Archive: Virgin Birth: Fact or Fairy Tale

A Debate On History’s Most Persistent Paternity Question

The Virgin Birth has long been considered central to the Christian faith. In the last century, however, that doctrine has been criticized. In 1924 at Carnegie Hall, Charles Francis Potter, a debater during the fundamentalist/modernist controversy, delivered a searing speech dismissing the importance of the Virgin Birth. His views are representative of many in the mainline Protestant churches today.

In the following pages, Dr. Steven O’ Malley, professor of church history and historical theology at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., responds to Potter’s speech.

FAIRYTALE

By Charles Potter

From the early days there have been different opinions as to the source of Jesus’ greatness. Most Christians agree that Jesus was what He was because the Spirit of God was in Him. I would agree upon that point, I think. And I am content to let the matter rest right there, but Christians want to go further. They insist that the spirit of God entered Jesus in a particular way, in a miraculous way. And they teach that belief in this miracle is an essential Christian doctrine; that is, that unless you believe in it you are not a Christian!

It seems it doesn’t matter whether or not we agree that Jesus was what He was because the Spirit of God was in Him. Unless we agree as to the particular way in which Jesus became divine, we will have rejected what is considered an essential Christian doctrine.

In order that I believe I must be persuaded, in the first place, that the miraculous Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ is a fact and in the second place, that it is an essential Christian doctrine.

Is The Virgin Birth A Fact?

To be considered fact the Virgin Birth must be proven to be more than a scientific possibility; it must be proven to be an actual historical occurrence. I shall not attempt to prove that the Virgin Birth is scientifically impossible. It will be sufficient to show how very rarely, if ever, virgin births of humans occur.

The scientific name for virgin birth is “parthenogenesis,” from “parthenos,” virgin, and “genesis,” birth. Parthenogenesis would be the development of an unfertilized egg cell. The best known instance of parthenogenesis is the case of the common aphis, or plant louse. It has been known also to occur among mites, beetles, bark lice, etc.

That is far from proving the possibility of virgin birth among human beings.

What Does the New Testament Say?

The evidence must be very convincing indeed to make us believe that any child was ever born of one parent alone.

Let us examine the evidence. The New Testament includes it all.

What does Paul have to say about the Virgin Birth? What do we find? Absolutely no mention of the Virgin Birth in all the 13 letters ascribed to Paul, and Paul was the greatest missionary preacher of the early Christian Church. Not only do we find no affirmation of the Virgin Birth, but we find the direct opposite stated. In Romans 1:3, Paul says that Jesus was “made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” Now it was Joseph, not Mary, who was of the seed of David. Mary was of the house of Levi, for she was the kinswoman of Elizabeth, who was of the house of Levi. In Galatians 4:4 Paul says “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.” Now anyone who believed that the Holy Spirit was the father of Jesus would not write in that fashion. Paul believed that Jesus was really human and based his whole plan of salvation on that fact

The earliest gospel is Mark’s, which begins, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” and goes on to tell of His baptism by John. There is absolutely no mention of the Virgin Birth at all throughout the entire gospel of Mark, regarded by scholars as the oldest account of the life of Jesus and the most trustworthy. And remember that it was written more than 30 years after Jesus’ death.

We come next to Matthew, and there we have one verse, chapter 1, verse 18, which states the Virgin Birth. Other verses in Matthew and Luke refer to its prediction, but this is the only verse which states the Virgin Birth as an historical fact The verse reads: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child by the Holy Spirit”

Upon this verse and in spite of numerous verses which state the contrary, the whole doctrine of the Virgin Birth is based. The significant thing is that in this same chapter it is stated that Jesus was the Son of Joseph.

Now since it is stated in the first verse that Jesus was the Son of David, that is, his descendant, it is very plain that He must have been the Son of Joseph, otherwise there is no sense to the genealogy at all.

I submit then that the only verse stating the Virgin Birth cannot be submitted as testimony because in the same chapter the fact is distinctly denied. We find Matthew a flatly contradictory witness.

But let us go further. In Matthew 13:55 the neighbors of Jesus say, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” and Jesus does not contradict them.

Luke comes next chronologically, and Luke 4:22 repeats this last incident, phrasing the question, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” and again Jesus does not deny His parenthood.

Luke in his first chapter has something to say about the Virgin Birth, but he does not say that it actually occurred. He says that the angel Gabriel told Mary that it would occur. Not once does Luke say plainly and directly that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit of God without a human father. How much value can we place on Luke’s story that an angel told Mary that it would occur?

