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Originally posted by Amanuensis:
I think the virgin birth is important (see my comments on the thread in kerygmania).

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Is the virgin birth an essential part of a healthy and empowering Christian doctrine?

Central to the Christian faith, IMV, is is the Crucifixion of Christ. This is the turning point in history, the point when a way back into full relationship with God the Father became possible. But, if Christ were just a man, even a very good man, his death would have been just that of a martyr; it would be something to inspire you to try and follow his teaching but would not effect any forgiveness for sin. But, within orthodox Christian tradition his death is a sacrifice for forgiveness of our sins (with several models of how that is achieved). To be effective this has to be a perfect sacrifice, and if that sacrifice was just a man then it would be the greatest injustice for God to accept such a sacrifice. However, if the sacrifice is God himself then it is both perfect and just (in that God isn't asking someone else to do what he himself isn't willing to do). Thus, the Incarnation is essential in understanding the Crucifixion.

Was it essential for Christ to be born f a virgin to be God Incarnate? Now that is an interesting question....

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I'm going to rephrase the question if I may ...

Is the virgin birth an essential part of a healthy and empowering Christian doctrine?
...
...Was it essential for Christ to be born f a virgin to be God Incarnate? Now that is an interesting question....
Alan

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Alan,
From my point of view it's necessary to rephrase the question:
Is A LITERAL UNDERSTANDING of the Virgin Birth an essential....

I don't believe in a literal Virgin Birth. Our faith is that in Christ, God and man are met. The problem with the volumes of explanations of the credal claims about Jesus is that they depend on a particular metaphysics. That metaphysics -- that explanation of how the world is -- does not work so well in our times.

The Virgin Birth made a lot more sense in the millenia before the discovery of the ovum. Mary was seen as the pure vessel of the action of the Holy Spirit. I think we need a new understanding that respects the realities of biology as they are known today.

Lots and lots of folk are Christian, and don't accept a literal interpretation of the Virgin Birth.

I wonder how many 'people in the street' know that there are a lot of Christians who think it is not necessary to believe everything literally, leaving no place for the celebration of myth and allegory?

I would guess that when a large number of people reach an age when they decide for themselves that events in the bible are impossible to believe (often a few years after the Santa bubble bursts) then they give up on Christianity and Church altogether

But if they were to realise that they could still be Christians if they didn't have to swallow every literal truth ........? I wonder.......

1 - Is the virgin birth an essential part of a healthy and empowering Christian doctrine?

2 - Was it essential for Christ to be born of a virgin to be God Incarnate?

I have to stick my nineteen year old neck out and give a resounding 'yes' to both questions.

One does not have to compromise his intellect in order to be a Christian, but there are mysteries of the faith that, while hard to swallow on scientific grounds, are essential if we are to stay consistent with what has been believed by Christians for two millennia. Please cross-reference the Nicene Creed ("who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man") and the Ecumenical Councils - Mary was bestowed the title of "Theotokos" ('the God-bearer' or 'Mother of God') instead of simply "Mother of Christ" in order to preserve Christ's true identity as fully God and fully man.

If Mary was not a virgin, then Christ was entirely human - and if Christ was in no way divine, he would have fallen into sin at some point in time, which would make his death an imperfect, and therefore unacceptable, sacrifice for our sins. And there goes the salvation of the world.

is it possible for a child who hasn't been told the "facts of life" yet, and who doesn't know what a virgin is, to be a christian?

I percieve much of Christianity to be rather hard to swallow. Indeed, if you're going to choose believe in most of a story that affects all of reality anyway (including a benevolent creator, angels, and a devil for contrast) why can't you believe in something as relatively minor as a virgin birth?

Before I dance around on too many people's toes, let me throw in the disclaimer that I freely acknowledge that Christianity could be right. Moreover, I have a great deal of respect for it's ideals, and as an important part of society (and for it's sheer story-telling audacity!).

Nevertheless, I connect the term "Christian" with a person's ability to accept what I consider to be dubious. Though, in my unfortunate habit of arguing against myself, I must admit that this does not mean that believing in any particular part, including virgin birth, is a necessary requirement.

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Originally posted by RooK:
Indeed, if you're going to choose believe in most of a story that affects all of reality anyway (including a benevolent creator, angels, and a devil for contrast) why can't you believe in something as relatively minor as a virgin birth?

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Amen, brother. The whole story is hard to swallow. Why stick on that particular point?

We are all in a sense the children of God. But Jesus is called the Son of God in a very literal and specific way. If there was no virgin birth then Jesus' father is not God.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
Christianity rests on the claim of Jesus' divinity. Having Him born of a human mother and father pretty much denies that claim.

