07 - Lecture 07
LECTURE VII Doctrinal bearings of the Virgin Birth, Personality of Christ as involving miracle: sinlessness and uniqueness
It is customary to seek to loosen the foundations of belief in the article of the Virgin Birth by affirming that no doctrinal interest is involved in its acceptance or non-acceptance. Faith in Jesus as the divine Redeemer—faith even in His sinlessness—is, we are told, in no way dependent on, or conditioned by, belief in His supernatural birth. The article, it is argued, may therefore safely be dropped from our creeds. It is this proposition I am to examine in the present and in the concluding lectures.
I do not deny that if it could really be shown that, as alleged, no important doctrinal interest is involved in the birth from the Virgin, it would do much to lessen our concern about the fact. Even then, as I said at the commencement, it would behove us to be cautious. We have still the record to be dealt with as an unassailable part of Scripture; we are poor judges of what may or may not be involved in so transcendent a fact as the Incarnation; and if, according to the evidence we have, this was actually the way in which God brought His Son into the world, it would be wiser for us to assume that there is a doctrinal connection, whether we can see it or not, than hastily to conclude that the Virgin Birth is of indifference to faith. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that it is a great help and support to faith if we are able to see—as I think we may come to see—that a connection between fact and doctrine does exist, and that, on any showing, a miraculous origin must be held to be involved in the constitution of such a Person as Christ is. I freely grant that faith in the Virgin Birth cannot be separated from the other elements of our faith in Christ. As Dr. Gore has said, if Christ’s subsequent life was miraculous, and His mode of exit from it, " beyond all doubt this fact conditions the evidence as to His Nativity." 1.
I have sought to show, as my argument has proceeded, that certain things create a strong presumption that there really does exist such a connection between fact and doctrine as I speak of. I indicated that the very zeal of the opponents points in this direction; for people do not usually waste their energies in efforts to overthrow a fact which they deem of no importance. I dwelt also on the circumstance that, with few exceptions, it is those who accept the Incarnation, in the full sense of that word, who defend the Virgin Birth, while the _____________________________________________ 1 Dissertations, p. 57. attacks upon it, as a rule, come from those who reject the supernatural or miraculous aspects of Christ’s life as a whole. The constancy with which these two things go together is only explicable on the assumption that there is a hidden bond between them. As the late Prof. A. B. Bruce—a man of sufficiently liberal mind—put it: " The connection is so close that few who earnestly believe in the absolute worth of Christ’s Person will be disposed to deny the truth of the Evangelical narratives relating to the manner of His entrance into, and exit from, the world." 1.
There are, however, other considerations—exegetical, historical, elements in the theories of the opponents themselves—which go far to strengthen this belief that there is, and must be, a close connection between the fact of the Virgin Birth and the miracle of Christ’s Personality. I may touch on these as preliminary to the direct argument.
1. Exegetically, it is very difficult, I think, to read the narratives in Matthew and Luke, and not see that the writers of these chapters, at least, believed that a close connection existed between the miraculous birth they recorded, and the kind of Personality Jesus was to be, the kind of life He was to lead, the work He was to do. In both of these narratives it will be observed that the conception by the Holy Ghost does not stand by itself as a simple marvel. It grounds something;
________________________________________________ 1 Miraculous Elements in the Gospels, pp. 352-3. and that something is the whole spiritual and ethical significance of the Personality of Christ. In Matthew, the angel declares to Joseph that that which is conceived by Mary is of the Holy Ghost, then goes on to direct how this wonderful child is to be named. " Thou shalt call His name Jesus; for it is He that shall save His people from their sins." 1 The miraculously born child is to be the Saviour. The language of Luke is even more significant. " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; wherefore "—mark the illative particle—" that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God." 2 Can it be doubted that, in the mind of the Evangelist, both the unique character of Jesus as " holy," and His divine Sonship in our humanity, are grounded in the fact of His miraculous conception? There is, indeed, nothing here about pre-existence: that is left for after Revelation 3:1-22 but all that is involved in His unique Sonship—for we see at once from the context that it is no mere physical filiation, but a unique relation of a higher kind that is intended—just as all that is involved in His character as " holy," and in His function as Saviour (cf. ch. 2:11)—is regarded as conditioned by His being conceived by the Holy Ghost.
