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Originally posted by Carys:
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.

Carys

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I think the heresy your looking for is Apollinarianism. Apollinaris was bishop of Laodicea and a supporter of Athanasius. He held that human beings were tripartite: body, "sensual soul" (the part that received sense impression) and "rational soul" (the part that thinks). Christ had a human body and a human "sensual soul" but rather than a human "rational soul" he had the divine Logos.
I tend to be forgiving of Apollinaris (as I am similarly of Nestorius). He was making a stab at the knotty problem of how humanity and divinity were united in Christ. He, not unreasonably, took as his model the union of body and soul in human beings. The problem with this, as you point out, is that it ends up saying that Christ is not fully human.

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Originally posted by Freddy:

I do recognize that this is not orthodox Christianity, since it denies the atonement and original sin.

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If Mousethief is awake yet he may have something to say about that line.

It was said earlier that people struggled to see how people could lie in the creeds if they do not believe in the virgin birth.

People I know in this position (and myself when I struggled with the belief) got round the statement "born of the Virgin Mary" by saying that Virgin Mary is the title commonly given to the Mother of Christ and does not necessarily imply that they believe there was actually a virgin birth. A bit of a sidestep really.

I have struggled with this idea as much of the birth narrative does appear to be constructed to validate messianic claims for Jesus.

Saying that Jesus could not have been the Son of God if he had a human father is possibly looking at the subject too biologically. I see no reason God could not have "annointed" Jesus in this way regardless of biological parentage and in some ways it would make him more fully human.

I don't think I believe in the existence of God-stuff. Have you ever felt the presence of God ? Did you see any God-stuff around at the time?

Seems to me that denying Jesus a human biological inheritance from both parents is envisaging him as less than fully human.

His relationship with God was that of Son to Father, but I suspect that this was achieved in a more subtle way than by God being a biological parent.

To stick my own neck out a bit, I do believe in a virgin birth, since it seems to me to make theological sense, and i can find no good reason not to believe it. But I can understand the non-literal point of view. I'm genuinely interested in how we work out our own beliefs regarding miracles.

Or am I barking up the wrong tree, is this miracle thing a red herring? Is the virgin birth significantly different to "a miracle"?

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Can I ask again, shipmates who don't believe in a literal virgin birth, do you have a literal belief in other miracles in the bible? Not so much the resurrection, but all the walking on water/ wine making / healing/ sticks bursting into flames ones. Do you believe some and not others? And if so how do you decide what is believable and what not?

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The entire question treats the creed like a smorgasbord that a not-completely-hungry man might idly shuffle by, picking this and that when it suits his fleeting fancy. Drive-thru Christianity. "Would you like Toronto Blessing with that?" It reduces Christianity to the level of comparison shopping. Beliefs as commodities.

The second problem, which was pointed out to me both by my wife and by a fellow at choir practice last night, is that it is part of this "what's the absolute minimum I can get away with?" reductionism which is, it would seem, endemic to Protestantism these days. Someone above made the comment that instead of thinking, "What do I have to believe?" we could be thinking, "Look at all I get to believe!"

This is one of the chief Orthodox (and probably RC, although I cannot speak for them) complaints about late 20th century Protestantism (it's too early to say 21st century protestantism or orthodoxy or rcism -- nothing has happened to differentiate the last 2 years (or 1 depending on how you count)) from the 40 or so that preceded them): viz., the minimalist aspect. If I don't HAVE to believe this, or do this, or have this "tat" in my church, then by God I shall not. I shall do, think, and possess the absolute minimum possible to still get into heaven.

It rather is not the attitude of one who embraces God with his entire heart soul and mind. Rather it is dilettante Christianity (if I may coin a term).

Unfortunately this position appears to be a pretty logical conclusion from Luther's soteriology. If "being saved" can happen instantly, then what does it matter whether one fasts, or gives alms, or prays unceasingly? What does it matter what the worship service is like, or whether the bread and wine are body and blood, or mere memorial meal? What does the virgin birth matter? Or even the creed?

If salvation is instantaneous, then what one does afterwards is of far less importance, and a dilettante attitude perhaps is not just acceptable but preferrable?

