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True, divine nature cannot be coded by genetics or else we might eventually be able to create divine nature in the lab! The only coherent response (and I know it's speculative) is that divine nature is something other than DNA. This would seem to be consistent with the belief that God in his essence has no materiality. Could this extra "something" have been added into the womb / foetus AFTER conception? Possibly not since the human being then existed and the die would have been cast. (Adding after would ber a form of adoptionism of course, albeit minimalist). The father had to be "absent" of course because for a natural maturation and birth the mother had to be "present."

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Originally posted by Glenn Oldham:
But ‘The virginal conception is necessary in order that the divine nature be received from the Father and not from Joseph, (who did not possess it)’ is a statement not an explanation. It still leaves it entirely unclear why the inheriting of the divine nature made it necessary for Joseph not to be the father.

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Originally posted by RuthW:
I still see no reason why the incarnation and a natural conception are incompatible.

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Originally posted by Robert Jesse Telford:
Well put Hermit. Although I am starting to think it doesn't matter whether you believe in it or not, after watching that Virgin Mary thing the other day on the Beeb. All you need to do is anchor your faith in a realism that events did indeed happen in the Middle-East, and that much theological discussion is not essential for the strengthening of faith and trust in God.

I don't know whether Mary was a virgin. Does it matter? No.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
[QUOTE]Swedenborgians have any easy time with this question because of the Swedenborgian doctrine that a person receives a distinctly different type of heredity from a father than from a mother.

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Originally posted by mrgrumble_au:
I am familiar with the texts.

What would you have said if you had been Mary and you had been 'fooling around' with Joseph?

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Originally posted by SpO-On-n-ng:
Yes, but Freddy, what do Swedenborgians do about the fact that this seems to have no basis in what has been discovered subsequently by genetic science...?

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Good point. It may not be true.

The idea, however, is that genetic science doesn't even recognize, nor could it describe or quantify, what is called the human "soul" - so how could it be expected to confirm this particular point?

I would not expect that the differences between the male and the female contributions would be detectable by scientific means. These are religious concepts, neither confirmed nor disproved by science. A person has no reason to believe them unless they believe in divine revelation. Even if they do believe in divine revelation, they may not believe that this particular piece of information meets that standard.

I am actually not aware of whether there is research addressing the question of differences between the way that a mother and a father's heredity affects their offspring. I would not expect there to be manifest differences. My maternal grandfather was bald, whereas my paternal one was not - so I hope there is no truth in that old chestnut about baldness coming from the mother's side.

So you are right - it may or may not be true.

My comment was simply that Swedenborgians, having accepted this, which is not contradicted by science, don't struggle with the reasoning behind the virgin birth. It is seen as an absolute necessity, fitting neatly into the entire scheme of how it is that the Incarnation saved the human race.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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Originally posted by PaulTH:
We've already had comments from believers in the virgin birth that DNA has nothing to do with the soul. In that case, why couldn't Jesus have "normal" DNA, ie created from the DNA of two earthly parents and still have a soul direct from God, and of God?

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Originally posted by Cosmo:
I find this whole business irritating and just another attempt by some 'liberal' thinkers (ie the ones who won't allow any other form of opinion to have any validity except their own) to try to de-mystify the Godhead into solely human terms.

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Let us remember that the belief that Jesus Christ had no human father but that he was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit to the Virgin Mary is clearly stated in the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels (Matthew 1f and Luke 1f). It has since been a constant tenet of orthodox Christian theology since the earliest days of the church. It is, at the very least, implied in both the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds and has always been seen by theologians as working hand-in-hand with the Incarnation as both stressing the uniqueness of Christ. Only in the last hundred years or so have liberal theologians attempted to cast doubt on the doctrine.

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I simply don't see the problem with the Virgin Birth. Why is it such a big deal for people like mr_grumble? Might it be because it is miraculous and something that we, as mere humanity, are unable to do or strive towards? Might it be, shock horror, out of our control? We'd better stop believing in the resurrection or the miracle narratives or whole swathes of Christian thought and theology in that case.

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The Virgin Birth removes any association of the taint of Original Sin (or have we stopped believing in that as well now?) with the conception and birth of Christ.

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It also stops any notions of 'adoptionism' and is a powerful argument against the heresy of Arianism (although to hear the constant reduction of emphasis on the divinity of Christ I suspect that Arius musy be getting ready for a comeback tour).

