Virgin birth and modern theology

[Mina Mounir]

hello,
I've read in some western studies , and met a catholic professor of scripture, that the virgin birth of our lord is not received as a fact in some academic circles. they have some arguments supporting their conclusion that Jesus might have been born naturally ( from a natural sexual relationship between Mary and Joseph).
i found a summary of the arguments and their answers here : http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15448a.htm
personally, I can't accept such a claim for many reasons. not only due to the biblical obvious testimonies, but also the arguments that were given by them cannot go beyond being a " theory " but not an evidence or a fact. so, the divinely inspired scripture and the long tradition judges here.

anyway, my question - and sorry for this long introduction - is :
I've read this
In one striking passage, Ratzinger makes an abstract distinction between Jesus's Divine Sonship and the Virgin Birth: "According to the faith of the Church, the Sonship of Jesus does not rest on the fact that Jesus had no human father; the doctrine of Jesus's divinity would not be affected if Jesus had been the product of a normal human marriage. For the Sonship of which faith speaks is not a biological but an ontological fact, an event not in time but in God's eternity; God is always Father, Son and Spirit."

what is the weight of the virgin birth in the economy of salvation ? and is it really that weightless? is it optional and has no impact on the christian soteriology?


thanks.

[Ryan]

Mina- As the New Advent article points out, many of these modern theories spring from 'scholars' with materialist presuppositions:


Modern theology adhering to the principle of historical development, and denying the possibility of any miraculous intervention in the course of history, cannot consistently admit the historical actuality of the virgin birth.

They draw their conclusions, and then look for evidence. Notice that all of these 'scholars' begin with the assumption that it isn't true, and then fabricate hypotheses for how the idea came about. Please do not take such modern academic work seriously. Nor should we pay any mind to what Ratzinger may or may not think.

The virgin birth is of central importance to the faith, as is evidenced not only in the scriptures but in our Creed, in our hymnography, in our iconography, in the writings of countless Saints. One cannot deny it without falling into grave error.

Modern science and modern academia are largely founded on materialism- therefore, some healthy skepticism is needed when it comes to their pronouncements on matters of faith.

[Owen Jones]

Boy, Ratzinger seems to be very confused on this point. It is like saying that the Resurrection does not depend on the empty tomb. It is a vain attempt to cleanse Christianity of its supposedly naive, mythological aspects and to prove Christ from a purely scholarly, intellectual standpoint.

[D. W. Dickens]

This view can only make sense in a juridical soterology. While I still believe that there is some value in viewing Christ's work on the cross within a legal or "honor" framework, that's not the emphasis of the teaching of the Church.

If we accept St Peter's admonition that we share in the life of God in Christ (as my spiritual father says, worshiping the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit, therefore existentially experiencing the Trinity), then the virgin birth is irremovable from the consideration. Otherwise you end up with somehow Christ's body being human and His spirit being the Word or something bizarre like that. He has to share our whole nature for our whole nature to be restored.

Just as important, it's clear all the early fathers accepted this and Mary's identity was even fought over to preserve the identity of Christ. If we do not hold to that which was given in this, why hold to the rest of the testimony of the Church of Pentecost?

Indeed, this, as a protestant was a keen weapon against my own heresies. I trusted the early Church to assemble the canon but did not trust so many of the Church's testimony to its meaning.

[Evan]

hello,
I've read in some western studies , and met a catholic professor of scripture, that the virgin birth of our lord is not received as a fact in some academic circles. they have some arguments supporting their conclusion that Jesus might have been born naturally ( from a natural sexual relationship between Mary and Joseph).
i found a summary of the arguments and their answers here : http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15448a.htm
personally, I can't accept such a claim for many reasons. not only due to the biblical obvious testimonies, but also the arguments that were given by them cannot go beyond being a " theory " but not an evidence or a fact. so, the divinely inspired scripture and the long tradition judges here.

anyway, my question - and sorry for this long introduction - is :
I've read this

what is the weight of the virgin birth in the economy of salvation ? and is it really that weightless? is it optional and has no impact on the christian soteriology?


thanks.


