THE MEANS BY WHICH GOD CHOSE to come into the world would be a virginal conception and a natural birth. It had to be natural to attest his humanity. It had to be virginal to attest his divinity. Mary is celebrated as remnant of Israel. The New Israel dawns with her radical attentiveness, receptivity, and trust in God (Gregory Thaumaturgus, Four Hom. I; Barth, CD I/2: 138). She is the daughter of Zion with whom God makes a new beginning with humanity (Isa. 1:8; Zech. 9:9; Luke 2:16–20; Bede, Hom. on Gospels 1.7).
A Natural Birth of Supernatural Conception
The conception exceeded all natural causal explanations. The birth was as natural as any normal human birth.
The conception of Jesus is viewed by the ancient ecumenical consensus as the creative act of the triune God through the initiating agency of God the Spirit (Luke 2:35; John of Damascus OF 4.13; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q31–33). In this lowly birth the Holy Spirit enabled the eternal Son to take on human nature without ceasing to be God (Augustine, Sermon 186.1; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q20–25, 32–33). Jesus’ birth was a birth in ordinary human flesh of a normal human mother who was a virgin.
The absence of an earthly natural father emphasizes that this event took place on God’s own initiative. The conception was without coitus of any kind. “Without any intercourse with a man, her virgin womb was suddenly impregnated” (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 4.12). The Russian Catechism does not miss the irony: “Why was Jesus Christ called the seed of the woman? Because he was born on earth without man” (COC 2:470).
The Fitness of Bodily Means
The manner of God’s coming did not imply a demeaning of sexuality. Rather it constituted an exaltation and celebration of the human body as the elected means God chooses to become knowable in history—through a man born of woman. The virginal conception was not a repudiation of maleness, but a sign of the grace of God toward all humanity, male and female (Gal. 4:2; Marius Victorinus, Epis. to Gal. 2.4.3–5). Without male initiative a male messiah is born through the body of a woman.
Here God is confirming the holy use of two bodies as fitting instruments of revelation with both genders included: a female body giving birth to a male body for hazardous service. It is not a two-to-one vote in favor of males or females, but equally honoring both genders.
The primary intention is neither to commend sexual abstinence nor condemn sexual passion but to attest God’s compassion for the fallen world and determination to save humanity from folly and sin. The fitness of these bodily means has been repeatedly affirmed by the apostolic witness and early Christian tradition (John 1:1, 17; Col. 2:9; Hilary, Trin. 3.16).
The Virgin Birth Confessed as a Creedal Article of Faith and Liturgical Event
Testimony to the virginal conception is considered important enough to be numbered among the core articles of faith of the creed, the baptismal confession. The birth narrative has remained among the foremost events celebrated in the Christian year. Its advent is revered as the beginning of the liturgical year (Augustine, Sermon 314.1).
Even though the Apostles’ Creed itself is very short, with no room for talk about such weighty matters as atonement or justification, it does include the crucial affirmation that Jesus was conceptus de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine (“conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,” Symbolum Apostolicum, COC II: 45). Second century expressions of the same basic rule of faith are reported by Irenaeus and Tertullian (Rufinus, Rule of Faith, COC 2:53).
So crucial is this testimony that it is often thought that those who reject the virginal conception are likely to fail to grasp the broader significance of the incarnation and thus of the resurrection. The Reformed theologian E. W. Sartorius wrote: “Those who deny the birth of the God-man of the Virgin Mary, will always question also the pre-existence and deity of Christ in general” (The Doctrine of Divine Love: 138; Jacobs).
The testimony to the conception has been a continuous feature of Christian proclamation since the oral traditions antedating the Gospel of Luke and of Matthew. Whatever modern critics may think, there is no doubt that the core proclamation of the church from very early times has included a witness to one “born of the virgin Mary.” Surprisingly there is more information in the New Testament about the virgin birth than about the Lord’s Supper.
The birth narrative has come to form an integral part of classic teaching on the identity of the Son. Liturgically the Feast of the Nativity (Christ-mass) is a focal point of the seasonal cycle of celebrations of the Christian year. If ignored or dismissed, a crucial link between Christology and liturgy is omitted (Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q29–30; J. G. Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ; H. von Campenhausen, The Virgin Birth in the Theology of the Ancient Church).
It is difficult to imagine how any alternative view could provide sufficient doctrinal cohesion within the context of ecumenical exegesis of scriptural teaching. The virgin birth aids in making sense out of a wide compass of correlated doctrines: the preexistent Logos; the humanity of Christ; the deity of Christ; the personal unity of theanthropos; both the temptation and sinlessness of Christ; and the new birth. Hence it is thought to be an apt way of understanding the first event of the Son’s earthly ministry (Calvin, Inst. 2.13.3; 3.20.22).
The Virgin Birth Firmly Established in Ecumenical Doctrine by Inclusion in Holy Writ
Jerome’s language displayed the high regard for canonical Scripture that prevailed in ancient ecumenism: “We believe that God was born of the Virgin, because we read it” (The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary 21). Classical exegetes assumed that the historicity of the virgin birth was firmly established quite simply by canonical authority (Ursinus, CHC: 205–207).
