Katechismus

Question 35 & 36

In the words of J. Gresham Machen, “it is perfectly clear that the New Testament teaches the virgin birth of Christ; about that there can be no manner of doubt. There is no serious question as to the interpretation of the Bible at this point.”

Throughout history, questions/challenges have been raised against the doctrine – for two basic reasons: man has a problem accepting his own inherent sinfulness and the need of a supernatural Redeemer.

“This really is an answer to the cavil [an evasion of the point of an argument by raising irrelevant distinctions or objections] 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.

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 [nit-pick] 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.” (James Orr, The Fundamentals, The Virgin Birth of Christ)

“When we penetrate to the mysterious and marvelous primary purpose of the Christmas miracle, I think we must conclude that both Evangelists intend that we should understand before everything else that, by means of the virginal conception, “the [preexistent] Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Mary's virginal conception, in other words, was the means whereby God became man, the means whereby he who “was rich for our sakes became poor, that through his poverty, we might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). It is the Bible's answer to the question that naturally arises when one hears that Jesus Christ is the God-Man: “How did this occur?” The virginal conception is the effecting means of the “Immanuel event” (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:22-23) that made God man with us without uniting the Son of God to a second (human) person, which would have surely been the effect of natural generation. But by means of Mary's virginal conception, God the Son, without ceasing to be what he is – the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the eternal Son and Word of God, took into union with his divine nature in the one divine Person of the Son our human nature (not a human person) and so came to be “with us” as “Immanuel”. Any other suggested purpose for the virginal conception of Jesus, whatever truth it may contain, pales into insignificance in the glorious light of this clear reason for it. And when this is clearly perceived, one will acknowledge that the Matthean and Lukan birth narratives take their rightful place alongside all the other lines of evidence in the New Testament for the deity of Jesus Christ and thus for the classical doctrine of an incarnational Christology. (Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology)

“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?” (Orr, Fundamentals)

The virgin birth was a necessity to fulfill prophecy, to provide a suitable Redeemer/Mediator for sinful man. In order to completely reconcile sinful man to a holy God, two issues must be addressed – actual sin and original sin. Providing for forgiveness of actual sin might satisfy our debt to God but would fall short of reconciling us to Him on account of our still-inherent nature to sin and lack of conformity to the image of God as we were created. Restoring our sin nature to a righteous condition would end the increase of our debt to God but would not cancel that debt. This full reconciliation is only possible because of the God-Man as defined by the Chalcedonian Creed.

// posted by sundoulos @ 9:30 PM