The Virgin Birth of
Christ
By Professor James Orr, D. D.
United Free
Church
College, Glasgow, Scotland
It is well known that the last ten or twenty years have been marked by
a determined assault upon the truth of the Virgin birth of Christ. In
the year 1892 a great controversy broke out in Germany, owing to the
refusal of a pastor named Schrempf to use the Apostles' Creed in
baptism because of disbelief in this and other articles. Schrempf was
deposed, and an agitation commenced against the doctrine of the Virgin
birth which has grown in volume ever since. Other tendencies,
especially the rise of an extremely radical school of historical
criticism, added force to the negative movement. The attack is not
confined, indeed, to the article of the Virgin birth. It affects the
whole supernatural estimate of Christ—His life, His claims, His
sinlessness, His miracles, His resurrection from the dead. But the
Virgin birth is assailed with special vehemence, because it is supposed
that the evidence for this miracle is more easily got rid of than the
evidence for public facts, such as the resurrection. The result is that
in very many quarters the Virgin birth of Christ is openly treated as a
fable. Belief in it is scouted as unworthy of the twentieth century
intelligence. The methods of the oldest opponents of Christianity are
revived, and it is likened to the Greek and Roman stories, coarse and
vile, of heroes who had gods for their fathers. A special point is made
of the silence of Paul, and of the other writings of the New Testament,
on this alleged wonder.
The Unhappiest Feature
It is not only, however, in the circles of unbelief that the Virgin
birth is discredited; in the church itself the habit is spreading of
casting doubt upon the fact, or at least of regarding it as no
essential part of Christian faith. This is the unhappiest feature in
this unhappy controversy. Till recently no one dreamed of denying that,
in the sincere profession of Christianity, this article, which has
stood from the beginning in the forefront of all the great creeds of
Christendom, was included. Now it is different. The truth and value of
the article of the Virgin birth are challenged. The article, it is
affirmed, did not belong to the earliest Christian tradition, and the
evidence for it is not strong. Therefore, let it drop.
The Company It Keeps
From the side of criticism, science, mythology, history and comparative
religion, assault is thus made on the article long so dear to the
hearts of Christians and rightly deemed by them so vital to their faith
For loud as is the voice of denial, one fact must strike every careful
observer of the conflict. Among those who reject the Virgin birth of
the Lord few will be found—I do not know any—who take in other respects
an adequate view of the Person and work of the Saviour. It is
surprising how clearly the line of division here reveals itself. My
statement publicly made and printed has never been confuted, that those
who accept a full doctrine of the incarnation . . . that is, of a true
entrance of the eternal Son of God into our nature for the purposes of
man's salvation—with hardly an exception accept with it the doctrine of
the Virgin birth of Christ, while those who repudiate or deny this
article of faith either hold a lowered view of Christ's Person, or,
more commonly, reject His supernatural claims altogether. It will not
be questioned, at any rate, that the great bulk of the opponents of the
Virgin birth—those who are conspicuous by writing against it—are in the
latter class.
A Cavil Answered
This really is an answer to the cavil often heard that, whether true or
not, the Virgin birth is not of essential importance. It is not
essential, it is urged, to Christ's sinlessness, for that would have
been secured equally though Christ had been born of two parents. And it
is not essential to the incarnation. A hazardous thing, surely, for
erring mortals to judge of what was and was not essential in so
stupendous an event as the bringing in of the "first-begotten" into the
world! But the Christian instinct has ever penetrated deeper. Rejection
of the Virgin birth seldom, if ever, goes by itself. As the late Prof.
A. B. Bruce said, with denial of the Virgin birth is apt to go denial
of the virgin life. The incarnation is felt by those who think
seriously to involve a miracle in Christ's earthly origin. This will
become clearer as we advance.
The Case Stated
It is the object of this paper to show that those who take the lines of
denial on the Virgin birth just sketched do great injustice to the
evidence and importance of the doctrine they reject. The evidence, if
not of the same public kind as that for the resurrection, is far
stronger than the objector allows, and the fact denied enters far more
vitally into the essence of the Christian faith than he supposes.
Placed in its right setting among the other truths of the Christian
religion, it is not only no stumbling-block to faith, but is felt to
fit in with self-evidencing power into the connection of these other
truths, and to furnish the very explanation that is needed of Christ's
holy and supernatural Person. The ordinary Christian is a witness here.