Yet the simple fact that the narrative is found in Scripture does not make it immune to historical investigation. Faith seeks to make such a historical investigation on the basis of the fullest possible assessment of evidence. Yet this must not be a limited inquiry that would arbitrarily rule out the possibility of the alleged event before one makes the investigation (Augustine, Conf. 17.10.16).
The birth narratives have indeed found their way into the canon. They cannot belatedly be arbitrarily weeded out of the canon on the grounds that they do not fit neatly into a naturalistic empiricist worldview (V. Taylor, Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth; D. Edwards, Virgin Birth in Faith and History; J. Orr, Virgin Birth of Christ; J. G. Machen, Virgin Birth of Christ). If one begins by assuming dogmatically that there can be no miracle under any circumstances, hence no virgin birth can ever be plausible, then has not a determining philosophical predisposition prevailed over free inquiry into history? Is one then making a fair and open historical inquiry?
Nature is not best defended by trying to prove philosophically that God is powerless to act either within or beyond natural causes. Augustine argued that no miracle could be known without the reliability of natural law (Trin. 3.5–9; CG 10.13–32). It may be that some Christians in the first century could have accepted Jesus as Lord who had not heard of the virginal conception. But the fact that it has been considered an article of faith by the mainstream of earliest ecumenical Christianity is evident from its persistence in the baptismal and creedal traditions (Justin Martyr, First Apol. 33). The virgin birth remains an intensely symbolic article, yet it did not function merely as an abstract symbol in classic Christianity but purported to attest an actual event that has import for everyday living.
Pagan Piety Lacks the Historical Certainty Claimed in the Gospel Story
A fervent hope for human renewal accompanies virtually every human birth. It is not surprising that in the history of religions generally that hope would be asserted on an idealized or cosmic scale—especially amid certain periods of historical despair and awakening hope. Israel too had hopes of this sort (Isa. 7:14; 54:1; Jer. 31:1–21). Israel expected a palpable, actual, coming event in history, God’s own new beginning, not a demigod or mythic idea.
In the Christian story, God is not the biological father of Jesus so as to make Jesus half God, half human. Rather Jesus is fully human, fully God. The narrative does not imply that a new Son of God is begotten who never before existed. Rather it speaks of the eternal Son of God who without any form of genital sexuality assumes human flesh in the conception and birth of this person (Prudentius, Scenes from Sacred History 25).
There is no clear or adequate parallel in the history of religions’ myths of virgin births for what is celebrated here: that “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16) to suffer for the salvation of humanity. The Son, “who, being in very nature God” took “the very nature of a servant” (Phil. 2:6–7). Pagan pieties knew nothing of incarnate birth of God in the flesh in this lowly sense (Marius Victorinus, Epis. to Phil. 2.6.8).
The Gospel First Announced to the Mother of All Living
The first announcement of God’s saving intention for humanity came to the first woman (Eve). The first glimpse of the gospel in Scripture is sometimes called the Protoevangelium of Genesis 3:14–19. It is the earliest anticipation of the good news of God’s coming.
It was first addressed not to Adam but Eve, in a promise to the mother of all living: The Lord God “will put enmity between [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.” From “her seed” would come the promised One who would overcome the tempter of humanity (Chrysostom, Hom. on Gen. 17; Heppe, RD: 411). There is no male in “her seed” (Gen. 1:15).
The Old Testament reports miraculous births that were not virginal conceptions. Each one signals a turning point in salvation history: Sarah belatedly bore Isaac (Gen. 18), Hannah belatedly gave birth to Samuel (1 Sam. 1–3), and the wife of Zorah bore Samson (Judg. 13:2–7; Bede, Homilies on the Gospels 2.19). In each case the mother had been barren and had abandoned all hope of having a child. God made the impossible birth possible, elevating the lowly to put down the rich and mighty (1 Sam. 2:7–17; Luke 1:52). In each case the child played a major role in the fulfillment of divine promise.
But the virgin birth of Jesus differs from all pagan miraculous birth narratives which focus upon barrenness overcome through divinely enabled human sexual coitus and human fathering without specifically disclaiming male sexual initiative (Chrysostom, Hom. on Hannah 1–2). Impotence is overcome through potency—quite different from virginal conception.
The Coming of Immanuel: The Language of Virginity—Almah, Parthenos
“Virgin” (almah, root word: “concealment,” Song of Songs 1:3; bethulah, root word: “separated,” Judg. 21:12) in the Old Testament generally meant a woman who has not had sexual intercourse with a man, the ritual purity expected in preparation for marriage and childbearing. It may also refer to a young maiden or woman of marriageable age (almah, “virgin, maiden,” never signifies a married woman, but always a maiden for whom virginity was presumed, Gen. 24:43). The pivotal passage in Isaiah 7:14 uses almah (LXX, GK. parthenos; Theophylact, Expl. of Matt., 23). Virginity symbolized the people of Israel as betrothed to God (Isa. 62:4–5; Jer. 18:15; Ephrem, Comm. on Is. 62.5). Later parthenos would be applied metaphorically to the church (2 Cor. 11:2–3) and to the faithful (Rev. 14:4).