Well there's my musings. Fire away.

However, I do not consider the Virgn Birth a miracle in the same "class" as the others, as the others - mostly - are examples of Christ's divinity (He was divine whether or not he walked on water), whereas an individual's interpretation of the Virgin Birth can have much deeper inpact on their theology (and vice versa). As one with quite high level training in genetics, I have great difficulty believing in a fully human man who lacks a Y chromasome, and I believe Christ was a fully human man as well as fully divine. Possibly Mary could have been one of those women who are XXY, but the chances are so remote I find it easier to believe the Y came from Joseph. Jesus' Incarnation is so far beyond my understanding as it is, this makes little difference.

Please understand that a) I am in no way dismissing any of the miracles found in the Bible, I am simply saying they have different effects on my faith. and b) I'm thinking on my feet a little, so this might come out a bit confused.

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As one with quite high level training in genetics, I have great difficulty believing in a fully human man who lacks a Y chromasome, and I believe Christ was a fully human man as well as fully divine. Possibly Mary could have been one of those women who are XXY, but the chances are so remote I find it easier to believe the Y came from Joseph.

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Well I agree Jesus must have had a Y chromasome, but I don't believe that it came from Joseph, or from Mary either or indeed from any human.

If his conception was entirely normal, how come he was different? I have far more trouble not believing the virgin birth than believing it.

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Wulfstan: You could get 100 people to say they believed in the creed, but if you tried to nail down what precisely they meant by it, you risk getting 100 different answers. Does it really matter how people rationalise it to themselves?

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That's why I'm here! I find it interesting, and other peoples answers help me think through my own beliefs, which are certainly not a signed and sealed document. But, no, in the much wider scheme of things, it doesn't matter. No-one is under any three line whip to defend an entirely logical faith.

You say that the reason people may or may not believe in x or y are individual, but in these recent posts you've reflected that you are a historian, Ginga as someone trained in genetics and Mousethief as an Othodox reader. Undoubtably our backgrounds inform the way we approach the bible and our faith, and I believe that we are richer and wiser from listening to one another. (Well, most of the time )

Ginga, thank you for your musings... i have a similar mix up of takes on the miracles, and you're right that they are too big a side track! I also think you're right that the Virgin birth has a "deeper impact" on our theology. It seems that you reject the idea of a virgin birth on the basis that it is genetically too improbable - what impact then does this have on your theology of the incarnation?

Mousethief. As a protestant it is with a sinking heart that I read this.

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If I don't HAVE to believe this, or do this, or have this "tat" in my church, then by God I shall not. I shall do, think, and possess the absolute minimum possible to still get into heaven.

It rather is not the attitude of one who embraces God with his entire heart soul and mind. Rather it is dilettante Christianity (if I may coin a term).

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Your examples confound me, that what i believe should be strung together with what I possess or choice of building of worship. I find the coining of my tradition 'dabbling in a subject' offensive. And the use of the word 'endemic'. Yes, we might all get annoyed with people who believe the 'easy bits' and forget the rest... but I don't think that is the preserve of any one tradition. Equally, we might choose to have the grace to be thankful for the mustard seeds of faith we find in our own lives and those of fellow Christians.

I do find it incredulous that after the thread that have been running over the last few weeks you should resort to these barbs that you know will deliberately provoke people. You could have made your point (which is a valid one) without such jibes.

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Originally posted by Manx Taffy:
[qi]I do recognize that this is not orthodox Christianity, since it denies the atonement and original sin. [/qi]

If Mousethief is awake yet he may have something to say about that line.

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Must I?

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I see no reason God could not have "annointed" Jesus in this way regardless of biological parentage and in some ways it would make him more fully human.

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This makes it sound like Christ's divinity was something painted on later. Whereas we teach that he was from the moment of his conception both wholly man and wholly God.

As for why or whether he had to be born of a virgin, I confess I do not know. But Isaiah foretold it, and Luke recorded it, and it is the teaching of the church from the very beginning. For that reason I would have to intensely scrutinize any suggestion or argument which purports to prove it false. Rather than invent my own Christianity, I prefer to receive the traditions passed on to me. It is the difficult truths which stretch us, as C.S. Lewis points out. If we jettison these, we will remain as we are and not be made to grow and deepen.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
and it is the teaching of the church from the very beginning.