Mina,

Where does that Ratzinger quote come from? I must admit, it's tremendously confusing.

[Mina Mounir]

Mina,

Where does that Ratzinger quote come from? I must admit, it's tremendously confusing.
please check this file :
http://www.penrallt.org/sermons/notes/VirginBirth.pdf
and in the book : " the thought of pope benedict" page 129-130 :
http://books.google.com/books?id=4SXyRdClFNQC&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=virgin+birth+ratzinger&source=bl&ots=eZLFQrQZ8O&sig=j_AWrAAA12-IxWkIm2cjk_teMmM&hl=en&ei=GAgLSortOc-W_Ab52-2LCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7
according to the New York times :
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/magazine/08pope.t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
it is said that :

. A recent survey of the Church of England by researchers at the University of Wales showed that only 60 percent of its clergy believe in the virginbirth of Jesus, and 1 out of 33 Anglican priests doubts the existence of God.

[Mina Mounir]

let me rephrase my question.

I think I accept what Pope Benedict says about the independence of divine sonship of Jesus from the type or way of his sonship according to flesh , whether it was a result of a natural sexual relationship or a virgin birth.
but does the economy and salvation ( the soteriological dimension) is also unaffected by the type of birth ?
i.e. does the doctrine of virgin birth have any value ?

I'm not questionning the truth of the virgin birth , because the modern theological arguments are quite shallow and - as I said - cannot take a step beyond being a mere theory that has no evidence or any base in the 2000 years christian tradition including the bible and the church creeds. but my question is about the importance of that doctrine.

I was having a discussion with fr. Kamil William. he is the dean of catholic seminaries in Egypt. he said that the doctrine of virgin birth is open for every one to believe it or not, it is not like the doctrine of trinity or Jesus' dual natures.
consequently, if fr. Kamil and the modern western ( catholic and protestant)theologians cannot place the virgin birth doctrine within the borders of the highly important christian doctrines. how can we see it then ?

I hope fr. Mathew and fr. Raphael also could give some help.

thanks

[Ryan]

First of all, the Virgin Birth is attested to by the Gospels and by the Church. On that basis alone, it is impossible to deny the doctrine without contradicting God's revelation. It's very dangerous if we start trying to formulate some minimal requirements for salvation, and make the rest of Tradition optional. We have no more right to reject the Virgin Birth than we do the Resurrection. We could say though that everything in the Creed is essential- it was, after all, meant as a succinct summary of the essentials of the faith- and the Virgin Birth is in there.

Second, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is essential because it shows that Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit and not by the seed of any man, and that he was fully divine as well as fully human.


For the Sonship of which faith speaks is not a biological but an ontological fact, an event not in time but in God's eternity; God is always Father, Son and Spirit.

This quote seems to me to evince a serious misunderstanding of the Incarnation, which occurred in time, and the effects of which permeate our physical as well as spiritual reality. I daresay Ratzinger's words smack of some kind of dualism... this of course is the legacy of scholasticism.

A great miracle of the Incarnation is that it bridged any gap between eternity and our temporal existence, and opened the path for human nature and the creation return to communion with God.

The Sonship is BOTH biological and ontological.

To conclude, I daresay that Ratzinger may fall under the following anathema of the Fifth Ecumenical Council:


If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God has two nativities, the one from all eternity of the Father, without time and without body; the other in these last days, coming down from heaven and being made flesh of the holy and glorious Mary, Mother of God and always a virgin, and born of her: let him be anathema

[Christopher Dombrowski]

Most importantly, a denial of the virgin birth would (if lead to logical consistency) make an orthodox Christology entirely impossible. For instance, if Mary and Joseph conceived of a child through sex and God Himself was not a partisan in this conception, then Ebionitism would reign as truth. Jesus would, at best, be the perfected yet solely human Messiah. If, on the other hand, the Word of God perfectly indwelt the human from the time of his conception but was not actually the generative principle in the conception of the human, we are left with two different beings, two different hypostases, and thus Nestorianism would have to be admitted as truth. Or perhaps Jesus was adopted as the Son of God at the time of His Baptism or His Resurrection, and thus Adoptionism must be admitted to be truth. It's possible that one could confess that there were 3 generative principles in the conception of Jesus, those being Mary, Joseph, and the Holy Spirit. But I just don't see how such a thing could be possible.

