by Steve | Nov 20, 1988 | Archive - 1988
Archive: C.S. LEWIS ON CHRISTMAS
By Kathryn Lindskoog
Our earliest description of Christmas from C. S. Lewis is a bitter one. The year was 1922. As usual C. S. Lewis and his brother, Warren, spent the holidays with their widowed father in his big house outside Belfast
“It was a dark morning with a gale blowing and some very cold rain,” Lewis reported in his diary. Their father, Albert, awakened his two sons, both in their mid-twenties, to go to early Communion service. As they walked to church in the dawn light, they started discussing the time of sunrise. Albert, an illogical and argumentative man, irritated his sons by insisting that the sun had already risen or else they would not have any light. Saint Mark’s Church was intensely cold. Warren wanted to keep his coat on during the service, but his father disapproved. “Well, at least you won’t keep it on when you go up to the table,” Albert warned. Warren asked why not and was told that taking Communion with a coat on was “most disrespectful.” Warren took his coat off to avoid an argument. Not one of the three Lewis men had any interest in the meaning of Communion. The two sons hadn’t believed in Christianity for years.
“Christmas dinner, a rather deplorable ceremony, at quarter to four,” Lewis continued in his diary. After dinner the rain had stopped at last, and Albert urged his two sons to take a walk. They were delighted to get out into the fresh air and headed for a pub where they could get a drink. Before they came to the pub, however, some relatives drove by on the way to the brothers’ house for a visit and gave them an unwelcome ride right back home.
After too much sitting and talking and eating and smoking all day in the stuffy house, Lewis went to bed early, dead tired and headachy. He felt like a flabby, lazy teenager again. It had been another bad Christmas.
In 1929 Albert Lewis suddenly died of cancer. There would be no more going home for Christmas. Within a couple of years of their father’s death, both Warren and C. S. Lewis privately made some major shifts in their ideas about religion. They were separately moving toward Christian faith.
It was 1931. In Shanghai where he was serving as a British military officer, Warren got up at 6:30 on Christmas morning. There was bright sun, frost on the ground and what Warren called “a faint, keen wind.” For the first time in many years Warren went to church to take Communion. He was deeply excited about it.
Warren couldn’t help thinking about the old days when he had attended Christmas Communion at home in Ireland. “The kafuffle of the early start, the hurried walk in the chill half-light, Barton’s beautiful voice, the dim lights of Saint Mark’s and then the return home to the gargantuan breakfast—how jolly it all seems in retrospect!” It hadn’t seemed jolly at the time. Warren felt great sorrow about the past, but his sorrow was outweighed by gladness and thanks that he was once again a believer in the Christmas story.
On that very day, Christmas of 1931, C. S. Lewis sat down in Oxford to write an eight-page letter to Warren. He began by warning that, because of his teaching duties, he had done, read and heard nothing for a long time that could possibly interest Warren. Then he proceeded to write one of his usual entertaining letters full of humor and ideas and bits of news. In the middle of the letter he mentioned that it was a foggy afternoon, but that it had seemed springlike early that morning as he went to the Communion service. That is how he admitted the big news that he had taken Communion for the first time in many years.
At that point in the letter, C. S. Lewis recounted a few things that he had heard in recent sermons. In a sermon on foreign missions the preacher had said, “Many of us have friends who used to live abroad and had a native Christian cook who was unsatisfactory. Well, after all, there are a great many unsatisfactory Christians in England too. In fact I’m one myself.”
Another preacher had said shortly before Christmas that he objected to the early chapters of Luke, especially the story of the Annunciation, because they were indelicate. Such prudery left Lewis gasping.
That Christmas letter from C. S. Lewis found its way to Warren on January 19, 1932, and he wrote in his diary, “A letter … today containing the news that he too has once more started to go to Communion, at which I am delighted.” Had he not done so, Warren reflected, they would not have been quite so close in the future as in the past.