To clarify Jesus’ messianic identity, Matthew specifically quoted Isaiah’s prophecy (7:14) that “‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel,’ which means ‘God with us’” (Matt. 1:23; Origen, OFP 4.1).
This birth was thought by Isaiah to be a “sign” (oth), addressed to “the house of David” (Is. 7:13), not merely for Ahaz in the singular but to “you” in the plural. Classical exegetes followed Matthew in regarding Isaiah’s prophecy as a type pointing beyond the circumstances of Ahaz to the Expected One (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.21).
The messianic promises were widely known in popular late Judaic piety: Micah foretold that the Savior would be born in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:4–6). Malachi had prophesied that a forerunner like Elijah would prepare the way for deliverance (Mal. 3:1; 4:5; Matt. 3:10–12). Isaiah had written: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Conselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end” (Isa. 9:6–7).
Gospel Witness to the Virgin Birth
Luke’s Narrative of the Annunciation
The angel Gabriel came to Mary to announce that “you will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:31–33). “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” is thus the opening moment of the salvation event as trustfully received by an attentive, grace-filled human agent (Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q30), the unique elect. “‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’” (Luke 1:34; note that parthenos here cannot be translated “young woman,” for that cannot fit the context). “The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.’” “For nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:35, 37).
Mary herself may have been one of the eyewitnesses Luke referred to as those from whom he gathered his information. Luke’s prologue clearly indicated his intention to write only about that which he had “carefully investigated” concerning “everything from the beginning” of these events “just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses” (Luke 1:2; Origen, Hom. on Luke 1.1–6).
Matthew’s Narrative of Joseph, Husband of Mary
Matthew’s narrative is apparently independent of Luke’s, hence corroboratory, again affirming the special conception. His genealogy ends with an atypical reference to “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (1:16, italics added). It is rare in ancient literature to find a man publicly identified primarily by means of his relation to his wife. Matthew then relates how the birth came about: “Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit” (1:18; Chrysostom, Hom. on Matt. 4.6). The angel appeared also to Joseph in a dream and explained that he had no reason to “be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus” (1:20–21), a name that held the clue from the outset to his identity—he will save (John of Damascus, OF 2.2; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q37).
In taking special note that Joseph, following the commandment of the angel, “called his name Jesus” (Matt. 1:25), the implication was that Joseph would accept legal responsibility for Jesus. Even though Joseph “had no union with her until she gave birth to a son,” precluding any notion that Jesus had an earthly father. Wherever Jesus is described as the “son of Joseph” (Luke 2:27, 33, 41, 43, 48; Matt. 13:55), the reference is to Joseph as legal not biological father, for otherwise Luke and Matthew would clearly be inconsistent with their own account (the same reasoning also applies to John 1:45; 6:42).
Mark’s Son of Mary
When it is suggested that Mark does not report the birth narrative, it might also be noted that Mark does not report anything at all from the first thirty years of Jesus’ life (circumcision, obedience to parents, or his growth as a lad). On closer inspection, however, Mark may not be so silent as supposed, for he pointedly refers to Jesus in an unusual reference as “son of Mary,” contrary to usual Jewish custom that identified the son by relation to the father, oddly leaving Joseph’s name out of the account (Mark 6:3). Hence it is possible that Mark, too, had access to the nativity narrative in some form, even if it did not fit in with the purpose of his particular task of writing.
Matthew and Luke, who probably had Mark’s Gospel in hand as they wrote, both thought it useful and necessary to include a missing piece—the nativity narrative. Does this mean that the narrative is late and hence of less importance? Or does it mean that they thought the nativity narrative was in fact necessary, and that in Mark’s account something important had been omitted on a point that was widely shared in the previous oral tradition? The latter seems more probable, for if they had thought otherwise, why would it even appear in their texts? More important, it is sometimes wrongly supposed that neither John nor Paul make any reference to the birth of Jesus; yet a careful examination of John 1:13, 6:42, Romans 1:2–4, and Galatians 4:4 makes it imperative that one not judge too quickly.
John’s Prologue: “Not of Natural Descent”
The birth narrative was almost surely known in some form to John, whose prologue on the incarnation assumes such a strong correspondence between the believer’s regeneration and the coming of God into the world.
John’s prologue takes the place of the nativity narrative, focusing not upon the mode of God’s becoming flesh but upon the incarnation itself, which requires some appropriate mode of entry into the world that is consistent with the preexistent Son becoming human. In developing the theme of “Word made flesh,” John writes: “Yet to all who receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:12–13, italics added; Augustine, Tractates on John 1.15). Why is the “husband’s [sexual] will” prominently inserted into the prologue? The comparison is between the eternal Son who came into the world unrecognized and the children quietly born of God who come into being through faith. If so, there is another level of this correlation: that between the Son of God born without a husband’s sexual initiative and children of God born of the unseen spirit. This suggests that John likely had access to the nativity narratives and understood himself to be here complementing them, rather than challenging or ignoring them.
