The
Virginal Conception and Birth of Jesus ChristThe becoming flesh of the Son of God is a fundamental, irreducible article of the Catholic faith succinctly expressed in the Creed with the words “by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary” (Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine). The words themselves appear, at times with slight variations, in some of the earliest forms of the Christian Creed[1] and were solemnly ratified by the First Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. to express, within the limits of human language, the mystery which the Church received, believes and transmits about the Incarnation of the Son of God.[2] It is the Catholic Church’s perennial belief in two facets of this mystery that is the specific object of this study: the conception and birth of Jesus Christ by the Virgin Mary.
I. Foundational Principles
At the very beginning I would like to state my intentions and assumptions as clearly as possible and in doing so I would like to make my own the declaration of Professor John Saward in his excellent book, Cradle of Redeeming Love:
I make no claim to originality. Self-consciously original theology tends always to be heretical theology. Orthodox theology has, by contrast, a blessed familiarity, for it does no more than assist the faithful in understanding what they already believe; its surprises are the outcome not of human ingenuity but of divine infinitude, the sign of a Truth that is ever ancient and ever new.[3]
To be even more explicit, I remain firmly convinced that the best approach to the Scripture texts which we will be considering is via the living Tradition of the Catholic Church and in this regard I would like to cite this fundamental text from Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation:
The apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time. Hence the apostles, in handing on what they themselves had received, warn the faithful to maintain the traditions which they had learned either by word of mouth or by letter (cf. 2 Th. 2:15); and they warn them to fight hard for the faith that had been handed on to them once and for all (cf. Jude 3). What was handed on by the apostles comprises everything that serves to make the People of God live their lives in holiness and increase their faith. In this way the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.
The
Tradition
that
comes
from the
apostles
makes
progress
in the
Church,
with the
help of
the Holy
Spirit.
There is
a growth
in
insight
into the
realities
and
words
that are
being
passed
on.
This
comes
about in
various
ways.
It comes
through
the
contemplation
and
study of
believers
who
ponder
these
things
in their
hearts
(cf. Lk.
2:19 and
51). It
comes
from the
intimate
sense of
spiritual
realities
which
they
experience.
And it
comes
from the
preaching
of those
who have
received,
along
with
their
right of
succession
in the
episcopate,
the sure
charism
of
truth.
Thus as
the
centuries
go by,
the
Church
is
always
advancing
towards
the
plenitude
of
divine
truth,
until
eventually
the
words of
God are
fulfilled
in her.[4]
In these paragraphs we have two very important assertions: (1) what we have received from the apostolic preaching must be handed on in its integrity and (2) by the assistance of the Holy Spirit “there is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on”. On this matter the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a helpful clarification:
Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.[5]
In the course of this study we will see that there have been many intuitions regarding the virginal conception and birth of Christ in the course of the centuries, but not all of them have been genuine developments of the faith once delivered to the apostles. Some of these intuitions have proven to be aberrations, heresies which have distorted and misrepresented the faith. For this reason the Church has constant need of authoritative guidance in order to distinguish genuine developments from false ones. Hence...
the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office [Magisterium] of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this [Word of God] devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.
It is
clear,
therefore,
that, in
the
supremely
wise
arrangement
of God,
sacred
Tradition,
sacred
Scripture
and the
Magisterium
of the
Church
are so
connected
and
associated
that one
of them
cannot
stand
without
the
others.