From 1931 to the end of his life, C. S. Lewis looked at Christmas from a Christian point of view. In 1939 Warren was on duty away from home again, and on Christmas Eve C. S. Lewis wrote that he had been thinking much that week about Christmas cards. “Aside from the absurdity of celebrating the Nativity at all if you don’t believe in the Incarnation, why in heaven’s name is everyone sending everyone else pictures of stagecoaches, fairies, foxes, dogs, butterflies, kittens, flowers, etc.?”
Warming to his topic, Lewis asked his brother to imagine a Chinese man sitting at a table covered with small pictures. The man explains that he is preparing for the anniversary of Buddha’s being protected by the dragons—not that he personally believes that this is the real anniversary of the event or even that it really happened. He is just keeping up the old custom. Neither does he have any pictures of Buddha or of the dragons; he doesn’t like that kind.
Aside from thinking about Christmas cards, Lewis had enjoyed himself in two ways that week. He was back at work on his book The Problem of Pain, and he was able to enjoy good winter walks. Near the end of his letter he said, “Well, Brother, (as the troops say) it’s a sad business not to have you with me to-morrow morning. …” That meant church.
During World War II C. S. Lewis gave a series of talks about Christianity on BBC radio, and later he brought these out as his book Mere Christianity. In that book Lewis summed up Christmas and Christianity in one memorable sentence: “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the sons of God.”
In his 1950 book for children, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis made it clear that he was all for merry times and good gifts and Christmas pudding. The land of Namia was under the spell of a wicked white witch who made it always winter and never Christmas. When the great gold lion, Asian, brought the thaw that spelled the witch’s doom, Father Christmas came at last.
In 1954 Lewis published a very different kind of fantasy about Christmas, “Xmas and Christmas.” It is an essay about the strange island called Niatirb (Britain spelled backward) and the winter festival called Exmas that the Niatirbians observe with great patience and endurance.
One of the customs that fills the marketplace with crowds during the foggiest and rainiest season of the year is the great labor and weariness of sending cards and gifts. Every citizen has to guess the value of the gift that every friend will send him so that he may send one of equal value whether he can afford it or not. Everyone becomes so pale and weary that it looks as if calamity has struck. These days are called the Exmas Rush. Exhausted with the Rush, most citizens lie in bed until noon on the day of the festival. Later that day they eat far too much and get intoxicated On the day after Exmas they are very grave because they feel unwell and begin to calculate how much they have spent on Exmas and the Rush.
There is also a festival in Niatirb called Crissmas, held on the same day as Exmas. A few people in Niatirb keep Crissmas sacred, but they are greatly distracted by Exmas and the Rush.
On December 17, 1955, Lewis wrote to an old friend that he was pleased by the card the man had sent him, a Japanese-style nativity scene. But, he continued, Christmas cards in general and the whole vast commercial drive called “Xmas ” was one of his pet abominations. He wished they would die away and leave the Christmas observance alone. He had nothing against secular festivities, but he despised the artificial jollity, the artificial childlikeness and the attempts to keep up some shallow connection with the birth of Christ.
In 1957 C. S. Lewis published “What Christmas Means to Me.” He claimed that three things go by the name of Christmas. First is the religious festival. Second is an occasion for merrymaking and hospitality. Third is the commercial racket, a modern invention to boost sales.
He listed his reasons for condemning the commercial racket. First, it causes more pain than pleasure. Second, it is a trap made up of obligations. Third, many of the purchases are gaudy rubbish. Fourth, we get exhausted by having to support the commercial racket while carrying on all our regular duties as well. “Can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter …?” Lewis demanded plaintively.
Two years later C. S. Lewis was featured in the Christmas issue of the Saturday Evening Post. The issue, dated December 19, 1959, bore on its cover a 15-cent price, a picture of a man struggling clumsily to get a package wrapped, and the announcement of a new Screwtape letter by C. S. Lewis. Inside was a life-size, close-up photo of Lewis’ face and his essay “Screwtape Proposes a Toast.” This was a kind of Christmas gift to the public from the editors.
In 1963 the Saturday Evening Post featured C. S. Lewis in its Christmas issue for the second time. This time the price was 20 cents, and the picture on the cover was of a children’s choir. Inside was Lewis’s article “We Have No ‘Right to Happiness’” with the heading, “Is happiness—in particular sexual happiness—one of man’s inalienable rights? A distinguished author attacks the brutality of this increasingly common notion.” In the upper right-hand corner is the announcement, “As this article went to press, its author died at his home in Oxford, England. The article is his last work.”
