1. In the New Testament:
The discussion of the doctrinal significance of the virgin-birth statement falls naturally into three parts: (1) Its doctrinal elaboration in the New Testament; (2) its historic function in the development of Christian doctrine; (3) its permanent value to Christian thought. We begin with the narratives themselves. As has just been said, they were incorporated into the Gospels at a time when the New Testament Christology had reached maturity in the Pauline and Johannine writings and the Epistle to the Hebrews. The doctrine of the incarnation was fully unfolded. It had been unequivocally asserted that in Jesus all the fullness of the Godhead was historically and personally manifested (Joh 1:14; Php 2:5-8; Col 1:18; 2:9; Heb 2:14). In contrast with these statements the infancy narratives not only, as adverted to above, exhibit on the surface a rudimentary Christology, but in several items, of profound interest and most surprising tenor, show that the birth notice was not apprehended or stated in view of the doctrine of the incarnation at all.
The detailed justification of this statement follows: (1) Matthew (see 1:18-25) does not use the term "Son of God." The only expression implying a unique relationship to God, other than in the "of Holy Spirit" phrase, twice used, is in the word "Immanuel" quoted from Isaiah, which does not necessarily involve incarnation. At the beginning of the genealogy Jesus is introduced as the son of David, the son of Abraham. (2) The assertion as to His conception by Holy Spirit is conditioned by three striking facts: (a) His conception is interpreted in terms of conception by the power of Holy Spirit, not of begetting by the Father. The Old Testament expression "This day have I begotten thee," used twice, occurs in quite a different connection (Heb 1:5; 5:5). (b) The term "Holy Spirit" is used without the article. (c) The phrase descriptive of the being conceived is expressed in the neuter, `the thing conceived in her is of Holy Spirit' (to gar en aute gennethen ek pneumatos estin hagiou). The implication of these three facts is (i) that the sonship of Jesus through His exceptional birth is interpreted in terms of divine power working upon humanity, not as the correlative of divine and essential fatherhood; it is the historical sonship that is in view (contrast with this the two passages in Hebrews referred to above); (ii) the writer is speaking in the Old Testament sense of "Holy Spirit" as the forthgoing of creative power from God, not as personal hypostasis; (iii) he is also emphasizing (in the use of the neuter) the reality of the physical birth. These three facts, all the more remarkable because they are attributed to a heavenly messenger who might be expected to speak more fully concerning the mystery, exclude the supposition that we have one historic form of the doctrine of incarnation. On the contrary, had we no other statements than those found here we should be unable logically to postulate an incarnation. Every statement made concerning Jesus, apart from the virgin-birth statement itself, might be true were He the son of Joseph and Mary.
The case is far stronger when we turn to Luke's account, in spite of the fact that the terms "Son of the Most High" and "Son of God" ordinarily implying incarnation are used. We notice (d) that the anarthrous use of "Holy Spirit" reappears and that a poetic parallelism defines the term (Lu 1:35), making "Holy Spirit" = "Power of the Most High"; (e) that the neuter phrase is also found here, "the holy thing which is begotten," etc. (dio kai to gennomenon hagion klethesetai); (f) that future tenses are used in connection with His career and the titles which He bears: "He shall be (as the outcome of a process) great," and "He shall be called (as a matter of ultimate titular recognition) the Son of the Most High" (Lu 1:32); "The holy thing .... shall be called the Son of God" (Lu 1:35). In these instances the title is connected directly with the career rather than the birth. Even the "wherefore" of Lu 1:35, in connection with the future verb, carries the power of God manifested in the holy conception forward into the entire career of Jesus rather than bases the career upon the initial miracle. These three facts taken together exclude the reference to any conception of the incarnation. The incarnation is directly and inseparably connected with Christ's eternal sonship to the Father. The title "Son of God" includes that but does not specify it. It includes also the ethical, historical, human sonship. The term "Holy Spirit" used without the article also is a comprehensive expression covering both a work of divine power in any sphere and a work of divine grace in the personal sphere only.
These accounts are concerned with the historic fact rather than its metaphysical implications. This historic fact is interpreted in terms of a divine power in and through the human career of Jesus (which is so stated as to include an impersonal, germinal life) rather than a dogmatic definition of the Messiah's essential nature. The omission of all reference to pre-existence is negatively conclusive on this point. The divine power manifested in His exceptional origin is thought of as extending on and including His entire career. This leads us directly to a second phase in the interpretation of Christ and compels to a reconsideration at a new angle of the miracle of His origin.
