Arianism is the issue that led to the Council of Nicaea. It is one example of a doctrine that questions the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Arius (c. 250 – 336) believed that Jesus was just a man. His doctrine is now called Arianism. “Arianism affirmed a created, finite nature of Christ rather than equal divinity with God the Father.”
Arius’s views were eventually denounced as heresy, but not before they divided the Church’s bishops. They caused so much turmoil in the early Church that the Emperor Constantine called a council to reconcile the factions. The final decision about this doctrine was composed at the council of Nicaea.
I’m Against Re-litigating Arianism
It is surprising to find that the divinity of Jesus is currently being litigated on YouTube as if the Council never happened. For reasons I will explain here, I am against re-litigating Arianism.
But it is important to state at the beginning that this debate is connected to another important topic: the Virgin Birth of Jesus. In this article I will use Thomas Boslooper’s book, The Virgin Birth, to add the information that I wasn’t allowed to add on Wikipedia. Boslooper’s account indicates that Christian scholarship has a long history of skirting the topic of the virgin birth.
There is Power in Christianity
There is power in the Christian religion. Many people have testified of this. Based on my own experience, people of faith are not bothered by a critical approach to the virgin birth. However, a certain editor on Wikipedia was bothered so much that he became a thief. Then he bullied me and told lies about me for daring to write about it.
Sincere objections can usually be overcome. However, on Wikipedia the insincere party has the ability to block anyone it disagrees with. This makes reconciliation, not to mention real understanding, impossible. I think it implies either a lack of faith or the desire for a public spectacle.
Here on my own blog, I am at least able to write without interruption. The question remains as to whether anything I write will get through to anyone. And yet, I keep writing.
My Cautious Approach to the Scholarship
Before I begin, it is important to remember that the The Virgin Birth was published in 1962. Religious leaders have had more than thirty years to consider or make changes based on Boslooper’s arguments and criticisms. So, some of the criticisms may no longer be justified.
I have noticed while studying James B. Adamson’s commentary on the Book of James that Christian theologians must be familiar with the findings of biblical scholars. Apparently, when they agree with those findings they are willing to make changes. What else can explain the omission of this phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, ‘And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil’?
Boslooper Cites the Failure of Biblical Scholarship
Boslooper was convinced that biblical scholarship had failed to present the kind of analysis of the story of Jesus’ birth that would serve as the basis of a satisfactory interpretation. He was mainly inspired by Oscar Cullmann’s1 disappointment when he could not find a single book on the virgin birth that presents a historical approach to the subject. The purpose of this book was to fill this need in biblical critical scholarship. The Virgin Birth is a history of interpretations of Jesus’ birth.
Thomas Boslooper’s Introduction Summarized
The subject of the virgin birth brings with it an entire history of interpretations. Christian communities have always taken different views on this part of Jesus’ story. There is also a history of responses from the non-Christian community.
Beginning with Ignatius and continuing through Origen, the virgin birth was at the center of the Church’s controversy with the non-Christian world. The exact point of disagreement differed with every non-Christian community.
The Debate With Jews and Gentiles
With the Jews, Christians struggled to demonstrate the relationship of the virgin birth to the Old Testament. With the Gentiles, the discussion centered on the relationship of the virgin birth to other religious traditions.
Meanwhile, within early Christianity itself the virgin birth had a positive effect over all with the development of Marian theology. A theology of Mary developed at the same time as a body of extra-canonical literature to support it.
Protestant Christianity
In Protestant Christianity, two main factions developed around the story of the virgin birth, supernaturalists versus naturalists. The supernaturalists considered the virgin birth historical. For them, it was an indispensable support to the whole structure of Christianity. The naturalists on the other hand, thought the virgin birth was unhistorical and therefore, unimportant.
Examples of How Modern Historians Dealt With the Virgin Birth
The story and doctrine of the virgin birth are treated as almost invisible by modern historians and contemporary theologians. They all tend to follow the naturalistic interpretation and attach it to a single historical or theological idea. Many of them treat the virgin birth in the narratives of Matthew, chs. 1 and 2 and Luke, chs. 1 and 2 as unrelated to the main story of Jesus. Boslooper gives several examples of historical treatments:
- Harnack thought the virgin birth should be understood as the outgrowth of a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14.
- Lobstein proposed the view that the virgin birth is a myth created by popular devotion to explain the divine Sonship of Christ.
- For Percy Gardner, the narratives of the virgin birth represent two separate attempts to give a date for the divine origin of Jesus.