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Originally posted by clare:
Your examples confound me, that what i believe should be strung together with what I possess or choice of building of worship.

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I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that belief and practice are so divorced in your life that mentioning them together has confounded you?

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I find the coining of my tradition 'dabbling in a subject' offensive.

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I don't remember mentioning your tradition (which is?), or saying that any one tradition was entirely this way. I said this sort of thing was endemic in late 20th century protestantism.

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And the use of the word 'endemic'. Yes, we might all get annoyed with people who believe the 'easy bits' and forget the rest... but I don't think that is the preserve of any one tradition.

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On the contrary. Picking and choosing what to believe and what to throw away defines Protestantism from the very beginning. It is what Luther set out to do, and the motivation behind his "sola scriptura" was to determine what rule of thumb to use when deciding what to keep and what to throw out. Luther and Zwingli had heated arguments because Zwingli wanted to throw away the "real presence" whereas Luther wanted to keep it. The seeds of consumerist Christianity are in the very roots of the reformation.

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Equally, we might choose to have the grace to be thankful for the mustard seeds of faith we find in our own lives and those of fellow Christians.

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And I do.

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I do find it incredulous that after the thread that have been running over the last few weeks you should resort to these barbs that you know will deliberately provoke people. You could have made your point (which is a valid one) without such jibes.

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Possibly. But I was reporting a feeling (as I clearly stated at the beginning of my post) and will stand by what I posted, not as objective truth, but as an expression of my (and my wife's and my choirmate's) subjective reactions to what we see in the "Christian subculture."

If you are not a dilettante Christian, then what I wrote does not apply to you, and you have no cause for offense, I'm thinking.

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:
Not quite true. It is possible, even including Phil. 2:5ff, to consider the preaching of Paul, Peter, the writer to the Hebrews and the evanglising of Mark (which are part of the very earliest core of Tradition) to be "orthodox" without the necessity of a virgin birth. I'd say that even John does not require belief in this. It is a known tradition, most definitely, but it is not the only tradition.

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Oh really come on, Dyfrig, Paul says nothing either way on the virgin birth! How can you posit him as a countertradition? If you have somebody who comes out and says, "Mary was not a virgin when Christ was born" then you have a countertradition. But nobody says this. Thus the unanimous teaching on the subject in the early church was the virgin birth tradition.

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Originally posted by Wulfstan:
My problem here is that that there appears to be no strong basis to come to a decision on one side or another. And for that matter how strong is one's belief supposed to be?(and by what units would you measure it?)
I have had no earth-shattering experiences of the divine (a vague sense perhaps) so I have no personal experiences that convince me one way or another. As an ex-history teacher, the fact that the gospels say "x" happened doesn't strike me as an overwhelmingly convincing proof and while I can understand the idea that an all powerful God COULD do this, it doesn't necessarily lead me to believe that he has. [/QB]

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I find it interesting that, as an ex-history teacher, you probably accepted the history texts that teach about what happened in the 1500's, the end of the first millenium, and, heaven forbid, even the ancient Roman and Egyptian empires of 2000 years ago (I am not an historian, so, please forgive the errors, if any in the timelines). Perhaps, you even teach older history. What evidence do you have that it is true as you teach it? A book? You weren't there, were you? So you believe what someone else wrote. Do you believe that Attila the Hun could have been a bad person, or that he was a bad person?

Why, then, can you not believe what the Bible says, even as an historical text? If it is nothing else, it is a book, written by someone else. I strongly believe that it is much more than that.

To quote clare:

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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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I agree, if you don't (or can't) believe in miracles, I think you should ask yourself, What do I believe?

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Originally posted by Wulfstan:
but it strikes me that the reasons why anyone would believe (whatever that means) any of it is likely to be personal and individual

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Exactly. Christianity is very personal.

