It matters more to RCs and Orthodox than to Protestants.
That's axiomatic.
Equally, there are things that matter to Protestants that aren't so much of an issue to RCs or to the Orthodox.
The whole predestination and freewill debate isn't that important to the Orthodox, for instance but is a big deal in some Protestant circles.
It's not that we aren't aware of it or don't understand it. But it's not such a big deal for us because our theology differs to some extent and that inevitably guides and 'governs' how we see things.
Likewise, debates about the RC doctrine of the 'Immaculate Conception of Mary', that the Mother of our Lord was conceived without taint of Original Sin are irrelevant to the Orthodox because we don't share the same view of Original Sin with the RCs.
The whole 'faith vs works' debate that goes on in some circles is also of lesser importance to the Orthodox because we don't think in that way and make those kind of distinctions.
Just because something is or isn't important within a particular branch of Christianity doesn't mean it will have equal import across the board.
'Speaking in tongues' and apparent spiritual gifts are very important to Pentecostals and charismatics but don't feature highly on the radar elsewhere.
The Real Presence in the eucharist is highly important to some Christians but doesn't feature in other Christians' theology at all.
Icons are important to the Orthodox. They aren't anywhere near as important to other Christians.
“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?”
This line places:
Mary
Jesus
His named brothers
His unnamed sisters
all together as a single household unit.
I guess you never watched The Brady Bunch or Yours, Mine and Ours.
Nothing in the narrative signals that these are cousins, step‑siblings, or extended kin.
Except that adelphoi and adelphai were used in Greek to encompass those meanings.
The simplest reading is that they are Mary's other children.
To the argument that it is more complicated than the simplest reading, I would say that the best interpretation is always the simplest reading.
The simplest reading is that whatever the exact relationships, they were, as you and @Lamb Chopped said, a single household, a family. Anything beyond that, including that they were Mary’s children, requires making an assumption about something Mark left unspecified.
We could go on arguing forever, but does it really matter? Besides curiosity, I mean. Whatever the precise nature of their relationship to Jesus, they clearly considered themselves family enough to feel shame on his behalf and to try to haul him home.
@Barnabas62 - the RCs and Orthodox would argue of course that the Holy Spirit works through Holy Tradition to safeguard the truth - or The Truth in Capital Letters as The Truth is actually a Person - our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Not a set of doctrines or propositions but the embodiment of Truth - 'the way the truth and the life' - the Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.
That can be challenged as problematic of course, as there care differences between the RCs and Orthodox over aspects of Tradition. Each claims theirs is the right take of course.
Also agree entirely!
It’s possible for a nonconformist to agree with both a Lutheran and an Orthodox in the same post. Perhaps it’s an Easter Day effect? Except for at least some Orthodox it’s April 12th (and called Pascha).
One aspect of this that needs to be born in mind is that the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary arose from the heavy influence of Gnostic teachings in parts of early Christianity. If all physical things were sinful, then sexual relations even within marriage were sinful. The Mother of Christ could not be sinful - therefore she could not have had sex and so the siblings of Jesus must have come from an earlier marriage of Joseph. If that was so, bearing in mind the list of the siblings in Mark, Joseph must have been much older than Mary.
Even when Gnosticism was finally rejected as being incompatible with Christianity, elements of the influence of Gnostic teachings remained, especially with regards to the utterly sinful nature of human physicality.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that the Fathers had a healthy attitude towards these things - and not just the Blessed Augustine of Hippo who had particularly bad form when it came to these matters.
But I think it's a bit of a stretch to accuse us of residual Gnosticism.
No, we accuse other people of that ... 😉.
@Barnabas62 - why the surprise? I often find myself in agreement with Lutheran posters, Reformed Shipmates, Anglicans and 'non-conformists' on these boards and even within the same post or thread at times.
We have far more in common than those things which keep us apart.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to accuse us of residual Gnosticism.
Just for clarity - I'm certainly NOT accusing Orthodoxy of residual Gnosticism.
What I AM saying is that Gnostic ideas WERE influential in parts of the Church in the first few centuries and that, as a result, some traditions (such as the idea of an older Joseph marrying a young Mary) took hold, even when the core ideas behind them (physical things are inherently sinful) had been rejected.
There is a non-canonical gospel where there is a midwife at the birth of Jesus who checked that Mary was still a virgin after the birth. For doing this she was punished with a withered hand, but then Mary healed her hand.
That's just an example of the style of thinking in creating the numerous gospels.
Ours is a resurrection faith, not a perpetual virgin faith. We study scriptures through the eyes of the risen Christ. While Matthew and Luke affirm a virgin birth, it really is not essential to my faith. I can have some idea why Matthew and Luke included the virgin birth. I have discussed them above.
The virgin birth is not a biological necessity. Matthew and Luke included it to make a theological point, affirming Jesus is from God. His life has divine purpose. Pay attention--Jesus is not ordinary. Its truth is symbolic and theological, not dependent on biological mechanism. It is more about what Matthew and Luke are trying to say rather than what happen in Mary's womb.
Given Irenaeus’ demolition of Gnosticism cosmology in the 2nd century, it’s unlikely to have had much influence on 4th and 5th century thinking around the considerations of the Ecumenical Councils. Not to say that there weren’t pervasive and wrong attitudes about human sexuality at the time. But I don’t think the roots of those thoughts were Gnostic.
I've a fairly high view of the authority of scripture, though I suspect such as neither the theory nor practice would pass muster with the likes of Wayne Grudem or John Piper. I also accept the authority of the historic creeds and Councils.
It does strike me as significant in itself that God has chosen to give us a selection of books written by a large number of people with a wide spread of viewpoints and written over central centuries. If he thought we needed a collection of statutes and rules, that is what he would have given us, but he didn't. In this respect it is very different both from the Koran and how I gather that is understood to be. Despite the awed way some Christians refer to 'the word' as though that is scripture, the Word did not become papyrus or parchment and dwelt among us. It is flesh that it became and dwelt among us.
I sometimes wonder whether there is a permanent significance in the replacement name, 'Israel" that God gave to Jacob 'for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed' (Gen 32:28), that very that process of struggling with God is the calling for everyone, and that this is what engaging with scripture is about.
Having said that, though, I do rather think that it is scripture one should be struggling with rather than finding intellectual excuses that let one off doing so. Finding reasons to explain away bits of the birth narrative so as to give oneself either more certainty about what the text says or less, depending on what one would prefer was there or was not there, strikes me as illustrating that.
Both Matthew and Luke are unequivocal that Jesus was conceived by the agency of God, not Joseph. The Nicene Creed accepts that. Historically, the Universal Church has done so. If you think about it, unusual though that may be, it is the most obvious way for 'the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God', to be 'begotten, not made, and to be of one Being with the Father', how a person can be both Son of Man and Son of God. If the Incarnation is not good news, I don't know what is. Why therefore would a person want an excuse to explain this away?
