THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE-MODERN SCEPTICISM
Enough examples, of the many that could be quoted, have now been given- to show that the story of a Virgin Birth was not a new one, but was a not unusual account of the birth of gods who had come down to earth as men, and that the details given in Matthew and Luke do not differ from those given in the stories of older cults in any greater degree than the details in one work of fiction differ from those in another which treats of the same theme.
Later on in early Christian history we find that the Virgin Mary inherits the festival of Cybele, mother of the pagan gods; and that day-the 25th of March-was observed as "Lady Day" by the early Christian Churches in the same way as the Hilaria, the festival of the goddess, had been held by pagans at Rome before Christianity had been heard of. The Pantheon at Rome, which had been dedicated by Agrippa to Cybele, was, when Christianity became the State religion, re-dedicated as a Christian edifice to the Virgin Mary. The ancient ceremonies connected with the worship of Cybele were performed until quite recent years in honour of Mary. In Rome an image, said to be of the Virgin Mary, was carried down to the Tiber every year, in the same way as it had been carried, with another name attached to it, long before the Christian era.
In Asia Minor the Ephesians worshipped the Virgin Mary with the very same ceremonies as they had previously performed in honour of the goddess Diana.
The festival of the "Assumption of the Virgin" is still celebrated in Christian churches at the same time of year as that in which the festival of Diana previously took place.
Wherever Christianity spread the same thing happened if a goddess had previously been worshipped. The rites continued, but the name of the goddess changed to Mary. The Virgin Birth doctrine offered no hindrance, as all the goddesses of ancient mythology were regarded as capable of giving birth to children without prior male congress, and most of them as having actually done so.
So the doctrine was easy to believe. But in addition to this it was, in that age, a welcome doctrine.
In religious and philosophical circles there was going on a violent reaction against the Eastern contempt for unmarried and intact females-a contempt which, in a very modified form, is still shown everywhere towards "old maids"-and still more against the religious prostitution on a large scale as it was known in very many places, notably Alexandria, Corinth, and the Hindu temples, stories of which had probably reached the near East. The licentiousness of the age was bewailed by many pagan philosophers, and chastity and virginity were glorified by every moralist.
This reaction, as such reactions always do, went beyond any rational limit. The relation of the sexes was spoken of as if it were at all times and in all circumstances evil.
"Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me," was the kind of sentiment expressed by the extremists, who taught that the spiritual life was all that men should think of, and that all carnal things were essentially wicked.
Some theosophists taught that Matter was something apart from or in opposition to the Absolute; and they might possibly-if their premises were accepted-justify so sweeping a doctrine.
But to all others it must appear that this implication, that human generation by natural processes is in itself always sinful, merely casts a slur upon the supreme wisdom which, ex hypothesi, ordains that all species must thus be propagated.
It is an implication which has worked untold harm in the past, leading in many cases to those very excesses against which it had been intended as a protest, and, as every student of medieval history knows, to the peculiar moral aberrations which disgraced monasticism and asceticism.
Meanwhile it led, coupled with the Jewish-Christian doctrine of original sin, to a curious further development of the Virgin Birth doctrine.
According to that doctrine, Jesus had not, like other men, been conceived in iniquity. He was therefore, unlike others, free from that taint of sin; but still theologians found it difficult to maintain the theory that he was altogether free from the taint of original sin inherited from Adam. Through his mother, even if he had no human father, he inherited that taint.
And so in the twelfth century the doctrine that the Virgin Mary's own birth had been immaculate and supernatural began to be accepted by many sects of the Catholic Church, and led to heated controversies between various bodies of Christians, more especially between the Dominicans and Franciscans. The great order of Dominicans always-or, at any rate, until quite recent years-denied the doctrine of Mary's immaculate conception, while their rivals, the Franciscans, strenuously upheld it.
It does not seem to have been recognized that logically, to get over the doctrine of original sin, every ancestress right back to Eve must be regarded as immaculately conceived. The Church found sufficient difficulty in gaining support for the doctrine of this one further miracle without inventing a hundred others, and it was not until quite recently-in 1854-that the Catholic Church officially accepted it, though it is a doctrine which has been widely held throughout the history of Christianity, and which narrowly escaped becoming, seven hundred years earlier, a fundamental dogma of the Christian faith, as so many other doctrines no less miraculous and no better founded upon historical evidence have become during the centuries which have elapsed since the original Christianity was evolved.