Working
together,
each in
its own
way
under
the
action
of the
one Holy
Spirit,
they all
contribute
effectively
to the
salvation
of
souls.[6]
The magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church as exercised by Popes and Councils, then, will provide the fundamental framework for this study and in this regard we are fortunate to have recent authoritative statements of the papal magisterium on the virginal conception and birth of Christ. Among these I assign a very important place to the discourse given by Pope John Paul II at Capua (near Naples) on 24 May 1992 to commemorate the 16th centenary of the Plenary Council of Capua, a discourse which recapitulates the tradition and offers us at the same time valuable orientations for our investigation. Among the literally thousands of other papal documents, addresses and homilies devoted primarily or partially to Our Lady by John Paul II, I would also signal for special attention the seventy Marian catecheses which he delivered at general audiences from 6 September 1995 to 12 November 1997. These constitute a veritable compendium of Mariology, touching upon all of the major questions and providing a remarkable summary of his own teaching and a further consolidation of that of his predecessors and that of the Second Vatican Council. These catecheses may be justly regarded as an important exercise of the ordinary magisterium of the Roman Pontiff and thus should be received by the faithful “with religious submission of mind and will” (cf. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium #25).[7]
I further wish to emphasize that in treating of the Incarnation, we are dealing with a mystery of faith, a truth which admits of rational explanation, but which is so profound that we can never fully exhaust it. John Saward puts it beautifully:
The human birth of the Son of God is a mystery in the strict theological sense: a divinely revealed reality that little ones can understand but not even learned ones can comprehend. Theological mysteries are truth and therefore light for the mind, but the truth is so vast, the light of such intensity, that the mind is dazzled and amazed. When a man meets a mystery of the faith, he finds not a deficiency but an excess of intelligibility: there is just too much to understand. Reverence for supernaturally revealed mysteries is therefore not reason’s abdication, but reason's recognition, through faith, of a grandeur transcending its powers.[8]
Happily, the interested reader who would like to pursue the theological concept of mystery in greater depth may refer to the first chapter of Cradle of Redeeming Love where the author develops it in a masterly fashion and with particular reference to the mystery of the Incarnation.[9] It will be noted that the above quote is in full harmony with what Pope John Paul II said in his discourse at Capua on 24 May 1992:
The theologian must approach the mystery of Mary's fruitful virginity with a deep sense of veneration for God's free, holy and sovereign action. Reading through the writings of the holy Fathers and the liturgical texts we notice that few of the saving mysteries have caused so much amazement, admiration or praise as the incarnation of God's Son in Mary’s virginal womb ...
The theologian, however, who approaches the mystery of Mary's virginity with a heart full of faith and adoring respect, does not thereby forego the duty of studying the data of Revelation and showing their harmony and interrelationship; rather, following the Spirit, ... he puts himself in the great and fruitful theological tradition of fides quærens intellectum.
When theological reflection becomes a moment of doxology and latria, the mystery of Mary’s virginity is disclosed, allowing one to catch a glimpse of other aspects and other depths.[10]
One who is not willing to recognize that in attempting to scrutinize the mystery of the Incarnation he is treading on sacred ground (cf. Ex. 3:5) and, therefore, must approach with reverence and awe is doomed to remain in the darkness of agnosticism or worse. In fact, the concept of sacred ground brings us remarkably close to an allied notion very dear to the Fathers of the Church, viz. that Mary is terra virgo, the virgin earth from which emerged the Son of God.[11] Her fruitful virginity cannot be separated from the blessed fruit of which it is the sign.
The Catholic tradition always witnesses to an indissoluble link between Mary’s virginity and the Incarnate Word. This is clearly attested to by John Paul II in his discourse at Capua:
For a fruitful theological reflection on Mary’s virginity it is first of all essential to have a correct point of departure. Actually, in its interwoven aspects the question of Mary’s virginity cannot be adequately treated by beginning with her person alone, her people's culture or the social conditions of her time. The Fathers of the Church had already clearly seen that Mary’s virginity was a “Christological theme” before being a “Mariological question”. They observed that the virginity of the Mother is a requirement flowing from the divine nature of the Son; it is the concrete condition in which, according to a free and wise divine plan, the incarnation of the eternal Son took place ... As a consequence, for Christian tradition Mary’s virginal womb, made fruitful by the divine Pneuma without human intervention (cf. Lk. 1:34-35), became, like the wood of the cross (cf. Mk. 15:39) or the wrappings in the tomb (cf. Jn. 20:5-8), a reason and sign for recognizing in Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God.[12]
The fact that in studying the virginal conception and birth of Jesus Christ we are dealing first of all with a Christological theme is cogently brought home by John Henry Newman in one of his first Catholic sermons entitled “The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son”:
They [the prerogatives with which the Church invests the Blessed Mother of God] are startling and difficult to those whose imagination is not accustomed to them, and whose reason has not reflected on them; but the more carefully and religiously they are dwelt on, the more, I am sure, will they be found essential to the Catholic faith, and integral to the worship of Christ. This simply is the point which I shall insist on – disputable indeed by aliens from the Church, but most clear to her children – that the glories of Mary are for the sake of Jesus; and that we praise and bless her as the first of creatures, that we may duly confess Him as our sole Creator.[13]
The link is indeed indissoluble and further on in the same sermon Newman did not hesitate to draw a very specific conclusion from it which is far more readily verifiable today than when he uttered it: “Catholics who have honoured the Mother, still worship the Son, while Protestants, who now have ceased to confess the Son, began then by scoffing at the Mother”.[14]
II. The Mystery of the Virginal Conception
In his Marian catechesis of 10 July 1996, in which he dealt with the virginal conception as a biological fact, Pope John Paul II made this very straightforward declaration:
The Church has constantly held that Mary’s virginity is a truth of faith, as the Church has received and reflected on the witness of the Gospels of Luke, of Matthew and probably also of John. In the episode of the annunciation, the evangelist Luke calls Mary a “virgin,” referring both to her intention to persevere in virginity, as well as to the divine plan which reconciled this intention with her miraculous motherhood. The affirmation of the virginal conception, due to the action of the Holy Spirit, excludes every hypothesis of natural parthenogenesis and rejects the attempts to explain Luke’s account as the development of a Jewish theme or as the derivation of a pagan mythological legend.