2. A like presumption of connection arises when we consider the use made of this fact of the Virgin Birth historically. We saw, in dealing with the witness of _________________________________________________________________________
1 Matthew 1:21.
2 Luke 1:35.
3 See below, p. 209. the early Church, how tenaciously the Fathers of that age held by this fact in their controversies with pagans and Gnostics—held fast by it, not simply as a piece of tradition, not simply as a marvel, not simply as fulfilling prophecy, but as a fact of vital doctrinal moment: the guarantee at once of the real humanity of Christ, as against all docetic denial, and, not less decisively, of His superhuman dignity, as against all Ebionitic lowering of His Person.
3. Finally, I would ask you to reflect what, on the theories of the opponents themselves, is the significance of this alleged myth of the birth of Jesus, and the principle of its origin. What gave rise to it ? Mere poetic fancy ? No, we are told, but the desire to account for a superhuman element discerned in Jesus; more specifically, to find an explanation of the divine Sonship already ascribed to Him. Recall some of the expressions used. " The Gospel narrative of the supernatural birth of Jesus," Lobstein says, " is an explanatory formula, an attempt to solve the Christological problem." 1 " Viewed as the Logos in human form," says F. C. Conybeare, " how should his birth be represented except as from a Virgin ? " 2 Soltau goes still further: " When the Pauline and Johannine Christology, having been translated into popular language [we should hear no more after this of the incompatibility of the Virgin ___________________________________________________ 1 Op. tit, p. 72.
2 Quoted by Machen, as above, Jan., 1906, p. 72.
Birth with the Christologies of Paul and John], penetrated to the lower classes of the people, it was almost bound to lead to the view . . . that Christ, in calling God His Father, did not merely call Him so in the sense in which all are children of God, but that He was even bodily of higher derivation, of divine origin." 1 What, I ask, does all this mean, if not that, in the view even of these writers, the narratives of the Virgin Birth are saturated with a doctrinal significance? The story of the miraculous conception is doctrine translated into history. The doctrinal motive is of the very essence of it. Its connection with the view taken of Christ’s Person is absolute. That character, surely, it does not lose, if, refusing to regard it as myth, we accept it as history.
Still the allegation is persistently made that faith in Jesus as Redeemer, even on the highest view we can take of His Person and work, is in no way dependent on belief in His supernatural birth. The grounds on which this is urged have already been partially before us, but must here be more formally indicated.
1. It is argued that there is no a priori reason why the Incarnation—assuming this to be a fact, which most of these writers do not believe it to be—should not have taken place in the way of ordinary parentage, but should involve birth from a Virgin. There is no stain, it is pointed out, in honourable marriage; and the divine Son __________________________________ 1 Op. cit., p. 44. could as truly (perhaps more truly) have taken our nature by the agency of two parents, as by means of one. God, it is urged, does not work superfluous miracles— these writers usually hold that He does not work any— and there seems here no call for a departure from the ordinary course of nature. I have already replied that we are altogether incompetent judges of what may be involved in so stupendous a fact as the Incarnation: that it is, in fact, the objector, not we, who is laying down a priori what God must do in the Incarnation of His Son. But I shall try immediately to show that we can go a great deal further than this.
2. As the Virgin Birth is thought to be not necessary for the Incarnation, so, in the next place, it is argued that it is not necessary for Christ’s sinlessness. The inheritance of a sinful nature, it is said, is not precluded by birth from a woman alone. If the mother herself is sinful, the taint of corruption can be conveyed as effectually through one as through two parents. Nothing, therefore, is really gained, in the interest of the holiness of Jesus, by the exclusion of the father. The element of truth in this objection must be acknowledged. There was nothing, I grant, in the mere fact that Jesus was born of a Virgin—in that fact, I mean, considered by itself—to secure that Christ should be perfectly pure, or free from stain of sin. In conjunction, however, with the other factor in the miraculous birth—the conception by the Holy Ghost—we shall see afterwards that there was involved everything to secure it. Meanwhile, let me put the question a little differently. It is objected that birth from a Virgin does not of itself secure sin-lessness. But turn the matter round, and ask: Does not perfect sinlessness, on the other hand, imply a miracle in the birth ? I think it will be found difficult, on reflection, to avoid an affirmative answer.
