Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Virgin Birth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virgin Birth. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Process Theology, Miracles, and the Virgin Birth


The Immaculate Conception by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo,
1767–1769, in the Museo del Prado, Spain


Process Theology, Miracles,
and the Virgin Birth

by R.E. Slater


The Immaculate Conception of Mary

The Catholic phrase of immaculate conception refers to the Virgin Mary as without sin and thus able to reproduce the birth of Jesus without male insemination. Protestants differ with the Catholic sentiment and state that Mary was no different than any other human born of sin since Adam and Eve's transgressions onwards. Myself, I am learning to re-envision humanity in the image of God yet marred by sin. Meaning, that humanity holds and reveals the Godhead as much as it must deal with the fallenness of it's image of God. Regardless of percentages, whether more good than bad, or more bad than good, it doesn't matter. What matters is that humanity (as well as creation itself) needed a God who would come incarnate into this world to atone for our fallenness to thereby redeem creation unto its fullest potential in beauty, joy, strival for good, thrival for healing all we touch, and generally help God to rebirth humanity and creation towards fullness fraught with struggle, hardship, fallenness, and evil.

Secondly, the Catholic statement of immaculation is an expression of an older idea that thought of all things of matter and flesh as being evil, or touched by evil. It is a sentiment found in Zoroastrianism which had bled down in Judaism and Christianity believing in a primal "urge" and "demi-urge" disspelling downwards and downwards into the human condition. By and by it came to mean that all things which are of the flesh is evil. Though found within certain parts of the church, many churches state this is not true. That God created all things as good and holy and not as evil. Process Theology further consolidates this idea by stating that rather than thinking in terms of gradations of sin and evil we simply think of humanity and creation as good but inflicted in varying degrees by sin and evil (cf. Original Sin).

Wikipedia - "The Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that Mary, mother of Jesus has been free of original sin from the moment of her conception. It proved controversial in the Middle Ages, but was revived in the 19th century and was adopted as Church dogma when Pope Pius IX promulgated Ineffabilis Deus in 1854. This followed Ubi primum, an 1849 encyclical wherein Pius had asked the bishops for their opinions on the matter, resulting in overwhelming support from the Church's hierarchy.

"Protestants rejected Ineffabilis Deus as an exercise in papal power and the doctrine itself as without foundation in Scripture. Eastern Orthodoxy, although it reveres Mary in its liturgy, called on the Roman church to return to the faith of early centuries.

"The iconography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception shows her standing, with arms outstretched or hands clasped in prayer, and her feast day is 8 December."

 

Bisexuality is Rare but not Uncommon in Nature

Allow me please to skip ahead to the virgin birth itself. How it is completely likely to be generative from the human body without imposition of sin upon the flesh (as the Church tends to think of the human condition, whether Catholic or Protestant) or with the need for an ex cathedra enactment of a miracle per se as we normally (but incorrectly) think of miracles. I will try to explain both ideas through a biological examination of things we find in nature which are rare, but not uncommon, using biological terms. Please bear with me.

Bisexuality is Found in Nature

The adage "bisexuality isn't natural" cannot be used anymore by the church. Clearly it is not true in the blobby green algae world of nature. Bisexuality is a natural but distinctly different form of sexuality from sexuality (male-female) or asexual-only reproduction.

This third type of reproductive system is known as hermaphroditic reproductivity which changes between male or female sexual expressions thus insuring the future survival of the species without regard to environmental conditions:

"Mixed mating systems such as trioecy may represent intermediate states of evolutionary transitions between dioecious (with male and female) and monoecious (with only hermaphrodites) mating systems in diploid organisms...." - Nature (below)

--- 

Trioecy (or subdioecy) is an extremely rare reproductive system characterized by the coexistence of males, females, and hermaphrodites. It has been found in both plants and animals. Trioecy is sometimes referred to as a mixed mating system alongside androdieocy and gyndioecy. Trioecy has been estimated to occur in about 3.6% of flowering plants, although most reports of trioecy are misinterpretions of gynodioecy. - Wikipedia

Reframing Miracles and the Virgin Birth

So the quips of God not making an "Adam and Steve" pretty much falls on deaf ears in the algae kingdom where bisexuality does exist as a rarity. And as an aside, let me suggest how miracles work in a process-filled creation:

A number of years ago I had given as a tentative explanation for the virgin birth of Christ the observation that there may have been one rare example of trioecy in the human species in Jesus' mother Mary. When saying this I reframed the idea of miracles not as external alien forces placed upon the natural creative order but as internal "natural" forces from within nature / creation. - re slater

 

Firstly,... later I discovered this would be well within keeping when applying by rigorous usage the rules of process theology to a process-based creative order. It keeps within the rules of not stepping outside of nature to perform something "miraculously" through nature by God by using nature itself to perform that enhanced, fully natural, miracle.

Secondly, ... nor does it create exterior conditions foreign to the natural systems we live in by a God who works well within the parameters of nature itself. That is, God has imbued nature with the ability to be creative and novel through its own natural forces.

Thirdly, "miracles" as defined by process theology must therefore be wholly congruent within the natural system itself. It cannot come from the "ether" nor fabricated from a different kind of spacetime external to our own spacetime referential.

Fourthly, miracles cannot be "ex cathedra" or enigmatic to the creative system itself, but conformable (or dutiful) from the system from which it was birthed.

Hence, the natural system God has spoken into being (in the sense of "creatio with existing chaotic material" can, and will, allow for these kinds of "miraculous" differentials without being interventionist in its origins or subsequent derivative results. 

R.E. Slater
July 13, 2021

Relevancy22 References re Virgin Birth


Saturday, January 28, 2012


Creatio Continua Articles
[Note: In older articles I use to say incorrectly creatio ex continua which is the wrong usage for what I was trying to say. When reading these articles please replace in your mind any-and-all of these older phrases with the corrected phrase creatio continua (without the ex). It would also help me if you notated in the comments section those typos so I may go back and correct them. Thanks.   :/  - re slater]
Monday, February 2, 2015


Tuesday, May 18, 2021

A Nice Outline Between Alternatives from an Outside Source:


[ADDENDUM]

Creatio ex nihilo is an idea found in certain faiths which means that the Creator God created the world, "from nothing". Scientifically something cannot come from nothing, and insofar as this is true, than the opposite of "creation from nothing" is "creation from something" (creatio continua). This means that the natural worlds of the universe (or multiverses) are very old but were at one time "breathed" upon God disturbing its entropically equilibrium state into formative and pronounced chaotic systems (that is, out of equilibrium with its former static (timeless) self) with the ability to create new and novel substance from its chaotic nature.

In this way the Creator God is the first Process to all subsequent (or subtending) future processes. It also means that God's image or essence in some fashion is uniquely embedded in all future processes while also remaining distinctly different in a process relational arrangement. Which also means that God doesn't know the future so much as God is the future because of His intimacy with creation in its ordering and teleology. More of this can be read about at Relevancy22 along with the virgin birth of Christ.
"The term creatio continua refers to God's continuing creative activity throughout the history of the universe. In a sense, most theologians accept creatio continua, since creation is the dependence of the whole of space-time on God. But more traditional views hold that because God is timeless and immutable, there is only one divine creative act, which originates the whole of space-time from first to last. Those who speak of creatio continua think of creation taking place in many successive acts, partly in response to events in time. Thus, at any particular time God's creation has not been completed, and the future is partly open, in some theological views, even for God." - Encyclopedia.com

R.E. Slater
July 13, 2021


* * * * * * * * * *


NATURE

Scientists Discover The First Known Algae
Species With Three Distinct Sexes

by Jacinta Bowler
July 13, 2021

Although we might think of ourselves as far removed from blobby green algae, we're not really that different.

