The Fundamentals - Volume 2
The Virgin Birth of Christ
by Professor James Orr, D.D.
United Free Church College, Glasgow, Scotland
First Presbyterian Church, Salt Lake City, Utah
[This resource is taken from Chapter XI of THE FUNDAMENTALS, VOLUME
II, from the four
volume edition issued by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in 1917.
This four volume set has been reprinted by Baker Books (ISBN
0-8010-8809-7). THE FUNDAMENTALS was edited by R.A. Torrey, A.C. Dixon,
and others. A copyright does not appear in the 2 volume reprint.]
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" (Rev. 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
over-exaltation 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" (Isa. 7:14; Cf. 8:8, 10). This is none other
than the child of wonder extolled in chapter 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, Counsellor, 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 Matt. 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.(1) 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.
(1) For the
evidence, see my volume on "The Virgin Birth," Lecture VII
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 (Matt. 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. Isa. 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 Jer. 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; Matt. 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 not 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, Syriac, 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 from 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 be 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" (Phil. 2:7, 8; Gal. 4:4; 2 Cor.
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 Cor. 9:15).
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