The question of Jesus’ birth may have already been a subject of debate during Jesus’ lifetime, as was suggested by the opponents of Jesus who said: “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” (John 6:42). This was said by his detractors who “were not as yet able to hear of his marvelous birth. And if they could not bear to hear in plain terms of his birth according to the flesh, much less could they hear of that ineffable Birth which is from above” (Chrysostom, Hom. on John 46.1).
Paul’s Witness to the Unique Descent of Jesus: God’s Sent Son Born of Woman
Paul speaks with great precision of the descent of Jesus in Romans: the gospel has to do with God’s own Son, “who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:2–4; Origen, Comm. on Rom. 1.4). Why would Paul distinguish his divine Sonship from “his human nature a descendant of David” unless he had access to some sort of genealogical or birth reports? Paul’s access to the tradition of Davidic descent suggests that genealogies like those of Matthew and Luke or some similar tradition must have been available to Paul.
The passages in Galatians 4 are more intriguing and more crucial. Paul specifically quotes the virginal passage from Isaiah 54 to his congregation in Galatia. Isaiah had prophesied that a barren woman who had never born a child would burst into song and would “have no labor pains” in giving birth, for “more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband” (Gal. 4:27, quoting Isa. 54:1). In commenting on this particular passage, Paul went out of his way to make note of the crucial distinction between a “son born in the ordinary way” and “the son born by the power of the Spirit” (Gal. 4:29). He was trying to teach the Galatian church that they were the children of this free woman, “the Jerusalem that is above” who is “free” and who is “our mother,” whom God had given extraordinary birth by the Spirit, not birth in “the ordinary way.” These references strengthen the hypothesis that Paul may have had access to some form of the nativity narratives and was assuming that his audience was already familiar with Sarah’s childbearing of Isaac, which was viewed as a prefiguring of Christ.
The crucial Pauline reference is from the same passage in Galatians: “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (4:4). Why not “man and woman”? The omission of the father in this reference makes it particularly unusual and noteworthy. The Father sends the Son by the power of the Spirit, and without mention of male sexuality woman gives birth.
The verb “born” (genomenon) in this passage is the same one used in Philippians 2:7: “born to be like other men.” It is fitting that one equal with God should be born and become flesh in a paradoxical way—the holiest God through lowliest vessel. This is consistent with the theme of reversal common in the nativity images: no room at the inn, born of poor parents in a remote village, and the flight to Egypt.
In this way not only Luke and Matthew, but Mark, John, and Paul all attest aspects of the birth and descent of the Savior. The classic consensus is that Christ “was conceived in the immaculate womb of the Virgin, not by the will of man, nor by concupiscence, nor by the intervention of a husband, nor by pleasurable generation, but of the Holy Ghost” (John of Damascus, OF 3.2).
The Holy Family as Source of the Birth Narratives
Much of the extended family of Jesus appears to have been involved in the messianic event—John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zechariah, Simeon, Anna, the apostle John, his brothers James, Joses, Judas, and Simon, his sisters (or cousins) and uncles and aunts—all were part of a single family. Jesus’ sisters are also occasionally referred to (Mark 6:3; Matt. 13:56; Origen, Comm. on Matt. 10.17). Mary’s sister, John reports, was with her at the crucifixion (John 19:25; Ambrose, Letter 63.109–111). Although some of the family seemed resistant (Mark 3:21, 31; John 7:5), they later shared significantly in the mission of the church (Acts 1:14; 1 Cor. 9:5).
The presence of Jesus’ mother and brothers, especially James (Acts 1:14; 15:13–21; Gal. 1:19; 2:9), in the early circle of leading rememberers makes it unlikely that legendary myths or tales about Jesus’ origin would have been invented and left unchallenged by these prominent living persons during the decades following Jesus’ death (Africanus, Epis. to Aristides; Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah).
Only gradually, at some point subsequent to the resurrection, did the birth narratives become a normative component of the core of Christian proclamation. How could it have been otherwise? Only Mary and Joseph and perhaps a few others would have been privy to these events prior to the time when their significance would become plausible. One reason that much of the New Testament does not appear to be preoccupied with the birth narrative may have been that public teaching sought to maintain a quiet reserve about such private matters out of respect for Mary and other members of the family, perhaps in connection with the supposed “illegitimacy” question that detractors may have attempted to exploit. Already in John 8:41 the opponents of Jesus were hinting at his “illegitimacy,” and that charge continued to be made by opponents of Christianity well into the second century (Brown, Birth of the Messiah; Augustine, Tractates on John 42, SCD 717f.).
Mary’s Recollections
Luke in fact specifically mentions that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19; cf. 2:51). This appears to present Mary as the special custodian of the mystery of Jesus’ birth until the time came for a fuller proclamation. This could explain why the publicly shared tradition of the nativity was relatively slower in forming than that of the resurrection. Lateness does not imply tampering but reserve with the evidence. It was not until the later Infancy Gospel of James that a narrative would develop attempting to provide evidence for Mary’s virginity.