An algae explosion a few hundred million years ago is thought to have been what allowed all human and animal life to evolve, and all told there's only about one and a half billion years between us in terms of evolution.

Plus, according to a Japanese team of researchers, algae could actually help us to understand how different sex systems - like male and female - evolved in the first place.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo and a number of other Japanese universities have discovered that a type of green algae called Pleodorina starrii has three distinct sexes – 'male', 'female', and a third sex that the team have called 'bisexual'. This is the first time any species of algae has been discovered with three sexes.

"It seems very uncommon to find a species with three sexes, but in natural conditions, I think it may not be so rare," said one of the researchers, University of Tokyo biologist Hisayoshi Nozaki.

Algae isn't a very specific scientific classification. It's an informal term for a huge collection of different eukaryotic creatures that use photosynthesis to get energy. They're not plants, as they lack many plant features; they're not bacteria (despite cyanobacteria sometimes being called blue-green algae); and they're not fungi.

Everything from many-celled giant kelp species, all the way down to cute single-celled dinoflagellates can be classed as algae.

Because algae are such a big, diverse group, there's lots of variation in the way that they get it on, but generally algae are able to reproduce asexually (by cloning themselves) or sexually (with a partner), depending on the life cycle stage they're in. This can be either haploid (with a single set of chromosomes), or diploid (with two sets).

There's also hermaphroditic algae that can change depending on the gene expression of the organism. Having three sexes, including hermaphrodites, is called 'trioecy'.

But the volvocine green algae P. starrii is different from this again. The bisexual form of this haploid algae has both male and female reproductive cells. The team describe it as a "new haploid mating system" completely unique to algae. 

P. starrii form either 32 or 64 same-sex celled vegetative colonies and have small mobile (male) and large immobile (female) sex cells similar to humans. The male sex cells are sent out in the world in sperm packets to find a female colony to attach to.

Bisexual P. starrii have both, can form either male or female colonies, and therefore can mate with either a male, a female, or another bisexual.


Above: Sexually induced male colony of algae (left). Female colony with male sperm
packet (center). Female colony with dissociated male gametes (right). | Kohei Takahashi


The researchers are particularly excited because other closely related algae have different sex systems, meaning the discovery might be able to tell us more about how these sexual changes evolve.

"Mixed mating systems such as trioecy may represent intermediate states of evolutionary transitions between dioecious (with male and female) and monoecious (with only hermaphrodites) mating systems in diploid organisms," the team write in their new paper.

"However, haploid mating systems with three sex phenotypes within a single biological species have not been previously reported."

For 30 years, Nozaki had been collecting algae samples from the Sagami River outside of Tokyo. Samples that were taken from lakes along that river in 2007 and 2013 were used by the team for the new finding.

The team separated the algal colonies and induced them to reproduce sexually by depriving them of nutrients, discovering that the bisexual algae had a 'bisexual factor' gene that was separate to previously discovered male and female specific genes.

The bisexual cells had the male gene as well, but can produce either male or female offspring.

"Co-existence of three sex phenotypes in a single biological species may not be an unusual phenomenon in wild populations," the researchers conclude.

"The continued field-collection studies may reveal further existence of three sex phenotypes in other volvocine species."

The research has been published in Evolution.



Intersections of the diagram represent mating systems with that combination of sexes. (a) Trioecy (green) is unstable and tends to collapse to a two-sex mating system. (b) In nematodes it has been proposed that trioecy (green) can be used as a temporary mating system in the transition between dioecy (red) and androdioecy (blue). | BioRxIV


Meiosis in A. rhodensis produces unexpected gametes in males and hermaphrodites. The gametes formed, as well as a relatively high frequency of nondisjuction, probably contribute A. freiburgensis sex ratio data that are highly divergent from what would be expected. | BioRxIV


Cooperation and Competition as Drivers of Evolutionary Transition




Thursday, December 27, 2012

What Can a Postmodernist Say You About the Virgin Birth?

  

What can a postmodernist say about the Virgin Birth of Christ concerning the immaculate conception of God in becoming incarnate man while retaining His Trinitarian divinity? Who, in Jesus, was fully God as He was fully man. With neither His divinity nor His participation in the flesh diminished. Who "laid" aside His divine being to be clothed upon in the garments of man's flesh ("the Word became flesh," Jn 1.14) without suspension of His divine being, authority, eternality, nor any other part of His unsearchable divinity. Who was Himself a man, and not a divine spirit indwelling a fully submissive man, but a man in His being and composition. Who was uniquely fashioned and historically dwelt among men as God in the flesh. And as man, lived with the help and agency of the Holy Spirit fully submitted and obedient to the Father God above.

These are paradoxes we do not understand. Mysteries we try to peer into whose fog withholds us from comprehension. Each centered in the person of Jesus, the Christ, Immanuel, God with us, the Holy One of God, sent from God as the Son of God the Father. Our Savior and Lord. The Son of David. Born of a virgin as the Son of Man. The only Incarnate God of history. This is what is meant by the theological term "Incarnation." That God became man and dwelt among us in all of our heartaches and sorrows, joys and laments. Who knew thirst and hunger, weakness and ability, pain and suffering, laughter and camaraderie. From a theological viewpoint we can only bow our heads and say, "Amen and amen."

John 1

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Word Became Flesh

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life,[a] and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John [the Baptist]. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own,[b] and his own people[c] did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (cf. the Suffering Servant, Isaiah 52-53).

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.[d] 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God,[e] who is at the Father's side,[f] he has made him known.


To this question, what can a postmodernist say about the incredulity that the Virgin Birth places upon our scientific presuppositions when considering what we know about the biological birthing of a human child requiring the agency of sperm and egg to conceptualize a living human being? When having the audacity to proclaim that Jesus was born fully human when knowing only the DNA portion of Jesus was birthed from His mother Mary. That neither his father Joseph, nor any other man, had any biological input to Jesus' birth. That Jesus was conceived within His mother's womb by the miraculous conception of the Holy Spirit who superintended over the division of the egg from 23 chromosomes to 46 in a parthenogenetic event, giving to Jesus His inherited male DNA from that of his mother as she had received it from her own mother and father. To consider Jesus as fully human because of this miraculous event, and as fully representative of mankind in His inherited genetic structure. For such was Jesus, born of the virgin Mary, born without a human biological father. From a scientific viewpoint we could argue doubt having not witnessed this as a normally occurring biological event except with the help and agency of a scientifically manufactured event.

And to each viewpoint - that of theology and that of science - one might be tempted to state a hard-and-fast line of demarcation. That each viewpoint remains as isolated from the other conceptually as they are ideologically. And yet, it might be that with the ironic help of science we may find that the incarnation of God as man is fully acceptable and abiding with biblical/theological statement. That each may interrelate with the other with no necessity for their perceived competing dualistic positions of immateriality and materiality.

