Disappearing Post

Advice to Bloggers, Don't Title Posts in Greek
This post was originally published on the 19th of December. It's still rather relevant, considering the discussions of Titusonenine presently about a piece by Rev. Mrs. Chloe Breyer in Slate and another article in the Church Times. One commenter suggested the Virgin Birth is what really separates the orthodox and the liberal. I suspect the commenter would be disabused of that notion in his own mind by reading this blog.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent is past. And surely countless sermons on the Annunciation and the Virgin Birth were preached yesterday. I've been trying to write this post for a few weeks now and every time I try, something disastrous happens. So I'll just pray I get somewhere.

Why Do I Need the Virgin Birth?

In church on Sunday and on Reverend Ref's blog, I heard or read two sermons that seek to make Joseph the biological father of Jesus. Considering the preacher at my church has said that the things she says "would make the faculty of Seabury-Western faint" and Ref is a SWTS alum, I will consider the two preachers in question to represent a broad theological swathe of ECUSA. But somehow I don't find the idea of Joseph being Jesus' biological father palatable. I have nothing against Joseph, of course. Joseph, after all, is the exemplar for all stepfathers and adoptive fathers. I believe that he took good care of Jesus and instructed Him in the trade of carpentry (and fled with Him and Mary to Egypt, too). Joseph earned fatherhood. How else can we explain Joseph's actions in Matthew? He was going to break off the engagement quietly? Why was that? This is not to say that the birth narratives aren't ambiguous in calling Joseph Jesus' father. But the ambiguity itself seems to suggest that the Gospel writers, too, doubted as we do. I may have a volume entitled "Biology for Dummies" on my shelf, but I've known the facts and nitty-gritty details of life for about seventeen years. [And I know more biology than that would imply]. And Matthew and Luke would have had little more information than I do about the causal logic relevant to the case. It is sometimes argued that women were seen as "incubators" by the ancients. I believe Aristotle was the most eloquent proponent of this position. But it was not uncontroversial. Some thought that both male and female emitted seed. The fully developed doctrine of homunculi belongs to the 17th century (and Jesuits with microscopes), not to the ancient world.

And the existence of homunculi seems less relevant for Matthew. Matthew likely was an urban Jew. But he would have seen animals mate. Luke was a physician according to tradition. Is it possible his ambiguity comes from his own doubts as a medical scientist? But to describe the process itself, Luke uses "ἐπισκιάσει," a verb more reminiscent of the pillar of cloud that rested on the Tent of Meeting while Israel was in the wilderness than biology. Matthew and Luke knew they were describing something special. But the question remains: Why a virgin birth?

Possible reasons include:

1. "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel" (Isaiah 7:14)
Well, if you've been hanging around a church enough around this time of year, you may have heard that the translators of the Septuagint (the semi-authoritative Greek edition of the Old Testament) may have made a tiny error by translating the Hebrew word for "young woman (no virginity implied)" ( almah ) as parthenos , Greek for "virgin."

Yet there's a counterargument (from Strong of Concordance fame and others). In all other (and later) Greek versions of the Tanakh , almah is translated neanis (no implication of virginity) in all cases. The presumption was that it was done so to prevent Christological interpretations. In the LXX, almah is generally translated neanis with two exceptions: the Matriarch Rebecca as she is about to meet Isaac and the woman of Isaiah 7:14 are called parthenoi . In other words, the translators of the Septuagint seem to have used parthenos emphatically and therefore must have had to deal with the "virgin birth" implications of Isaiah 7:14. Perhaps, there was a tradition...

2. Virgin birth evades infection of Adam by cutting men out of the process. I'm not a big fan of this.

These are good old-fashioned reasons, but I would like to take a different tack and talk about the understanding of the Incarnation provided by the Nicene Creed.

The Nicene Creed has this to say concerning the nature of the Son before the Incarnation:

τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, τὸν μονογενῆ,
The son of God, the only-begotten
τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα
The one begotten of the Father
πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων,
Before all ages
φῶς ἐκ φωτός, Θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ,
Light from light, true God from true God
γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί,
Begotten not made, of the same substance as the Father
διʼ οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο.
Through Him, all things came into being.

This understanding of God the Son is often called "the cosmic Christ" because the essence of his nature is entwined in the making and enduring of the cosmos. The "begetting" which is emphasized is compared to "light from light." Imagine being at a great distance from two lamps (so as not to violate conservation of energy, I do not claim this is homology). You will perceive the lamps as one light source, essentially concentrated at a point. Now, imagine that the lamps are moved apart slightly. You will perceive the lamps as two barely resolved point sources. But the lamps are of the same substance (light). This is the sense I think the Fathers had, not of God divided, added, multiplied, or subtracted but of an ever-extant God expanded.

Of the Incarnation, the Creed says:

τὸν διʼ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους
For us, humans
καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν
And for our salvation
κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν
He came down from heaven
καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου
And he was enfleshed by the Holy Spirit
καὶ Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου
And by the Virgin Mary
καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα.
And he became human.