If one takes the hypothesis that Jesus was not born of a virgin, a greater difficulty arises, namely, that an unmarried couple would be chosen to give life to the Son of God who is without sin, the One who would forgive the sins of others, who without the premise of the virgin mother would have been legally treated as an illegitimate son born out of wedlock.
Christianity is unwavering in proclaiming a Savior who was born in time. But that makes for complications in other respects, with which the classic exegetes had to deal.
The Limits of Alternatives
It is theoretically possible to conjecture that God could have entered human history in some other way than by virginal conception, but objections mount as one considers the alternatives. The formally conceivable ways of being born are reduced to only two: normally, of one male and one female parent; or virginally, of a female parent alone. There is no third for the simple reason that male sexuality cannot give birth alone.
Hence if both sexes are to be honored in the incarnation, and if the one giving birth must be female, then the one sex remaining—the one to be born—would have to be male. Some might argue that both the mother of God-incarnate and God-incarnate might have been female. The obvious objection: This would have been less representative of humanity than a man born of woman (Gal. 4:4). Long before modern feminism, Augustine had thought seriously about this: “Mankind’s deliverance had to be evidenced among both sexes,” hence if the incarnate one is male, “it reasonably followed that the deliverance of the female sex be seen by that man’s birth from a woman” (Augustine, EDQ 11).
The virginal conception is not an embarrassed attempt to avoid sexuality. To the contrary, according to Gregory of Nyssa: “By the generative organs the immortality of the human race is preserved, and death’s perpetual moves against us are, in a way rendered futile and ineffectual. By her successive generations nature is always filling up the deficiency. What unfitting notion, then, does our religion contain, if God was united with human life by the very means by which our nature wars on death” (ARI 28). Sexual generation is not diminished but affirmed and transmitted in the incarnation.
Without Human Father
Why without human father? Compelling reasons are offered by classic exegetes as to why Christ was born without human father:
An Actual Human Birth Points Openly to Jesus’ Humanity and Historicity
It is ironic now to realize that the birth narratives probably were not first proclaimed and transmitted to underscore Jesus’ divinity, but his humanity. The primitive church was doing battle with Docetic views that doubted that the Savior could have been born at all. It is less pivotal in the narrative that Jesus was conceived without a father than that Jesus indeed had a mother and was conceived at all and born.
The struggle against Docetism shines through the primitive rule of faith recalled and passed on by Ignatius of Antioch to the Trallians, where it is affirmed that Jesus Christ “is of the stock of David, who is of Mary, who was truly born, ate and drank” (Ignatius, Trallians 8:1–2; Smyrna 1.1).
The birth narratives rejected the view that Jesus was so divine that he could not have been born at all. He was “born from her truly and properly,” wrote John II, Patriarch of Constantinople, “lest one should believe that from the Virgin He took on a mere appearance of flesh or in some other way a flesh which was not real, as Eutyches irreverently declared” (Letter to the Senate of Constantinople [534], CF: 156). “He truly fed upon her milk” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 4.10). “He did not pass through her as the sun shines through a glass, but brought her virgin flesh and blood with Him” (Luther, Epiphany Serm. on Matt. 2:1–12 [1538; cf. Calvin, Inst. 2.13.4).
The Virginal Conception Occurred by Attentive Hearing of the Word
The bodily locus of the virginal conception was not portrayed in early Christian art as the vagina, but the ear: “The conception was by hearing,” wrote John of Damascus (OF 4.14; italics added).
In early iconography the Holy Spirit is not portrayed as coming into Mary’s body physiologically by sexual transmission, but spiritually by attentive hearing. The coming of the Son by an actual human birth was by “the usual orifice,” the uterine birth canal; but the conception was by right hearing of the Word of God.
Accordingly, Mary remains in Christian memory the primary prototype of human readiness to receive God’s coming. The gift of God’s coming can only be received, it cannot be acquired on human initiative.
The Exclusion of Merit, Yet a Free Act Enabled by Grace
There is nothing that Mary does beforehand that qualifies her as worthy for this decisive role, except to trust in God’s promise, as did Abraham. Protestants have laid stress upon the meaning of the virgin birth as the exclusion of all human effort, parallel to the teaching of justification by grace through faith alone without works of merit. This theme was anticipated by patristic writers, as when Hilary spoke of the incarnation as the sublime moment “when human nature without any precedent merits of good works, was joined to God the Word in the womb of the Virgin” (Trin. 15.26).
The virginal conception occurred entirely by consent, not coercion. The virgin Mother was receptive to the divine address. As the incarnation of the Son was voluntary, so was the virginal conception. Mary was willing to be the human bodily means by which the Word became flesh, even as the Son assumed flesh voluntarily. As the Savior’s conception was voluntary but without works of merit by grace, so is the believer’s new birth into the Christian life voluntary yet entirely by grace. Mary consented without impairment of the liberty that made her human. “It was only after having instructed her and persuaded her that God took her for His Mother and borrowed from her the flesh that She so greatly wished to lend Him” (Cabasilas, “Homilies Mariales Byzantines,” Patrologia orientalis 19, 3).
