By definition grace comes from God.

bnelson44 on December 20, 2007 at 9:46 PM

Thanks for the link. It made for an interesting read.

I guess that, in my attempt at brevity, I sacrificed clarity. Of course I agree with your good point.

The verse in question states that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. My point… How did God choose for that grace, in the form of Jesus Christ, giving us the chance to have that faith, to arrive? As God chose for it to arrive in the form of the human life and deeds of Jesus Christ, the answer to that question brings us right back to his claimed virgin birth.

To take it a step further, Jesus surely claimed his virgin birth as disciples of his wrote about it, and he spoke of Mary as his mother and God as his father (even at the age of 12!). He also claimed to be fully God. As he makes these claims, one who claims to have faith in Jesus but says that he was not born of a virgin is effectively calling God a liar.

Next step: Calling God a liar is inherently declaring a lack of faith in Him, and recall that faith seems to be a key component in that Romans verse toward receiving that grace. With this logic, I don’t see how acceptance of the virgin birth and reception of that grace can truly be separated.

That’s where I was headed; if I’m right, that archbishop has put himself in a bad place and needs to do some serious rethinking of the matter. I like what Rush said on the topic yesterday. Call it what you want; just don’t call it Christianity.

What do you call it when the head of the church is himself a heretic?

Time to either find another church or kick the bum out.

It makes a difference because of Old Testament prophecy. The virgin birth is one of the many prophecies that Jesus fulfilled from the Old Testament.

ThackerAgency on December 20, 2007 at 12:21 PM

Good point. It was important to the Jews in the time of Christ who were awaiting Messiah that all parts of the prophecies be fulfilled. That is why apostles detailed the genealology of Mary. Some of the prophecies

Micah 5:1 born in bethlehem
Gen 49:10 of the tribe of Judah
Zech 9:9 would be seen riding an ass into the city
Psalm 22 would be killed, hands pierced, lots cast for clothing would cry ‘My god why hast thou forsaken me’
Daniel 9:24-27 would appear before the destruction of the second Temple
Isaiah 52-53 a life of suffering, a trial at which he would speak no words of defense, death, buried in a rich man’s tomb, and resurrection

The three wise men were seeking the prophecied one, just as Herod feared the prophecied one (who would restore the Jews and vanquish their opressors)

So this archbishop may find these items fluff but Christ told people he fulfilled the prophecies.

John 4:25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

The virgin birth matters because Christ took credit for it.

The significance of the virgin conception/birth of Jesus is that it is one of the proofs of his being the Messiah of Israel, per Isaiah 7:14. It is the author of the Gospel of Matthew — unquestionably the most Jewish of the four Gospels — who links Jesus’ unique entrance into the world with the Messianic sign promised in Isaiah’s book.

So it is possible for one to believe that Jesus was/is the Christ (Messiah) who was executed according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures without first affirming that he was born of the virgin — as there are many other evidences for Jesus’ identity as Messiah — but if one already accepts the other proofs for Jesus as Messiah, there is no good reason (other than a weak character) not to accept that the same God who can created the entire material universe out of literally nothing by fiat command (no quarrels as to how He did it) can manipulate a relative handful of genetic and biochemical material to produce a baby.

More than likely, the Archbishop (or whatever he is) is more interested in looking sophisticated to the intelligensia than upholding the tenets of the faith he is charged to oversee.

Dude! Indeed.

Sorry folks, no virgin birth, no Messiah.

In what form exactly did that grace come, and how did the process of that grace coming start, actually? It would seem that the virgin birth is central to the arrival of that grace, right?

flutejpl on December 20, 2007 at 9:40 PM

By definition grace comes from God.

As usual I defer to my theological betters

Why not study theology yourself? It’s not difficult and wouldn’t take up too much of your time. You don’t have to believe in it. The more you study it the better you could debate against it.

Incidentally, when you say “we are saved by grace alone”, and that understanding theology is not a prerequisite to accepting Christ, you are actually opening a very live theological debate, which I do not propose to engage in

Blaise on December 20, 2007 at 5:50 PM

Actually, I don’t think it’s all that lively a debate, so I’ll throw in my closed-minded two cents on it from my perspective of faith.