In reading the Gospels, he feels no incongruity in passing from the
narratives of the Virgin birth to the wonderful story of Christ's life
in the chapters that follow, then from these to the pictures of
Christ's divine dignity given in John and Paul. The whole is of one
piece: the Virgin birth is as natural at the beginning of the life of
such an One—the divine Son—as the resurrection is at the end. And the
more closely the matter is considered, the stronger does this
impression grow. It is only when the scriptural conception of Christ is
parted with that various difficulties and doubts come in.
A Superficial View
It is, in truth, a very superficial way of speaking or thinking of the
Virgin birth to say that nothing depends on this belief for our
estimate of Christ. Who that reflects on the subject carefully can fail
to see that if Christ was virgin born—if He was truly "conceived," as
the creed says, "by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary"—there must
of necessity enter a supernatural element into His Person; while, if
Christ was sinless, much more, if He was the very Word of God
incarnate, there must have been a miracle—the most stupendous miracle
in the universe—in His origin? If Christ was, as John and Paul affirm
and His church has ever believed, the Son of God made flesh, the second
Adam, the new redeeming Head of the race, a miracle was to be expected
in His earthly origin; without a miracle such a Person could never have
been. Why then cavil at the narratives which declare the fact of such a
miracle? Who does not see that the Gospel history would have been
incomplete without them? Inspiration here only gives to faith what
faith on its own grounds imperatively demands for its perfect
satisfaction.
The Historical Setting
It is time now to come to the Scripture itself, and to look at the fact
of the Virgin birth in its historical setting, and its relation with
other truths of the Gospel. As preceding the examination of the
historical evidence, a little may be said, first, on the Old Testament
preparation. Was there any such preparation? Some would say there was
not, but this is not God's way, and we may look with confidence for at
least some indications which point in the direction of the New
Testament event.
The First Promise
One's mind turns first to that oldest of all evangelical promises, that
the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent. "I will put
enmity," says Jehovah to the serpent-tempter, "between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15. R.V.). It is a forceless
weakening of this first word of Gospel in the Bible to explain it of a
lasting feud between the race of men and the brood of serpents. The
serpent, as even Dr. Driver attests, is "the representative of the
power of evil"—in later Scripture, "he that is called the Devil and
Satan" (Revelation 12:9)—and the defeat he sustains from the woman's
seed is a moral and spiritual victory. The "seed" who should destroy
him is described emphatically as the woman's seed. It was the woman
through whom sin had entered the race; by the seed of the woman would
salvation come. The early church Writers often pressed this analogy
between Eve and the Virgin Mary. We may reject any element of
overexaltation of Mary they connected with it, but it remains
significant that this peculiar phrase should be chosen to designate the
future deliverer. I cannot believe the choice to be of accident. The
promise to Abraham was that in his seed the families of the earth would
be blessed; there the male is emphasized, but here it is the woman the
woman distinctively. There is, perhaps, as good scholars have thought,
an allusion to this promise in 1 Timothy 2:15, where, with allusion to
Adam and Eve, it is said, "But she shall be saved through her (or the)
child-bearing" (R. V.).
The Immanuel Prophecy
The idea of the Messiah, gradually gathering to itself the attributes
of a divine King, reaches one of its clearest expressions in the great
Immanuel prophecy, extending from Isaiah 7 to 9:7, and centering in the
declaration: "The Lord Himself will give you [the unbelieving Ahaz] a
sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call
his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14; Cf. 8:8,10). This is none other than
the child of wonder extolled in Isaiah 9:6,7: "For unto us a child is
born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his
shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty
God, The everlasting Father, [Father of Eternity], The Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon
the throne of David, and upon his kingdom," etc. This is the prophecy
quoted as fulfilled in Christ's birth in Matthew 1:23, and it seems
also alluded to in the glowing promises to Mary in Luke 1:32,33. It is
pointed out in objection that the term rendered "virgin" in Isaiah does
not necessarily bear this meaning; it denotes properly only a young
unmarried woman. The context, however, seems clearly to lay an emphasis
on the unmarried state, and the translators of the Greek version of the
Old Testament (the Septuagint) plainly so understood it when they
rendered it by parthenos, a word which does mean "virgin." The tendency
in many quarters now is to admit this (Dr. Cheyne, etc.), and even to
seek an explanation of it in alleged Babylonian beliefs in a virgin
birth. This last, however, is quite illusory.* [* For the evidence, see
my volume on "The Virgin Birth," Lecture VII.] It is, on the other
hand, singular that the Jews themselves do not seem to have applied
this prophecy at any time to the Messiah—a fact which disproves the
theory that it was this text which suggested the story of a Virgin
birth to the early disciples.
