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Definition
and Introductory Comments on the Virgin Birth of Christ
Different
Traces Of Virgin Birth In Other Religions And Traditions
End
Notes
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The
Virgin Birth of Christ
CHAPTER
I
The
virgin birth of Christ plays an absolutely fundamental role in the plan of
redemption. It is the one event of Christ's life that has received the
greatest amount of attention next to His crucifixion and resurrection.
Certainly, next to the resurrection, it is the most debated and
controversial doctrine in Christology.
Virgin
birth is one of the criteria to determine one's belief in the deity of
Christ and supernatural. As a general rule, one who accepts the virgin
birth as true will also accept the other miraculous elements in Scripture,
while one who rejects it will also reject a considerable portion of the
other miracles. The doctrine
of the virgin birth is important, not only because of its bearing on the
doctrine of the person of Christ, but also because of its representative
character.
A virgin is "a person who has not had sexual
intercourse,"1 and virgin birth is "birth from a
virgin."2 Today,
this term "virgin birth" has been widely used by religious
leaders and scholars to narrate the stories of miraculous and supernatural
birth in their religion. Therefore it is appropriate on the part of the
writer to study the term under general technical sense.
a.
Virgin birth in general sense. In the context of myth and
religion, the virgin birth is applied to any miraculous conception and
birth. In this sense, whether the mother is technically a virgin is of
secondary importance to the fact that she conceives and gives birth by
some means other than the ordinary. The virgin birth story is ultimately
not the story of a physiological quirk; it is the story of divinity
entering the human experience by the only door- way available to it..3
In this general sense, the concept of virgin birth is found in most
of the religions and secular traditions. It is found in the religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam,
Judaism and Zoroastrianism, and in Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian,
Greco-Roman and Hellenistic traditions.
b. Virgin birth in technical sense.
In technical sense, virgin birth refers only to Jesus Christ and the
manner in which He came into the world to save the sinful mankind. By
this, scholars mean that Jesus' conception in the womb of Mary was not the
result of sexual relationship.4 Mary was a virgin at the time of the conception, and continued so
up to the point of the birth of Christ. Word of God clearly points that
Joseph did not have sexual relationship with Mary "till she had
brought forth her first-born son" (Matt. 1:25). Oswald Sanders has a careful comment on the term virgin birth :
It does not imply that Jesus was born in a manner different from
other children. He was born in exactly the same way as any other baby.
Nor does it suggest that there was merely a miraculous conception
as in the case of Elizabeth who was past age. It does not mean immaculate
conception as taught by Roman Catholic Church, for that dogma asserts that
Mary was conceived and born without original sin, a claim for which there
is not a scintilla of Scriptural support. It was a VIRGIN Conception
entirely without parallel. Contrary to the course of the nature, Jesus was
miraculously conceived in the womb of Mary. In His case "the ordinary
processes of the transmission of the racial heritage were interrupted by
the miraculous conception."5
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In his Cur Deus Homo, Anselm pointed four ways in which human life has been
brought into existence; (a) by God in creation, as in the case of Adam;
(b) by man without a woman, as in the case of Eve; (c) by man plus woman,
as in the case of the law of natural generation; and (d) through the
divine empowering of a man and a woman both past age, as in the case of
Abraham and Sara.6 But
when the eternal Son came into this world, He did not chose the above
mentioned ways. He has a unique birth. He was born of a woman without a
man. He was begotten of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:20; Luke 1:35). Except in
the case of Jesus Christ, that way of birth had never happened nor will
happen.
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Though one may find Joseph, Mary, and Gabriel in virgin birth
narrations (Matt. 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38), the direct means of the virgin
birth of Christ were Mary, who was espoused to Joseph (Matt. 1:18; Luke
1:27; 2:5) and the Holy Spirit.
The male plays the active role in natural, human generation.
Therefore, in order for the human nature of Jesus Christ to be the
"seed of the Woman," the initiatory role was with the Spirit of
God. In this manner, Mary was with the child before she and Joseph came
together (Matt. 1:18). Mary asked, "How shall this be since I know
not a man?" (Luke 1:34),
"and the angel answering said to her, the Holy Spirit shall come upon
you, and the power of the Highest overshadow you, wherefore the holy thing
also which shall be born shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). Virgin Mary was elected by God to fulfil the essential
passive role as the one through whom God would act to accomplish His
gracious salvation for sinners.7
The work of the Holy Spirit in causing Mary's conception is
emphasised both by Matthew and Luke (Matt. 1:20; Luke 1:35).
