A number of people continue to wonder aloud how crucial the doctrine of the virgin birth really is. In a related vein, I’ve had a few people (on the blogosphere and elsewhere) ask about the transmission of sin and what role, if any, the virgin birth played in keeping Christ free from sin. This is a good question. Because if we aren’t careful we could end up saying sex is bad or that the sin nature is passed on through the male.
In order to answer this question about the transmission of sin, and to demonstrate that I’m not the only one who considers the virgin birth crucial to the faith, I thought we should listen to what others have said about the matter.
Calvin:
Ursinus:
Ursinus goes on to explain why the virgin birth matters. 1) It confirms that the Son of God truly assumed human flesh. 2) It means Christ truly descended from the fathers; he was a true seed of Abrhaam and a son of David. 3) That we may know that the Scriptures are fulfilled. 4) That we may know that Christ was sanctified in the womb and therefore pure and without sin. 5) That we may know there is an analogy between the nativity of Christ and the regeneration of the faithful (206-7).
Bavinck:
In summary, the virgin birth is crucially important for several reasons, one of which is that it made possible the uniting of full deity and full humanity in one person. If Jesus had come to earth without being born, it would be hard to see how he was a human like us. But if he had been born to two parents just as we are, it would be hard to see how he could be fully God.
Is it possible that God could have brought Christ into the world in some other way? We don’t’ know. Scripture doesn’t tell us. But Scripture does strongly suggest that Christ was born holy as a result of being conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). This does not mean sex is evil, nor that sin is only transmitted through the father. It means that although Christ was a man like Adam, he was not a descendant of Adam. Rather, he stood in parallel as the promised seed of Abraham and a second Adam. The Adamic line, with its inherited taint, was interrupted in Christ. Christ was not begotten by a man, but by God. He was not conceived through natural human intercourse, but by supernatural intervention. The virgin birth shows that someone from the outside has come in to our world. A new stream is flowing, one that is not involved with the guilt that flows in the original stream.
It is best not to speculate how all this can be. What Scripture tells us clearly is that it is. The Gospels want us to understand that Christ was not conceived in the normal way (Matt. 1:20), and that his miraculous conception does, in part, speak to his unique identity as God with us (Matt. 1:23). If we remove the virginal conception from the equation, the biblical account of Jesus identity and mission does not hold together.
Calvin summarized the importance of the virgin birth in his 1538 Catechism in this way:
Calvin, and the Reformed tradition after him, not to mention the historic orthodox faith behind him, has not hesitated to make much of the virgin birth. If building on the virgin birth is a theological house of cards, as some contend, then it’s one that has been built up many times.
And while I’m spending time I shouldn’t on blogging, let me make one other point. Christianity is a historical religion. To suggest that Matthew or Luke inserted the virgin birth as a metaphorical example of how God can do amazing things is, frankly, preposterous. Luke, for example, claims to have received his reports from “eyewitnesses” (1:2). He then makes clear that he has “followed all things closely” and has endeavored to write “an orderly account” so that Theophilus “may have certainty concerning the things” he has been taught (1:3-4). This is not the introduction you give if you plan on throwing in a few myths here and there.
Moreover, everything in the first two chapters of Luke screams “history.” Luke is exceedingly careful to note who was ruling where and when. The references to Augustus, Herod, and Quirinius tell us, at the very least, that Luke sure thought the birth of Jesus happened just as he narrates it. It is history he is relating to Theophilus, nothing less.
This same emphasis on history, by the way, shows up in the Creed. Why mention so specifically that Christ “suffered under Pontius Pilate” if the bit about “born of the virgin Mary” is ahistorical make-believe? The Gospels and the early church believed it was important not just that Jesus was born of a virgin, but that it was a virgin birth that really happened in time and history.
