The doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus has been part of the church’s teaching since its earliest days, appearing in both Scripture and the Apostles’ Creed. Two main questions have been raised concerning Jesus’ virgin birth.
Question 1: Is there good reason to believe that the claim of Jesus’ virgin birth is rooted in history?
Skeptics have proposed that the idea of the virgin birth is simply an early Christian myth, with no basis in actual history. There are three basic arguments that challenge the historical credibility of the virgin birth.
(1) The story of Jesus’ virgin birth simply follows a common form of religious myth, and is probably drawn from similar stories found in ancient pagan religions.
On the surface, this argument can sound convincing. But things begin to unravel once we press into the historical details. First, the claim that other ancient religions had similar virgin birth stories is simply not true. It turns out that miraculous births in pagan religions are typically the product of sexual intercourse between a god and a human. In other words, while there is a supernatural element to these pagan stories, they don’t involve a virgin birth at all.
The Greek story of Hercules is a classic example. Hercules is said to be the child of the king of the gods, Zeus, and a human woman, Alcmene. But there is no virgin birth involved! Rather, Zeus is said to have taken the form of Alcmene’s husband, Amphitryon, in order to have sexual relations with Alcmene. It turns out that the actual idea of a virgin birth is not a common theme in pagan religions.
(2) The early church had to create the virgin birth story so they could claim that Jesus fulfilled the Jewish expectation that the Messiah would be the divine Son of God, as seen in the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 7:14: “The Lord himself will give you a sign: A virgin shall give birth to a child and shall name him Immanuel.”
There are serious problems with this argument. First, it is clear, historically, that the Jews did NOT expect the Messiah to be divine. Rather, based on God’s covenant promise to David in 2 Samuel 7, they were convinced that the Messiah would be a normal human descendent of King David, who God would specially anoint and empower to deliver the Jews from their human oppressors and to restore the land of Israel back to the Jewish people.
In fact, the idea of a virgin birth presents a potential theological problem for Jewish Messianism. The Messiah had to be the “son of David.” But a virgin birth could threaten the “Davidic line” requirement, since it would bypass the human father. Beyond this, there is nothing in ancient Jewish religion that would anticipate a non-sexual virgin birth of God incarnate! If the Jews were certain of one thing, it was that Yahweh, their Creator-God, was NOT a human being!
So, what about the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 that a virgin will give birth to a child? Jewish readers have commonly understood this passage to be referring to the birth of King Hezekiah. And no Jewish person thinks that Hezekiah was virgin-born! This is because in the original Hebrew, the word used is ‘almah, which simply means “young woman.”
So, why do most English translations say “virgin” instead of “young woman?” This is most likely due to the influence of the Greek translation of this verse as found in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). In the Septuagint translation, the Greek word parthenos is used to translate the Hebrew word ‘almah, and this Greek word does mean “virgin.”
However, in its ancient context, readers would have most likely understood it as referring to a young woman who was presently a virgin, but who would eventually conceive and give birth through natural means. When we put this all together, we see that there was no Jewish expectation of a divine Messiah, let alone one who would be born of a virgin.
This forces the question: If the Judaism of Jesus’ day had no expectation of a divine, virgin-born Messiah, and if Isaiah 7:14 wasn’t understood to refer to a virgin birth in the supernatural sense, then why did the early Christians claim that Jesus was miraculously born of a virgin, and why did they interpret Isaiah 7:14 as referring to this supernatural event?
We propose that the most plausible answer is that the early Jewish Christians were convinced that Jesus was the divine Son of God who had been virgin-born, and that they were therefore led to adjust their theology and their interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 to help explain this fact.
(3) As modern science shows, virgin births simply can’t happen.
This assumption seems to be the driving motive behind the first two arguments we’ve considered. From the skeptical perspective, a virgin birth is impossible, so there MUST be some other explanation. We propose that this assumption usually comes from an atheistic or deistic worldview that excludes the possibility of a personal God who can choose to miraculously interact in history. Since we are convinced that a personal God does exist, we have no reason to think God cannot enact a virgin birth if God so chooses.
So, in light of the facts that: (a) the early Christian tradition widely assumes the historicity of Jesus’ virgin birth, and yet (b) there was nothing in either the Jewish religion or the surrounding pagan culture that would lead the early Christians to fabricate such a story, it seems that this early Christian belief about Jesus’s birth is best attributed to its actual occurrence in history.
Question #2: Why is this belief important for the Christian worldview?
This question has been a source of debate over the centuries, and we will consider four responses that have been offered to this question.
(1) Sexual intercourse is inherently sinful and morally impure. Therefore, for Jesus to be a sinless human being, he had to be conceived apart from normal human sexual intercourse.
The problem with this view is that there is absolutely no evidence that the New Testament considers sexual intercourse to be inherently sinful. Although this view was held by some in the early church, it has no legitimate basis in Scripture.
(2) The human sin nature (original sin) is passed down through the sex act, possibly through the male seed. Since the pure Son of God had to be untouched by original sin, Jesus had to be conceived apart from a sexual act.
Once again, there is no good biblical evidence for the claim that original sin is passed down through sexual intercourse. Although Augustine believed that original sin was in some way transferred through the male seed, this view has been widely rejected by theologians throughout church history.
(3) The virgin birth enables Jesus to be fully human without also inheriting a sinful human nature and the corporate guilt associated with Adam’s sin. This is necessary if Jesus is to be the sinless New Adam, and to function as a new, faithful covenant representative of the human race.
The problem with this view is that it is not clear how a virgin birth would preserve Jesus from inheriting a sinful human nature when he still has a fully human mother who is, herself, tainted by original sin. The Roman Catholic Church has recognized this problem, and addresses it with the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary (the claim that Mary herself was miraculously conceived without the taint of human sinfulness). But Protestants have broadly rejected this doctrine, pointing out that there is no scriptural basis for this. In addition, the Roman Catholic solution only seems to push the problem back one step: If Jesus required a mother free from the taint of original sin in order to be free of it himself, then Mary would also require a mother who was free from original sin as well, and so on back through history.
(4) The virgin birth anchors and expresses the deity of Jesus. For the incarnation to take place, a supernatural dimension is necessary. The virgin birth, then, represents the expected element of the supernatural that would logically accompany a divine incarnation event.
In our opinion, this response is much more plausible than the first three. While it may have been possible for the divine Son of God to become humanly incarnate through normal sexual intercourse, even this would still require a supernatural dimension to the event. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus’ birth involved a miraculous aspect.
Whether or not one is persuaded by any of these theological arguments, the most important point that needs to be made here is that Scripture clearly claims that Jesus was born of a virgin, and it does so in an impressive array of passages. The virgin birth is explicitly mentioned in both Matthew and Luke’s infancy narratives (Matthew 1:18-25 ; Luke 1:26-38 ), and it appears to be implicitly assumed and alluded to in other New Testament passages, including Mark 6:2-3; John 1:13; 8:41; and Romans 1:3. This reveals that the virgin birth was a widely held conviction within the earliest church. And so, commitment to Scripture and the “rule of faith” of the earliest church calls us to affirm it as well, whether or not we can explain why God decided it was important for the divine Son to enter into human history in this supernatural way.
