Apostles' Creed video (4): conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary

Here's the fourth installment in my sermon series on the Apostles' Creed:

On the virgin birth: or, why it's better to say the creed than to criticise it

I got an email from someone the other day about a post I wrote (seven years ago!) where I cast aspersions on the "historical" value of the New Testament's virgin birth narratives. 

I sent a reply email, and since I felt ashamed when I read that old post, I thought I'd reproduce my reply here:

Barth's famous discussion of the virgin birth is in Church Dogmatics I/2, the section on 'The Miracle of Christmas'. Barth always insists that acts of divine revelation are 'not historical'. But he doesn't mean they never happened. All he means is that revelation is a unique event, an act of God. It's not part of the normal historical sequence, it doesn't belong to a chain of cause-and-effect, and so there's no use trying to verify or disprove it on historical grounds. 

So in the case of the virgin birth, Barth argues that it's not subject to the methods of historiography. Its truth isn't for historians to decide. But he certainly believes that it really happened, that it happened in time and space, within the real material human world. It involved Mary's body, her real flesh and blood. In this section of Church Dogmatics, Barth's brilliant critique of Brunner rests on the assumption that the virgin birth really happened. His point is just that it happens as revelation, as an act of God. 

And so we can start to get our heads around the truth of the virgin birth only by confessing it. It's not an explanation or a conclusion that you could arrive at from other premises, historical or philosophical or whatever. It's a truth grasped in the humility of faith.

Anyway, I guess I misrepresented Barth in that post: don't hold it against me, it was so long ago! And I definitely misrepresented the Christian faith if I gave the impression that something can have theological meaning without actually happening! As though the creed were a conjuring trick, a magical formula rather than a confession about reality, about how things really are in this world. 

For what it's worth, nowadays I would never speak that way about the virgin birth. Who do I take myself for? Am I really so much smarter than St Matthew and St Luke? Am I qualified to correct the church's creed, the sum of the gospel, just because I've read two or three books on the topic? Would my own personalised ready-made faith – in which everything is arranged just as I like it, and everything difficult or offensive is removed – really be an improvement on the faith of the church? Wouldn't I be like the proud young carpenter who, on his first day on the job, scorns the silly traditions of other carpenters and gets to work building his own three-legged table – only to discover that the rest of the world knew what they were doing when they made them with four legs?

I guess all I'm trying to say is that I used to be a lot more cynical and sophisticated than I am today. As one of the saints has said, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Nowadays, to be honest, I'm just very grateful to be a Christian at all. Three-legged tables are fine, as far as they go. But you can rely implicitly on the ones with four legs; that's the kind you want when you're sitting down in the comfort of your own home, day after day, a table just like the one your grandfather used, and just like the one your great-grandchildren will use too, long after you've left the world and gone to that big dinner table in the sky.

It's a good thing to be a Christian – I'm sorry to be so banal, but that's what really strikes me. It's a good thing to believe something that you didn't invent for yourself. It's a good thing to have a certain framework, a story that tells you what kind of place the world really is, so that there are some basic questions that are already settled, that you don't have to go on wringing your hands and wondering about. It's a privilege, a real privilege, to be able to join your voice to the church's confession: "... and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate" – and all the rest. 

If you ask me, a faith like that is as good as Christmas: as reliable as the calendar, but full of surprises too.

The virgin birth

David has started an excellent new series – a historical survey of various theological views of the virgin birth. We were discussing that topic here at F&T last December, and I tried to persuade you that the “virgin birth” is grounded in Jesus’ resurrection.

O come, let us adore him!

I love Christmas carols; and more than any other I love “O Come All Ye Faithful.” This carol includes a remarkable verse—my favourite verse in the entire hymnbook:

“God of God, Light of Light,
Lo! He abhors not the Virgin’s womb;
Very God, Begotten, not created.”

These are breathtaking words, words that stop you in your tracks, words that leave you gasping and speechless. If we could grasp this one verse—just three lines!—then we would have grasped everything. If we could learn to speak this verse—really speak it!—then there would be nothing else to say, nothing else for all eternity.

