05 - Lecture 05
LECTURE V Relation" to Old Testament Prophecy-Witness of Early Church History
It is obviously not enough for the objector to deny the historical character of the narratives of the Virgin Birth: he must find some method of explaining how the narratives come to be there. One such method very commonly employed has been to represent the narratives as myths or stories arising out of the application of Old Testament prophecies—or what were taken to be such— to Jesus. Strauss was the great master of this method in the past. lie carried it rigorously through the Gospel history, developing from it his well-known " mythical theory " of the life of Jesus. The Jews, he reasoned, entertained certain notions of the Messianic character and office. The Messiah, for instance, was to be a Son of David, was to be born at Bethlehem, was to do great signs and wonders, was to come to Jerusalem riding on an ass. But Jesus, His disciples believed, was the Messiah. Therefore these things must have happened to Him. So stories grew up, or were invented, showing that they did happen to Him. This theory of Strauss’s, as a general theory of the life of Christ, could not maintain itself. Apart from other objections, it assumed a unity in Jewish conceptions of the Messiah which we know did not exist, and broke down on the absurdity of supposing a multitude of minds evolving from a miscellany of Old Testament predictions a picture of such coherence and harmony as that of Jesus in the Gospels.
While, however, Strauss’s theory had to be abandoned as a general explanation of the Gospel history, the method of finding in Old Testament prophecies the germ of Gospel narratives was still retained in certain cases—particularly in the derivation of the story, or " myth," of the Virgin Birth from the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14, " Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son," etc., with which it is associated in Matthew. This prophecy, it was thought, lay so aptly to hand that there was no need of going further in search of an explanation. As Lobstein puts it: " The new faith, in quest of arguments and illustrations furnished by the Old Testament, hit upon a prophetic passage which furnished religious feeling with its exact and definite formula." 1 This is the view, accordingly, formerly taken by such writers as Keim and Beyschlag, and now favoured by Lobstein, Harnack, and many more. But just here a deep cleft in the opposing camp reveals itself; for, as has already been indicated, the newer __________________________________________
1 The Virgin Birth, p. 73. This is what Harnack euphemistically describes as "enriching the life of Jesus with new facts"! (Hist, of Dogma, I, p. 100.) school, represented by such writers as Schmiedel, Soltau, Usener, Gunkel, Cheyne, declare emphatically that a derivation from Isaiah’s oracle is impossible, and that the origin of the idea of the Virgin Birth must be • sought, not in Hebrew prophecy, or from Jewish sources of any kind, but outside—in paganism. The subject will come up again,1 but the reasons urged against a Jewish origin of the idea may here be briefly given:
1. There is no reason to believe that the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 was ever applied by the Jews to the Messiah. We know, indeed, that it was not. Edersheim gives a list of all the passages—some 456 of them2—which were Messianically interpreted by the Jews, but this is not among them.
2. The Hebrew word used in the prophecy, ’almah, does not, scholars tell us, properly mean " virgin," but denotes in strictness only a marriageable young woman. I shall return to this presently. Meanwhile, it is certain that no expectation of the birth of the Messiah ever obtained among the Jews 3—not even after the translation of this word in the Greek version bywhich does mean virgin. ~-
3. The idea of birth from a Virgin was, as stated before,4 one wholly foreign to the Jewish mind. The Jews honoured marriage and family life, and children were regarded by them as a heritage from the Lord. There __________________________________________________ 1 See below, pp. 154-5.
2 Jesus the Messiah, App. vii.
3 On Mr. Badham’ *rtions to the contrary, cf. Gore, Dissertations, pp. 289ff.
4. See above, p. 82. were cases of children given by promise, as Isaac, Samson, Samuel, and now John the Baptist; but the birth was always in the estate of marriage. 1.
4. In Luke’s narrative there is no hint of connection with Isaiah 7:14; or with any prophecy. Harnack, as we saw, evades this by declaring that Luke 1:34-35 is an interpolation, and that Luke had not originally the story of a Virgin Birth. But I sought to show before that there is not the least good ground for this assertion. 2.
5. To these reasons it may be added that, even if the idea of a Virgin Birth had occurred to the mind of any Christian reader of this prophecy, there was the strongest reason why such a story as that which we have in the Gospels should not have been spun out of it. A story like that of Matthew—if not true—could only have one result: to provide material for such slander of Mary and Jesus as we shall see did afterwards arise in the Jewish Synagogue.