Luke uses the terms "come
upon" (eperchomai-epercomai) and
"over-shadow" (Episkiazw-episkiazw) to
describe the work of the Holy Spirit with regard to Mary in causing the
conception. The term eperchomai
is used of the Holy Spirit's coming upon the apostles at Pentecost (Acts
1:8). Episkiazw suggests that God's powerful presence will rest upon Mary, so that
she will bear a child who will be the Son of God. Nothing is stated
regarding how this will happen, and in particular there is no suggestion
of divine begetting.8
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Though some scholars include revealing God, bridging the chasm
between God and man, saving men, and rescuing the whole creations as the
purposes of the virgin birth of Christ9, they are only the
purposes of the incarnation of Christ. The virgin birth was only the means
of the incarnation of Christ. When the incarnation began at the birth of
Jesus and continues forever, the virgin birth lasted only a matter of
hours.10
The distinctive purpose of the virgin birth of Christ was to free
Him from the original sin, in His incarnation. The ordinary processes of
transmission of racial heritage were interrupted in His case by the
miraculous conception. But one should not assume that the mere fact of a
virgin birth would break the entail of sin. The unique circumstances
associated with His birth help one to appreciate the fact that Jesus was
born without sin.11 Bible
declares that He "knew no sin" (II Cor. 5:21); and "in Him
there is no sin" (I Jn. 3:5). Satan had nothing in Christ (Jn.
14:30); he has no claim on the sinless Son of God. Leon Morris rightly
says:
It is sin which gives Satan his hold on men but there is no sin in
Jesus as in others.12
Through the miraculous overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, Jesus was
born sinless. It served as a sign of the uniqueness of the Person who was
born.
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B.
Different Traces Of Virgin Birth In Other Religions And Traditions
a.
Virgin birth in Buddhism. In Buddhism the virgin birth concept
occupies a central place and the suggestion of immaculate conception is
also made. Buddha's future mother, Mahamaya, refrained form sexual
activity and other worldly pleasures during the mid-summer festival and
was taken off during a dream to the Himalayas. There she was purified by
water to remove every human stain before being placed upon a divine couch.
Nearby, the future Buddha had become a superb white elephant, and three
times he walked round his mother's couch, with his right side towards it,
and striking on her right side, he seemed to enter her womb. After the
conception, no lustful thought sprang up in the mind of future Buddha's
mother. Buddha was carried for ten months in Mahamaya's womb and was
delivered as she stood in the sacred Lumbini Grove.13
Mahamaya died seven days after giving birth and was reborn in the
Tusita Heaven. In this way her immaculate state was preserved because a
womb that has been occupied by a future Buddha is like the shrine of a
temple and can never be occupied or used again. The meaning usually
ascribed to Buddha's birth legend centres on the fact that he chose to be
born of a woman so as to become human himself, which would enable him to
inspire other humans with the possibility of achieving perfection. Details
such as the absence of sexuality, the conception during a dream, the
immaculate nature of the birth and the death of the mother immediately
afterward suggest a certain docetism in Buddhism.14
b. Virgin
birth in Hinduism. In
Hinduism, the birth of Krishna is attributed as virgin birth. The myth of
Krishna elaborates how the divine Vishnu himself descended into the womb
of Devaki and was born as her son Krishna. In this, the deity is not only
the effective agent in conception, but also the off-spring.15
In the Hindu epic 'Mahabharata,' Karna is miraculously conceived
and born of the virgin Kunti. Karna's
father is the sun god Surya, the light of the Universe, who restores
Kunti's maidenhood after the act of conception. Karna is born wearing
armour and ear- rings. Like so many other virgin mothers, Kunti hides her
child from her family for fear of scandal. The child is placed, like
Moses, in a basket in the river and subsequently he is rescued and reared
by people of a lower station in life. Later, Kunti is protected from what would be the defilement of the
sacred virginity by a curse that is laid upon her husband. There is a hint
here of the idea of immaculate conception, an implicit suggestion that
Kunti receives the divine seed without experiencing carnal desire.16
There are several such kind of traces of virgin birth in Hinduism.
c.