2. Portrait of Jesus in Synoptic Gospels:
The narrators of the life and ministry of Jesus on the basis of ascertained fact and apostolic testimony were confronted with a very definite and delicate task. They had to tell with unexaggerating truthfulness the story of the human life of Jesus. Their ultimate aim was to justify the doctrine of incarnation, but they could not have been unaware that the genuine and sincere humanity of Christ was a pillar of the doctrine quite as much as His essential Deity. To portray the human experience of a being considered essentially divine was the Herculean task attempted and carried to a successful issue in the Synoptic Gospels. These writers do not conceal for a moment their conviction that they are depicting the career of the wonder-working Son of God, but they never forget that it is a career of self-limitation within the human sphere, the period of self-imposed and complete humiliation undertaken on behalf of the Father, "for us men and for our salvation." Hence, the nature and limitations of the narrative. Mark omits reference to the virgin-birth. Matthew and Luke narrate it and forthwith drop it. These facts are exactly on a paragraph. It is no more remarkable that Mark omits the story than that Matthew and Luke make so little of it. To allege either fact as a motive to doubt is to misinterpret the whole situation. By the terms of their task they could do nothing else. The Fourth Gospel and the Epistles announce that the human life of Jesus was due to the voluntary extra-temporal act of a pre-existent Divine Being, but in the synoptic narrative four passages only hint at pre-existence, and then as incidental flashes from the inner consciousness of Jesus. This omission is no more remarkable and no less so than the omissions noted above. By the terms of their task the synoptic writers could do nothing else. The fact of pre-existence could be announced only when the earthly task had been triumphantly finished (see Mr 9:9,11). During the entire period of the earthly life as such Jesus was under trial (note Mt 3:17, correctly translating the aorist; compare the remarkable words of Joh 10:17), performing a task, accomplishing a commission, achieving a victory as human son. The story of the Temptation exhibits the conditions under which Jesus performed His task. The temptations were one and all addressed to His consciousness as God's Son. They were resisted on the sole basis of self-humiliation and dependence. The entire synoptic narrative is consistent with this representation. Jesus is consciously one in will and spirit with God, but that oneness with God is consummated and conducted in the Spirit, through faith, by prayer. They describe His entire career of holiness, wisdom and power, each unique, in the terms of the Spirit-filled, trustful, prayerful human life. Here is the vital point. They disclose the eternal Sonship (in which beyond question they believe) on its ethical, not on its metaphysical side, by prediction of His future triumph rather than by definition of His person. In such a narrative, consistently carried out, there can be no resort to the preexistent, eternal Sonship, nor to the miracle of His human origin in the story of His career under trial. In particular, the miracle, whereby His germinal connection with the race was established could not extend to the personal and spiritual life in which His victory was His own through the personal Holy Spirit. The argument from the virgin-birth to His sinlessness (see IMMACULATE CONCEPTION) was made by the church, not by the New Testament writers. The sinlessness of Christ was His own achievement in the flesh which He sacrificed through His holy will of obedience to the Father.
3. In Rest of the New Testament:
This leads us to a third phase of development in the New Testament doctrine of incarnation. In the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles it is asserted that the innermost moral significance of the earthly career of Jesus lay in the fact that it was the consistent carrying-out of an extra-temporal volition of divine mercy and love whereby He became the Revealer of God and the Saviour of men. This doctrine is based upon the story of the human career completed in the glorification which, according to the testimony, ensued upon His death and disclosed His place in the divine sphere of being. But it is also based upon the virgin-birth narrative and grounded in it. Attention has already been called to the fact that the virgin-birth is not (in the infancy narrative) connected with the metaphysical sonship of Jesus. All that is said then, doctrinally, concerning Jesus might be true were He the son of Joseph and Mary. On the contrary, what is said in John and the Epistles depends upon the virgin-birth narrative for its foundational basis. It has often been asserted that Paul and John do not refer to the virgin-birth. This statement the present writer takes to be more than doubtful, but if it is true, all the more striking is the indirect and unconscious testimony to the virgin-birth involved in their doctrinal reliance upon it. According to these writers the incarnation was due to a divine act of self-limitation whereby the divine mode of existence was exchanged for the human (Php 2:5-11 et al.). According to the infancy narrative, the birth of Jesus was due to a divine creative act whereby a human life began germinally and passed through the successive stages of growth to maturity. The synoptic narrative outside the infancy narrative supplies a third point, that the entire conscious personal career of Jesus upon earth was lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. The infancy narrative is the keystone of an arch, one half resting upon the synoptic account, the other upon the doctrinal construction of Jn and the Epistles. The virgin-birth statement by its adoption of Old Testament terminology makes room for a divine activity both in the impersonal and in the personal spheres. The doctrine of incarnation implies that as in every new human being the creative divine power manifests itself impersonally in germinal beginnings, so in the life of Christ the divine power conditions itself within the impersonal forces of germinant life with this important and suggestive difference: In the career of Jesus there issues from the sphere of germinal beginnings not a new human person created from the life-stock of the race, but the personal human life, including all human powers, of a pre-existent divine person self- conditioned and self-implanted within the human sphere. The central conscious self, the agent of His activities and the subject of His experiences in the historic sphere was the eternal Son of God. His life in the human sphere was that of a true human being in the full actuality of a human life. Hence, it follows, since ordinary generation involves necessarily (that is the intent of it) the origination of a new person not hitherto existing, that the birth of Jesus could not have been by ordinary generation. The birth of Christ through ordinary generation would have involved a quite incomprehensible miracle, namely, the presence and action of the ordinary factors in human origins with a contrary and unique result. The virgin-birth is the only key that fits the vacant space in the arch. In addition it may reasonably be urged that the relationship of human parents to each other, ordinarily a natural, necessary and sacred act, could have no part in this transaction, while the very fact that Mary's relationship was to God alone, in an act of submission involving complete self-renunciation and solitary enclosure within the divine will, fulfils the spiritual conditions of this unique motherhood as no other imaginable experience could.
