Editorial
From the Newsletter of Revesby Presbyterian Church
December 2009
Rev Dr Peter Barnes
It is customary, even compulsory, in many circles these days to lampoon the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin. There is nothing new in this. In the second century, both the Jew, Trypho, and the pagan, Celsus, repudiated the Christian claim that Mary conceived her divine Son while remaining a virgin. In 1823 Thomas Jefferson wrote: ‘The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.’
It is a common enough view. Christmas has for many become the celebration of some vague Christmas spirit of giving. For a couple of years the televised Carols in the Domain included John Lennon’s Imagine, with its lines about ‘Imagine there’s no heaven;/ It’s easy if you try:/ No hell below us;/ Above us only sky.’ The criterion for inclusion amongst the carols must have been something like: ‘If it moved people and they liked it, it was in.’ Content was irrelevant.
In actual fact, content is everything. Thomas Jefferson and his fellow critics imply that Christians in biblical times were gullible, and rather inclined to believe any story, provided it told of a miracle. They supposedly could not tell the difference between a fable and history. However, when the angel Gabriel told Zechariah that his ageing wife, Elizabeth, would bear a son who would make ready for the Lord a prepared people, Zechariah’s first response was to question the promise: ‘How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years’ (Luke 1:18). Mary too was not quick to believe the even greater promises of Gabriel to her. She was told that her Son would be the Son of the Most High, and would be the Davidic king who would rule over God’s kingdom forever. Not surprisingly, she had at least one question: ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ (Luke 1:34) Joseph also was quite well aware of how babies are conceived, so when he learned of Mary’s pregnancy, he resolved to divorce her quietly (Matt.1:19). To him, it seemed obvious that Mary had been unfaithful. But what seems obvious is not always true.
One of main reasons for the early Christians’ belief in the Virgin Birth was the truth that nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37). Thomas Jefferson made two obvious errors. First, he believed that God could only do what we can do, except that He created the world. This is supposed to be rational but it is clearly nonsense. If Genesis 1:1 is true – that God created the heavens and the earth – then He is able to do whatever He pleases (Psalm 115:3). Jefferson’s god of Deism is just a rational idol.
Jefferson’s second great error was that he believed that Jesus only came to be a human reformer – to be someone like Jefferson himself, only before his time. Jesus never claimed simply to be a great human teacher. He claimed to be the Son of God whom only the Father knew in an absolute sense (Matt.11:27), the One who would the sheep from the goats in the Last Judgment (Matt.25:31-46), and accepted the titles of ‘Lord’ and ‘God’ (John 20:28). The One who is greater than the angels and receives their worship (Heb.1) is the One who in the ‘little while’ of the Incarnation was made lower than the angels (Heb.2:9). Far from being ‘artificial scaffolding’, the Virgin Birth is exactly what one would expect. The unique redeemer comes into the world in a unique way.
Rationalism collapses into irrationality. Jefferson ends out with a god who cannot do much, and a man Jesus who cannot save. It is a problem of his own making. The God of the Bible is the God who can do anything except sin, and the Christ of the Bible is both divine and human in the one person. The Virgin Birth – or virgin conception to be more accurate – reflects both of these truths. Here we celebrate the coming of the King from another world – the Lord from heaven to be the Saviour of sinners. In the wonderful summary of Ambrose of Milan: ‘He is seen as man, he is adored as Lord; he lies in swaddling clothes, but shines amid the stars; the cradle shows his birth, the stars his dominion; it is the flesh that is wrapped in clothes, the Godhead that receives the ministry of angels.’
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes