From: rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Virgin Birth
Date: 16 Sep 92 03:49:45 GMT
Organization: CERL-EE, Georgia Institue of Technology

In article <Sep.15.03.58.55.1992.25122@athos.rutgers.edu> rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:
moderator writes:
>[Let's try this again.  First, I am not arguing against the Virgin
>Birth.  

Good.

>        What I am saying is that orthodox Christology is not based on
>it.  Remember that the original question raised was whether the Virgin
>Birth was essential, and the claim was made that if you deny the
>Virgin Birth you are denying Jesus' status as God.  So what we're

No, I said part of having the right Jesus included His Virgin Birth.
This would led to saying if you deny the Virgin Birth, then you have
the wrong Jesus (i.e., ANOTHER JESUS, as Paul warned us about.)

>discussing here is not whether it's true, but whether it is essential
>to a correct understanding of Christology.

I am not saying that God is not capable of made in the likeness of human 
flesh (John 1) without a Virgin Birth, but that THE SPECIFICS WE HAVE has 
God being born of a Virgin and so it is part of Christology - not that
it could not have been done another way.  Being born of a woman is
also part of the deal (virgin or not) for God promised to make 
Abraham/David's seed the Redeemer.  The Virgin Birth is the way it happened.

>Orthodox Christology says that Jesus is a complete human being who is
>at the same time the incarnation of God.  While there are two models
>of how this happened, the one most common in the West says that the
>Logos took to himself a human being, uniting divine and human in a
>single hypostatis.  There's nothing in any of that that requires the
>human to have been born unusually.  The Virgin Birth may be an

Agreed - but the SPECIFICS we have has Him being born unusually.

>appropriate sign that something special is going on.  But if you try
>to make it more than a sign, you're going to run into trouble.  If you
>say that the incarnation requires the Virgin Birth, then you're saying
>that his status as God is based on his having been conceived
>unusually.  This implies strongly that you are thinking of the

I didn't say that - and I don't think what I said could have been
construed to say that.

>Incarnation in an Arian or Docetic fashion: i.e. that Jesus is
>effectively a half-breed, a cross between man and god.  This is not
>orthodox theology.  In orthodox theology, Jesus' body and soul --
>which is what ultimately result from the conception -- are completely
>human.

Agreed.

>The difficulty with the idea of God creating half of Jesus genetic
>material is that it partially breaks his biological continuity with
>the rest of the race.  I don't absolutely reject the idea that God

Again, God created the race - he can create the sperm or cause whatever
to happen that was needed, can't he?

>might have created human genes out of nowhere that didn't come from
>any actual human.  But it raises troubling issues in bioethics.  Do we
>consider artificially created genetic material, that didn't actually
>come from a human being, human?  Maybe.  But I'd want to think very
>carefully about it.  My "gut feeling" is that it would be more fitting
>for God to have used Joseph's genes.  This seems particularly
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
He could have, but Luke tells us that Jesus was 'thought to be' the son
of Joseph, which implies he was not the son (biologically) of Joseph.

>appropriate when you consider that at least one of the geneologies
>goes through Joseph.  Of course this whole area is speculative, so I
>don't claim to have a real answer.  The only point I was making
>originally is that the Virgin Birth at least raises questions about
>whether Jesus is fully human, and thus that if anything it makes
>things more difficult for orthodox doctrine.

Only if God couldn't create whatever is necessary, is this a problem.

For Christ and His Kingdom,
Richard Pitts
-- 
rpitts@cerl.gatech.edu       |    
Atlanta, GA                --|-- 
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[OK, I have misread you.  You seem to be saying that we have "another
Jesus" if anything specific about him is changed.  I presume this
would include hair color or anything else.  If that's what you mean,
then I have no problem.  Unless I misunderstand, most people who say
the Virgin Birth is essential are thinking of something slightly
different.  --clh]