3. We are reminded, as before, that the Apostles did not include the Virgin Birth in their teaching—probably did not know of it—certainly did not make it the foundation of their faith, or insist on belief of it by others. All which, as we saw before, may be admitted, and still our main point stand untouched. "No one alleges that the Virgin Birth was the ground of the Apostolic belief in the Incarnation; though, if the Apostles knew of it—as I think it probable they did—it no doubt contributed its share to that belief. If they did not know it at the beginning, of course they could not teach it; but it does not follow that, once it was made known to them, they would not value it, or see in it profound significance, or that they would speak slightingly of it, as our modern objectors do. A fact, as we have seen, may not be the original ground of our faith, yet may prove to be an essential implication of our faith; may not be the foundation of our faith, yet may be part of the foundation of the thing believed—of the reality itself. I refer you to what I said on this in the first lecture. 1.
________________________________________ 1 See above, pp. 25-26.
It is time now that I should approach this subject on its positive side; and here I hope to be able to convince you that the mode of our Lord’s birth does stand in inseparable relation with the constitution of His Person— with His sinlessness, with His divine Sonship, with the reality of His Incarnation. It is, I know, a great demand on faith which is here made; but then it is a great subject we have to deal with. I shall develop my argument in the line of advancing from the general fact of miracle in the constitution of a Person such as Christ’s is, to the particular mode of miracle implied in the Virgin Birth; and shall ask you to consider the subject successively from the three points of view: 1. Of the sinlessness (rather, the holiness) of Christ; 2. Of His uniqueness as a new creative beginning in humanity; and 3. Of His Incarnation as Son of God— the highest point of view of all.
1. I begin, then, with that side of Christ’s Person that lies nearest to us, and ask: Is the Virgin Birth in any degree an implication of Christ’s sinlessness ?
Jesus was sinless—this, I think, I am warranted in assuming. It is a flawless character which the Gospels present to us. Jesus Himself, while so pure and unerring in His judgments on sin in others—laying His finger on the first uprisings of sin in the sinful thought or desire—is yet without trace of consciousness of sin. He confesses no sin, seeks no forgiveness, knows no repentance. He puts Himself as Saviour over against all others as sinners needing salvation. His Apostles and disciples—those who knew Him best—declare Him to be free from sin. " He did no sin," 1 says Peter. " In Him was no sin," 2 says John. " He knew no sin," 3 says Paul, repeating their testimony. With this correspond the declarations at His birth. " He shall save His people from their sins," 4 Matthew reports, in this explicitly distinguishing Him from the people He came to save. " Wherefore also that which is to be born shall be called holy," 5 Luke says, therein bringing His holiness into direct connection with the miraculous conception.
Here, then, arises a problem: this presence of an absolutely Holy One in our sinful humanity: How did it come about ? Can nature explain it ? Is not a miracle involved in the very statement of the fact ? Undeniably, I think, it is. The late Prof. A. B. Bruce, already quoted, justly says: " A sinless man is as much a miracle in the moral world as a Virgin Birth is a miracle in the physical world." 6 It is very interesting to my mind to notice how our modern advocates of a humanitarian Christ, naturally born from Joseph and Mary, deal with this fact of the sinlessness of Jesus. My experience is that there is hardly one of them but hedges when he is brought face to face with it. Prof. Foster, in his __________________________________________
1 1 Peter 2:22.
2 1 John 3:5.
4 Matthew 1:21.
5 Luke 1:35.
6 Apologetics, p. 410. book on The Finality of the Christian Religion, will go no further than to say that He is " the best we know." 1 Prof. N. Schmidt, in his The Prophet of Nazareth, says: " He seems to have had no morbid consciousness of sin. His consciousness of imperfection was swallowed up in the sense of divine love." 2 I asked an able Ritschlian friend if he would grant me the perfect sinlessness of Christ. His reply was: " That is a theoretical question." I do not mean that there are not those who accept the moral miracle, but deny the physical (e. g., Schleiermacher, Keim, Beyschlag). I shall come to their case immediately; 8 but it must be owned that commonly in practice belief in the miraculous birth and belief in the sinlessness of Jesus stand or fall together. Prof. Bruce has remarked on this also. " It has to be remembered," he says, " that faith is ever in a state of unstable equilibrium while the supernatural is dealt with eclectically; admitted in the moral and spiritual sphere, denied in the physical. With belief in the Virgin Birth is apt to go belief in the Virgin life, as not less than the other a part of that veil that must be taken away that the true Jesus may be seen as He was—a morally defective man, better than most, but not perfectly good." 4 In order, however, that we may gauge the full extent of this marvel of the appearance of the sinless One in humanity, and realise the imperative need of miracle ______________________________________________
1 p. 482.