On the other hand, how much does it matter whether Mary was Jospeh's second wife or not, or whether James the Lord's brother was an older brother, a younger one, a full brother or a half-brother or even a cousin. Since scripture gives no answer on this one, is it unreasonable to say 'well it's all interesting conjecture, but does it really matter?' or even 'perhaps I don't need to know'.
As it happens, I think I prefer Tradition and that Joseph may have been an older man, with a pre-existing family. If James was the Lord's brother because he was from Joseph's first marriage, that explains why the care of Mary did not automatically fall to him and why Jesus committed her into the hands of the Beloved Disciple, though that is the opposite of what @Rufus T Firefly has deduced from this.
I rather like what @Alan Cresswell and @Gamma Gamaliel discuss about typology of Jospeh, and his brothers. I'd not heard that one before.
And I think, if 'the Tradition' prefers Mary's perpetual virginity, on balance I probably go along with it.
But all in all, however interesting as ideas, as scripture and the Creeds don't deal with them, it also strikes me that it is not essential to have a position on them.
@Gramps49 can speak for himself and is free to hold whatever views he likes.
What he can't do is speak for all Christians in the kind of pontifical tone he has adopted here.
'Ours is a resurrection faith not a perpetual virgin faith.'
Of course it's a resurrection faith.
'Pay attention,' he barks, like as if none of us are. Like as if he is uniquely qualified to lecture the rest of us on what Christians should or should not believe.
It's fine if he says that the virgin birth isn't essential to his faith - 'not essential to my faith' - he says. Ok.
But it's an important component of other people's faith, whether RC, Protestant or Orthodox and irrespective of whether they believe that Mary remained a virgin or whether she and Joseph went on to have other children besides Jesus.
He can't speak for those Christians.
Please @Gramps49 I don’t want to fall out with you but your extorting and lecturing tone rankles at times. It's Easter so I won't push back too strongly but fond of you as I am, I find the tone and tenor of your posts hard to take at times.
I find them a bit preachy at times.
Ok, that's your job. It comes with the territory and I'm guilty of much, much worse.
@LatchKeyKid, yes, that incident comes from the Proto-Evangelium of James I think which isn't canonical but which the Orthodox and perhaps the RCs (?) often cite - I know the RCs did in medieval times as it appears in some of the Mystery Plays.
I'd put it in the category of pious legend but would observe that the idea that Mary remained a virgin is a pretty ancient one and one which persisted a long time even within Protestantism. The Wesleys still believed it in the 18th century for instance as did Luther before them of course.
Not that we can hold up 'proof-preachers' any more than we can bandy isolated 'proof-texts' around.
Whatever the case, however we cut these things if this thread demonstrates anything it demonstrates how our theology and respective traditions shape how we interpret scripture and what the Bible may or may not say is received and processed in that fulcrum and context.
I don't really want to get hung-up on specific issues of theological variance but that's inevitable given that these variances exist.
The virgin birth and Mary's role in the 'economy of salvation' might well be a better topic for another thread.
The most any of us can say is, 'My particular Christian tradition teaches X ...' or 'In my particular neck of the Christian woods we interpret this as follows ...'
Sure, there are pretty hefty truth-claims out there - Orthodoxy has those. So does the RCC.
Protestant Christians will vary as to how much of those they accept and which ones they'll reject or remain agnostic about.
We can say 'our faith' when it comes to those areas wherever all agree, of course. But even saying, 'Ours is a resurrection faith' is problematic as some people believe the resurrection is figurative or metaphorical others take it literally.
What we can't do is act like some kind of Ship'board Pope and presume to speak for everyone else.
One aspect of this that needs to be born in mind is that the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary arose from the heavy influence of Gnostic teachings in parts of early Christianity.
What is the evidence for this? I don't mean similarity, I mean external evidence.
There is a non-canonical gospel where there is a midwife at the birth of Jesus who checked that Mary was still a virgin after the birth. For doing this she was punished with a withered hand, but then Mary healed her hand.
That's just an example of the style of thinking in creating the numerous gospels.
You will note it's non-canonical. Probabaly a reason for that.
I wouldn’t discard the Incarnation! God with us, God for us, God in us? All important.
The Virgin birth is distinct from the Incarnation.
There could have been a virgin birth of an ordinary human; Jesus could have been God incarnate without being born of a virgin. God is not Jesus' biological father; the Father doesn't have genes to pass on to Jesus. (The genes that Jesus didn't get from Mary were presumably created ex nihilo.)
I was pointing out that the statement “Ours is a resurrection faith” is incomplete as it stands. I’m well aware of course of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15 but that is not the end of the matter.
I’m not faulting your “could have” logic. But as the creeds make clear (Nicene, Apostles, Chalcedonian) from the fourth century onwards, “born of the Virgin Mary” has been inextricably linked with the belief that “God became Man”. Your “could have”, logical though it is, is not in line with the faith we received, nor is it in line with the faith proclaimed in church services today whenever the Creed is spoken.
Put another way, Christianity is more than Crosstianity.
One aspect of this that needs to be born in mind is that the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary arose from the heavy influence of Gnostic teachings in parts of early Christianity.
What is the evidence for this? I don't mean similarity, I mean external evidence.
There is a non-canonical gospel where there is a midwife at the birth of Jesus who checked that Mary was still a virgin after the birth. For doing this she was punished with a withered hand, but then Mary healed her hand.
That's just an example of the style of thinking in creating the numerous gospels.
You will note it's non-canonical. Probabaly a reason for that.
The earliest documents we have, the letters and Mark do not mention a virgin birth. Neither do John and Revelation. Probably a reason for that.
Now we know that a man does plant a seed in a womb, where did the male and female gametes come from? Both from God, or did one come from Mary?
That consideration could not have been in the minds of the writers of the canonical and extra- canonical gospels.
I doubt they cared, or could even frame such a concern in those terms. Gametes? Not a thing they would have conceived of (ignore the pun).
We, of course, are interested. But we have no way of knowing. We can safely assume that Mary's body was involved as more than a mere incubator, as Jesus takes his human nature from her. So there's one gamete, if you like--possibly two, if two were even needed, and if God chose that route to deal with the need.
I mean, I read science fiction. I can think of at least three possible routes God could have taken to bring about a virgin birth and yet leave his Son with a fully human nature--body and soul, both. If I can think of three, I expect God could think of 300. It doesn't matter, does it?
I was pointing out that the statement “Ours is a resurrection faith” is incomplete as it stands. I’m well aware of course of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15 but that is not the end of the matter.
