Faith, purity and the virgin birth
I really don't know what goes through the mind of people who argue that they know much better than the gospel writers what Christianity is all about. Do they remember the evangelists were stupid, ignorant, or simply a little flake ho-hum on the uptake—or peradventure all 3? And how did Christian tradition make such egregious errors until this enlightened modern mind came along to set u.s. all directly?
Such were my thoughts when reading Giles Fraser'due south latest piece, pointing out how the virgin nativity doesn't actually fit with Christian belief.
The idea that Jesus was born of "pure virgin" could well have been a reaction to insults [that Jesus was illegitimate]. That Mary'south womb was "spotless" was maybe a encompass story designed by Jesus's supporters to explicate a more God-like nature for his inflow.
And Fraser goes further to suggest that the idea of Virgin Nascency is particularly inappropriate for a religion which rejects the distinction between purity and impurity.
For what separates Christianity from other religious traditions is that – the birth narratives aside – Christianity deliberately refuses the familiar distinction betwixt the pure and the impure. Jesus was born in a cowshed; from lepers to prostitutes, he deliberately courted the ritually unclean; and he spent about of his ministry tearing downwardly barriers between pure and impure – not least, those of the Temple – that separated the "ungodly" from God himself.
In Christianity, purity is abolished.
I suspect that that would have been news to both Jesus, who instructed people to get and make offering to the priest to demonstrate their purity after healing (Mark 1.44), and his Jewish disciples who continue to attend Temple worship, presumably including its cleansing rituals, even after Jesus' death and resurrection and the sending of the Spirit (Acts 2.46). It would have been news to Paul, who expected a decisive change in the lifestyles of believers ('such were some of you…' 1 Cor 6.eleven) not least considering nosotros ourselves are temples of the Holy Spirit. It would exist news to the Jewish Peter, who appeared to think that the Levitical command to 'exist holy, as I am holy' (Lev 20.26) now applies to all Jesus' followers, whether Jew or Gentile (1 Peter 1.16).
It should also be news to any Anglican, who weekly prays (as part of the Communion service) the Collect for Purity, in which we inquire God to 'cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit'. In fact, it ought to exist a surprise to any of united states who read the whole Bible, since information technology draws such a stiff distinction between the rather oppressive Old Testament concern with purity and holiness and a much more enlightened and (bluntly) not very Jewish Jesus who thankfully does away with all that. This is not only historically implausible, only it is in danger of putting an anti-semitic perspective at the heart of our theology.
In debates on social media, someone suggested that what Fraserintended to say was that Christianity abolished the demand for purity as apre-requisite for run across with God. If then, then I suppose this should exist a warning to u.s. of the dangers of shooting our theology from the hip in such a fashion as to catch headlines. But even then we need to reckon with Jesus' ain preaching; the first response to the skilful news of the kingdom appears to be that nosotros should 'repent'.
The irony of all this is that Fraser'due south position doesn't brand much sense of the New Testament texts either. The i indicate where I think Fraser is correct in suggesting that some Christian traditions take made too much of Mary's virginity. But it is hit that, by contrast, the gospels don't brand that much of information technology themselves—a distinction Fraser fails to brand every bit he lumps the NT accounts in with the subsequent tradition. The emphasis in Luke's account is not Mary's purity so much equally her lack of qualification; this appears to be a surprising choice. And the piece of work of the Spirit in bringing new nascence is interpreted symbolically as a foreshadowing of the birth of the new community of faith at Pentecost (compare the linguistic communication of Luke ane.35 and Acts 1.8). Matthew needs to make a rather forced connexion between the Virgin Birth and the 'prophetic' text of Is seven.14—and the best caption of this is that he had some actual facts to make sense of. Contrary to Fraser's lazy assumption, there is in fact quite a adult scholarly fence on whether the language of Isaiah is adequately translated by Matthew in his Greek text, and it is hitting that Matthew makes very little of the miraculous nature of the birth itself. Elsewhere in the NT, it is often noted that Paul does not listing this in his set of basic beliefs (1 Cor xv), though he does talk of Jesus as 'born of a woman' (Gal 4.iv).
