Virgin on Overwhelming!
Yesterday, in our module on the study of Christ, we had a lecture on Mary the Mother of Jesus and the Virgin Birth and the contribution to Jesus’ humanity. We heard about all sorts of different things including about these Jewish Rabbis at the time of the gospel writings who would take one small verse of scripture and go off on one about all the different fanciful meanings, which made me and Lewis look at each other as if to say, Croeso i Gymru!¹
We finished the lecture quite abruptly as lunch was upon us. So in our next lecture, after we had been fed with a roast dinner, he started by asking if there were any questions from the last lecture, to which I asked, “what about all the Roman Catholic teaching that Mary had to conceive Jesus perfectly?” (Which is formally known as the Immaculate Conception.) Our Lecturer, Bob Letham, had only hoped question time to take 5 minutes but alas the next half hour was taken up addressing the subject to the detriment of our knowledge of the humanity of Christ (as that was what the lecture was supposed to be on!).
So the big question was this: How could Jesus be born of a human and be fully human without inheriting Mary’s sinful nature. I think there are four possible and reasonable answers, some more heretical than others!
1. The Catholic View.
This view comes from a good place, since when it was ‘invented’, it was done so to try and preserve a high view of Jesus’ deity. This view is that Mary, by special grace of God, was conceived without original sin in her. This way, when she conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit, her contribution was not tainted with Sin. There is nothing biblically to suggest anything to do with this view.
2. The Denial of Original Sin view.
One possible answer that we didn’t discuss yesterday but which did pop into my head, and I almost gave just to be heretical, is that we do away with the doctrine of original sin. That is that we all, in a way, inherit sin as a ‘disease’ from our fathers traced right back to Adam and Eve. Because of this we are all born with sin. If we simply deny this then that means that every human is conceived and born without sin and that Jesus could be conceived and born without sin. But of course, that means denying a significant and seemingly clear teaching of the Bible.
3. The Reformed Rational view.
This one was where it got overwhelming in a confusing sense for me, but I’ll do my best to explain. We all sinned in Adam, but Jesus came as a second Adam. So just in the creation of the world the spirit hovered over the waters, so in Jesus creation, I guess you could say that the spirit hovered over Mary’s waters or something (is that going too far?!). And then it all started to sound like a bit of forcing of logic a bit like how the Catholics did, requiring special grace and all that, but not that Mary was conceived without sin, just Jesus. It seems to me like a forcing of human logic upon something which is something else and of course it seems to go ever so slightly beyond what the Bible actually says.
4. The Orthodox view.
I put Orthodox in italics because as far as I know this isn’t the actually view of the Orthodox Church on this particular matter (in fact in practice, they’re pretty much Catholic on this particular subject). This view just smacks² of a lot of the tendencies of Orthodox Church theology, as far as I know. So this view is that I don’t know - it’s a mystery - but it works. Jesus was fully human but he was conceived without the taint of original sin. How that works out practically, I dunno, it’s something of a mystery!
And this is where the Orthodox Church attracts me. They often explain things in terms of mystery whereas the Western churches (Catholic and Reformed/Protestant) try and force reason and make these overwhelming doctrines rational. I suspect this is one of the throwbacks of having that enlightenment thing all those years ago (even though there are hints that it stems from right back to the early church where the Western churches would talk more in terms of black and white whereas Eastern churches would be more vague).
Although our faith is reasonable, I would suggest it goes beyond human reason to a place we can’t go. So although some things are clear to us, such as Jesus being fully God and human, but other things can’t be forced into human rationality, such as exactly how Jesus became fully man. When we have this attitude, it makes us less arrogant, more accepting of others and gives us a greater sense of awe for our great God who is far greater than we can conceive. Allow yourself to be overwhelmed with God rather than just verging on it!
¹ For those who are so ignorant of Welsh that they don’t know what it means, well, shame on you! It means “Welcome to Wales”!
² For those who are so ignorant of the English language, to smack of something is to have hints, flavours or essences of that said thing.