2 p. 25.
3 See below, pp. 197-8, 205.
4 As above. to explain it, we must go a good deal deeper, and look at the radically sinful condition of the humanity into which Christ came. This brings us back to the theology of the Apostles, which we have already in part considered. We are discussing doctrine, and it is in the light of doctrine that I ask you to look at this startling fact of the sinlessness of Jesus.
1. Take, first, the teaching of the Apostle John, We saw before that, to John, the cardinal fact about human nature is, that it needs regeneration. Natural birth does not fit a man for the kingdom of God. He must be born anew of the Spirit. Sin so cleaves even to the believer that, if any man says he has no sin, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 1 The holiness the believer has comes from a different principle—one supernaturally implanted. Now it is this human nature which, according to the Apostle, the Word’assumed when He " became flesh." What was His relation to it ? If Jesus shared in this human nature of ours, how did He escape its evil ? Was there ever a point of time of which it could be said of Him that He needed regeneration, or was otherwise than perfectly holy in thought, and will, and deed ? The suggestion, I think you will admit, to John’s mind would have been blasphemous. Jesus was the Regenerator—the Giver of the Spirit—not one of the regenerated subjects of the kingdom. Whence, then, this complete separation between Him and the rest __________________________________________ 1 1 John 1:7-10. of mankind? What higher law operated in His case to raise Him above the need of regeneration common to all others ? It is futile and superficial to say, as some do, that, content with his Logos doctrine, John never reflected on this question. How could he help reflecting ? John knew as well as we do that Jesus, as a man, was born—somehow. He knew that His mother was Mary. Is it conceivable that he could think of His birth, and not associate with it the idea of miracle ?—a miracle that must have operated in the very inception of His being, to constitute Him the Holy One, separate from sinners, that He was. Or can we, if we adopt John’s view of the radical need of regeneration in humanity, construe the earthly origin of this Holy One to our thoughts in any other way ?
2. Or, next, take Paul’s characteristic doctrine of the universal sin and condemnation of the race, and of the carnal condition of man by nature. According to Paul, every child of Adam has inherited a nature which lacks in spiritual power, and is under a law of sin and death,—the evil of which manifests itself in dispositions and desires at war among themselves, and in revolt against God and His holy law,—which, in its carnal state, is " enmity against God." 1 The voik, or better part in man, is not extinguished; but its feeble protests are ineffectual against the masterful forces of sin. 2 It is not that, in Paul’s view, the flesh is evil in itself, _____________________________________
1 Romans 8:7.
2 Romans 7:22-23. This misunderstanding of his doctrine is contradicted by the fact that human nature in all its parts and members is regarded by him as the subject of redemption. 1 But sin has taken possession of this nature, governs and controls it, so that to be " in the flesh " is the synonym with Paul of being subject to sin, and specially to its inferior impulses. Every man is thus bound by the law of a sinful nature to corruption and death, and cannot by any power of his own deliver himself from his wretched estate. 2.
What then, the question comes back, of Jesus, who is born into this humanity expressly for its redemption? Is it humanity in its integrity, or humanity in its fallen and sin-corrupted state, that Christ assumes? Does Jesus, like others, stand in solidarity with Adam, and share the sinful nature, the loss of spiritual power, the perverted and godless desires, inherited from that first forefather by natural generation ? Surely Paul would have replied, had such a question been put to him, " Perish the thought!" Jesus was to him One who stood absolutely free from, and above, this law of sin and death. But does not this, again, by the clearest necessity, imply miracle in the constitution of His Person ? Assume, if you will, that Paul had not heard of the Virgin Birth, though I think this unlikely. He knew at least that Jesus had a human birth, and, in the very nature of the case, he must have conceived of that _____________________________________________ 1 Romans 6:13, Romans 6:19.
2 Romans 7:23. birth as involving miracle, for only by a miracle could such a sinless Person flower out in our sinful humanity. I pointed out before, accordingly, that in every one of Paul’s references to the earthly origin of Christ there is some significant peculiarity of expression. 1 And again I say, if we accept Paul’s premises as to the radically sinful condition of human nature, I fail to see how we, any more than he, can escape the conclusion that Christ’s entrance into our humanity must have been exceptional and miraculous.
