December 24, 2011
FROM THE ARCHIVES: WHO'S YO' DADDY?:
Whose Child Is This?: The early church's opponents claimed Jesus was illegitimate. Its heretical fringe said he wasn't human. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth set them both straight. (Richard Longenecker, 12/22/00, Christianity Today)
When they tell their stories of Jesus' birth, Matthew and Luke have little in common. Matthew dwells on the fulfillment of prophecy, the visit of foreign astrologers, and the slaughter of the innocents. Luke, by contrast, reports the poetic utterances of Zechariah, Mary, and Simeon, and focuses on Mary's relatives and the visit of the shepherds.Matthew 1:18-2:23 and Luke 1:5-2:52 are quite different. Neither writer seems to have known the other's account. Yet Matthew and Luke make one major point in common�that Jesus was born of a virgin through the power of the Holy Spirit. This agreement, amidst otherwise diverse presentations, suggests that a common tradition regarding the Virgin Birth existed before either writer recorded his story.
How did a divine mystery, agreed on by the Gospel writers, become the subject of debate?
From at least Ignatius of Antioch (writing about A.D. 110) to the nineteenth century, almost all Christians accepted the Virgin Birth as both a fact of history and a datum of theology. Believers expected marvelous events to accompany God's actions, and so the miraculous served to support faith. In addition, the Virgin Birth fit nicely with church teaching about Jesus' being the Son of God and having a sinless nature.
After the eighteenth-century intellectual revolution we call the Enlightenment, however, the miraculous created suspicion rather than faith-even among Christians. This stemmed from more than mere rationalism or the association of miracles with credulity. It also arose from the conviction that God works in and through a history like our own-and a history studded with miracles is not the kind of history we know. So in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many scholars refused to believe that Jesus was conceived any differently from anyone else. Furthermore, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth seemed impossible to reconcile with the true humanity of Jesus.
(Originally posted: 12/24/04)
Posted by oj at December 24, 2011 12:00 AM
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except that the story makes no sense unless He's divine.
Posted by: oj at December 24, 2004 10:03 AMWell, it could make sense in the same way that Mohammed was considered a messenger and not Allah himself. Though Mohammed himself made that point in ways that Jesus did not.
And I'm not arguing their point. They lost 1700 years ago; and unlike Osama, I'm not willing to refight lost causes.
Posted by: Brandon at December 24, 2004 10:53 AMSo it could make sense if it were completely different--that's inarguable.
Posted by: oj at December 24, 2004 10:58 AMThat's not what I said. I'm saying that there are ways of presenting the case for Arianism that make sense.
Internal sense, not external.
Posted by: oj at December 24, 2004 12:12 PMWhat does that mean?
Posted by: Brandon at December 24, 2004 12:18 PMArians didn't believe he was human. They believed he was some sort of special created being, but not strictly "human."
Posted by: Timothy at December 24, 2004 12:18 PMWhat does that mean?
Posted by: Brandon at December 24, 2004 12:20 PMYou can change the story until it says what Arians want it to, but at that point it has nothing to do with the life of Christ.
Posted by: oj at December 24, 2004 12:24 PMBrandon, the Arians would say that Jesus never never left footprints or cast a shadow or passed gas or caused a breeze when he ran past you.
Posted by: Phil at December 24, 2004 4:21 PMJust barely an iota's difference between the two theories, if you ask me.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 25, 2004 9:24 PMIt's a well-known fact that Jesus came from a typical Jewish family. He thought his mother was a virgin and she thought her son was God.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at December 26, 2004 3:35 AMWell, contra what Orrin said last week about there being no meaningful differences among Christian sects, no Christians ever have believed that.
They were pleased to murder thousands over the difference between homoousion and homoiousion (which is the point at issue here), and it was not nearly so clear as Orrin says it is that homoousion (the superstition that prevailed) was the only possible one.
Otherwise, of course, they wouldn't have murdered anybody.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 27, 2004 8:17 PMYou don't n eed a particularly good reason to murder over your differences--it's just fun.
Posted by: oj at December 27, 2004 10:37 PM
An equally heretical fringe, the Arians, held that Christ was human and not divine. And that interpretation very nearly became orthodoxy.
Posted by: Brandon at December 24, 2004 9:48 AM