Thus, the most important concern, I think, with the denial of the virgin birth is not primarily Mariological, but rather Christological.

[Olga]

An optional matter of faith? Hmmm. There is not a single liturgical service of the Orthodox Church which does not mention and affirm the ever-virginity of the Mother of God. Not one.



Thus, the most important concern, I think, with the denial of the virgin birth is not primarily Mariological, but rather Christological.


Quite true, Christopher. All heresies ultimately lead to Christological distortions.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear friends,

Christ is risen! I just come to read this thread. As to your original observation, Mina, that among some academic scholars there is a belief that the virigin birth is not central to Christianity, I would say that you are absolutely right. There are any number of scholars who believe and argue this. They are wrong; but they still argue it. This is a good example of how far 'theology' can venture from the truth when it is explored outside its ecclesiastical context.

That said, I agree of course with what others have written on the necessity of confessing the virginal birth of the Lord, which is really a non-question in Orthodoxy.

However, I'm suspicious that people are dismissing Benedict XVI's (then Ratzinger) comments out of hand, forcing them to say something they don't. I have not read the text from which this brief comment is drawn; but in its own right, it doesn't seem to say what people are suggesting it says. The comment reads:
"According to the faith of the Church, the Sonship of Jesus does not rest on the fact that Jesus had no human father; the doctrine of Jesus's divinity would not be affected if Jesus had been the product of a normal human marriage. For the Sonship of which faith speaks is not a biological but an ontological fact, an event not in time but in God's eternity; God is always Father, Son and Spirit."
As I read this, he is not in any way exploring the question of the virginal birth - i.e. whether it did or did not happen, whether it is important, etc. It is not his point of discussion in the slightest. He appears to be speaking on the confession of Christ's eternal Sonship: that He is ever Son of the Father. His point appears to be that Christ as Son of the Father was not dependent on a temporal miracle: in other words, that it was not because Jesus was miraculously born without a human father that He is Son of the divine Father; rather, that He is always Son of the Father, and this reality is not made true by his not having a human father.

In this, he is absolutely correct. I don't see this quotation as questioning the virginal birth; rather, he is making a rhetorical point about the Son's eternal Sonship - the very nature of the Trinity. That point goes: "Say (rhetorically) that Christ did have a human father; this would not mean He was not eternally Son of the divine Father, because that is an eternal reality that is not dependent on the biology of the incarnation."

If I make a rhetorical point by beginning, 'Let's say I was born without any arms or legs...', I'm not actually confessing this. I'm using a different context to prove a point.

I don't see his rhetorical point as challenging or even questioning the virginal birth. Of course, in its fullest expression, theology does not work in 'what ifs', in rhetorical verse; but even among the Fathers of the Church, rhetorical back-and-forth is far from uncommon.

I'm not trying to make any comment here on the value, positive or negative, of Benedict's theology. But it does seem people are rather hastily jumping to a misreading of this passage.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Owen Jones]

I would want to give Benedict the benefit of the doubt on this, since he has never fallen into the higher critical method camp, as far as I know.

[Mina Mounir]

As I read this, he is not in any way exploring the question of the virginal birth - i.e. whether it did or did not happen, whether it is important, etc. It is not his point of discussion in the slightest. He appears to be speaking on the confession of Christ's eternal Sonship: that He is ever Son of the Father. His point appears to be that Christ as Son of the Father was not dependent on a temporal miracle: in other words, that it was not because Jesus was miraculously born without a human father that He is Son of the divine Father; rather, that He is always Son of the Father, and this reality is not made true by his not having a human father.

