Albert Mohler on the importance of doctrine of the virgin birth:
Must one believe in the Virgin Birth to be a Christian? This is not a hard question to answer. It is conceivable that someone might come to Christ and trust Christ as Savior without yet learning that the Bible teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin. A new believer is not yet aware of the full structure of Christian truth. The real question is this: Can a Christian, once aware of the Bible’s teaching, reject the Virgin Birth? The answer must be no.
December 16th, 2011 | 2:27 pm
For those who hold the Bible to be the inspired word of God, this seems to me to be a question more of how the Bible is interpreted. I don’t see the difficulty in interpreting the virgin birth (actually, virginal conception) as symbolic. Of course, I don’t know why the virginal conception would be a stumbling block for anyone who believes Jesus died and rose from the dead. (As always, I recommend Philip Roth’s hilarious short story The Conversion of the Jews.) How difficult would it be for the creator of the universe to cause a virginal conception?
For those who are attempting to determine what is faith and what is history in the Bible from a purely historical viewpoint, there is of course not nearly enough evidence in the Bible to even consider the virginal conception as possibly true.
December 16th, 2011 | 2:36 pm
Some (most?) contemporary Catholic Biblical exegetes consider the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary (virginity ante partum, in partu, and post partum) to be symbolic, and I presume Protestants do not accept it. Based on the Gospels alone, it seems Jesus had siblings. Also, for Mary to remain an intact virgin while giving birth would seem to require the actual birth of Jesus to have been unlike the birth of any other human being. How many exceptions to the humanity of Jesus are acceptable before he can’t be considered fully human?
December 16th, 2011 | 2:57 pm
David Nickol: when the Bible says Mary was a “virgin,” it simply means that she had not had sexual relations. It isn’t referring to any, ahem, features of her physical anatomy that would be affected by giving birth, which is what you seem to be meaning when you say “intact virgin.”
December 16th, 2011 | 3:04 pm
Mohler says one is obliged to believe in the Virgin Birth because it is in the (inerrant) Bible. But Catholics are obliged to believe in the Virgin Birth because the Church teaches that it is a de fide doctrine of the faith.
December 16th, 2011 | 4:02 pm
While there are several such studies reaching the same conclusions, “Mary of Galilee: The Marian Heritage of the Early Church” by Bertrand Buby makes a convincing case, using primary sources, that the early church considered Mary’s virginity to be ante partum, in partu, and post partum. Most importantly the early church fathers relied heavily on Scripture for this conclusion.
I myself was uncomfortable with in partu until reading the reasoning of the early church leaders.
December 16th, 2011 | 4:12 pm
Stephen P,
I am not referring to the Bible, but to the Catholic doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, which does indeed state that Mary was an intact virgin before, during, and after the birth of Jesus. How can a woman in first-century Palestine have given birth (painlessly, too) and have remained an intact virgin? To those Catholics who take the Perpetual Virginity of Mary literally, the answer is “miraculously.”
I think Catholics would agree that the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption are not to be found in the Bible but in Tradition (with a capital T). But they are bedrock.
December 16th, 2011 | 4:17 pm
True, David, but that has nothing to do with what Mohler is talking about.
Orthodox Christology plus orthodox anthropology pretty much require a virgin birth.
December 16th, 2011 | 5:51 pm
David
If the pains of childbirth are supposed to be due to sin, and if our first parents had not sinned before generating the first children, then it is possible to give birth without pain & still have a fully human birth.
December 16th, 2011 | 10:04 pm
And the article describes it as “less intellectual.”
This is a failure to realize that someone else does not share your premises. “Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”
December 16th, 2011 | 10:08 pm
“Some (most?) contemporary Catholic Biblical exegetes consider the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary (virginity ante partum, in partu, and post partum) to be symbolic”
Well, yeah. “This gate is to remain shut. It must not be opened; no one may enter through it. It is to remain shut because the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered through it.”
That doesn’t preclude it’s being literal. If you meant only symbolic it might be wise to say so. (After considering whether those who say it’s symbolic mean it’s only symbolic.)