Echoes in Other Scriptures
It was, indeed, when one thinks of it, only on the supposition that
there was to be something exceptional and extraordinary in the birth of
this child called Immanuel that it could have afforded to Ahaz a sign
of the perpetuity of the throne of David on the scale of magnitude
proposed ("Ask it either in the depth, or in the height above." Ver.
10). We look, therefore, with interest to see if there are any echoes
or suggestions of the idea of this passage in other prophetic
scriptures. They are naturally not many, but they do not seem to be
altogether wanting. There is, first, the remarkable Bethlehem prophecy
in Micah 5:2,3—also quoted as fulfilled in the nativity (Matthew
2:5,6)—connected with the saying: "Therefore will he give them up,
until the time that she who travaileth hath brought forth" ("The King
from Bethlehem," says Delitzsch, "who has a nameless one as mother, and
of whose father there is no mention"). Micah was Isaiah's contemporary,
and when the close relation between the two is considered (Cf. Isaiah
2:2-4, with Micah 4:1-3), it is difficult not to recognize in his
oracle an expansion of Isaiah's. In the same line would seem to lie the
enigmatic utterance in Jeremiah 31:22: "For Jehovah hath created a new
thing in the earth: a woman shall encompass a man" (thus Delitzsch,
etc.).
Testimony of the Gospel
The germs now indicated in prophetic scriptures had apparently borne no
fruit in Jewish expectations of the Messiah, when the event took place
which to Christian minds made them luminous with predictive import. In
Bethlehem of Judea, as Micah had foretold, was born of a virgin mother
He whose "goings forth" were "from of old, from everlasting" (Micah
5:2; Matthew 2:6). Matthew, who quotes the first part of the verse, can
hardly have been ignorant of the hint of pre-existence it contained.
This brings us to the testimony to the miraculous birth of Christ in
our first and third Gospels—the only Gospels which record the
circumstances of Christ's birth at all. By general consent the
narratives in Matthew (chapters 1,2) and in Luke (chapters 1,2) are
independent—that is, they are not derived one from the other—yet they
both affirm, in detailed story, that Jesus, conceived by the power of
the Holy Spirit, was born of a pure virgin, Mary of Nazareth, espoused
to Joseph, whose wife she afterwards became. The birth took place at
Bethlehem, whither Joseph and Mary had gone for enrollment in a census
that was being taken. The announcement was made to Mary beforehand by
an angel, and the birth was preceded, attended, and followed by
remarkable events that are narrated (birth of the Baptist, with
annunciations, angelic vision to the shepherds, visit of wise men from
the east, etc.). The narratives should be carefully read at length to
understand the comments that follow.
The Testimony Tested
There is no doubt, therefore, about the testimony to the Virgin birth,
and the question which now arises is—What is the value of these parts
of the Gospels as evidence? Are they genuine parts of the Gospels? Or
are they late and untrustworthy additions? From what sources may they
be presumed to be derived? It is on the truth of the narratives that
our belief in the Virgin birth depends. Can they be trusted? Or are
they mere fables, inventions, legends, to which no credit can be
attached?
The answer to several of these questions can be given in very brief
form. The narratives of the nativity in Matthew and Luke are
undoubtedly genuine parts of their respective Gospels. They have been
there since ever the Gospels themselves had an existence. The proof of
this is convincing. The chapters in question are found in every
manuscript and version of the Gospels known to exist. There are
hundreds of manuscripts, some of them very old, belonging to different
parts of the world, and many versions in different languages (Latin,
Syrian, Egyptian, etc.), but these narratives of the Virgin birth are
found in all. We know, indeed, that a section of the early Jewish
Christians—the Ebionites, as they are commonly called—possessed a
Gospel based on Matthew from which the chapters on the nativity were
absent. But this was not the real Gospel of Matthew: it was at best a
mutilated and corrupted form of it. The genuine Gospel, as the
manuscripts attest, always had these chapters.