In what form exactly did that grace come, and how did the process of that grace coming start, actually? It would seem that the virgin birth is central to the arrival of that grace, right?

It’s all BS. The Archbishop can go back to sodding off with alter boys as he has no credibility here.

Incidentally, when you say “we are saved by grace alone”, and that understanding theology is not a prerequisite to accepting Christ, you are actually opening a very live theological debate, which I do not propose to engage in

Blaise on December 20, 2007 at 5:50 PM

Of course you do so, at least a little, in this comment alone.

I sometimes wonder if people’s misunderstanding of what is meant by the Immaculate Conception (if it’s not “Immaculate” it must be “dirty”, right?) is the source of a lot of misapprehensions about the Church’s views on sex.

Incidentally, when you say “we are saved by grace alone”, and that understanding theology is not a prerequisite to accepting Christ, you are actually opening a very live theological debate, which I do not propose to engage in

The Immaculate Conception refers to Mary’s conception (not that of Jesus) and the idea that she was born without Original Sin.

Blaise on December 20, 2007 at 5:24 PM

What? That makes no sense whatsoever.

But again, I don’t understand why everyone is upset by this. We are saved by grace and grace alone. Understanding theology is not a prerequisite to accepting Christ.

I know that for some it’s a minor point, but I just wanted to clear it up.

And bnelson44 above has a good point. I wish someone had thought to ask Atkinson how, if belief in the virgin birth is unnecessary, he explains the words “…born of the Virgin Mary” in the two creeds. Huh?

I think religion would fare better against the scrutiny of science if they did not lie about all this impossible stuff. It just makes people look foolish who buy it.

Ultimately science can no more explain why we are here than religion but science does at least, look credible.

‘transrational’ thinking can not simply proceed from rationality, but also must include an element of mysticism. It was excellently said:

The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.

(G.K.Chesterton)

One of the purposes of Christian mysticism, I.e the potential existential reality of supernatural and divine events is to free the mind of man.

In the end it may be moot, as the spirit does operate through the son (though not proceeding from him.) Part of why we say this has more to do with how we understand the hypostases of God to be.

The Trinity is something that sits right on the border between what we can reason and what is ultimately unknowable. Like the mystery of the God-Man, it is a truth that is underivable strictly by reason. It must be intuited (faith is sometimes referred to as a ‘decisive intuition’.) and the fact that it is available has no small part of Grace in it.

Mr. Marxbishop (a heresiarch if ever there was one) discounts the role of truth in faith; like Julian Apostate if we discount a fact for it’s deeper meaning we are free to simply throw the deeper meaning away for whatever we want.

If you haven’t, please consider what Paul Tillich had to say:

Things like miraculous interventions of God, special inspirations and revelations are beneath the level of real religious experience. Religion itself is immediacy*. The supernaturalistic heritage about the suspension of the laws of nature for the sake of miracles collapses completely.

*By which he means precisely the immediacy of Wakefulness or pure Presence, which is Spirit in us, as Tillich himself makes very clear.

I do not believe The Nazarene was immaculately conceived; and I base that not on my lack of first hand knowledge, but rather on the laws of nature as delineated by science. The science that says the probability of my left hand spontaneously turning into a hammer is incredibly low, is the same science setting the probability of immaculate conceptions at near-zero.

We must as Christians properly be able to believe in the occurrence of such nonrational things without it forcing us to reduce them to mere material events.

Pre-rational thinking is appropriate for children and young adults, at which point they move predominately into the rational stages, with further development taking them into the trans-rational stages. Developmentalists tend to view the stages before the ages of 10-14 as pre-rational because the choice to be rational or not is generally not present, that happens a little later, when the decision to not be rational is then termed non-rational.

I believe the prime realization of Jesus Christ, and the one which got him killed, was His understanding that “I and the Father are One”. That realization does not require one to embrace anything non-rational.

The “three” kings likely comes for the gifts that are mentioned: gold, frankensence, and myhrr. There could have been 2, there could have been 20, the Bible doesn’t say. The gifts represent Jesus. The gold=our king; the frankensence=our high priest; the myhrr (a spice used for the dead)=his redeeming death.

There are other examples of how the Christmas story has been “adjusted” over the years.