The Historical Evidence for the Virgin BirthTaylor, Vincent
Religion
The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth
Taylor, Vincent
Bible. Gospels; Jesus Christ -- Nativity; Virgin birth
On the theological side, the question is probably more far‐reaching than
is commonly supposed. Individual Christian doctrines can never be treated
_in vacuo_; they are inter‐related one with another. It is often said that
those who reject the Virgin Birth reject also the physical Resurrection of
Jesus, the Ascension, and many of the miracles reported in the Gospels.
The statement is largely true; it is possible we ought also to include in
it the doctrine of the Pre‐existence of Christ. The reason is that these
denials belong to the same general habit of mind; they are part of the
content of what has been called a “reduced Christianity”. It is
impossible, therefore, adequately to discuss the question of the Virgin
Birth on its theological side, without raising the larger question,
whether this so‐called “reduced Christianity” is not the true faith, as
distinguished from a “full Christianity” which in reality is florid and
overgrown. Sweet can scarcely be said to go too far when he writes: “In
short, and this is the gist of the whole matter, in this controversy
concerning the birth of Christ, two fundamentally different Christologies
are groping for supremacy” (ib., p. 311). This fact has not always been
recognized by those who think of the Virgin Birth, but there can be no
question of its truth. The Virgin Birth is part of a larger problem; it
must ultimately be established, if at all, as a corollary, not as an
independent conclusion. The larger problem is whether we can still hold
the Trinitarian Theology and the Two‐Nature Doctrine of the Person of
Christ, or whether we must give to the Immanence of God a place greatly in
excess of any it has yet held in Christian thought; whether, indeed, we
can feel it adequate to speak of Christ as One in whom the Immanent God
revealed and expressed Himself in an altogether unique and ultimately
inexplicable way. In any case, the conflict is one of Christologies. The
purely naturalistic interpretation of Jesus holds a more and more
precarious place in the field. This, then, is the problem of the present
and of the immediate future. It is nothing less than the problem which
every age has had to face since the days of Jesus of Nazareth—the problem
of the Incarnation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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