Question of the Week 3 – What about the Virgin Birth?

Why should the Virgin Birth be thought incredible? We looked at this question last Sunday…..

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Turning Christmas into Mythmas – Why we shouldn’t ditch the virgin birth

This is part of chapter one of Magnificent Obsession

The Virgin Birth

But let’s go on to loat some of the actual history.   Probably the most important thing about the birth of Christ, is what is known as the Virgin Birth. Larry King was once asked who he would like to interview if he had his pick from all history – his answer?   Jesus Christ.   ‘What is the one question you would like to ask him? “  “  I would ask him if he was indeed virgin-born, because the answer to that would define history for me”.

Hitchens of course has no doubt.  And you seemed to have been impressed by this.  But in reality Hitchens pronoucements are largely bluster.  “Matthew and Luke cannot concur on the virgin birth”[1] ;. His comments on Isaiah 7:14 are particularly interesting –  “The word translated as ‘virgin, namely almah, means only a young woman’.[2] I don’t think you were at the eventful Belfast University meeting I spoke at a few years ago,  but I did tell you about it.  Apart from the almost riot between the Free Presbyterian creationists and the militant ‘you are all going to atheist hell’ secularists, the most interesting part of the meeting was when a young man dressed in his black Goth outfit complete with chains and nose studs, shouted out from the back, “there are hundreds of Greek, Egyptian and Roman myths about babies being born on the 25^th of December, why should we believe yours?”.  I broke the cardinal rule of polite debating by mocking him, “You, sir, are a prime example of the dangers of Wikipedia” – before going on to point out that the fallacies within his statement.   At the end of the evening he was standing at the back of a long queue, looking really angry.  I took my time signing books but he was very patient and waited, and waited.  When it was his turn I shook his hand and apologised for putting him down.  But he just laughed – “no”. he replied,”I thought you were going to give me some of that Christian XXXX, and I was going to walk out.  But you called me on it.  You were right I hadn’t a clue what I was talking about.  Cheers”.  And off he went.

Sadly Hitchens argues at that level.  I am sorry to say that but it is not unreasonable to treat as bluster the statements of a man who can declare that Augustine, the writer of at least two of the greatest books in human history, was “an ignoramus”[3].   Unlike Hitchens, E J Young and Robert Dick Wilson did serious research on the meaning of the nine occurences of ‘almah’ in the Old Testament.   Both concluded that the word is never employed to describe a married woman and that the Septuagint (cited by Matthew’s gospel) was right to translate it in Greek as ‘parthenos’ (virgin).

Hitchens though is in good/bad company.  There are many more ‘sophisticated’ clergymen who are stuck in a 19^th Century paradigm of ‘miracles don’t happen’ and so do their best to dismiss it as untrue or unimportant.  Tony Jordan, a scriptwriter for the BBC series Eastenders did an excellent miniseries on the Nativity.  He describes his experience in researching this – “I sat with these men of the cloth, these were organised religion.  They were all explaining to me about the Nativity and about how it never happened.  And they were saying, ‘well of course, Mespotamia….mumble, mumble – there was always the legend of the virgin birth’  And I’m thinking, ‘What?  Hang on a minute! You’re on the wrong side, that doesn’t work.’  So I despair of them”  (Tony Jordan – interview in Christianity Magazine March 2012) .  Indeed.   The ‘evangelical’ liberal, Rob Bell, likened the virgin birth to one brick in a wall of theology.  “What do you lose if you lose that one brick?” To which the best reply was that of Mark Driscoll – “nothing, except Jesus”.   The virgin birth of Christ is one of the key doctrines of Christianity and without it you do not have Christ.  It’s a bit like the man who goes into the local fish ‘n’ chip shop and announces ‘I’ll have a fish supper, without the fish’!  Christianity without the virgin birth of Christ is Christianity without Christ.

I have to confess that I have never understood why the virgin birth was seen as such a stumbling block.  If human beings can manufacture a situation whereby a woman can become pregnant without the necessity of sexual intercourse, why should we consider it impossible for an Almighty God to do so?  He does not need IVF or a turkey baster!  The trouble is that people start off with the pre-supposition that such a God does not exist and therefore a non-existent being cannot perform such a miracle.  This is the ultimate in circular and irrational thinking.  To claim that a virgin birth cannot happen because the Being who could make such a thing happen does not exist, really says nothing, other than about the prejudices of the person making the claim. Likewise I am NOT stating that merely claiming it did happen makes it true.  However I AM stating that by definition it is not self-evidently impossible that an Almighty God could do this one small miracle!

It all does make sense.  So much so that there is an increasing trend amongst those who once thought sceptical atheism was the only way to fly, to turn or return to the fold.   You are too young to remember this but AN Wilson was one of the most famous atheists in the United Kingdom.  In 1992 he wrote a famous book entitled Jesus: A Life in which he argued the conformist position of the time that the Gospels were just legends.  17 years later one Saturday afternoon, I was doing my usual, lying in the bath, drinking a coffee and reading The Spectator (in my view the magazine with the best writing of English in the world), when I had one of those ‘Eureka’ moments.  I almost shouted for joy to read an article by the aforementioned Mr Wilson, renouncing his atheism and his return to Christianity.  

Tim Keller tells the story of the novelist Anne Rice who had lost her childhood faith but when she began to read the work of sceptical scholars it had the opposite effect than that which they would have supposed.  “The whole case for the non-divine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified if he knew it – that whole picture which had floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years.  That case was not made.” [4]

I leave you with that thought.  Please feel free to get back to me.  I am sorry that I have skimmed over these deep topics in such a quick fashion but if you want to investigate this further then can I suggest the following books to help.  Richard Bauckam – Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.  FF Bruce, The New Testament Documents, and John Dickson’s The Christ Files – How historian knows what they know about Jesus

  Yours etc

David