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It stresses the unique personage of Mary and her utter 'purity' in being the vessel for the Son of God and the one to whom he attributes his full humanity.

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To deny the Virgin Birth also presumably, given the texts that we have been given, denies the Annunciation.

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Lastly, why should God bother with going through the whole process of letting Mary and Joseph break Jewish Law, send the Holy Spirit to work through the sperm of Joseph (but presumably 'clean out' Joseph's sperm from traces of Original Sin and making Joseph into a sort of divinely imspired stud pony) and then allow the Church, the 'Body of Christ', to make a complete cock-up (if you will excuse the term) over the centuries concerning the theology of the Conception and Birth of Christ?

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Might it in fact be that the Early Church Fathers, who laboured over these points for so many years, actually got it right with the help of the Holy Spirit? Might it be that God doesn't particularly want his Church to teach fundamentally flawed theology and doctrine, particularly concerning the conception and birth of a part of the Godhead as God and Man? Might it be that in the recent times theologians such as Gore and Temple and Ramsey and Macquarrie and Williams have also got it right in defending the Virgin Birth? Or should we simply bow before mr_grumble who, in his infinite sagacity, has seen through all those charlatans?

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Originally posted by Gunner:
If the Virgin Conception didn't happen then do we say the Resurrection didn't happen.
What do we say of those priests who teach this? Should they be de-frocked?

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Originally posted by Fr. Gregory:
Simon

The Virgin Birth has nothing to do with "tainted sexuality." May wasn't a virgin when she conceived because sex was somehow compromised ... all the arguments about the virginal conception have to do with the Incarnation ... nothing else.

In one important sense Jesus was manifestly NOT one of us. Although subject to temptation he was and is the sinless Son of God.

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Originally posted by PaulTH:
Mousethief
I've never suggested that Jesus was a human body with a divine soul, far from it. I agree that such a person could never save humanity, but many Christians act as if He was just that.

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Originally posted by Ken:
Are you saying that original sin is transmitted only from the father's conribution to conception? What happens then if, as is perhaps possible, somone manages to artificially make a human baby with no father?

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I think this was addressed to me as well.

In the Swedenborgian system there is no such thing as original sin. So the virgin birth was in no way a mechanism for avoiding original sin.

The idea of the Incarnation, in this system, is that God was to come into the world, taking on the sins of the world at the level of humanity and defeating them. He had to come into the world, not because as God He could not easily defeat hell at any point, but because humanity could not defeat hell. Hell did not actually have any power, but for humans it did have power because of the ignorance and evil of the human condition - meant by the darkness and the captivity so often mentioned in the prophecies. This is what needed to be dispelled.

To overcome this, Jesus took it on by birth to a human mother, from whom He inherited all the ignorance and evil inclinations of the human race. This system does not recognize original sin, but it does teach the idea of inherited inclinations to evils of every kind, which are passed down from generation to generation. These inclinations are augmented or diminished according to the free choices and behaviors of each generation.

So the question about what happens when we make babies with no father is not relevant. What a thought, though!

From Mary, therefore, Jesus was born with a human heredity, enabling Him to encounter and overcome evil at the human level. From the Father, however, He was divine, and therefore able to completely subdue the hells from His own power. This was the struggle of His life, culminating in His final temptation, or struggle, on the cross, by which He overcame the desire for natural life itself and all the evil attached to it - completely conquering hell and completely uniting Himself to His inmost divine nature. When He rose, therefore, He was simply the Lord, and said that all power in heaven and on earth was now in His hands.

This is why the virgin birth is so important. It's not that God could not have imparted divinity in a human in any way that He liked, whether from a human father or whatever. He chose to do it in this way because of the normal processes of nature, and because of the normal relationships between what is female and what is male, so that the evil that had become lodged in this natural system could be overcome from within its own walls. If that makes any sense.

Merry Christmas to all on this thread, by the way!

I'm thinking about these things as I wait for the family to wake up, so we can all open our stockings - which I notice that Santa has left hanging by the chimney with care.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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I feel slightly scalded by Cosmo's post - but in a good way.
Thanks to him for clearing up some shakey issues for me.

Cosmo quote

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Might it be that God doesn't particularly want his Church to teach fundamentally flawed theology and doctrine,...

