Born of a Virgin?: Reconceiving Jesus In The Bible, Tradition And Theology

by Andrew Lincoln

What was proposed was that the problems with taking Matthew 1 or Luke 1 literally in their talk of a virgin birth do not require a rejection of the authority or truth of Scripture at these points but rather lead to the recognition that Scripture’s truth comes in culturally conditioned forms, in this instance through the literary form of ancient biography with its legendary features where claims about figures being born without a human father were means of asserting their extraordinary significance. In the case of Jesus, then, the stories of virginal conception express the convictions that only God’s sovereign initiative could ultimately explain his life and that this God was wholly present in his fully human life from its inception. Similarly, the credal statements need to be seen as conditioned by the assumptions and categories of their day.