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VIRGIN BIRTH

The doctrine drawing on the tradition that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary conceives and bears Jesus apart from sexual intercourse with her husband Joseph.

Only two NT texts refer to a virginal conception and birth. In Matt. 1:18-25 Mary discovers she is pregnant “with the child of the Holy Spirit before they [she and Joseph] came together” (v. 18). Though Joseph decides to divorce Mary quietly, an angel tells him that Mary’s child has been conceived by the Holy Spirit and that the child, whom they are to name Jesus, “will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Immediately following this story, the writer of the Gospel inserts a passage from Isa. 7:14 — “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son” — to demonstrate that Jesus’ miraculous conception fulfills ancient prophecy. However, since the writer quotes from the LXX, he uses Gk. parthénos (“virgin”) to translate Heb. ʿalmâ (“young woman”); later commentators often demonstrate that the doctrine of the virgin birth is based upon an inexact translation.

In Luke 1:26-38 Gabriel appears to a virgin (parthénos) named Mary and tells her that she will conceive and bear a son named Jesus. Since Mary has no husband, she asks Gabriel how this will occur, and the angel says: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you . . . ; therefore the child to be born . . . will be called Son of God” (Luke 1:35). While the Matthean passage attempts to show how Jesus fulfills Isaianic prophecy, the Lukan passage connects Jesus with the Davidic kingship.

No other NT passages mention this miraculous birth, although a number of verses defend Jesus’ human paternity and maternity (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; Luke 4:22; Gal. 4:4). Heb. 7:3 describes Melchizedek as “without father, without mother, without genealogy” and resembling the Son of God.

The popularly accepted tradition of Mary as the God-Bearer, or Theotokos, was challenged by Nestorius in the early 5th century as contradictory to Jesus’ full humanity. Later theologians challenged the doctrine of the virgin birth on the grounds that it is based on an inexact translation of the Hebrew in the LXX; there are no other NT allusions to the birth; and the emphasis on Christ’s humanity would have been better supported by his being born as other humans are born. Many feminist theologians reject the virgin birth on the grounds that Mary was raped by the Holy Spirit, thus demonstrating the power of men over women in the patriarchal society of 1st-century Palestine. While only the Catholic Church holds the doctrine of the virgin birth as authoritative for faith and practice, most Protestant denominations acknowledge the substance of the doctrine as an explanation of the admixture of Jesus’ divine and human natures. In any event, the doctrine is more christological than mariological in intent.

Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

VIRGIN BIRTH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)