Since Lewis’ death on November 22, 1963, a number of his writings from earlier years have become more widely available. A few not published at all in his lifetime have now found their way into print. One of these is his undated poem “The Nativity,” available in his book Poems. In this brief poem Lewis shows what the nativity scene meant in his own prayer life.
First, Lewis likens himself to a slow, dull ox. Along with the oxen he sees the glory growing in the stable, he says, and he hopes that it will give him, at length, an ox’s strength. Second, Lewis likens himself to a stubborn and foolish ass. Along with the asses, he sees the Savior in the hay, and he hopes that he will learn the patience of an ass. Third, Lewis likens himself to a strayed and bleating sheep. Along with the sheep in the stable, he watches his Lord lying in the manger. From his Lord he hopes to gain some of a sheep’s woolly innocence.
One of the earliest photos of C. S. Lewis shows him as a little boy posed with a Father Christmas doll. The half-smile caught forever on his plump, young face seems balanced between anxiety and pleasure. He looks thoughtfully attentive. It is fitting because he half-smiled at Christmas the rest of his days. We might do well to pause in the “kafuffle ” and “Exmas Rush ” and look into the manger with C. S. Lewis.
Kathryn Lindskoog is a freelance writer living in Orange, California. She met C. S. Lewis while studying at the University of London and received Lewis’ personal endorsement of her thesis, written about his works.
by Steve | Nov 19, 1988 | Archive - 1988
Archive: Bishop Ayo Ladigbolu
By The Right Rev. Ayo Ladigbolu
This Muslim Nigerian prince traded his kingdom for Christ
I happen to belong to the family of the Alafi of Ayoc. (He was known as the king of kings and ruler of rulers in Nigeria.) The royal family embraced the religion of Islam when it first spread to the southern parts of our country, so I was not only born into a ruling family but into a Muslim one.
I was the first male child on my father’s side of the family, so I was given the best available education. I became somewhat well-versed in the Koran and in the religion of Islam, and I quickly rose to become an assistant to one of the prominent Muslim evangelists in the land.
God Is a Ferocious Judge
I went everywhere with him, and that not only enhanced the people’s respect for me as a prince, but it endeared me to many of them as someone who was fighting the cause of the religion they held very, very dear.
My master and I did a lot of open-air preaching; the Christian missionaries also preached, and they gained some converts. Some of the Christian leaders would come to debate with us, and I was always assigned to read passages that attacked Christianity. Whenever the Christians proved difficult it was no problem for us to gather enough of a crowd to stone or shout them away.
Because of my involvement in these happenings, many people looked forward to the day the old ruler would pass away. “There’s a bright future for you,” they said. “The way things are going we know you will be our ruler in the course of time.” But that was not to be.
As a Muslim I knew God as benevolent, but I also knew Him as a ferocious judge who kept track of every little thing I did and would one day bring me to judgment. There was always the quiet fear inside me, “If this God is the ferocious judge I understand Him to be, and if my eternal fate will be determined when God puts my bad works on one scale and my good works on another, and whichever one weighs the heavier, which I know will be the bad, then He will have no option but to throw me into hell fire.” I just could not see any way to become fit to serve this God.
But I went along doing all that I was taught I fasted during the Ramadan, gave the little alms I could and did all the good works I knew to do. But everything I did was inadequate to appease this God; I lived in constant, minute-to-minute fear of death.
Then two Jehovah’s Witnesses approached me; they were the first Christian people ever to come to me. They knew that I could get them arrested, beaten up or imprisoned if I desired, but they came anyway. They wanted me to read the Bible with them, so we read Old Testament stories. It was fun because most of the stories in the Koran are adulterations of Old Testament stories. These people kept coming for about a year, and as I went from the Old Testament to reading stories in the New Testament I found there were questions I needed to ask—particularly about Jesus, the Son of Mary.