I’m not faulting your “could have” logic. But as the creeds make clear (Nicene, Apostles, Chalcedonian) from the fourth century onwards, “born of the Virgin Mary” has been inextricably linked with the belief that “God became Man”. Your “could have”, logical though it is, is not in line with the faith we received, nor is it in line with the faith proclaimed in church services today whenever the Creed is spoken.
Put another way, Christianity is more than Crosstianity.
Amen! Preach it brother!
Ok, I'm being flippant but @Barnabas62's point is well made.
He is not far from the Kingdom of God. 😉
'Behold, an Israelite indeed ...'
Ok, I'll stop messing about... although by 'recognising' him as such I'm not saying that others aren't.
At the risk of sounding all fundie, it seems to me that this thing about some things being mentioned in some NT texts and not others doesn't get us very far.
For instance, I've heard Salvationists use the argument that because the Lord's Supper / communion / the eucharist is only mentioned in one Pauline epistle it's not necessarily a 'requirement' for Christian worship.
It's up to the Salvation Army whether it observes some form of eucharistic rite or ordinance of course, and they may or may not have good grounds for adopting the particular position they hold.
But to say it's mentioned in 1 Corinthians but not Ephesians or in Philemon or Jude, say, rather misses the point it seems to me.
The practice of some kind of communal meal that represented or referred to Christ's 'self-giving' in some way seems to have been pretty universal within early Christianity however it was done.
Put crudely, the early Church chose which texts to include in its New Testament. The texts didn't self select. In doing so, they didn't reject those that contained references to the Virgin Birth.
'Hang on a minute, these two are a bit weird. They contain miraculous stories connected with Christ's birth. We'd better leave those out ...'
Neither did they leave out those that don't include the birth-narratives.
They chose those texts which represented or reinforced what they believed. Their beliefs had been shaped and formed by the texts they selected and, yes, by others that didn't make it into the final 'cut' as it were
'The Church through the Bible and the Bible through the Church.'
@Lamb Chopped says we 'have no way of knowing.' Well, perhaps not, but those who hold to a high view of Big T Tradition would say that we have of course.
'They hsve Moses and the Prophets.'
We have those too. Plus the witness of Tradition which includes all that and the apostolic deposit preserved and handed down through the Church.
We don’t simply have a collection of texts to debate. We have the Person of the Incarnate Christ and ever-living Word of God. We have the Spirit who guides us into all truth - the truth as it is in Jesus who is himself the Truth.
We have God the Father who is the source and giver of life.
If we have no Virgin Birth we have a form of 'adoptionism.' Christ conceived and born in the 'normal' way and 'adopted' as the Son of God either at his baptism or at some other point.
If that's what people want, fine. But it's not historic creedal Christianity.
At any rate, saying that certain NT texts don't contain the Virgin Birth narrative doesn't deal with the issue of them containing other things we might struggle with - Lazarus being raised from the dead, apparently miraculous healings and various 'hard sayings' etc.
Gamaliel, read more carefully, please. I would be astonished if tradition has anything to say to the question of whether God made use of (say) one of Mary’s eggs, two of them (suitably altered), other Marian body material, and / or completely new-created genetic material. Given that the discovery of human gametes and what they do came after the invention of the microscope (and female gametes are not so easily come by! So make that even later), there isn’t time for tradition to develop about such matters. And that is what we were discussing. Gametes.
Ours is a resurrection faith, not a perpetual virgin faith. We study scriptures through the eyes of the risen Christ. While Matthew and Luke affirm a virgin birth, it really is not essential to my faith. I can have some idea why Matthew and Luke included the virgin birth. I have discussed them above.
The virgin birth is not a biological necessity. Matthew and Luke included it to make a theological point, affirming Jesus is from God. His life has divine purpose. Pay attention--Jesus is not ordinary. Its truth is symbolic and theological, not dependent on biological mechanism. It is more about what Matthew and Luke are trying to say rather than what happen in Mary's womb.
I quite agree.
Matthew and Luke are using the contemporary understandings and literary genres of Judah and Rome.
Gamaliel, read more carefully, please. I would be astonished if tradition has anything to say to the question of whether God made use of (say) one of Mary’s eggs, two of them (suitably altered), other Marian body material, and / or completely new-created genetic material. Given that the discovery of human gametes and what they do came after the invention of the microscope (and female gametes are not so easily come by! So make that even later), there isn’t time for tradition to develop about such matters. And that is what we were discussing. Gametes.
Ok. I was making a more general point of course but can see I shouldn't have referenced your comment which related to a more specific biological issue.
My bad, as they say on your side of the Pond.
I certainly wasn't saying that Tradition goes into granular detail over scientific, biological or cosmological issues.
Ours is a resurrection faith, not a perpetual virgin faith. We study scriptures through the eyes of the risen Christ. While Matthew and Luke affirm a virgin birth, it really is not essential to my faith. I can have some idea why Matthew and Luke included the virgin birth. I have discussed them above.
The virgin birth is not a biological necessity. Matthew and Luke included it to make a theological point, affirming Jesus is from God. His life has divine purpose. Pay attention--Jesus is not ordinary. Its truth is symbolic and theological, not dependent on biological mechanism. It is more about what Matthew and Luke are trying to say rather than what happen in Mary's womb.
I quite agree.
Matthew and Luke are using the contemporary understandings and literary genres of Judah and Rome.
Of course.
And Christianity fuses elements of Hebraic and Hellenistic thought.
Did they simply adopt classically inspired divine/human incarnation stories as some kind of literary trope, or did they use this medium as it were to express something that some (or all?) of the early Christians believed?
Higher Criticism can help but can topple into 'lower scepticism' just as a 'high' view of scripture and tradition/Tradition can topple into fundamentalism.
When it comes to the Creeds then, we are either saying, 'We believe in ...' or 'We believe that in the fourth century they believed in ...'
At any rate, saying that certain NT texts don't contain the Virgin Birth narrative doesn't deal with the issue of them containing other things we might struggle with - Lazarus being raised from the dead, apparently miraculous healings and various 'hard sayings' etc.
I think there's a bit of a difference. Plausible explanations exist for most of the reported miracles. For example someone seemingly dead could have been in a deep coma, someone could have had a psychosomatic issue, could have been suffering a mental health episode and so on.
Saying someone had a child with only one human gamete is a whole other thing. The others are explainable, that is impossible.
If God created all things, is sovereign over all things and works other miracles, why should it be so unacceptably imaginable that the Holy Spirit can overshadow Mary and cause her to conceive.
Why should God be limited by my or anyone else's expectations? It is he that is God, not me.
@Basketactortale what you are providing look to me like illustrations of what I described a few posts back as putting a lot of effort into trying to find intellectual excuses to let oneself off taking seriously what the text, the creeds and tradition have always been interpreted as saying. All I can do is ask, why? What are you so frightened of and determined to avoid?
