Part 1: God Became Man – Conceived by the Holy Spirit

Since we are on a roll, I thought I would just continue the discussion of the Incarnation of the Son of God by looking at the next chapter in my book on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

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Nativity

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov’d imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod’s jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe. – John Donne

The Creed next tells us:

By the Holy Spirit, he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.

Conceived by the Holy Spirit

One of the curious features of the Christian tradition is the introduction of the Holy Spirit into the story of Christ at this point.  This line is the first time the Spirit is mentioned in the Creed and the mention is a reminder that the Creed is being written by and for people who have already encountered the Christian story and therefore already believe in the Holy Spirit and have already heard the account of the conception and birth of Jesus elsewhere. 

Like the Virgin Birth itself, the Christian faith in the Holy Spirit appears to be something that is due entirely to the teaching of Jesus and the testimony of those in his circle.  A mere human fiction writer, tasked with concocting the story of the birth of the Son of God would, in a Jewish culture, already have a ready-made image for the author of the Incarnation: God the Father.  Who, after all, would be a more likely figure to conceive a Son than a Father?

But the Christian community, instead of teaching that Mary conceived by God the Father, attributes the Incarnation to the mysterious Person known as the Holy Spirit.  Why?

The answer appears to be, “Because it’s what happened and the Church is stuck with the facts that have been handed to it.”  They tell us that, “When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18).  If we ask how she knew this to be so, Luke adds the detail that Mary was told this by the Archangel Gabriel (cf. Luke 1:35).

Likewise, in Matthew, Joseph is assured by an angel, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20).  And so, the Creed simply repeats this nugget of memory.  And it does so decades before the Church has clearly discerned and defined who or what the Holy Spirit is. For the first iteration of the Nicene Creed in 325 AD will simply state that we “believe in the Holy Spirit”.  That’s it.  That’s all.  It will not be until 381 AD that the Church gives us more detail (see Chapter 11 for the full discussion).

How, you may ask, could the framers of the Creed profess belief in the Spirit while apparently having no clear idea about who or what the Spirit is? The answer is that this is how communities built around memory and tradition function all the time. They hold fast to the tradition they have received even when they are not altogether sure what that memory and tradition mean.  So, for instance, the American community was founded on a tradition that professed “all men are created equal” long before it worked out that “all men” included not just white men but black men (in the Civil War) and not just men, but women, in the passage of women’s suffrage.

Similarly, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit and the Church had received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (of which much more in Chapter 11).  But just who or what the Holy Spirit was?  The Church trusted God would make clear such matters in his own time and his own way.

Skepticism about the Virgin Birth

Curiously, the Virgin Birth often seems to provoke more doubt than the Resurrection does. Not just non-Christians, but even many believers have difficulties with it while having no trouble believing Jesus rose from the dead. This doubt can be roughly divided into “weak” and “strong” skepticism. 

The weak type of doubt can be stated this way: Belief in the Virgin Birth was caused by scientific illiteracy. Long ago, people ignorant of science did not know that parthenogenesis (i.e. virgin birth) was scientifically impossible and that’s why they believed this story.

But, of course, people knew perfectly well two thousand years ago, as they know today, that babies are not born of virgins in the normal course of nature.  That’s why St. Joseph was dubious of Mary’s story (Matthew 1:19).

The Strong Skeptic argument goes like this, more or less: “Mary, a hysterical teen in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, invented the story of a virginal conception and brainwashed Jesus into believing it.  Jesus, a megalomaniac and mentally ill peasant due to this upbringing, therefore claimed to be Son of God.  He then convinced the apostles and hundreds of other disciples of this story.  Then it all fell apart, he was crucified, and his apostles founded a cult which claimed he had been raised from the dead. With the mother of their god still living in the Christian community, claiming to be a virgin, the apostles were stuck with this bizarre detail as part of their story and it became a fixture of early Christian belief along with the Resurrection.”

You will find variations on the theory that put the blame on various figures in the early Church, but the core assertion is that the Virgin Birth was a cover story for Jesus’ illegitimacy.

It is often a shock to the people proposing this allegedly daring new claim to discover that it is as old as the New Testament. 

Of which more tomorrow.