The Koran says that Jesus was not actually crucified, that God substituted someone else because He never would have allowed His servant to be treated so poorly. Another part of the Koran says God gave Jesus the power to escape, and He went on to Pakistan; He’s coming back to preach Islam to the whole world. But the New Testament says that Jesus was actually, truly crucified. It was difficult for me to understand what the New Testament says about Jesus because it is so different from what I had been taught, and my Jehovah’s Witnesses were not able to help much.
Some time later I went to teach amidst friends with a young man, a member of the Methodist Church, who had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and he was able to share what he knew about Jesus with me. He said, “You know, Jesus is the mediator between man and God, and all the sins that we have committed God has laid upon Jesus. If we are willing to confess our sins and put them upon Jesus, God will overlook them.”
That’s what I had been groping for in all the good deeds I did as a Muslim young man. I kept thinking, “Is it possible that Jesus can take care of my sins and help me to relate to God? And this God will not be my ferocious judge, but He will become my father? And I can talk to Him, and He will talk to me?” It was too much for me to comprehend.
Cold Water from Heaven
But as I saw the radiance of this young man’s Christian life, I began to want that kind of life. So I asked my friend, “If I want to believe in this Jesus, how do I do it?” And he said, “It’s very simple. You don’t have to give any money; you don’t have to give away anything. Just go to Jesus as you are and say, ‘Look, I’m tired of who I am and what I am. I want to believe in Jesus, and I want to take care of my sins.’ Confess those sins you can recall, and just leave those you can’t remember to Him. He knows all about them anyway, and He’ll take care of them.” Right there in his room I asked Jesus to come into my heart, to cleanse it of all sin and to make me a child of God.
I did not feel my heart strangely warmed as did John Wesley, but I felt as if cold water were dripping from heaven through my head and into the rest of my body. It was the very best day of my life.
My friend told a Methodist minister about my experience with Christ, and this minister invited me to a Methodist church. I felt a strong urge to go, so I went. Right away people went back to my father saying they’d seen me go into a church. When I returned home my family was waiting. My father said, “Welcome back from church. What in the world took you into a church?”
I broke out in a cold sweat and for a moment became almost blind with fear, but I managed to say to him, “You’ve given me my education and prepared me for life the best you knew, and I’ve been attacking Christians. But all my life I have felt in my heart a fear of death because the god you introduced to me is a different one than the One I’ve come to know in Jesus Christ. I now know my sins are forgiven. Now I can talk to God, and He talks to me. I want to be with Christians because it’s when I’m with them I feel right.”
It seemed like my eyes opened, and I saw that everyone was looking at me, and no one was talking. They sat staring at me, and my mother burst into tears. A lot of them were wailing. But I was able to say, “A young man shared with me about Christ, and I found it to be real. When I said to Jesus, ‘Come into my heart,’ I felt Him come! I knew He was there.” My mother laid prostrate in front of me and said, “You are throwing away everything. You are putting my life in jeopardy. You are putting your life at risk. Don’t you see the future ahead of you? Don’t you see all the possibilities? Don’t you wonder what will happen to me?” And I could not control my tears because she was weeping as she was saying these things to me. But I could not go back from following Christ.
My mother went to all the Muslim scholars and medicine men hoping they would make medicine that would charm me so that if I’d been bewitched the spell would be removed. But I knew I wasn’t bewitched.
In a week the family told me, “You’ve had time to think about this. If you do what you are doing now it will spoil your name. The people will stop respecting you, and they will hate you. You will put the name of this family in disrepute.”
But the Lord made my heart so strong at that moment I was able to say, “I’ve found joy and assurance in belonging to God and believing in Jesus, and I know my sins are forgiven. And that’s where I will stay.”
My dad said, “If that’s your choice then we will regard you as dead, and you may as well be dead.”
My Life Was in Danger
The following day I knew I might be poisoned because the news had spread everywhere, and everyone was talking about me. I went to the pastor of the Methodist church and told him everything. He was very sorry. I said, “You did what was right and good for me, and I am most grateful. Now my life is in danger. I cannot stay anywhere nearby. What shall I do?”