Virgin birth in Islam. Though
Muslims do not believe in God becoming man, they believe in the virgin
birth of Jesus.17 In Quran, there is a record of the birth of Jesus, the prophet. When it was
announced to Mary that she would bear a son, she replied, "How shall
I have a boy, seeing that man has not touched me. nor have I been a
harlot?" (Sura 19:20). The account goes on to say that "so shall
it be! Thy Lord has said: `It is easy for me,' and in order that we may
make him a sign for the people" (Sura 19:20). Sura 21:91 and 66:12
stated about Mary that "who (Mary) guarded her chastity, so we
breathed into her some our spirit." But modern Muslim writers like Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Tawfiq
Sidqi,
Parwez and Muhammad Ali deny that the Quran teaches the virgin birth, But
others like Maulana Azad, despite some rationalisation, think that Quran
accepts the virgin birth.18
d.
Virgin birth in Judaism. No evidence can be cited in favour of
a Jewish expectation of the virgin birth for the Messiah. Isa. 7:14 was
not given a Messianic interpretation among the Jews of Jesus' time, unless
the use of parthenos (parqenoV) in
the Greek translation of the Old Testament be regarded as a proof of such
an expectation in some quarters of Judaism. There is not the slightest
evidence for supposing that Isa. 7:14 was ever interpreted by the
pre-Christian Jews as indicating the virgin birth of the Messiah.19
Though there is an undoubted miraculous element in the birth of
certain individuals in the old Testament period, such as Isaac, these
cases are clearly not parallel to the virgin birth of Christ. The very
notion of virgin birth was foreign to Jewish thinking, especially at the
beginning of the Christian era, when the transcendence of God was more
strongly emphasised than through the Old Testament period.20
e.
Virgin birth in Zoroastrianism. According to Zoroastrianism,
the glory of Ahura Mazda (the supreme deity) united itself with
Zoroaster's future mother at her birth and rendered her fit thereby to
bear the prophet. At the same time a divinely protected stem of a haoma21 plant was infused with the
fravashi22 of the coming prophet. At the proper time the
parents of Zoroaster drank its juices mixed with a potent milk and it
contained the material essence of the child about to be conceived. This
leads up to his actual physical generation. But his virgin birth assertion
is hardly supported by the accounts in the sacred books.23
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a. Assyrian and Babylonian
traditions. The
inscriptions and literature of Assyria and Babylon all are not without suggestion that some sort of parallel may exist between the myths of these
countries and the records in Christian literature. A building inscription
speaking of Tukulti-Urta II (890-884 B.C.) tells that the great gods
created him in the womb of his mother. Another building inscription
describes the activity of the goddess of procreation at the conception of
Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.). On one of the cylinder texts, Ashurbanipal
(668-626 B.C.) is described as the offspring of the gods. Behind these
ideas lie the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian and Babylonian mythologies.
The tradition shows that there was great concern of the procreative
affairs of the gods. The emphasis of the Assyrian and Babylonian
traditions of the mother goddess and the general concurrence of incidents
between purely mythological figures portray ideas of origin on a level
foreign to New Testament thought. These traditions are extremely flexible in the descriptions
of conception.24
b. Egyptian tradition. Several
historians, Cheyne, Petersen, and Norden placed special emphasis on the
relation which the idea of the virgin birth in the Gospels supposedly has
with ancient Egyptian religious ideas. In the story of the birth of Horus and in the idea of the divinity
of pharaohs great resemblance is thought to be found. The doctrine of the
virgin birth was well known in Egypt in connection with the goddess Neith
of Sais, centuries before the birth of Christ.25
It is of interest to note that in Egyptian birth stories, the agent
of conception is God's breath. At its profound level, the virgin birth
story is the story of re-creation in which the virgin as the centre of
creation receives the divine breath or spirit of the divine in order that
a new sacred creation in microcosm might take place. Egyptian thought is
extremely more complex and crude than Biblical. A clear analogy to the
virgin birth of the New Testament is not to be found in Egyptian
traditions.26
c.
Greco-Roman and Hellenistic traditions. Greco-Roman and
Hellenistic traditions are difficult to demonstrate from textual evidence.
