The New Testament accounts of the Virgin Birth (more properly, the virginal conception) of Christ make good historical sense, says N.T. Wright.  In an article entitled ‘God’s Way of Acting’ (The Christian Century, December 16th 1989) Wright sets out his argument.  What follows is a summary.

Of course, we make much of the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, even though the New Testament itself places much more stress on events of Calvary, Easter and Pentecost.

The birth stories have become test cases in various controversies: the question of miracles, the truthfulness of the Bible, sexuality (is perpetual virginity to be celebrated?), and incarnation (those who stress Jesus’ divinity sometimes make the virginal conception central; those who stress his humanity tend not to).  But none of these has much to do with what Matthew and Luke actually say.

Matthew seems to have prepared us for the otherwise unexpected by pointing out the peculiarities of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba.  One of Luke’s emphases is that the birth is a challenge to the pagan powers.  Acts 5:37 informs us that the census took place at a time of national revolt.

With regard to the virginal conception itself, the parents were understandably perplexed.  They knew where babies came from.  Hence Mary’s question to the Angel, and Joseph’s resolve to end the engagement.

The argument is as follows:-

1.  If we have reached certain conclusions about the resurrection and the incarnation, then the door is open to a divine creative act ‘from the outside’, to inaugurate the new creation from the womb of the old.

2.  There is no pre-Christian tradition that the Messiah was to be born of a virgin.  No one used Isaiah 7:14 in this way.  The only conceivable parallels are pagan ones, and these fiercely Jewish stories cannot have been modelled on them.

3.  We have then to account for when and by whom the stories were invented, if not true.

This is how it would look: Christians came to believe that Jesus was in some sense divine. Someone who shared this faith broke thoroughly with Jewish precedents and invented the story of a pagan-style virginal conception. Some Christians failed to realize that this was historicized metaphor, and retold it as though it were historical. Matthew and Luke, assuming historicity; drew independently upon this astonishing fabrication, set it (though in quite different ways) within a thoroughly Jewish context, and wove it in quite different ways into their respective narratives.

And all this happened within, more or less, 50 years. Possible? Yes, of course. Most things are possible in history. Likely? No.

Smoke without fire does, of course, happen quite often in the real world. But this smoke, in that world, without fire? This theory asks us to believe in intellectual parthenogenesis: the birth of an idea without visible parentage. Difficult. Unless, of course, you believe in miracles, which most people who disbelieve the virginal conception don’t.

Of course, proof is not possible either way.  And if the first two chapters of Matthew and of Luke did not exist, Christian faith could still flourish.

But since they do, and since for quite other reasons I have come to believe that the God of Israel, the world’s creator, was personally and fully revealed in and as Jesus of Nazareth, I hold open my historical judgement and say: If that’s what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?