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mousethief said:

The second problem, which was pointed out to me both by my wife and by a fellow at choir practice last night, is that it is part of this "what's the absolute minimum I can get away with?" reductionism which is, it would seem, endemic to Protestantism these days. Someone above made the comment that instead of thinking, "What do I have to believe?" we could be thinking, "Look at all I get to believe!"

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This is refreshing, because I was beginning to think most people of the ship thought that all Protestants were Fundamentalist .

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mousethief also said:

If salvation is instantaneous, then what one does afterwards is of far less importance, and a dilettante attitude perhaps is not just acceptable but preferrable?

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I would suggest that once one is saved, one would want (as opposed to have) to do all those things which are righteous.

Jesus was not a human body with a divine soul - he was fully human and fully divine. And (without repeating my previous reference to deification) there is far more import to His becoming man than that he needed to be human in order to take on the sins of the world (I also have a problem with the latter part of that sentence, in any case.)

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The second problem, which was pointed out to me both by my wife and by a fellow at choir practice last night, is that it is part of this "what's the absolute minimum I can get away with?"

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Originally posted by Wulfstan:
Sharkshooter, from a strictly historical point of view, the Gospels I would say represent four, scarcely unbiased accounts, of events that are, strictly speaking, scientific impossibilities... [/QB]

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5000 years ago space travel was thought to be a scientific impossibility. We now know differently.

Virginity is a valued quality mentioned a number of times in Scripture to describe those who are pure. It is only a pure and innocent love in humanity that can receive God, and so it was important that Mary symbolize that quality.

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Originally posted by splodge:
I am intrigued by the suggestion that Jesus could not be "divine" if he was not born of a virgin

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But please remember this is all speculation. The bare factum is the virgin birth. This is predicted by Isaiah, recorded by Luke, and codified in the Creed. Any reasons or motivation or mechanisms are 100% speculation.

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I think this is phrased in too perjorative a fashion. Think of it rather as a reaction against a tendency toward prescriptive definitions of "true" faith, e.g. can I say in all conscience I am a Christian/Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox etc.

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I don't understand what you're saying. I thought I did, then you gave your example which doesn't seem to match what I thought you were saying.

I'm sorry you don't like presecriptive definitions of true faith. The church has been doing that since at least Paul, and doesn't seem to have stopped yet. It seems to be a pretty fundamental part of Christianity if anything is. The argument between the Protestants and the RC/Orthodox would seem to be not over whether to codify, but how. It isn't until very late, maybe even the 20th century itself, that the anti-codifying thing really gets moving. Creeds and "statements of faith" are ubiquitous throughout the history of the church until very, very recently. If I have to put my money on codifying versus non-codifying as being intrinsic to Christianity, I'd have to pick codifying every time.

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Similarly you refer to people "choosing" to believe things.I think this is rather denigrating often sincere attempts to figure whether one honestly can, for example, recite the creed without feeling hypocritical

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Again this is this very personal thing. What do *I* think? What can *I* believe? Which parts of the creed can *I* sign my name to? This spirit of do-it-yourselfism is not apparent in the NT, nor in the ancient or medieval church. It is strictly a post-enlightenment thing. My claim is that if you really desire God with all your mind/heart/etc., then you are willing to give up the claim to decide for yourself what the faith consists of, or which parts of it you will (or will be able to) believe.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
My claim is that if you really desire God with all your mind/heart/etc., then you are willing to give up the claim to decide for yourself what the faith consists of, or which parts of it you will (or will be able to) believe.

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That's almost right, but not quite, in my view. Otherwise no one would have any ability to choose their religion, but would be stuck with whatever they were first introduced to. I'm sure this isn't what you mean.

The key, I think, lies in accepting - not the beliefs themselves - but the basis for belief.

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Wulfstan said:
My problem here is that that there appears to be no strong basis to come to a decision on one side or another.

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Wulfy evidently has things that he thinks constitute a basis for belief and for making decisions. But he sees no strong evidence, in terms of things that he sees as demanding credence, in this argument.

I think what MT means is that once you have accepted a basis for belief, you are obligated to be consistent about it. If you accept the authority of the Bible and the traditions of the church, then you automatically accept what these sources teach. The only question would be whether they in fact teach what is claimed. If you question the teaching, you are then questioning the sources, and are therefore outside of the church's basis of knowledge.