Let us be generous to the other side, however, and say that perhaps Luke intended his readers to think that the Virgin Birth was a fact even if he doesn’t say so outright. Then why does he flatly deny it in the third chapter with another of those dangerous genealogies? He goes Matthew one better and traces Jesus’ genealogy way back to Adam and God, and he traces the line not through Mary but through Joseph, just as Matthew did. Here again is contradictory evidence, and the witness is a poor one to prove a miracle by, to say the least.

Read the rest of Luke after the first chapter and there is no mention of the Virgin Birth. You would think it had never been mentioned. Why, in the second chapter, verse 33, after old Simeon had made a prophecy about the child Jesus, do we read that His father and mother (note that it doesn’t say Joseph and his mother) marveled at the things which were spoken of Him. Why should they marvel if the angel had told them more wonderful things only a little while before?

And in the third chapter, verse 22, we read that when Jesus was baptized “the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, ‘Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased.'” There were two explanations in the early Church—one that divinity entered Jesus when Mary conceived Him, and one that it entered Him at His baptism. A person could accept either explanation and be an equally good Christian. Neither theory was an essential Christian doctrine.

As for the remaining books of the New Testament, there is no testimony to the Virgin Birth in them. That includes the fourth gospel, John. Even Dr. Jefferson of New York, who says he believes the Virgin Birth, although (evidently) he does not consider it an essential Christian doctrine, admits the scant evidence for it in the Bible, saying, “John of all disciples must have known about the Virgin Birth, but he never mentions it”

Summary Of New Testament Evidence

To summarize the evidence for the Virgin Birth—the New Testament evidence, which is all there is—what have we? There is no evidence in any part of the New Testament save in Matthew and possibly Luke, while there is much against it in many places, including Matthew and Luke.

Any attempt to prove from the New Testament that the Virgin Birth was a fact has on its side only one document, the first part of the gospel according to Matthew, and only one verse of the first chapter. Luke’s statement has to be ruled out as direct evidence; it can only be considered secondary in the light of its being a prophecy by an angel rather than a direct statement.

Furthermore, to get at the facts before us, the only document of importance as evidence in the case is an unsigned, contradictory statement, made by one who was not an eyewitness. Is that good evidence? Even if you admit Luke as evidence, remember that his book is unsigned, self-contradictory, that he was not an eyewitness and that he wrote even later than Matthew.

Is The Virgin Birth an Essential Christian Doctrine?

We come now to the second part of the debate, as to whether or not this doctrine is an essential Christian doctrine.

Immediately the question rises whether any doctrine can be essential to Christianity which is not a fact. The second part of the resolution depends upon the first. It is certainly time that mistaken persons stop making the Virgin Birth a test of a Christian’s faith. No doctrine based on such a flimsy foundation ought to be a test-question for young people entering the Christian ministry.

It Has Always Been In Dispute

The matter of the Virgin Birth bas always created a great deal of discussion in Christianity. But it is not a part of all the great creeds. The Athanasian creed, the longest and most carefully detailed of the ecumenical creeds of Christendom, did not contain it, nor did the earliest form of the Nicene creed have it.

It is when we get back to the origins of Christianity that we find the relative unimportance of the Virgin Birth indicated by its absence from the theology of the founders of Christianity. Paul, Peter, Mark and John did not consider it important enough to mention.

Search as you will in the recorded sayings of Jesus, you will not find the Virgin Birth mentioned. When people came to Him and asked Him the source of His power, then was the time for Him to point to His miraculous Virgin Birth, as the fundamentalists do. Yet the records say that He pointed rather to the good works which He was doing, healing the sick and helping poor people. Are modem Christians wrong when they follow Jesus in finding the evidence for His own divinity in His life of useful service to His fellow men? I ask again the question, can any doctrine be essential to Christianity which is never mentioned in Jesus’ own teachings?

FACT

By Steven O’Malley

From the beginning of Christianity one of the most sacred and essential Christian beliefs has been the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The holy season of Advent is a fitting time for us to reexamine the significance of the Virgin Birth for our faith. However, according to Potter, the Virgin Birth is a troublesome and poorly-founded appendage to Christian faith that distracts Christians from the real message of Christ. He argues from the standpoint of the New Testament and the creeds of the Church. Just how persuasive are his arguments? Let us consider them.

The Witness of Scripture

In asking whether the Virgin Birth is a fact, Potter tries to show that the doctrine ought not be regarded as an essential part of the gospel by challenging what he considers to be the sole verse that explicitly teaches the doctrine: Matthew 1:18. He regards this verse as a contradiction of Matthew’s prior assertion that Jesus was the Son of Joseph (Matt 1:16). This supposed contradiction leads him to conclude that the testimony of Matthew is invalid, preferring instead the apparently earlier account of Mark, whose gospel begins with Jesus’ baptism rather than His birth.

