The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord Part 1

The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord.

by B. W. Randolph.

PREFACE

This paper was read before the S. T. C. (Sanctae Trinitatis Confraternitas) on March 10th of this years at one of the ordinary meetings of the Brotherhood. It is published now in the hope that it may thus reach a wider circle.

To suppose that any one can hold the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation without believing the miraculous Conception and Birth, is, in the writer's opinion, a delusion. There is no trace in Church History, so far as he is aware, of any believers in the Incarnation who were not also believers in the Virgin-Birth. The modern endeavour to divorce the one from the other appears to be part of the attempt now being made to get rid of the miraculous altogether from Christianity.

Professor Harnack appears to urge us to accept the "Easter message"

while we need not, he thinks, believe the "Easter faith."* He means apparently by this that we can deny the literal fact of our Lord's Resurrection, while we may believe in a future life.

What St. Paul would really have said to a Christianity such as this seems to be plain from his words to the Corinthian converts who were denying the Resurrection in his day: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."

(I Cor. xv. 14.)

-- * Harnack, What is Christianity? p. 160.

Deny the Resurrection of our Lord, and you take away the key-stone from the Apostolic preaching, and the whole edifice falls to the ground. Any unprejudiced reader of the sermons and speeches of St. Peter and St. Paul in the Acts will surely recognize how true this is.

Similarly in regard to the human Birth of our Lord. Once admit that He was born as other men, and the Incarnation fades away.

A child born naturally of human parents can never be G.o.d Incarnate.

There can be no new start given to humanity by such a birth. The entail of original sin would not be cut off nor could the Christ so born be described as the "Second Adam--the Lord from heaven."

Christians could not look to such a one as their Redeemer or Saviour, still less as the Author to them of a new spiritual life.

Another man would have appeared among men, giving mankind the example of a beautiful human life, but unable in any other way to benefit the race of men. Further, a Christ such as this would not be a perfect character, for if the Gospels are to be believed, He said things about Himself and made claims which no thoroughly good man could have a right to make unless he were immeasurably more than man. While these pages were pa.s.sing through the press, the eye of the present writer was caught by the following words in a letter of Bishop Westcott, which seem to have a special significance at this time:--"I tried vainly to read----'s book ....

He seems to me to deny the Virgin-Birth. In other words, he makes the Lord a man, one man in the race, and not the new Man--the Son of Man, in whom the race is gathered up. To put the thought in another and a technical form, he makes the Lord's personality human, which is, I think, a fatal error."*

-- * Life of Bishop Westcott, vol. ii. p. 308.

It is sometimes said, in opposition to the mystery of the Virgin-Birth, that there is a tendency in the human mind, not without its ill.u.s.trations in history, to "decorate with legend"

the early history of great men. In reply, it may be enough here to say that legends a.n.a.logous to the pagan legends of the births of heroes, false and absurd legends, did gather round the infancy of Jesus Christ. The Apocryphal Gospels are full of such legends.

They tell us how the idols of Egypt fell down before Him; how His swaddling-clothes worked miracles; and how He made clay birds and turned boys into kids, and worked other absurd miracles of various kinds. But there is a world of difference between these "silly tales" and the restraint, purity, dignity, and reserve which characterize the narratives of the first and third Evangelists.

"The distinction between history and legend," says Dr. Fairbairn, "could not be better marked than by the reserve of the Canonical and the vulgar tattle of the Apocryphal Gospels."*

-- * Quoted in Gore, Dissertations, p. 60.

I wish to take this opportunity of thanking my colleague, the Rev. G. W. Douglas, and my friend the Rev. Canon Warner, Rector of Stoke-by-Grantham, for their kind help in revising the proof-sheets of this paper.

B.W.R.

THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE, ELY, Feast of St. Mark, 1903.

[Note on transliteration of Greek quotations: o = omicron (short o); e = epsilon (short e); o = omega (long o); e = eta (long e)]

THE VIRGIN-BIRTH OF OUR LORD

There are two miracles confessed in every form of the Creed--the miracle of the Conception and Birth, by which the Incarnation was effected; and the miracle of the Resurrection. These are the fundamental miracles, and are the battle-ground upon which the defenders and a.s.sailants of Christianity more especially meet.

The discussion of this most sacred subject of the Virgin-Birth of our Lord has been forced upon us at the present time. It is impossible to ignore it or set it aside. We must be prepared, each of us, however much we may shrink from treading on such sacred ground, to give a reason for the hope that is in us with reverence and fear.

I will ask you here and now to consider the matter briefly under four heads. First, I will try to give the evidence for the belief in this article of the Creed during the second century; next, I will ask you to consider the evidence of St. Matthew and St. Luke; thirdly, we will consider the argument e silentio on the other side; and lastly, I will ask you to reflect on the theological aspect of the question.

THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION

I will therefore, without any further preface, plunge into the middle of the subject, and ask you, first of all, to consider afresh that 'throughout the Church the statement of the belief in the Virgin-Birth had its place from so early a date, and is traceable along so many different lines of evidence, as to force upon us the conclusion that, before the death of the last Apostle, the Virgin-Birth must have been among the rudiments of the Faith in which every Christian was initiated;' that if we believe the Divine guidance in the Church at all, we must needs believe that this mystery was part of "the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints."

Bear with me, then, while I go over the evidence of the leading witnesses.

1. St. Ignatius.

He must have become Bishop of Antioch quite early in the second century. As he pa.s.ses through Asia about the year 110, he is on his way to martyrdom, and in his Epistles he speaks emphatically of the Virgin-Birth.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians, he says: "Hidden from the prince of this world were the Virginity of Mary and her child-bearing, and likewise also the death of our Lord--three mysteries of open proclamation, the which were wrought in the silence of G.o.d."*

-- * Eph., 19. "Kai elathen ton archonta tou aionos toutou he parthenia Marias kai ho toketos autes, homios kai ho thanatos tou Kuriou; tria musteria krauges, hatina en hesuchia theou eprachthe."

In the Epistle to the Symrnaeans, he says: "I give glory to Jesus Christ, the G.o.d who bestowed such wisdom upon you; for I have perceived that ye are established in faith immovable... firmly persuaded as touching our Lord, that He is truly of the race of David according to the flesh, but Son of G.o.d by the Divine will and power, truly born of a Virgin, and baptized by John... truly nailed up for our sakes in the flesh, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch."+

-- + Smyrn., I. "Doxazo Iesoun Christon ton theon ton houtos humas sophisanta; enoesa gar humas katertismenous en akineto pistei ..., pepleroph.o.r.emenous eis ton kurion hemon alethos onta ek genous David kata sarka, huion theou kata thelema kai dunamin theou, gegenemenon alethos ek parthenou, bebaptismenon hupo Ioannou ... alethos epi Pontiou Pilatou kai Herodou tetrarchou kathelomenon huper hemon en sarki."

In his Epistle to the Trallians, he writes: "Be ye deaf, therefore, when any man Speaketh to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the race of David, who was the Son of Mary, who was truly born."*

-- * Trall., 9. "kophothete oun, hotan humin choris Jesou Christou lale tis, tou ek genous Daveid, tou ek Marias, hos alethos egennethe."

2. Aristides of Athens.

In his Apology, written about the year 130, mentioning the Virgin-Birth as an Integral portion of the Catholic Faith, he writes: "The Christians trace their descent from the Lord Jesus Christ; now He is confessed by the Holy Ghost to be the Son of the Most High G.o.d, having come down from heaven for the salvation of men, and having been born of a holy Virgin+ . . . He took flesh, and appeared to men."#

-- + Another reading here is "a Hebrew Virgin," and the Armenian recension has the name "Mary." See Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole, p. 4; and Harnack's Appendix to the same work, p. 376.

# Apol., ch. xv. The quotation is from the Greek text preserved in the History of Barlaam and Josaphat. See The Remains of the Original Greek of the Apology of Aristides, by J. Armitage Robinson. Texts and Studies (Cambridge, 1891), vol. i. pp. 78, 79, 110. "hoi de Christianoi genealogountai apo tou Kuriou Jesou Christou, houtos de ho huios tou theou tou hupsistou h.o.m.ologeitai en Pneumati Hagio ap' ouranou katabas dia ten soterian ton anthropon; kai ek parthenou hagias gennetheis ... sapka anelabe, kai anephane anthpopois."

3. Justin Martyr.

In his Apologies and in his Dialogue with Trypho he has three summaries of the Christian Faith, in all of which the Virgin-Birth, the Crucifixion, the Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension are the chief points of belief about Christ.

In his First Apology (written between 140 and 150) he says: "We find it foretold in the Books of the Prophets that Jesus our Christ should come born of a Virgin . . . be crucified and should die and rise again, and go up to Heaven, and should both be and be called the 'Son of G.o.d.'" * And a little later in the same work he says: "He was born as man of a Virgin, and was called Jesus, and was crucified, and died, and rose again, and has gone up into heaven."+

-- * Apol., i. 31. "En de tais ton propheton biblois heuromen prokerussomenon paraginomenon gennomenon dia parthenou . . .

stauroumenon Iesoun ton hemeteron Christon, kai apothneskonta, kai anegeiromenon, kai eis ouranous anerchomenon, ai huion theou onta kai keklemenon."

+ Apol., i. 46. "Dia parthenou anthropos apekuethe, kai Iesous eponomasthe, kai staurotheis kai apothanon aneste, kai aneleluthen eis ouranon."