The mother of the Virgin Mary was named St. Anna, and many Christian churches were dedicated to her long before the dogma of Mary's immaculate conception was fixed in the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet another doctrine sprang from this same sanctification of virginity. This, the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary, was mooted by some of the early Fathers of the Church, who quoted in support of their theory the words of Ezekiel (xliv, 2): "This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut." That words plainly referring to a gate of the Temple should be taken as prophesying about the womb of a future mother of God is typical of the exegetical methods practised by early theologians and accepted by later ones.
Moreover, in view of the fact that Jesus is said in the Gospels to have had brethren, and that James is several times referred to as "the brother of Jesus," the idea of Mary's perpetual virginity and the motive for attempting to teach this doctrine are at first not easy to recognize.
But the idea, we find on studying comparative religion, is an old one. The mothers of each successive Buddha are said to have died shortly after giving birth to their divine children. Their wombs had become holy, and no other child might occupy them. Thence came the idea of perpetual virginity. The motive was, too, bound up with the doctrine of original sin-a doctrine which was inconsistent with human-born divinity, unless the mother was herself without original sin, in which case doctrinal difficulties arose about the birth and nature of any further children.
So the brothers of Jesus, of whom the Gospels speak, though at first considered as his full brothers, were next -to preserve the virginity of Mary throughout her life- described by the Fathers of the Church as the children of Joseph by another wife; and lastly, when the Church, in her-desire to glorify chastity, taught that Joseph had lived as a perpetual celibate, they were described as being really the first cousins of Jesus. Thus do myths grow among a priesthood.
In the middle of the fourth century Jovinian, an Italian monk, had the temerity to assert that Mary ceased to be a virgin when Jesus was born, and for this offense he was flogged and banished to a desolate island. Thus do priesthoods ensure the survival of their myths.
The doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity, though it never became a fundamental dogma of Christianity, has been widely held, and is even found to be taught in many early Protestant theological works.
It is of interest to note that during the first four centuries of the Christian era nothing was known as to the death or burial of Mary, that then Ephesus-at the Synod held with reference to the "Mother of God" controversy-claimed the honour of containing her burial place, that this was affirmed by the Synod to be a fact, and that much later Jerusalem claimed the same honour, which was eventually conferred on her by the Christian Churches.
At Jerusalem, in proof of their claim, the clergy used to show an empty sepulchre and explain that the Virgin had also been raised from the dead and had bodily ascended into heaven!
But these attempts to enlarge the original doctrine, and to get over difficulties by postulating still further miracles, were not the only questions about the Virgin Birth theory with which the Christian Churches had to deal. When we study the disputes which arose in the fourth century, at the time when the Trinity doctrine was first formulated, we find that many quarrels and much bloodshed ensued over the thorny questions connected with the "nature" of Christ. How far was he divine, and how far human? A host of difficulties attended every attempted solution. And again, if we study the beliefs held by various sects of Christians who were suppressed as heretics by the Catholic sect when it became allied with the Roman emperors and attained to power, we find that a large number of conflicting beliefs divided Christianity over this very question of the birth of Jesus.
The story of these disputes and heresies is too long to tell here, and can be studied in the pages of Gibbon. We note them now only because surprise is sometimes expressed, by those who have not studied the doctrinal controversies of the Christian Churches, that this doctrine, if it is not well founded, should have been accepted without demur by so many and for so long. This surprise is based upon a misapprehension or ignorance of two facts. First, the fact that the doctrine has been repeatedly questioned; and, secondly, the fact that from the fourth century, when the Catholic Church became all-powerful, until the nineteenth century, when the State Churches began to lose their power, those who questioned it were effectually silenced by the irresistible power of orthodoxy.
From the writings of the very earliest "Fathers of the Church" we learn that not only Jews and pagans, but many Christians, rejected the Virgin Birth story.
Celsus, the principal refuter in the second century of Christian doctrines, asserted that the Virgin Birth story had never been heard of until a few years before he himself wrote; and, as he probably wrote between 177 and 180 A.D., this statement agrees very well with the dates given elsewhere to the first appearance of Matthew's and Luke's stories. According to Celsus, the Gospel story was continually being altered and added to, with a view to meeting criticisms upon and objections to it. This may or may not be true, but it is at any rate an accusation which was made, and which the Church Fathers tried to answer-in their manner, not by bringing evidence to show that it was untrue, but by declaring that it was the "heretics" who were attempting to falsify the books.
