Countering the Counter: Why evangelical defenses of the virgin birth are unconvincing

This is my reply to an article by "BK" entitled

A Brief Review of Arguments Evangelicals Use to Support the Virgin Birth  

By BK  - December 21, 2017

Christianity Today published an article on December 20, 2017 entitled The Virgin Birth: What's the Problem Exactly? by Mark Galli. In the article, Galli set forth in a very concise form the arguments by those who contend that the Virgin Birth was either not true or not part of the earliest teachings of the church, and the responses to those arguments by those who support the historicity of the Virgin Birth.

Then "very concise" was Galli's problem, since the reasons supporting the skeptical position are weighty, and the Galli's "concise" articulation of the evangelical replies wasn't sufficient to pass historiography muster.

Since I had never seen the arguments set forth in this fashion before, and since Christianity Today articles drop behind a paid wall after awhile, I wanted to share the summarized arguments on the blog. Galli writes:

For the fundamentalists, the Virgin Birth is a consequence of belief in inerrancy, Christ’s deity, and the belief in the miraculous. This is one large reason why it was singled it out for defense. A lot depended on this doctrine. The main lines of liberal argument against it were: 1. It is not mentioned in the rest of the New Testament; Paul, in particular, doesn’t ever discuss it. Likewise, it is rarely mentioned in the first three centuries of the church’s existence.

And we'd naturally expect to see mention of it in such early sources if in fact that story was believed by the early Christians to be a doctrinally and historically true fact.

2. Matthew and Luke were using a faulty translation (the Septuagint) of Isaiah 7:14, which in the original Hebrew did not predict that a “virgin” would conceive a coming messiah, but only a “young woman” would. Thus they either made up the story or shaped it according to their misunderstanding.

The better skeptical argument is that a) Isaiah provided enough details in 7:13-16 to show that the "sign" was something for King Ahaz back there in 700 b.c., and b) Isaiah 7:14 was never characterized by pre-Christian Jews as messianic, or messianic prophecy.

3. It imitates pagan and Jewish myths that credit virginal conception to spiritual heroes.

It does.  Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12 is the oldest of the Zeus + Danae stories, and says he got her pregnant while he was in the form of a mist of gold, then it continues to characterize her as the "virgin goddess" even while she is in the midst of labor pains giving birth to Perseus.  So that's the concept of virgin birth existing in 400 b.c.  Sorry, but all Matthew and Luke were doing was taking an older motif and putting a new spin on it.  As any dummy the least bit familiar with copyright issues knows, you don't have to imitate the original with exactitude, before the investigators can be reasonable to conclude you got your idea from a prior source.  You cannot find an exactly precursors for Medusa, but you are perfectly certain that such a story character was the result of ancient Greeks taking parts of older legends, adding some new twists, and coming up with a new idea.  The single solitary reason you don't like the idea of Matthew and Luke having done that is that such admission would destroy your wood and stone idols of bible inerrancy.  

4. It’s not possible for a human being to be conceived outside of intercourse between a man and a woman, and that’s the only way God providentially designed humans to be fruitful and multiply.

I'd never make that argument.

These were easily countered by fundamentalist authors. They replied:    

3. That other religions have similar stories has no bearing on whether this particular story is historically true.

On the contrary, the more Christianity looks like its pagan ancestors, the more justification we have to say Christianity was nothing more than a new twist on older motifs.

It just indicates that the idea of virginal conception didn’t seem preposterous in that age.

Precisely because stories of gods having sex with humans was typical in that age.

4. More recent science has shown that parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction) is possible in plants and some animals, if extremely rare (see “Virgin Births Happen all the Time,” by Ted Olsen). The fundamentalist reply of the time would have simply been to say, “Who says God could not or would not do this?”

I don't see the point, as a fundamentalist you are stuck forever with defending Matthews and Luke's specifications that the seed of Christ was planted by God in Mary's womb.  You cannot shake the parallel to pre-Christian religions by simply noting that science acknowledges parthenogenesis sometimes occurs in lower life forms.