Dr. Cheyne and his friends, therefore, must be allowed to have good reasons for rejecting Isaiah 7:14 as the explanation of the narrative in Matthew. Whether their own theory is in any better case I shall consider in next lecture.
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1 Cf. Neander, Life of Christ, p. 15: "Such a fable as the birth of the Messiah from a virgin could have arisen anywhere else easier than among the Jews; their doctrine of the divine unity placed an impassable gulf between God and the world; their high regard for the marriage relation," etc.
2 See above, pp. 53ff. Do I then, it will now be asked, deny the reality of Messianic prophecy in connection with the birth of Jesus ? Or do I question the legitimacy of the Evangelist’s application of this prediction in Isaiah 7:14 ? I reply: By no means. I am dealing in what I have said with the hypothesis that the story is a fiction, evolved from Isaiah’s words; but I in no way doubt the Evangelist’s right to regard the birth of Jesus as a fulfilment of this prophecy, once the event itself had thrown back light upon the meaning of the oracle. To see, however, how the question precisely stands, it is necessary to take a wider and more systematic view of Matthew’s use of prophecy in the narrative of the Lord’s birth.
Observe then first, generally, that Matthew’s is the theocratic Gospel, evidently penned with the design of showing that Jesus is the Messiah of the Old Testament. Jesus had already taught His disciples to see the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy in Himself; to regard Him as the goal of all Old Testament revelation; to think of everything in the Old Testament as pointing forward to Him. It is in this light that Matthew looks always at the life of Christ. It is not, as Strauss thought, that the incidents in the Gospel are evolved from the prophecies; but, the incidents being given, it is sought to be shown how much of the Old Testament is fulfilled in them. The Evangelist, with this aim, is ever on the outlook to find suggestions, preludings, forecastings, prophecies, of the things he is narrating—sometimes actual predictions, sometimes only applications, or what we would call " illustrations." 1 I confine myself to the instances in the sections on the Infancy.
1. Take the case in which it is said that the residence of Jesus at Nazareth fulfilled that " which was spoken by the prophets, that He should be called a Nazarene." 2 There is no such specific prediction in any of the prophets. Nor does Matthew say there is. He speaks generally of " the prophets." What then is the explanation? Simply, I think, this. It was made a reproach to Jesus that He came from so small and despised a place as Nazareth. 3 His disciples were contemptuously named " the Nazarenes." 4 The Evangelist sees in this the fulfilment of a whole series of prophecies about the lowly and despised origin of the Messiah— especially of the prophecy in Isaiah 11:1; which speaks of Him as a Nezer, or shoot, out of the stump of Jesse, then decayed to its roots. The application was the more natural, that, as there seems ground for affirming, the name " Nazareth " is derived from this very word. 5.
2. Take next the case in which the Evangelist sees in the return from Egypt a fulfilment of the word of the Lord by the prophet, " Out of Egypt did I call my _____________________________________________ 1 Mi. Sweet has valuable remarks on this point in his volume on The Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, ch. ii, etc.
2 Matthew 2:23.
4 Cf. Acts 24:1-28.
5.For authorities, see Hengstenberg, Christohgy, II, p. 106. It is stated that in the Talmud the name Ben Nezer, i. e., the Nazarene is given to Jesus. Cf. also Meyer, Com. on Matt., I, p. 98.
Son." 1 Egypt had been the place of refuge of Israel for a time; afterwards, when oppression overtook Israel, God, in a wonderful way, brought His people out, to give them their own land. " When Israel was a child I loved Him," it is said in Hosea 11:1, " and called my son out of Egypt." The Evangelist reads this passage, and sees in it a dealing of God which had a new and higher fulfilment in the calling back of Him who was the Son—Immanuel, God with us—out of Egypt. It is quite clearly the incident that suggests the application of the prophecy here, not vice versa.
