From: stabosz@chopin.udel.edu (Rae Stabosz)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Preaching to the Moderns
Date: 4 Jan 93 03:24:02 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware

In article <Dec.22.03.09.13.1992.12921@geneva.rutgers.edu> mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon) writes:
>
>If God became a "new" creation that is NOT human, it amounts to
>thumbing His nose at us.  And if there *is* no distinction between
>Christ's humanity and our own, then this Virginity business is at
>best a distraction.  I think that Steve's response is an honest
>and "reasonable" one -- but I don't think it addresses the problem
>I have of *why virginity?*   The implication of a Virgin Birth, to
>me and in a different way I think to the Hellenistic world, is to
>QUALIFY the humanity of Christ in a manner that tends to make Him
>other than human.  If I see this as a "first draft" of the position
>that later got worked out as the two natures of Christ (since I
>too will affirm that Jesus as the Son is Incarnate God), I can live
>with it.  But I am thoroughly uncomfortable about the terms of this
>formulation.
>-- 
>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."

*****

Excuse me if this has been said already, but so far the discussion
of the Virgin Birth has ignored Mary herself, as if she were just
some inert vessel, inexplicably the object of a miracle designed
to somehow prove something about her Son.

I object!  I see the Virgin Birth as completely plausible,
spiritually, and of the utmost importance in understanding what
God did in Jesus.

God did not become incarnate with a wave of a magic wand, like a
deus ex machina.  The absolutely magnificent HUMAN act that took
place in the Annunciation was Mary's belief -- her act of faith,
her act of will -- that what God said would be true.  I truly believe
that the Incarnation was the first example of the truth of Jesus'
words, during His lifetime, that "if you have but the faith of a
mustard seed, you can say to that mountain 'fall into the sea' and
it will fall into the sea."  

Mary's act of faith that God could cause a virgin to conceive was
the act of faith that God needed in order to work the great wonder
of the Incarnation.  No deus ex machina, I repeat -- God _needed_
Mary, and her faith, as He _needs_ us, and our faith, in order
to bring about the salvation for humans that He wishes to bring
about.

We are His hands and His feet and His mouth and His compassion and
His love on earth -- and Mary was the first in the new order to
believe... faith like a mustard seed... that the Word delivered
to her by God through the angel could become flesh, in her
situation, which was a situation of virginity.

The Virgin Birth stands as a witness for us of the power of faith --
of what wonders God can work IF WE BUT ASSENT AND COOPERATE WITH
HIS WILL!  It is magnificent, what He can and _will_ do with a
person of faith, a person like His mother Mary.  

Please don't make the mistake of denigrating the great trust that
God placed in her, and places in all of us, in carrying out His
will.  He's not coming out of the sky in a machine -- He whispers
His will to a heart willing to listen -- like Mary -- and if he
hears the sweet words, "Let it be done to me according to Thy
will" then He is delighted to raise children for Abraham from
stones... and let the Child of promise be formed in the womb
of a virgin.  

I think of her faith in the power of God to do as He spoke as akin
to the power of an atom being split -- it's what God needed in
order to make Christ's coming into this world a cooperative
venture, a creation of God and human being working together.
It takes the hocus-pocus, distant, stand-offish aspect out of it
for me, and makes the Incarnation as clearly an act of relationship
as any sexual conception.  Mary's act of faith brought Christ into
the world, and I defy anyone to say that that act of faith was 
anything less than heroic and completely Christ-like.

Rae