So then, as a postmodernist, we have hard questions to ask of ourselves. And equally as important, we must similarly determine how to approach this very delicate subject in postmodern terminology. Whether we should abdicate one position over the other (as modernism would do in the presentation of dualistic categories). Or perhaps, simply hold both positions in tension and content ourselves in the problem itself without any further need for a final solution (which postmodernism would require). But to so simply decry either for theology, or for science, would work against the mystery of God's divine incarnation, and against the necessity for scientific discovery. For each are as equally important as the other within the creation of God.






As such, I have yet to discover a good scientific understanding of the Virgin Birth (which would include this present article included further below; AND its antecedent article from a year ago by NT Wright and  John Polkinghorne which I had also reported on). As a trained theologian I am completely confident in accepting the reality of the virgin birth of Christ. But from a scientific  point of view I am equally as sympathetic to the lack of evidence supporting this theological concept (unless parthenogenesis is actually the key to this topic. But if so, I still will have a lot of questions that must be answered).

And unlike my earlier stances of generally supporting science over today's more popular Christian opinions created by the ideologies of biblical literalism - which in my estimation (as well as that of others) has misapplied the literary texts of biblical oral legends in the early chapters of Genesis (sic, the Creation story of Genesis and the Noahic Flood, as example) with the scientifically erroneous conclusions of denying both biblical evolution with the disavowal of a regional flood in favor of spontaneous creationism and that of a global flood where there is no geologic evidence. So that in this instance, I cannot support the speculation that the Virgin Birth of Christ is itself an ancient Near-Eastern myth when there is no literary evidence for this.assumption - especially knowing that it runs against too many of the Bible's theological ideas about God and humanity. Nor can I accept jettisoning the Virgin Birth of Christ as scientifically implausible as some would like to say. Nay, I chose neither side and thereby reject both as spurious arguments by stating that the Virgin Birth is not a myth. Nor is it scientifically implausible. That there is no literary basis to make this claim. Nor is there any scientific basis to disprove this claim.

And when considering the article's stated intent below, can neither accept RJS nor Dr. Polkinghorne's further description of the Virgin Birth as an "enacted myth of the church" - by which I think they mean that it is a legend that rightly-or-wrongly has endeared itself to the church from the start. If anything, I would declare it as an enacted acceptance of an historical event passed along through the theological charters of the church. And if we were to go by the assessment that the Virgin Birth itself is mere myth without any historical, or scientific viability, than we would have to throw out our previously argued support for an evolutionary understanding of the bible and its related oral legends such as the Flood story. And instead hold in favor for a non-scientific understanding of biblical event-and-cause marking all theological endeavors as impractical as man's materialistic mindedness is deceivable.

Which returns us back to where we began 18 months earlier when broaching this very same subject here at Relevancy22 as we've waded through the highs-and-lows of arrogant humanism and misleading Christian thought juxtaposed around a sensible interpretation of the Scriptures integrated with our postmodern day knowledges across all human disciplines and discoveries, experiences and examinations. Certainly the church has many enacted myths that it should throw out - the one that most immediately comes to mind is that of its incongruent position of biblical literalism. It is misleading and filled with conjectures that are ideologically based. That we argue here for biblical historicity has been shown. That God's revelation is true and unerring, beyond a doubt. But not for Christian myths, dogmas, and fancied folklores that give precedence over God's truth. We wish only to pursue the best of theology using the best of our human knowledge. And when undertaking this task must always examine ourselves, our competing interests, and our counterveiling arguments, as is right and proper. Ditching the worst, keeping what we don't know in epistemic tension, and favoring the evidence that seems most true and proper. As always, it is this latter statement that is most often the most misleading. What is thought as true and proper may not always be so. As in the case of decrying the Virgin Birth as enacted myth while assuming its scientific implausibility.

Hence, I am perfectly willing to hold in tension the theological concept of the Virgin Birth without necessitating its support by present day science. To the geologic, cosmologic, and biologic sciences I have yielded deference believing that those disciplines have more than adequately explained Earth's - and mankind's - early prehistory from an evolutionary basis. However, upon the subject of Christ's miraculous birth I must still remain fixed in my doubt until science should someday better explain the Incarnate conception of Jesus to my doubting mind and heart. To that extent, we must leave the Virgin Birth of Christ as an accepted miracle that is "interactive with natural laws and not in suspension to natural laws" when produced within the boundaries of this creation. Which means we simply don't understand it yet. And to this position of understanding pertaining to the concept of miracle I will accede solidarity with RJS and the good Dr. Polkinghorne.

Consequently, rightly or wrongly, I cannot at this point yield on so important a theological concept pertaining to God's incarnation by birth from a flesh-and-blood woman with the absent agency of a man. Certainly we could argue sexism here by devaluing God's usage of a woman alone. But more so we can argue ideological assumptions where none need to be except in that of holding to the position of epistemic unknowing and humility. In being content to allow science to proceed apace with biblical discovery separately-and-apart until at such time congruency may be found unforced. Hence, God "clothed His divine being with the garment of flesh" (speaking poetically) and did not simply overwhelm (or possess)  a yielded holy man named Jesus, is without question. For if we did, it would give no good theological substantiation for Jesus' atoning sacrifice and redemptive restoration of both the cosmos and mankind if performed without the necessity of the Virgin Birth.


 As such, I am willing to hold in tension an incredulity between theology and science even though on many of the other biblical myths (as has been discussed) we have re-configured (or reframed) the bible's theological congruence with science pertaining to man's imaging in God (Adam), man's preservation by God (Noah), and man's salvific relationship to God (Jesus) without resorting to the imagined need for a literal bible (or a literal hermeneutic). We have done this by keeping the bible's literary content intact, and reapplying our allusionary ignorance forward into a larger, non-mythic understanding of the bible's historical reality and applicability, such that the bible has been enlarged to recapture man's primer sciences even as those same sciences force the postmodern theologian to reconsider all doctrinal angles and composite reactions.

In the offering we have argued against many of popular Christian suppositions that have delved into Christian folklore and legend, and not into the bible itself. As well have we argued against its counterpart of Christian liberalism, moving fearlessly forward to the overly cynical left. For should we do less is to lose the God of the universe to either forces - on the right, to a mystical spiritualism, and on the left, to a materialistic humanism. When in fact, by carefully removing our perceived theological barriers we are, in essence, freeing the God of the universe to be larger than we had believed possible (as if God should need our help!). Far too often it is more important to examine ourselves, rather than our neighbor, and be willing to critique how we came to our theological conclusions irrespective to our traditions and customs. Emergent Christianity allows a postmodern introspection to all things church and science - including our treasured dogmas and beliefs - so that we may arrive at a fuller bible that is more open, and more applicable, to postmodern man today. It changes nothing about God, and everything about ourselves, when we release ourselves from the theological boxes we have impudently placed ourselves within.

Thus, I will admit up front that science has yet to fully explain the Virgin Birth of Christ to my satisfaction. Nor does the accompanying imposed implication of enacted church myth help much here either. For neither position is satisfactory, and consequently, we argue for neither. And furthermore, we support the theological view of the miraculous/immaculate conception of Christ - not on the basis of perceived historical support by the church (the enacted part of the story), but on the basis of its theological necessity (the enacted part of the redemptive story of the bible) as inculcated by the Apostles to their disciples which then passed into the living charters of the early church. This New Testament-Apostolic position shows the most theological congruency with the redemptive story of the divine-human cooperative between God and man marking the Virgin Birth not as a myth but as an actual historical event.

