When is a "virgin" birth not a virgin birth?

For many Christians, the "virgin" birth of Jesus is "gospel truth" and thus fundamental to their faith. If you knock out the virgin birth, you've cut down one of the pillars of Christianity.

This is not going to be a theological discourse on the subject, but I did want to make a couple of points.

There is no such thing as a "virgin" birth. And neither Matthew nor Luke (the only places where the story appears) write of a virgin birth. If you must think of Mary as a "virgin," the correct terminology would be that she experienced a "virginal" conception. While still a virgin, Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit.

The earliest Christians could not have cared less about Jesus' so-called virgin birth. The virgin birth became important only after the passing of several hundred years when the "orthodox" Christians (as opposed to myriads of other Christian groups) began to see Mary, not as a teenage Jewish girl, but as the "Mother of God." The idea of Mother of God derives mostly from paganism; and Mary, the Mother of God would have to be a virgin. Not only so, she must remain a virgin. That's the reason the Roman Church to this day denies that the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels were actually his blood brothers. More like cousins?

The notion of "Mother of God" led further to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception which maintains that Mary was conceived without the "stain" of original sin.


Who cares? What does any of this have to do with anything? What difference does it make in one's day to day life? The stories of Jesus' birth are clearly mythological and have no basis in reality or history. They were created by two of the four Gospel writers to give Jesus "heavenly" significance. Mark's gospel, the earliest of the canonical works, fails to mention Jesus' birth and John, the latest gospel, turns Jesus into a Greek caricature - the "logos" or wisdom or "word" of God who is in fact, God.

There is nothing wrong with Christians celebrating the birth of the one they claim as savior; one who, according to the angels, came to bring peace and goodwill to all. Unfortunately, all that peace and goodwill gets lost in a mishmash of Christianized paganism dripping with sloppy sentimentality which too often results in turning the hard truth of what it might cost to truly celebrate the birth of Jesus into a ritual easily discarded on December 26.

And that's why there was so much uproar when Playboy pictured a "Maria" on the cover of its Mexican edition. Although the magazine insists the woman was not intended to represent the mother of Jesus, many saw it that way and took offense.

To become angry at Playboy for its insensitivity to Catholic (mostly) sensitivities is, of course, another method of avoiding walking the walk. In fact, according to one story in the Gospels, it is unlikely that Jesus would have been offended in the least by the Playboy cover: "Woman, what have you to do with me?"

Or, to put it another way, the "virgin" part of Jesus' birth tradition has no relevance to anything and, in fact, may be detrimental to real spirituality.


You'll find an interesting and provocative post on the virgin birth here.