Of course alternative explanations are available. They didn't happen. They are made-up stories. This sort of thing happens in hagiographies and ancient literature. It was an illusion. There was a collective delusion. They didn't actually see what they thought they saw. Something happened but was exaggerated in the telling ...
And many more alternatives and objections besides.
Thanks @Basketactortale. I wasn't aware that anyone has ever put forward other explanations over the last 2000 years.
This is why I find Kerymania baffling and impossible to inhabit. The books within the Bible are literary and/or anthropological works, telling stories of the identity of groups, and of the figures from their past , real or asserted, who define them. They are not historical treaties, and absolutely none of them is/are biographical. They are also powerfully mythical, telling stories by which profound truths about God, humanity, creation and the relationships between them are articulated - in fact this is their primary purpose. That is my starting point. So, no the bible frequently isn't asserting its contents as a statement of objective fact.
But call me naive, I don't think we can completely do away with the 'supranatural' element- as I'd prefer to refer to these things rather than the 'supernatural' - a preference informed by my particular ecclesial affiliation of course.
I apologise to @Basketactortale and others if I've appeared somewhat snarky and sarky on this thread (and no doubt other threads).
It's the 'meddling, idle talk and lust for power' thing that the Lenten Prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian seeks deliverance from. And no, he may not have written it, but it's attributed to him.
We pray that every day during Lent and year after year and still we have to keep on praying it and trying to practice the virtues the prayer asks God to give us instead - 'chastity, humility, patience and love.'
Lord have mercy!
FWIW I very much agree with @LatchKeyKid's emphasis on the moral outworkings of the Sermon on the Mount, the 'royal law' and so on. I find myself allying equally with those who also emphasise those but who perhaps hold to a more 'traditional' stand-point on aspects he may consider of lesser weight.
I don't have any issues with Kerymania particularly although many of the regular contributors there know far more about the biblical texts than I do so I don't always feel I have much to contribute there.
I do find that many of the arguments there are framed in a particularly 'Protestant' kind of way - hardly surprising as many of them posts are made by Protestants - and as I'm approaching these things from a different frame of reference within our shared Christian paradigm, I can jostle somewhat clumsily there and derail the threads.
I can also be a sarky so-and-so.
So lots of barriers to overcome before we can even begin to dialogue constructively. But I hope we can. And do.
Matthew and Luke are using the contemporary understandings and literary genres of Judah and Rome.
That Luke structures his story with an eye on the story of Hannah and Samuel I can see. But I've never seen any argument that Matthew is dependent on Luke. It's usually the other way around.
If one abandons vague handwavy invocations of "understandings" and "genres" - I note that the very people who invoke genres here often claim that gospels are a genre sui generis - what specific stories and genres are supposed to be invoked by Matthew?
There is a non-canonical gospel where there is a midwife at the birth of Jesus who checked that Mary was still a virgin after the birth. For doing this she was punished with a withered hand, but then Mary healed her hand.
That's just an example of the style of thinking in creating the numerous gospels.
You will note it's non-canonical. Probabaly a reason for that.
The earliest documents we have, the letters and Mark do not mention a virgin birth. Neither do John and Revelation. Probably a reason for that.
Is it the same reason that neither Luke nor Matthew mention the virgin birth after the infancy narratives? An argument from silence only works when one would expect there not to be silence; and the fact that neither Matthew nor Luke bring it up during Jesus' ministry means one can't expect that.
In any case, you're shifting the goalposts.
Mousethief, if I get his point, has suggested that the fact you have to go to a non canonical gospel for this style of thinking proves only that the style of thinking is found in that non-canonical gospel. As I understand it the canonical gospels, even John, are a good deal more realistic in their presentation than many of the non-canonical gospels.
I’m not faulting your “could have” logic. But as the creeds make clear (Nicene, Apostles, Chalcedonian) from the fourth century onwards, “born of the Virgin Mary” has been inextricably linked with the belief that “God became Man”. Your “could have”, logical though it is, is not in line with the faith we received, nor is it in line with the faith proclaimed in church services today whenever the Creed is spoken.
Put another way, Christianity is more than Crosstianity.
Most people who run the risk of reducing the faith to "Crosstianity" would I think insist on the literal historicity of the Virgin Birth. I think that you're arguing against a different position there.
While all the above creeds do make mention of the Virgin birth I do not think that any of them insist that it's inextricably linked to the Incarnation. Nor can I see how one can make the two inextricably linked without falling into some form of monophysitism.
No apology necessary, I was just trying to show the difference between a biologically asexual human birth and all the other miracles. I'm not saying nobody has thought about this before, I was just saying that these seem different in kind to me. One type of thing can be explained the other cannot.
If God created all things, is sovereign over all things and works other miracles, why should it be so unacceptably imaginable that the Holy Spirit can overshadow Mary and cause her to conceive.
Why should God be limited by my or anyone else's expectations? It is he that is God, not me.
@Basketactortale what you are providing look to me like illustrations of what I described a few posts back as putting a lot of effort into trying to find intellectual excuses to let oneself off taking seriously what the text, the creeds and tradition have always been interpreted as saying. All I can do is ask, why? What are you so frightened of and determined to avoid?
I don't answer stupid questions couched in terms designed to catch me out. I have no interest in these stories, I am just observing what I see others talking about.
I could have accidentally dropped into a discussion about any other myth, it just so happens that this one has meaning in the culture where I was born and raised so (in a residual sense) the stories are known about by me. I can't talk at all confidentially about other myths because I don't know anything about many other myths.
Parthenogenesis is, of course, not unheard of in other animals. A Jesus conceived via parthenogenesis would have to be a transgender man (because parthenogenesis results in female offspring by necessity) and I think as an idea it's one that fits in quite nicely with the Incarnation. Not because I think that the historical Jesus was born via parthenogenesis, but the way a transgender Jesus would fit in with other protrayals of Jesus as various marginalised peoples. I don't see the point of debates over the Virgin Birth otherwise - in an inherently supernatural faith, why is one more miracle such a problem? Why is the existence of God less of a problem? That doesn't make much sense to me.
@Gamma Gamaliel my issue with such a high view of Tradition is the risk of being painted into a corner so to speak - it's hard to climb down if Tradition is proven to be wrong for whatever reason, whether morally wrong or factually incorrect.
I’m not faulting your “could have” logic. But as the creeds make clear (Nicene, Apostles, Chalcedonian) from the fourth century onwards, “born of the Virgin Mary” has been inextricably linked with the belief that “God became Man”. Your “could have”, logical though it is, is not in line with the faith we received, nor is it in line with the faith proclaimed in church services today whenever the Creed is spoken.
Put another way, Christianity is more than Crosstianity.
Most people who run the risk of reducing the faith to "Crosstianity" would I think insist on the literal historicity of the Virgin Birth. I think that you're arguing against a different position there.