Consequently, my God is big enough to allow us to doubt in as many ways as we can doubt. This is part of our human prerogative and divine allowance, if not man's very creational charter as given to him by God. As such, so should my postmodern examinations of the bible and its teachings be likewise held within the limits of doubt and human understanding balancing the one-over-against-the-over in a continual act of acknowledging our scientific limits and theological over-speculations. For myself, I do expect that at some later time science will show the viability of God's miraculous parthenogenetic act upon Mary.

However, I do not need to attribute it as either a  church myth, or as an illogical theological position. That would be to strip the Son of God of His incarnational divinity and thus making it theologically disjunctive to the redemptive story of God's atonement to the fallenness of man. It looses all import should Jesus be only mundanely human without being profoundly God. No apostle or later arising martyr of Christ's could take on this divine act for mankind. This divine act of agency was Jesus' alone. There was no other to fulfill it. Nor ever shall be from the very Godhead of the Trinity. This is the heart of Jesus' incarnation. To bear the sins of man upon the very heart/spirit/being/personage of God Himself in direct agency and propitiation. As the holy Lamb of God. Who was in Himself, both sacrificial lamb and atoning God, our very Mediator as both Priest and holy sacrifice (cf. the book of Hebrews). Verily has our Redeemer come. Amen and Amen.

R.E. Slater
December 27, 2012

That man should be made in God’s image is a wonder,
but that God should be made in man’s image is a greater wonder.
That the Ancient of Days would be born.
That He who thunders in the heavens
should cry in the cradle.

~ Thomas Watson,
Painting by Bernardino Luini





* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *




What About the Virgin Birth? (RJS)
by RJS
Dec 27, 2012

Not quite a year ago I wrote about the relationship of science and virgin birth in the context of John Polkinghorne’s book Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible. Recently I’ve been reading Robert Asher’s new book Evolution and Belief: Confessions of a Religious Paleontologist and here the topic comes up again, but Asher has a different take on the question. As a result the topic is worth a reprise, considering the arguments put forth both by Polkinghorne and by Asher.

Most Christians have a deep appreciation for the scriptures. Many of our disagreements, especially the most heated discussions of science and faith arise because we respect and wrestle with scripture as inspired by God. As Paul tells Timothy, the scriptures are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. They are not to be taken lightly. On the other hand there are some pretty incredible events and stories contained within the pages of scripture and the virgin birth is one of these. For those who were not raised in the church however, or who have for any one of a number of reasons become distrustful of the reliability of the scriptures, questions about the virgin birth and other incredible events within the pages of scripture become a real barrier.

Matthew 1:18 relates the claim:
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph responds to Mary’s pregnancy by planning to divorce her and an angel in a dream reiterates the claim “what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.“ Luke 1:34-35 records Mary’s response when told she would conceive and give birth to a son, the Messiah.
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
The very idea of a miraculous conception, that a virgin conceived and bore a son, hits a nerve in our secular Western society – both modern and postmodern. In Testing Scripture Polkinghorne describes why he accepts the virgin birth. In contrast Asher does not see acceptance of the virgin birth as traditionally understood to be either reasonable or necessary. The differences in the approaches they take and the conclusions they reach will help to flesh out some of the key questions.

How would you address doubts from a nonbeliever about the incredible events in scripture? How do you reconcile a belief in these events yourself?

In chapter six of Testing Scripture John Polkinghorne looks at the gospels. Within the historical conventions of their time they tell the gospel; the story of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the good news of God’s work in the world. The Gospels record a reliable history. This is the key starting point, but there is more to it than just this.

What about miracles, including virgin birth?

Robert Asher is not an atheist; he does not rule out the existence of the supernatural or spiritual. He is, as he describes himself, a religious paleontologist. He is not evangelical, and like many he explicitly disavows the designation. Like Polkinghorne he sees the gospels as basically trustworthy with much of it (especially Paul’s letters and Mark’s gospel) written “well within the range of an oral tradition based on eyewitness accounts.” (p. 24 Evolution and Belief) Asher’s reasoning about the virgin birth is rooted in his understanding of cause and effect in science.
However, does this enable me to believe in an actual human being born of a virgin? No it does not – at least not in a biological sense, which is how most people understand this question and how, therefore, I should answer it. Female humans do not give birth unless they have been inseminated. As he was a human being, I infer based on what I know of biology that Christ would have developed in His mother’s womb, from zygote to morula to embryo to fetus. … (p. 24 Evolution and Belief) 
Everything that I understand about human biology indicates that He, too, had a biological father. There is no doubt, however, that this father was perceived as divine by his followers. As a human being, of course Christ had a biological father; it is not rational to believe otherwise. Personally, however, I really do believe that father and son were inspired individuals, worthy of the impressive documentation with which their legacy has been recorded. … Simply stated, Christianity is my faith. It is not an unshakable faith, nor do I believe literally in many parts of the Bible. Indeed, much of the text of this chapter disqualifies me as a theist Christian by most evangelical standards. Nevertheless, Christianity seems to me a legitimate account of the agency behind life, and while the causes of life’s diversity are fascinating, they are not of immediate relevance to this faith. (p. 25 Evolution and Belief)
Does God intervene?

This paragraph from Asher is rooted in a discussion of miracles, because the virgin birth, or more accurately virginal conception, if true in a biological sense, is a miracle. It is an intervention by God into the natural order.

I was passed a question just recently asking about Jesus and his DNA. What DNA would he have carried? Mary’s we presume – but would his DNA have also traced to Joseph? Was it something else entirely? Asher doesn’t bring this question up specifically, but he does focus in on the question of intervention. Rather than quote a large segment I will choose a few particularly pertinent sections:
Let me phrase this differently. Do I believe in miracles? If by “miracle” you mean a spontaneous failure of a natural law due to the contrary influence of some supernatural agency, then no. … However, this is not at all the same thing as denying the existence of a divinity, including the Christian sort. … The “do you believe in miracles?” question assumes an opposition between “nature” and “god” that is wholly our own fabrication, as if the two compete with one another for our attention. This question presumes a philosophy that the two things are independent, even antagonistic – but I don’t think they are. Rather one is an expression of the other. God cannot “intrude” into the normal operation of nature because, the way I see it, nature is a part of God; it represents God’s thought, or laws, in action. He cannot intrude upon himself. (p. 25-26 Evolution and Belief)
Asher’s view of the virgin birth is shaped by his understanding of biology, of cause and effect, and by his view of God. There a scientific, philosophical, and theological reasons to question the traditional view of the virgin birth.