The legend of Perseus stated that his mother conceived him by Jupiter when
he visited her in a golden shower. Stories of the generation of gods and
goddesses by other gods and goddesses as in the case of the birth of
Apollo by Zeus and Semele, legends of the birth of gods by generation of a
god with a mortal woman as in the case of the birth of Hercules by the
union of Zeus and Alomena, tales of the birth of the heroes through the
union of a god with a mortal as in the birth of Ion by Apollo and Creusa,
and stories of the birth of emperors as in the legend of Augustus'
generation by a serpent- god and Atia, have been regarded as virgin birth
by Greco-Roman and Hellenistic traditions. None of these ideas is at all
comparable to the Biblical formula.27
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There is a striking difference between the Christian and
non-Christian traditions. The Christian virgin birth is unique. Christian
teaching of virgin birth contains divine conception and human birth
without anthropomorphism, sensuality, or suggestions of moral
irregularity. This type of virgin birth is to be found no-where in the
literature of the world outside the canonical Biblical narratives. Rather
than being an idea borrowed from other traditions, it is original with
Christianity. The Christian story of the virgin birth is as different from
other religious and secular traditions as monotheism is from polytheism.
After a careful study of these traditions Louis Matthews Sweet rightly
comments:
... I am convinced that heathenism knows nothing of virgin births.
Supernatural births it has without number, but never from a virgin in the
New Testament sense and never without physical generation, except in a few
isolated instances of magical births on the part of women who had not the
slightest claim to be called virgins. In all recorded instances, which I
have been able to examine, if the mother was a virgin before conception
took place she could not make that claim afterwards.28
These traditions are nothing more than stories about fornication
between divine and human beings, and it is something rationally different
from the biblical accounts of the virgin birth.
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1Webster's Third New International Dictionary, 1971 ed., "Virgin."
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2Ibid., s.v. "Virgin
birth."
-
3The
Encyclopedia of Religion,
1987 ed., s.v. "Virgin Birth," by David Adams Leeming.
-
4New
Dictionary of Theology, 1991
ed., s.v. "Virgin Birth," by A.N.S. Lane.
-
5J. Oswald Sanders, The
Incomparable Christ, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1971), pp. 26-27.
-
6Ibid.
-
7W.E. Best, Christ's
Kingdom is Future, Vol. II; Introduction
to the King (Houston: W.E. Best Book Ministry Trust, n.d.), p.13.
-
8I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, (Grand Rapids:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978), pp. 70-71.
-
9Alban Douglas, One
Hundred Bible Lessons (Bombay: Gospel Literature Service, 1980),
p. 25
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10Charles C. Ryrie, Basic
Theology, (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1988), p. 242.
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11T.C. Hammond, In
understanding Be Men, (London: Inter - Varsity Press, 1968), pp.
98-99.
-
12F.F. Bruce, Gen. Ed., The New International Commentary on the New Testament, 18 vols.
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1984), Vol. IV: The
Gospel According to John, By Leon Morris, p. 660.
-
13John B. Noss, Man's
Religions, 3rd ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968), pp.
207-8.
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14Encyclopedia
of Religion, s.v.
"Virgin Birth."
-
15Thomas Boslooper, The
Virgin Birth, (London: S.C.M. Press LTD, 1962), pp. 148-49.
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16Encyclopedia
of Religion,
s.v.
"Virgin Birth."
-
17F.F. Bruce, "The Person of
Christ: Incarnation and Virgin Birth," in Basic
Christian Doctrines, ed. Carl F.H. Henry (Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1975), p. 128.
-
18Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Quran, (London: Sheldon Press, 1982), p.70.
-
19J. Gresham Machen, What
is Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1951), p. 78.
-
20Idem, The
Virgin Birth of Christ, (Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977), p. 282.
-
21Haoma is the sacred intoxicant.
-
22Fravashi seems to have been the ancestral sprits, guarding, and
expecting worship in return from, the living.
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23Encyclopaedia
of Religion and Ethics, 1921
ed. s.v. "Virgin Birth," by J.A. Macculloch.
-
24Boslooper, pp. 149-54.
-
25Ibid., pp. 158-61.
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26Encyclopedia
of Religion,
s.v.
"Virgin Birth."
-
27Boslooper, p.167.
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28Louis Matthews Sweet, The Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, (Philadelphia : Westminster
Press, 1906), p.188.
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