3. Again, take the passage about Kachel weeping for her children, suggested by the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem. 2 In its original connection in Jeremiah 32:15, the passage refers to the carrying off of the exiles to Babylon, and the scene is laid in Ramah, in Benjamin. " A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel [the ancestress of the Benjaminites] weeping for her children; she refuseth to be comforted for her children, because they are not." The sole point of connection with Bethlehem is that, according to Genesis (Genesis 35:19; 48:73), Rachel’s tomb was in the neighbourhood of that city. All this the Evangelist is quite aware of, for he, too, makes the lamentation and _________________________________________________
1 Matthew 2:15.
3 On the apparent contradiction of this site with that suggested by 1 Samuel 10:2; see Delitzsch, Genesis, in loc. Probably the " city " in which Samuel was at the time was not Ramah. Cf. article " Ramah " in Smith’s Diet, of Bible. weeping in the prophetic passage to be at Raman; but, by a bold figure, using Rachel, whose grave was in the vicinity, as representative of the motherhood of Bethlehem,1 he finds a new application of the prophetic words in the wailing that filled city and neighbourhood at the slaughter of the babes. It is again clear from the fact that the prophet’s words had no original application to Bethlehem, that it is not from the prophecy the incident is evolved.
4. I come now to a passage which differs from the preceding in that it is Messianic and directly prophetic —I refer to the prophecy in Micah 5:3; which predicts j the coming forth of the ruler of Israel from Bethlehem. " But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from Everlasting." There is no doubt that this passage was accepted as Messianic by the Jews. We know this from Jewish sources themselves,2 and we see it in the Gospels. The scribes at once put their finger on this passage when asked by the wise men where Christ should be born; 3 and John 7:42 shows that it was a current belief that the Christ should come out of Bethlehem. Given, then, a faculty or disposition for invention, it may be thought easy to explain _________________________________________________ 1 The massacre included the surrounding district, no doubt also the part where Rachel’s tomb was situated.
2 See Edersheim, as above.
3 Matthew 2:5-6. how a birthplace was sought for Jesus in Bethlehem. But there is one obvious difficulty. The passage might suggest a birth in Bethlehem, but it would certainly not suggest the hind of birth we have described in Matthew and Luke. The prophecy in Micah speaks of a prince, a ruler, going forth from David’s city. How different the picture in the two Evangelists of the lowly Babe, cradled in a manger, because there was no room for Him—not to speak of a palace—even in the common inn! The prophecy was fulfilled, in God’s good providence, as Matthew notes; but it was not fulfilled in the way that human imagination, working on the prophet’s words, would have devised. Is the story one that human imagination, granting it a free rein, would naturally have devised at all for the advent of the Messiah? Here again it is to be noted that Luke, who gives the most detailed account of the birth at Bethlehem, has no suggestion of a connection with prophecy.
I now return by this somewhat roundabout road to the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14; with which we set out. The Jews may not have given this prophecy a Messianic application,1 but the Evangelist, looking back upon it with the facts before him, rightly saw its Messianic import. That therein he displayed a true discernment, a brief inspection of the passage will, I think, make clear.
First recall the circumstances in which the prophecy ___________________________________________________ 1 See above, p. 125. was given. 1 The throne of Ahaz was threatened by a coalition of the kings of Ephraim and Syria, which had for its object to depose Ahaz, and set up a creature of their own, a certain son of Tabeel, in his stead. Isaiah was sent to Ahaz to assure him that the conspiracy would not succeed. A sign was offered to the king " either in the depth (Sheol), or in the height above." But Ahaz, who had designs of his own of an alliance with Assyria, in mock humility declined the sign. Who was he, that he should " tempt the Lord " ? The indignation of the prophet then broke forth upon him. " Hear ye now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, that ye will weary my God also ? " The Lord Himself, the prophet announced, would give Ahaz a sign; and, after the king’s refusal of a sign in the depths of Sheol and the heights of heaven, we are justified in expecting that the sign the Lord would give would be no ordinary one. What was the sign ? I quote from the R. V.: " Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel," etc. How are we to understand these words ? The first point relates to the word rendered " virgin " —the word ’almah. This word, Hebrew authorities tell us, no doubt correctly, does not strictly mean " virgin," but simply a young woman of marriageable age. There is another word—bethulah—which does express virginity in the strict sense. Even this word, it is worth - ______________________________________________________________ 1. Cf. Isaiah 7:1-25. noticing, is once used (in Joel 1:8) of a bride lamenting over her bridegroom. The objection from the meaning of ’almah was, as we learn from Justin Martyr,1 Origen,2 and other fathers,3 one urged by the Jews against the Christian interpretation of the passage from the earliest times. But it may fairly be replied now, as it was then, that, if the word does not necessarily bear this meaning of " virgin," it may, and indeed usually does, bear it. In fact, in all the six places in which, besides this passage, the word occurs in the Old Testament, it may be contended that this is its meaning. 4 The Septuagint renders it here by and even the R. V. retains the translation " virgin," while giving in the margin " maiden." It is true that the word means, as stated, a marriageable young woman; but it is not less true that in its use in the Old Testament it means an unmarried young woman; and we may repeat the challenge of Luther: " If a Jew or Christian can prove to me that in any passage of Scripture ’almah means ’ a married woman’ I will give him 100 florins, although God alone knows where I may find them." 5.