Dr. Polkinghorne sees things a bit differently. He works through a number of different episodes and events as he describes his reasons for taking the Gospels seriously. The one we wish to focus on here, the birth narratives and the virgin birth, is the one he leaves for last.
I have left till last what are among the best-known and best-loved narratives in the Gospels: the stories of the birth of Jesus. We find them only in Matthew 1.18-2.12 and Luke 2.1-20. John, after his timeless Prologue, and Mark, without any preliminaries, both start with the encounters between John the Baptist and Jesus at the beginning of the public ministry. We are so used to conflating the two gospel accounts that it is only when we read them carefully and separately that we become aware of how different they are. 
Luke seems to tell the story very much from the point of view of Mary, and the visitors to the newborn Jesus are the humble shepherds. Matthew seems to see things much more from Joseph’s perspective, and his visitors are the magi. 
Luke gives us a very specific dating of the birth in relation to a Roman census, but there are severe scholarly difficulties in reconciling this with Matthew’s (plausible) statement that it took place during the reign of Herod the Great. 
A principle concern of both narratives is to explain why, if Mary’s home was at Nazareth, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, as Messianic prophecy required. I do not doubt that there is historical truth preserved in the birth stories, but establishing its exact content is not an easy task. (p. 67-68 Testing Scripture)
As with some of the other stories in the gospels and in other parts of scripture there are discrepancies that can be difficult to reconcile and harmonize. There is no strong reason, however, to doubt a historical root, down to and including the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

The Virgin Birth. The conception of Jesus is a different issue. How can an intelligent, educated, experienced person, an eminent scientist, believe in a virgin birth? Dr. Polkinghorne gives his reasoning:
Luke, very explicitly in his story of the Annunciation (1.34-35), and Matthew, more obliquely (1.18), both assert the virginal conception of Jesus. Christian tradition has attached great significance to this, often rather inaccurately calling it the ‘virgin birth’. Yet in the New Testament it seems nowhere as widely significant as the Resurrection. Paul is content to simply lay stress on Jesus’ solidarity with humanity: ‘God sent his Son, born of woman, born under the law’ (Galatians 4.4). The theological importance of the virginal conception lies in its lending emphasis to the presence of a total divine initiative in the coming of Jesus, even if this truth is much more frequently expressed by the New Testament writers simply in the language of his having been sent. Jesus was not opportunistically co-opted for God’s purpose when he was found to be suitable, but he was part of that purpose from the start. The virginal conception is a powerful myth, and I believe that in the religion of the Incarnation the power of story fuses with the power of a true story, so that the great Christian myths are enacted myths. On this basis, I find myself able to believe in the virgin birth, even if the motivating evidence is less extensive than for the belief in the Resurrection. (p. 68-69 Testing Scripture)
Interaction not Intervention.

One of the most important criterion for thinking through the incredible claims in scripture is God’s interaction with his creatures rather than his intervention in his creation. The miracles ring true when they enhance our understanding of the interaction of God with his people in divine self-revelation. The virginal conception is part of the Incarnation, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”. The magnificent early Christian hymns quoted by Paul in Col 1.15-20 and Phil 2.6-11 catch the essence of this enacted myth as well.

It makes no sense to try to defend the virginal conception, the resurrection, or any of the other signs or miracles related in the New Testament, separate from the story of the Gospel, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as God’s Messiah. In the context of God’s mission within his creation the miracles make sense. Separate from this they will never make sense.

What do you think? Do Dr. Polkinghorne’s reasons for believing in the virgin birth make sense? Is there an important distinction between intervention and interaction? Why do you believe in the virginal conception? Or if you don’t, why not?

- RJS

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.
If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.



Saturday, January 28, 2012

Reacting to the Virgin Birth of Mary and the Virgin Conception of Jesus


Of Myth and Science

I have included two articles below that focus on the Virgin Birth of Mary's child Jesus. One from a respected theologian/bishop's viewpoint and the other from a respected scientist-turned-priest viewpoint. Both British. Both believers and servants of God. And each giving their separate arguments for-and-against the Virgin Birth while making no personal claim of disbelief over Mary's exceptional conception. Rather, they wish to affirm their belief despite the lack of supporting scientific evidence.

N.T. Wright starts things off with a "nay-and-yeah" look at this topic's debatable arguments and then proceeds to tick these arguments off one-by-one while creating a larger biblical context for Jesus' immaculate conception and birth. In contrast, John Polkinghorne immediately dives in discussing the scientific difficulties and improbabilities of such a birth. Which is a true statement. Science does not understand this event even though he himself believes it still to be a true, historical event, regardless of science's inabilities to discover the nature of the event. And so do we affirm the virgin birth of Jesus.

But Dr. Polkinghorne then initiates a secondary discussion about the nature of literary "myth" that I found less-than-helpful within his scientific analysis. In fact, it makes me think that a separate article on "Ancient Myth as a Literary Type" should be created to address the many crucial implications brought about by this subject's shaded overtones and misdirections. Or at least how I perceived them to be misdirecting without actually knowing the position of Polkinghorne himself. We all make grammatical mistakes and shaded inferences that on any other day we may wish to take back. I think that we should allow this of our good priest and simply look then at something that he let slip on that particular day or related passages in his book....

Dr. John Polkinghorne's asserts that scientific evidence cannot support the Virgin Birth and thus declares this immaculate birth to be scientifically impossible, but not improbable. To which we can all agree. Yes, science cannot explain this act of God. Then N.T. Wright describes this event by distinguishing whether it was a miracle suspending all natural scientific laws, or as a miraculous intervention of God to Mary herself. To which I might ask, "Is there a difference?" According to Wright there may be, but its beyond my powers of perception to distinguish at present the difference between miracle and God-event. However, it is substantively true that science at its current level of prowess has yet been able to explain this miracle/God-event like many of the other miracles/God-events found within the Bible.

Dr. Polkinghorne continues then upon an alternate explanation that I find to have little appeal... that is, that we should regard this Gospel story of the Virgin Birth as an enacted myth. Now lest I accuse my brother in Christ of factually declaring Jesus' birth as a myth (which he doesn't) as we understand myths today, perhaps I should allow him the point of view that though he considers it a myth, he actually means that its a literary myth that is not a fanciful myth but an historically true myth that has a true historical story behind it. My guess is that is what Dr. Polkinghorne really meant. However, to an outside listener who has heard this statement uncritically and mistakenly believes it to mean something more akin to the popular perception of myth, then we have a problem of communication. Is it fanciful and historically untrue? Or is it descriptive and historically true? Consequently, we as Christians should be more clear with the use of our words by not confusing an already difficult topic with extended hyperbole, whether intentional or not.

So then, regardless of Polkinghorne's theological stance, my argument rests upon the fact that its probable to stretch the ancient Near-Eastern myth paradigm expansively to cover many unexplained events to the ancient mindset. Sometimes uncritically and at other times critically, when science is unable to explain “the unexplainable.” My concern then is that we may be back-filling the definition of myth "as a poetic form of language that has cultural historical context" into a newer postmodern definition of a "superstitious category bearing dubious historicity or truth." Like the old argument that the bible stories are just that, stories, so one might say that many bible stories are mythic and do not mandate necessary belief structures to follow Jesus. The term "myth" then becomes a convenient article of convention that makes the bible stories more magical than true as we begin to delineated between fused enacted myths in the guise of co-opted human language.

And this concerns me. As example, I think the biblical creation story in Genesis 1-3 is more beautifully told in poetic mythic structure that is both true, and has an historical cultural context to it, than as a cold, sterile scientific account.... And I might pose the additional question, "How might the creation story be otherwise told or described?!" Even today as modern, scientifically-based men and women I think that we would have a very difficult time explaining God's creative handiwork if we were to observe it first hand. Both factually and scientifically without resorting to some kind of mythic poetic structure to make the transfer to the human mind and heart. Which causes me to find the mythic literary structural form more helpful than not when interspersed throughout the biblical narratives making its incredible stories more vivid and culturally relative. But not necessarily fanciful. Nor untrue. Instead it conveys intense, descriptive imagery which is intelligible without demanding that event, or cause, to be fully understood other than as a God-event or as a miracle. An event/miracle which then allows God to reveal something about Himself and His will to man that we need to know. A revelation that is as potent to modern man today as it was to ancient man in years past.