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I, too, think RooK hit the nail on the head (and I, FWIW, believe utterly in it - I have no compelling reason not to).

I think the Virgin Birth argument is actually a part of a larger argument: do miracles happen?

There are (I was surprised to learn) a lot of Christians who don't actually believe in miracles... (if anyone can explain this view in a succinct manner, I'd be grateful).

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Originally posted by Wood:

There are ... a lot of Christians who don't actually believe in miracles...

... are they still Christians?

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If they do not believe in any miracles then that must include the resurrection, which IMO is probably the one fundamental belief of Christianity.

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Originally posted by Steve_R:
If they do not believe in any miracles then that must include the resurrection, which IMO is probably the one fundamental belief of Christianity.

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It's certainluy the fundamental belief of most of the Christians I know... but a few years ago I was acquainted with an Anglican priest, who didn't believe in the virgin birth or a literal resurrection - and didn't have a problem reconciling it with her faith.

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Originally posted by nicolemrw:
is it possible for a person so severly retarded that s/he can't understand the concept of virgin birth to be a christian?

is it possible for a child who hasn't been told the "facts of life" yet, and who doesn't know what a virgin is, to be a christian?

i think the answer to both is obviously yes. therefore, no, one does not need to believe in the virgin bith to be a christian.

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I think that logic is a wee bit faulty. By the same process, you could negate any aspect of the Christian mystery - the Trinity, the resurrection, Pentecost etc. God created all of us and knows our limitations and we believe to the best of our ability and understanding. What we believe and understand as children has to grow and develop as we do. The fact that I did not understand what the Virgin birth was at age 5 does not give me a reason not to believe it now.

God bless

I thought this quite nicely framed the issue and accurately describes the fundamental project of modern theology, at least since Schleiermacher: how to make Christianity acceptable to its "cultured despisers"?

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The Virgin Birth made a lot more sense in the millenia before the discovery of the ovum. Mary was seen as the pure vessel of the action of the Holy Spirit. I think we need a new understanding that respects the realities of biology as they are known today.

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I don't see why this should be the case. In fact I think that knowing about the ovum makes the virgin birth make more sense. If Mary had - as would presumably been thought at the time (though I don't know what Jewish thought on the matter was, only Greek) - just been the 'soil' into which the 'seed' was planted, then where did Jesus' humanity come from? But knowing about the ovum we can see how Christ was incarnate 'of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary'. Or that's how I see it anyway.

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Originally posted by Carys:
I don't see why this should be the case. In fact I think that knowing about the ovum makes the virgin birth make more sense. If Mary had - as would presumably been thought at the time (though I don't know what Jewish thought on the matter was, only Greek) - just been the 'soil' into which the 'seed' was planted, then where did Jesus' humanity come from? But knowing about the ovum we can see how Christ was incarnate 'of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary'. Or that's how I see it anyway.

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I think that's a very sensible way of seeing things. The biology thing is quite possibly a red herring.

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The biology thing is quite possibly a red herring

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I agree. Given that Matthew records Joseph's intention to break off his engagement to Mary (when he finds out she's pregnant - and not by him) I suspect that more than enough of "the realities of biology" were known.

I agree with Wood that crux of this debate may be on “Can we believe in miracles?”

So many impossibilities in the bible… ranging from the Jesus rising from the dead, down through the virgin birth, feeding of the 5000 and with a few minor ones dotted about, such as the iron bar floating on water somewhere in the depths of the Old Testament. Some Christians believe that all of these literally happened, some in some of them, some in none of them (I don’t want to get side-tracked onto “what is a Christian” at this point, so we’ll move on quickly).

But how did I order the sentence in bold type? Some people might range these reports according to how contra they are to the laws of science or how fundamental we see those laws to be (i.e gravity vs. mammal reproduction). Others might order them to how easy for them to be misinterpreted or mis-reported (biblical inerrancy here we come). But, on the basis of this discussion, I propose that most Christians ‘order’ these on the basis of their theological importance… how crucial any one event is in terms of their own faith.

Most Christians would argue that whether or not the resurrection literally happened is a more vital question than whether Jesus turned water into wine. But does that make the latter any less likely to have happened?

I'm sure the problem is with me and not you. In trying to be concise I always end up being cryptic.