The structure of the Lucan text resists any reductive interpretation (cf. Lk. 1:26-38; 2:19, 51). Its coherence does not validly support any mutilation of the terms or expressions which affirm the virginal conception brought about by the Holy Spirit.[15]
The Pope’s language is unmistakably clear. He discounts any attempt to explain the virginal conception of Jesus in terms of (1) parthenogenesis,[16] (2) midrash (development of a Jewish theme)[17] or (3) derivation of a pagan mythological legend.[18] Further on in the same discourse he explicitly rejects a further and lethal hypothesis which undermines belief in the virginal conception of Jesus as the Church has always understood it:
the opinion – that the account of the virginal conception would instead be a theologoumenon, that is, a way of expressing a theological doctrine, that of Jesus’ divine sonship, or would be a mythological portrayal of him.[19]
A. Questionable Assumptions
Referring to the Gospel references to the miraculous conception of Jesus as a theologoumenon is the result of the program of radical demythologizing of the Gospels championed by Lutheran Scripture scholars Martin Dibelius (1883-1947), Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) and their followers. According to them, the belief that Jesus had no human father was a theological fabrication of the early Christian community in order to heighten Jesus’ importance, in other words to “mythologize” him. Having established such assumptions, these scholars set about to de-mythologize the New Testament. Dibelius specifically maintained that the virginal conception is an entirely Christian legend resulting from a theologoumenon of Judeo-Hellenistic provenance. Bultmann went on to insist that it was a late excrescence which is in contradiction to the internal evidence of the Gospels.[20]
While I have no desire to judge the intentions of these men, neither, following the lead of the Holy Father, do I have any intention of giving them serious attention: a theory which flies in the face of the New Testament evidence and the unbroken testimony of the great tradition may be readily dismissed. In fact, much subsequent biblical scholarship since Dibelius and Bultmann first advanced their positions demonstrates precisely why the Pope deemed it necessary in that same catechesis to affirm that:
The uniform Gospel witness testifies how faith in the virginal conception of Jesus was firmly rooted in various milieus of the early Church. This deprives of any foundation several recent interpretations which understand the virginal conception not in a physical or biological sense, but only as symbolic or metaphorical.[21]
Unfortunately, once the de-mythologizing currents were in the air, it was only a matter of time before they were passed off as compatible with Catholic belief in the so-called Dutch Catechism of 1966 and in the writings of Hans Küng, Piet Schoonenberg, Edward Schillebeeckx and numerous other Catholic theologians.[22]
Even more complex was the approach to the virginal conception of Jesus taken by the late noted American Sulpician exegete, Raymond E. Brown, S.S. (+1998). In a major essay on this topic he concluded thus:
My judgment, in conclusion, is that the totality of the scientifically controllable evidence leaves an unresolved problem – a conclusion that should not disappoint since I used the word “problem” in my title – and that is why I want to induce an honest, ecumenical discussion of it. Part of the difficulty is that past discussions have often been conducted by people who were interpreting ambiguous evidence to favor positions already taken.[23]
He quoted that conclusion again in the appendix to his second edition of The Birth of the Messiah[24] in the course of a further treatment of the “Historicity of the Virginal Conception”[25]. I must humbly confess that that treatment baffles me as much as this statement in his earlier essay:
Please understand: I am not saying that there is no longer impressive evidence for the virginal conception – personally I think that it is far more impressive than many who deny the virginal conception will admit. Nor am I saying that the Catholic position is dependent on the impressiveness of the scientifically controllable evidence, for I have just mentioned the Catholic belief that the Holy Spirit can give to the Church a deeper perception than would be warranted by the evidence alone. I am simply asking whether for Catholics a modern evaluation of the evidence is irrelevant because the answer is already decided through past Church teaching. The very fact that theologians are discussing the limits of infallibility and how well the criteria for judging infallibility have been applied suggests that further investigation is not necessarily foreclosed.[26]
In effect, Father Brown's work in this area seems to have been based on a number of working principles which I find it necessary to question: (1) the assumption that what he considered the “scientifically controllable” study of the Scriptures, largely following the canons of the Bultmannian school, may be separate from and independent of the content of Catholic faith; (2) the employment of a reductionistic and minimizing approach to Catholic dogma similar to that of Francis A. Sullivan, S.J. who, while not directly denying Catholic dogma, was prepared to challenge its weight on the basis of his evaluation of how it was defined[27] and following from these (3) an ecumenical methodology which might be described as consensus based on the “lowest common denominator”.