In this, he is absolutely correct. I don't see this quotation as questioning the virginal birth; rather, he is making a rhetorical point about the Son's eternal Sonship - the very nature of the Trinity. That point goes: "Say (rhetorically) that Christ did have a human father; this would not mean He was not eternally Son of the divine Father, because that is an eternal reality that is not dependent on the biology of the incarnation."

If I make a rhetorical point by beginning, 'Let's say I was born without any arms or legs...', I'm not actually confessing this. I'm using a different context to prove a point.

I don't see his rhetorical point as challenging or even questioning the virginal birth. Of course, in its fullest expression, theology does not work in 'what ifs', in rhetorical verse; but even among the Fathers of the Church, rhetorical back-and-forth is far from uncommon.

INXC, Dcn Matthew
well I do agree with u father. and that's why I said in my last post:

I think I accept what Pope Benedict says about the independence of divine sonship of Jesus from the type or way of his sonship according to flesh , whether it was a result of a natural sexual relationship or a virgin birth.I agree with what Olga said about the distortion effect of denying virginal birth on Christology, but I think I can't put it in words or in a frame. what do u think father?

I i feel it is linked some how to what is said in the creed ... born of the holy spirit ?
foes this sentence in the creed just refer to the miraculous role of the holy spirit in the birth? only? i think not ...
what do u think ?

[Dimitris]

I agree with Father Deacon Matthew. I am glad he wrote this statement because I wanted to write a similar one, but because I am not that fluent in English language I hesitated. I, too, can not understand the excitement on Ratzinger's statement. I do not know the context of his statement, but I rather see it in a light of opposition to the concept of a "quaternity" which constitutes a "holy family" with Mary as mother of Christ, God, the Father, as the father of Christ, and Christ as their son; additionally the Holy Spirit. Ratzinger clearly separates the natures of the eternal Sonship from God, the Father, and the biological sonship from the Theotokos. In my understanding this is exactly the confession of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, which was quoted by Ryan: "If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God has two nativities....", so I don't understand why Ratzinger with this statement should fall under the anathema.

[Mina Mounir]

so I don't understand why Ratzinger with this statement should fall under the anathema.
me too , Dimitris.

well, I'm still wondering about the shape and type of consequences and distortion that denouncing virginal birth may cause in Christology or soteriology. we - along with Pope Benedict XVI - agree that the human nativity of our Lord has nothing to do with the immanent Trinitarian relationships ( paternity or Monarchy , Divine sonship and procession).
but what about economy?
I think Christopher Dombrowsky's post (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=79048&postcount=9) shed the light on that , but we need to figure it out more.

[Owen Jones]

mmm, but what if His eternal sonship DOES depend on His earthly/material sonship? i.e., that the two are inextricably linked eternally? You cannot have one without the other. And, if I am correct, the Incarnation can only be dated, so to speak, in terms of its fullness. In other words, there would be no material world absent Christ's presence in that world, being inextricably linked to the material world.

If I were more spiritually perceptive, and living B.C., I would perceive Christ already in the world. It is not as if Christ were never materially present prior to the year 1. My understanding is also that it was Christ who was present in the Garden.

So, while I concede that it's a rhetorical point, it may be a case of flawed rhetoric. One can likewise say, for rhetorical purposes, I would still believe in the Resurrection, absent the empty tomb and the stone that was rolled away. But at that point, what kind of resurrection do I believe in?

[Ryan]

mmm, but what if His eternal sonship DOES depend on His earthly/material sonship?

I'm not sure I agree with this, but surely the physical nativity does have some relation to the divine Sonship. God must be Christ's father on earth (with the Virgin Birth) as well as in eternity. Therefore, I would not agree that the two nativities have nothing to do with each other, nor can I agree that it is possible to posit one without the other.

I do take the point though that I was reading a bit too much into the decontextualized Ratzinger quote.