Tag Archives: Incarnation

What About the Virgin Birth?

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The Adoration of the Shepherds, by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1753

It’s Christmas: the time set aside each year to celebrate the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Word taking on human flesh, the birth of our Lord and Savior – Jesus, the Christ. But the way He invaded our corrupt world has long been a sticking point for some people. So let’s work through an issue related to that today.

I am, of course, referring to the “Virgin Birth”. You’ll find it recounted in the gospels of Matthew [Mt 1:18-24] and Luke [Lk 1:26-38], and noted as a core belief in the earliest creeds. At Christmas time, you may even reference it in singing carols, like the traditional verses below:

“Christ, by highest heaven adored,
Christ, the everlasting Lord,
late in time behold him come,
offspring of the Virgin’s womb:
veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
hail th’incarnate Deity,
pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus, our Immanuel.”
– “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” verse 2

“Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
’round yon virgin mother and child!
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace.”
– “Silent Night! Holy Night!” verse 1

For many, singing such lyrics is more about tradition and nostalgia than singing their beliefs. Yet this has been a fundamental part of Christianity from early on. Why is that? First off, if the Bible really is God’s special revelation to us, inspired by the One who cannot lie [Heb 6:18], then we must take seriously the clear statements in the gospels that Mary was a virgin and Jesus was conceived through the work of the Holy Spirit, not having a human father. That said, one point of clarification is that while it is typically called the “virgin birth”, it is really the unique case of virgin conception that is at issue here. The birth was presumably like any other. But back to the the main issue: a virgin conception isn’t possible, right? Of course it’s not – naturally. A new human life requires 46 chromosomes, and the mother only provides half of those. But that is what makes it a miracle: it is an occurrence in nature that requires supernatural intervention to be accomplished. However, while God has created a very orderly machine-like universe, that does not preclude the machine’s Designer and Creator from bypassing the usual workings to produce a desired result. And from the record we have of such interventions, they are far from arbitrary interference, but rather special signs to a) draw our attention to the message behind the event, and b) prove the legitimacy of the message by the inexplicability of the event apart from divine intervention. The virgin conception was no different.  It was a sign that God was at work here to accomplish something big.

But this leads to that larger purpose served by it, and I think it is something that actually makes a virgin conception necessary if Jesus was to be “truly God and truly man”, as the Chalcedonian Creed would say. Jesus could not inherit a sinful nature if he was to be the perfect, sinless sacrifice that would satisfy the wrath of God. Yet ever since Adam and Eve first disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, humans have suffered from sin, and “there is none righteous, not even one” [Rom 3:10]. How then could God the Son be born as a human, live a perfect life, and offer Himself as an unblemished, atoning, redemptive sacrifice for each of us, if He was born into sin like the rest of us [Ps 51:5, 1Kin 8:46]?

This is where I think a look at two views of ensoulment is profitable. If we recognize the existence of an immaterial “self” that is a key part of who we are, commonly considered as the soul of a person, apart from their material body, then we must ponder how that comes to be. One view is special creation: each human being’s soul is specially created by God and implanted at some point between conception and birth. Another view is called the Traducian view, from the Latin word for a branch of a vine. This view holds that special creation was limited to Adam and Eve as the first humans, and that humans since then have the distinct privilege (and responsibility) of partaking in creation as instrumental causes not just of the physical life of their children, but also of their souls as well. In this way, while mankind was created “in the image of God” [Ge 1:27], a spiritual deadness and propensity to sin are passed down to subsequent generations as part of our very nature after Adam and Eve sinned. What was created good and reflective of God was polluted, marred, corrupted. Much like a genetic defect in our physical bodies, our nonphysical souls have inherited a sin nature from our parents that we are powerless to overcome without the regenerating call to life of the Holy Spirit. What I find particularly interesting about the Traducian idea is that this does explain why the Virgin Conception of Jesus was necessary – Jesus could take on human nature but without that inherited corruption that had been passed down from Adam. Now, whether the Traducian view of ensoulment is the correct one or not, God only knows, but it seems to have significant explanatory power in answering why the virgin conception of Christ was necessary in the first place. Just a little something to chew on this week as thoughts of our Savior take center stage during this season of the year. Blessings, y’all, and … MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

The Twin Pillars of Christmas & Easter

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National Building Museum, Washington DC, 2017. Author’s photo.