That holy man of God gave me a note to take to the United Missionary Society in another town. That’s where I went, and that’s where I lived for four years. Of course I missed my family back home, but the people of the Missionary Society became my father, mother, sisters and brothers. I lacked nothing that I needed in those four years of exile.
A Message from My Father
In the course of living with them, I felt the call to be a preacher, to go all around Nigeria talking to people about Jesus, so my new family enrolled me in their training course. I studied the Bible, and I learned a lot about what God can do if our lives are surrendered to Him.
At the conclusion of that training, I received the message that my father wanted to see me. My friends at the Mission Society said, “Go. You’ve never received such a message. This might be an answer to prayer.” So I went.
When I got home there was another gathering of my family and the elders, and they said, “We’ve had the news that you’ve been married, and you’ve had a baby.” (I had met my wife during my exile, and we had our first baby.) My father said, “I’ve heard many good things about you, and I’m very happy with what I have heard. You may not know it, but I followed you everywhere you went. I now believe this faith you have embraced is good for you. If you would like to return to this family, you are welcome anytime.” I could not control my tears; everyone was crying tears of joy. I wanted to introduce my wife and little daughter to them. My father said, “Go ahead, bring them.”
I brought my wife and our baby home. My family accepted my wife; they would not normally have accepted her because she’s from a tribe against which my own tribe is prejudiced.
Then the Methodist Church invited me to do frontier missionary work, and during that time we had our second child, also a girl. After we’d named her and done everything the Christian way we brought her home, and my parents put the family marks on her and said, “This is our child because the one you had before is your own.” That marked our official acceptance back into the family.
Many in my homeland never forgave me for embracing Christ. When it came time to elect a new king my uncle was chosen. I didn’t mind because a number of my brothers and half-brothers and sisters and cousins had become Christians. I had become a Christian and, along the way, an ordained minister. I was later surprised to find I had been elected bishop. I would not even consider becoming a king in my homeland, because I’ve found a kingdom that is splendid and glorious, a kingdom which I would not trade for any tribal kingdom.
My family and I had to leave home. For my mother the move meant the loss of a lot of property. She was left with four, maybe six acres. If I had remained who I was and eventually had become king the whole land and people would have been ours. But my Bible says, “What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” And with Christ I have not lost anything.
These Are the Lord’s Doing
I would like to deal with a few issues related to all I’ve said. For the gospel-sharer it is not sufficient to speak the Word. We must live it out. What happened to me is not ideal and is not unusual. It is simply an act of God.
It is possible for a Muslim to become a Christian. It is difficult, alright, but it is possible. If anybody could claim to be a Muslim I could, just as Paul claimed to be a Jew of the Jews. But when it came time for Christ to reach out to me He did, and He used people who knew Him to get hold of me.
Christians should not be afraid to befriend Muslims. Most Muslims will not respond to Christians; they may even be hostile toward them. Some Muslims still regard Christians as infidels who believe in more than one God. But it was through the friendship of a young Christian man who shared his faith with me that I came to know the Lord. God found me, and by grace I am what I am. That can happen to any Muslim.
When I look back on my life, my upbringing and what I am today, I ask myself, “How come?” And the answer I get each time is, “These things should be marvelous in your eyes, because they are the Lord’s doing.”
Christ is real to me. Is He real to you? Do you just know about Him, or do you know Him? He could become real to you if you would simply say, “Lord, come into my heart. Stay there and take care of all my sins, and make me fit to be a child of God.” He’s willing to do it even now. It won’t cost you anything because it costed God everything to make it possible. He can become real to you, and I’m saying that because I know.
Ayo Ladigbolu is a Methodist bishop serving in Nigeria.
by Steve | Nov 18, 1988 | Archive - 1988
Archive: What Does it Mean to Be Holy?
In the second of a two-part series, Robert Coleman, professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, issues a summons to holiness
In view of the unspeakable blessing of the life of divine grace, one would think that the body of saints would constantly herald the beauty of holiness. Yet, strangely, this does not seem to be the case. It is not that the truth is denied; it is just that other things appear to be more appealing. The church, under the illusion of relevance, tends to accept the world’s agenda of concerns. Inevitably, then, more mundane and humanitarian interests take precedence over the demanding claims of the lordship of Christ.
