Considering the Virginal Conception

aka, the Virgin Birth.

It is listed as one of the 5 fundamental beliefs during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early 20th century.  Is it a fundamental belief?  It is necessary for Jesus to be conceived in this way if he is to be fully divine?

There are a surprising number of people who are saying it isn’t necessary.

Emergent (revisionist) pastor Rob Bell, in his book Velvet Elvis, stated that while he personally affirmed the virgin birth, it was not a necessary belief.  You don’t need the ‘spring’ of the virgin birth to ‘jump’ (cue the Van Halen please), so he says.  He includes some shoddy exegesis and historical context to make his point about why you might think Matthew doesn’t mean what we thought he meant.  Got that?

Easy for me to disregard Rob Bell; he doesn’t have conservative street cred.  But Michael Green, another story.  He wrote the commentary on Matthew in the Bible Speaks Today series edited by John Stott.  I’m reading this for my sermon series from Matthew this Advent.

Green covers the standard arguments against the virginal conception, and counters them pretty well.  Like Bell, he personally holds to the virginal conception.  But he didn’t stop there, and I was a bit shocked.

“However, it is only proper to say that there is nothing necessary about the virgin birth.  The deity of Christ is not inextricably tied to it.  God might well have entered  this world in the normal manner, or chosen some unprecedented way of becoming one of us.  He need not have come through a virginal conception.  The documents, however, assert that he did.”

This precisely where a good biblical and systematic theology save you from a mass of heresy.  Adoptionism (the view that God adopted the human Jesus to be his divine son) would be a denial of the Trinity.  Any other method would presumably include Joseph or other male.  If an ordinary man is involved, Jesus is born “in Adam”.  All who born of 2 human parents are born under the covenant with Adam (Romans 5) and are therefore subject to sin and death.  Jesus, in order to save other, must be free from sin and death.  He must not be “in Adam” as his covenant head.  He becomes the 2nd Adam, the head of a new covenant so that all who are in him by faith are delivered from sin on account of his obedience, death for sin and resurrection on our behalf.

He must be born of a woman for his must be human too.  For only a man can die for the sins of people. Jesus could just drop out of the sky like an alien, or Mighty Mouse- “Here I am to save the day!”

Jesus was conceived by the Spirit and born by Mary because this was the only way he could save people from their sin.  It was not a way, but the way.  It is a fundamental, essential truth we must cling to if we seek to build a foundation or jump on a trampoline.

But, what about the Hebrew in Isaiah 7?  Good question.  The opening sequence of Snatch, for some odd reason, contains this argument against the virginal conception (after the 2:30 mark, you find some offensive language).

Yes, the Hebrew word used can mean ‘young woman’ as well as ‘virgin’.  The range of meaning includes both.  Matthew, as a Palestinian Jew writing to Palestinian Jews, most likely was not using the Septuagint when he refers to Isaiah 7.  Maybe he did, but either way he used a Greek word that only means ‘virgin.’  So, while the Isaiah passage is unclear, the passage in Matthew is crystal (clear).  If we believe that God inspires the human authors, He inspired this clarification and use of the text in Matthew.  Matthew is not misquoting or misapplying the text from Isaiah 7.

But there has been a shift.  Originally it pointed to a sign that the alliance forming against Judah would not succeed.  It would be a sign God was with them, not Israel and her allies.  This text finds a greater fulfillment in Matthew in that it is no longer a sign, but God actually is with us since he took on flesh and blood  through this virginal conception.  The first is a type of the second, pointing us to a greater, better fulfillment.

The texts teach us about the virginal conception (and birth since Joseph did not know her in the biblical sense until after Jesus’ birth).  It is not just something that can be taught, or should be taught, but must be taught.  The whole means of redemption falls apart without this doctrine.