The point was that one way of understanding "modern theology" -- by which I mean mainly protestant theology since the early 19th century -- is that it seeks to explain Christian beliefs in such a way that modern people can believe them without difficulty (Roman Catholic theology didn't really begin to get "modern" in this sense until the 1960's). The reference to Schleiermacher is to his Speeches on Religion to its Cultured Despisers, which is generally considered a watershed for this type of theology. In it, he attempted to show the German intelligensia that Christianity was compatible with the Kantian philosophy that then held sway. Now, there is nothing wrong with that per se, except that beliefs that didn't fit with the presuppositions of Kant's philosophy tended either to get explicitly pitched, or reinterpreted in terms that fundamentally changed the belief. I would contrast this with my hero, Thomas Aquinas, who sought to use Aristotelian philosophy to better understand Christian beliefs.

Maybe an example or two would help. In trying to understand the traditional Christian belief in the Incarnation, Schleiermacher reinterpreted it as the claim that while all human beings possessed at least an implicit consciousness of a being upon whom they were absolutely dependent, Jesus' "God Consciousness" was so fully developed that we can speak of him as "God's Son." I would dare say that this amounts to a rather different claim than "one person, two natures" (or even, "And the Word was God") but it certainly is easier for modern people to believe. Or, regarding the resurrection, Schleiermacher claimed that Jesus did not actually die on the cross, but simply fell into a coma. However, because his God Consciousness was so powerful, he was able to temporarily revive and was seen by some of his disciples. Again, this is certainly easier to believe than that God raised Jesus from the dead, but is it still belief in the resurrection?

The point that Oakes makes, I think, is that modern theology has fundamentally misunderstood its task as supplying people with an understanding of Christian beliefs that is easy to believe in the modern world.
But why should matters of belief be easy? What makes us think that people in the first century were more willing to accept a virgin giving birth, a man being God, or a person returning to life from the grave? Indeed, the Gospels indicate that most people in the first century found these things very difficult, if not impossible, to believe.

Now if there had only been theologians there to explain that the virgin birth was a mythological symbol. . .

By the way, a great short critique of (i.e. a screed against) the Catholic version of modern theology is Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Moment of Christian Witness.

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Originally posted by Chorister:
I am rather keen on symbolism. I don't think it's cheating, because it is often harder to tease out the hidden depths of meaning behind a symbol than it is to simply believe everything unthinkingly just because the Bible says it is so.

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Isn't this a rather stark contrast? In fact, modern biblical criticism is rather tone-deaf regarding symbolism, whereas pre-modern bible readers, who "unthinkingly" accepted such things as the virgin birth, didn't think there was any incompatability with thinking such things "really happened" and thinking that they were symbolic.

On the other hand, they tended to be pretty critical of this kind of stuff actually happening - see for example, Plutarch's rationalisations of a number of mythological characters (written c. AD120 or thereabouts).

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Originally posted by Allison Kistler:
...One does not have to compromise his intellect in order to be a Christian, but there are mysteries of the faith that, while hard to swallow on scientific grounds, are essential if we are to stay consistent with what has been believed by Christians for two millennia.
...If Mary was not a virgin, then Christ was entirely human - and if Christ was in no way divine, he would have fallen into sin at some point in time, which would make his death an imperfect, and therefore unacceptable, sacrifice for our sins. And there goes the salvation of the world.

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The core belief that makes us Christian is that God entered the human experience in Christ. The myth of virgin birth provided the "how" of it, and was a perfectly satisfactory explanation for millenia. For many it no longer suffices because of how we see the world. But you are right. There are mysteries of the faith. For me it remains the greatest of mysteries that God entered into human experience. It virginal conception of Jesus is the metaphor that makes this notion accessable.

So, yes I believe in the virgin birth ... but not literally.

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Originally posted by Lou Poulain:

So, yes I believe in the virgin birth ... but not literally.

Lou[/QB]

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This is getting too metaphysical for me - how can you believe in the virgin birth - but not literally. How did the Incarnation happen then?

Peace

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Originally posted by The Coot:
If the Creator of the Universe decides for whatever reason that He will become incarnate and born of a virgin, then it's no biggie for Him to organise it I reckon.

Do I believe it is an issue of salvation? Nup.

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If Jesus was born of a virgin, there must have been a reason for it, surely? Is there any established theology which sets out to explain why Jesus was born in such a way? I can understand why Jesus would need to have become incarnate through the power of the Holy Spirit, which I guess would make Joseph a little unnecessary but why would Mary need to be a virgin? If there is a reason for it then it may become an issue for salvation.

In Tom Clancy's book, Debt of Honour, when the last of the Russian missiles has been destroyed two men (one Russian, one American) drink a toast and then, following a Russian custom, throw the glasses away so that they may never be used for a lesser purpose. Perhaps it has something to do with this?

the original poster asked not "is the virgin birth true", (a point i'm entirely agnostic about) but "is it neccessary to believe in it." the point i was making is that since there are christians who are incapable for whatever reason in believing in it, yet are undoubtedly christians (at least, i have no doubts on that issue) indicates to me at least that no, its not neccessary.