We should point out to our critic that, in his search for factual evidence, he has overlooked the most telling evidence on the matter in question. It is Matthew’s intention throughout this chapter to assert the Virgin Birth of our Lord. In 1:16 Matthew avoids saying that Jesus is the Son of Joseph. Instead he refers to “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born” (RSV). Further, in 1:18 the passive form is used again with “had been betrothed” and “was found,” strongly communicating the thought that Jesus was not conceived by Joseph, His legal father, but by the Holy Spirit.[1] Hence, in 1:18-25 Matthew is seeking to clarify how Jesus can be both Son of David through His adoption by Joseph and Son of God by His divine origin.[2]

The variant reading that Potter cites is regarded by the great consensus of scholars as a questionable reading that is to be rejected.[3]

The important point to note is that not just one verse but rather the whole force of Matthew’s gospel supports the mystery of the Virgin Birth. Matthew even tells us that after their marriage Mary and Joseph had no sexual relationship until after the child was born (1:25), thus further heightening the importance of Christ’s Virgin Birth. The later chapters speak much of His perfect obedience, but the point is that the Virgin Birth is unmistakably prominent in chapter one, and thereby it forms the basis for all of Jesus’ subsequent obedient words and acts as the Messiah. There is no contradiction, as Potter charges, between asking “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” (Matt 13:55) and saying He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matt 1:18).

Potter also asks us to consider the witness of Luke’s gospel that, he says, only alludes to the Virgin Birth without explicitly affirming it. The angel Gabriel simply promises Mary that it would occur (Luke 1:26-36). However, in Luke an angelic message is always seen as a message from God Himself that always finds fulfillment. It would therefore be unnecessary for Luke to add that it did occur as prophesied. He invites the reader to assume that it did take place. This is the way Luke intends for us to read the gospel!

There is this important difference between the Virgin Birth accounts in Matthew and in Luke: the former speaks after the fact of Jesus’ birth, while the latter speaks prophetically before the fact of His birth.

It is true, as Potter reminds us, that Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back through Joseph to Adam and to God (3:38). But this is hardly an attempt to deny His Virgin Birth. On the contrary, Luke, more than Matthew, would have us to know that Jesus is not the Son of Joseph in any specific sense. Luke helps us to see that Jesus’ humanity does not rest on any biological relationship to Joseph but rather upon His identity with the human race as a whole, as climaxed in 3:38. That is, His humanity is that of the ideal man, the Son of God, whereas Matthew regarded Jesus as the ideal Son of Abraham, or the ideal Israelite.[4]

Paul is also cited by Potter as failing to mention the Virgin Birth in his letters. However, Paul was surely not compelled to identify all the tenets of Christology.

The same curious argument from silence is made in reference to Mark, which is often called the earliest gospel. However, Mark also omits the Resurrection account, and it can hardly be claimed that he disbelieved this!

As for the gospel of John, it can scarcely be believed that he “did not consider it important enough to mention.” On the contrary, the clear implication of John 1:14, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” is that Jesus was the Incarnate Word from the inception of His human life.

The consensus among reputable New Testament scholars[5] is that the Virgin Birth accounts that are explicitly taught in Matthew and Luke are independently reported and are based on a tradition that is earlier than both. Yet, even if it is argued that the Virgin Birth of our Lord was not taught in the early Church until Matthew and Luke were written, this still means that we have two canonical accounts that teach the doctrine plainly. The question that comes then is, how seriously do we take the canon of holy Scripture as God’s Word (see 2 Tim. 3:16)? This question brings us to another point for consideration, namely:

The Witness To The Virgin Birth In The History Of The Church

The biblical canon is our foundation for what we confess as the creed of the Church. The creeds, especially the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, bear witness to God’s Word in the community of faith. The link between the two is inseparable.

Potter carries his criticism of the Virgin Birth into the history of the Church, alleging that the Nicene Creed, in its first edition, omits the Virgin Birth, as well as does the Athanasian Creed. He is strangely silent about the Apostles’ Creed, the most authoritative of all, where the Virgin Birth is clearly taught. A closer examination will reveal that these other authoritative (ecumenical) creeds are in no way intending to diminish belief in our Lord’s supernatural nativity. On the contrary, those who denied this truth were clearly identified by the early Church as the adherents of one form of heresy known as “Ebionism.”[6] These deviant Jewish believers limited the Messiah to being merely a human, prophetic figure. For them, He was anointed by God the Father only at His baptism, and from this comes the term “adoptionism.” The witness of the Apostles’ Creed and all principal Church fathers was as opposed to this deviation as it was to the opposite error of those who saw Jesus as only a spiritual being, devoid of manhood (the “Docetists”).

