The ultimate considerations which determine a true estimate of the Virgin Birth tradition are doctrinal. It is one of the chief merits of Lobstein's well-known book that he so clearly recognizes this fact: “What must finally turn the scale ... are reasons of a dogmatic and religious order” (op. cit., p. 79).

We need make no apology for not having dealt with the question of the possibility of the Miraculous Birth from the standpoint of Science. We do not propose to consider the question at length even now. The objection that miracles are impossible [pg 128] has long been exploded. In a famous letter to the Spectator (February 10, 1866) Huxley wrote: “... denying the possibility of miracles seems to me quite as unjustifiable as speculative Atheism”, and Atheism, he said, is “as absurd, logically speaking, as polytheism”. What we call a “miracle” may be no more than the divine operation within the domain of law itself. We have therefore no ground for saying that a virgin birth is impossible; while, in the case of One so unique as Jesus Christ, such an assertion would be utterly absurd. We do not really need any support which may be gained from the question of Parthenogenesis. The question is in the first place one of evidence.

But if primarily the question is one of evidence, it does not stop there. The historical and the theological aspects of the problem overlap; we cannot determine the question by weighing evidence alone.

If we attempt to confine ourselves to a purely historical inquiry, the verdict must be “Not proven”.108 It is true, on the one hand, that the late appearance of the tradition is not an insuperable difficulty. The theory of a long-treasured secret has a logic of its own. On the other hand, by the conditions of the case, we are unable to interrogate the witnesses. We cannot ask them whence they derived what they tell us. We cannot demonstrate that the story they relate has the ultimate authority of Mary. All that we can reach is a primitive belief, generally accepted within New Testament times, which presumably implies an earlier private tradition. Beyond that point we cannot travel—within the limits of the evidence alone.

Substantially this position is recognized by Dr. Gore in Dissertations. While affirming his belief that the historical evidence is “in itself strong and cogent”, he says frankly that “it is not such as to compel belief”. “There are ways to dissolve its force”, he continues. The last sentence is not very happily phrased, but it need not detain us. The point that is of greatest importance is expressed by Dr. Gore as follows:

The present work is, in part, a foot-note to, or illustration of, this principle. We may therefore be pardoned for a further reference to it in a passage from F. C. Burkitt's Gospel History and its Transmission, in which it finds an almost classic statement:

It is clear, then, that if further advance is to be made, we must enter the realms of doctrine. What doctrinal purpose, we must ask, does the Virgin Birth serve? Does it explain the sinlessness of Jesus? Is it necessary to the doctrine of the Incarnation? Is it congruous with the doctrine of the Person of Christ? It is not contended that an answer to these questions in the affirmative would prove the event to have happened. Nevertheless, such an answer would unquestionably invest the New Testament tradition with a yet higher probability, sufficiently great, in our judgement, to make belief in its historical character reasonable. If, however, we have to answer the doctrinal questions in the negative, then the historical character of the tradition receives a fatal blow. The opinion, so frequently expressed, that, in any case, the Virgin Birth is not a doctrine of essential importance, is one that calls for scrutiny. If it means that a man may be a sincere follower of our Lord, whether he believes the doctrine or not, it is, of course, a truism. But if it means that the doctrine is of no importance in relation to the Incarnation and the Person of Christ, that is perhaps the strongest argument that can be adduced against the credibility of the miracle. What is doctrinally irrelevant is not likely to be historically true.

It does not fall in with the scope of this work to enter fully [pg 130] into the theological question. Our purpose has been to examine the historical and critical questions and to show where the real problem lies. Criticism cannot solve that problem. Nevertheless, its contribution is not barren. It can discuss interpolation theories; it can treat of the literary form which the tradition has assumed in the Gospels. It can date—imperfectly it is true—the time when the belief became current. It can apply broad tests of credibility. We ourselves believe that it can say the miracle may have transpired. But it cannot say more. The last word is with Theology.

