Virgin Birth – a sceptic’s view
Daniel Florien lists five reasons why he no longer believes in the virgin birth of Jesus:-
1. “There is no reliable evidence”. No DNA samples, for example, and no medical confirmation. Well it is plain silly to suppose that there might be that kind of evidence. Florien adds that there are ‘no eyewitness accounts’. That’s a pretty silly complaint, too: I don’t think that, under the circumstances, it is reasonable to expect there to have been a human witness to Mary not having sexual relations with Joseph (or anyone else for that matter).
The only two human beings who could have known what did, and did not, take place regarding the conception of Jesus were Mary and Joseph themselves. And their testimony is there for all to see in the accounts of Matthew and Luke.
2. “The earliest references are late and sparse”. Florien surmises that the reason the story virgin birth is absent from the earliest writings of the New Testament (Paul’s letters) is that ‘it hadn’t been made up yet’. Yet Florien quite happily concedes that Paul makes only two references to Jesus’ birth at all. So it’s not that Paul’s writings are full of opportunities for him to demonstrate knowledge of the virgin birth. It is reasonable to conclude that Paul’s main interests lie elsewhere. It is gratuitous to suppose that the virgin birth was ‘so important’ that the New Testament writers must have referred to it, if they knew of it. The evidence points in another direction: that Paul and others were more interested in the incarnation itself, together with Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.
Let us grant that Paul did not, in fact, know of the virgin birth. This still leaves us with a presentation of Jesus in Paul’s writings as the pre-existent Son of God, so that Paul would surely have regarded the story of the virgin birth, if he became aware of it, as consistent with that picture (see, for example, Romans 1:3,4; 2 Corinthians 8:9; Colossians 1:15,19; Galatians 4:4; Philippians 2:8).
There is no point in complaining that the virgin birth is not mentioned by Mark, since his Gospel does not address Jesus’ birth at all, but begins at the outset of his public ministry. It is generally agreed that John’s was the last Gospel to have been written, and yet the virgin birth is not explicitly mentioned there either, and probably for the same reason. As for the assertion that the story of the virgin birth didn’t appear until over 50 years after is supposedly happened, this signally fails to deal with Luke’s claim to have research the life of Jesus thoroughly, and to have utilised eye-witness accounts, among other sources. And there are very good reasons for supposing that one of his sources was Mary herself.
3. “It’s the same old myth”. The same myth, according to Florien, as other gods allegedly born of virgins: ‘Ra, the Egyptian sun god, was said to be born of a virgin. So was Perseus, Romulus, Mithras, Genghis Khan, Krishna, Horus, Melanippe, Auge and Antiope.’ I have dealt with this objection above. Suffice it to say here that to regard the story virgin birth of Jesus as ‘the same as’ that of Ra, or Krishna is to demonstrate a remarkable failure to distinguish between things that differ.
4. “It is much more likely to be false, than to be true”. Thomas Paine is quoted as saying, ‘we have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course, but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is therefore at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.’ This is an argument from personal experience, and it has the effect of closing down the debate prior to any rational consideration of the evidence by saying, in effect, ‘I can’t believe anything that lies outside my personal experience.’ That’s a very blinkered and closed-minded attitude. And, in any case, it is now much harder to claim that ‘no-one in our time has every seen a miracle’, given the recent work of Craig Keener, which suggests that large numbers of people have witnessed miracles.
5. “We would never, ever, believe this today”. Florien invites us to imagine that a teenage girl today claimed that her pregnancy was due to God impregnating her and that she was still a virgin. We wouldn’t believe her, so why should we believe Mary’s story? Once again, this is singularly inept. The story of Christ’s virgin birth does not stand as an isolated tale told about an otherwise ordinary life. It is, rather, all of a piece with everything else we know about him. It is consistent with everything else that he said and did, and perhaps most of all with his resurrection from the dead. Presumably, Florien does not believe in the resurrection either, but there we have an event which certainly has early and universal attestation in the New Testament, and for which the historical evidence is plentiful. It is this more complete picture of Jesus Christ that helps to make sense of the virgin birth, and which must be dismantled if the story of his remarkable entry into the world is to be disbelieved.