__________________________________________________ 1 Dial, with Trypho, 43, 66-7.
2 Against Celsus, 1:34.
3Cf. Iren. 3:21; Text. Against the Jews, 9; Against Marcion, 3:13; etc.
4 The passages are, Genesis 24:43 (LXX translates; Exodus 2:8; Psalms 118:26; Song of Solomon 1:3; Song of Solomon 6:8; Proverbs 30:19. Cf. Heng-stenberg, Christology II, pp. 45-47. Prof. Willis Beeeher says: "There is no trace of its use to denote any other than a Virgin" {Prophets and Promise, p. 334).
5 Cf. Hengstenberg, II, p. 45. This maiden, then, in the prophet’s oracle, is figured (the tenses are present) as conceiving, as bearing a son, and as giving Him the name Immanuel, " God with us." Here is a sign indeed, and with it agrees the scope of the prophecy as a whole. For observe carefully, next, that the Immanuel prophecy does not end with these verses. Its refrain is heard through the next chapter in connection with the Assyrian invasions: " He shall overflow and pass through; he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel " 1—" Take counsel together, and it shall be brought to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand; for immanu El, God is with us "; 2 till it culminates in ch. 9:6-7, in that magnificent prediction: " For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom, to establish it," etc. The import of the prophecy can now be readily grasped. The thing at stake was the perpetuity of the house and throne of David. Ahaz had refused a sigu, and God now takes the matter into His own hands. And the guarantee He gives for the perpetuity of the house of David is this child Immanuel. The vision of the _______________________________________________________
1 Isaiah 8:8.
2 Isaiah 8:10. prophet sweeps far beyond present events—beyond the defeat of Syria and Ephraim; beyond even the devastations of the Assyrian invasions; and he beholds in this Son that should be born, this child that should be given —who can be no other than the Messianic King—the security for the fulfilment of the promises to David, and the hope for the future of the world. The other elements of the prophecy fall naturally into their places on this interpretation-—even the time-elements, provided allowance is made for the character of prophetic vision. To the prophet’s view the maiden’s child is already there; is already conceived; is about to be born; he can speak as if the period of its arrival at the discernment of good and evil defined the limit of this confederacy of Syria and Ephraim (ver. 14). But again his vision stretches far beyond that limit into the time of the Assyrian invasions, then, leaving even these behind, sees this child of David’s line, of the wonderful names, firmly established on His throne.
Taking the prophecy in this light, we cannot, I think, but see that Matthew’s use of it is entirely justified. The whole character of the prophecy leads us to expect an exceptional and wonderful origin for the child that should be born. All theories which see in this " maiden " a person already married—e. g., Isaiah’s own wife—or one who is first to marry, then become a mother, break on the meaning of the words and force of the context. The idea of a peculiar birth for the Messiah does not stand quite alone in Isaiah; it seems hinted at in Isaiah’s contemporary, Micah, in the prophecy about the ruler from Bethlehem—" until the time come when she that travaileth hath brought forth." 1 If any one chooses to think that there was some lower or nearer fulfilment, as in the distinct incident recorded in the next chapter (8:1-4) of the birth of a son to the prophet with a significant name,2 accompanied with like promises of the overthrow of Syria and Ephraim, there is nothing to hinder. But that does not fill up the meaning of this prophecy of Immanuel, nor did the latter ever receive its fulfilment till, as Matthew narrates, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea.
It seems a long step from the study of Old Testament prophecy in its relation to the Virgin Birth to the place of this belief in the early Church; but the transition is natural for the reason that it was chiefly by prophecy that Apologists and Church Fathers sought to establish the Messiahship of Jesus, and it was precisely on this point of the Virgin Birth that they were most keenly assailed by Jewish and heathen opponents. The subject is one which requires investigation, for it is a main count in the opposing argument that the belief in the Virgin Birth grew up late, and did not form part of the early tradition of the Church. I hope to convince you of the contrary.
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1 Micah 5:3.
