The Virgin Birth: Essential? Emphasized? Necessary?

Do I believe in the virgin birth, and if so, why was it necessary, and is it necessary to believe in it for salvation?

Good question.

Oddly enough, when I came to understand that the God of the Bible is the Father alone, and that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the human Son of God, one of the first questions my Trinitarian, deity-of-Christ friends asked me was, “So, do you believe in the virgin birth?”

I think they were asking the question for a couple of reasons:

1. Some probably thought I doubted the Scriptures, which was not the case at all. I was taking the Scriptures as authoritative, as much as I ever had in my life. The Scriptures testify over and over again that God is “one self,” the Father alone, and that Jesus is a man empowered and attested to by God.
2. My friends had been taught, as I had, that somehow Jesus could not be righteous if he were “only human,” if he had not somehow circumvented so-called human “total depravity” and a “sin nature.” This is what mainstream—call it Augustinian or Calvinist—Christianity has been teaching for centuries.

But the claim that “Jesus had to be God in order to side-step total depravity or not have a human sin nature” is non-biblical, philosophical speculation—actually, the claim is anti-biblical, human speculation. The Bible declares a number of times that who the man Christ Jesus is, and what he did as a man, was necessary, sufficient, and acceptable to God. For instance, 1 Cor. 15:21 says, “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man” (cf. John 8:40; Rom. 5:15, 17). In the Bible, there is no necessity for Jesus to somehow have a divine nature or be a God-man. There are no reservations, no qualifications, and no further explanations about Jesus being “more than a man.” Instead, unashamedly, the Bible says that the “one mediator between God and humanity is a man Christ Jesus, who gave himself…” (1 Tim. 2:4–6).

I don't think the virgin birth has anything to do with circumventing sinful human nature, as some of the Catholic “church fathers” began to speculate in developing the idea of a “dual-nature” Jesus. The Bible never talks about Jesus having a God nature and a human nature. Interestingly, even the sinless nature of Jesus wasn’t enough for the Catholic Church, which went back at least one more generation to propose that Mary herself was immaculately conceived so that she would be free from so-called “inherited original sin.”

The Supernatural Conception as a Sign and Evidence that God Is at Work: Parallels between Isaac, Adam, Israel, and Jesus

Now I see the virgin conception and birth primarily as evidence that God was involved. When the messenger proclaimed to Abraham and Sarah, who was past childbearing age, that they would have a son, the question was asked, “Is anything too hard for YHVH?” הֲיִפָּלֵ֥א מֵיְהוָ֖ה דָּבָ֑ר (“wonder, marvel”). There is a direct connection to the announcement by Gabriel to Mary when Gabriel says, “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). The overcoming of the “impossibility,” so to say, of Sarah conceiving and bearing a son was evidence that God was behind it all.

Adam, the first Adam (man), was created without father or mother. God was obviously involved as Adam’s creator. Jesus is the second Adam (man). By means of Jesus’ birth, and also by means of his resurrection from the dead – a kind of second birth, God is shown to be involved, and Jesus is shown to be the Son of God.

By being raised from the dead, Jesus became the firstborn man/Adam of the new creation.

The miraculous conception also parallels the beginning of the people/nation of Israel. There is no other nation or people that was formed, indeed created, like Israel. Israel, though human beings, is unique. And their uniqueness shows that God is the one involved.

So Adam’s, Isaac’s, Israel’s, and Jesus’ births are the result of the direct creative action of God. They all had a unique creative beginning, and God was the one who brought about that beginning.

When the Gospel of Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 about a young maiden (or virgin) being pregnant and bearing a child, he does so as a parallel to the fact that both in Isaiah’s day and in Jesus’s day what was happening was a sign that God gave. The event is a sign, evidence from God of God’s involvement.

So again, I don’t see the virgin conception as something that circumvents the non-biblical, so-called “sin nature” in some way, as is claimed by mainstream Christianity. Rather, it is a direct sign that God is involved.

Compare Luke 1:35 and Romans 1:4 – Declarations of Identity, not Ontology

Mary is wondering how the amazing declaration from Gabriel—that she will bear the Son of the Most High God, to whom the Lord God will grant perpetual rule over Israel by giving him the throne of his father David—will happen. Luke 1:35 says: “And the angel answered and said to her, ‘The holy spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy (set apart) one shall be called the Son of God.’”

Luke is clear that it is the holy spirit (of God), which he clarifies as the “power of the Most High” (spirit = power), that comes over Mary to enable these things to happen.

Note that the text of Luke does not say, “For this reason the child to be born is the Son of God.” The child born is not the Son of God because of the unique conception, as if the virgin conception were the reason the child is the Son of God. Instead, because of this miraculous sign event, he “will be called” the Son of God; that is, others can recognize and acknowledge that the one to be born is the Son of God.

Son of God is a Messianic title, not a divine title, given to the Davidic King of Israel (2 Sam. 7:12; Ps. 2:7; 89:26; Matt. 16:16; 26:63). Being the Son of God in the Bible does not mean “to be God.” In the Bible, the Son or sons of God are always created beings, most prominently human beings.

Being the Son of God has to do with things like relationship and character, not ontology or “essence.”