On the theological side, the question is probably more far-reaching than is commonly supposed. Individual Christian doctrines can never be treated in vacuo; they are inter-related one with another. It is often said that those who reject the Virgin Birth reject also the physical Resurrection of Jesus, the Ascension, and many of the miracles reported in the Gospels. The statement is largely true; it is possible we ought also to include in it the doctrine of the Pre-existence of Christ. The reason is that these denials belong to the same general habit of mind; they are part of the content of what has been called a “reduced Christianity”. It is impossible, therefore, adequately to discuss the question of the Virgin Birth on its theological side, without raising the larger question, whether this so-called “reduced Christianity” is not the true faith, as distinguished from a “full Christianity” which in reality is florid and overgrown. Sweet can scarcely be said to go too far when he writes: “In short, and this is the gist of the whole matter, in this controversy concerning the birth of Christ, two fundamentally different Christologies are groping for supremacy” (ib., p. 311). This fact has not always been recognized by those who think of the Virgin Birth, but there can be no question of its truth. The Virgin Birth is part of a larger problem; it must ultimately be established, if at all, as a corollary, not as an independent conclusion. The larger problem is whether we can still hold the Trinitarian Theology and the Two-Nature Doctrine of the Person of Christ, or whether we must give to the Immanence of God a place greatly in excess of any it has yet held in Christian thought; whether, indeed, we can feel it adequate to speak of Christ as One in whom the Immanent God revealed and expressed Himself [pg 131] in an altogether unique and ultimately inexplicable way. In any case, the conflict is one of Christologies. The purely naturalistic interpretation of Jesus holds a more and more precarious place in the field. This, then, is the problem of the present and of the immediate future. It is nothing less than the problem which every age has had to face since the days of Jesus of Nazareth—the problem of the Incarnation.

The present writer takes no shame to say that upon the theological aspect of the Virgin Birth he has not yet been able to satisfy his mind. The longer the question is studied the less easy it becomes airily to brush the miracle aside and call it myth. We speak of those who are impressed by the unique spiritual greatness of Jesus, and who cannot explain for themselves His Person in terms of humanity alone. The hesitation does not spring from vacillation, nor, we hope, from lack of courage and strength of mind. It springs out of a sense of the uniqueness of Jesus. Have we adequately grasped His greatness? Can we say what is, or what is not, congruous with His Person? It is open to serious question whether the individual can expect, or ought to expect an answer to these questions out of his experience and thought alone. Brief discussions of the Virgin Birth by individual writers do not carry us very far. What is needed more than anything else is a yet fuller disclosure of the unfettered mind of the Christian Church; and for this we must wait.

This last statement may perhaps seem strange. Has not the Church already expressed her corporate mind? Has she not committed herself to the Virgin Birth tradition? Can we not find it in Ignatius, in Justin, and in the Creeds of the Undivided Church? That these things are so is too patent to be denied. But has the Church expressed her unfettered mind? Has she said her final word? Has she, indeed, ever been in a position to do these things? The appeal to the almost unbroken external witness of the Catholic Church does not carry us so far as we might think. Once the Gospels had attained canonical authority the rest was a foregone conclusion. The status given to the Gospels carried everything else with it, and the Church was no longer free to judge. It is written, therefore it was so! Moreover, the question of the Virgin Birth was largely overshadowed [pg 132] in the struggle with Docetism. It is only in modern times that a more intelligent attitude towards the Gospels permits the Church freely to ponder the Virgin Birth tradition in the light of her experience of Christ. We may cherish the hope that she has yet greater things to say of Christ than any she has yet uttered. It is in its relation to that voice that the Virgin Birth will find its place.

Where, then, shall we look for this expression of corporate mind? Not perhaps again in Consiliar Decrees, though who can say? There is, however, a corporate mind that finds expression in the affirmations of simple believers, and in the writings of Christian thinkers the world over. The affirmations are neither the medley nor the babel they are sometimes thought to be. There is no colourless uniformity, but there is a real and growing unity, a harmony in which varied voices blend. No one can survey Christendom without seeing that everywhere denominational walls become less and less forbidding, and that every year it is more difficult to classify Christian thinkers under the prim labels of exclusive schools. Thought is unbound, but it is not chaotic. The thousand streams fall to the rivers which flow onward towards the sea that is never full. Those only may be pessimistic who cannot take long views. We may believe that the Spirit will yet guide His Church into all the truth. The individual thinker whose voice breaks the silence will ever be needed. Yet his task is but a limited one; he too must listen. For unless, beneath his affirmations, we hear the undertone of a corporate faith and experience, his voice will be but the echo that rings among the empty hills.

One thing is certain. Whatever the ultimate issue, it must be gain, even if gain through loss. Whether it be historical or not, the Virgin Birth tradition must always be full of beauty and of truth.

If, on the one hand, the tradition is involved in the corporate experience of Christ, if it is congruous with what He was and is, then, admittedly, the gain is great. For this means increased confidence in the facts which the Evangelists relate and the primitive community believed: there is no breach with the past. It means too another foothold in history for the theological interpretation of the Person of Christ. And these are things not lightly to be surrendered, save at the command of Truth.