1. It was not discussed by Paul and other New Testament writers, nor by writers in the early church, because it was not controversial.

You don't know that this was the reason for their silence toward it, that's nothing but a possibility.  The winners of the historical debate are those whose reasons are more likely true than those theories which merely stay at the "possible" level.  First, the scholarly consensus is that Mark was the earliest published gospel, so it appears conclusive that the earliest form of the gospel said nothing about a virgin birth.  Second, the virgin birth stories show Jesus to be Lord from birth and strongly support a claim that he was God's Son, one of Mark's main themes.  It doesn't matter if it is "possible" for Mark to have knowingly refused to use material he believed doctrinally and historically correct to substantiate his teachings, people don't normally walk away from their best evidence and rely on lesser sources, therefore, it is more likely that Mark's silence on the virgin birth is because he either didn't know about it, or felt it was a legend unworthy of the gospel.  Third, it is the same problem with the other NT authors.  The virgin birth story says much that would have been particularly useful to them in combating adoptionist heretics who said Jesus' sonship to God didn't start until he was baptised or resurrected, even if those adoptionists somehow still believed Jesus to be born of a virgin, because the canonical versions of the stories clearly indicate Jesus' divine sonship began at his birth.

There was no reason to argue for it because no one doubted it.

Then under your logic, everything else that the NT "argues for", it does so because the subject was doubted within the church.  Under your logic, everything Mark did jot down in his gospel, he recorded because there were doubts in the church about those things.  So I guess the reason Mark does mention the public ministry of Jesus and his resurrection is because the original church was internally split on those matters?

I guess that means that the original church was fraught with internal divisions on the resurrection of Jesus, the significance of his death and what exactly he said and did.  If you say a NT author's mentioning something doesn't imply there were doubters, then you cannot argue from their silence that it was never doubted.

There was room in the original church for the idea of maintaining silence toward a thing because it was viewed as immoral or doctrinally incorrect.  See Ephesians 5:12, where one such reason was that certain things done by others in secret was best kept out of one's conversation.

The fact that it emerges in the Nicene Creed without argument or debate suggests this was indeed the case and that it was a core belief for Christians.

If you date Mark to 50 a.d. to grant any fundies' wet dream, you've got at least 275 years between Mark and the Council of Nicaea.  Some would argue that is plenty of time for false doctrines to take hold.  Notably the scholarly consensus is that Mark was neglected in favor of Matthew throughout the early church, and this is easily explained as Matthew's being richer in details.  But it tells you nothing about whether Matthew's author was inventing stories or passing along false traditions.

2. Biblical prophecies work on many levels, some literally,

Not so. Take your best example of a bible "prophecy" that you believe was fulfilled, and let's get started.

some metaphorically, and some both. We see the New Testament writers using a great freedom in using such prophecies.

So much freedom that they, like "heretics", often obtain their fulfillments by taking such bible passages out of context.  ONly desperate apologists would carp that the NT authors should be allowed to take the OT out of context.  People without an ax to grind prefer condemning everybody who take things out of context.  You cannot use "second temple exegesis" to disguise the hard truth here.  I don't care if Paul's argument from singular "seed" in Galatians 3:16 was consistent with second-temple hermenuetics, anybody who takes something out of context, deserves censure.  It's not like there's some law of the universe saying some people are correct to take the bible out of context.

Besides, Mary was clearly a “young woman,” which Isaiah foresaw under the inspiration of the Spirit; that she was also a virgin is revealed in the Gospel accounts.

Again, nothing in pre-Christian Judaism took Isaiah 7:14 as messianic, and the context makes clear that the sign was a political development Ahaz was promised to see within his own lifetime, putting the burden on the Christians to show that Matthew's use was legitimated by Isaiah's immediate context.  By so whittling down this messianic prophecy to the purely typological, it's apologetic worth is ultimately negated.  Stop wasting your time with it.

