Even so, What Difference Does it Make? (Part 8)
Without fail, university professors teaching undergraduates in the humanities and social sciences face the same situation every semester. At some point, after delivering a particularly difficult lecture on a complex subject, someone in the professor’s class will raise their hand and ask the proverbial “sophomore’s question”: “What you are saying is very interesting, and makes good sense, but really, what does it matter? What difference does it all make?”
Here in this article in our series, we too now have to face “the sophomore’s question.” Many biblical scholars and theologians today, whether or not they believe that the virginal conception of Jesus really happened, are nevertheless inclined to say that the doctrine makes little or no difference in the end to the essential core of one’s Christian belief. One can believe that Jesus is the Son of God without it, and its appearance in the Creed is not a sign that it is vital to Christian orthodoxy.
In the last three installments of this web series, I will endeavor to show that the literal truth of the virginal conception of Christ does indeed make a significant difference to the wider pattern of Christian belief, and therefore its appearance in the ecumenical Nicene Creed was no accident.
Above all, we need to know: What was God our Father trying to say to us by sending His Son into the world through the womb of a virgin, by the power of the Holy Spirit? What is the theological message that the mystery of the Virgin Birth intends to convey, and to what extent does that message depend upon the historical-biological facticity of the story?
Given the truth of the central doctrines of the Christian Faith (such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) there are several reasons for thinking that the entrance of the divine Son of God into the world — that is, his assumption of our human condition as “the Word made flesh” (Jn 1:14), in order to rescue humanity from sin — was very likely to have taken place in an extraordinary, or even miraculous manner, indeed, something very like a virginal conception.
We need to bear in mind that if Jesus of Nazareth really is the divine Lord in human flesh, then his divine person pre-existed his human conception. In other words, alone among human beings, he must have had a personal, divine life that preceded his human conception and birth. It follows that the coming of this person into the world must have been unlike that of anyone else, for in this case alone an infinite, supernatural, uncreated, divine person, the Second Person of the Trinity, assumed our human condition. He was not a created individual, as we are. Rather, he was the eternal Son of God coming to earth to share our lot. His coming-to-be in this world, therefore, was bound to be unique in some way — indeed, most likely miraculous in some way as well.
In fact, even if the story of the Virgin Birth is a mere myth or legend, and in reality Jesus was conceived through the natural, conjugal union of his parents, Mary and Joseph, still, his conception would have had to have a miraculous or extraordinary dimension. A special divine intervention of some kind would have been required to prevent the natural process of conception from resulting (as all human conceptions do) in a created human person, and to insert in its place the presence of an uncreated, divine person, the divine Son of God. Thus, we are faced with a choice of accepting the divine intervention that the gospel writers tell us about — the virginal conception in the womb of Mary — or coming up with one of our own devising, with no evidence to back it up.
Some contemporary theologians worry that if Jesus did not have a human father, then he was not fully human. But it is surely not the case that person must be conceived in the ordinary, natural way in order to be accounted an authentically human being. For example, no one doubts that a child who is the product of in-vitro fertilization, or even human cloning, would still be categorized as fully human (however morally dubious such medical procedures may be). The result is still a definably “human” being, even though that person had a non-standard mode of origin. The fact that Jesus’ own process of conception was unique, therefore, would not necessarily imply that he was less than fully human.
We also cannot appeal to the natural occurrence of “parthenogenesis” in some biological species in order to find a purely natural explanation for Christ’s entrance into the world in the womb of a virgin. Parthenogenesis is the self-activation of the ovum in a fertile female of a species — but parthenogenesis can only naturally result in female offspring (since all ova in the wombs of females are genetically female, unless activated otherwise by male spermatozoa). For the child Jesus to be the product of human parthenogenesis, therefore, divine intervention still would have been needed to change the female XX chromosomes of an ovum in the womb of Mary to a male XY set of chromosomes. And even then, that would only explain the origin of Christ’s body: we would need an additional, extraordinary divine act of some kind to enable this body to be the body of an uncreated, divine person, the Second Person of the Trinity, rather than the body of a created person.
In short, any way you slice it, for the Incarnation truly to take place, an extraordinary or miraculous divine intervention had to happen to make it possible, from the moment of conception onward.
