As a librarian in a theological seminary I'm used to seeing the "big three" news magazines (Time, US News and World Report and Newsweek) arrive each week. I'm also used to, and now somewhat immune to, the obligatory stories that the three always seem to run: stories about the Birth of Christ around Christmas time, something on the resurrection around Easter and usually at least one issue on evolution versus creation and generally one other "religious themed" story, generally about the Apostle Paul, or the Book of Revelation, or the like.
Usually about the only thing that is of interest in the Christmas and Easter articles is the classic artwork that the editors use to illustrate the story. Frankly, in terms of the text of the stories, they could run the same one each year and no one would probably notice. They are bland and uninformative; rehashing tired old theories, almost always quoting a predictable group of liberal scholars and theologians.
This year was different however, at least for the Newsweek cover story, "The Birth of Jesus: Faith and History, How the Story of Christmas Came to Be" (Newsweek 145:24 [December 13, 2004], 48-58). The author of the story Jon Meacham departs from the normal bland, innocuous, albeit liberal, fare we have become accustomed to, to a through-going attack on Biblical Christianity, all in the name of "news."
Meacham's article is flawed at almost every conceivable level; it betrays little actual understanding of the issues involved and an even worse research methodology. Foundationally, he misses the entire point of the Virgin Birth, mainly because he entirely fails to understand why the Virgin Birth is so entirely important, in fact, centrally important, to the Christian faith. One writer, commenting on the Virgin Birth said this:
It is well known that the last ten or twenty years have been marked by a determined assault upon the truth of the Virgin birth of Christ. . . The result is that in very many quarters the Virgin birth of Christ is openly treated as a fable. Belief in it is scouted as unworthy of the twentieth century intelligence. The methods of the oldest opponents of Christianity are revived, and it is likened to the Greek and Roman stories, coarse and vile, of heroes who had gods for their fathers. A special point is made of the silence of Paul, and of the other writings of the New Testament on this alleged wonder.
This statement could easily be mistaken for the outline of Meacham's article; however, it was actually written by James Orr in 1917 as part of a series of articles called The Fundamentals (2:247-48), written to defend historic Christianity against the theological liberalism of the day.
Meacham's article is written in a "news" magazine and portrays as factual information various theories and conspiracies that have been presented, systematically refuted; and then re-packaged and re-presented in virtually every successive generation since Christ walked the earth. Meacham, whose credentials to write this story are suspect, entirely fails to interact with any evidence in support of the Virgin Birth. He mainly relies on the works of the late Raymond Brown, a liberal New Testament scholar, who concluded, that the New Testament, and particularly the gospel accounts were not historically reliable and had all been written with a theological agenda.
No conservative New Testament scholar is either quoted or referenced in the article. Recent works, such as Jesus According to the Scripture by Darrell L. Bock (Baker Books, 2003) or his Studying the Historical Jesus (Baker, 2002) or Craig L. Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel (IVP, 2001) receive no mention. The list of New Testament scholars who could have been consulted is almost endless, the aforementnioned Darrell L. Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary and Craig Blomberg of Denver Seminary, Robert Stein of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Grant Osborne or D. A. Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, or particularly my own colleague at The Master's Seminary, Robert L. Thomas who has been in the forefront of evangelical scholarship in Gospel studies for nearly 50 years.
Meacham also shows no familiarity at all with perhaps the most detailed and definitive presentation and defense of the Virgin Birth written in the last 100 years, The Virgin Birth of Christ, by J. Gresham Machen (Harper & Brothers, 1930) formerly of Princeton Theological Seminary and then professor of New Testament and one of the founders of Westminster Theological Seminary. This work is detailed and definitive in nature and point by point refutes every assertion raised in the Newsweek article.
Meacham seems to hold out that the Virgin Birth could actually be true. "The simplest explanation is that it [the Virgin birth] happened" (p. 54). But this admission is little more than a literary device which every other paragraph in the article sets to disprove. His arguments run along the three normal lines of skepticism: (1) The Virgin birth was an invention of a faction in the early church who were trying to gain prominence over other factions; in short this group invented a "better" Jesus than the others and eventually their theology triumphed and became Christianity. (2) The Virgin birth is simply a parallel of the Greek and Roman mythologies and even the stories about the miraculous birth of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. (3) And finally, the Virgin Birth stories were a continuation of "miraculous birth" stories in Jewish history, particularly the Old Testament.