Consider ancient Greek, Roman and Chinese myths that attempt to explain creation's origins and man's interaction with nature. They are attempts to convey unexplainable events, fears, and anxities, that were passed down verbally with minimal loss of translation through the use of songs, ballads, poems and chants, among other forms of communication. Consider also the ancient Near-Eastern Sumerian, Babylonia, Assyrian and Jewish accounts of creation, a world-wide flood, and ancient man's interaction with natural cause and effect. Some are fanciful but others are real attempts to account for oral lores founded upon legitimate historical events. It is our duty then to discern their historic mythic import... whether true, false, or in another category altogether. Science can only help with this effort so far, but at a certain point it cannot. So then we look at such passages anthropologically, linguistically, narratively, sociologically, epistemologically, and etc, and etc. Trying to assay all the varied meanings of the biblical text, and in this case, to ascertain what the Creator God is trying to tell us using this literary forms and paradigms. Which, by way of example, NT Wright does a brilliant job on in his summary effort below explaining the import of Jesus' virgin birth.

And though I expect someday to find a science that can perhaps better explain biblical miracles and God-events, I do not necessitate it, nor require it, of science in its present forms today. Though advance as a human discipline, it has a long ways to go, and till then we must be content with God’s handiwork as it has been historically conveyed to us. While at the same time not audaciously perceiving every such literary type to fall under the umbrella of “fanciful myth.” It confuses the literary types with inspecific assertions. It also questions the ancient mindset in its oral – and later, written – histories through shaded overtones and nuanced linguistical meanings. We need better clarity herein when speaking to the Bible's literary types known as myths.

Consequently, I respect Dr. Polkinghorne, but renown scientists, no less than renown philosophers, do not necessary make for the best theological re-interpreters of biblical events, even though their trained minds are more perceptive to some areas of study than many of our own. And yet, this does not release us, as biblicists (or as theologians) from listening to Christianity’s grand proponents and delving into their mindsets to discover substantive thoughts and insights, including scientific viability. And thus, my argument does not rest upon personages or their rhetoric, but upon the usages of idiom and imaginative re-expressions of our cultural heritage of faith and worship. I think it to be wise to be more specific with our language and less indistinct with our insinuations.

R.E. Slater
January 27, 2012


Legends surround the birth and childhood of many figures who afterwards become important.
But by comparison with other legends about other figures, the gospels' accounts of Jesus look restrained.

Suspending Scepticism:
History and the Virgin Birth

N.T. Wright
December 28, 2011

Jesus' birth usually gets far more attention than its role in the New Testament warrants. Christmas looms large in our culture, outshining even Easter in the popular mind.

Yet without Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 we would know nothing about it. Paul's gospel includes Jesus' Davidic descent (Rom. 1:3), but apart from that could exist without mention of his birth. One can be justified by faith with no knowledge of it. Likewise, John's wonderful theological edifice has no need of it: God's glory is revealed not in the manger; but on the cross.

If you try to express any New Testament theology without Jesus' death and resurrection, you will find it cannot be done. "Man shall live for evermore," says the song, "because of Christmas Day." No, replies the New Testament; because of Calvary, Easter and Pentecost.

Nevertheless, the birth stories have become a test case in various controversies. If you believe in miracles, you believe in Jesus' miraculous birth; if you don't, you don't. Both sides turn the question into a shibboleth, not for its own sake but to find out who's in and who's out.

The problem is that "miracle," as used in these controversies, is not a biblical category. The God of the Bible is not a normally [nominally] absent God who sometimes "intervenes." This God is always present and active, often surprisingly so.

Likewise, if you believe the Bible is "true," you will believe the birth stories; if you don't, you won't. Again, the birth stories are insignificant in themselves; they function as a test for beliefs about the Bible.

The birth stories have also functioned as a test case for views of sexuality. Some believers in the virginal conception align this with a low view of sexuality and a high view of perpetual virginity. They believe the story not because of what it says about Jesus, but because of what it says about sex - namely, that it's something God wouldn't want to get mixed up in. This, too, has its mirror image: those who cannot imagine anything good about abstinence insist that Mary must have been sexually active.

More significantly, the birth stories have played a role within different views of the incarnation. Those who have emphasized Jesus' divinity have sometimes made the virginal conception central. Those who have emphasized Jesus' humanity have often felt that the virginal conception would mark him off from the rest of us.

None of these arguments bears much relation to what either Matthew or Luke actually says. But before we turn to them, two more preliminary remarks.

First, we are of course speaking of the virginal conception of Jesus, not, strictly, of the "virgin birth." Even if I come to believe in the former; the latter would remain a different sort of thing altogether. Neither, of course, should be confused with the "immaculate conception," a Roman Catholic dogma about the conception not of Jesus, but of Mary.

Second, some things must be put in a "suspense account" - in Marcus Borg's happy phrase - while others are sorted out. The birth narratives have no impact on my reconstruction of Jesus' public agendas and his mind-set as he went to the cross.

There might just be a case for saying that if his birth was as Matthew and Luke describe it, and if Mary had told him about it, my argument about Jesus' vocation to do and be what in scripture YHWH does-and-is might look slightly different. But as a historian I cannot use the birth stories within an argument about the rest of the gospel narratives.

I can, however, run the process the other way. Because I am convinced that the creator God raised Jesus bodily from the dead, and because I am convinced that Jesus was and is the embodiment of this God, Israel's God, my worldview is forced to reactivate various things in the suspense account, the birth narratives included.

There are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in post-Enlightenment metaphysics. The "closed continuum" of cause and effect is a modernist myth. The God who does not "intervene" from outside but is always present and active within the world, sometimes shockingly, may well have been thus active on this occasion.

It is all very well to get on one's high metaphysical horse and insist that God cannot behave like this, but we do not know that ahead of time. Nor will the high moral horse do any better insisting that God ought not to do things like this, because they send the wrong message about sexuality or because divine parentage gave Jesus an unfair start over the rest of us. Such positions produce a cartoon picture: the mouse draws itself up to its full height, puts its paws on its hips and gives the elephant a good dressing down.

The stories in question are complex and controversial. I simply highlight certain features.

Matthew's story, told from Joseph's point of view, reminds one of various biblical birth stories, such as that of Samson in Judges 13. Matthew's whole hook is about the scriptures being fulfilled in Jesus. The angel, the dream, the command not to be afraid, the righteous couple doing what they are told-all is familiar.

Like Samson, the promised and provided child has a dangerous public future: here, the true king of the Jews is born under the nose of the wicked king, Herod. This is a major theme in Matthew's Gospel. His picture of Jesus' messiahship has both feet on the ground of first-century realpolitik.

Matthew tells us that Jesus fulfils at least three biblical themes:
  1. He brings Israel into the promised land ("Jesus" is the Greek for "Joshua");
  2. As Immanuel, he embodies God's presence with his people (Isaiah 7:14, quoted in 1:23);
  3. As the new David, he is the Messiah born at Bethlehem (2:5, fulfilling Micah 5:1-3).
In the genealogy [of Matthew], Jesus is the point toward which Israel's long covenant history has been leading, particularly its puzzling and tragic latter phase. Matthew agrees with his Jewish contemporaries that the exile was the last significant event before Jesus; when the angel says that Jesus will "save his people from their sins" (1:21), liberation from exile is in view. Jesus, David's true descendant, will fulfil the Abrahamic covenant by undoing the exile and all that it means.

