justification of this statement follows:
(1) Matthew (see 1:18-25) does not use the term "Son of God." The only expression implying a unique relationship to God, other than in the "of Holy Spirit" phrase, twice used, is in the word "Immanuel" quoted from Isaiah, which does not necessarily involve incarnation. At the beginning of the genealogy Jesus is introduced as the son of David, the son of Abraham.
(2) The assertion as to His conception by Holy Spirit is conditioned by three striking facts:
(a) His conception is interpreted in terms of conception by the power of Holy Spirit, not of begetting by the Father. The Old Testament expression "This day have I begotten thee," used twice, occurs in quite a different connection (
(b) The term "Holy Spirit" is used without the article.
(c) The phrase descriptive of the being conceived is expressed in the neuter, `the thing conceived in her is of Holy Spirit’ (to gar en aute gennethen ek pneumatos estin hagiou).
The implication of these three facts is
(i) that the sonship of Jesus through His exceptional birth is interpreted in terms of divine power working upon humanity, not as the correlative of divine and essential fatherhood; it is the historical sonship that is in view (contrast with this the two passages in Hebrews referred to above);
(ii) the writer is speaking in the Old Testament sense of "Holy Spirit" as the forthgoing of creative power from God, not as personal hypostasis;
(iii) he is also emphasizing (in the use of the neuter) the reality of the physical birth. These three facts, all the more remarkable because they are attributed to a heavenly messenger who might be expected to speak more fully concerning the mystery, exclude the supposition that we have one historic form of the doctrine of incarnation. On the contrary, had we no other statements than those found here we should be unable logically to postulate an incarnation. Every statement made concerning Jesus, apart from the virgin-birth statement itself, might be true were He the son of Joseph and Mary.
The case is far stronger when we turn to Luke’s account, in spite of the fact that the terms "Son of the Most High" and "Son of God" ordinarily implying incarnation are used. We notice
(d) that the anarthrous use of "Holy Spirit" reappears and that a poetic parallelism defines the term (
(e) that the neuter phrase is also found here, "the holy thing which is begotten," etc. (dio kai to gennomenon hagion klethesetai);
(f) that future tenses are used in connection with His career and the titles which He bears: "He shall be (as the outcome of a process) great," and "He shall be called (as a matter of ultimate titular recognition) the Son of the Most High" (
In these instances the title is connected directly with the career rather than the birth. Even the "wherefore" of
These accounts are concerned with the historic fact rather than its metaphysical implications. This historic fact is interpreted in terms of a divine power in and through the human career of Jesus (which is so stated as to include an impersonal, germinal life) rather than a dogmatic definition of the Messiah’s essential nature. The omission of all reference to pre-existence is negatively conclusive on this point. The divine power manifested in His exceptional origin is thought of as extending on and including His entire career. This leads us directly to a second phase in the interpretation of Christ and compels to a reconsideration at a new angle of the miracle of His origin.
2. Portrait of Jesus in Synoptic Gospels:
The narrators of the life and ministry of Jesus on the basis of ascertained fact and apostolic testimony were confronted with a very definite and delicate task. They had to tell with unexaggerating truthfulness the story of the human life of Jesus. Their ultimate aim was to justify the doctrine of incarnation, but they could not have been unaware that the genuine and sincere humanity of Christ was a pillar of the doctrine quite as much as His essential Deity. To portray the human experience of a being considered essentially divine was the Herculean task attempted and carried to a successful issue in the Synoptic Gospels. These writers do not conceal for a moment their conviction that they are depicting the career of the wonder-working Son of God, but they never forget that it is a career of self-limitation within the human sphere, the period of self-imposed and complete humiliation undertaken on behalf of the Father, "for us men and for our salvation." Hence, the nature and limitations of the narrative. Mark omits reference to the virgin-birth. Matthew and Luke narrate it and forthwith drop it. These facts are exactly on a paragraph. It is no more remarkable that Mark omits the story than that Matthew and Luke make so little of it. To allege either fact as a motive to doubt is to misinterpret the whole situation. By the terms of their task they could do nothing else. The Fourth Gospel and the Epistles announce that the human life of Jesus was due to the voluntary extra-temporal act of a pre-existent Divine Being, but in the synoptic narrative four passages only hint at pre-existence, and then as incidental flashes from the inner consciousness of Jesus. This omission is no more remarkable and no less so than the omissions noted above. By the terms of their task the synoptic writers could do nothing else. The fact of pre-existence could be announced only when the earthly task had been triumphantly finished (see
3. In Rest of the New Testament:
This leads us to a third phase of development in the New Testament doctrine of incarnation. In the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles it is asserted that the innermost moral significance of the earthly career of Jesus lay in the fact that it was the consistent carrying-out of an extra-temporal volition of divine mercy and love whereby He became the Revealer of God and the Saviour of men. This doctrine is based upon the story of the human career completed in the glorification which, according to the testimony, ensued upon His death and disclosed His place in the divine sphere of being. But it is also based upon the virgin-birth narrative and grounded in it. Attention has already been called to the fact that the virgin-birth is not (in the infancy narrative) connected with the metaphysical sonship of Jesus. All that is said then, doctrinally, concerning Jesus might be true were He the son of Joseph and Mary. On the contrary, what is said in John and the Epistles depends upon the virgin-birth narrative for its foundational basis. It has often been asserted that Paul and John do not refer to the virgin-birth. This statement the present writer takes to be more than doubtful, but if it is true, all the more striking is the indirect and unconscious testimony to the virgin-birth involved in their doctrinal reliance upon it. According to these writers the incarnation was due to a divine act of self-limitation whereby the divine mode of existence was exchanged for the human (
4. Oppositions to the Doctrine: Historically the virgin-birth statement performed a function commensurate with the importance ascribed to it in this discussion rather than the current depreciation of it. The doctrine of Christ was menaced in two opposite directions, which may be designated respectively by the terms "Ebionite" and "Gnostic." According to the former teaching (the word "Ebionite" being used in a general sense only), Jesus was reduced to the human category and interpreted as a Spirit-led man or prophet, in the Old Testament meaning of the term. According to the opposite tendency, He was interpreted as divine, while His human experience was reduced to mere appearance of a temporary external union with the Logos. The virgin-birth statement resisted both these tendencies with equal effectiveness. On the one hand, it asserted with unequivocal definiteness a real humanity conditioned by true birth into an actual connection with the race. On the other hand, it asserted an exceptional birth, setting Jesus apart as one whose entrance into the world was due to a new, creative contact of God with the race. Historically, it is difficult to see how the New Testament doctrine could have escaped mutilation apart from the statement, seemingly framed with express reference to conditions arising afterward, which so wonderfully guarded it. The holy mystery of the Lord’s origin became the symbol of the holier mystery of His divine nature. It thus appears in every one of the historic creeds, an assertion of fact around which the belief of the church crystallized into the faith which alone accounts for its history, a profound and immovable conviction that Jesus Christ was really incarnate Deity.
5. Its Importance to Modern Thought:
The importance for modern thinking of the virgin-birth statement is threefold:
(1) First, it involves in general the question, never more vital than at the present time, of the trustworthiness of the gospel tradition. This particular fact, i.e. the virgin-birth, has been a favorite, because apparently a vulnerable, point of attack. But the presuppositions of the attack and the method according to which it has been conducted involve a general and radical undermining of confidence in the testimony of the gospel witnesses. This process has finally met its nemesis in the Christus-myth propaganda. The virgin-birth statement can be successfully assailed on no grounds which do not involve the whole witnessing body of Christians in charges of blind credulity or willful falsification, very unjust indeed as respects their character and standing in general, but very difficult to repel in view of the results of denial at this point.
(2) The virgin-birth is important for the simple historical reason that it involves or is involved in a clear and consistent account of the Lord’s birth and early years. Apart from the infancy narratives we are utterly without direct information as to His birth, ancestry or early years. Apart from these narratives we have no information as to the marriage of Joseph and Mary; we are shut up to vague inferences as to this entire period. No biographer ever leaves these points obscure if he can avoid it. It is very earnestly suggested that those who cast discredit upon the infancy story do not clearly recognize the seriousness of the situation brought about in the absence of any narrative which can be trusted as to this vital point. Calumny there is and has been from an early day. If there is nowhere an authoritative answer to the calumny, in what sort of a position is the Christian believer placed? He can assert nothing, because apart from what he has too lightly thrown away he knows nothing.
(3) Lastly, the more closely the statement as to the Lord’s birth is studied, the more clearly it will be seen that it involves in a most vital and central way the entire doctrine of the incarnation. This doctrine is an interpretation of facts. Those facts stand together. In the midst of those facts, harmonizing with them, shedding light upon them and receiving light from them, resting upon the same consentient testimony is the statement, which is thus worded in the oldest symbol of our historical faith: "Conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary" (see APOSTLES’ CREED). There is no adequate reason why the intelligent believer should feel uncertain as to this statement of our holy religion.
LITERATURE.
There is a vast and growing literature which more or less directly deals with the subject of our Lord’s birth. The literature may be classified as follows:
(1) Lives of Christ;
(2) critical commentaries on Matthew and Luke;
(3) critical and historical investigations of Christian origins;
(4) monographs on the Apostles’ Creed;
(5) monographs and articles on the specific subject.
For a list and analysis of discussions see Sweet, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, 354-57.