The backdrop for the title Son of God is Israel and Israel’s king. As human beings, both the nation of Israel and Israel’s king were the Son of God because they were created and set apart by God with uniquely equipped purposes, and were to have a relationship with God and a character appropriate to that relationship with God—even so Jesus is the God-appointed Son of God.

In the Gospels, there are a number of times when Jesus is specifically called or confirmed to be the Son of God by humans (e.g., Matt. 16:16, Peter says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”; John 1:49, Nathanael says: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel”; John 11:27, Martha says: “You are the Christ, the Son of God…”). These are statements about identification using Old Testament titles, not ontology describing pagan ideas of essence or deity.

A few times, God himself proclaimed Jesus to be his Son: 1) at Jesus’ baptism and 2) at the Transfiguration (Matt. 3:17; 17:5). And then, 3) Romans 1:4 says that Jesus Christ our Lord “…was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead…”

Like at his unique birth, when God, by his spirit of holiness raised Jesus from the dead, God made a declaration and gave evidence—a sign—that Jesus is the Son of God, the Davidic King of Israel.

God is Israel’s and Jesus’ Father, and they are his sons. As Father, God gave life to them in unique ways. The nation of Israel was uniquely brought into existence by God’s power and was regathered, and persists—a type of resurrection and immortality—by the power of God. In parallel to Israel, Jesus was miraculously conceived and then, by the power of God, was given immortal life in resurrection from the dead.

Another Look at Luke and Matthew’s Conception/Birth Narratives

I think Luke’s account could be read without interpreting the account as a virgin conception. Although a virgin conception is implied, Luke does not say directly that the spirit of God coming upon Mary will cause the pregnancy. Luke says that the coming of the spirit of God (the power of the Most High) upon Mary will cause her offspring to be called the Son of God. One could say as well that the spirit of God coming upon David caused him to be acknowledged and called the Son of God (Psa. 2:7, 1 Sam. 16:13, 2 Sam. 23:2).

On the other hand, it is pretty much impossible to read Matthew’s account as describing anything but a virgin conception. Matthew 1:18 says that “before they (Mary and Joseph) came together she was found to be with child of the holy spirit,” followed by the description of Joseph’s intention to divorce Mary privately.

A problem for deity-of-Christ believers in both Matthew and Luke is that the progenitor or begetter of Jesus is specifically the holy spirit (the power of the Most High), not the Father. If Trinitarian, deity-of-Christ believers want to be consistent, they should insist that Jesus is the Son of “God the Spirit,” not God the Father. The Nicene Creed should have insisted that Jesus had the same essence as the Holy Spirit.

But again, I don’t think Luke or Matthew are describing some necessary ontological requirement, some divinity to Jesus’ sonship. Jesus is not the Son of God because he has God’s essence. That is reading a pagan idea of being “Son of God” into a Hebraic text. There is nothing about a pre-incarnate God taking on human flesh in the birth narratives of the Gospels. There is no speculation that some non-human person had to take on flesh to avoid a sin nature, total depravity, or the need to “be God” to pay for sin.

Instead, both Matthew and Luke describe the unique birth of a human being. Matthew uses the word genesis—origin, birth, beginning—of a human being, not of a divine being who took on flesh or turned into a human being.

Is it necessary to believe in a virgin conception?

I don’t think so, because nowhere does the Bible say so. The question may have bearing on issues of New Testament textual authority and criticism, and genealogical studies; but, believing in the virgin conception is biblically a non-essential. It is not something essential, like belief that God raised Jesus from the dead.

Why do I believe so? Because while the virgin conception is presented briefly in Matthew and Luke, it is not an emphasis or focus of ever again in the rest of those Gospels, or of any other New Testament writing. For instance, the virgin conception is not in the Gospel of John. In fact, John has no description of the birth of Jesus at all, but like Mark, jumps right into the Gospel story with an adult Jesus and John the Baptizer. Readers of John can understand that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, without knowing about the virgin conception. The virgin conception and birth is not part of the apostolic preaching in the Book of Acts. It is not in the letters of Paul, John, Peter, Revelation, etc.

Summary and Conclusion

I believe that God could supernaturally create a human in the womb of a woman. But Matthew’s and Luke’s records are not communicating a “divine nature” to Jesus and thereby some circumvention of a sin nature, or a God being born as a man with two natures —a “hypostatic union.”

Instead, the Gospel writers’ point is:

1. The evidence of God’s involvement, as with the miraculous conception of Isaac, or in parallel to the unique creation and restoration of the nation of Israel.
2. A second Adam. The first human God made from dust, and subsequent human beings, including the Second Adam, by the power of God are all “born of a woman.”

And so, the virgin conception is not an essential feature of the preaching about who Jesus was/is. It is not an element presented by the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of John, the Book of Acts, Paul’s epistles, Peter’s or John’s epistles, the Book of Hebrews, or the Book of Revelation. The idea of the virgin birth did not play a central role in the proclamation of the apostles as it does in mainstream Christianity.

Perhaps the Book of Acts is the best illustration that a belief in a virgin conception of Jesus is not an emphasized aspect of the apostolic declarations. Thousands of people repented and believed in the Messiah Jesus, the Son of God (Acts 9:20) without hearing about the virgin birth.

What do you think?