The presentation of holiness and sanctification will be considerably enhanced by a careful exposition of Scripture. I am afraid that in Wesleyan circles, to our shame, far too much emphasis has been given to the recitation of personal testimonies to the neglect of solid biblical exegesis. I am convinced this deficiency is one reason holiness teaching is so often compromised.
Human experiences help illustrate the power of the written Word, but only the authoritative Word of God can focus the full reality of holiness. The muting of this central truth of Scripture in the private and public witness of the church, whatever the tradition, reflects a tragic displacement of priorities.
Danger In a Defensive Posture
Bound up with this confusion is an inordinate fear of fanaticism which, unfortunately, some misguided people associate with holiness. Just the thought of this message conjures images of wild emotionalism or anti-social behavior.
Please do not misunderstand. I am not suggesting that we should endorse every harebrained zealot that crowds under the holiness umbrella. Clearly there are many strange fellow travelers, but this is something over which we have scant jurisdiction. Let us be careful that, in our desire to be removed from these perceived excesses, we do not become defensive and divert our energy from our cause.
This is a failing all too common today in the so-called “holiness movement.” We spend too much time protecting ourselves from embarrassment—pointing out that we are not this and we are not that—until we become more astute in maintaining an appearance of respectability than in being confident in our own experiences.
Any time that we become more concerned with self-preservation than with proclamation, we have lost our advantage in the mission of Christ True holiness needs no defense; it will vindicate itself when seen in its own beauty.
Resistance Of the Flesh
This is not to say that the holy life will elicit popular acceptance from the masses. By its nature holiness will always have an uphill battle with the flesh, since it cuts across the grain of the carnal mindset. If we are overly sensitive to what people think, there will be little preaching of holiness.
For this reason it should not seem surprising that in Wesley’s day there were many among his followers who “little insisted on” this message.[1] The same problem was seen in response to Francis Asbury’s ministry. He noted that “sanctification and Christian perfection” were not “commonplace subjects”—a fact, incidentally, which caused him to resolve to “make them the savor of every sermon” he preached.[2]
The situation is aptly described by Benjamin Lakin, an itinerant Methodist minister who made the following entry in his diary under the date March 15, 1814:
I have been making some inquiry into the cause of the gloom that is on the minds of professors and the decline of religion. Lately an old Brother observed that he had observed for some time our preaching to begin with the fall of man, the redemption by Jesus Christ, repentance and justification by faith, and here we stopped, and for a long time he had not heard the doctrine of sanctification enforced. I immediately began to make my observation on experiences that I hear, for a considerable time have observed them go as far as justification and there stop and no talk of sanctification. I have further observed that professors have lost that bright experience (at least too many of them) of their acceptance with God they once had, and rest too much on general determinations to serve God. And as I have reason to thank God that there is as little immoral conduct among us as I could expect among so large a body, I concluded the following causes have produced this effect: (1) The confused state of affairs and the interest every man takes in the event of war, (2) We have preached the gospel but have been deficient in enforcing the doctrine of sanctification, and (3) the people stopped in a justified state without pursuing holiness. Immediately [I] set about a reform in myself and began to preach and enforce the doctrine of holiness by showing the state I found the people to be in, and the need of perfecting holiness in the fear of God.[3]
Holiness In Church Growth
What can be detected in this faithful circuit rider’s account underscores the continuing need for renewal of our first love if the priorities of the kingdom are maintained. This becomes increasingly imperative in the succeeding generations of any revival movement, of which Methodism is a prime example. By and large the holiness teaching of Wesley became diluted, as well as slighted, as the nineteenth century progressed; and the doctrine of entire sanctification met with increasing resistance from the hierarchy of the church. The tensions from this conflict, combined with other conditions, resulted in the formation of various new holiness denominations and contributed to the rise of the modem Pentecostal movement.