While all the above creeds do make mention of the Virgin birth I do not think that any of them insist that it's inextricably linked to the Incarnation. Nor can I see how one can make the two inextricably linked without falling into some form of monophysitism.
How so?
As far as I'm aware, accusations of monophytism, real or otherwise, only emerged after the Council of Chalcedon and not as early as Nicea.
I am prepared to stand corrected.
The bishops were such a disputatious bunch that even with the Emperor watching over proceedings I'm sure one or another of them would have cried foul if 'Incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary' had carried a whiff of monophytism about it.
Or perhaps those ideas were less developed in 325 than they were in the 450s.
@Pomona. Sure and I'd certainly say that was the case with elements of RC Tradition such as the 'Immaculate Conception of Mary', some aspects of the RC view of the 'Assumption of Mary' and 'Papal Infallibility' of course.
They've painted themselves into a corner with those, although I'd accept that RC views on these things tend to be more nuanced than they are often portrayed by non-RCs.
You raise a very valid challenge to me also as an Orthodox Christian.
I might be happy to snip away with Occam's Razor at someone else's traditions/Tradition but would I be prepared to shave my own?
But it cuts both ways of course.
If evidence came to light that debunked the entire Christian 'myth' / story then would we all convene a genuinely ecumenical council to dismantle our entire edifice/s?
The locus of the focus has to rest somewhere - even allowing for both/and wriggle-room.
So it either resides in 'community' - a collective agreement on core doctrines and principles - or in a set of key texts (which we then debate or discuss on matters of interpretation) - which again presupposes a community element - or we all come to our own conclusions and effectively become our own Popes.
As a couple of preliminary points, I disagree that "incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary" implies that incarnation is bound up with her virginity. I also think that doctrine develops - the participants at Nicaea probably hadn't thought much about how many natures Christ has.
If Jesus is God incarnate because he does not have a human father that implies that the Incarnation is a form of hybridisation, making Jesus half-God and half-human, like a mule or tigon, sharing fully in the nature of neither. I take that to be a form of monophysitism.
The Holy Spirit isn't Jesus' father replacing Joseph in the way that Zeus is Heracles' father replacing Amphitryon. One could even see the mention of Mary's virginity in the creed as trying to forestall that idea.
@Gamma Gamaliel papal infalliability only applies when speaking ex cathedra and iirc has only ever been invoked twice. I also wouldn't think that the immaculate conception or assumption of Mary would be classed as factually or morally wrong - they're only really relevant to Catholics anyway I would think. Protestants and other Christians just don't think about them.
From what I know of early church history, it seems extremely likely that belief in the virgin birth pre-dated the worked out theology of the Incarnation we find in the Creeds. In other words, virgin birth belief was one of the clues to the belief that God became Man. The infancy gospel (however legendary) dates at latest to the middle of the second century and is itself evidence of the prior belief in the virgin birth. It was obviously special and seen as rightly so because Jesus was special.
So that’s why I see the belief as inextricably linked to Incarnational belief. It took a long time for the Ecumenical Councils to determine that Jesus was fully human and human divine. The Arian controversy wasn’t the only source of dispute.
Of course we can say today, with hindsight, that the Incarnation doesn’t need a virgin birth. God could have done it another way. But that overlooks the way the theology of the Incarnation developed (and was fought over).
Put another way, as I did earlier. In the mainstream of the debates about the Incarnation and the two natures of Jesus, I don’t recall seeing any evidence that the debaters at that time believed in some way in the Incarnation but disbelieved in the virgin birth. (I’m willing to be corrected on that if someone can point me to a source).
@Gamma Gamaliel papal infalliability only applies when speaking ex cathedra and iirc has only ever been invoked twice. I also wouldn't think that the immaculate conception or assumption of Mary would be classed as factually or morally wrong - they're only really relevant to Catholics anyway I would think. Protestants and other Christians just don't think about them.
Yes, I know. You've rather missed my point I think.
My point was that if I'm prepared to apply Occam's Razor to other people's traditions then I ought to be prepared to do the same to my own.
I also said that RC positions on things tend to be more nuanced than non-RCs often assume. That includes those issues I cited such as Papal Infallibility.
I wasn't having a 'go' at the RCs, I was being charitable and even handed and also trying to address the question you raised.
You appear to be addressing things I didn't say. Perhaps I need to express myself more clearly in future.
As a couple of preliminary points, I disagree that "incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary" implies that incarnation is bound up with her virginity. I also think that doctrine develops - the participants at Nicaea probably hadn't thought much about how many natures Christ has.
If Jesus is God incarnate because he does not have a human father that implies that the Incarnation is a form of hybridisation, making Jesus half-God and half-human, like a mule or tigon, sharing fully in the nature of neither. I take that to be a form of monophysitism.
The Holy Spirit isn't Jesus' father replacing Joseph in the way that Zeus is Heracles' father replacing Amphitryon. One could even see the mention of Mary's virginity in the creed as trying to forestall that idea.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting that Christ is half-man / half-God.
I'm an Orthodox Christian for goodness sake. We believe that Christ is fully God and fully human at one and the same time. Just as small o orthodox Christians do.
Just as all mainstream Trinitarian Christian churches do in their various statements of faith.
@Barnabas62 has said it better than I can and he's a non-conformist Protestant and not a beardy-weirdy Orthodox - or a beardless one like me.
Yes, debates over how many nature's Christ had developed over time and I'd imagine that the implications of Nicea triggered debates about that over the centuries that followed - and heck it's still a sticking point and bone of contention between the Oriental Orthodox - Copts, Armenians etc - and the Eastern Orthodox and others to this day.
Heck, I was only discussing the issue the other week with a Coptic priest and hearing him out on his church's view on the matter.
He claimed not to be monophysite of course. Try telling him that the Virgin Birth wasn't necessary.
@Gamma Gamaliel I didn't think you were having a go, I just didn't quite get the point you were making.
I think it's worth distinguishing between not recognising Tradition at all, and not having such a prominent place for Tradition. Sometimes non-Protestants can seem like Tradition is primary above everything else. I think that can be a problem. I say this as someone who would openly put Reason above Tradition and Scripture.
Comments
It matters more to RCs and Orthodox than to Protestants.
That's axiomatic.
Equally, there are things that matter to Protestants that aren't so much of an issue to RCs or to the Orthodox.
The whole predestination and freewill debate isn't that important to the Orthodox, for instance but is a big deal in some Protestant circles.
It's not that we aren't aware of it or don't understand it. But it's not such a big deal for us because our theology differs to some extent and that inevitably guides and 'governs' how we see things.
Likewise, debates about the RC doctrine of the 'Immaculate Conception of Mary', that the Mother of our Lord was conceived without taint of Original Sin are irrelevant to the Orthodox because we don't share the same view of Original Sin with the RCs.