In fact, the assumptions of 19th-century liberal theologians arose not from indisputable objective starting points but from unprovable assumptions. Most were strict materialists, or close to it, and believed that anything that happened in history had to have a material cause.

Since it defies coherence to say something happened in the material world that did not have a material cause, sounds like the naturalist interpretation of history is probably going to win any specific debate on the subject. Feel free to take your best shot.

Fundamentalists countered that the Bible, in fact, has a different starting point: God intervenes in history now and then, and when he does and it defies the laws of nature, it’s called a miracle.

Oh gee, an ancient book has a different starting point than modern science.  Let's just say your doing a rather poor job of giving me the slightest reason to worry about naturalism being wrong.

What follows is the response I posted to the CADRE blog on December 27, 2017 after whittling it down to meet the word limits:
---------------

"1. Silence due to nobody doubting it"
-------The author doesn't do a very good job of supporting his interpretation of Mark's silence.  His conclusions, i.e., that no one doubted it because it wasn't controversial, don't count because they are conclusions, not arguments.  That leaves only his absurd argument that the VB found its way into the Nicene Creed without controversy.  Granting for the sake of argument the fundie dream that Mark is dated to about 50 a.d., that's 275 years between Mark's original and the Council of Nicaea.  Some would argue 275 years is plenty of time for false legends and fables to deceive a substantial portion of the church.  False rumors about the apostles took strong root in the original church within the lifetimes of those apostles, see Acts 21:17-27.
 "2. Biblical prophecies."
-------I've yet to see any Christian scholar or apologist convincingly argue that any bible prophecy was fulfilled literally, that is, in a way that "god" is the best explanation for the biblical data.  I'll debate anybody on Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 53-55, Daniel 9, or whatever biblical prophecy you think is most impervious to a naturalistic interpretation.
 " We see the New Testament writers using a great freedom in using such prophecies."
------Leading to disagreements among Christian scholars on the matter (i.e., Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology, 2008, by Kenneth Berding, editor), thus rationally warranting the unbelieving reader to turn away from the entire bible prophecy business, concluding that if spiritually alive people can't figure it out, spiritually dead people are only going to fare worse.
 "Isaiah was inspired by God."
-------So apparently the author wasn't writing for skeptics, but solely for Christian readers, for whom Isaiah's inspiration and gospel accuracy are foregone conclusions.  Edifying to the Christian, laughable to the skeptic.
 "3. That other religions have similar stories has no bearing on whether this particular story is historically true."
--------You cannot find either numerous or precise parallels to Medusa in pre-Medusa pagan stories, but that doesn't slow you down from saying the Greeks more than likely just took older similar but not exact motifs and gave them a new twist to create this gorgon monster, correct?  Why should anybody think Matthew and Luke are doing anything different?  One apparent proof that Matthew wasn't above creating fiction is Acts 11:18, not at all consistent with the apostles agreeing with Matthew 4:15 that Jesus had preached salvation to the Gentiles...
 " It just indicates that the idea of virginal conception didn’t seem preposterous in that age."
----It could also indicate what it had indicated to Justin Martyr, i.e., making Jesus sound more like the heroes of pre-Christian mythology would increase the odds of the unbelieving pagan audiences taking Jesus' claims more seriously than they otherwise would have.
 Fundies are committed to defending Matthew's and Luke's reasons for the story, that God really did get Mary pregnant while "overshadowing" this young teen girl.  Sorry, but this is just Zeus by another name.
 Since the consensus of Christian scholars is that Mark is the earliest among the canonical 4, you likely won't be using Matthean priority to justify saying Mark intentionally omitted the VB.
 If the consensus of spiritually alive Christian scholars can be wrong, that's a powerful incentive for the unbelieving reader to conclude that spiritually dead people will only fare worse entering this fray, thus giving them rational warrant and reasonable justification to turn away from the whole business entirely.
 A copy of my comments here will be posted at my own blog.