2. Not this name, however.
One thing, I think, is plain at the outset. If this story of the miraculous birth is of late and gradual origin, then it is hopeless to look for any consensus about it in the Church of the earliest period. If, on the other hand, we find it, as I believe we shall, to be a firmly established and generally accepted article of faith as far back as we can trace it, then the inference is irresistible that it goes back to Apostolic times, and must have been believed from the first to have Apostolic authority and sanction. To see this, you have only, I think, to put yourself in the situation of the Church of that period,— to remember that even at the close of the first century the Church was not yet 70 years distant from the Lord’s crucifixion,—that the Gospels containing these narratives had already appeared, and been received, some 30 years earlier than this,—that during this period the Church had a continuous history, and successions of office-bearers,1 as well acquainted with the facts of its past, as we are with the prominent events in our respective Churches during the last half-century, or longer, —that the Churches of Apostolic and post-Apostolic times were in constant communication with each other, —that the Apostolic Churches, especially, felt a responsibility for the maintenance of a pure Apostolic tradition,2—you have only, I say, to put yourself in this situation to see the impossibility of foisting a late and baseless legend on these Churches, so as to secure ________________________________________________________________________ 1 Cf. 2 Timothy 2:21.
2 Cf. Tertullian, On Prescription, 36. general acceptance of it, and how vital it is for those who hold the narratives to be late and legendary to show that the Church was not at first, or for long, agreed in this belief. That, however, I am persuaded, it is impossible for them to do. I feel that I am on peculiarly sure ground here, and take up the challenge offered us with all confidence.
First, generally, as against all assertions of a late acceptance of this doctrine, I lay down this position—the character of which I have already outlined—that, apart from the Ebionites, or narrower section of Jewish Christians, and a few Gnostic sects, no body of Christians in early times is Tcnown to have existed who did not accept as part of their faith the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary: while, on the other hand, we have the amplest evidence that this belief was part of the general faith of the Church. I shall give the proof immediately; but, for the general fact, I do not need to go beyond the admission of leading impugners of the doctrine themselves. Here is one testimony from Prof. Harnack. " It is certain," says this authority, " that already in the middle of the second century, and probably soon after its beginning, the birth of Jesus from the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary formed an established part of the Church tradition." 1 Another is from an able Ritschlian writer, A. Hering, who, in a long article on the subject, says: " It is a constant, and we may truly __________________________________________________ 1 Das apostol. Glaubensbekenntniss, p. 24. say, universal element in the doctrinal tracllilcn of the post-Apostolic age, for of any important or fruitful opposition to it, the history of doctrine knows nothing." " The opposition to it," he adds, " was limited to the narrow circle of the Jewish Ebionites," and " even among the Jewish Christians the denial was not general, for the Nazarenes confessed the Virgin Birth of the Messiah, and at a later time even the remains of the old Ebionites appear to have shared this view." 1 This is what I have been affirming.
Let us now look more closely at the facts. I begin with the opposition to the belief.
1. The characteristics of the Ebionites (the " Pharisaic Ebionites," as some name them)—the narrow, legal, anti-Pauline section of the Jewish Christians —I formerly described to you. These rejected the supernatural birth. Regarding Jesus as a mere man, chosen to be Messiah for His legal piety, they affirmed Him to be naturally born of Joseph and Mary,2 and cut out from their Gospel the chapters which narrate His birth from the Virgin. 3 Their action, we must admit, was perfectly logical. An Ebionitic Christ has no need of a supernatural origin. As we saw, however, this extreme party in no way represented the whole of Jewish ________________________________________________ 1 Zeitschrift fur Theol. und Kirche, V, p. 67.
2 Cf. Justin, Dial, 48; Iren. 1:26; Tert., On Flesh of Christ, 14; Euseb. 3:27. On Christ’s acceptance for His piety, cf. Hippol. 7:22.
3 See above, pp. 44-5.
Christianity. What we must regard as the main body of Jewish Christians—those whom Jerome calls the Nazarenes—were at one with the general mind of the Church in their acceptance of the Virgin Birth.