While I appreciate the vast apparatus of Father Brown’s critical scholarship and the enormous accumulation of data which his publications have made available to the scholarly world, of which his monumental volume The Birth of the Messiah is an outstanding example, I cannot pass over his fundamental assumptions in silence precisely because of his towering influence in the world of biblical scholarship and his membership on the Pontifical Biblical Commission.[28] His name, more than any other, is identified with the acclaimed collaborative assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars entitled Mary in the New Testament. While he was not its sole author, he was a principal participant, coordinator, discussion leader and editor and, since the conclusions were always arrived at by the consensus of the participants, we may assume that he was in accord with the working hypotheses adopted. Here are some of them:
While we do not exclude the possibility and even the likelihood that some items of historical information about Jesus’ birth have come to Luke, we are not working with the hypothesis that he is giving us substantially the memoirs of Mary. Rather, the possibility that he constructed his narrative in the light of OT themes and stories will be stressed. ...
Our
contention,
then, is
that the
Lucan
annunciation
message
is a
reflection
of the
christological
language
and
formulas
of the
post-resurrectional
church.
To put
it in
another
way, the
angel’s
words to
Mary
dramatize
vividly
what the
church
has said
about
Jesus
after
the
resurrection
and
about
Jesus
during
his
ministry
after
the
baptism.
Now this
christology
has been
carried
back to
Jesus at
the very
moment
of
conception
in his
mother’s
womb.
...
All of
this
means
that [Lk.]
1:32.33,
35 are
scarcely
the
explicit
words of
a divine
revelation
to Mary
prior to
Jesus’
birth;
and
hence
one
ought
not to
assume
that
Mary had
explicit
knowledge
of Jesus
as “the
Son of
God”
during
his
lifetime.
... We
do not
deny the
possibility
of a
revelation
to Mary
at the
conception
of her
son, but
in the
Lucan
annunciation
we are
hearing
a
revelation
phrased
in post-resurrectional
language.
...
Finally,
in
interpreting
the
virginal
conception
of Jesus
as the
begetting
of God’s
Son, we
recognize
that
Luke is
not
talking
about
the
incarnation
of a
pre-existent
divine
being.[29]
Where do such assumptions leave one? The answer, I'm afraid, is "nowhere". This or that datum of the tradition may or may not be true. About what is true we can have no real certitude. This is the reductio ad absurdum which so much post-Bultmannian exegesis leaves us with. This de-stabilizing approach to the Word of God provides no satisfactory basis for either the study of Scripture or the practice of genuine ecumenism.[30] With regard to this state of affairs Professor Saward offers some very astute remarks:
Sadly, Liberal Protestant and Modernist Biblical scholars have seemed, for a large part of the last two centuries, to be determined to separate the evangelists as far as possible, in space and time as well as in direct contact, from the Jesus whose life and teaching they set forth. First, the critics “prescind” from the dogmatic faith and Tradition of the Church, in order, so they allege, to attain a scientific reading of the texts. Secondly, they give prominence to what they take to be contradictions of fact or opinion between the sacred authors, or between the Bible and natural science. Thirdly, they destroy the historical identity of the evangelists. The Gospels – so they claim – were written, not by recognized disciples of Truth but by unknown and unknowable devisers of myth. The evangelists composed their narratives not in order to tell the honest truth about the Lord but to promote the religious interests (or ‘theologies’, as the critics like to say) of particular communities in the early Church. The Higher Critics are embarrassed by every physical marvel in the life of Jesus – His miracles, His bodily Resurrection, and the virginity of His Blessed Mother; like the Gnostics of old, they seem repelled by the Word’s deep descent into the world of matter.[31]
These “Higher Critics”as John Saward justly concludes, “cannot teach us how to read the Holy Gospels”.[32] They have not placed themselves, as the Pope exhorted theologians in Capua, “in the great and fruitful theological tradition of fides quærens intellectum” precisely because they do not approach the mystery “with a heart full of faith and adoring respect”.[33] Happily, however, there are exegetes who have acquired the necessary technical skills and who also stand “in the great and fruitful theological tradition”. From them we can learn as we shall see.