As Machen notes:
The belief of the Christian Church in the virgin birth of Christ is a fact of history which requires an explanation. And two kinds of explanations are possible. In the first place, the belief may be explained as being based upon fact. It may be held that the church came to believe in the virgin birth because as a matter of fact Jesus was born of a virgin. Or in the second place, it may be held that the belief arose in some other way. The task of the historian is to balance these two kinds of explanation against each other. Is it easier to explain the virgin birth on the hypothesis that it arose in fact or on the hypothesis that it arose in some other way? (Machen, Shorter Works, Presbyterian and Reformed, 2003, p. 58).
In this quest Meacham fails most miserably. He begins with a skeptical bias, "we can see that the Nativity saga is neither fully fanciful nor fully factual but a layered narrative of early tradition and enduring theology" (p. 52). He views the New Testament and particularly the gospel narratives of less historical value than extra-biblical literature. He notes that while the New Testament details a slaughter of "all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its environs, from two years old and under" (Matt 2:16), "history records no such Herodian slaughter, though Herod was an undeniably cruel ruler" (p. 56). Biblical "literalism" is set against a "more historical view of faith" (p. 51). The significant objections to his stated denials receive no mention, nor is there any (much less serious) interaction with the conservative or traditional position. In the article he does not really settle on one particularly objection in denying the historicity of the Virgin Birth, apparently hoping that the cumulative force of all of the various objections will carry the day for him.
In a blog such as this we can't possibly detail the points of error or even disagreement we have with this thoroughly useless article. However, there is one point that must be mentioned. Meacham fails to grasp the real significance of the Virgin Birth. The real reason that the Virgin birth been the subject of attack, from Christ's own lifetime to the present day
Again, to quote Machen, "One thing at least is clear: even if belief in the virgin birth is not necessary to every Christian [that is Machen did not believe that a person had to have a thorough grasp of the virgin birth to be saved], it is certainly necessary to Christianity" (Virgin Birth, p. 396). The Virgin Birth is a pivitol and foundational doctrine, not for any of the reasons that Meacham postulates, but because without the Virgin Birth, Christianity is a fraud, it does not exist, it presents a gospel that saves no one.
The Gospel of Christianity is that Jesus Christ, God a very God and man a very man, died on the cross as a substitute, a propitiation for sin (Romans 3:21-30) and that the individual sinner can only be saved by faith in Christ (Acts 16:31). "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Only the God-man could pay the penalty for sin (1 Cor 15:3, Phil 2:6-8, Romans 5:6-11). Remove the Virgin Birth, if Jesus is just another man, then His death benefits no one and the message of the Gospel is a cruel hoax.
As Orr wrote, nearly 100 years ago
It must be repeated that the belief in the Virgin birth of Christ is of the highest value for the right apprehension of Christ's unique and sinless personality. Here is One, as Paul brings out in Romans 5:12ff., who, free from sin Himself and not involved in the Adamic liabilities of the race, reverses the curse of sin and death brought in by the first Adam, and establishes the reign of righteousness and life. Had Christ been naturally born, not one of those things could be affirmed of Him. As one of Adam's race, not an entrant from a higher sphere, He would have shared in Adam's corruption and doom--would Himself have required to be redeemed. Through God's infinite mercy, He came from above, inherited no guilt, needed no regeneration or sanctification, but became Himself the Redeemer, Regenerator, Sanctifier for all who receive Him. "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift" (2 Cor 9:15). (Fundamentals 2:259-60).
Meacham wants a Christianity that emulates the words of the angels "on earth peace, good will toward men" (p. 58) while rejecting the message of Prince of Peace, by denying the Virgin Birth and by extension the diety of Christ. Without the later the former is impossible. As Machen states,
Believe that Jesus is simply the fairest flower of humanity, and the infancy narrative of the gospels, despite, its marvelous beauty, will be to you abhorrent; but accept the dear Lord and Savior presented to you in the Word of God, and you will believe and confess, with a heart full of gratitude and love and joy, that he was ""conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary" (Shorter Works, p. 74).
The "Newsweek New Testament" is not a reliable version of the Bible and Jon Meacham, as the "preacher" of this version, is presenting not the Jesus of history, but the Jesus of his imagination and intellectual pride. What J. Gresham Machen wrote in 1930 is even more true today, "A Chistianity dependent upon the so-called "historical Jesus" is gradually giving place to a Christanity that dependent upon no Jesus at all--a Christianity that is content to use the ethical and religious ideals contained in the gospels without settling the question whether the person who is said to have enunciated these ideas ever really walked upon the earth" (Virgin Birth, p. 384).
Posted by Narnia3 at December 14, 2004 2:07 PM | TrackBack