2. The other exception to the general acceptance of this doctrine is in certain of the Gnostic sects. These never were regarded as properly within the Church at all. Denying, as they usually did, the true humanity of Christ, or else, like Cerinthus, representing the earthly Jesus as a man on whom the heavenly Christ descended at the Baptism, the Gnostics were again logically bound to deny the supernatural birth, though it is a strong testimony to the hold of this belief upon the Church that, in fact, only certain of the sects—and these not t»he most influential—seem to have done so. It is attested, e. g., that the Valentinians,1 the followers of Basilides,2 some even of the Docetce3 (deniers of the real humanity), and others,4 accepted in a fashion of their own the Virgin Birth. Those who did reject it were Cerinthus, spoken of already in connection with the Apostle John, the Carpocratians, one of the most licentious of the Gnostic sects, some of the Ophites, who revelled in a crude mythology, and Marcion, who, as I told you before, mutilated the Gospel of Luke in the interest of his theory, and made Jesus descend directly _______________________________________
1 Hippol. 6:30.
2 Ibid., 7:14.
3 8:2.
4 Iren. 11:3. from heaven to Capernaum. 1 To these fantastic speculators the Fathers of the time, in name of the Church, with one voice, opposed themselves.
I come now to the main stream of tradition and belief in the Church of the second century, and here the broad fact that meets us—in harmony with all that has been said—is the universal acceptance of the Virgin Birth, not simply as a truth believed in, but as an article of the highest doctrinal importance, by the acceptance of which a genuine Christianity is distinguished from a spurious. The testimony I have to produce is a single and undivided one; you can judge of its weight for yourselves when I set it before you.
1. The first witness I adduce is naturally the Apostles’ Creed itself in its older form and varying ecclesiastical shapes. The history of this ancient symbol is now tolerably well known, thanks largely to the recent controversy in Germany on the subject; and it is interesting to have it acknowledged by a writer already quoted, A. Hering, that it was, at bottom, about this article of the Virgin Birth that the controversy turned. 2 The Apostles’ Creed, it is commonly recognised, is simply an expansion or enlargement of the older baptismal confession—that, Harnack says, is the thing to be held fast3—and the oldest ______________________________________________ 1 See above, p. 47.
2 Zeitschrift fur Theol. und Kirche, V, p. 58.
3 Op. cit., p. 19. form in which it is known to us—the Old Roman form —is dated by Harnack about 140 a. d.,1 by Zahn about 120, and by Kattenbusch, a high authority, about 100. 2 But in the forefront of this Old Roman Creed stands, without dispute, the article: " Who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary." The Old Roman Creed, however, is not the whole. We have very full information as to the forms which these baptismal confessions, embodying the " Rule of Faith," as it came to be called, assumed in the different Churches: in Gaul, Carthage, Alexandria, and other places; and their testimony on this point is again absolutely consentient. The importance of this is seen when we remember that it was on this constant and steadfast tradition of the Churches as embodied in the " Rule of Faith," that the Fathers were wont to fall back in their controversies with the Gnostics and others. I give you two illustrations—one from Irenaeus, and one from Ter-tullian. Irenceus (c. 175), in Gaul, thus writes: " The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their disciples this faith. [She believes] in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth . . . and in One Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the _______________________________________________
1 Hist, of Dogma, II, 21. Elsewhere, "before the middle of the 2d century" (I, p. 157), "not before Hennas, about 135" (I, p. 159), etc.
2 Cf. Schmiedel, article "Ministry" in Ency. Bib., Ill, p. 3122.
Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advent, and the birth from a Virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead,1 etc. He enumerates as uniting in this faith the Churches of Germany, Spain, Gaul, the East, Egypt, Libya, etc. Tertullian, of Carthage, a few years later, declares the unity of the Churches in Africa with the Church of Rome in their confession of faith, including the article of the Virgin Birth,2 and elsewhere gives the contents of the common Confession. " The Rule of Faith," he says, " is altogether one, sole, immovable, and irreformable—namely, to believe in One God Almighty, the Maker of the world, and His Son, Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary," etc. 3.
2. When we pass from the united testimony of the "Rule of Faith" (or Apostles’ Creed) to individual witnesses, we get fresh confirmation of the universality and constancy of this belief in the Virgin Birth. One of the oldest writers is Ignatius, about 110 a.d.—a few years after the death of the Apostle John—and no one will question the stress which Ignatius lays on the birth from the Virgin. " We find," Harnack says, " that Ignatius has freely reproduced a Kerugma [or preaching] of Christ, which seems, in essentials, to be of a fairly definite historical character, and which contained, inter ____________________________________________ 1 Iren. 1:10; cf. 3:4; 4:35.
