The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord / A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy Trinity at Cambridge

by B. W. Randolph

Think for a moment what all this agreement—this consensus of tradition implies. The testimony of these writers clearly shows that in the early part of the second century, and reaching back to its very beginning, the Virgin-Birth formed part of the tradition or doctrinal creed of the Church, and that this tradition was believed to be traced back to the Apostles. It has a place in the earliest forms of the Creed: it is insisted upon by the earliest Apologists. It is not merely in one Church or two Churches, in one district or in two, that this tradition is found. It is everywhere. In East and West alike. It is so in Rome and in Gaul (by the testimony of Irenaeus). It is in Greece (by the testimony of Aristides). It is in Africa (by the testimony of Tertullian); in Alexandria (by the testimony of Clement and Origen); in Asia (by the testimony of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Ignatius); in Palestine and Syria (by the testimony of Ignatius and Justin Martyr). Irenaeus, if any one, should know what the Apostles taught, for before he came to Rome he had been the pupil of Polycarp in Asia, who had himself sat at the feet of St. John. "Everything that we know," says Mr. Rendel Harris, "of 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."* How could the belief in the Virgin-Birth have taken such undisputed possession of so many widely separated and independent Churches unless it had had Apostolic authority?+ What other explanation can be given for the fact? There is as complete a consensus of tradition as could reasonably be asked for. It is impossible to imagine that the doctrine of the Virgin-Birth can have been suddenly evolved in the early years of the second century. The only adequate explanation is that it was a substantial part of the Apostolic tradition. It may be worth while here to quote the words of so distinguished a scholar as Professor Zahn, of Erlangen. "This [the Virgin-Birth] has been an element of the Creed as far as we can trace it back; and if Ignatius can be taken as a witness of a Baptismal Creed springing from early Apostolic times, certainly in that Creed the name of the Virgin Mary already had its place …. We may further assert that during the first four centuries of the Church, no teacher and no religious community which can be considered with any appearance of right as an heir of original Christianity, had any other notion of the beginning of the [human] life of Jesus of Nazareth …. The theory of an original Christianity without the belief in Jesus the Son of God, born of the Virgin, is a fiction."#

— * See Texts and Studies (Cambridge, 1891), vol. i. No. I, p. 25. + "Ecquid verisimile est, ut tot ac tantae [ecclesiae] in unam fidem erraverint?"—Tertullian, De Praescript, cap. xxviii. # "Dies aber ist ein Element des Symbolum gewesen, so weit wir dasselbe zuruckverfolgen konnen; und wenn Ignatius als Zeuge fur ein noch ateres, aus fruher apostolischer Zeit stammendes Taufbekenntnis gelten darf, so hat auch in diesem bereits der Name der Jungfrau Maria seine Stelle gehabt . . . Man darf ferner behauften, dass wathrend der ersten vier Jahrhunderte der Kirche kein Lehrer und Keine religiose Genossenschaft, welche sich mit einigem Schein des Rechts als Erben des ursprfinglichen Christenthums betrachten konnten, eine andere Auschauung yon dem Lebensanfang Jesu yon Nazareth gehabt haben, als diese …. Dass die Annahme eines ursprunglichen Christenthums ohne den Glauben an den yon der Jungfrau geborenen Gottessohn Jesus eine Fiktion ist."—Zahn, Das Apostolische Symbolum, pp. 55-68. —

Opponents of the Virgin-Birth occur, indeed, in the person of
Cerinthus, the contemporary of St. John, and later on among the
Ebionites, mentioned by Justin Martyr.* But they reject the
Virgin-Birth, because they reject the principle of the Incarnation.
"There are no believers in the Incarnation discoverable who are not
believers in the Virgin-Birth."+ The two truths have been held
together as inseparable. There has never been any belief in the
Incarnation without its carrying with it the belief in the
Virgin-Birth.

—
* Dial cum Tryph., 48, 49.
+ Gore, Dissertations, p. 48.
—

II

THE GOSPELS OF ST. MATTHEW AND ST. LUKE

But if such was the belief of Christians everywhere in the early years of the second century, can we trace the evidence further back? In answering this question, we are brought face to face with the Gospels. But first it must be noted that the positive evidence for such a subject must, in the nature of the case, be much more limited than the evidence for the Resurrection. The Apostles were primarily witnesses of what they themselves had seen. There are two persons, and two only, from whom we could reasonably expect to hear the truth about the mystery of the miraculous Conception—Mary and Joseph; and when we open the Gospels we have, as everybody knows, two narratives of the Nativity—St. Luke's and St. Matthew's.

(I) St. Luke, in describing the Nativity, is using an Aramaic document. There is a great difference in style between the preface, which is his own, and that of the narrative which follows. It was an Aramaic document (as Godet, Weiss, and Dr. Sanday agree); but more than this, as Bishop Gore has pointed out: "It breathes the spirit of the Messianic hope, before it had received the rude and crushing blow involved in the rejection of the Messiah."* The Christology of the passage is pre-Christian: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end."+

— * Gore, Dissertations, p. 16. + St. Luke i. 32, 33. — "How can all this," Dr. Chase asks, "be the invention of a believer in the Messiahship of Jesus when the Jews had rejected Him, and when the Resurrection and Ascension had raised the conception of His Messiahship to the height of a spiritual and universal sovereignty? The Christology of these passages is a striking proof of their primitive character."# It is indeed difficult to see how men can read the Benedictus or Magnificat without realizing this. Every verse in them is full of Jewish thought and Jewish expressions, such as would have been impossible had they been the inventions of a later date.

— # Chase, Supernatural Elements in our Lord's Earthly Life. —