If I may, can I turn the question around and ask "why don't you believe in a literal virgin birth?" ('you' being the agnostics/ non literalists posting on this thread). What is it in your theology that makes this an unlikely/impossible event to happen?

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Originally posted by Scottie:
This is getting too metaphysical for me - how can you believe in the virgin birth - but not literally. How did the Incarnation happen then?

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My faith is that God entered into human experience through the person of Jesus. Doctrinally we hold that Jesus was FULLY human and FULLY divine. This is a mystery. Our mechanistic explanations for this are culturally and linguisticly limited. I believe the "what" (incarnation), and accept the "how" (virginal conception) metaphorically.

But this entire discussion raises great questions. Since the beginnings of "higher criticism" the mainstream of the churches has moved beyond literalism, and there has been a reaction called Fundimentalism. Has this dynamic happened with regard to the credal statements of the great ecumenical councils? If not, why not? Why would scripture be subject to critical analysis in light of culture, language, etc,. and not the credal statements themselves?

Interesting things to think about.

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but a few years ago I was acquainted with an Anglican priest, who didn't believe in the virgin birth or a literal resurrection - and didn't have a problem reconciling it with her faith.

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Yes, these characters are out there--including that heretic Spong. How can you be a member of a church that subscribes to the traditional creeds, but not believe them? Part of the baptism ceremony, and usually the confirmation ceremony, of such churches includes giving assent to the creeds. Does one therefore lie in order to be initiated into the church, then go about the business of doing churchy things?

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Originally posted by Nancy Winningham:
Yes, these characters are out there--including that heretic Spong. ......Does one therefore lie in order to be initiated into the church, then go about the business of doing churchy things?

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I don't think that the issue of "literal vs non-literal" is a matter of lying. I say the creed weekly at Eucharist without qualms and without literalism.

Thomas Aquinas began his Summa Theologiae with the statement that God is unknowable, and we cannot say what God is, but only what he is not. (The Via Negativa) The Transcendent and the Holy is beyond our ability to delimit. It is possible to stand in awe of the mystery of God and yet not be awed by the statements the churches make about God (all of which are limited by culture and language).

Poor Jack Spong would have surely been burnt at the stake a mere four hundred years ago, don't you think? I recommend his latest book, which addresses the question of how to shape Christianity in this modern world. I don't think one has to agree with him to appreciate the validity of the question.

Lou

[corrected quote attribution]

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Originally posted by Tim V:
If Jesus was born of a virgin, there must have been a reason for it, surely? Is there any established theology which sets out to explain why Jesus was born in such a way?
...
In Tom Clancy's book, Debt of Honour, when the last of the Russian missiles has been destroyed two men (one Russian, one American) drink a toast and then, following a Russian custom, throw the glasses away so that they may never be used for a lesser purpose. Perhaps it has something to do with this?

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Originally posted by Chorister:
Do people who think one has to believe in the literal virgin birth also believe in transubstantiation?

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There are many possible intrpretations of terms such as Son of God. Paul in Romans 1.4 says Jesus was declared Son of God by his rising from the dead. That isn't quite the same as being the pre-existant Logos as described by St.John. The Incarnation is a mystery and meant diferent things even to the writers of the NT. That doesn't mean any of them are wrong, it means that Jesus is Immanuel, but the details are shrouded in mystery.

The resurrection is also a mystery. That the resurrested Christ could appear and disappear at will suggests He appeared as a ghost, but that He could be touched by Thomas and others and eat fish suggests He could make Himself solid. But He tells Mary Magdalene not to touch Him because He is not yet risen, but encourages Thomas to do so. The point is that different witnesses had different experiences even of the Risen Christ.

The resurrection of the shattered lives of the disciples from selfish cowardly obtuse people, to courageous proclaimers of the Risen Lord through suffering persecution and martyrdom is the essential proof of the resurrection. Jesus' followers knew that the bond of love that had existed between them while on earth hadn't been broken by His death and He was still there as a guiding presence in their lives. The mechanics of it or what sort of body He was resurrected into is beyond the understanding of anybody alive and should be accepted as a mystery.

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Originally posted by PaulTH:

For me the essentials of Christianity are that Jesus was the icon of God on earth, that in some way I don't pretend to understand, He reconciled God and man, and that in some form which I also don't pretend to undertand, He convinced those nearest to Him that He had survived death and was always there to intercede for mankind with the Father. I don't think much else matters.