Yet at that place are tell-tale signs that Jesus' nascency was unusual—including the text in John that Fraser cites. In John 8.41 those Jews opposed to Jesus annotate 'Nosotros were non built-in of fornication; nosotros have one Father: God.' The thought that they could have fabricated utilize of this as an insult to Jesus—to which John gives no theological weight whatever—is skilful evidence for the reliability of the Virgin Nascency tradition. In fact, Luke demonstrates awareness that this really makes his account slightly awkward; his tracing of Jesus' lineage dorsum through Joseph depends on the assumption that Joseph was in fact Jesus' male parent, which is only supposition (Luke three.23). When exploring whether something in the NT might be historical or not, 1 matter that scholars await for is 'multiple attestation', asking whether we havecontained accounts of an result, rather than accounts where one gospel writer has copied from another. Matthew's account of the nativity of Jesus is told from a male person perspective; the men do all the talking and are the key players on whom the plot turns. But Luke writes from a female perspective; we move from the palaces to the individual rooms, and it is the women who are key. It is not surprising, then, that Matthew'south language about the supernatural nature of Mary's conception ('that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit' Matt one.xx) has no connection with Luke'southward linguistic communication ('The Holy Spirit volition come upon you, and the power of the Most Loftier will overshadow you' Luke 1.35). Merely this in turn suggests that in that location are two independent traditions confirming the same matter. If you add together the hints in John and Paul mentioned higher up, then you take the highest level of attention to historicity.
We might forgive Fraser's coincidental error in suggesting that Jesus 'was built-in in a cowshed', which once again makes theology out of mistaken tradition, without distinguishing this from the actual gospel accounts. It is harder to forgive the historical error that the notion of the virgin birth was 'a reaction to' insults from people like Celsus. As Dwight Longenecker points out, the Protoevangelium of James was virtually likely written at least xxx years earlier Celsus'southward attack on Christian belief, and information technology already has the notion of the virgin nascency (along with a number of traditions about Mary that plant their way into Catholic dogma) firmly embedded in it.
Fraser is on equally dodgy ground in his assertion that 'Jesus didn't much care for the whole nuclear family thing.' Putting the anachronism aside of expecting Jesus to say annihilation at all most the 'nuclear family', it is worth reflecting a lilliputian more on the question of faith and family loyalty. Although Jesus makes kingdom loyalties more fundamental than family ties, that was a relative and not accented dissimilarity. He nonetheless gives his mother to John at the cross; and Paul is able to state baldly that 'If anyone doesn't accept care of his ain relatives, especially his immediate family, he has denied the Christian faith and is worse than an unbeliever' (1 Tim 5.viii). As Rodney Stark has pointed out, it was the distinctive delivery to family relations which was a key role of the growth of Christianity in the early centuries—every bit a sharp dissimilarity to pagan civilization around it. In one case over again, the early Christian movement took values deeply rooted in its Jewish heritage into the wider world, which Fraser brushes aside with coincidental ignorance.
The foolishness of the kind of liberal re-writing of theology which Fraser offers united states of america here was well captured by Richard Niebuhr: 'A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.' It is not only foolish, information technology is as well supremely intellectually big-headed. I wonder if Fraser really thinks that the church building would accept grown faster and more constructive had they followed his advise—as that is what he claims:
Early Christians answered the likes of Celsus in the wrong way. When they charged Jesus with being illegitimate, they should only have replied: "So what if he was?"
Scenic.
In fact, what separates Christianity from other religions is not the abolition of purity, simply accessibility to purity made available not by our own try or religious action, but past the plush gift of God's grace.
The wonder of Christmas is precisely that a holy God comes to us in Jesus in our unholiness, and, in an amazing exchange, that he not but invites us into holiness, but enables that to happen past the continuing gift of his presence by the Spirit. The same Spirit that came upon Mary, overshadowing her with power from on high, tin this Christmas overshadow united states, till the holy Christ is born in us anew (Gal 4.16), enabling the states to live transformed lives that are acceptable to our holy God (Romans 12.2).
(A shorter version of this was offset published at Premier Christianity on 24th Dec 2015).
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