Celsus, before his own attack on Christianity by philosophical arguments, brings in an imaginary Jew, who alleges that Jesus was the bastard son of a soldier in the Roman Army, named Panthera or Pandira, and that Mary was divorced by Joseph because of this intrigue; but the story is not very convincing as it appears for the first time in the second century, and is supported by no evidence. This story was often resuscitated by uncritical opponents of Christianity, especially by the Jews, and has even been accepted by critical historians of Christianity. These latter identify the Jesus of Christianity with a Joshua or Jesus ben Pandira, who is alleged to have lived about 100 B.C., and of whom the Jews relate many stories similar, in certain respects, to those of the Gospels. Some critics believe that it was round the name of this teacher that the Gospel legends afterwards gathered; but to the present writer it seems more likely that the whole story was invented as a satire on, and refutation of, the Christian story.
However that may be, we know from Origen, who wrote in the first half of the third century "Against Celsus," that these accusations were made; and we know from the writings not only of Origen, but of all the early Church Fathers, that the Virgin Birth doctrine was constantly disputed, and was not believed in even by some of those who held the highest positions in the "orthodox" Christian Church.
Papal of Samosata, for example, taught that Christ was a man and not divinely born, but that, being anointed by the Holy Ghost at his baptism, and keeping himself free from sin, he eventually became united to God. This, as we have already seen, was the doctrine of the "Adoptionist" sect of Christians.
For holding and for teaching such a doctrine Paul does not seem to have been blamed; but he also taught a doctrine which appears to be diametrically opposed to the above-viz., that God the Son was consubstantial with God the Father; and this latter doctrine, which very soon afterwards became the very nucleus of the Athanasian Creed, was condemned in the year 269 by a large council of the Church, at Antioch. By this council Paul, who was then patriarch of Antioch, was sentenced to be deposed. He did not, however, surrender his position until the Roman emperor Aurelian confirmed the sentence in 272. Thus did a pagan emperor aid in settling what was to be the orthodox faith for the time being.
But the Virgin Birth doctrine seems still to have been regarded as an open question. A belief in it became obligatory among Christians only when the "Catholic" sect of Christians allied itself with the Emperor Constantine, assumed the name of orthodox, and, aided by the secular arms of the State, enforced, at the point of the sword, its doctrines upon all men. All doctrines other than its own were then suppressed as heresies. Fertile countries were turned into deserts, and hundreds of thousands of men perished in the wars by which this policy was carried out.
When the Catholic Church eventually triumphed, any expression of doubt was prohibited, and any criticism of the Virgin Birth doctrine was, for many centuries, answered by the imprisonment or the death of the offender. But, in spite of all this, some sects of Christians, besides those primitive sects to which we have already referred, have disbelieved in the doctrine, and a few, in spite of the cruellest persecution, managed to escape total suppression. Of these we will now refer only to the most important survivor-the Unitarians. In England at the present day there are some hundreds of Unitarian churches; in America some thousands. They worship as God only the First Person of the orthodox Christian Trinity, and they regard Jesus as a man and a prophet. They number among their precursors Servetus, a most learned man, who, in addition to other distinctions, is famous for anticipating part of Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood.
Servetus was burnt to death in 1553 at Geneva, at the instigation of the Protestant reformer Calvin, for printing a tract denying the miraculous birth of Christ. In England the first Unitarian to be burnt to death suffered at Norwich in 1579, and a spasmodic persecution of the sect, between that date and the beginning of the nineteenth century, when they obtained the protection of the Act of Toleration, ensured that their views and arguments should not become widely known. Very few persons ever heard the Virgin Birth doctrine questioned, and fewer still heard or could understand the arguments against its acceptance. Whenever and wherever the ecclesiastical authorities were sufficiently powerful, the prospect of being burnt at the stake, together with the books in which their arguments were published, deterred even the boldest sceptics from attempting a task which seemed useless; so men who themselves doubted refrained from imparting their doubts to others.
