Machen: how important is the Virgin Birth?
In 1930, the redoubtable scholar and apologist J. Gresham Machen published his 400-page defence of The Virgin Birth of Christ.
Towards the end of his book, Machen deals with the question of the importance of this doctrine. Helpfully, he steers a path between saying, on the one hand, that belief in the Virgin Birth is essential to salvation, and, on the other hand, saying that it is of relatively little significance.
Machen maintained that belief in the Virgin Birth is not simply a matter of private judgement, but is, rather ‘essential to the corporate witness of the Church.’…