RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Virgin Birth
lier preaching, the clue to the perfect fulfilment of both the royal and the prophetic hopes of Israel in a person of divine excellence is found in the divine designation of Jesus as the Messiah. Schleiermacher suggested that the exclusion of Joseph from participation in the conception of Jesus does not relieve the difficulty (Der christliche Glaube, § 97, 7th ed., Gotha, 1889; cf. Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, i. 153-154, Tubingen, 1835), for Mary was likewise subject to original sin, and must have contributed of her sinful principle to Jesus. Moreover, Schultz has shown that the Scriptures represent woman as weaker and more susceptible to temptation than is man (Die Lehre von der Gottheit Jesu, p. 593, Gotha, 1881). To avoid this general conclusion, different positions have been taken: (1) that in the conception Mary was wholly passive; hence no sinful impulse was communicated from her to the new life; (2) Jesus was born not of (ek) but through (dia) Mary, a docetic position of certain Gnostics (cf. Tertullian, Adv. Valentinum, xxvii., ANF, vol. iii.); (3) by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (q.v.), Mary, although born of a human father and mother, was herself miraculously preserved from both hereditary and actual sinfulness. Yet from the common Protestant point of view it is objected that the assumptions underlying these positions are invalid; the laws of natural generation are themselves ordained by God, and, accordingly, are not sinful. Even if the conception was as alleged, still during the period of gestation her influence was normal with the unborn child (Lobstein, ut sup., pp. 84 sqq.). Calvin maintained that Jesus was perfectly immaculate, not because man had no part in his conception, but because he was sanctified by the Spirit so that his generation was as pure and holy as it would have been before Adam’s fall (Institutes, II., xiii. 3-4).
A further dogmatic use of the virgin birth grounds the incarnation on it. While one can not a priori affirm that such a birth was a necessary form of divine action, nor that the doctrine of the incarnation is historically traced to such a birth, yet this would seem the more congruous to the event (cf. W. N. Clarke, Outline of Christian Theology, pp. 289 sqq., New York, 1898). The affirmation is further made that, given an eternal preexisting
being who is born without changing
29. Dog- or taking a new personality, but merematic Bear- ly by assuming a new nature and en-
ing on tering new conditions of experience, Incarnation. this can not be thought of as occurring by the ordinary process of generation,
since this involves the beginning of a new personality. Denial of the virgin birth, therefore, is tantamount to the reduction of Jesus to the rank of a purely human personality, however intimate his relation with God (cf. Gore, Dissertations, pp. 64— 65). In addition it is maintained that the spiritual miracle in the person of Christ requires a corresponding physical miracle, and since this goes down to the ultimate ground of Mary’s nature, a second miracle of the same sort with reference to Joseph would be uanecessary; while the mode of the event symbolizes the unique character of the person (Orr, ut sup., pp. 223 sqq.). On the other hand, many of
those who deny the virgin birth deny not only the virgin life (cf. A. B. Bruce, Apologetics, p. 410, New York, 1892), but also the traditional theory of the incarnation; the latter, however, not because of denial of the virgin birth. The Nicene Creed con~nected the incarnation with the virgin birth, but this was for the sake, not of basing the incarnation on the birth of Christ, but of showing its reality, i.e., the reality of his human nature as against Gnostic interpretations and tendencies (cf. A. C. McGiffert, Apostles’ Creed, New York, 1902). That view of the incarnation which seeks the proof of Christ’s divinity in his ethical and spiritual revelation of God naturally lays less stress upon the virgin birth than upon the character of his consciousness and the impression he makes upon men.
It has been urged that in the doctrine of the virgin birth the divinity of Christ is lowered from a spiritual to a natural basis, his full humanity sacrificed, and an illusory wall reared between the natural and supernatural (cf. Lobstein, ut sup., pp. 106 sqq.). Those who hold that the idea of the virgin birth is an amalgamation of Jewish Messianism and Hellenistic Logos doctrine, or who maintain that the most exalted Christology owes nothing to this tradition, have no dogmatic interest in this question (cf. Biblical World, x. 1 sqq.). One may ignore the inquiry into origins, or may declare this to be a secret hidden in the personality of Jesus (cf. A. Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Verséhnung, iii. 426, Bonn, 1874; A. Harnack, What is Christianity ? 3d ed., London, 1904).
The conclusions may be thus summarized: (1) The first and third Gospels are our sole authority for the virgin birth of Jesus. (2) The stories as they appear in these Gospels are independent of each other and
are from different sources, but whether
30. Sum- they were written or oral, and whether
mary. Matthew’s account is dependent on Joseph and Luke’s on Mary, does not
appear. (3) The writings of Paul and John contain no indisputable reference to these stories—they neither presuppose, nor contradict, nor draw conclusions from them; they do, however, involve a superhuman and pre-earthly being who became incarnate in Jesus. (4) With unimportant exceptions the entire early Church in the interest of Jesus’ real humanity and divine nature acknowledged the virgin birth. (5) The connection proposed between the story of the virgin birth and stories of supernatural births in the Old Testament, in classic antiquity, in the wide-spread hope of a world Redeemer, and in folk-lore, has not been established. (6) The doctrine has important bearings on the incarnation and sinlessness of Jesus, but it is not essential either to these or to Christian experience. (7) The story itself, in comparison with all other stories of supernatural births, is one of unique and incomparable beauty, befitting the creative entrance of Jesus into our earthly lot, to live the life of God under human conditions; he who knows the mystery of the beginnings of life, and remembers with what meaning this story has been invested by men of deepest insight through the Christian centuries, will not tear it from the Gospels, but will with the holy Catholic Church confess, ‘‘I believe in . . . Jesus Christ,
Virtue Visitatio