Another reason why the virginal conception is important is that it adequately accounts for the preservation of the human nature of Jesus from sin. A basic New Testament teaching is that from the day he was conceived to the day he died, Jesus Christ was completely free from sin. In fact, to make the perfect atoning sacrifice for our sins on the Cross, he must have had no involvement with sin whatsoever (which is why the New Testament speaks of him as the pure, unblemished Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world: Jn 2:19; I Pet 1:18-20). The nature of every human being born into this world, however, has been wounded and corrupted by “original sin”: a wound passed down to us from our first parents (Rom 5:12-21; cf. Ps 51:5). Adam and Eve bequeathed to all their descendants this spiritual wound: the loss of the life-giving Holy Spirit, with all its deleterious effects (including inner disorders that strongly incline us to sin). For Jesus to be preserved from the spiritual corruption of original sin, a special coming-to-be in this world of some kind, by the Holy Spirit, would seem to be “just what the doctor ordered”!
Evangelical apologist Josh McDowell points to a third significant feature of the virginal conception:
If Jesus had been sired by Joseph, He would not have been able to claim the legal rights to the throne of David [cf. Lk 1:32]. According to the prophecy of Jeremiah 22:28-30, there could be no king in Israel who was a natural descendent of King Jeconiah, and Matthew 1:12 relates that Joseph was from the line of Jeconiah. If Jesus had been fathered by Joseph, He could not rightly inherit the throne of David, since [He would have been] of the accursed line.
Thus, in order to be the promised Messiah, while Jesus could be adopted into the House of David by Joseph, he could not be a physical descendent of Jeconiah through Joseph. Once again, the miracle of the virginal conception in the womb of Mary, while not the only way that God could have brought his incarnate Son into the House of David, certainly was sufficient to meet the need.
Notice how the doctrine of the virginal conception fits with the earliest, most central expression of the Christian Faith: that “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2:11). He is “Jesus” (literally, “God saves”) in so far as he is the spotless Lamb of God, the sinless one, who gave his life for us on the Cross (and the doctrine of the virginal conception by the Holy Spirit shows us how God chose to preserve his soul from the wound of original sin). He is also the “Christ,” (literally, “the Anointed One”), the promised Davidic Messiah (and the doctrine of the virginal conception shows us how Jesus became a member of the House of David through adoption, and not through biological descent from the cursed line of Jeconiah). Finally, he is the divine “Lord” (in Hebrew Adonai or Yahweh), the divine Son of God made flesh (and the doctrine of the virginal conception shows how that pre-existent divine Person entered our world, assuming our human nature: a unique mode of origin for a unique mode of divine presence in history). Clearly, the doctrine of the virginal conception helps us knit together a coherent understanding of the central Christian confession that “Jesus Christ is Lord.”
Of course, that opens up the bigger question of whether it is possible, without self-contradiction, to remain in doubt about the historical-biological fact of the virginal conception of Jesus, and yet still uphold the classical Christian Faith that Jesus is the Messiah, the divine Savior who came among us in human flesh. In one sense, the answer is “yes”: from our limited, human vantage point, we cannot say that the virginal conception was the only way that God could have sent his Son into the world for our salvation. Maybe there was some other way he could have done so. Nevertheless, to believe what is merely logically possible is not necessarily always wise and prudent. In some way, the divine Son of God came to share our human condition, to be the sinless Savior of the world, and to reign as the promised Davidic Messiah over all of humanity. The doctrine of the virginal conception shows how God began to accomplish all three of these intentions at once, from the origin of Jesus onward. We can cleverly speculate about other ways that God could have acted to bring his Son into the world and begin to equip him for his mission, but for those theories we would have no historical evidence to back them up — and we would be trading the simple explanation provided by the gospels for more complex theories of our own devising. Usually, (following the famous philosophical principle “Occam’s razor”) the simplest sufficient explanation for a phenomenon deserves the benefit of the doubt. It would surely be rash and imprudent not to follow that principle here.
In short, the virginal conception shows us that the early Christian confession “Jesus Christ is Lord” was true and manifest from the very first moment of his existence on this earth. It is thereby triply fitting to the mystery of his divine person and saving work.
Next Time: Sent From Above, on a Rescue Mission
Robert Stackpole, STD
©2020 Mere Christian Fellowship