Protestantism basically threw out the traditions of the church as a basis of belief. It ostensibly based all belief, then, on the Bible. But it has degenerated, in my opinion, over the years to the point where this is no longer the universally accepted basis. So people feel free to question virtually any teaching, making it impossible to resolve issues of belief.

I fully accept the virgin birth because I fully accept the Gospels as authoritative. This is also the teaching of my church (Swedenborgian), which I regard as authoritative. On the other hand I reject the immaculate conception, not just because it makes no sense to me, but because it has no basis in sources that I consider to be a legitimate source of information about spiritual matters.

Reasoning is useful in helping a person decide whether or not to accept a system of belief and a basis for knowing what is true. But reasoning about particular, supposedly miraculous, events, where there is no accepted basis for accepting or rejecting them, is fruitless.

Anyone for another heretical view on the virgin birth? Don't read on if you offend easily - but then of you offend easily why are you in Purgatory??

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. Perhaps, you even teach older history. What evidence do you have that it is
true as you teach it? A book? You weren't there, were you?

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Um... Ancient texts need to be treated with a vast amount of caution and backed up with evidence from other sources when possible.

You then have to try and work out the bias of the author, their intentions, their closeness (in time/geography) to the events they are reporting and also what they actually meant to say in the language they were using.

When you've taken all these factors into account then you can make an educated guess as to whether you think something is true.

I'd take an educated guess and say that the virgin birth is a myth like the many other myths of miraculous birth stories to be found in the near eastern world and that it arose out of a wish to assert that an Old Testament prophecy had been fulfilled by the birth of Jesus.

This was Isaiah 7:14, but the Hebrew word 'almah' which usually means young woman was mistranslated by the Greek 'parthenos' which definitely means virgin by the translators of the Septuagint (which is the OT text the gospel writer would have been drawing on)

So the prophecy was actually about a young woman giving birth, not a virgin in our sense.

And it then got seized upon as a powerful symbol for thinking about the human and divine natures of Jesus and so it's still with us.

Probably one of the worlds most influential translation errors.

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Originally posted by Ginga:
As one with quite high level training in genetics, I have great difficulty believing in a fully human man who lacks a Y chromasome, and I believe Christ was a fully human man as well as fully divine. Possibly Mary could have been one of those women who are XXY, but the chances are so remote I find it easier to believe the Y came from Joseph.

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We're talking God here! God who spoke the Creation into being. Even if that and the assorted old testament miracles clapped him right out, I'm sure he could speak a little Y-carrying spermie into being. (Being facetious - the mechanism doesn't matter to me). I belong to a Creedal Church so I accept it.

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Originally posted by Wood:
...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.

Not having discussed this at any great length with her, I'm still at a loss to understand how this can be. I know there are shipmates who hold this view: would any of them be able to explain?

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FX: nailing of colours to mast...

That would include me. Before I started Reader training I had already gone from agnostic to against on the virgin birth, by the time we finished I'd got to the point where I probably don't believe in a literal resurrection the way that most other people believe in a literal resurrection...

The problem is primarily the texts. I believe God COULD do all these things, I just don't think he would have left behind such a vague witness to it if he had. That's a thread in itself (probably two). But essentially I go along with the 1920s Modernist approach that I can't separate my views of the world into secular and sacred and apply different tests to them, and applying historical tests to the birth and resurrection texts does not produce a coherent story, IMHO.

I believe Jesus was born of a human mother and father in Nazareth. That he was a disciple of John, and later founded his own movement, possibly breaking with John on the issue of how you deal with sinners.

I believe he healed people; I don't know how they were healed, but I don't think it involved suspending the laws of nature - since if God is prepared to do this I have an insurmountable problem of why he doesn't always do it.

I believe he preached a gospel of love and reconciliation which is as valid today as it was then. I believe he was a man so closely aligned to the will of God that he was God in man; both, and entirely.