Many stalwart exponents of the holiness doctrine remained in the established church, but, bereft of institutional support, their influence has been marginal in shaping policy of mainline Methodism for more than 100 years. The loss of this emphasis has been progressively apparent in the ministry of the church, of which the erosion of evangelistic effectiveness and the corresponding membership decline are only symptomatic evidence. On the other hand the dissident holiness groups (many of which came out of Methodism), imbued with a revival, have generally manifested a higher degree of commitment and a sustained increase of disciples as a by-product.
There are numerous factors to consider in church growth, of course, but a shared quest for heart holiness certainly must be included among them. Whenever this scriptural truth has been lifted up in word and deed the blessing of God has been obvious in evangelism despite buffetings from the world. Any time this principle of growth is compromised, degeneration, while not immediately apparent, inevitably follows in the long term.
Weakness Of Contemporary Methodism
Here, I believe, is a glaring fallacy in the United Methodist Church. Much of the talk today about church growth strategies is simply too shallow to develop the necessary spiritual resources for dynamic reproduction. Attention seems to center on better sociological understanding, programs of outreach, training in management and the like. All of these are helpful, but the great theological and spiritual issues in sanctification are largely ignored. Ecclesiastical rhetoric is confused with godliness.
We have all seen the old television commercial featuring a haggard little lady looking at a hamburger. With an expression of bewilderment on her face, she asks, “Where’s the beef?”
I think her predicament might be somewhat analogous to the feeling persons looking for the substance of the Wesleyan revival in our churches experience today. Where is the “beef” of holiness, that ingredient of Christian experience which Wesley described as “religion itself”? Even in institutions founded to propagate holiness I have sometimes wondered, “Where is the unabashed, forthright witness to this most distinctive Methodist doctrine?” Oh yes, one recognizes references here and there—code words such as “second blessing” or “perfect love”—intended to convey an association with tradition. But upon closer examination it often turns out that the hamburger is mostly bun.
Facing Up To Carnality
Why do holy people and the institutions they build drift away from the holiness mandate?
Doubtless there are many reasons, but the heart of the problem, I believe, is the pervasive tendency of the flesh to take the course of least resistance. Unless this human characteristic is persistently overcome through the renewing power of the Holy Spirit, the deceitful nature of carnality, ever lurking in the shadows of disobedience, will stealthily arise to take control. Consent to its leavening influence may be so gradual and refined as to be undetected at first. After all, do we not need times to relax and enjoy the pleasures of the world? Do we always have to deny ourselves recognition and advancement in order to bear the cross of Christ? Why should we have to bring the Great Commission into every aspect of our lifestyle?
Such questions may seem innocent enough, but carnality has a beguiling way of turning our responses into self-indulgence. All too easily we pamper ourselves under the guise of God’s blessing, failing to measure our lives by the pattern of our Lord. Holiness is an exacting standard, and as the values of Christ’s kingdom become clearer, we will be more able to identify with the publican who cried, “Lord, have mercy on me!” Quibbling over hair styles and forms of dress will not be the issues. When we see ourselves with more Christlikeness, I expect that we will become far more sensitive to worldliness, materialism, prayerlessness, disregard of the oppressed and indifference to the lost multitudes who have never heard the gospel.
Here we must be utterly honest with ourselves, and with God’s help we must relentlessly seek day by day to bring our lives into conformity with His holiness. If we try to trim the corners and excuse a few favorite shortcomings, carnality reigns in our hearts.
The Incontrovertible Witness
A dear friend, when being examined for admission into a Methodist Conference, was asked by the Board of Ordained Ministry: “Are you wholly sanctified?”
Detecting a spirit of skepticism yet wanting to be helpful, he replied, “Don’t you think that you are asking the wrong person? My wife is sitting outside in the lobby. Why don’t you talk to her?”
What a Solomonic response! It is not the creed you profess that convinces other persons of holiness; it’s the life they see. I will never forget the closing service of the World Congress on Evangelism in the great Kingresshalle of Berlin, Germany, in 1966. Billy Graham was speaking on the need in Christian work for “a gentleness and a kindness and a love and a forgiveness and a compassion that will mark us as different from the world. The Christian minister,” he said, “is to be a holy man.”[4]
To illustrate his point he told of the conversion of Dr. H. C. Morrison, the founder of Asbury Theological Seminary. He described a day when farm worker Morrison was plowing in a field. Happening to look down the road, he saw an old Methodist circuit rider coming by on a horse. The young plowman had seen the preacher before, and he knew him to be a holy man. As Morrison watched the saint go by he could feel the power of the preacher’s godly presence way out there in the field. Such a sense of conviction for sin came over Morrison that, fearful for his soul, he dropped on his knees; and there, alone between the corn rows, he gave his life to God.
