"The Virgin Birth, Fact Or Myth"

                               “The Virgin Birth, Fact or Myth?"

Some believe, some don’t where do you stand?   Just how important is it concerning who Jesus is for you?   How do you answer the question: “Who do you say I am?” 

Dec 27 2015   Psalm 148,   Luke: 2 41-52

Let us examine the passage from Luke 2: verses 41-52.  Luke clarifies for his readers that the boy Jesus was a very human person as well as having unusual spiritual insight and at least an elementary awareness of his divine mission.  The portrait we may have here is of a headstrong adolescent who disappeared from the company of Galilean travelers as they left Jerusalem after the Passover festival.  He went missing for three days, a terrifyingly long time for his anxious parents.  My wife and I can attest to this terrifying and anxious feeling as we lost our middle son at the local fall fair grounds one fall at the age of 3 while checking out the horse barn.   After a terrifying frantic search for what seemed like hours we found him with a friend who had seen him wondering around in the arena.  Mary and Joseph finally found Jesus in the temple questioning the learned scholars about spiritual matters. Naturally, Mary scolded him, as all mothers would.  Instead of submitting to her rebuke, he answered her back, “Why did you have to look for me? Didn't you know that I had to be about my Fathers business?  But they did not understand his answer.” The distance between the boy and his parents was already widening.  Who was this young adult who so mystified them?

The claim that Jesus was fully divine, meaning he couldn’t be a human being was not the belief of the early Christian Church.  The perspective fully divine began to take shape in the early part of the 3^rd Century after Jesus’ death and is still being taught as doctrine in some of the modern day Christian denominations.  We know from biblical records that this was contrary to the early Orthodox Christian church because Jesus was only known by the majority as a Jewish Rabbi, a very special Rabbi but yet, only a Rabbi.  Let us recall in John 20: 16 at the tomb of resurrection, Mary Magdalene encounters a gardener, after realizing the entity she is speaking with is not a gardener by Jesus himself, calls out “Rabboni!”  Meaning Teacher or Rabbi.   Jesus was never considered by the majority of his closest disciples to be God incarnate but was viewed by the early Christians as a unique agent of God with great spiritual insight and powers.   

The notion that Jesus was fully divine didn’t really come to light until some of the 1st and 2nd-century texts, written by Paul, were officially canonized to become part of what we now know as the New Testament.   At different points in his writings, Paul implies indirectly to the divine character of Jesus, but he never makes a direct connection to the claim.  To this very day, there is still scholarly debates going on as to whether or not we can call Jesus God.   I have to admit that I myself at one point in my faith journey could be quoted as publicly taking sides in the debate. 

It was the Apostle Paul within his generous contribution to the writings found in the Epistles of the New Testament that this theological perspective comes to light, Jesus as  “The Son of God”.  This also sparked a new theological perspective, Jesus as “The Son of Man” and the debate continues.   Was Jesus in fact God incarnate or was he just a man, or was he both Son of God and Son of Man, both divine and human?

It has been suggested that in some of the Christian churches today, to help prevent the total humanizing of Jesus, there has been an overemphasis of his deity.  In fact it appears that some theological camps or perspectives want Jesus to be only fully human and others want him to be only fully God.  May I suggest to you that to minimize the humanity of Jesus is as heretical as the overemphasis placed on his deity?  The writer Luke does not attempt to do anything more than tell his story and leave the reader to answer the crucial personal question which confronts us all: Who is this man we call Jesus?

Jesus himself often avoided a direct answer to this question all the way to his death.  When confronted he often turned his answer into the question: “Who do you say I am?”

Is it then heresy to question the age old story of a virgin birth as historical fact? 

Most of the ammunition to keep Jesus as divine comes to us from the virgin birth as historical fact, being conceived by the Holy Spirit not by human means.  Holding tightly to this view as historical fact clears the way for Jesus to be completely divine.  He would be void of a human nature, the nature that is prone to missing the mark.  Thus we have the perspective that Jesus was born outside the curse placed on all human seed allowing Jesus to be free from sin and fully divine.  

But there are many Christians who struggle with theology of the virgin 

birth and do not see it as historical fact, neither do they see it as a fairy tale but as historical myth.  Myth when used as a noun refers to  a traditional story, concerning the early history of a people that explains some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involves a supernatural being or events.  The historical myths of all ancient writings, including the bible always, have a hidden truth contained within the story.  It is up to the seeker to uncover the truth behind the myth. For example, a virgin birth would not prevent Jesus from experiencing the fullness of being human.   He was to experience everything we experience and be tested with every temptation of the human nature, see Matthew 4: 1-3.  The understanding of this theological perspective would allow Jesus to be full alive, fully human yet containing the full embodiment of the divine nature of God.   

May I suggest to you here that either way there is room for the understanding that Luke’s intentions in telling his version of the Christmas story was to provide a narrative which would start the debate that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine.  Let me leave you with the question that we all have to wrestle with in the development of our own faith.  The question Jesus asked his disciples:  “Who do you say I am”