Postscript: A Reply to a Recent Book
After this web series was researched and written, an additional book from the UK was made known to me that directly addresses many of the issues I discussed in “Conceived by the Holy Spirit”: namely, Protestant New Testament scholar Andrew Lincoln’s work Born of a Virgin? (London: SPCK, 2013). Rather than rewrite the web series to incorporate discussion of this additional source, I decided instead to add this postscript, for those interested in pursuing these matters further. Here I am also going to lean heavily on an outstanding six part, point-by-point discussion of Lincoln’s book by Jason Engwer that appeared on the “Triablogue” website: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/11/andrew-lincolns-book-against-virgin_9.html
Lincoln’s main thesis is that there was actually no consensus in the New Testament, or among the early Christian writers about the origins of Jesus: some evidently believed he was born of a virgin, some are unclear, or probably did not believe it.
Most of his arguments, however, seem to be arguments from silence. Thus, he believes that the silence of St. Paul, St. Mark, St. John and the author of Hebrews about the virginal conception suggest that they may have been unaware of the claim. In the sixth installment of my web series, I discussed the strange silence — and its implications — of the first three of these important writers from the apostolic era. But Lincoln claims that there are actually hints in their writings that they believed that Jesus was the natural offspring of Mary and Joseph. Indeed, he claims that this was the majority view in the apostolic era. For example, in Romans 1:3, St. Paul says that Jesus was “born of the seed of David, according to the flesh.” St. John reports that Jesus was called “son of Joseph” in John 1:45. And Lincoln argues that Hebrews 2:17 would be undermined if Jesus was born of a virgin, because then the claim that he was fully human would be untenable: “Without complete human DNA Jesus would be a semi-divine or wholly divine special creation that [merely] appeared to be human” (Lincoln, p. 261-262).
None of these tidbits, however, amounts to very much. First of all, the phrase that someone was born “the seed of X” seems to have been a vague and fluid one, with a variety of applications, much like the phrases “son of God” (which could refer to the Israelite king, or to Adam as God’s first creation – or in some sense to a divine son of God) and “son of David” (which could refer to a biological descendant of David, or someone legally incorporated or adopted into the House of David). Engwer remarks: “Matthew, Luke and [St.] Ignatius [of Antioch] refer to the virgin birth, yet apply terms like ‘son of David’ and ‘seed of David’ to Jesus elsewhere in their writings.”
The fact that St. John quotes the apostle Phillip’s as reference to Jesus as “son of Joseph” after their very first meeting only implies that at that early stage of their discipleship, the apostles had not been informed yet about the supernatural origin of their Master (see the fifth installment of my web series). Can we honestly believe that St. John, who (almost all scholars agree) probably wrote his gospel around 90-100 AD, was unaware of the claim circulated by St. Matthew and St. Luke (probably decades earlier) that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary? — or that he intended to refute that claim only by inserting the phrase “son of Joseph” into the mouth of a new, green-behind-the-ears disciple? Besides, as Engwer puts it:
John wouldn’t need to correct or clarify Philip’s comments in John 1:45 if he expected his audience to be familiar with the virgin birth. As Craig Keener notes while commenting on another passage in John’s gospel, “Many ironies in Greek tragedies did not need to be spelled out because the story was already well known to the audience.”… Sometimes authors don’t spell something out if they think their audience already knows it or can easily figure it out.
Also, in all these discussions we need to be aware of what the gospel genre of literature really is: gospels are not meant to be complete biographies, nor complete theological treatises, but brief accounts of the life of Jesus in which the author selects from the biographical facts available to him only those that are pertinent to the particular theological points he wants to make about Jesus, relevant to the needs of the particular Christian community he is addressing. If St. John does not mention or discuss the virginal conception of Jesus, this does not mean that he was unaware of the claim, or that he rejected the doctrine, any more than the fact that he does not mention explicitly the Baptism of Jesus, or the Transfiguration, or the Lord’s Supper implies that he was unaware of these events, or disbelieved in the Christian doctrines related to them.