A major concern of the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.), which Potter wants to use in his negative argument, was that the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of Mary, is one and the same Lord and Son of God. The Nicene fathers were seeking to counteract the suggestion of Arius that God the Son was not coequal with God the Father. Further, in its definitive edition this creed does affirm that Christ was “incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.”[7]

This witness to Christ’s holy birth had earlier been forcefully advocated by Irenaeus, the greatest Church father of the second century. Although Potter cites the Athanasian Creed for its failure to state the Virgin Birth, the doctrine is unmistakably to be inferred from the statement that we worship Christ who is both God and man in one person, “by taking of the manhood into God.”[8]

Athanasius (d. 373), for whom the later Athanasian Creed was named, also bears witness to the doctrine in a manner similar to Irenaeus: Mankind was perishing in sin. What was God to do? He could not “falsify” Himself by ignoring our sin. However, due to the severity of our transgression, the incorporeal Word of God Himself had to enter our world. He did so by taking our body,

and not only so, but He took it from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father … He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt.[9]

How unfortunate that Potter stumbles on the Virgin Birth also because he does not know of any scientific precedent for parthenogenesis among mammals. However, the list of Church fathers who knew that divine mystery transcends natural reason is impressive. Anselm (d. 1109) sought to adore the mystery from the standpoint of sanctified reason[10]: “If it was a virgin that brought all evil upon the human race, it is much more appropriate that a virgin should be the occasion for all good.”[11]

Conclusion

The witness of Scripture and of the Church abundantly supports the converse of Potter’s position. The view that Joseph was the real father of Jesus may not “claim for it more extensive scriptural authority” than the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of our Lord. There is no basis for concluding that the doctrine is to be relegated only to a later written document that is not “a record of facts.” We have seen that this mystery that we discover in Advent is not only central to the witness of the Gospels, but it is also at the heart of some of the most profound and consecrated theological reflection in the history of the Church.

The debate over the Virgin Birth has continued since Potter wrote in the 1920s. In her recent work, The Illegitimacy of Jesus, feminist theologian Jane Schaberg has shown the radical extreme to which Potter’s negative argument can lead. She is not content with merely trying to discount this biblical doctrine. To her mind, the Virgin Birth is to defer to a preposterous theory that our Lord was the product of either an act of adultery or rape—she is not yet certain which it was. That such blasphemy is being taken seriously in quarters of United Methodism[12] is surely evidence that the converse of Potter’s prophecy has become the real concern. Christianity in our day is being threatened not by the advocacy of the doctrine in question but by its perversion.

As our response to these critics, are we not being prompted to prepare our hearts, as never before, with unspeakable joy and thanksgiving before God, and with vigilance amid this world, for His gracious gift to us in Advent 1988?

 

FOOTNOTES

[1] This is grammatically known as the “passive of divine-circumlocution.”

[2] See the discussion of this issue in Krister Stendahl, “Quix et Unde,” in G. Stanton, ed., The Interpretation of Matthew (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), pp. 56-66.

[3] According to Dr. David Bauer, associate professor of New Testament, Asbury Theological Seminary. I am indebted to my colleague Professor Bauer for many of the textual comments made in this article. See also Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London: United Bible Society, 1971), 3rd ed., pp. 2-7.

[4] Surely the two gospels do not conflict at this point. They present two perspectives on Jesus’ humanity—one that He is the ideal Israelite and the other that, even more, He is the ideal man in the generic sense.

[5] As noted by Bauer, supra.

[6] See Reinhold Seeberg, A History of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1964), Vol. I, p. 89.

[7] Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (N.Y., Harper & Bros., 1932), Vol. II, pp. 62-63.

[8] See Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II, pp. 66-70. Schaff noted that it is in “essential agreement” with the Creed of Chalcedon, where the Virgin Birth is explicitly affirmed to counter the errors stemming from the Nestorians and Eutychians. Op. cit. Vol. I, p. 39.

[9] Athanasius, The Incarnation of the Word of God, (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1946), pp. 32-35.

[10] We will recall that reason is one of the factors in confirming biblical truth in the Wesleyan tradition.

[11] St Anselm, Cur Densttomo? in S. N. Deane (tr.), St. Anselm: Basic Writings (Chicago: Open Court Pub. Co., 1962), pp. 244-51.

[12] I refer to the publication of Jane Schaberg’s “Rethinking the Birth of Jesus” in The International Christian Digest (September 1988), pp. 16-19, a publication of the United Methodist Church. Her book is entitled The Illegitimacy of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).