Eve and Mary
Eve is not to be viewed alone, in isolation from Mary. Mary fulfills promises given to Eve. The “mother of all living” awaits the mother of the Savior.
The human condition has become neurotically tangled and knotted by the history of sin. “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith” (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.22).
Note the parallelisms: the fall occurred by false belief; the incarnation began with true belief. “As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced” (Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 17). As the destruction of the old humanity occurred through the disobedience of a virgin, so the redemption of the world occurred through the obedience of a virgin (Doc. Vat. II: 87–90; Heppe, RD, 422).
Irenaeus spoke of “the back-reference from Mary to Eve” (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.22). This means that the faithful better understand Eve from Mary, not Mary from Eve. Those who criticize Christianity for having a sexist view of Eve’s fall do well to ponder the meaning of the special role of Mary in the recovery of humanity from Eve’s fall. Eve alone is an incomplete story. Mary is “the new Eve believing God’s messenger with unhesitating faith” (Lumen Gentium 63). The narrative of Eve cannot rightly be read without Mary, as Adam’s story is similarly incomplete apart from Christ.
Adam’s Creation Prefigured Christ’s Birth
It seems odd that some are quick to affirm that God could breathe life and created goodness generally into all humanity, yet find it difficult to affirm that God could act specially or directly to breathe life into the Savior in a way distinctly befitting his mediatorial role. How it is that some readily affirm that God created Adam, but find it wrenching to hear that God might have taken some special initiative to create the New Adam? Why is the special conception of the Savior intrinsically a less plausible miracle of creation than the creation of humanity?
Compare the Genesis narrative of the surprising creation of Adam and Eve with the Lucan-Matthean nativity narratives telling the surprising story of God’s own direct and special initiative in the birth of the Savior. In both cases natural material was utilized to fulfill a preternatural purpose—the body of Adam made from mud; the body of Jesus born through an ordinary period of gestation and delivery.
Ancient exegetes marveled that the miracle of human creation prefigured the miracle of the birth of Jesus, just as the fall of Adam prefigured the restoration in Christ, and the Protoevangelium to Eve prefigured the annunciation (Rom. 5:14; 1 Cor. 15:22, 45; 1 Tim. 2:11–15; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.19–23; Chrysostom, Hom. on First Cor. 39; Hom. on Tim. 9).
Why Two Different Routes of Davidic Descent?
Accompanying the nativity narratives are genealogies that underscore that salvation history is human history.
The genealogies are not embarrassed by the notorious sinners in the messianic line. Luther commented: “The first thing to be noted in the lineage of Christ is the fact that the Evangelist lists in it four women who are very notorious in Scripture: Thamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. But nothing is said about the women of good repute: Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel. Now Jerome and others have been concerned about the reason why this was done. I hold that the first group was mentioned because these women were sinners and that Christ also wanted to be born in that large family in which prostitutes and fornicators are found in order to indicate what a love He bore sinners” (Luther, Serm. on Matt. 8 September, 1522).
The main purpose of both genealogies was to establish Davidic descent, to show that Jesus fulfilled the messianic expectations of Israel (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. III, 16–17; Pearson, EC I: 313). Matthew’s registry of Davidic descent moves from past to present through Joseph, son of David. Luke’s registry of Davidic descent is from present to past through Heli, the father of Mary. Matthew’s descent begins with Abraham and proceeds to Christ. Luke’s begins with Christ and recedes back to Adam (Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 22; Origen, 1.4; Hom. 28 on Luke).
Matthew’s genealogy traces Jesus’ ancestry not through Mary but through Joseph, but this does not imply that Joseph was Jesus’ physiological father because Matthew makes it clear that Joseph “had no union with her” (Matt. 1:25). The prevailing custom to trace lineage not through the mother but through the father’s side, and without such patrilineal tracing, first-century readers might have found the genealogy puzzling and implausible. John of Damascus explained of Matthew: “One should know, however, that it was not customary for the Hebrews, nor for sacred Scripture either, to give the pedigrees of women…. Consequently, it was sufficient to show the descent of Joseph” (John of Damascus, OF 2.14; Eusebius, CH 1.7; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q31). The “descent is reckoned by the male line,” but this is only “as far as the political order is concerned,” for this legal status “does not gainsay the fact that the woman’s seed must share in the act of generation” (Calvin, Inst. 2.13.4). So Matthew recorded the Abrahamic and Davidic descent of the Messiah, and then described his birth and infancy as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies (Origen, Comm. on Matt. 1:1 18; Ambrose, Comm. on Matt. 1).