December 16th, 2011 | 11:05 pm
Unless one can be a Christian without confessing the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople as an ecumenically-binding symbol of faith, I do not see how one cannot accept the virgin birth and remain within the Christian fold. Like all so-called “Marian” doctrines, this one is essentially Christological: if Mary was not a virgin before, during and after giving birth to Christ, what assurance is there Christ was indeed “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary”?
Mary’s perpetual virginity extends to the earliest stratum of the Church’s Tradition, witnessed by late first and early second century inscriptions in which petitions are addressed to her as “most pure Virgin and Mother of God”. Those closest to the event knew and revered her virginity, and who are we to question them?
December 17th, 2011 | 6:49 am
Bad news for Peter, Paul, Stephen and all the others then. Of course, maybe that’s why they did not call themselves christians.
December 17th, 2011 | 10:13 am
David,
As a Christian, one must acknowledge Jesus not as a good man, nor a great teacher, but as God. To be a Christian, one must believe that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man. To deny the Virgin birth is to deny that Jesus has only a human origin, and not a Divine one. To deny the Virgin birth is to say that the child in Mary’s womb was the consequence of human sexual relations. If one believes this, one is no longer a Christian. As to be a Christian, is not just an acknowledgement of certain moral values, but is to believe in the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord and God.
December 17th, 2011 | 11:21 am
We have St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 120-165) – “We know that He, before all creatures, proceeded from the Father by His power and will, … and by means of the Virgin became man, that by what way the disobedience arising from the serpent had its beginning, by that way also it might have an undoing. For Eve, being a Virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that was from the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin Mary, taking faith and joy, when the Angel told her the good tidings, that the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her and the power of the Highest overshadow her, and therefore the Holy One that was born of her was Son of God, answered, ‘Be it to me according to thy word.’” —Tryph. 100
And Tertullian (160-240) – “God recovered His image and likeness, which the devil had seized, by a rival operation. For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer of death. Equally into a virgin was to be introduced the Word of God which was the builder-up of life; that, what by that sex had gone into perdition by the same sex might be brought back to salvation. Eve had believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel; the fault which the one committed by believing, the other by believing has blotted out.”— De Carn. Christ. 17.
And St. Irenæus (120-200) – “As Eve by the speech of an Angel was seduced, so as to flee God, transgressing His word, so also Mary received the good tidings by means of the Angel’s speech, so as to bear God within her, being obedient to His word. And, though the one had disobeyed God, yet the other was drawn to obey God; that of the virgin Eve the Virgin Mary might become the advocate. And, as by a virgin the human race had been bound to death, by a virgin it is saved, the balance being preserved, a virgin’s disobedience by a Virgin’s obedience.”— Adv. Hær. v. 19
To me, at least, the verbal similarity between the teaching of these three early Fathers, representing the traditions of the churches of Palestine, Africa and Rome and Asia Minor and Gaul, repectively, renders it probable that this antithesis between the Blessed Virgin Mary and Eve is part of the original apostolic teaching.
December 17th, 2011 | 12:40 pm
Let me be pedantic briefly and say that referring to the virgin birth confuses the issue. What we’re principally discussing here is the virginal conception of Jesus. This is how it is expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
December 17th, 2011 | 1:09 pm
To deny the Virgin birth is to deny that Jesus has only a human origin, and not a Divine one. To deny the Virgin birth is to say that the child in Mary’s womb was the consequence of human sexual relations.
Mark Tan,
My point was that the Bible attests to the virginal conception of Jesus. Mary’s perpetual virginity (ante partum, in part, and post partum) comes not from the Bible but from Tradition.
Regarding the virginal conception, Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) said in Introduction to Christianity:
Raymond E. Brown, in commenting on that quote in The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus says
So to deny the virginal conception of Jesus is to deny a fundamental Christian belief. But our current pope has maintained that while Jesus was born of a virgin, this did not have to be the case for him to be God incarnate.
December 17th, 2011 | 1:34 pm
What is more hard to believe than the Virgin Birth is that for 2,000 years God permitted the overwhelming majority of Christians, saints and otherwise, to believe in a major tenant of their faith that was not true.
December 17th, 2011 | 2:26 pm
Orthodox Christology plus orthodox anthropology pretty much require a virgin birth.
pentamom,
Pope Benedict XVI and I disagree with you. While we do not deny the virginal conception of Jesus, we deny it was a necessity for the Incarnation.