As for the passage from Hebrews, Lincoln seems to be reading the Scriptures through the lens of modern notions of what it means to be fully human. According to the Bible, as Engwer points out, “Adam and Eve were human without having been conceived through sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. Similarly, St. John the Baptist is approvingly portrayed as saying that God can create children of Abraham from stones (Matthew 3:9, Luke 3:8). … Why should we think that Jesus would have to attain a Y chromosome by means of sexual intercourse between two humans in order to meet the definition of humanity held by the author of Hebrews?” Besides, it is not clear even from the standpoint of modern biology that Jesus could only be fully human if he had a biologically standard mode of origin (for a brief discussion of this point, see the fifth installment of my web series). Engwer writes:
We don’t know much about the means by which God brought about the virgin birth. He could have created, at that time, whatever was needed, such as a Y chromosome, to supplement what Mary provided. Or material within Mary could have been transformed into what was needed. Or the needed material could have been transferred from Joseph to Mary, for example. The second and third scenarios just mentioned would be reminiscent of Adam’s creation from the dust (Genesis 2:7) and Jesus’ use of spit and clay to perform miracles (Mark 8:23, John 9:6), for instance. [NB: the second option mentioned by Engwer seems most likely, as the creation of the New Adam, Jesus Christ, would thereby echo the creation of the old Adam through the transformation of pre-existing material]
When Lincoln writes of the lack of consensus among the early writers of the Church about the virginal conception of Jesus, however, his work crosses the line from merely unconvincing, to utterly slipshod. For example, he writes:
Writings such as I and II Clement, the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shephered of Hermas, the Epistle of Polycarp, and the Epistle to Diognetus appear not to have been aware of the tradition of a virginal conception. In a number of cases, this is clearly not because they did not have the occasion to say anything about Jesus’ origins. (p. 169)
Engwer’s response to Lincoln about these late first and early second century Christian texts is so detailed and devastating that I need do no more than quote the highlights from it here:
[T]he idea that the sources Lincoln mentions “appear not to have been aware of the tradition of a virginal conception” is absurd. To get some idea of how widely Matthew and Luke and the traditions behind them are reflected in these patristic sources, see, for example, Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament … and Clayton Jefford, The Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament ….
The gospels were known to some extent even among non-Christians during the late first century to the middle of the second. … Eusebius refers to Quadratus and many others around the time of the apostles distributing copies of the gospels to non-Christians they were evangelizing (Church History, 3:7). Aristides expects non-Christians to have access to a gospel he cites and invites them to read it (Apology 2). He mentions the virgin birth as something people could read about in the gospel. Trypho, a Jewish opponent of Justin Martyr, comments that he’s read one or more of the gospels (Dialogue with Trypho, 10). Justin places his exchange with Trypho in the 130s. Are we to believe that such non-Christians had so much access to the gospels, and read them, yet the Christian sources Lincoln refers to had never even heard of the virgin birth tradition, which is recorded in two of the gospels (including Matthew, the most popular of the gospels at the time)?
Indeed, Engwer clearly shows that the virginal conception of Jesus Christ was both known to and believed in by the overwhelming consensus of the mainstream, early Christian community:
Around the middle of the second century, Justin gives us a description of church services in the city of Rome (First Apology, 67). He mentions that the gospels or the Old Testament scriptures are read during those services. If the reading of the gospels was a regular part of Christian church services in Rome at the time, why should we think the Christians in Rome mentioned by Lincoln would never even have heard of the virginal conception? …
Ignatius [of Antioch] discusses the concept in the documents written from or to locations that are also associated with some of the patristic sources Lincoln lists above. If Ignatius was writing to such Christians about the virgin birth in the early second century, and was writing in a manner suggesting he expected them to be familiar with the concept and to have accepted it, how likely is it that Christians writing from those locations around the same time or afterward had never even heard of the virgin birth?
Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians refers to and comments on the letters of Ignatius (13). As I mentioned above, those letters repeatedly advocate the virgin birth.
The Epsitle of Barnabas seems to cite a passage from Matthew’s gospel with the introduction “as it is written” (4). The author probably not only knew of Matthew’s gospel, but even considered it scripture. …
When writing to the Smymeans, [Ignatius] commends them for being “totally convinced” of the virgin birth, among other beliefs (1). Polycarp, a disciple of John, was bishop of the Smymean church at the time. He, especially as a leader of the church, would have been included among those Ignatius comments for holding to the virgin birth. He commends Polycarp without mentioning his name (12), wrote a letter to Polycarp that’s still extant, and is commended by Polycarp in his later letter to the Philippians (9,13). They knew each other well and had mutual respect. Polycarp recommends Ignatius’ letters to the Philippians, and those letters repeatedly advocate the virgin birth. Polycarp’s belief in the virginal conception is highly probable in light of the evidence just cited, and that conclusion is corroborated by Irenaeus’ later testimony about the beliefs of Polycarp (e.g., Against Heresies, 3: 3:4; cf. 1:10:1-2), who was Irenaeus’ mentor.