The whole 'faith vs works' debate that goes on in some circles is also of lesser importance to the Orthodox because we don't think in that way and make those kind of distinctions.
Just because something is or isn't important within a particular branch of Christianity doesn't mean it will have equal import across the board.
'Speaking in tongues' and apparent spiritual gifts are very important to Pentecostals and charismatics but don't feature highly on the radar elsewhere.
The Real Presence in the eucharist is highly important to some Christians but doesn't feature in other Christians' theology at all.
Icons are important to the Orthodox. They aren't anywhere near as important to other Christians.
And so on.
There are plenty or other examples.
Except that adelphoi and adelphai were used in Greek to encompass those meanings.
The simplest reading is that whatever the exact relationships, they were, as you and @Lamb Chopped said, a single household, a family. Anything beyond that, including that they were Mary’s children, requires making an assumption about something Mark left unspecified.
Also agree entirely!
It’s possible for a nonconformist to agree with both a Lutheran and an Orthodox in the same post. Perhaps it’s an Easter Day effect? Except for at least some Orthodox it’s April 12th (and called Pascha).
Amazing what we can get to disagree about!
Even when Gnosticism was finally rejected as being incompatible with Christianity, elements of the influence of Gnostic teachings remained, especially with regards to the utterly sinful nature of human physicality.
'Matter matters.'
Human physicality isn't icky.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that the Fathers had a healthy attitude towards these things - and not just the Blessed Augustine of Hippo who had particularly bad form when it came to these matters.
But I think it's a bit of a stretch to accuse us of residual Gnosticism.
No, we accuse other people of that ... 😉.
@Barnabas62 - why the surprise? I often find myself in agreement with Lutheran posters, Reformed Shipmates, Anglicans and 'non-conformists' on these boards and even within the same post or thread at times.
We have far more in common than those things which keep us apart.
Just for clarity - I'm certainly NOT accusing Orthodoxy of residual Gnosticism.
What I AM saying is that Gnostic ideas WERE influential in parts of the Church in the first few centuries and that, as a result, some traditions (such as the idea of an older Joseph marrying a young Mary) took hold, even when the core ideas behind them (physical things are inherently sinful) had been rejected.
That's just an example of the style of thinking in creating the numerous gospels.
The virgin birth is not a biological necessity. Matthew and Luke included it to make a theological point, affirming Jesus is from God. His life has divine purpose. Pay attention--Jesus is not ordinary. Its truth is symbolic and theological, not dependent on biological mechanism. It is more about what Matthew and Luke are trying to say rather than what happen in Mary's womb.
C S Lewis argued, persuasively, that the Incarnation was the great miracle. God was Man in Palestine. Ours isn’t just a resurrection faith.
It does strike me as significant in itself that God has chosen to give us a selection of books written by a large number of people with a wide spread of viewpoints and written over central centuries. If he thought we needed a collection of statutes and rules, that is what he would have given us, but he didn't. In this respect it is very different both from the Koran and how I gather that is understood to be. Despite the awed way some Christians refer to 'the word' as though that is scripture, the Word did not become papyrus or parchment and dwelt among us. It is flesh that it became and dwelt among us.
I sometimes wonder whether there is a permanent significance in the replacement name, 'Israel" that God gave to Jacob 'for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed' (Gen 32:28), that very that process of struggling with God is the calling for everyone, and that this is what engaging with scripture is about.
Having said that, though, I do rather think that it is scripture one should be struggling with rather than finding intellectual excuses that let one off doing so. Finding reasons to explain away bits of the birth narrative so as to give oneself either more certainty about what the text says or less, depending on what one would prefer was there or was not there, strikes me as illustrating that.
Both Matthew and Luke are unequivocal that Jesus was conceived by the agency of God, not Joseph. The Nicene Creed accepts that. Historically, the Universal Church has done so. If you think about it, unusual though that may be, it is the most obvious way for 'the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God', to be 'begotten, not made, and to be of one Being with the Father', how a person can be both Son of Man and Son of God. If the Incarnation is not good news, I don't know what is. Why therefore would a person want an excuse to explain this away?
On the other hand, how much does it matter whether Mary was Jospeh's second wife or not, or whether James the Lord's brother was an older brother, a younger one, a full brother or a half-brother or even a cousin. Since scripture gives no answer on this one, is it unreasonable to say 'well it's all interesting conjecture, but does it really matter?' or even 'perhaps I don't need to know'.
As it happens, I think I prefer Tradition and that Joseph may have been an older man, with a pre-existing family. If James was the Lord's brother because he was from Joseph's first marriage, that explains why the care of Mary did not automatically fall to him and why Jesus committed her into the hands of the Beloved Disciple, though that is the opposite of what @Rufus T Firefly has deduced from this.
I rather like what @Alan Cresswell and @Gamma Gamaliel discuss about typology of Jospeh, and his brothers. I'd not heard that one before.
And I think, if 'the Tradition' prefers Mary's perpetual virginity, on balance I probably go along with it.
But all in all, however interesting as ideas, as scripture and the Creeds don't deal with them, it also strikes me that it is not essential to have a position on them.
What he can't do is speak for all Christians in the kind of pontifical tone he has adopted here.
'Ours is a resurrection faith not a perpetual virgin faith.'
Of course it's a resurrection faith.
'Pay attention,' he barks, like as if none of us are. Like as if he is uniquely qualified to lecture the rest of us on what Christians should or should not believe.
It's fine if he says that the virgin birth isn't essential to his faith - 'not essential to my faith' - he says. Ok.
But it's an important component of other people's faith, whether RC, Protestant or Orthodox and irrespective of whether they believe that Mary remained a virgin or whether she and Joseph went on to have other children besides Jesus.
He can't speak for those Christians.
Please @Gramps49 I don’t want to fall out with you but your extorting and lecturing tone rankles at times. It's Easter so I won't push back too strongly but fond of you as I am, I find the tone and tenor of your posts hard to take at times.
I find them a bit preachy at times.
Ok, that's your job. It comes with the territory and I'm guilty of much, much worse.
@LatchKeyKid, yes, that incident comes from the Proto-Evangelium of James I think which isn't canonical but which the Orthodox and perhaps the RCs (?) often cite - I know the RCs did in medieval times as it appears in some of the Mystery Plays.
I'd put it in the category of pious legend but would observe that the idea that Mary remained a virgin is a pretty ancient one and one which persisted a long time even within Protestantism. The Wesleys still believed it in the 18th century for instance as did Luther before them of course.
Not that we can hold up 'proof-preachers' any more than we can bandy isolated 'proof-texts' around.
Whatever the case, however we cut these things if this thread demonstrates anything it demonstrates how our theology and respective traditions shape how we interpret scripture and what the Bible may or may not say is received and processed in that fulcrum and context.
I don't really want to get hung-up on specific issues of theological variance but that's inevitable given that these variances exist.
