THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
dead man. Among many peoples the belief is general that a previously existing soul, whether human, animal, or vegetable, spontaneously, without union of the sexes, enters the body of a woman and causes pregnancy, whence a new being reappears in a new form. Such beliefs or theories can be explained in part only on the ground of wide-spread ignorance of the invariable physiological conditions of reproduction. As the cause of death, so also the cause of birth remained hidden. The relation of the mother to the offspring is constant and unequiyocal, while that of the father, owing to economic or religious conditions, is often indifferent and not well understood. Even where knowledge of the laws of reproduction have become more extended and better established, tradition still maintains its hold in popular myths concerning the birth-stories of great men in primitive times (cf. Hartland, ut sup., and his Legend of Perseus, 3 vols., London, 1894-96). Nowhere, perhaps, has comparative religion discovered a more impressive instance of virgin birth than in the Eleusinian Mysteries. The supreme moment of the solemn celebration of these rites was marked by the marriage of the sacred mother and the birth of the sacred child. The mother was Brimo, a maiden, a goddess of the underworld, the Thessalian Kore or Demeter, the goddess of the fruits of the cultivated earth. At night, in deep darkness, and in perfect chastity, the mimetic marriage was enacted by the hierophant and the chief priestess of Demeter. Immediately afterward the hierophant came forth into a blaze of torches, and with a loud voice cried to the initiates that the great and unspeakable mystery was accomplished: ‘‘ Holy Brimo has borne a sacred child, Brimos,” “‘ the mighty has borne the mighty, and holy is the generation that is spiritual, heavenly, from above, and mighty is he who is so engendered ” (Philosophumena, p. 170, Paris, 1860; cf. Harrison, ut sup., pp. 525, 548 sqq.; Tertullian, Ad Nationes, ii. 7). Since the begetting and the birth were both symbolical, the mystic rite was performed without physical contamination, the ““ mother ”’ remaining a maiden still. Thus at the very heart and culmination of the ceremonies at this sacred shrine in ancient Greece, centuries before its appearance in the Septuagint, the dogma had been created, ‘‘ A virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son.”
The legendary theory has a vast background and makes an impressive showing. The point is not so much that birth from a virgin is alleged—this is seldom the case—as that the conception is super-
natural. That the stories are some-
26. Criti- times gross signifies that they are an
cism of the integral part of the religions in which Legendary they are found; a spiritual religion Theory. would transform the supernatural agency into forms of action worthy of a spiritual being. The most vigorous advocates of this theory do not, however, claim that they have more than presumptive evidence for their view; the historical connection between the universal myth of supernatural birth and the stories of the New Testament has not yet been traced. It remains to consider the dogmatic bearings of
the virgin birth. To the tenet of the Lutheran church of Germany, “ that the Son of God ‘ conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary ’ is the foundation of Christianity,’ Harnack replies: “ Tt is a dangerous but fallacious dilemma that the idea of the God-man stands or falls with the virgin birth” (Das apostolische Glaubensbekenntniss, p. 39), and he adds, ‘‘ If this were the case, ill would fare Mark, ill Paul, ill John, ill Christianity.”” Ropes (ut sup., p. 695) declares that ‘‘ Good Christian men may take opposite sides of this question, without giving up that which is vital and cardinal to the faith.’ It formed no part of the preaching or mes-
sage of the apostles, and no doctrinal
27. Is the use is made of it in the New Testament. Dogma On the supposition that the writers of Essential the New Testament outside of the First to Chris- and Third Gospel knew of the virgin tianity? birth, they never availed themselves of it in the formulation of any doc-
trine. Other theories of the person of Christ were
both suggested, and were more or less constitutive in the earliest Christian teaching (see Son or Gop). The divine element in Christ has been explained as an endowment conferred at his baptism. Paul, John, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews make very significant use of both the fact and the nature of the preexistent element in Christ’s person. It has been contended that between preexistence and the nativity account in Matthew and Luke there is an irreconcilable contradiction, since both of these Gospels speak as if, by the action of the Spirit of God, a new individual in all respects came into being (cf. A. Réville, Histoire du dogme de la divinité de Jésus-Christ, p. 30, Paris, 1869; Orr, ut sup., pp. 208 sqq.). It is true that the Kenosis theories (see CHrisroLoGy, Krnosis) have been proposed, and with elaborate and ingenious refinement have been made to serve as mediators between the Pauline and Johannean conscious preexistence, on the one hand, and on the other, the narratives of the infancy and the development of Jesus; but instead of elucidating, they have made still more perplexing the profound mystery of the person of Christ, and are falling into disfavor.
The dogmatic use of the virgin birth involves two considerations—sinlessness and incarnation. Its bearing on sinlessness rests on two postulates, that contamination derived fromAdam’s sin through natural generation is inevitable, and that there was in Jesus Christ a divine, preexistent element which
is not in us; hence his human nature
28. Dog- differed from ours, and, accordingly, matic Bear- he was not affected by Adam’s sin.
ingon In the position that sinlessness de- Sinlessness. pended upon the virgin birth, there is assumed the Augustinian doctrine of
the fall of man, and also the invariable hereditary taint of sin transmitted through ordinary processes of human birth. Of this basis of sinlessness the New Testament knows nothing. Paul finds the secret of Jesus’ character in the peculiar nature of his person in relation to preexistence (cf. Phil. ii. 5:sqq.; Rom. viii. 3, ix. 5; Gal. iv. 4; II Cor. viii. 9). For John the Logos doctrine offered the key to the supreme grace and truth of Christ. In the ear-