The Smymean church is also significant as one of the recipients of [the book of] Revelation (Revelation 2:8). The book is commonly dated to the last several years of the first century. It is one of the documents Lincoln cites against the virgin birth, since it puts a lot of emphasis on Jesus’ Davidic descent (3:7, 5:5, 22:16) without mentioning a virgin birth. Yet Ignatius’ letter to the Smymeans tells us that the church of Smyma was convinced of the virgin birth probably less than two decades after receiving Revelation. It looks as though the early Smymean interpreters of Revelation didn’t interpret the book as Lincoln does. [NB: Let’s remember also that the Blessed Virgin Mary may have been of the lineage of David as well, as one stream of Christian tradition believed, and if so, then this would make these claims of Jesus’ Davidic descent in the book of Revelation literally true, and not just oblique references to his legal acceptance into the house of David by Joseph]. …
We can further test Lincoln's interpretation of Revelation by examining Ignatius' letter to the Ephesians. That church, too, had received Revelation less than two decades earlier (Revelation 2:1). When writing to the Ephesians, Ignatius mentions the virgin birth in passing (19), as if the Ephesians already knew of it and wouldn't need to be persuaded of it. Note that the Ephesian church was not only Johannine, but Pauline as well.
Ignatius was a bishop in Antioch. The church there was both Petrine and Pauline (Galatians 2:11). …
Lincoln mentions that the virgin birth is referred to by Aristides, but neglects the larger significance of the passage. Aristides claims to be representing Christians in general. He tells the Roman emperor, to whom his document is addressed, that he can read of the Christian faith in "the gospel", and he mentions the virgin birth as one of the characteristic beliefs of Christians that he'll read about there (Apology, 2). Notice that we see Aristides referring to the virgin birth as one of the characteristic beliefs of Christians in general about half a century before Irenaeus did the same. …
Lincoln acknowledges that Justin Martyr affirmed the virgin birth, but makes some misleading comments in the process. He quotes an erroneous translation of Justin that makes it look as if Justin referred to some people who rejected the virgin birth as fellow Christians (p. 170). To his credit, Lincoln mentions that the translation is wrong in a footnote, but, then, why did he use that translation to begin with? For example, Michael Slusser's recent edition of Justin's work (Dialogue With Trypho [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2003]) has an accurate rendering of the passage, so Lincoln could have used Slusser's version instead. To make matters worse, Lincoln goes on to comment that the passage in question is "frequently and plausibly" cited to support the notion that Justin considered some individuals who rejected the virgin birth to be Christians (p.171). Lincoln himself later advocates that view of Justin (p. 177). Yet, I see no reason to think Justin expressed such a view in the passage quoted if you correct the error in the translation Lincoln used. Surely the popularity of the interpretation of Justin that Lincoln is referring to is due largely to how widely the false translation has been disseminated. Why, then, should the popularity of that interpretation be cited? Lincoln goes on to refer to some other passages in Justin, but I don't see how any of those support his conclusion either. He provides no supporting argument. …
Since Lincoln's view of the New Testament involves the authors contradicting one another, and Luke presenting contradictory traditions side-by-side, we should ask whether the early extrabiblical Christians held such a view of the documents. They didn't. And Lincoln admits that harmonization of the documents was popular in the second century. He discusses the gospel harmonies of Justin Martyr and Tatian and refers to harmonization that occurred even earlier (n. 22 on 188). …
The sources I've cited contradicting Lincoln's view are early, large in number, geographically widespread, and diverse in their backgrounds, personalities, and theologies, for example. They include individuals and churches who were in close contact with one or more of the apostles and/or New Testament authors. Lincoln maintains that men like Paul and the author(s) of the Johannine documents contradicted the virgin birth, yet the individuals and churches who were close to those men repeatedly affirm that Jesus was born of a virgin.
By contrast, what sources does Lincoln cite in support of his position? Remember, he claims that the belief that Joseph was Jesus' natural father was the majority view during the New Testament era. He claims that the view is found in New Testament documents at least as late as the end of the first century. So, where do we see that perspective on Jesus' conception in the extrabiblical literature? Lincoln cites sources like the Ebionites and Carpocratians and apocryphal and heretical documents like the Gospel Of Philip and the Gospel Of Thomas. He also appeals to some dubious readings of New Testament manuscripts, which don't actually support his conclusion. He makes a vague appeal to some "Gentile Christians" referred to by Origen in the third century (173). The extrabiblical sources supporting a virgin birth are earlier, far more numerous, more geographically widespread, and relationally closer to the apostles and other New Testament authors.
There is no reason to belabor the point. The simple fact is that there is no clear evidence that any of the New Testament writers believed that Jesus was born of the conjugal union of Joseph and Mary, and plenty of evidence that the early Christians of the mainstream Church (excluding fringe groups like the Gnostics) generally accepted belief in the miracle of the virginal conception throughout the first and second centuries AD. The tidbits on which Lincoln hangs his theory are greatly outweighed by the preponderance of the extant testimony.
Robert Stackpole, STD
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