Virgin Birth

Years ago I took a course from a Catholic woman theologian, a rare breed. Think about what it must be like as a female theologian in a male-dominated church! During the course, she made a comment that has stayed with me: the feminine ideal that the male hierarchy holds up to Roman Catholic women is an impossibility: a virgin mother, Mary. It was an illuminating statement that revealed much about the current state of Catholicism.

It is not enough that the Bible records one virgin birth, that of Jesus. Roman doctrine interprets Mary’s statement in Luke that she “has not known a man” as a declaration of lifelong celibacy. The various references in Scripture to Jesus’ brothers and sisters are then said to mean cousins. The end result is the Blessed Mary, Ever Virgin, a model no mother can follow.

But enough Protestant rant. What about that first virgin birth, that of Jesus? It, at least, is attested by Scripture. Yet is the idea of the miraculous conception of Jesus at all tenable anymore? Should it be taken literally? Metaphorically?

Luke doesn’t seem to hint that his story should be taken at anything but face value. Commentators have worked hard to show that it was pasted together from various sources, or that it has pagan antecedents, or that it is really “just a story” invented to make Jesus more exalted. One gets the distinct impression that they have already made up their minds about its veracity, and then proceed from their assumption that it can’t possibly be true.

Yet what if it is true? To the people around him, Jesus Christ was unlike any other person they had ever encountered. Something extraordinary had come into the world with his birth, something so beyond human comprehension that human language was not up to describing it. Like John, the author of the book of Revelation, Luke had to put into words an idea that could not be bound by words, the Word of God himself. Luke wanted to be sure that we knew that this child to be born was divine as well as human, and he expressed that in the best way he could.

The virgin birth is not an incidental matter; where one comes down on that reveals a lot about what one believes about the divinity of Christ. But getting all wrapped up in the virgin birth takes us away from the main thrust of the story. The angel Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary follows on the heels of a similar prophecy about Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptizer. When John’s father, Zechariah, doubts Gabriel, he is struck dumb. When Mary doubts, she gets a fuller explanation. It’s a good thing Gabriel lets her keep her tongue. She still has to say, “Yes.”

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” is what Mary actually says. “Here am I.” That’s the response of Abraham, of Moses, of Isaiah, of all the great ones who have been given a commission from God that they think they can’t possibly fulfill. “Here am I.” It’s a statement of submission to God’s will, a statement of trust in something incomprehensible. It is not an agreement to submit to all authority, as is sometimes placed on women through Mary.

Mary can be a model for all of us – but not a model of mere submission or virginity. Instead, she is the God-bearer, the Theotokos of the Greek Church, one who shows us all how to say “yes” to God and thus bear God within us. We do that neither literally nor metaphorically, but in a way that is beyond words. Only after saying “Here am I” do we begin to get a glimpse of that power, that light, that love which can be born within us, just as it was within Mary so long ago.

[Advent 4: Luke 1:26-38.]