From: mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Mary and the Moderns
Date: 14 Dec 92 05:06:10 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC

Several good responses have come in, attempting to clarify for me
the meaning of Mary's Virginity.  I hope other responses will also
show up, but I think there is already enough for me to comment on
in somewhat less provocative mode than my initial response to Charley.

It may help set the context if I note that a) I venerate Mary as the
Mother of God and b) it was in part the reaction I had to some of the
great Medieval and Renaissance Marian music (_Alma Redemptoris Mater_
and _Ave Maris Stella_ in the "Gregorian" repertoire, and Josquin's
4-part _Ave Maria_) that prepared the ground for me to leave the
chilly heights of skeptical atheism and recognize Christ in my life.

Darin Johnson says:

+ If there was no virgin birth, then there would be little reason
+ to assume any divinity at all in Jesus.  Everyone would have
+ treated him as another prophet in the same manner as Elijah.

It seems to me that the recognition of Jesus/Christ as divine is
a matter *concluded* after the Resurrection, in coming to terms
with THAT.  Jesus speaks of his unity with the Father (in John,
anyway; possibly this is the later community speaking rather than
Jesus directly), and the gospels show the disciples only with a
great deal of difficulty coming to terms with Jesus as The Christ
(cf. Peter's confession of this) even before the doctrinal issue
of how this Christ is or is not identified with the Father became
pressing.  In all the gospel interchanges, where Jesus asks "And
who do YOU say I am?" or where the gospels point to identification
with God ("before Abraham was, I am"), the matter NEVER refers to
his birth.  Indeed the confusion of him with Elijah ("the Prohpet")
or John the Baptist is almost insisted on (while equally leading
the interchange so as to make that an impossible conclusion.)

+ (this is how Jesus is perceived in Islam)  While there may have
+ been no theological *need* for a virgin birth, its occurence
+ provided a firm basis for the assertion of Christ's divinity.

But that is irrelevant.  It is, if anything, the Resurrection which
establishes the Incarnation.  That the ancient world would take a
Virgin Birth as a "sign" -- a "miracle" -- pointing to divinty may be
granted.  But Islam accepts Mary's virginity without accepting the
Incarnation.  So the sign fails of its purpose, which seems "tacked on"
to the story in the first place.  The Annunciation and Virgin BIrth
*do* reinforce and emphasize Jesus' "divinity" -- but only if you
already *grant* that for other reasons.

Michael J. Bumbulis writes:

+ I think this oddity is a function
+ of the "odd" nature of the Incarnation.  Because even if we believed that
+ Jesus was just "another" human being (the product of Joseph's sperm
+ fertilizing Mary's egg), then we have another type of oddity when we
+ consider the incarnation.  For now, the man Jesus becomes "possessed"
+ by God at some point in time.  And I find this to be an equally, if not
+ more, "odd" belief.  

And yet, there is considerable support for the notion that such a
"possession" is implied by the Epiphany at Jesus' Baptism, the very
start of Mark -- and Matthew and Luke preserve this even while adding
the nativity stories.  John also begins with the Baptism (after a
brief look at the very Origin of All :-))  The Christian community
would seem to have moved very quickly to a view that the Incarnation
"happened" at birth, rather than baptism, but nothing in the case seems
*logically* to prefer one over the other.  There is, as Mr. Bumbulis
notes, an "oddity" however we see the Incarnation.  I'd prefer (in my
most vauge-Anglican manner) to leave the "timing" and details of this
to speculation -- including respect for those who find it important
to bring specifics of Mary's conception into the case.

When I mention sperm and chromosomes, I virtually ask for the comment
Charley Wingate supplies:
 
+ I guess I've just become post-modern then; this [ the biological
+ details game ] sees to me to be a low-grade "how many angels.."
+ sort of speculation.

But you see, that is precisely what calling Mary a Virgin seems to
me to imply -- a concern for low-grade speculation that has nothing
to do with the case.  It is like requiring transubstantiation for
the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharist.  What has "virginity"
got to do with Incarnation, any more than "essence & accident" have
to do with eucharistic bread and wine?

Darin Johnson said about this point:

+ (and if it you believe was trivially easy for God to do, why
+ not believe that he *did* do it :-)

and Michael Bumbulis says

+ Personally, I do not think the sperm was created ex nihilo.  I think
+ the person was created as such.  This, of course, may concern some about
+ the humanity of Jesus, but what is it really to be a human?  It is
+ clear that throughout the Gospels, Jesus was most human.  More so

Actually, I have zero concern for whether it was a sperm created on
the spot or a fully-formed fertilized egg or a blastula or whatever.
But if you CLAIM Mary's Virginity, you HAVE to be able to accept SOME
kind of biological peculiarity (such as Jesus Haploid Christ, who is
then in a peculiar position of NOT developing as a phenotypic female.)
And the biological peculiarity strikes DIRECTLY at the question of
whether Jesus was "fully human."  If we are relying on God intervening
to MAKE Jesus "fully human" despite the biology being weird, why do
this in the FIRST place -- unless you are trying to "remove" Jesus
from the merely human realm?  Which I will resist to my death.

Like Charley (in this respect at least) I think such questions are absurd
-- low-grade and pointless.  But the "pointlessness" extends to Mary's
Virginity itself.  That's what I was saying -- as a purely personal kind
of rumination.  I am not trying to undermine anyone else's BELIEF in the
Virginity of Mary, just explaining MY puzzlement at the whole issue.

Charley may well protest that my insistence on biology is "modern" vs.
his "post-modern" unconcern with such low-grade details.  But my concern
is NOT the biology at all.  The theo-biological details of Jesus' birth
do not concern me -- but that is precisely why I DON'T have a belief in
the Virgin Birth.  What *does* concern me is that he is not thereby made
into a non-human demigod or docetic sham.

I *grant* that many Christians find the Virgin Birth a sign TO THEM of
Christ's divinity.  You will not find me posting articles ridiculing or
contradicting or arguing AGAINST this belief.  All I have said is my
reflection on the "finger-crossing" I do when the adjective comes by
in the Creed.  All that I insist upon is that a) Jesus WAS human,
b) in Him God became human and died on the Cross and c) in His resur-
rection our own, human, deaths are opened up to life in God.  I honor
Mary as the Mother of my savior, and thereby of my God, _theotokos_.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon	"We honour founders of these starving cities
mls@panix.com		 Whose honour is the image of our sorrow ...
			 They built by rivers and at night the water
			 Running past the windows comforted their sorrow."