Next, as to the Gospels themselves, they were not of late and
non-apostolic origin; but were written by apostolic men, and were from
the first accepted and circulated in the church as trustworthy
embodiments of sound apostolic tradition. Luke's Gospel was from Luke's
own pen—its genuineness has recently received a powerful vindication
from Prof. Harnack, of Berlin—and Matthew's Gospel, while some dubiety
still rests on its original language (Aramaic or Greek), passed without
challenge in the early church as the genuine Gospel of the Apostle
Matthew. Criticism has more recently raised the question whether it is
only the "groundwork" of the discourses (the "Logia") that comes
directly from, Matthew. However this may be settled, it is certain that
the Gospel in its Greek form always passed as Matthew's. It must,
therefore, if not written by him, have had his immediate authority. The
narratives come to us, accordingly, with high apostolic sanction.
Sources of the Narratives
As to the sources of the narratives, not a little can he gleaned from
the study of their internal character. Here two facts reveal
themselves. The first is that the narrative of Luke is based on some
old, archaic, highly original Aramaic writing. Its Aramaic character
gleams through its every part. In style, tone, conception, it is highly
primitive—emanates, apparently, from that circle of devout people in
Jerusalem to whom its own pages introduce us (Luke 2:25,36-38). It has,
therefore, the highest claim to credit. The second fact is even more
important. A perusal of the narratives shows clearly—what might have
been expected that the information they convey was derived from no
lower source than Joseph and Mary themselves. This is a marked feature
of contrast in the narratives—that Matthew's narrative is all told from
Joseph's point of view, and Luke's is all told from Mary's. The signs
of this are unmistakable. Matthew tells about Joseph's difficulties and
action, and says little or nothing about Mary's thoughts and feelings.
Luke tells much about Mary—even her inmost thoughts—but says next to
nothing directly about Joseph. The narratives, in short, are not, as
some would have it, contradictory, but are independent and
complementary. The one supplements and completes the other. Both
together are needed to give the whole story. They bear in themselves
the stamp of truth, honesty, and purity, and are worthy of all
acceptation, as they were evidently held to be in the early church.
Unfounded Objections
Against the acceptance of these early, well-attested narratives, what,
now, have the objectors to allege? I pass by the attempts to show, by
critical elimination (expurging Luke 1:35, and some other clauses),
that Luke's narrative was not a narrative of a Virgin birth at all.
This is a vain attempt in face of the testimony of manuscript
authorities. Neither need I dwell on the alleged "discrepancies" in the
genealogies and narratives. These are not serious, when the
independence and different standpoints of the narratives are
acknowledged. The genealogies, tracing the descent of Christ from David
along different lines, present problems which exercise the minds of
scholars, but they do not touch the central fact of the belief of both
Evangelists in the birth of Jesus from a virgin. Even in a Syriac
manuscript which contains the certainly wrong reading, "Joseph begat
Jesus," the narrative goes on, as usual, to recount the Virgin birth.
It is not a contradiction, if Matthew is silent on the earlier
residence in Nazareth, which Luke's object led him fully to describe.
Silence of Mark and John
The objection on which most stress is laid (apart from what is called
the evidently "mythical" character of the narratives) is the silence on
the Virgin birth in the remaining Gospels, and other parts of the New
Testament. This, it is held, conclusively proves that the Virgin birth
was not known in the earliest Christian circles, and was a legend of
later origin. As respects the Gospels—Mark and John—the objection would
only apply if it was the design of these Gospels to narrate, as the
others do, the circumstances of the nativity. But this was evidently
not their design. Both Mark and John knew that Jesus had a human
birth—an infancy and early life—and that His mother was called Mary,
but of deliberate purpose they tell us nothing about it. Mark begins
his Gospel with Christ's entrance on His public ministry, and says
nothing of the period before, especially of how Jesus came to be called
"the Son of God" (Mark 1:1). John traces the divine descent of Jesus,
and tells us that the "Word became flesh" (John 1:14); but how this
miracle of becoming flesh was wrought he does not say. It did not lie
within his plan. He knew the church tradition on the subject: he had
the Gospels narrating the birth of Jesus from the Virgin in his hands:
and he takes the knowledge of their teaching for granted. To speak of
contradiction in a case like this is out of the question.