Even when the Church became less powerful and the State more humane, contumely, disgrace, and secular disabilities awaited those who expressed any doubts; while honours, position, and wealth might be attained by those who professed orthodox opinions. Until the numbers of nonconformists, dissenters, and sceptics became large enough to enforce toleration, and some small measure of freedom of speech for all men, unorthodox doctrines were heard by only a very small number of men, and those men were generally classical scholars with ecclesiastical or educational positions to lose if, like the eccentric but honest Whiston, the translator of Josephus, they were too conscientious for the "protective mimicry" of discreet ambiguities.
Even learned theologians, classical scholars themselves, lived in an atmosphere in which "faith" was so firmly established by centuries of unquestioned, or rather of not openly questioned, tradition that they mostly ignored altogether those very difficulties which nowadays loom so large before the defenders of the faith.
If we read Milman's celebrated "History of Christianity," published in 1840, and turn to what he has to say about the Virgin Birth, we find no attempt made to explain or to reconcile the different stories told by Matthew and Luke. We discover, indeed, no reference to the fact that there are any differences between the two evangelists, nor to the fact that nowhere else in the New Testament is the Virgin Birth referred to. We find no comment on the fact that many passages in these books are irreconcilable with the story of a virgin birth.
We do, it is true, find-mostly in brief footnotes- references to some of the exegetical difficulties which confront the orthodox commentator. The era of historical criticism had already dawned, and an ecclesiastical author could no longer, like his predecessors, entirely ignore those difficulties. So they are not entirely ignored, but are brushed aside as of no great importance. For example, regarding the census, he remarks: "The chronological difficulties in this case do not appear to me of great importance."
If, he says further on, the author of Luke's Gospel made a mistake as to the name of Cyrenius, even then "his general truth would remain unshaken" by "so trivial and natural an inaccuracy." Milman did not, it seems, realize that if, in the few instances in which we possess the data for checking the evangelists' statements, we invariably find them to be undoubtedly erroneous, we have no reason for believing that all their other statements, which we have no means of definitely checking, must undoubtedly be true. The story as a whole is a remarkably strange one. It is, as we have before stated, told by two writers only, so as a whole we can check it only by comparing the versions of these two authors one with the other. But in the details of the story we find references made to historical persons, Herod and Cyrenius, of whom many other authors have written. Here and here alone we can check the statements made by the tellers of the story, and here we discover that those statements cannot be accurate. Would Dean Milman have thought it a trivial matter if some secular historian were to be proved wrong in every statement he made which could be checked? Would he say that "his general truth would remain unshaken" if this were done? "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus " may not always be a legitimate presumption, but the burden of proof lies heavily on the shoulders of those detected in error.
In the same way with the incident related of the "Massacre of the Innocents," the only comment-in a footnote-points out the absurdity of the tradition held almost universally by Christians up to Milman's own times, that 14,000 or 144,000 children were actually massacred. He makes short work of his orthodox predecessors, who had given support to this story, and passes on without noticing the fact that no such massacre of children is reported by any history of the times.
He does not ignore secular history, as he tells us of the political disputes, and indeed puts them forward as a reason why, in spite of all the wonderful events said to have attended the birth of Jesus-the arrival of the Magi, the striking dumb of Zachariah, and so on-the Jews appear to have forgotten that a Messiah had been born to them.
No man but one blinded by intolerance-and a sceptic has for intolerance not even the excuse of the faithful, who believe that those who disagree with them are guilty of mortal sin-would accuse Milman of deliberately concealing or distorting the truth. That is not our suggestion. We, in fact, make no accusation against our learned and interesting author. We only draw attention to the fact that he, in common with the majority of men of his day, was so accustomed to regard the faith in which he had been brought up as somehow in all essentials true, that he never with unbiased mind considered the difficulties which to unprejudiced observers seem so obvious. They judged their own doctrines by a standard entirely different from that which they applied to other religions.
They did not, for example, attempt to find any reasons which could justify a belief in their own Virgin Birth story, and yet not at the same time justify a belief in the numerous other Virgin Birth stories of antiquity; but they just took for granted that their story was true, and the others utter absurdities. So difficulties were not faced or explained, but either unnoticed or swept aside as unimportant. The thing was true; the evidence for or against it was of no importance whatever!
We know that Milman, in his Preface, announces that his "notion of history is, that it should give the results, not the process of inquiry," and that he assures us-as we have certainly no reason for doubting-that "he has with his utmost diligence investigated, and with scrupulous fidelity repeated, what appeared to him to be the truth"; yet it is apparent, from the few notes which he does give us about the episodes most open to criticism as unhistorical, that his inquiries were regarded by himself as merely of pedantic interest, and were not at any time directed to the question of whether the stories under consideration were in their main features true.
