BIBLE STUDY BOOKLET

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	THE VIRGIN BIRTH By Theo Todman INTRODUCTION

Acknowledgements

While this booklet is intended to be a thoughtful study and to be thought provoking, it is necessarily confined by the space available. Those seeking a thorough study of some 400 pages should consult J. Gresham Machen The Virgin Birth of Christ (James Clark, 1958). I would like to express appreciation of two other works that I have found especially valuable in preparing this booklet. They are The Virgin Birth in the Theology of the Ancient Church by Hans von Campenhausen (SCM, 1964) and The Birth of the Messiah by Raymond E. Brown (Doubleday, 1979). The booklet by Keith Ward, Evidence for the Virgin Birth (Mowbray, 1987), though even shorter than my own, was also a stimulus.

Introduction

Why write a booklet on the Virgin Birth? It is now some time since David Jerkins, the Bishop of Durham, was rumoured not to believe in this doctrine, so perhaps it is time to forget it again, as is our usual habit? I think this sort of attitude is a reason for giving the subject an airing. I have never heard it preached upon, and it is all too easy either to be embarrassed by the subject or to use it as a yardstick or shibboleth to distinguish between the real believers and the theologians.

This negative view will not do if we claim to be Biblical Christians. We misuse the doctrine if all we use it for is as a talisman to ward off liberals. We ought rather to reflect on the doctrine and ask ourselves what it means, and in particular what Matthew and Luke intended their readers to understand by the accounts they recorded.

Given the above thoughts, the reader may be surprised to find a large proportion of this booklet taken up with questions and objections raised concerning the doctrine. This is partly explained by the origins of the booklet, which is basically a reworking and expansion of lecture notes delivered during 1987 at three Open Bible Trust Conferences entitled Fundamentals under Fire. In the lectures I used the Virgin Birth to illustrate some of the considerations that have to be faced in the defence of an inerrant Scripture and to demonstrate that the "miraculous" events in Scripture cannot simply be written off without risking the shipwreck of the Christian faith.

However, the approach I have adopted in this booklet also reflects my concern that it is all too easy for us to be intellectually passive when reading or even studying our Bibles. We don't ask questions. In particular, it is easy for us to become immune to the conflict between the world view of the Biblical writers and that of the modern world in which we live and work, the world, whether we speak of it in these terms or not, of reductionism and determinism. In the modern world we habitually seek to explain the unexplained by showing how it can be constructed out of things we already understand: miracles, by definition, do not happen. In today's world, miracles, when they are not seen to be obviously fictitious, are simply taken to be natural events awaiting an explanation.

We must ask ourselves a key question: "Is this modern world the same world as that depicted in the Bible?" Some would say "Yes! Can't you see the miracles happening all around you?" Others would say "Yes! Miracles didn't happen then and they sure don't happen now!" Others, like myself, would say "No! The world is in some sense different now from then." Then, for various reasons outside the scope of this booklet, and I am thinking particularly of the period covered by the Gospels and Acts, miracles happened. Now, for various other reasons, they don't, or at least not when I'm around ! A number of booklets investigating such questions are available from The Open Bible Trust.

Those who believe in contemporary miracles should have no difficulty believing in ancient ones. Those who do not, however, need to put themselves to the test. Anyone wishing to respond to the Gospel needs to be able to imagine himself in the world of 2,000 years ago, that fluid, Hellenistic world held together by the Pax Romanum, in so many ways like our own, and imagine himself, with his modern mind, responding to these reported incidents, either by accepting or by rejecting them.

The virgin birth is only one of many miracles recorded in the New Testament, but it sets the hallmark on our Lord's earthly life, which was encompassed by miracle, not only in his ministry, but also in his resurrection and ascension. It is this miraculous Jesus in whom we must believe if we are to be Biblical Christians.

Plan of the Booklet

After defining what is meant by the term "virgin birth", I have then analysed the two major passages in the New Testament that deal with the subject. To help with this study I have placed the various themes of the two accounts side by side for comparison and contrast. I have then considered various objections to these passages, firstly from within Scripture itself, when I have also examined some of the other passages of Scripture that are alleged to have a bearing on our subject, and then from external sources. I am conscious that I have not been able to find perfect answers to these questions, many of them my own. Finally, I have endeavoured to determine the theological importance and meaning of the virgin birth, by reference both to Scripture and to the investigations of the early church Fathers.

The Subject

When we talk about the virgin birth, what do we mean? The term has probably come from the Apostles Creed, which states that the Lord Jesus Christ was 'Born of the Virgin Mary'. However, when we speak Scripturally of this doctrine, what we are really talking about is his virgin conception. As far as we know from Scripture, Jesus' birth was perfectly normal. It was the manner of his conception that was unusual. Rather than having been conceived, like the rest of us, through the agency of a human father he was conceived by the agency of the Holy Spirit. Throughout this process, his mother, Mary, remained a virgin. Hence the term 'the Virgin Mary'.

It was only in later doctrinal developments, when the centre of interest in the debates surrounding the Lord's nativity had shifted slightly from the Lord to his mother, that the concept of a virgin birth proper started to emerge. As it was felt necessary to preserve Mary perpetually inviolate to make her, in some sense, a fitting mother of our Lord, the idea of Jesus having been born in some miraculous manner, without passage through the birth canal, arose - the so called "virginitas in partu". We will discuss these ideas later for the light they shed on misunderstandings of the virgin birth. It is sufficient to record here that, as far as I can see, they are wholly extra-Scriptural and therefore of no spiritual authority.