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Was the Virgin Birth Strictly Necessary?

Jonathan Culley

24 Jul 98

This paper was written with a very limited exegetical knowledge of the passages that deal with the virgin birth of Christ. I am open to correction on this paper. I wrote it primarily to make a point about necessity.

Before we get into this, I must define what I mean by the word necessary. By necessary, I don’t mean some law external to God that constrains God to act a certain way. I mean the kind of necessity that is based on God’s character and His Truth. In other words, was it logically consistent with God’s character and His system of truth that made the virgin birth a requirement and ruled out any other possibilities?

In order to continue, we must make this assumption: The Word of God is necessary and sufficient for our life with God this side of the grave, but it does not exhaustively contain all truth. In other words, the Bible doesn’t give us the full picture. Out of the infinite set of truths, God gave us a subset, called the Bible. The Bible calls the remaining body of truth the "secret things of God" (Deut 29:29). We are not to search for revelation from God anywhere except the Bible, but there exists a body of truth that we do not find out about through the Bible.

We are told in the Bible that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary. That leaves us with these two "possibilities." (I put quotations around this word because it I mean possibilities for the sake of argument, not that these are necessarily possible in reality.) First, it is "possible" that the virgin birth was a grand miracle performed by God, but wasn’t necessary. In other words, the virgin birth was an arbitrary decision by God, but He wasn’t bound by anything (including His own character) to cause it to happen as such. Second, it is "possible" that the virgin birth not only was a grand miracle, but was necessary. In other words, to have the birth of Jesus be any other way would be contrary to God's character and His Truth.

If the virgin birth was, in fact, necessary, God may have chosen not to reveal the entire "proof" of the necessity in His Word. On the other hand, if the virgin birth was not necessary, God may have chosen not to tell us that it wasn’t necessary. In other words, there may not be enough absolute Scripture proof to say that the virgin birth was absolutely necessary or not, but that doesn’t mean that it was or wasn’t necessary. It may just mean that God didn’t reveal that it was or wasn’t necessary. Here is an example of a logical fallacy that we must not fall victim to:

1) Assume the Bible is true.

2) The Bible says Event A is true.

3) The Bible doesn't give sufficient reason why Event A was necessarily true.

4) Therefore, Event A is not necessarily true (even though it is).

Someone may ask, "Was the virgin birth necessarily true?" Just because there may not be sufficient Scriptures to prove the necessity of the virgin birth doesn't mean that it wasn't necessary. On the other hand, it also doesn't mean that it was necessary. What I'm trying to say is that if you are unable to convince the questioner of the necessity of the virgin birth, then he shouldn't conclude that the virgin birth was unnecessary.

Ok. All that being said, there may be enough Scriptures to prove the necessity of the virgin birth, but at this time, I just don't know where they all are. In the mean time, consider these statements:

1) Historically, God has chosen to deal with the entire family unit through the man. This is especially seen in the Old Testament (i.e., Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.).

2) The curse of the fall was propagated through the man so that it infected the family line of every person in the line of Adam. "Through on man sin entered the world, and death through sin" (Rom 5:12). "By the one man's offense many died" (vs 15). "Through one man's offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation" (vs 18). "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners" (vs 19). This propagated curse is what we call "original sin."

3) The following statement is just a theory (and therefore, fallible). I don't know enough about the Bible yet to make a coherent set of statements about this issue, so just consider it for now: It seems that in order for Jesus Christ to by-pass ("short-circuit") the curse of original sin, his family line must have been fully Divine (through the Holy Spirit), but in order for Christ to be truly representative of man on the cross (through the substitutionary atonement), his family line must have also been fully human (through Adam, Abraham, David, etc). Indeed, we do recognize that Jesus was in His very nature fully human and at the same time, fully Divine. For Jesus to be born through Joseph's seed would have put him directly into the curse of Adam's fall, and it would have contradicted the above Scriptures (that is, through Adam’s disobedience, Jesus would have been made a sinner—cf. Rom 5:19). But, if Jesus was not born of a woman, He would not have been human. Thus, the only logical possibility that maintains His full (sinless) Divinity and full humanity is for Him to be born of a virgin.

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This page was last edited on 19 Dec 1999.