December 17th, 2011 | 3:12 pm
But “Virgin Birth” in common language means that Jesus was born to a woman who was a virgin, not necessarily that He was born in some way that did not alter her anatomy in the usual way. Protestants, including those of us well-informed about Catholic doctrine, confess the Virgin Birth in the sense that the term is normally used. We know perfectly well what we mean by it, and no one is misled by the language.
It’s important to remember that “virgin” is not a medical term. Its primary meaning is one who has not had sexual relations; if the advent of modern methods of feminine hygiene and modern preventive medicine has not changed the normal connotation of the term, this needn’t even be a pedantic point.
December 17th, 2011 | 3:50 pm
It’s important to remember that “virgin” is not a medical term. Its primary meaning is one who has not had sexual relations . . .
pentamom,
Actually, the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary (ante partum, in partu, and post partum) developed very much as a statement about the physical body of Mary, although some today would interpret it as symbolic, not physical. The doctrine is that Mary remained a physically intact virgin before, during, and after the birth of Jesus (requiring a miraculous birth process). It was not merely that Mary remained ever a virgin in the sense of never having sex, but that she maintained “bodily perfection” even in the act of giving birth to Jesus. Some people are made uncomfortable by explicit talk about this doctrine, but it was indeed formulated as, in part, a “medical” statement about the anatomy of Mary and the perfection of her body.
December 19th, 2011 | 11:22 am
What I always found hard to understand is why people pick that out of all miracle stories to most express their skepticism at.
December 19th, 2011 | 11:27 am
David — I’m quite aware of everything you just said. That does not change the fact that Protestants can be completely accurate in referring to the Virgin Birth without implying that Mary’s anatomy was not altered by the physical processes of childbirth. We can differ on the implications of her virginity, but that does not mean that referring to Jesus’ birth as “the Virgin Birth” is still both accurate and precise, according the perfectly legitimate and primary meaning of virgin as “one who has not had sexual relations” since any way you slice it, He was born to a virgin.
And also, that still does not make virgin a “medical” term. I realize that some meanings of the word have anatomical implications, but that is a different point.
December 19th, 2011 | 12:33 pm
Sorry, “that does not mean that referring to Jesus’ birth as “the Virgin Birth” is NOT still both accurate and precise,”
December 19th, 2011 | 12:54 pm
I see no way around the conclusion that it Mary & Joseph issued a zygote with a complete set of chromosomes. Those genes defined a unique human person. If so to impose the incarnation on that person means either: Nestorianism in which the Divine Person possesses the human, or worse, the fusion of these persons into a new person, whereby the original human is effectively aborted. Both seem unworthy of God, in the injustice done to the concepti.
December 19th, 2011 | 1:59 pm
pentamom,
I think you are quibbling. I agree everyone knows what is meant by “virgin birth” in most contexts, but when discussing the Catholic doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, “virgin birth” is not precise. “Virginal conception” is preferable, since the Catholic doctrine asserts that Mary remained an intact virgin during the birth process, not just that she was a virgin when she conceived.
I have no problem with people using the term “virgin birth,” but there are contexts in which it is not precise, which is why (I can only assume) the Catechism of the Catholic Church uses the term “virginal conception.”
As for whether “intact virgin” is a “medical” term, you were the one who introduced the word “medical.” I used it in quotes to indicate it was not exactly the term I myself would use. But in the development of the doctrine of Mary’s virginity, it was very much the idea that Mary was physically an intact virgin. Whether you want to call that medical, or anatomical, or whatever, it’s not important. But the idea was more than the assertion that Mary was a virgin by reason, and only by reason, of never having had sex. We do not place a great deal of importance on “intact virginity” today, but it was considered very important to those who formulated the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.
December 19th, 2011 | 2:07 pm
Tom B,
As someone who is willing to be skeptical about almost anything, I really don’t see why it is necessary to work out the Incarnation in terms of genes and chromosomes. For those who accept the Incarnation, it seems to me that Jesus could have been true God and true man with one human parent, with two human parents (see my reference to Pope Benedict XVI, above), and possibly even with no human parents. Since God created humans in the first place, I don’t see why he would be constrained from creating a truly human person “from scratch” instead of using a human egg.