- Soltau saw the story of Jesus’ conception as an attempt at the end of the first century to reconcile the belief that Jesus was born in Bethlehem on the one hand, with the earlier tradition of his origin in Nazareth on the other.
- Conybeare understood the virgin birth as a legend adopted by the Catholic Church to reconcile the Ebionite and Docetic parties.
- Charles Guignebert argued that all the stories of the miraculous birth were a solution to a Christological problem that arose in the primitive community. This problem had to do with the conflict between the terms ‘Messiah’ and ‘Son of God’.
Contemporary Theologians
According to Boslooper, Emil Brunner, Nels Ferré, and Paul Tillich oversimplify the problem of interpretation. They underestimate the significance of the virgin birth by linking it to the early Christian doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus. This association was not a positive development in their opinion. They thought it stood in the way of a true understanding of the incarnation.
For Brunner and Ferré, the virgin birth obscures and obstructs the fact of Jesus’ true humanity.2 For Tillich, it represents one of the New Testament’s rationalizations. He thought it changed a positive religious concept into a negative form.3
Positive and Negative Aspects in the Interpretation of the Virgin Birth
On the negative side, the history of interpretation has been a history of error. The Old Roman Catholic Church maligned the Biblical narratives by transferring the chief emphasis from Jesus to Mary and from marriage to virginity. Following the Protestant Reformation, the rationalistic naturalists underestimated the importance of the narrative through their a priori judgments against miracle, and the theological supernaturalists by attaching the virgin birth to the deity of Christ and by insisting on the ‘literal historicity’ of the story removed Jesus’ origin from the context of history. Historical critics, by being obsessed with the compulsion to demonstrate what was the source from which the Biblical narrative was ‘derived,’ tended to deprive the church of the significance of the content of the story of Jesus’ virgin birth. (Boslooper pp. 20-21)
But the history of interpretation has also had positive effects. Boslooper argues that it has provided insight and contributed to our understanding of the Biblical narratives.
The Roman Catholic Church preserved the relevance of the virgin birth to personal morality. The naturalists have helped the church recognize the true moral character of the narratives and helped curb the abuses that appeared through apocryphal tradition. The supernaturalists have insisted on the importance of the story of Jesus’ origin and demanded that the church take the doctrine seriously. Historical criticism gave a proper literary classification to the virgin birth. It eventually recognized its true role in the world and provided the basis for understanding the content of its message. (Boslooper p. 21)
The Crux of the Problem (In Boslooper’s View)
Boslooper argued that both the Roman Catholic and Protestant positions took the virgin birth in the gospels as literal history. In this way they weakened the thrust of its morally redemptive message.
The Catholics produced a Docetic theology of Mary, questioned the sanctity of sex, and idealized virginity. The Protestants used the virgin birth to prove the deity of Christ and to set forth a moral idealism attached solely to the person of Jesus. In these approaches the original message was lost. The original message was that moral order is to be established within the marriage bond.
Boslooper’s Objection to the Literal Historical View
Boslooper argued that ‘The virgin birth is ‘myth, in the highest and best sense of the word’. He thought both Roman Catholics and Protestants were wrong to insist on the ‘literal historicity of the narratives’. For him, the universal message of Jesus’ origin is the important thing. The ‘truth’ in Boslooper’s opinion, is found somewhere between the Roman Catholic tradition and the Protestant tradition.
My Conclusion
I will point out that Boslooper goes beyond presenting a history of interpretations of the virgin birth when he tries to explain the purpose of the story. It seems to me he exceeded his stated purpose with mere speculation.
Why do I say this? The statement that the virgin birth is myth ‘in the highest and best sense of the word’ is one thing. Defining its purpose and limiting its influence to the attestation of the humanity of Jesus and the sanctity of sex and marriage is a bit high-handed. For one thing, even assuming it is myth, the inspirations or motivations behind the story can’t be known.
However, the main problem might be that the question of Jesus’ divinity has been forgotten entirely. In what way is he divine? How might this divinity be possible for a human born to a woman?
The Perspective of Faith
The faithful who experience his divinity probably don’t need an explanation for it. Maybe that’s why so many scholars have treated it as unimportant or detachable from the rest of the story. The most I can do at this point is acknowledge that the virgin birth really is a difficult subject. One might argue whether it is a myth in the best sense of the word, but the virgin birth is definitely a mystery in the best sense of the word.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.