2 On Prescription, 36.
3 Veiling of Virgins, 1; cf. On Prescription, 13; Against Praneas, 2. alia, the Virgin Birth, Pontius Pilate," 1 etc. He speaks of the birth from the Virgin as one of " the three mysteries of renown, wrought in the silence of God." 2 " Stop your ears," he says to the Trallians, " when any one speaks to you at variance with Jesus Christ, who was descended from David, and was also of Mary "; 3 and to the Ephesians: " For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb of Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost." 4. In face of such a testimony, no one, I think, can misconstrue the fact that the Virgin Birth does not happen to be mentioned in the brief Epistle of Polycarp (contemporary of Ignatius), in Hermas,5 or in Barnabas. Ignatius may be fairly held to speak for the sub-Apostolic age.
After Ignatius we come to the Apologists; and here we find the earliest of these, Aristides, about 125 a.d., a Syriac translation of whose Apology has recently been recovered, giving this as part of the general Christian faith that the Son of God " from a Hebrew Virgin took and clad Himself with flesh." Dr. Rendel Harris, who edits the Apology, says: " Everything that we know of ______________________________________________ 1 The Apostles’ Creed, p. 59 (E. T.). (Distinct from Das apostol. Glaubensbekenntniss.) 2 Ep. to Ephesians, 19.
3 To Trallians, 9.
4 To Ephesians, 18.
5 Some, however, find an allusion in Hermas. the dogmatics of the early part of the second century agrees with the belief that, at that period, the virginity of Mary was a part of the formulated Christian belief."1. A more important witness is Justin Martyr, who wrote about the middle of the century, though his life extends through the whole earlier part of it. In his Apology Justin comes back again and again to the Virgin Birth, defending it from the objections of pagans,2 and in his long Dialogue with Trypho, it forms one of the leading topics of discussion with the Jew. 3 The references in Justin show that he was well acquainted with Matthew and Luke, including the early chapters. 4 We are not surprised, therefore, to find these Gospels, with the narratives of the miraculous birth, included in the Diatessaron, or Harmony of the Gospels, drawn up by his disciple Tatian. 5. The testimony of the Catholic Fathers has been already referred to, and will be further spoken of below.
3. I have more than once referred to the attacks of Jews and pagans on this article of faith. 6 I may here allude to them again as themselves furnishing important evidence of the place which this belief had in the faith of the early Church. In Justin’s argument, the belief __________________________________________ 1 Apology, p. 25 (in Texts and Studies, 1891).
2 Apol., 21, 31, 33, 46, 54, 63, 64, etc 3 Dial, 23, 43, 66, 84, etc.
4 Cf. Westcott, Canon, pp. 92-3.
5 See above, p. 42.
6 Cf. above, pp. 5, 95. is always assumed, on both sides, as an unquestioned article of the faith of Christians. The Dialogue with Trypho, however, has mainly to do with the fulfilment of prophecy, and does not touch on those baser calumnies which, as we know from Celsus, were already in circulation in the second century among the Jews, and were probably far older—calumnies attributing to Jesus an illegitimate origin, through the union of his mother (thus in Celsus1) with a soldier named Panther a. The matured form of these fables is seen in the late Jewish work Tol’ doth Jeschu—a work, probably, of the eleventh century. 2 These wretched slanders, which, however, Voltaire served up as veracious history, averring the Tol’ doth Jeschu to be a work of the first century,3 and which a writer like Haeckel in our own time is not ashamed to reproduce,4 but which are repudiated by every reputable authority, are still, in their own perverted way, a witness to the belief of the Church in all ages in Christ’s supernatural birth. As Origen retorts 5—the Jew of Celsus has nothing to tell against Jesus which is not based on the narratives of the Gospels. The name Panthera itself—or in its later Jewish _______________________________________________________ 1 Origen, Against Celsus, 1:32.
2 On this work, and the whole subject, see especially Loofs, Anti-Haeckel, p. 44. Cf. also Baring-Gould, Lost and Hostile Gospels, chs. iii, iv.
3 Examen de Bolingbroke, ch. 10:11.
4 Riddle of Universe, ch. xviii.
5 Against Celsus, 2:13. shape, Pandira—is probably nothing more than a corruption of a Virgin. 1 The unanimity and firmness with which the belief was held fast in face of the argument and ridicule of Jewish and heathen opponents only shows again how deeply rooted that belief must have been.