As he concluded the story Billy Graham earnestly prayed, “Oh, God, make me a holy man—a holy man.”[5]
That is the prayer, I trust, that speaks the yearning of all our souls. Upon its answer is the hope of revival in the United Methodist Church.
FOOTNOTES
[1] John Wesley, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, IV, p. 149. In this letter Wesley went on to observe that when such neglect was common “there is little increase, either in the numbers or the grace of the hearers.”
[2] Francis Asbury, Journal, Monday, March 1, 1803, quoted in Francis Asbury’s America, compiled and edited by Terry D. Bilhantz (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), p. 82
[3] Benjamin Lakin, Journal, in William Warren Sweet, Religion on the American Frontier, IV, The Methodists, 1783-1840, A Collection of Source Materials (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), p. 249.
[4] Billy Graham, “Stains on the Altar,” One Race, One Gospel, One Task, ed. by Carl F. H. Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham I (Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1967), p. 158.
[5] Ibid., p. 159.
by Steve | Nov 17, 1988 | Archive - 1988
Archive: A Shepherd’s Story
By Sara L. Anderson
At four o’clock several mornings a week you will find Bill Mason, pastor of the 5,200-member Asbury United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Okla., beginning his devotional time. By six he’s at a local hospital praying with a church member that may be about to undergo surgery. Mason will often remain in the waiting room with anxious family members until the operation is over. Even when an early morning visit is not necessary, Mason makes trips to the hospitals at least four days a week.
Why does the pastor of a large church spend so much time doing what would often be relegated to a junior staff member? Mason feels that hospital patients and family members “are more likely to be open to the things of the Lord.”
He adds, “There are practical things I’ve found I can do to assist families, as well as dealing with spiritual needs.”
This sense of caring for a person’s emotional, physical and spiritual needs is a hallmark of the Asbury congregation’s evangelical emphasis. Consider the following efforts:
- Under the leadership of staff member Dick McKee, approximately 800 Asbury members have participated in 18-month discipleship groups, and another 1,500-2,000 have completed a 14-week class on the basics of the Christian life.
- For years the church has helped financially and volunteered labor to the UM-sponsored Frances E. Willard Home for troubled girls.
- The church’s United Methodist Men’s group, numbering about 100, has done volunteer painting and repair work for several UM campgrounds and the Little Lighthouse School for preschool children with vision, hearing and birth defects.
- Approximately 1,750 attend Sunday morning worship services, and Sunday school attendance has nearly equaled that figure.
- About 400-500 people are involved in the single adult ministry.
- Church staff operates Destination Discovery, an after-school and summer program for children and families living in densely populated, low-income, public housing projects. The program helps youngsters develop new skills, tutors students and provides recreation opportunities. Still, the desire behind this effort is to bring people into a vital relationship with Christ.
- Asbury’s mission budget totals more than $500,000 annually, including World Service apportionments. The funds are distributed to individuals and organizations in Tulsa, Okla., in the United States and around the world.
- An Alcoholics Anonymous group has met in the church building for more than 20 years, and Mason has worked with programs dealing with alcoholism since the beginning of his ministry.
- For six months of the year a group goes to a pre-release center for the state’s correction system every Saturday night and conducts services for the inmates.
These types of ministry flow from the people’s love for Christ.
“Jesus gave us the Great Commission to go into the world baptizing and teaching, and then He gave us the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself,” Mason says. “I can’t separate the two,” he adds. “I don’t imagine that anyone who knows and loves the Lord can be insensitive to the needs of people.”
Sara L Anderson is the associate editor of Good News.
by Steve | Nov 16, 1988 | Archive - 1988
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).