B. The Biblical Witness
Let us turn once again to the Pope’s discourse of 24 May 1992 in Capua.
In our day the Church has deemed it necessary to recall the reality of Christ’s virginal conception, pointing out that the texts of Lk. 1:26-38 and Mt. 1:18-25 cannot be reduced to simple etiological accounts meant to make it easier for the faithful to believe in Christ’s divinity. More than the literary genre used by Matthew and Luke, they are instead the expression of a biblical tradition of apostolic origin.
To affirm the reality of Christ’s virginal conception does not mean that an apodictic proof of the rational sort can be provided for it. In fact, the virginal conception of Christ is a truth revealed by God, which the human person accepts through the obedience of faith (cf. Rom. 16:26). Only the person who is willing to believe that God acts within the reality of this world and that with him “nothing is impossible” (Lk. 1:37) can, with devout gratitude, accept the truths of the kenosis of God’s eternal Son, of his virginal conception-birth, of the universal salvific value of his death on the cross and of the true resurrection in his own body of him who was hung and died on the wood of the cross.[34]
In this illuminating statement the Pope makes several important points among which are the following: (1) the fundamental biblical texts regarding the virginal conception are Lk. 1:26-38 and Mt. 1:18-25; (2) they constitute “a biblical tradition of apostolic origin”; (3) these texts do not provide “an apodictic proof of the rational sort”, rather they require faith in the God who reveals. This third point is very appropriately made in the light of the presuppositions of the kind of biblical studies represented by the Catholic-Protestant collaborative volume Mary in the New Testament. This foundational assertion was already made with great clarity in the Profession of Faith of the Eleventh Council of Toledo of 675 which declares that the virginal conception is
neither proved by reason nor demonstrated from precedent. Were it proved by reason, it would not be miraculous; were it demonstrated from precedent, it would not be unique.[35]
Now let us consider some of the principal biblical evidence for the virginal conception of Jesus insofar as space permits, recognizing that in particular as we explore the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke we are dealing with Scripture texts which are extremely dense, whose fundamental sense has been understood from the earliest days of the Church’s life, but which continue to reveal their hidden treasures to those who approach with reverence and faith (cf. Mt. 13:52). I believe that what Canon René Laurentin says in the following statement about the infancy narrative of Luke applies to all of the Old and New Testament Scriptures which have reference to the virginal conception and birth of Christ:
Luke 1-2 is a surprisingly rich Gospel. The more one delves into it, the more one is overwhelmed and surprised at the liberty with which criticism has attempted to pull it to pieces. Fortunately, unlike a monument or an organism, a text survives the violence to which it is subjected. It survives the autopsies and ends up intact after dissection. Interpretations come and go but the Gospel remains, bearer of a witness which goes beyond it.[36]
I begin with a recent insight by Father Ignace de la Potterie, S.J. into Luke 1:31, arguably the first explicit reference to the virginal conception in the Lucan infancy narrative. The angel says to Mary “you will conceive in your womb”, but the words “in your womb” are omitted in many modern translations as being redundant.[37] Where else does a woman conceive, except in her womb, many would ask, but Father de la Potterie argues that Saint Luke was very particular about his vocabulary:
“To conceive in your womb” is a paradoxical and new formula which is only found here in the entire Bible. For what reason did Luke introduce this strange, totally new and seemingly redundant expression? The reason is evident enough. To speak of the ordinary conception of a woman the Old Testament habitually employed two formulas: “to receive in her womb”, e.g. Gen. 25:22, Is. 8:3 etc. in reference to the man from whom the woman receives the seed into her womb (the name of the man is sometimes indicated); or else “to have in her womb”, after the woman’s sexual relationship with the man, but here also, after having “received” the seed from the man; in this way it was indicated that a woman was now pregnant, e.g. Gen. 38:25, Am. 1:3 etc.[38]
He points out that the expression “conceive in your womb” has an indirect reference to the Greek text of Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23[39] and he goes on to draw out the implications:
For Mary, by contrast [with Elizabeth] Luke employs twice the verb “to conceive”, but here with the addition of “in your womb”; the first text is precisely the one under consideration: “you will conceive in your womb” (1:31); further on, we read again: “... he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb [of Mary]” (2:21). This formula “in your womb”, seemingly useless and pleonastic, is unique in the entire Bible; it is the sign of a particular meaning, a sign which becomes still more clear when we note that it is found uniquely in these two adjacent texts (1:31; 2:21) both of which