I believe he was crucified. I *know* he is alive. Therefore he returned to life, though I suspect that the accounts in the gospels contain more theology than history. But his followers became sufficiently convinced of his continued life to found the church rather than collapse into nothing. And they found in that continued life a promise of God's reconciliation with mankid while we ar estill sinners, which I also find today.

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Originally posted by Wulfstan:
Mousethief, try it this way. Say I chose to become Orthodox and proclaimed my belief in it's doctrines, even though, deep down, many of them struck me as rather unlikely or hard to come to terms with (curse my western post-enlightenment education!) would this actually qualify as "belief" and would this be appropriate/advisable behaviour? Would you in fact allow me to participate as a communicant? Or alternatively should I wait until I am genuinely convinced about all aspects of the faith before proclaiming myself a believer.
If the latter does it matter what intellectual gymnastics I have performed in order to convince myself? Is the route to "belief" of itself important?
Apologies if this seems tangential but it strikes me as significant.

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Significant indeed, and excellent questions, in my not nearly humble-enough opinion.

If you're not ready to accept the O. Church as the repository of apostolic teaching, I would counsel you not to join. I can't forbid you taking communion because I'm merely a lowly reader (one of the lowliest).

Maybe a story will help explain how I feel about belief. When I was at Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in grad school, I was asked to be on the leadership team. In order to be on the leadership team, I would have to sign IVCF's "Statement of Belief". At that time I did not believe all the things on the statement. Yet I (somehow) felt that God wanted me to be on the team. So I decided to believe it. From that point on, I believed it.

I'm sure I'm weird in this respect. I acknowledge that I need to remember that not everybody will (be able to) approach belief in this sort of way. So I apologize if I have presupposed this to be normative or even normally do-able.

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Originally posted by Mike Truman:

That would include me. Before I started Reader training I had already gone from agnostic to against on the virgin birth, by the time we finished I'd got to the point where I probably don't believe in a literal resurrection the way that most other people believe in a literal resurrection...

The problem is primarily the texts. I believe God COULD do all these things, I just don't think he would have left behind such a vague witness to it if he had...

I believe Jesus was born of a human mother and father in Nazareth. That he was a disciple of John, and later founded his own movement, possibly breaking with John on the issue of how you deal with sinners.

I believe he healed people; I don't know how they were healed, but I don't think it involved suspending the laws of nature - since if God is prepared to do this I have an insurmountable problem of why he doesn't always do it.

I believe he preached a gospel of love and reconciliation which is as valid today as it was then. I believe he was a man so closely aligned to the will of God that he was God in man; both, and entirely.

I believe he was crucified. I *know* he is alive. Therefore he returned to life, though I suspect that the accounts in the gospels contain more theology than history. But his followers became sufficiently convinced of his continued life to found the church rather than collapse into nothing. And they found in that continued life a promise of God's reconciliation with mankid while we ar estill sinners, which I also find today.

Ultimately the story we have is more important than the historical truth behind every step of it. There is a depth of meaning in the story which can't be reached - indeed to me is destroyed - by simple cause and effect atonement theology.

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A few comments and questions.

First, Jesus said "I did not come to bring peace , but a sword" (Matt 10:34). This does not seem to reconcile with your believe that He preached love and reconciliaiton.

I find it interesting that you choose to believe some things, however, given the extent of what you do not believe, do you still call it Chriatianity? Other religions such as Islam, also believe some aspects of the Bible, like you appear to.

How can you have a problem with what God does? God is infinitely just, and as creator, can do whatever he wants (except, as I understnd it, anything which would be against His own character - i.e. evil, etc.).

You stated that you do not even believe that Jesus is God! What do you believe that makes you Christian? Do you believe that God came to earth in the person of His Son, Jesus, who died for our sins, and rose agian to reign in heaven with His Heavenly Father? This is what Christianity is all about. When you said you believe God could have done that, why do you then not believe that He did? Just because he did not leave witnesses credible enough for you is not a sufficient answer. He did it, and He left witnesses who wrote it down.

I know there is a risk that people who go on such courses could end up losing their faith altogether, but in reality it seems as if you end up with faith having been strengthened for being put under the microscope of scrutiny.