The problem is that the structure of the last three lines does not allow a literal translation, for it has the rhetorical form of an anaphora on καὶ combined with a chiasmus, "σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου...Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου...ἐνανθρωπήσαντα." In other words, the Fathers were trying to emphasize the importance of "and" in the Incarnation, drawing a relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary in which the Holy Spirit was the primary doer of the verb σαρκωθέντα and the Virgin Mary the secondary doer and vice versa with "ἐνανθρωπήσαντα." Thus, it might be better translated: He became incarnate both through the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and likewise (by both the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit) became human.

Therefore, the Nicene Creed contains in its very rhetoric the idea of the synergy between God and the Virgin Mary that is essential to the Incarnation. Let us explore the possible meanings of this synergy:

1. The Incarnate Christ is as a new Creation. In other words, He becomes flesh through the Holy Spirit. Luke's usage is especially appropriate here. The womb of Mary (standing for the waters of the primordial chaos) is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, just as the Holy Spirit moved over the waters in the beginning of time. Thus, Jesus' birth is a foretaste of baptismal regeneration as well, since Jesus literally is born by water and the Holy Spirit.

2. Jesus, is fully divine and fully human, because his birth comes about by cooperation between God and a human being.

3. Reverend Ref refers to the ancient idea that the Virgin Mary is the Second Eve, saying "Yes" to God when Eve said "Yes" to disobedience to God. The Virgin Mary likewise stands in for her ancestor Adam by agreeing to act as God's vice-regent over nature as represented by her generative organs.

4. Most controversially, the Virgin Birth has some interesting implications for the controversy about Jesus' gender. Many have pointed out before me that Jesus "became a human being" through a woman alone. In other words, His human nature comes from a woman, thus He must be in some sense a woman. In order to take another look at this, let us consider the major theological justification for ambiguity about the Virgin Birth. God did promise to raise up a descendant of David as Messiah etc. Luke and Matthew are clear about the necessary genealogies. For some purposes, Jesus must have been Joseph's son. Thus, I am inclined to believe that Joseph was Jesus' biological father contrary to the order of nature. Thus, if you could go back in time and do genetic tests, I suspect they would reveal that Joseph was Jesus' father. I also am fairly sure Jesus would be revealed to be male (as far as biology could ascertain). Yet I do not think it coincidence that God became incarnate by cooperation with a woman betrothed to a man of the lineage of David. For Creation, as Dionysius Areopagites saith, is chiefly instituted by yearning. And what would be the yearning of a woman betrothed to a man pregnant with a child not fertilized by his sperm? Well, I think it's quite likely that she would yearn to give Joseph a son that would look as much like him as possible, so he would not have to raise a stranger. Or just as Dido desired "a little Aeneas," Mary yearned to create a little version of her chief loves: God and Joseph. This is something many women want. And nature often favors this desire. But through synergy with the Holy Spirit, Mary made it possible, though nature would prevent it.

Thus, Jesus might have been biologically a man and "son of David," so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, the circumstances of his birth also make him a female. Does this, too, fulfill the Scriptures? I think so. For we know Jesus to be the second Adam and thus Jesus must share somewhat in the nature of the primal androgyne. And there's also the problem that two of the required sacrificial victims of the Temple worship must be female (most others need to be male). Thus, for a full replacement of the bloody sacrifices of the Old Covenant, Jesus, the victim and priest of the Bloodless Sacrifice, would have to be both male and female.

QEDL

The preacher I heard on Sunday described Luke's account as poetry, and I admit that I have de-emphasized the beauty and wonder of the Incarnation in favor for speculations about mechanics. It's wretched that I have to do this. But I do feel that it is important to say that there was an actual Virgin Birth. Two major themes define my theology: Christ as the surprising consummation of the ritual and moral systems of signs and actions of the Old Covenant; and Christ and the Church as a foretaste of the glorious consummation of being that lies beyond time and knowledge, when "[the saints] shall rule on earth" and "God shall be all in all." And these themes are bridged by the Cross and the Empty Tomb. But without a Virgin Birth, it seems that the Incarnation falls by the wayside. The Nativity just becomes a first step to the Cross, as the carol puts it, "Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume, Breathes a life of gathering gloom; Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, Sealed in a stone-cold tomb." Better that it be a foretaste of theosis or of synergy in the work of reconciliation.

In lieu of the closing prayer of the Holy Brothers, I would like to put here the great "Proclamation of Christmas" in the Roman Martyrology (which is sung every year at one of my former parishes).

The twenty-fifth day of December.

In the 5199th year of the creation of the world, from the time when God in the
beginning created the heavens and the earth;
the 2957th year after the flood;
the 2050th year from the birth of Abraham;
the 1510th year from Moses and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;
the 1032nd year from David's being anointed king;
in the 65th week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the 194th Olympiad;
the 752nd year from the foundation of the city of Rome;
the 42nd year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;
the whole world being at peace;
in the 6th age of the world,

JESUS CHRIST the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, and nine months having passed since his conception,
was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary, being made flesh.

The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.



Amen.