Well-known problems abound. Why does the genealogy finish with Joseph if Matthew is going to say that he wasn't Jesus' father after all? This cannot have been a problem for Matthew or he would hardly have followed the genealogy so closely with the story of the virginal conception. It was enough that Jesus was born into the Davidic family; adoption brought legitimacy.

Further, anyone can say that Matthew made it all up to fulfil Isaiah 7:14 ("the virgin shall conceive"). Since Luke doesn't quote the same passage, though, the argument looks thin. Is Bethlehem mentioned only, perhaps, because of Micah 5:2-4?

Again, Luke doesn't quote the same passage, but still gets Mary to Bethlehem for the birth. Some have questioned whether Herod would really have behaved in the way described in Matthew 2; the answer, from any reader of Josephus, would be a firm yes.

One can investigate, as many have, whether there really was a star. One can challenge the flight into Egypt as simply a back-projection from a fanciful reading of Hosea 11:1. These are the natural probing questions of the historian.

As with most ancient history, of course, we cannot verify independently that which is reported only in one source. If that gives grounds for ruling it out, however, most of ancient history goes with it.

Let us by all means be suspicious, but let us not be paranoid. Just because I've had a nightmare doesn't mean that there aren't burglars in the house. Just because Matthew says that something fulfilled scripture doesn't mean it didn't happen.

What then about his central claim, the virginal conception itself, dropped almost casually into the narrative, with no flourish of trumpets? Some have argued, of course, that there is instead a flourish of trumpets: Matthew has taken care to draw our attention to the peculiarities (to put it no stronger) of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Batlisheba, presumably in order to warn us that something even stranger is coming; or perhaps to enable us, when the news is announced, to connect it with God's strange way of operating in the past. He is hardly likely on this occasion, however, to have made up the story of Mary's being with child by the Holy Spirit in order to "fulfil'" this theme.

What about Luke, who tells the story from Mary's point of view? His setting is just as Jewish as Matthew's, with verbal and narrative allusions to, and echoes of, the Septuagint. Like Matthew, he insists that with this story Israel's history is reaching its God-ordained climax. But his emphasis, unlike Matthew's, is on the very Jewish point that this birth is a direct challenge to the pagan power: in other words, to Caesar.

This fits with Luke's whole emphasis: the (very Jewish) gospel is for the whole world, of which Jesus is now the Lord. Israel's god is the king of the world; now, Jesus is the king of the world.

Attention has focused on the census in Luke 2:2 - whether it took place and could have involved people travelling to their ancestral homes. But Luke's point has been missed. The census was the time of the great revolt - the rebellion of Judas the Galilean, which Luke not only knows about but allows Gamaliel to compare with Jesus and his movement (Acts 5:37).

Luke is deliberately aligning Jesus with the Jewish kingdom-movements, the revolutions which declared that there would be "no king but God."

The census is not, of course, the only query that people have raised about Luke's birth stories. Jesus' birth at Bethlehem seems to have been a puzzle to Luke, which he explains by the census, rather than something he invents for other reasons. The fact that Luke does not mention the wise men, nor Matthew the shepherds, is not a reason for doubting either; this sort of thing crops up in ancient historical sources all the time.

Of course, legends surround the birth and childhood of many figures who afterwards become important. As historians we have no reason to say that this did not happen in the case of Jesus, and some reasons to say that it did. But by comparison with other legends about other figures, Matthew and Luke look, after all, quite restrained.

Except, of course, in the matter where the real interest centres. Matthew and Luke declare unambiguously that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. What are we to make of this?

It will not do to say that we know the laws of nature and that Joseph, Mary, the early church and the evangelists did not. Mary and Joseph hadn't seen diagrams of Fallopian tubes, but that doesn't mean they didn't know where babies came from. Hence Mary's question to Gabriel (in Luke), and Joseph's determination to break the engagement (in Matthew).

Nor can we say that if we believe this story we should believe all the other similar ones in the ancient world as well. Of course, the argument "miracles are possible therefore virginal conception is possible, therefore Jesus' virginal conception may well be true," also commits one to saying, "therefore Augustus's virginal conception may well be true." But that is not my argument.

My argument, rather, works in three stages.

First, the position I have reached about the resurrection and incarnation of Jesus opens the door to reconsidering what we would otherwise probably dismiss. "Miracle," in the sense of divine intervention "from outside," is not in question.

What matters is the powerful, mysterious presence of the God of Israel, the creator God, bringing Israel's story to its climax by doing a new thing, bringing the story of creation to its height by a new creation from the womb of the old. Whether or not it happened, this is what it would mean if it did.

Second, there is no pre-Christian Jewish tradition suggesting that the messiah would be born of a virgin. No one used Isaiah 7:14 this way before Matthew did. Even assuming that Matthew or Luke regularly invented material to fit Jesus into earlier templates, why would they have invented something like this?

The only conceivable parallels are pagan ones, and these fiercely Jewish stories have certainly not been modelled on them. Luke at least must have known that telling this story ran the risk of making Jesus out to be a pagan demigod. Why, for the sake of an exalted metaphor, would they take this risk - unless they at least believed the stories to be literally true?

Third, if the evangelists believed them to be true, when and by whom were they invented, if by the time of Matthew and Luke two such different, yet so compatible, stories were in circulation?

Did whoever started this hare running mean it in a nonliteral sense, using virginal conception as a metaphor for something else? What was that "something else"? An embroidered border, presumably, around the belief that Jesus was divine. But that belief was a Jewish belief expressed in classic Jewish God-language; while the only models for virginal conception are the nakedly pagan stories of Alexander, Augustus and others.

We would have to suppose that, within the first fifty years of Christianity a double move took place: from an early, very Jewish, high Christology, to a sudden paganization, and back to a very Jewish storytelling again. The evangelists would then have thoroughly deconstructed their own deep intentions, suggesting that the climax of YHWH's purpose for Israel took place through a pagan-style miraculous birth.

To put it another way: What would have to have happened, granted the sceptic's position, for the story to have taken the shape it did? To answer this, I must indulge in some speculative tradition-history. (Bear with me in a little foolishness.)

This is how it would look: Christians came to believe that Jesus was in some sense divine. Someone who shared this faith broke thoroughly with Jewish precedents and invented the story of a pagan-style virginal conception. Some Christians failed to realize that this was historicized metaphor, and retold it as though it were historical. Matthew and Luke, assuming historicity, drew independently upon this astonishing fabrication, set it (though in quite different ways) within a thoroughly Jewish context, and wove it in quite different ways into their respective narratives.

And all this happened within, more or less, fifty years. Possible? Yes, of course. Most things are possible in history. Likely? No.

Smoke without fire does, of course, happen quite often in the real world. But this smoke, in that world, without fire? This theory asks us to believe in intellectual parthenogenesis: the birth of an idea without visible parentage. Difficult - unless, of course, you believe in miracles, which most people who disbelieve the virginal conception don't.