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The virginal conception reminds us of God's "Otherness." Indeed, he is the Creator, and normally works through creation - but here was a case where, in Christ's becoming Man, God was not "limited" by the created order as He established it. (I don't know that 1st century Jews would have found the concept of miracles so astonishing in itself - they were far more aware of God's acting within creation than we - but a virgin birth would be so foreign an idea to anyone's thought that it would have been totally unlikely to be a created myth, either for those giving testimony to Christ or uttering prophecies.)

Of course, following the idea of God's limitless power to act, it was not essential that He bring forth the Incarnation in any particular fashion - I believe it was Cardinal Ratzinger (certainly no liberal!) who set forth that this was an ontological reality, and not, if you will, making the biological reality necessary for Jesus to be the Incarnate Word. (The point can even be stretched that it was not strictly necessary for a Christian to know anything about Jesus's conception to accept who he was.) Yet there being this detail, and its having been revealed to the Church, reminds us not only of Jesus's humanity, and His divinity (God's only son), but of our own limitations. It is rather awe-inspiring, I would say. God worked outside of the normal created order - but, dealing with "time and space limited" mortals, His both suspending the laws of nature, as it were, and making this known to us was a way of making us see, strongly, Jesus's uniqueness. We need that aid to grasping the truth, I believe.

I think that, central though the Cross is to our faith, we're limiting things too much when we think of the Incarnation solely in terms of our salvation. I think we need to re-visit the idea of deification - the ways in which our own intimacy with God was affected by Jesus's entire life, by His Resurrection and ascension, by His presence in the Church, etc. He is not an intercessor - that is far too limited a viewpoint. (Nor did His Incarnation consist only in His birth... I've also read too many Franciscans to forget to add that.)

That Jesus would assume human nature, and that, in the very act of this happening, God, without Jesus's being in any way less a man, worked (in a way that would boggle our thick heads forever afterward!) outside of the usual limitations of creation, seems very powerful to me. Concurrently, the divine Logos was accepting all of the limitations of being a man, while remaining a divine Person!

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Originally posted by Tim V:
Is there any established theology which sets out to explain why Jesus was born in such a way?

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Swedenborgianism goes on at length about this, the general rule being that nothing recorded in Scripture happened without a reason.

There are basically three reasons for the virgin birth:

1. Because of the meaning of virginity - The reason that Messiah was born to a virgin is because of the symbolism associated with virginity. A virgin represents the pure love that receives God in a person's life. So virgins, or young women, are often mentioned in the Old Testament. It is true that the Hebrew word is ambiguous, but the Greek word is not. Mary represents humanity itself, and especially that aspect of humanity that is fully accepting of God. This is why it was important that she be a virgin.

2. Because of the necessity that He have human heredity, yet have a divine soul - The reason that Jesus was born in the normal way and not simply created was because of the nature of His mission. He was to take on the sins of the world hereditarily through His mother. The idea is that everyone inherits tendencies to selfishness and worldliness through their parents. These tendencies are the means by which hell influences a person, and so they were the means by which the hells were able to attack Jesus - and be defeated by Him.

So it was important that Jesus have a human mother, so that He could inherit the sins of the world, so to speak. But it was equally important that His inner soul be divine from the Father. During the course of His life this inner soul manifested itself increasingly. Through continual spiritual battles with the hells Jesus gradually united Himself with the Father, the union being complete in the resurrection.

3. The third reason is so that He could literally be the Son of God. If Jesus had a human father He would not be the Son of God.

These reasons all relate to the entire mechanism of salvation both of the human race as a whole, and of each individual. There is a part of each person that is like Mary - and God is born miraculously into that part of them. The process is replicated in many ways in a person's life.

To my mind these reasons make no sense if you accept the atonement theory of salvation. They are coming from an entirely different view of Jesus' mission. This view makes the virgin birth an essential part of the purpose of the incarnation.

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Because of the necessity that He have human heredity, yet have a divine soul -

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So it was important that Jesus have a human mother, so that He could inherit the sins of the world, so to speak. But it was equally important that His inner soul be divine from the Father. During the course of His life this inner soul manifested itself increasingly. Through continual spiritual battles with the hells Jesus gradually united Himself with the Father, the union being complete in the resurrection.

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I'm not convinced these statements represent orthodox Christology, in fact I suspect it is a defined heresy to say his soul was divine and his body human - I'm just not sure which (Docetism?). Christ was fully human AND fully divine and those two natures are indivisible, so you can't say that one bit was God and another was Man.