In this verse is a message of sheer joy—the joy of Christmas! God, God himself, came among us. At a certain time, in a certain place, among a certain people, God was born. He was born not in a temple, or in a church, or in a palace, but in a poor stable. He lay helpless and human in a Virgin’s lap. He emptied himself, so that we might be filled. He humbled himself, so that we might be lifted up. He came to us, so that we might come home to him. And at the final moment, he cried out “I thirst!”—so that we would never thirst again.

The only possible response to all this is one of joyful gratitude. And so the old Christmas carol continues:

“O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord!”

Merry Christmas to you all.

The incarnation

“[T]he incarnation of God the Son is a reality which grows. It is not complete in a matter of a moment; for example, at Jesus’ conception in Mary’s womb or at his birth. The incarnation is not merely a Christmas event. To be man is a process of becoming man; Jesus’ manhood grew throughout his earthly life, finding its completion in the supreme moment of the incarnation, his death, resurrection and exaltation. Only then is the incarnation fulfilled to the very end.”

—Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (London: Sheed & Ward, 1963, pp. 18-19.

Thinking about the virgin birth

What does the church mean when it confesses that Jesus Christ was natus ex Maria virgine, “born of the virgin Mary”?

It is well known that the doctrine was a relatively late and isolated development in the first century. There is no real trace of it in the earliest New Testament witnesses (the Pauline letters), or in the Marcan and Johannine writings. Only in the relatively late writings of Luke and Matthew do we find the virgin birth narratives, in the form of pre-histories to the story of Jesus. Here we are clearly concerned with later theological reflections on the nature of Jesus as the “Son of God,” even though there may well be a (no longer identifiable) historical core to the narratives.

It’s crucial to recognise, then, that the concept of Jesus as the “Son of God” does not depend on the doctrine of the virgin birth; on the contrary, the stories of a virgin birth depend wholly on the Christian community’s prior faith in Jesus as the “Son of God.” And this is still true in christology: the doctrine of the incarnation of God in Jesus does not depend in any way on the doctrine of the virgin birth, but instead we can speak of the “virgin birth” only because we first believe in the incarnation.

The early Christians knew that Jesus was the “Son of God” because God had vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead. Because of the resurrection, the early Christians saw that Jesus must have come from God from the very beginning. In other words, they believed in the virgin birth because of the resurrection. Or to put it more sharply: if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, then he would not have been “born of a virgin” either.

We should thus avoid regarding the virgin birth either as a biological explanation of the origins of Jesus, or as an abstract reflection on virginity and sexuality. The New Testament witnesses are not concerned with any such scientific and biological topics. Instead, they are concerned solely with the identity of Jesus in relation to God. Their message is that Jesus owes his existence wholly to the Father. From the very beginning, he comes from the Father through the power of the Spirit. He was crucified, but God has vindicated him. Therefore he is, and always was, the Son of God—even from his mother’s womb! Natus ex Maria virgine!

Born of a virgin?

As Schleiermacher had already perceived, the idea of the virgin birth “must be considered from a twofold point of view: first, with reference to the available New Testament testimonies on the subject; next, with reference to its dogmatic value” (The Christian Faith, p. 403). And Schleiermacher also noted that “anyone who cannot accept [the New Testament birth narratives] as literally and historically true is still quite free to hold to the doctrine” (p. 406).

So any consideration of the virgin birth must face two main questions: is the virgin birth historical, and does it have any theological meaning? Here’s how a list of modern theologians and scholars have answered those two questions:

		Historical?		Theological meaning?
F. Schleiermacher		No		No
E. Brunner		No		(emphatic) No
K. Barth		No		(emphatic) Yes
H. Küng		No		Yes
E. Schillebeeckx		No		(tentative) Yes
W. Pannenberg		No		No
J. Macquarrie		No		Yes
R. W. Jenson		(tentative) Yes		Yes
Raymond Brown		Yes		Yes
Gerd Lüdemann		No		No
N. T. Wright		Yes		Yes

So, to sum it up, we have two-and-a-half votes in favour of the historicity of the virgin birth, and six-and-a-half votes in favour of the doctrine’s theological value. In spite of this diversity of opinion, most modern scholars share one thing in common: virtually no one anymore thinks that the miraculous birth narratives in Matthew and Luke should be interpreted as biological explanations of the origins of Jesus. To do so would be to impose foreign scientific categories on to the ancient texts, and it would only obscure the theological intention of the ancient writers.