The virgin birth and Mary's role in the 'economy of salvation' might well be a better topic for another thread.
The most any of us can say is, 'My particular Christian tradition teaches X ...' or 'In my particular neck of the Christian woods we interpret this as follows ...'
Sure, there are pretty hefty truth-claims out there - Orthodoxy has those. So does the RCC.
Protestant Christians will vary as to how much of those they accept and which ones they'll reject or remain agnostic about.
We can say 'our faith' when it comes to those areas wherever all agree, of course. But even saying, 'Ours is a resurrection faith' is problematic as some people believe the resurrection is figurative or metaphorical others take it literally.
What we can't do is act like some kind of Ship'board Pope and presume to speak for everyone else.
What is the evidence for this? I don't mean similarity, I mean external evidence.
You will note it's non-canonical. Probabaly a reason for that.
There could have been a virgin birth of an ordinary human; Jesus could have been God incarnate without being born of a virgin. God is not Jesus' biological father; the Father doesn't have genes to pass on to Jesus. (The genes that Jesus didn't get from Mary were presumably created ex nihilo.)
I was pointing out that the statement “Ours is a resurrection faith” is incomplete as it stands. I’m well aware of course of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15 but that is not the end of the matter.
I’m not faulting your “could have” logic. But as the creeds make clear (Nicene, Apostles, Chalcedonian) from the fourth century onwards, “born of the Virgin Mary” has been inextricably linked with the belief that “God became Man”. Your “could have”, logical though it is, is not in line with the faith we received, nor is it in line with the faith proclaimed in church services today whenever the Creed is spoken.
Put another way, Christianity is more than Crosstianity.
The earliest documents we have, the letters and Mark do not mention a virgin birth. Neither do John and Revelation. Probably a reason for that.
Now we know that a man does plant a seed in a womb, where did the male and female gametes come from? Both from God, or did one come from Mary?
That consideration could not have been in the minds of the writers of the canonical and extra- canonical gospels.
We, of course, are interested. But we have no way of knowing. We can safely assume that Mary's body was involved as more than a mere incubator, as Jesus takes his human nature from her. So there's one gamete, if you like--possibly two, if two were even needed, and if God chose that route to deal with the need.
I mean, I read science fiction. I can think of at least three possible routes God could have taken to bring about a virgin birth and yet leave his Son with a fully human nature--body and soul, both. If I can think of three, I expect God could think of 300. It doesn't matter, does it?
Amen! Preach it brother!
Ok, I'm being flippant but @Barnabas62's point is well made.
He is not far from the Kingdom of God. 😉
'Behold, an Israelite indeed ...'
Ok, I'll stop messing about... although by 'recognising' him as such I'm not saying that others aren't.
At the risk of sounding all fundie, it seems to me that this thing about some things being mentioned in some NT texts and not others doesn't get us very far.
For instance, I've heard Salvationists use the argument that because the Lord's Supper / communion / the eucharist is only mentioned in one Pauline epistle it's not necessarily a 'requirement' for Christian worship.
It's up to the Salvation Army whether it observes some form of eucharistic rite or ordinance of course, and they may or may not have good grounds for adopting the particular position they hold.
But to say it's mentioned in 1 Corinthians but not Ephesians or in Philemon or Jude, say, rather misses the point it seems to me.
The practice of some kind of communal meal that represented or referred to Christ's 'self-giving' in some way seems to have been pretty universal within early Christianity however it was done.
Put crudely, the early Church chose which texts to include in its New Testament. The texts didn't self select. In doing so, they didn't reject those that contained references to the Virgin Birth.
'Hang on a minute, these two are a bit weird. They contain miraculous stories connected with Christ's birth. We'd better leave those out ...'
Neither did they leave out those that don't include the birth-narratives.
They chose those texts which represented or reinforced what they believed. Their beliefs had been shaped and formed by the texts they selected and, yes, by others that didn't make it into the final 'cut' as it were
'The Church through the Bible and the Bible through the Church.'
@Lamb Chopped says we 'have no way of knowing.' Well, perhaps not, but those who hold to a high view of Big T Tradition would say that we have of course.
'They hsve Moses and the Prophets.'
We have those too. Plus the witness of Tradition which includes all that and the apostolic deposit preserved and handed down through the Church.
We don’t simply have a collection of texts to debate. We have the Person of the Incarnate Christ and ever-living Word of God. We have the Spirit who guides us into all truth - the truth as it is in Jesus who is himself the Truth.
We have God the Father who is the source and giver of life.
If we have no Virgin Birth we have a form of 'adoptionism.' Christ conceived and born in the 'normal' way and 'adopted' as the Son of God either at his baptism or at some other point.
If that's what people want, fine. But it's not historic creedal Christianity.
I quite agree.
Matthew and Luke are using the contemporary understandings and literary genres of Judah and Rome.
Ok. I was making a more general point of course but can see I shouldn't have referenced your comment which related to a more specific biological issue.
My bad, as they say on your side of the Pond.
I certainly wasn't saying that Tradition goes into granular detail over scientific, biological or cosmological issues.
Of course.
And Christianity fuses elements of Hebraic and Hellenistic thought.
Did they simply adopt classically inspired divine/human incarnation stories as some kind of literary trope, or did they use this medium as it were to express something that some (or all?) of the early Christians believed?
Higher Criticism can help but can topple into 'lower scepticism' just as a 'high' view of scripture and tradition/Tradition can topple into fundamentalism.
When it comes to the Creeds then, we are either saying, 'We believe in ...' or 'We believe that in the fourth century they believed in ...'
I think there's a bit of a difference. Plausible explanations exist for most of the reported miracles. For example someone seemingly dead could have been in a deep coma, someone could have had a psychosomatic issue, could have been suffering a mental health episode and so on.
Saying someone had a child with only one human gamete is a whole other thing. The others are explainable, that is impossible.
Or a 'ghost' eating fish and being able to be touched and handled?
Or walking on water?
Or ...?
These are obviously explainable. You might not like the explanation but there is at least one.
You can't get a human with a single parent, there is no explanation where that is possible.
Why should God be limited by my or anyone else's expectations? It is he that is God, not me.
@Basketactortale what you are providing look to me like illustrations of what I described a few posts back as putting a lot of effort into trying to find intellectual excuses to let oneself off taking seriously what the text, the creeds and tradition have always been interpreted as saying. All I can do is ask, why? What are you so frightened of and determined to avoid?
And many more alternatives and objections besides.
Thanks @Basketactortale. I wasn't aware that anyone has ever put forward other explanations over the last 2000 years.
Thanks for putting me straight on that ...
But call me naive, I don't think we can completely do away with the 'supranatural' element- as I'd prefer to refer to these things rather than the 'supernatural' - a preference informed by my particular ecclesial affiliation of course.
