CT Classic: Whose Child Is This?
The early church's opponents claimed Jesus was illegitimate. Its heretical fringe said he wasn't human. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth set them both straight.
By Richard Longenecker | posted 12/01/2000 12:00AM
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Likewise, the early forms of confessions of faith, incorporated by New Testament writers into their letters, do not mention the Virgin Birth. However, two expressions in confessional portions have sometimes been claimed to allude to Jesus' virgin birth. First, some have taken born of a woman in Galatians 4:4 to imply a virgin birth, since it refers only to "a woman" without mentioning her husband. But born of a woman is simply a Jewish idiom for being human (as, for example, in Job 14:1 and Matt. 11:11/Luke 7:28. See also Josephus, Antiquities 7.21 and 16.382). The phrase itself gives no information about the biology of Jesus' birth. Rather, it tells us Jesus was truly one with us, and that he came as "the Man" to stand in our place.
Second, some take an expression found in Romans 1:3-4 to allude to Jesus' virgin birth. In speaking of our Lord's human credentials, Paul says he was "the seed [or, descendant] of David according to the flesh." Some have claimed the word seed (sperma) means male sperm from David's line, and that royal sperma, according to Luke's geneology (as it is argued), came through Mary's line, not Joseph's. But seed here means no more than it does elsewhere in Scripture: simply a descendant (cf. 2 Sam. 7:12; Ps. 89:3-4; John 7:42; Gal. 3:16, 29; 2 Tim. 2:8). What Romans 1:3-11 sets out is a two-stage Christology: that humanly, Jesus was a descendant of David; that because of the resurrection, he is legitimately declared God's Son and Lord of the human race.
Nothing is said here about a virginal conception.
Philippians 2:6-11 is a particularly significant case. Here is a Christological hymn or confession that seems to come from the heart of earliest Christian conviction and that runs the gamut from pre-existence to exaltation. Yet this "Christ-hymn" does not mention Jesus' virgin birth. Though fully human ("born of a woman") and with Davidic blood in his veins ("seed of David"), Jesus the Christ was also pre-existent and divine ("the divine nature was his from the first," NEB; "being in very nature God," NIV) and has become the Lord over all ("every knee should bow ... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord," NIV). Yet there is no reference to Jesus' virginal conception. Early Christians, evidently, did not see the Virgin Birth as a necessary part of speaking about our Lord's taking "the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (v. 7, NIV).
The silence of Paul, Mark, and John
If the Virgin Birth is missing from the apostles' sermons and the earliest confessions of faith, we still might expect to find it elsewhere in the New Testament. But apart from Matthew's and Luke's infancy narratives, the New Testament has no direct statement about Jesus' virginal conception.
Paul's letters, probably the first materials of the New Testament written, speak nowhere of the Virgin Birth. And he makes no attempt to improve on the confessional statements he incorporates by adding a virginal conception.
Mark's gospel, probably the earliest canonical Gospel, is likewise silent on Jesus' virgin birth. For Mark, "the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (1:1, NIV) has to do with John the Baptist's preparation for Jesus, Jesus' own baptism, his temptation, his announcement of the kingdom, and Jesus' call to four fishermen to follow him (1:2-20). Mark's gospel essentially agrees with the scope of the apostles' sermons in Acts, beginning with the baptism of John and concluding with the resurrection of Jesus.
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