This, I confess, is one of the things I can never understand in certain of our modern interpreters of John and Paul. They think, apparently, they have explained everything in the Christology of these Apostles, when they have used such terms as " Logos " or " Heavenly Man," or spoken of a "metaphysical," in distinction from a " physical" conception of Christ’s origin. They seem altogether to forget that for Paul and John also Jesus was a man who was actually born, and that problems were presented by His birth, not the less hard, but all the more difficult and pressing, just because of their high doctrine of pre-existence, and their belief in Christ’s sinlessness. Jesus had an earthly origin, and in that origin, as these Apostles well knew, He was differentiated from every other by the fact that, from the first moment of His existence, He was absolutely pure, —that He was possessed of a Spirit of holiness which ______________________________________ 1 See above, p. 117ff. overbore all temptation, even to the slightest evil, and made Him continuously and perfectly a doer of the will of His Father. They must have explained this to themselves somehow. Can it be doubted that they explained it to their own thoughts in a way which involved miracle ?
Here, then, I draw my first strong line—there is a miracle involved in the production of the sinless humanity of Christ. But just here, I know, I will be pulled up. " Miracle "—I can think I hear some one say—" Yes, spiritual miracle—moral miracle—miracle, if you like, in the region of the soul; but not a physical miracle—not a miracle in the bodily sphere—a miracle which suspends the ordinary course of natural causation —which is incompatible with a double parentage, or requires us to assume birth from a Virgin." Some who uphold the sinlessness of Christ have taken exactly this ground. Schleiermacher, Keim, Beyschlag took this ground: Ritschlians like Kaftan, Loofs, Haring, etc., take it now. Even Lobstein, in his own way, admits the moral miracle, while denying the physical. 1 This, in fact, is the contention of these writers. Here, they say in effect, is the real kernel of truth in the Infancy stories ; the element which makes them truly valuable; preserve this, and you have all that is essential to faith in these representations. The reply I have to make to this form of theory, which ______________________________________ 1 The Virgin Birth, p. 101. fain would separate the spiritual from the physical miracle, is simply this—and here I draw my next broad line —the thing cannot be done. My ground for this assertion is that, in the nature of things, spiritual and physical are so intimately related, that you cannot have a change so vitally affecting humanity on the spiritual side, which does not involve a corresponding change on the physical side, or in the sphere of organism. We are dealing here, I ask you to remember, not with a simple miracle of sanctification—Jesus being viewed, after the analogy of ordinary Christian experience, as a perfectly sanctified man. Sanctification, we instinctively feel, is not the category which suits One like Him, for sanctification implies that there is sin to be cleansed away, and He had no sin, needed no cleansing. He is the Sanctifier, not one of the sanctified. We could not apply to Him the language of John—" He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 He was never aught but pure. The miracle, therefore, which made Him what He was,—which faith is compelled to postulate for the explanation of His Person,—is one that goes down to the primal origin of His earthly being. It cannot stop at any intermediate point, but must be traced back to the first germinal beginnings of His existence, or even behind them. But this plainly involves the physical as well as the spiritual side of His humanity.
_______________________________________
1 1 John 1:9. The subject is difficult to explain, but let me try to illustrate for a moment, as I have tried to do elsewhere,1 from the scientific doctrine of evolution. It is well known that certain distinguished evolutionists, while handing over man’s body to be accounted for by the ordinary processes of evolution, yet hold that man’s mind cannot be wholly accounted for in a similar manner. The rational mind of man, they urge—I agree with the view, but am not called upon here to discuss it—has qualities and powers which separate it, not only in degree, but in kind, from the animal mind, and put an unbridgeable gulf, on the spiritual side, between man and the highest of the creatures below him. In other words, there is, in man’s case, a rise on the spiritual side—the constitution of a new order or kingdom of existence—which requires for its explanation a distinct supernatural cause. Now the weakness of this theory, I have always felt, lies in its assumption that, while man’s mind needs a supernatural cause to account for it, his body may be left to the ordinary processes of development. The difficulty of such a view is obvious. I have stated the point in this way, " It is a corollary from the known laws of the connection of mind and body that every mind needs an organism fitted to it. If the mind of man is the product of a new cause, the brain, which is the instrument of that mind, must share ___________________________________________________ 1 In my volume on Ritschlianism, Essay on "The Miraculous Conception." in its peculiar origin. You cannot put a human mind into a simian brain." 1 In other words, if there is a sudden rise on the spiritual side, there must be a rise on the physical—the organic—side to correspond.