Matthew’s genealogy follows the line of Joseph through Jesus’ legal but not biological father, while Luke follows the line of Mary. Luke clarified that Jesus was not literally or biologically the son of Joseph but “was thought” to be the son of Joseph (Luke 3:23; Eusebius, Quaestiones ad Stephanum 2–3). According to one ancient tradition, “Herod indeed destroyed the genealogies, hoping that he would then appear as well born as anyone else. But a few careful people preserved private genealogies, either from recollections of the names or from copies; among them are those which are called desposunoi because they belong to the Savior’s family” (Epist. to Aristides). In the absence of fuller information, it is extremely difficult to find a theory that fully harmonizes the genealogies, yet classic exegetes argued that they are not intrinsically contradictory (Eusebius, Questiones ad Stephanum). We are left to ponder:
What Child is this, who, laid to rest,
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.
Why lies He in such mean estate
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian, fear: for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading
(William C. Dix, MH: 109)
The consensual teaching concerning Mary upon which Christians generally agree is the chief interest of this study. Is there an ecumenical teaching on Mary generally received by Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants? The place to begin is with the theotokos doctrine largely shared by East and West.
Theotokos: An East-West Ecumenical Consensus
In ascribing to Mary the term theotokos, “bearer of God,” there has never been intended the slightest implication that Mary gave birth to the Godhead, but only to the incarnate Son (Ecumenical Council of Ephesus; Athanasius, Four Discourses Ag. Arians 3.14f.; Luther; Expos. Isaiah 53). “We do not, however, say that the Virgin Mary gave birth to the unity of this Trinity, but only to the Son who alone assumed our nature” (Eleventh Council of Toledo; SCD 284).
The intent of eastern and western orthodoxy is accurately stated by John II of Constantinople (AD 533–535): Mary is “truly the one who bore God, and the Mother of God’s Word, become incarnate from her” (Epist. 3, SCD 202; see also SCD 20, 91, 111–113). The consensus was stated with equal caution by John of Damascus: “We do not say that God was born of her in the sense that the divinity of the Word has its beginning of being from her, but in the sense that God the Word Himself…did in the last days come for our salvation to dwell in her womb” (OF 3.12; Cyril of Alexandria, Third Letter to Nestorius). “For the holy Virgin did not give birth to a mere man but to true God, and not to God simply, but to God made flesh” (John of Damascus, OF 3.12). “For, as He who was born of her is true God, so is she truly Mother of God” (John of Damascus, OF 3.12).
The Holy Spirit hallowed the flesh, the womb into which our Lord entered and set apart the mother for her incomparable function (Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q35). We are dealing with a mystery “neither grasped by reason nor illustrated by example. Were it grasped by reason, it would not be wonderful; were it illustrated by example, it would not be unique” (Eleventh Council of Toledo).
The problem many Protestants have had with the Roman Marian tradition is that it has seemed at times to have become inordinately detached from its Christological center or disconnected unproportionally as a separate subject of inquiry. Two movements have occurred simultaneously in recent years to attempt to correct this disproportion: Protestants have sought to reacquaint themselves with classical Christian reasoning about Mary; and Catholics under the guidance of the Second Vatican Council have reintegrated Marian teaching into Christology, rather than appearing to view it as relatively unconnected (Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue 1–3; Outler, A Methodist Observer at Vatican II; Doc. of Vat. II: 85–96; Evangelicals and Catholics Together; Dombes Group).
Why the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus Rejected the Nestorian Formula as Threatening the Personal Unity of Christ
The teaching of Nestorius did not receive ecumenical consent, but raised a decisive question for ecumenical teaching concerning Mary. The Nestorians were charged with asserting that there were two persons, a divine person distinguished from a human person, that this human person was conceived by the Virgin. The crisis emerged when Anastasius publicly denied to Mary the liturgically familiar title, “Mother of God” (or “bearer of God,” Theotokos)—the implication being that she was not mother of God but only of Christ (Christotokos) to whom the person of the Word of God had in some way united himself. This amounted to saying that Christ is two persons, one divine and one human, not one person with two natures. It was principally to guard the teaching of the distinctive unity of the Person of Jesus Christ against Nestorianism that “Mother of God” was applied to Mary. Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Ephesus (AD 431) cut through to the essential point, that the one born of the Virgin was Son of God at the time of his conception and birth. “She brought forth, according to the flesh, the Word of God made flesh” (Cyril of Alexandria, Third Letter to Nestorius).
Mary as Model of the Faithful
The virginal conception became the basis for the vast exercise of poetic and typological imagination in early Christianity. St. Methodius of Olympus, a martyr of the Diocletian persecution (d. ca. 311), early offered this poetic eulogy to the Blessed Virgin:
Thou art the circumscription, so to speak,
of Him who cannot be circumscribed;
the root of the most beautiful flower;
the mother of the Creator;
the nurse of the Nourisher;
the circumference of Him who embraces all things;
the upholder of Him who upholds all things by His word;
the gate through which God appears in the flesh;
the tongs of that cleansing coal;
the bosom in small of that bosom which is all-containining….
Thou hast lent to God, who stands in need of nothing,
that flesh which He had not,
in order that the Omnipotent might become
that which it was his good pleasure to be….