I apologise to @Basketactortale and others if I've appeared somewhat snarky and sarky on this thread (and no doubt other threads).
It's the 'meddling, idle talk and lust for power' thing that the Lenten Prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian seeks deliverance from. And no, he may not have written it, but it's attributed to him.
We pray that every day during Lent and year after year and still we have to keep on praying it and trying to practice the virtues the prayer asks God to give us instead - 'chastity, humility, patience and love.'
Lord have mercy!
FWIW I very much agree with @LatchKeyKid's emphasis on the moral outworkings of the Sermon on the Mount, the 'royal law' and so on. I find myself allying equally with those who also emphasise those but who perhaps hold to a more 'traditional' stand-point on aspects he may consider of lesser weight.
I don't have any issues with Kerymania particularly although many of the regular contributors there know far more about the biblical texts than I do so I don't always feel I have much to contribute there.
I do find that many of the arguments there are framed in a particularly 'Protestant' kind of way - hardly surprising as many of them posts are made by Protestants - and as I'm approaching these things from a different frame of reference within our shared Christian paradigm, I can jostle somewhat clumsily there and derail the threads.
I can also be a sarky so-and-so.
So lots of barriers to overcome before we can even begin to dialogue constructively. But I hope we can. And do.
If one abandons vague handwavy invocations of "understandings" and "genres" - I note that the very people who invoke genres here often claim that gospels are a genre sui generis - what specific stories and genres are supposed to be invoked by Matthew?
In any case, you're shifting the goalposts.
Mousethief, if I get his point, has suggested that the fact you have to go to a non canonical gospel for this style of thinking proves only that the style of thinking is found in that non-canonical gospel. As I understand it the canonical gospels, even John, are a good deal more realistic in their presentation than many of the non-canonical gospels.
While all the above creeds do make mention of the Virgin birth I do not think that any of them insist that it's inextricably linked to the Incarnation. Nor can I see how one can make the two inextricably linked without falling into some form of monophysitism.
I don't answer stupid questions couched in terms designed to catch me out. I have no interest in these stories, I am just observing what I see others talking about.
I could have accidentally dropped into a discussion about any other myth, it just so happens that this one has meaning in the culture where I was born and raised so (in a residual sense) the stories are known about by me. I can't talk at all confidentially about other myths because I don't know anything about many other myths.
@Gamma Gamaliel my issue with such a high view of Tradition is the risk of being painted into a corner so to speak - it's hard to climb down if Tradition is proven to be wrong for whatever reason, whether morally wrong or factually incorrect.
How so?
As far as I'm aware, accusations of monophytism, real or otherwise, only emerged after the Council of Chalcedon and not as early as Nicea.
I am prepared to stand corrected.
The bishops were such a disputatious bunch that even with the Emperor watching over proceedings I'm sure one or another of them would have cried foul if 'Incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary' had carried a whiff of monophytism about it.
Or perhaps those ideas were less developed in 325 than they were in the 450s.
They've painted themselves into a corner with those, although I'd accept that RC views on these things tend to be more nuanced than they are often portrayed by non-RCs.
You raise a very valid challenge to me also as an Orthodox Christian.
I might be happy to snip away with Occam's Razor at someone else's traditions/Tradition but would I be prepared to shave my own?
But it cuts both ways of course.
If evidence came to light that debunked the entire Christian 'myth' / story then would we all convene a genuinely ecumenical council to dismantle our entire edifice/s?
The locus of the focus has to rest somewhere - even allowing for both/and wriggle-room.
So it either resides in 'community' - a collective agreement on core doctrines and principles - or in a set of key texts (which we then debate or discuss on matters of interpretation) - which again presupposes a community element - or we all come to our own conclusions and effectively become our own Popes.
I'm not sure I can see any way around that one.
If Jesus is God incarnate because he does not have a human father that implies that the Incarnation is a form of hybridisation, making Jesus half-God and half-human, like a mule or tigon, sharing fully in the nature of neither. I take that to be a form of monophysitism.
The Holy Spirit isn't Jesus' father replacing Joseph in the way that Zeus is Heracles' father replacing Amphitryon. One could even see the mention of Mary's virginity in the creed as trying to forestall that idea.
From what I know of early church history, it seems extremely likely that belief in the virgin birth pre-dated the worked out theology of the Incarnation we find in the Creeds. In other words, virgin birth belief was one of the clues to the belief that God became Man. The infancy gospel (however legendary) dates at latest to the middle of the second century and is itself evidence of the prior belief in the virgin birth. It was obviously special and seen as rightly so because Jesus was special.
So that’s why I see the belief as inextricably linked to Incarnational belief. It took a long time for the Ecumenical Councils to determine that Jesus was fully human and human divine. The Arian controversy wasn’t the only source of dispute.
Of course we can say today, with hindsight, that the Incarnation doesn’t need a virgin birth. God could have done it another way. But that overlooks the way the theology of the Incarnation developed (and was fought over).
Put another way, as I did earlier. In the mainstream of the debates about the Incarnation and the two natures of Jesus, I don’t recall seeing any evidence that the debaters at that time believed in some way in the Incarnation but disbelieved in the virgin birth. (I’m willing to be corrected on that if someone can point me to a source).
Yes, I know. You've rather missed my point I think.
My point was that if I'm prepared to apply Occam's Razor to other people's traditions then I ought to be prepared to do the same to my own.
I also said that RC positions on things tend to be more nuanced than non-RCs often assume. That includes those issues I cited such as Papal Infallibility.
I wasn't having a 'go' at the RCs, I was being charitable and even handed and also trying to address the question you raised.
You appear to be addressing things I didn't say. Perhaps I need to express myself more clearly in future.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting that Christ is half-man / half-God.
I'm an Orthodox Christian for goodness sake. We believe that Christ is fully God and fully human at one and the same time. Just as small o orthodox Christians do.
Just as all mainstream Trinitarian Christian churches do in their various statements of faith.
@Barnabas62 has said it better than I can and he's a non-conformist Protestant and not a beardy-weirdy Orthodox - or a beardless one like me.
Yes, debates over how many nature's Christ had developed over time and I'd imagine that the implications of Nicea triggered debates about that over the centuries that followed - and heck it's still a sticking point and bone of contention between the Oriental Orthodox - Copts, Armenians etc - and the Eastern Orthodox and others to this day.
Heck, I was only discussing the issue the other week with a Coptic priest and hearing him out on his church's view on the matter.
He claimed not to be monophysite of course. Try telling him that the Virgin Birth wasn't necessary.
I think it's worth distinguishing between not recognising Tradition at all, and not having such a prominent place for Tradition. Sometimes non-Protestants can seem like Tradition is primary above everything else. I think that can be a problem. I say this as someone who would openly put Reason above Tradition and Scripture.