Maybe, after all, it is the theory of the contemporary sceptic that is metaphor historicized. The modernist belief that history is a closed continuum of cause and effect is projected onto the screen of the early church, producing a myth (specifically, a tradition-historical reconstruction which sustains and legitimates the original belief so strongly that its proponents come to believe it actually happened).*

This foolishness is, of course, a way of saying that no "proof" is possible either way. No one can prove, historically, that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. No one can prove, historically, that she wasn't. Science studies the repeatable; history bumps its nose against the unrepeatable.

If the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two of Luke had never existed, I do not suppose that my own Christian faith, or that of the church to which I belong, would have been very different.

But since they do, and since for quite other reasons I have come to believe that the God of Israel, the world's Creator, was personally and fully revealed in and as Jesus of Nazareth, I hold open my historical judgment and say: If that's what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?


Formerly Anglican Bishop of Durham, in 2010 the Rt Revd Dr N.T. Wright was appointed to a Chair in New Testament and Early Christianity in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is one of the world's most distinguished and influential New Testament scholars. Among his many books are The New Testament and the People of God (1992), Jesus and the Victory of God (1996), The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003), Surprised by Hope (2007) and Virtue Reborn (2010).


* * * * * * * * * * * * * *



 Why Would a Scientist Believe the Virgin Birth?
January 27, 2012

Most Christians have a deep appreciation for the scriptures, both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Many of our disagreements, especially the most heated discussions of science and faith arise because we respect and wrestle with scripture as inspired by God. As Paul tells Timothy, the scriptures are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. They are not to be taken lightly.

For those who were not raised in the church however, or who have for any one of a number of reasons become distrustful of the reliability of the scriptures, the questions are quite different. Scripture relates some pretty incredible events and stories – from Exodus with the story of parting of the Red Sea to the Gospels with the virgin birth and the resurrection – to name just a few. Why should intelligent educated person in secular, modern or postmodern, enlightened, Western society take these seriously on any level? Dr. John Polkinghorne’s book Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible can provide some useful insights here – whether one agrees with him across the board or disagrees with some of his conclusions. In the book he isn’t dogmatic or defensive about about scripture, rather he is explaining why he, as a scientist, scholar, and Christian, takes scripture seriously. Both faith and reason play a role in his approach to scripture.

How would you address doubts from a nonbeliever about the incredible events in scripture?

How do you reconcile a belief in these events yourself?

Chapters five and six of Testing Scripture look at Israel’s Bible and at the Gospels. Israel’s Bible consists of many forms of literature. Dr. Polkinghorne mentions myth telling deep truth in the form of symbolic story, history, law, wisdom writings, apocalypse, and more. Most of the text was edited and shaped in post-exilic Israel. But this does not mean that it was fabricated with no roots or history. In fact Dr. Polkinghorne finds it difficult to believe that most of the material is not rooted in sources that date far earlier. He sees this in Genesis 14 with Melchizedek of Salem (not a text that would be constructed in a post-exilic history) and in the book of Judges to give just two examples. The origins of these passages must lie in very ancient texts. Within the historical conventions of the time Israel’s Bible records the history of God’s revelation of himself through his particular relationship with his chosen nation.

Even the Exodus, dismissed by many scholars as impossible, Dr. Polkinghorne sees as rooted in history. The text has been elaborated and shaped for theological and national impact for sure. In particular Dr. Polkinghorne feels that numbers have been exaggerated as is common in ancient texts   [acutally, the Hebrew term has been scribed with a typo in it making the number larger than it is - res]. But this reshaping does not undercut the historical roots of the incident or the importance of this event as God’s revelation of his divine nature through his relationship with his people.

The Gospels likewise record a reliable history. Within the historical conventions of their time they tell the gospel; the story of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the good news of God’s work in the world. Dr. Polkinghorne works through a number of different episodes and events as he describes his reasons for taking the Gospels seriously. One of the most interesting, though, is the one he leaves for last.
I have left till last what are among the best-known and best-loved narratives in the Gospels: the stories of the birth of Jesus. We find them only in Matthew 1.18-2.12 and Luke 2.1-20. John, after his timeless Prologue, and Mark, without any preliminaries, both start with the encounters between John the Baptist and Jesus at the beginning of the public ministry. We are so used to conflating the two gospel accounts that it is only when we read them carefully and separately that we become aware of how different they are. Luke seems to tell the story very much from the point of view of Mary, and the visitors to the newborn Jesus are the humble shepherds. Matthew seems to see things much more from Joseph’s perspective, and his visitors are the magi.… Luke gives us a very specific dating of the birth in relation to a Roman census, but there are severe scholarly difficulties in reconciling this with Matthew’s (plausible) statement that it took place during the reign of Herod the Great. A principle concern of both narratives is to explain why, if Mary’s home was at Nazareth, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, as Messianic prophecy required. I do not doubt that there is historical truth preserved in the birth stories, but establishing its exact content is not an easy task. (p. 67-68)
As with some of the other stories in the gospels and in other parts of scripture there are discrepancies that can be difficult to reconcile and harmonize. There is no strong reason, however, to doubt a historical root, down to and including the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

The Virgin Birth. The conception of Jesus is a different issue. Matthew 1:18 relates the claim:
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph responds to Mary’s pregnancy by planning to divorce her and an angel in a dream reiterates the claim “what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.“ Luke 1:34-35 records Mary’s response when told she would conceive and give birth to a son, the Messiah.
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
The very idea of a miraculous conception, that a virgin conceived and bore a son, hits a nerve in our secular Western society – both modern and postmodern. How can an intelligent, educated, experienced person believe in a virgin birth? Dr. Polkinghorne gives his reasoning:
Luke, very explicitly in his story of the Annunciation (1.34-35), and Matthew, more obliquely (1.18), both assert the virginal conception of Jesus. Christian tradition has attached great significance to this, often rather inaccurately calling it the ‘virgin birth’. Yet in the New Testament it seems nowhere as widely significant as the Resurrection. Paul is content to simply lay stress on Jesus’ solidarity with humanity: ‘God sent his Son, born of woman, born under the law’ (Galatians 4.4). The theological importance of the virginal conception lies in its lending emphasis to the presence of a total divine initiative in the coming of Jesus, even if this truth is much more frequently expressed by the New Testament writers simply in the language of his having been sent. Jesus was not opportunistically co-opted for God’s purpose when he was found to be suitable, but he was part of that purpose from the start. The virginal conception is a powerful myth, and I believe that in the religion of the Incarnation the power of story fuses with the power of a true story, so that the great Christian myths are enacted myths. On this basis, I find myself able to believe in the virgin birth, even if the motivating evidence is less extensive than for the belief in the Resurrection. (p. 68-69)
One of the most important criterion for thinking through the incredible claims in scripture is God’s interaction with his creatures rather than his intervention in his creation. The miracles ring true when they enhance our understanding of the interaction of God with his people in divine self-revelation. The virginal conception is part of the Incarnation, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”. The magnificent early Christian hymns quoted by Paul in Col 1.15-20 and Phil 2.6-11 catch the essence of this enacted myth as well.

It makes no sense to try to defend the virginal conception, the resurrection, or any of the other signs or miracles related in the New Testament, separate from the story of the Gospel, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as God’s Messiah. In the context of God’s mission within his creation the miracles make sense. Separate from this they will never make sense.

What do you think? Do Dr. Polkinghorne’s reasons for believing in the virgin birth make sense?

Why do you believe in the virgin birth? Or if you don’t, why not?

What arguments are persuasive on this, or any other “difficult to believe” event?


If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net
If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.