Thou hast clad the Mighty One with that beauteous panoply
of the body by which it has become possible
for Him to be seen by mine eyes….
Hail! hail! mother and handmaid of God.
Hail! hail! thou to whom the great Creditor of all
is a debtor
(Orat. Concerning Simeon and Anna 10)
The Marian Tradition of the Latin West
Key affirmations of the Marian tradition in Roman Catholic teaching are the perpetual virginity of Mary, “her virginity remaining equally inviolate after the birth” (Lateran Council [AD 649], CF 703; see also SCD 256), and equally inviolate before birth, in birth (Siricius, Epist. 9 to Anysius, SCD 91; Augustine, Concerning Faith of Things Not Seen 5; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q28.4), and “after childbirth” (Sixtus IV, Cum Praeexcelsa [1476], SCD 734). The view “that Mary seems to have brought forth many children” is rejected on the grounds that the term “brothers” (adelphoi) can also mean more generally “relatives” or “cousins” (Siricius, SCD 91; Matt. 12:46–49; 13:55; Mark 3:31–34; 6:3; John 7:3; Luke 8:19–21; Acts 1:14; M.-J. Lagrange, Comm. on St. Mark).
Mary’s freedom from original sin was “preserved immune from all stain of original sin” (Pius IX, Bull Ineffabilis Deus), hence conceived immaculate (Sixtus, SCD 734, 735; see also SCD 792, 1073; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q31). The Roman teaching of the virgin’s bodily assumption into heaven is that Mary, “when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven” (Pius XII Munificentissimus Deus).
Vatican II summarized Roman teaching: “Because of her close and indissoluble connection with the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption the most Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate, at the end of her earthly life was assumed body and soul into heaven, and so became like her Son, who himself rose from the dead, anticipating thereby the destiny of the just. We believe that the most holy Mother of God, the new Eve, the Mother of the Church, continues in heaven her maternal role towards the members of Christ, in that she cooperates with the birth and growth of divine life in the souls of the redeemed” (Paul VI, Doc. Vat. II: 391).
Among Marian teachings of ancient and modern Roman Catholicism with which other believers have less difficulty in agreeing are the following: Mary is held as an example to the faithful rather for the way in which in her own particular life, she fully and responsibly accepted the will of God (Luke 1:38); because she received the word of God and acted on it; because charity and a spirit of service were the driving force of her actions; because she was the first and the most perfect of Christ’s disciples. All of this has a permanent and universal exemplary value” (Paul VI). Mary is a “type of the Church, or exemplar, in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ.” Mary is understood “not merely as a passive instrument in the hands of God, but as freely co-operating in the salvation of mankind by her faith and obedience” (Lumen Gentium 56).
The Liturgical Persistence of the Nativity as Anchor of the Christian Year
The extraordinary liturgical importance of the virgin birth for the celebration of the incarnation at Christmastide makes the teaching hard to dismiss. Those who dismiss it, do so at the risk of resisting a broad church consensus that is written into the most widely shared baptismal and catechetical confessions of historic Christianity.
Many in the modern world know very little about Jesus other than the birth narratives, yet they know these by heart. Jesus’ life begins with incarnation and ends with resurrection. These two events form the two key moments of the Christian year—Christmas and Easter. The virgin birth and the bodily resurrection are anchor points of the salvation event (R. E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus). It is fitting that the salvation event begins and ends in a way fitting to the incarnate Lord. The virgin birth is the first miracle of the history of Jesus (Augustine, CG 18.46).
That the birth was attested in Bethlehem (literally “the house of bread,” from whom comes the Bread from heaven, John 6:32–33) and of Davidic descent was from the outset viewed as fulfillment of messianic prophecy (Mic. 5:2; Matt. 2:2, 6; 1 Sam. 16:18; Luke 2:4). The angelic hosts celebrated his coming (Luke 2:10–14; Tho. Aq., ST 3, Q36.). The stories of Simeon and Anna in the Temple (Luke 2:22–39) and the wise men (Matt. 2:1–11; Isa. 9) indicate that he came as a light both to Jews and Gentiles—the whole world (Hag. 2:6–9; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q37.3). The gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh were gifts befitting his hidden royal identity yet to be revealed.
Why did this teaching appear so early, and why has it been sustained so tenaciously? The incarnation was such a unique event that it was unthinkable that it could have been treated merely as a routine birth. Rather it pointed to the mystery of God’s coming in our midst, in God’s own way and time (Baxter, PW 19:70–73).
Christ’s birth prepares the way for the rebirth of the believer (Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 57). “O holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin and enter in; Be born in us to-day” (Phillips Brooks, HPEC: 68). This is the church that, imitating his mother, daily gives birth to his members yet remains virgin (Augustine, Enchiridion 37–57; BCP, “Collect for Christmas Day”).
Gentle Mary laid her Child
Lowly in a manger
There He lay, the undefiled,
To the world a Stranger.
Such a Babe in such a place,
Can He be the Saviour?
Ask the saved of all the race
Who have found His favor
(Joseph S. Cook, MH: 107)