As the Christmas celebrations wrapped up, a friend shared the following quote yesterday from atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman:

“The God of Christmas is not a God of wrath, judgment, sin, punishment, or vengeance. He is a God of love, who wants the best for people and gives of himself to bring peace, joy, and redemption. That’s a great image of a divine being. This is not a God who is waiting for you to die so he can send you into eternal torment. It is a God who is concerned for you and your world, who wants to solve your problems, heal your wounds, remove your pain, bring you joy, peace, happiness, healing, and wholeness. Can’t we keep that image with us all the time? Can’t we affirm that view of ultimate reality 52 weeks of the year instead of just a few? I myself do not believe in God. But if I did, that would be the God I would defend, promote, and proclaim. Enough of war! Enough of starvation! Enough of epidemics! Enough of pain! Enough of misery! Enough of abject loneliness! Enough of violence, hatred, narcissism, self-aggrandizement, and suffering of every kind! Give me the God of Christmas, the God of love, the God of an innocent child in a manger, who comes to bring salvation and wholeness to the world, the way it was always meant to be.”[1, emphasis mine]

I get it. We tend to like the “God of Christmas”: the God who sends Jesus to be born as one of us, the God who so loved the world that He sent His Son for us, the God who is “pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Immanuel!”[2] Unless you have some psychosis where you resent being loved, who wouldn’t want “that God”? But here’s the thing. God isn’t one-dimensional. We often complain about books and movies where the character development is shallow, and each character has one personality trait that is exaggerated to the exclusion of all others. Then, why do we want God to be equally one-dimensional? Can He not be loving and just? But justice requires the judgement that Bart resents. Can He not love us, and punish evildoers? It’s hard to complain of the “problem of evil” if you specifically reject a God who judges and punishes evil.

What I think Bart is missing is that the “God of Christmas” is necessarily the same “God of the Cross”. You can’t have the manger without the cross, or the cross without the manger; they are twin pillars  in God’s plan of redemption.  We must not forget that the birth of Christ is not really functional without the other pillar: Easter. These two events, separated by about 33 years, mark the beginning and completion of a critical phase of God’s redemption plan established before the world was even formed. If Jesus had simply materialized at the cross to be a sacrifice for our sin, he wouldn’t have lived a sinless life [2Cor 5:21, Heb 4:15] to be an unblemished sacrifice [Heb 9:14]. If Jesus had been born and lived His perfect life, only to die the familiar and final death of men, then He would’ve been a great teacher and role model, but not our redeemer bringing eternal life, and we would be no better off than before He came. We can’t have one without the other. While we may feel more comfortable with the lowly child Jesus, the incarnation through a virgin birth was the necessary beginning that must end in the crucifixion and resurrection. The purpose of Jesus becoming that “innocent child in a manger” that would satisfy Bart, was to become the sacrifice that would satisfy the wrath of God that Bart resents.

Does wrath make you uncomfortable? It should. Left to face the perfectly fair justice of God on our own, wrath is rightly ours to bear. But that doesn’t have to be our fate. For God so loved the world, that He sent His Son [Jn 3:16], not to stay a sweet lowly baby, not to merely be a good teacher, and not to be an interesting story to ponder centuries later, but to be the mediator between us and God [1Tim 2:5], to be our great High Priest [Heb 2:17-18, 7:25], to pay the price for sin that we might receive the free gift of God [Rom 3:23-24, 5:8, 6:23]! There is no dichotomy here – the  God of Christmas and the God of the Cross are one and the same. For that sweet baby came to be our ransom and take the wrath of God; and the cross and subsequent resurrection were the culmination of God’s love for us in sending Jesus to redeem us, and Jesus’s love for us in sacrificing His life for us. Christmas and Easter are both necessary pillars supporting God’s plan for our salvation. So give me that God, that is big enough to orchestrate a plan so much grander and better than anything Bart Ehrman, or me, or anyone else could ever come up with. Give me that God, who is loving and just, whose wrath is righteous, who is the only one who can be trusted with vengeance, who judges fairly and consistently, yet whose mercy and grace are unfathomable.  Give me that God, who loved me while I was His enemy, with a costly, sacrificial love, but also loves me enough to not let me stay wallowing in my sin. Rather He disciplines me, convicts me, molds me, even though it’s uncomfortable, but it’s for my own good, even when I can’t see that far.

In short, give me… the God of the Bible.

[1] Bart Ehrman’s blog, from Christmas Eve, 2017, https://ehrmanblog.org/christmas-reflection-2017, accessed 2017-12-26.
[2] Charles Wesley, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, verse 2.