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I actually hadn't thought of how much influence God must have had over the men who developed church tradition. If they were good, prayerful men at all, then of course his will would be done through them.

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The men (and hopefully women ... but I won't get into that right now ) whom God influenced and used in developing Church Tradition were the same kind of men and women whom God influenced and used to construct the Scriptures. The only difference in status concerns the "eye witness" character of most of the biblical tesimonies in the New Testament. The inspired quality of Christian thinking and acting beyond the New Testament canon is not of a radically different order to that within it.

If the Church developed any teaching that was in clear contradiction to Scripture then she would not be true to HERSELF ... as well as God of course. However, that's not to say that the Church doesn't have the freedom to unfold, interpret and develop biblical teaching in the context of human understanding and action; she does. Unless this ongoing work is divinely inspired we have no hope. All we are left with is going back to the text and hoping that it can simply speak for itself. Well, a lot of it can .... but also, a lot of it needs contextualising, explaining, relating, moving forward into the "now" of God's present action. We have not been left as orphans. God has given us the Church to help us find our way. This is one wheel we don't have to reinvent.

The trouble with many exegetes and theologians who are working today is that they are like many young people in the 60's who thought that they had just invented sex. Theological endeavour is a 3500 year old work in progress. Truth didn't just emerge in the last 35 years.

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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™

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mental gymnastics

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Originally posted by PaulTH:
On another thread, Alan came up with a theory that He was effectively a clone of His mother, in which an X chromosome had rapidly evolved into a Y chromosome. Forgive me my scepticism, but I don't believe that happened.

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Originally posted by ChristinaMarie:
I think that the liberal questioning of the Virgin Conception, is more serious than just implying that Christians nearly 2000 years ago, got their facts wrong.

It is a conspiracy theory.

It points to a scenario, where these Christians lied, and fabricated stories, that were untrue, to back up their beliefs.

If this were true, Christianity is bankrupt, both morally and spiritually. It has no integrity.

Many Liberals seem to value integrity, but don't seem to have much trouble scorning the integrity of those who cannot answer for themselves. They have no problem speaking evil of the dead.

I think Liberalism is bankrupt.

It is the Church, that is the 'pillar and bulwark of the truth.' It is the Church that received Jesus' promises.

If the Virgin Birth isn't true, the Church has failed to be the pillar and bulwark of truth, and Jesus' promises have failed, because made-up stories, rather than truth, prevailed.

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Originally posted by RuthW:
Originally posted by ChristinaMarie:
I think that the liberal questioning of the Virgin Conception, is more serious than just implying that Christians nearly 2000 years ago, got their facts wrong.

It is a conspiracy theory.

It points to a scenario, where these Christians lied, and fabricated stories, that were untrue, to back up their beliefs.

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<Ironic tone of voice> Oh no! We've been rumbled!! This is true of course. As soon as it was rumoured that I was no longer a card-carrying conservative, I received through the post, in plain brown paper, a 'Christianity for Liberal Conspirators' package, informing me of all the doctrines, dogma and beliefs etc, that I must now not conform to, having no opinion of my own, naturally, nor the ability to study, pray and experience God in my own life.

This rule book stringently sets down the regulations for the 'Liberal Christian Life' - which of course must bear no resemblance at all to real or proper Christianity; and comes accompanied with a cassette tape which hypnotizes the listener into repeating the same brainless, dishonest hogwash, regardless of what they theymselves may think. For isn't the first rule in the book: You shall not think for yourself, but conform your ideas for the greater glory of THE CONSPIRACY.

Finally, we are instructed that we are no longer to be truthful, or truth-seeking human beings just trying to serve our Lord to the best of our ability etc, etc - no, that's only for a certain kind of Christian, apparently - we are to forsake our natural integrity and the vocation of our baptism vows ('cos, hey, they don't mean anything to us after all, right?) and turn into some kind of anti-Christian lie-spewing parody of a disciple of Christ.

The chief ceremony for conspirators, in case, anyone is interested in turning up for the next one, is the summer solstice eve, where we meet on desecrated ground, wear our surplices inside out, and chant the Creed backwards. Oh, and our names are entered into the 'Liberal Conspirators Handbook' in blood...... <Ironic tone off>

Just another bit of nonsense to add to the quote above!


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Irish dogs needing homes! http://www.dogactionwelfaregroup.ie/ Greyhounds and Lurchers are shipped over to England for rehoming too!