December 19th, 2011 | 3:21 pm
Perhaps Tom B is claiming that the virgin conception is either impossible or incompatible with orthodox Christianity since without a full genetic makeup Jesus could not be fully human, and that it is impossible for a woman to provide all the necessary genetic material for a male offspring.
I once had it explained to me, by someone with more knowledge about fertilization and embryology than I possess, how all of Jesus’s chromosomes could have been provided by Mary, with the exception of the male (x). That x itself could have, been “manufactured,” for lack of a better word, from one of Mary’s chromosomes. All of this, of course, is not something that can happen without divine intervention.
I am just relaying what I remember and am no scientist. The point this person was trying to make was that just because Jesus was fully human (all the requisite chromosomes) and male was no argument against the virgin conception.
December 19th, 2011 | 3:24 pm
And to prove I am no scientist: I meant, “y”.
December 19th, 2011 | 5:18 pm
True, Jesus had to have a y chromosome to be a male, and it could not have come from Mary. But if God created the universe from nothing, certainly he can create as many new chromosomes as he wants, including a y chromosome, and they would be truly human chromosomes if he created them to be. Of course, the people who formulated the doctrine of the virginal conception of Jesus knew next to nothing about human reproduction. It is amazing how little was known before the nineteenth century, in fact.
December 19th, 2011 | 5:56 pm
The nucleotides on the Y chromosome are indistinguishable from those on any other chromosome. A significant amount of ordinary genetic variation consists not simply of polymorphisms, but of insertions and deletions. There is no reason God could not have constructed a functioning Y chromosome (i.e., one from which the requisite androgens could be transcribed) by inducing a very high rate of insertions and deletions (mostly the latter, because the Y chromosome is very short) during replication from another chromosome.
This would not even qualify as a miracle under David Hume’s definition (“a suspension of the Laws of Nature.”) It is just extremely improbable.
Turning water into wine is actually a more impressive miracle, because carbon nuclei cannot be fused from oxygen and hydrogen without supplying a very large quantity of energy.
December 19th, 2011 | 7:51 pm
David — you keep dragging the implications of Catholic understanding of the doctrine of the virginity of Mary into a the discussion of a post made by a Baptist editor about a Baptist professor’s writing on the subject, in order to take issue with the language “Virgin Birth” that they both use and by which they clearly mean only “born of a woman who had not had sexual relations”, and *I’m* quibbling?
December 20th, 2011 | 12:48 am
you keep dragging the implications of Catholic understanding of the doctrine of the virginity of Mary into a the discussion of a post made by a Baptist editor about a Baptist professor’s writing
pentamom,
It must be my browser malfunctioning again. Apparently you see a notice—”No Dragging in Catholic Ideas”—that I don’t see.
December 20th, 2011 | 3:49 am
David — what I’m objecting to is your initial comment of “actually, virginal conception…”
There is nothing “actual” going on here from the perspective from which either Carter or Mohler are writing. “Actually,” virgin birth, under a perfectly legitimate use of the words “virgin” and “birth” is *actually* what they meant. Only if you import distinctively Catholic ideas into a place where they aren’t part of what the writer is talking about, does that become “actually” the case.
So rather than “actually,” the phrase “from another perspective,” which implies further discussion rather than correction or clarification, might have worked better. Otherwise, it sounds like a quibble, and an ill-founded one at that.
December 20th, 2011 | 10:11 am
Let me try again.
Yes God can raise up sons to Abraham from stones, and could produce a fully human child from one or no parent. Such an event would be no problem for the Creator of Heaven and Earth.
I differ from David in that I believe: He cannot do so from two parents (as He cannot produce a rock too heavy for Him to lift). If there was a ovum fertilized by a man, then there would already be a human being. God has the power to prevent that obviously, but that would prevent a real unique child, something I cannot believe of God.
So I’m saying no incarnation with a human father. The human person that would have been the result of a fertilization must be in some way accounted for. The incarnation by normal human reproduction leads to the options of: Nestorianism (a human person suffering possession by a Divine Person), or God as abortionist.
All due respect to Pope Benedict of course.
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