Now apply this, with all reverence, to the origin of such a new and sinless Personality as we have in Jesus Christ. How is this to be accounted for on the supposition of a miracle in the spiritual sphere only ? A miracle is allowed to be necessary on the spiritual side. It is, further, not a miracle of ordinary sanctification. It is a miracle that operates in the first moment of His conception. But, in a new creation like this, can we separate the two sides of Christ’s Personality % Surely we must say that a perfect soul such as Jesus had needed as its counterpart a perfect and harmonious organism. It is as much part of our faith that Jesus had a pure and perfect physical nature as that He had a pure and perfect soul; indeed the one is not conceivable without the other. We may distinguish as we please between the spiritual and the natural, but the fact is that man, as we know him, is a unity. The disturbance of sin is felt as strongly in the disordered passions of his body as in the unregulated affections of his spirit.
I thus come back to the point from which I started, that, viewing Jesus as a Sinless Personality, there is involved a supernatural act in the production of His bodily nature. One lesson I would draw from this be ______________________________________________ 1 Ritschlianism, p. 230. fore going further. I was speaking in last lecture of alleged heathen analogies to the Virgin Birth. But I would ask you now to observe how completely we are outside of the range of all heathen myths in this idea of supernatural birth as grounding a Sinless Personality. No such idea as that is found anywhere in heathenism. In Christianity it is of the essence of the conception. This simple fact sets the miraculous birth of Jesus wholly by itself, and sweeps away the entire baseless fabric of analogies sought in other religions to this unique act of God in our redemption.
2. Thus far I have been considering how far miracle is implied in the perfect sinlessness of Christ. This, however, is only the first round in the ladder of ascent to the full apprehension of the dignity of Jesus. We have not said everything about Jesus when we have said sinlessness. We mount a stage higher when we regard Him, as He is set forth to us in Scripture, as the Second Adam of our race, and new creative beginning in humanity. This, in truth, is already implied in what has gone before, for it is evidently no ordinary Person—no single individual of the race — who had the creative origin in body and soul just described. We connect here with what Paul says of Christ as standing to the second creation in a like relation to that in which Adam stood to the first; 1 but still more directly we connect ____________________________________
1 Romans 5:14. with Christ’s own consciousness, and with the facts about Him in the Gospels.
We look first here to the birth-narratives, and find that these, while not anticipating the pre-existence doctrine of later revelation, ascribe to the child to be born of the Virgin a unique and incommunicable dignity. " God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David." 1 He is the goal of prophecy—the Immanuel, " God with us," of Isaiah’s oracle. He is Lord, King, Saviour. He is prepared for by a forerunner, heralded by angels, worshipped by shepherds and Magi, greeted by prophetic voices in the Temple. We might be tempted to set this down to poetry, but, when we advance to the history in the Gospels, we find that everything there corresponds. No one can read the Gospels without perceiving that the Evangelists throughout ascribe an absolute worth to Christ’s Person. What is more, Jesus Himself does the same. His consciousness of a unique dignity is seen in almost every statement He makes, every act He performs. His universal relation to humanity is already implied in His favourite designation for Himself—" Son of Man." He is of the race, yet in a manner stands apart from it. He belongs to humanity, yet stands as Saviour over against the world He came to save. He reveals God to man, and man to himself, yet is not merely a prophet, but above all prophets—the Son. He does not simply, like the prophets, bring words ______________________________________
1 Luke 1:32. of God to men, but is Himself " the Truth "—the embodied revelation of God. Throughout He is identified with His message: He speaks with absolute authority: " But I say unto you "; by relation to Him the destinies of men are determined. Nor are these mere empty claims on Christ’s part; they can be verified. The ages have accepted Christ at His own valuation. In Him, the conscience of the world being judge, there is presented the realised ideal of humanity. In Him we have a revelation of God which the world can never grow beyond. In Him we do see presented the type of the absolute religious relation of Sonship to God. His thoughts and ideals do to-day dominate the highest thought and sentiment of the world. In Him the spiritual forces are concentrated on which we depend for the world’s moral and spiritual salvation.