Not that I necessarily agree! I think you are influenced by a "modernist approach" in more ways than one. Although you are reading the Gospels from a perspective of faith, many of your conclusions seem to be based more on a good old-fashioned inability/unwillingness to accept the possibility of the miraculous. In general terms, I think this is a new way of going down the old Deist route, which almost led to the death of the Church of England in the 18th/19th centuries.

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Originally posted by FCB:
I think it is important to be not only skeptical about scripture and tradition, but also to be skeptical of this skepticism. Isn't it possible that self proclaimed neutral critics might be ideologically driven?

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Hear, hear.

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Originally posted by The Coot:

Regardless of the number of X chromosomes, the presence of a Y denotes maleness. You don't get XXY women. Persons who are (47,XXY) are males with Klinefelter's Syndrome.

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<bashful smirk> Yes, thank you Coot. I realised that, but alas, 'twas too late. I still stand by my point though - there are ways Jesus could have got his Y chrom, but they all seem either a little contrived, or a little pointless.

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We're talking God here! God who spoke the Creation into being. Even if that and the assorted old testament miracles clapped him right out, I'm sure he could speak a little Y-carrying spermie into being. (Being facetious - the mechanism doesn't matter to me). I belong to a Creedal Church so I accept it.

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Yes he could easily create a little Y chromasome, but then, he could also create a human without the need for a mother. But he chose not to. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I confess, but I think I just don't understand why the mother is so necessary, but the father isn't at all, when the argument for not needing the father is that God is all-powerful. It just seems an odd time to start "bending the rules".

Sorry if I'm not making much sense.

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Originally posted by Ginga:
I just don't understand why the mother is so necessary, but the father isn't at all, when the argument for not needing the father is that God is all-powerful.

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This is certainly a good point. For that matter, if God was all powerful why couldn't He think of another, less curious, way of saving the human race than the incarnation?

The fundamental principle, I think, is that although God can do anything, He wishes to act only in ways that do not detract from human freedom. The method He used, therefore, was a way of interacting with the human race that could result in their salvation, and yet not force them.

So He was born, to all appearances, in the usual way, and appeared to be an ordinary man. The miracles that He did were relatively minor ones compared to Old Testament miracles, or compared to more dramatic ones that we could easily imagine. Their purpose, aside from inspiring belief among a very worldly and very simple population, was to represent the genuine spiritual healing and renewal that He came to bring to the world as a whole.

I think that one of the reasons that He was actually born, instead of simply assuming a human body, was for the purpose of taking on the human heredity so that He could combat the power of hell that was connected to it. I have mentioned this before.

An added aspect to this that my own church teaches is that the heredity from a mother and that from a father are of a slightly different nature. I wouldn't expect others to accept this, but I will mention it anyway, because it partly explains to me why Jesus was born of a human mother but not of a human father. One reason is that the heredity that a person receives from their mother is less fixed and more changeable than that received from their father, which is more permanent.

Of course there is no way to demonstrate this.

But the relevance, in our doctrine anyway, is that Jesus, through combats with the hells, completely expunged the hereditary evil that He received through Mary. This would not have been possible if He had had a human father.

Jesus therefore, having been completely human, became completely divine. Or, rather, He elevated or glorified His humanity so that He became the Divine Human - both completely human and completely divine at the same time. The essential meaning of this is that God in this way put on a human face, coming down so that He could be known, understood, and loved, in a way that an invisile God cannot be. God did not change, He simply showed Himself to us - in a way that we can accept or not accept freely.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
I think that one of the reasons that He was actually born, instead of simply assuming a human body, was for the purpose of taking on the human heredity so that He could combat the power of hell that was connected to it. I have mentioned this before.

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I like this. I shall think on it some more.

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An added aspect to this that my own church teaches is that the heredity from a mother and that from a father are of a slightly different nature. I wouldn't expect others to accept this, but I will mention it anyway, because it partly explains to me why Jesus was born of a human mother but not of a human father. One reason is that the heredity that a person receives from their mother is less fixed and more changeable than that received from their father, which is more permanent.

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This, however, I have a little trouble with. Any chance of an elaboration, at the risk of upsetting those who may have heard it before?