4. Oppositions to the Doctrine:
Historically the virgin-birth statement performed a function commensurate with the importance ascribed to it in this discussion rather than the current depreciation of it. The doctrine of Christ was menaced in two opposite directions, which may be designated respectively by the terms "Ebionite" and "Gnostic." According to the former teaching (the word "Ebionite" being used in a general sense only), Jesus was reduced to the human category and interpreted as a Spirit-led man or prophet, in the Old Testament meaning of the term. According to the opposite tendency, He was interpreted as divine, while His human experience was reduced to mere appearance of a temporary external union with the Logos. The virgin-birth statement resisted both these tendencies with equal effectiveness. On the one hand, it asserted with unequivocal definiteness a real humanity conditioned by true birth into an actual connection with the race. On the other hand, it asserted an exceptional birth, setting Jesus apart as one whose entrance into the world was due to a new, creative contact of God with the race. Historically, it is difficult to see how the New Testament doctrine could have escaped mutilation apart from the statement, seemingly framed with express reference to conditions arising afterward, which so wonderfully guarded it. The holy mystery of the Lord's origin became the symbol of the holier mystery of His divine nature. It thus appears in every one of the historic creeds, an assertion of fact around which the belief of the church crystallized into the faith which alone accounts for its history, a profound and immovable conviction that Jesus Christ was really incarnate Deity.
5. Its Importance to Modern Thought:
The importance for modern thinking of the virgin-birth statement is threefold: (1) First, it involves in general the question, never more vital than at the present time, of the trustworthiness of the gospel tradition. This particular fact, i.e. the virgin-birth, has been a favorite, because apparently a vulnerable, point of attack. But the presuppositions of the attack and the method according to which it has been conducted involve a general and radical undermining of confidence in the testimony of the gospel witnesses. This process has finally met its nemesis in the Christus-myth propaganda. The virgin-birth statement can be successfully assailed on no grounds which do not involve the whole witnessing body of Christians in charges of blind credulity or willful falsification, very unjust indeed as respects their character and standing in general, but very difficult to repel in view of the results of denial at this point.
(2) The virgin-birth is important for the simple historical reason that it involves or is involved in a clear and consistent account of the Lord's birth and early years. Apart from the infancy narratives we are utterly without direct information as to His birth, ancestry or early years. Apart from these narratives we have no information as to the marriage of Joseph and Mary; we are shut up to vague inferences as to this entire period. No biographer ever leaves these points obscure if he can avoid it. It is very earnestly suggested that those who cast discredit upon the infancy story do not clearly recognize the seriousness of the situation brought about in the absence of any narrative which can be trusted as to this vital point. Calumny there is and has been from an early day. If there is nowhere an authoritative answer to the calumny, in what sort of a position is the Christian believer placed? He can assert nothing, because apart from what he has too lightly thrown away he knows nothing.
(3) Lastly, the more closely the statement as to the Lord's birth is studied, the more clearly it will be seen that it involves in a most vital and central way the entire doctrine of the incarnation. This doctrine is an interpretation of facts. Those facts stand together. In the midst of those facts, harmonizing with them, shedding light upon them and receiving light from them, resting upon the same consentient testimony is the statement, which is thus worded in the oldest symbol of our historical faith: "Conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary" (see APOSTLES' CREED). There is no adequate reason why the intelligent believer should feel uncertain as to this statement of our holy religion.
LITERATURE.
There is a vast and growing literature which more or less directly deals with the subject of our Lord's birth. The literature may be classified as follows: (1) Lives of Christ; (2) critical commentaries on Matthew and Luke; (3) critical and historical investigations of Christian origins; (4) monographs on the Apostles' Creed; (5) monographs and articles on the specific subject. For a list and analysis of discussions see Sweet, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, 354-57.
Louis Matthews Sweet