Silence of Paul
How far Paul was acquainted with the facts of Christ's earthly origin
it is not easy to say. To a certain extent these facts would always be
regarded as among the privacies of the innermost Christian circles so
long at least as Mary lived—and the details may not have been fully
known till the Gospels were published. Paul admittedly did not base his
preaching of his Gospel on these private, interior matters, but on the
broad, public facts of Christ's ministry, death, and resurrection. It
would be going too far, however, to infer from this that Paul had no
knowledge of the miracle of Christ's birth. Luke was Paul's companion,
and doubtless shared with Paul all the knowledge which he himself had
gathered on this and other subjects. One thing certain is, that Paul
could not have believed in the divine dignity, the pre-existence, the
sinless perfection, and redeeming headship, of Jesus as he did, and not
have been convinced that His entrance into humanity was no ordinary
event of nature, but implied an unparalleled miracle of some kind. This
Son of God, who "emptied" Himself, who was "born of a woman, born under
the law," who "knew no sin" (Philippians 2:7,8; Galatians 4:4; 2
Corinthians 5:21), was not, and could not be, a simple product of
nature. God must have wrought creatively in His human origin. The
Virgin birth would be to Paul the most reasonable and credible of
events. So also to John, who held the same high view of Christ's
dignity and holiness.
Christ's Sinlessness a Proof
It is sometimes argued that a Virgin birth is no aid to the explanation
of Christ's sinlessness. Mary being herself sinful in nature, it is
held the taint of corruption would be conveyed by one parent as really
as by two. It is overlooked that the whole fact is not expressed by
saying that Jesus was born of a virgin mother. There is the other
factor—"conceived by the Holy Ghost." What happened was a divine,
creative miracle wrought in the production of this new humanity which
secured, from its earliest germinal beginnings, freedom from the
slightest taint of sin. Paternal generation in such an origin is
superfluous. The birth of Jesus was not, as in ordinary births, the
creation of a new personality. It was a divine Person—already
existing—entering on this new mode of existence. Miracle could alone
effect such a wonder. Because His human nature had this miraculous
origin Christ was the "holy" One from the commencement (Luke 1:35).
Sinless He was, as His whole life demonstrated; but when, in all time,
did natural generation give birth to a sinless personality?
The Early Church a Witness
The history of the early church is occasionally appealed to in witness
that the doctrine of the Virgin birth was not primitive. No assertion
could be more futile. The early church, so far as we can trace it back,
in all its branches, held this doctrine. No Christian sect is known
that denied it, save the Jewish Ebionites formerly alluded to. The
general body of the Jewish Christians—the Nazarenes as they are
called—accepted it. Even the greater Gnostic sects in their own way
admitted it. Those Gnostics who denied it were repelled with all the
force of the church's greatest teachers. The Apostle John is related to
have vehemently opposed Cerinthus, the earliest teacher with whom this
denial is connected.
Discredited Vagaries
What more remains to be said? It would be waste of space to follow the
objectors into their various theories of a mythical origin of this
belief. One by one the speculations advanced have broken down, and
given place to others all equally baseless. The newest of the theories
seeks an origin of the belief in ancient Babylonia, and supposes the
Jews to have possessed the notion in pre-Christian times. This is not
only opposed to all real evidence, but is the giving up of the
contention that the idea had its origin in late Christian circles, and
was unknown to earlier apostles.
The Real Christ
Doctrinally, it must be repeated that the belief in the Virgin birth of
Christ is of the highest value for the right apprehension of Christ's
unique and sinless personality. Here is One, as Paul brings out in
Romans 5:12 ff., who, free from sin Himself, and not involved in the
Adamic liabilities of the race, reverses the curse of sin and death
brought in by the first Adam, and establishes the reign of
righteousness and life. Had Christ been naturally born, not one of
these things could be affirmed of Him. As one of Adam's race, not an
entrant from a higher sphere, He would have shared in Adam's corruption
and doom—would Himself have required to be redeemed. Through God's
infinite mercy, He came from above, inherited no guilt, needed no
regeneration or sanctification, but became Himself the Redeemer,
Regenerator, Sanctifier, for all who receive Him. "Thanks be unto God
for His unspeakable gift" (2 Corinthians 9:15).
From the article by James
Orr, The
Virgin Birth of Christ in The Fundamentals Ed. by R.A.
Torrey.