Sharkshooter: The prooftext of Matt 10:34 does not invalidate the claim that Jesus came to preach love and reconciliation, as a survey of the breadth and the height and the depth of that love and reconciliation as shown in the Sermon on the Mount will indicate... I certainly accept that Jesus knew his message would bring division amongst those that accepted it and those that rejected it (which is the point of the sword metaphor, see the parallel in Luke), but the message ITSELF was one of love.

How can I have a problem with what God does? I don't, I have a problem with my own understanding of it if it results in a God who is less loving than I would be. Would you, if you could have saved her, have stood by and watched Sarah Payne die as she did? No, and nor would I. So if I have a view of God's omnipotence that says God did precisely that, I know my view must be wrong. I don't have a clear alternative to offer, that's work in progress.

With respect, I'm not going to answer the rest, except to say that my beliefs are actually firmly in the mainstream of liberalish Christianity - I'm far from being a radical. I'm not interested in a slanging match along the lines of 'you're not a Christian - oh yes I am'; quite apart from anything else it would require the thread to be taken to Hell, and like a good liberal I don't believe it exists...

Amanuensis: I'm not actually a Bultmannite, I do believe in the miraculous, I just think that it normally happens at a mental or spiritual level, not (directly) a physical one.

Thus it is not enough that Jesus merely appeared to be a man; he had to actually BE a man, and thus had to have human DNA, derived from the human race and not merely created ex nihilo. (Which is why I think parthenogenic explanations of his conceiving more convincing than sperm-ex-nihilo ones.)

The one-parent thing is perhaps (this is speculation!) just to drive home the point that he was BOTH human AND divine. By having one human parent (viz Mary) and one divine parent (viz God) this is thrown into sharp relief. Not perhaps (this is spectulation!) that it would be necessary for the God-Man to have no earthly father, but that it really points out the point. (I presume that having no mother would be far more difficult, given the necessity of mothers for gestation in those pre-test-tube days. )

Anyway, it's not like you had this hero and you had to invent some sort of divine origin for him. On the contrary, to save mankind He had to be both human and divine (at least according to Orthodox soteriology, which (it should be obvious) is the sort I think makes the most sense).

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Originally posted by Ginga:
This, however, I have a little trouble with. Any chance of an elaboration, at the risk of upsetting those who may have heard it before?

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I doubt that anyone has heard this before. As far as I know only New Jerusalem Churches teach this. I hope no one will take offense if I describe it for the sake of adding new ideas to the mix.

The principle is that everyone inherits from their parents tendencies to worldliness, self-centeredness, and other negative qualities, as well as positive qualities. This heredity has been accumulating since the beginning of the human race, and is modified in each generation. It replaces the concept of original sin. Since these attributes are only tendencies a person is not guilty of them. Nevertheless, they do serve as the basis through which the hells approach and influence us. Over the course of a person's life the person comes to approve of and carry out these tendencies, or reject them and adopt others that they freely choose.

This heredity comes through both the mother and the father, but the contribution of the two are not identical in nature. Not only do they carry different heredities, but they carry them in different ways - so they do not compete, but fit together. Essentially the male heredity makes up the inner part and the female makes up the outer part, although that doesn't adequately describe this relationship. In many ways the feminine contribution is interior to the masculine. In any case they are designed to fit together perfectly.

During a person's life they respond to their heredity, confirming some parts and rejecting others, and they then pass on a slightly modified version of the heredity they received. The father's heredity, according to this doctrine, changes less from generation to generation, whereas the mother's heredity changes more and is more responsive to a person's choices and environment.

The Lord came into the world as a fully human infant, born in the usual way, and with the same inherited tendencies that everyone has. The only difference was that in His innermost part there was something divine in Him that He had from His Father. It was therefore possible for the human nature that Jesus received from Mary - because of the character of the heredity from a mother - to become fully responsive to this divine nature from the Father. This process was called glorification. This would not have been possible if Jesus' father had been Joseph.

It is not that God can't make anything happen that He wishes. It is that He wishes to operate according to His laws. Even miracles operate according to certain laws. Nothing is simply arbitrary.