The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord Part 2

-- * Gore, Dissertations, p. 16.

+ St. Luke i. 32, 33.

-- "How can all this," Dr. Chase asks, "be the invention of a believer in the Messiahship of Jesus when the Jews had rejected Him, and when the Resurrection and Ascension had raised the conception of His Messiahship to the height of a spiritual and universal sovereignty? The Christology of these pa.s.sages is a striking proof of their primitive character."# It is indeed difficult to see how men can read the Benedictus or Magnificat without realizing this.

Every verse in them is full of Jewish thought and Jewish expressions, such as would have been impossible had they been the inventions of a later date.

-- # Chase, Supernatural Elements in our Lord's Earthly Life.

That is to say, these two chapters bear traces on the face of them of being what they profess to be--a true and genuine account of the human Birth of Jesus Christ, received ultimately from her who alone could be competent to give it--the Virgin-Mother herself. For it must be Mary's account if it is genuine. It is given to us by St. Luke, who tells us that he "had traced the course of all things accurately from the first," and who had gathered information concerning, be it observed, "those things which are most surely believed among the disciples."* "It is an account," says Bishop Gore, "which there is no evidence to show the imagination of an early Christian capable of producing; for its consummate fitness, reserve, sobriety, and loftiness are unquestionable. What solid reason is there for not accepting it?"+ It is extraordinarily difficult to imagine that St. Luke, whose accuracy and care have been, in recent years, so severely tested and found not wanting, should have been so careless as to append to his Gospel a spurious account of so momentous an occurrence as the human Birth of our Lord. "Historical accuracy is not a capricious and intermittent impulse," writes Bishop Alexander. "It is a fixed habit of mind, the result of a particular discipline. Historians of the school of the author of the Acts of the Apostles are not men to build a flamboyant portal of romance over the entrance to the austere temple of truth."#

-- * St. Luke i. 1-4.

+ Gore, Dissertations, p. 18.

# Bishop Alexander's Leading Ideas of the Gospels, pp. 154, 155.

(2) The account in St. Matthew's Gospel, if genuine, must have come from Joseph. It is his perplexities which are in question, and Divine intimations are given to him, on three occasions, how to act for the safety of the mother and the Child. The facts which appear in the Third Gospel are clearly prior to those reported in the First: the Annunciation, Mary's visit to Judaea, her return to Nazareth, precede Joseph's discovery and dream, which follow appropriately upon the Virgin's return. How this account has been preserved in the First Gospel we do not know, for we know so very little about the authorship of that Gospel; but there is nothing at all unreasonable in Bishop Gore's conjecture* that St. Joseph (who must have died before the public ministry of our Lord began) left some doc.u.ment detailing the circ.u.mstances of the Birth of Jesus Christ; that this doc.u.ment would have been given to Mary (to vindicate, by means of it, when occasion demanded, her own virginity), and that after Pentecost she may have given it to the family of Joseph, the now believing "brethren of the Lord," and from their hands it pa.s.sed into those of the author of the First Gospel.

-- * Gore, Dissertations, pp. 28, 29.

The Evangelist dwells, as is well known, on the fulfilment of prophecy; but in regard to the particular prophecy of Isaiah, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel,"* it cannot with any probability be said that the prophecy suggested the event; for it does not seem at all likely that there was any Jewish expectation that the Christ should be born of a Virgin. We can understand the prophecy being adduced in order to attest a story already current (this would be wholly after St. Matthew's method); but the prophecy itself, with one's eye on the Hebrew text of Isaiah,+ could scarcely have led to the fabrication of this particular story about the Messiah's birth. Probably the notion of a Virgin-born Messiah would have been alien to ordinary Jewish ideas.# In any case, the Jews did not so interpret the pa.s.sage, and in fact, to quote Professor Stanton, "It is an instance in which the principle would hold that it is more easy to suppose the meaning of prophetic language to have been strained to fit facts, than that facts should have been invented to correspond with prophetic language."^ That is to say, it is wholly reasonable and entirely in keeping with the method of the first Evangelist, that when once he had come to know that the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem of a Virgin-Mother, he should have recognized in that wondrous birth the fulfilment of the ancient prophecy of Isaiah. He would then see that whatever primary and lesser fulfilment the words of Isaiah might have, they were only completely fulfilled in Him who is the end of all prophecy, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary. -- * Isa. vii. 14.

+ See Note at the end.

# So Dr. Chase.

^ Stanton, Jewish and Christian Messiah, p. 378.

See Eck, The Incarnation, p. 87.

It is hard to bring one's self to speak of the theory put forward by Professor Usener, in which he says that the story of the Virgin-Birth is traceable "to a pagan substratum, and that it must have arisen in Gentile circles."* Surely this is wholly contrary to all probability. How can any serious student think that any but Jewish hands could have penned the first two chapters of St.

Matthew's Gospel? "The story," says Professor Chase, "moves, like that of St. Luke, within the circle of Eastern conceptions; it is pre-eminently and essentially Jewish. Moreover, if time is to be found for the complicated interaction between paganism and Christianity which this theory involves, the First and Third Gospels must be placed at a date which I believe is quite untenable."+

-- * Encyc. Bibl., iii. 3352.

+ Chase, Supernatural Elements in our Lord's Earthly Life, p. 21.

That there are differences and even discrepancies between the two accounts, which are manifestly independent of one another, serves surely to strengthen their witness to the great central fact in which they are at one--that Christ was born of a Virgin-Mother at Bethlehem, in the days of Herod the king.

There appears, then, to be no reason for doubting that in St.

Luke's Gospel we have a genuine account derived from Mary herself, and that in St. Matthew's Gospel we have an account left by St. Joseph, "worked over by the Evangelist in view of his predominant interest--that of calling attention to the fulfilments of prophecies."* Wherever, therefore, these two Gospels had reached in the second half of the first century, there the story of the Virgin-Birth was known. If the story thus attested by the first and third Evangelists were really a fiction, it is hard indeed to believe that it would not have been contradicted by some who were still living, and who knew that the story was different from that which the Mother herself had delivered them. "If," says Dean Alford, speaking of the Third Gospel, "not the mother of our Lord herself, yet His brethren were certainly living; and the universal reception of the Gospel in the very earliest ages sufficiently demonstrates that no objection to this part of the sacred narrative had been heard of as raised by them."+

-- * Gore, Dissertations, p. 29.

+ Greek Test., vol. i. Prolog. sect. viii. p. 48.

There is no other alternative but to regard both stories as legends independently circulated in the ancient Church. "So artificial an explanation would probably have found little favour with scholars if there had been no miracle to suggest it. It is too commonly a.s.sumed that evidence which would be good under ordinary circ.u.mstances is bad where the supernatural is involved."*

Certainly it would seem to be in a high degree improbable that two such accounts as those of the Birth of Jesus Christ which we have in these two Gospels should be the work of forgers; and this improbability is further heightened when we compare them with the legendary accounts of His infancy which were actually current in the early centuries.+

-- * Swete, Church Congress Report (1902), p. 163.

+ See Preface, p. xi.

III

THE SILENCE OF OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS

What are the objections brought against all this evidence? The main objection is the silence of the other writers of the New Testament.

To reply--

(I) First, we may surely ask--Why should they mention it? This sort of argument from silence is most precarious. Are we to infer that because there is no mention of the Cross or the Crucifixion in the Epistles of St. James or of St. Jude, that it was unknown to this group of writers, and that they were unaware of the manner of Christ's Death?

"We might much more naturally infer it than we may infer that the Virgin-Birth was unknown because St. James speaks of Christ's Death, and it would therefore have been quite natural for him to speak of the exact mode of it, whereas our Lord's Birth is very seldom referred to in the New Testament, and when it is referred to it would not have aided the argument, or been at all to the point to mention how that Birth was brought about."*

-- * A. J. Mason, in the Guardian, November 19, 1902.

Or, because St. John omits all mention of the inst.i.tution of the Holy Eucharist, are we to suppose that he knew nothing of that Sacrament?

(2) The subject of the Virgin-Birth was not one which the Apostles would be likely to dwell on much. They were above all witnesses of what they had seen and heard. They come before us insisting, therefore, on what they could themselves personally attest--especially on the Resurrection. They had seen and heard the risen Christ, and the Resurrection was at once a vindication of His Messianic claims, and a manifestation of the dignity of His Person. "This praeternatural fact, the fulfilment of the 'sign'+ which He had Himself promised, a fact concerning the reality of which they offered themselves as witnesses, would carry with it a readiness to accept a fact like the Virgin-Birth, concerning which the same sort of evidence was not possible."^

-- + St. John ii. 18, 19; St. Matt. xii. 40.

^ Hall, The Virgin-Mother, p. 215.

Belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of G.o.d, belief in His Life, in His Death, in His miracles, in His Resurrection,--these came first, and these were the subjects of Apostolic preaching,* and belief in His Virgin-Birth (ultimately attested by Mary and Joseph) easily followed.

-- * Acts i. 22; ii. 32.

It is instructive in this connection to draw attention to the Acts of the Apostles. As every one knows, it is St. Luke's second volume--the Third Gospel being his first. Now, the Gospel begins with the account of Christ's miraculous Conception and Birth, but there is no reference to these mysteries in the rest of the Gospel or in the Acts. "The reason for the silence in the Acts is the same as for the silence in the subsequent chapters of the Gospel. The Jews had to learn the meaning of the Person of Christ from His own revelation of Himself in His words and works. To have begun with proclaiming the story of His miraculous Birth would have created prejudice and hindered the reception of that revelation.

"Similarly, in the Acts, both Jews and Gentiles had first to learn in the experience of the life of the Church what Jesus had done and said. Only when they had learned that, was it time to go on and ask who He was and whence He came."+

The same point is ill.u.s.trated by St. Mark's silence. "Had he given any account of our Lord's early years, there would be some ground for pitting him (so to speak) against St. Matthew and St. Luke."^ But this Gospel begins, as every one knows, with the public ministry of our Lord. It is, in fact, the Gospel which reflects the oral teaching and preaching of St. Peter, and so it begins naturally enough at the point where that Apostle first came in contact with Christ.

-- + Rackham, Acts of the Apostles, p. lxxiv.

^ Hall, The Virgin-Mother, p. 217.

(3) If in these writers of the New Testament expressions had been used inconsistent with the Virgin-Birth, it would be a very serious matter: but what are the facts? In the few cases where the Birth is mentioned, there is nothing said which implies that His Birth in the flesh was a.n.a.logous in all respects to ours.

Consider St. John's Gospel. The silence on the Virgin-Birth can occasion, one would think, no real difficulty. His Gospel is a supplementary record, and he does not, for the most part, repeat historical statements already made by the other Evangelists. It seems altogether impossible to suppose that St. John was ignorant of the Virgin-Birth. Ignatius, who was Bishop of Antioch quite at the beginning of the second century, and therefore only a few years after the writing of this Gospel, calls it (the Virgin-Birth) a mystery of open proclamation in the Church.

(Eph., 19.) Indeed, on any theory of the date or authorship of this Gospel, there is every reason for believing that the Virgin-Birth was, at the time it was compiled, part and parcel of the tradition of the Church. But when St. John does speak of the Incarnation, in the prologue to his Gospel, when he says, "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," (St. John i. 14.) there is nothing in these words to suggest anything inconsistent with the miraculous story related by St. Matthew and St. Luke. In fact, we may say more than this. We may say that his teaching about the Pre-existent Divine Logos who "was made flesh, and dwelt among us," is felt to be a natural explanation of St. Matthew's narrative as well as of St. Luke's; for, as we shall see, it is the question of the Divine Pre-existence of the Logos on which the reasonableness of the doctrine of the Virgin-Birth really turns.

St. John does, in fact, in connection with this mystery of the Virgin-Birth, what he does in the case of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, "he supplies the justifying principle--in this case the principle of the Incarnation--without supplying what was already current and well known, the record of the fact."*

-- * Gore, Dissertations, p. 8, seq.