Here, then, we have a Person unlike every other in history; who stands on a plane infinitely higher than every other; whose birth-hour, as we proclaim by our very manner of dating our letters, divides time for us into two great sections—before and after Christ;—One who, sinless in character, is yet more—perfect, archetypal man, realisation of a type of humanity utterly beyond the powers of nature to produce. How do we account for Him ? This New Redeeming Head of the race that Schleiermacher tells us of, in whom the God-consciousness had absolute supremacy; this miracle of ideal perfection—" ideal man "—whom Keim and Beyschlag acknowledge; this " Revelation-Person," in such solidarity with God in mind and purpose—in His appropriation of the divine world-end as His own—that Ritschl will have us ascribe to Him " Godhead "—How came He to be there ? Will natural explanation suffice ? Can you explain it without miracle ? The answer which our Gospels give to this question, and in which most of us, I think, will now be disposed to agree, is, that a natural explanation does not suffice. It did not suffice for the explanation of the Sinless Personality; it will not suffice for the new Creative Head of humanity. Paul is quoted against us on the Virgin Birth. But assuredly Paul did not believe that One whom He expressly puts in contrast with the first Adam as the new Spiritual Head by whose obedience the baleful consequences of the first Adam’s transgression were annulled, and righteousness and life brought to the world, was Himself a natural descendant of that first Adam, involved in the liabilities and doom attached to his sin. This is simply to say that, however Paul conceived of the wonder, he did not believe that Christ had a non-miraculous origin. This is the Scriptural answer; but what of the answer of the moderns? The thorough-going humanitarians who are to-day the chief opponents of the Virgin Birth will hear of no miracle in Christ’s origin at all. I have already availed myself of the admission of others— mostly now of older date—Schleiermacher, Keim, Beyschlag, and the like, who grant that there must have been a miracle in the constitution of Christ’s Person, though the miracle was not physical. These writers do not concede the full truth of the Incarnation; to them Christ is still only " ideal man," " archetypal man," " Ke-vealer "; but even so they grant that ordinary generation does not suffice to explain Him—that there must have been in His origin a direct creative act. Here, for instance, is Schleiermacher, who anticipated a century ago the objections with which we are familiar to the Virgin Birth, and this is what He says: " Every one who accepts in the Redeemer a sinlessness of nature and a new creation through union of the divine with the human, postulates in this sense a supernatural generation " (Erzeugung). 1 Or here is Keim. After pages of argument against the birth from the Virgin, what does he come to ? This: " As little are we able ... to refrain from the acknowledgment that in the Person of Jesus a higher human organisation [note these words] than heretofore was called into being by that creative will of God that runs in parallel though viewless course side by side with the processes of creaturely procreation." 2 I value these admissions, so far as they go. They break the back of a pure naturalism, and seem to me, in principle, to be the surrender of the case.
. To this, of course, the reply, as before, will be given —" Yes, but the miracle was spiritual, inward, the _____________________________________ 1 Der christ. Glaube, Sect. 97.
2 Jesus of Nazara, II, p. 64. bestowal of spiritual endowment—not physical" But this brings me back to the old point: Can we, in the establishing of such a new creative beginning,—in the origination of One who, while holding of humanity, is yet outside the chain of its heredities and liabilities,— think of a spiritual miracle which has not also its physical side ? I contend that we cannot. We have heard even Keim speak of " a higher human organisation," which, if the words mean anything, surely points to something physical. The best proof of all of the inadequacy of this half-way position is that, historically, it has never been able to maintain itself. It did not do so in the school of Schleiermacher, the great bulk of whose disciples—Neander, Ullmann, Tholuck, and the rest—went on to the full acknowledgment of the Virgin Birth. It did not do so in the school represented by Keim, which mostly sank down to the level of pure humanitarianism. Current indications show that the same fate (or return to a more positive position) is certain to attend the halfway position of a section of the school of Ritschl. Ritschl himself, while laying the whole weight of Christianity on what he called the " revelation-value " of the Person of Christ, persistently declined to discuss how the revelation came to be there: how Christ came to be the unique Being He was. 1 But in this seeming humility, there is really an abdication of thought on questions one must ask. I feel sure of this, that any one ____________________________________________________ 1 Cf. Recht. und Versdhnung, III, p. 426. who applies his mind earnestly to the conditions of the problem, even as Ritschl states it, will find little difficulty in going at least so far as to say that miracle there was, and must have been, in the origin of One, sinless and divinely unique, as Jesus was.
Further discussion I leave to my last lecture, and close here by again emphasising the complete distinction of this Christian circle of conceptions from everything found in heathen mythology. A supernatural birth which has for its end the founding of a new humanity, and the introduction by a Redeemer of the divine forces needed for a world’s salvation, is wide as the poles apart from those fables of the lust of the gods with which the birth of the mythical heroes of paganism is associated.