It is not, however, in their disputes with Jews and pagans, so much as in their controversies with the Gnostics, that we see most convincingly how tenaciously the Fathers of the early Church held to the fact of the birth from the Virgin, and what high value, in a doctrinal respect, they placed upon it. We have already seen that it was the fewest number even of the Gnostics who ventured to reject this doctrine; but it is now to be observed that, even where, in deference to tradition, they did not reject it in words, they subverted it, as was inevitable, in fact, by making the birth from Mary a more or less unreal and phantasmal affair. 2 Against all such perversions the Fathers firmly set themselves— maintaining, on the one hand, that Jesus had truly come in the flesh, and was of the real substance of Mary,3 but, on the other, that He was supernaturally born, and had a superhuman dignity and pre-eminence as a new beginning in humanity. He came, as Tertullian said, ________________________________________________ 1 Cf. Swete, Apostles’ Creed, p. 47.
2 Iren. 1:7; 3:22; Tert., Flesh of Christ, 15, etc.; Against Vol., 27; Hippol. 6:30; 10:12; etc.
3 Iren. 3:19, 22; Tert., Flesh of Christ, 15, etc.
" to consecrate a new order of birth." 1 The doctrine of the Virgin Birth was thus brought into practical use as guaranteeing, on the one side, the true humanity, but not less, on the other, the divine Sonship of Jesus. This is the ground taken up by Irenseus, by Tertullian, by Clement of Alexandria, by Hippolytus, by Origen—by all who discuss the subject. Gnosticism, with its denial, or explaining away, of the Virgin Birth, Irenseus speaks of as a " system which neither the prophets announced, nor the Lord taught, nor the Apostles delivered." 2 Two of the headings of his chapters are: " Jesus Christ was not a mere man begotten from Joseph in the ordinary course of nature, but was very God, begotten of the Father Most High, and very man, born of the Virgin "—" Christ assumed human flesh, conceived and born of the Virgin." 3 Here is a characteristic passage from Tertullian. I do not ask you to accept the reasoning, but only to note the belief that is in the heart of it. " It was not fit," he says, " that the Son of God should be born of a human father’s seed, lest, if He were wholly the Son of Man, He should fail to be also the Son of God. ... In order, therefore, that He who was already the Son of God—of God the Father’s seed, i. e., the Spirit—might also be the Son of Man, He only wanted to assume flesh, of the flesh of man, without the seed of a man; for the seed ______________________________________________ 1 Flesh of Christ, 9.
2 Iren. 1:8.
3 3:19, 22. of a man was unnecessary for One who had the seed of God." 1 I inflict upon you only one other sentence from Origen, interesting because of the appeal the Apologist makes to the world’s knowledge of the Christian doctrine. " Moreover," he says, " since he [Celsus] frequently calls the Christian doctrine a secret system, we must confute him on this point also, since almost the entire world is better acquainted with what Christians preach than with the favourite opinions of philosophers. For who is ignorant of the statement that Jesus was born of a Virgin, and that He was crucified, and that His resurrection is an article of faith ?" 2 etc. In the light of all that has been advanced, there can be little doubt, I think, in any candid mind, as to the place held by this article of faith in the esteem of the early Church. There can, I should say, be nearly as little hesitation as to the inference to be drawn from so remarkable a consensus as to the solid Apostolic basis of the doctrine itself. Others judge differently. To a similar marshalling of evidence Lobstein thinks it sufficient to reply: " The common source of all this patristic testimony is the double tradition contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: the consensus so urgently insisted upon is accounted for by the fact that all the writers quoted went back to two of our Gospels." 3 I might answer (1) that I am not so sure that all these _______________________________________________ 1 Flesh of Christ, 18.
2 Against Celsus, 1:7.
3 The Virgin Birth, Pref. to Eng. Trans. writers went back only to the written Gospels, for the essence of the argument of the Fathers in their controversy with those who rejected or wrested the meaning of the Gospels was an appeal to a tradition of the Church, presumed to be independent of the Scriptures; or ask (2) how the " double tradition " is itself to be accounted for, since, if " double," it must go back to some yet earlier fact or belief; or point out (3) that it is surely no slight matter that, by admission, we have a " double tradition," and the witness of " two of our Gospels." But I would specially urge, as I did before, that the fundamental problem is ignored of how these Gospels, if the stories were untrue, came to obtain the universal and unquestioning acceptance they did from the Church of the time. I contend again that this problem is insoluble on the hypothesis that the narratives are baseless legends; that they had no known backing of truth behind them. We shall see this better when we come, as we do in the next lecture, to consider the rival legendary theories.