Strauss's "Life of Jesus," which appeared shortly before Milman's work was finished, is referred to in an Appendix; and here again our author reiterates that his plan does not "require or admit" of minute investigations into the origin or truth of Christian opinions. In short, the learned future Dean did not attempt to elucidate anything. He either himself did not fully appreciate the weakness of the evidence he used, or, writing for the devout, was careful to say nothing that might arouse serious doubts in their minds.
On the fundamental point of Virgin Birth stories being common in the East, he again makes only one brief remark, in a footnote. In this note he expresses surprise that a similar story is told of "Budh," and also of "the Fohi of China and the Schaka of Thibet"-persons whom he, therefore, identifies with the Buddha himself, though we are further informed that the virgin mother of the latter was Maia, and that the virgin mother of Schaka was named Lamoghinpral. We are also told in the same footnote that "certain incidents, for example, in the history of the Indian Chrishna are so similar to those of the life of Christ that Dr. Goignaut is almost inclined to believe that they are derived from some very early Christian tradition. In the present instance, however, the peculiar sanctity attributed to virginity in all countries, where the ascetic principle is held in high honour as approximating the pure and passionless human being to the divinity, might suggest such an origin for a deity in human form."
This is a typical example of the careless confidence with which learned theologians of the middle of last century applied to religions and creeds other than their own the very arguments which were really as destructive of it as of them. The bold Dr. Goignaut, instead of feeling "almost inclined to believe" that the early Krishna stories were derived from the far later Christianity, might-bolder still-have reversed his theory, had he for a moment considered the bare possibility of anything in his own religion not being absolutely true, and exactly as stated in the doctrines of his Church.
And Milman's own theory of a Virgin Birth story being suggested by the sanctity connected with virginity might with equal justice and force be applied to the Christian doctrine as well as to the story of "Budh."
Milman's "History of Christianity" has been dealt with at, perhaps, undue length, not for the sake of carping at the Dean or at other theologians who pursued the same path, but to explain how it was that even in the nineteenth century the difficulties in the way of believing this Virgin Birth story were not known to most Englishmen, though in France they were already both recognized and acknowledged.
In the fear that the excesses of the French Revolution would be the inevitable concomitant of doubt, free speech and open discussion of these difficulties were still debarred. These fears were, as events have proved, ill founded; but that the fear was felt is indisputable. That the orthodox writers of this period did not attempt to defend their doctrines against attack is evidence not that they considered the position of these doctrines impregnable, but that there were no attacks of importance as yet being made upon them in England.
The State and the ecclesiastical authorities were as orthodox in their strategy as in their theology. They did not stand upon the defensive, but defended themselves by attacking their opponents. Even when some measure of freedom of speech had been gained, even when men had at last forced the allied powers of State and Church to grant them liberty to worship in any way they chose, authors and speakers who openly attacked the orthodox doctrines were still liable to be prosecuted for blasphemy and to be imprisoned for long periods of time. To impugn, even in the most temperate words, any fundamental doctrine of Christianity was, until quite recently, a criminal offense. Unless offensive words are used, prosecutions for this offense are now never set on foot; but until towards the end of last century convictions could be obtained in cases in which the language of doubt was quite free from the reproach of offensiveness.
Many men, apart from those belonging to "heretical" sects and to "infidel" religions, doubted, but few dared to attack the defences behind which orthodoxy was firmly entrenched. Public opinion, however, gradually changed.
Judges became averse to applying antiquated laws, and laws unwillingly administered are usually found to provide loopholes of escape. Archbishops and bishops began to dread the publicity which unorthodox views gained when prosecutions took place. At centres of learning, and in places more humble from an intellectual point of view, scepticism became more common than orthodox faith.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century there have been in Great Britain but few prosecutions under the Blasphemy Laws, and those few have been mostly directed against what has been regarded as scurrilous and vulgar abuse of views held sacred by many worthy, if ill-informed, persons.
The Blasphemy Laws no longer either terrorize men into silence or irritate them into verbal excesses. Orthodoxy's sole remaining weapons are social and professional ostracism, and these are losing their edge. It is, therefore, now possible to hear both sides of the question. The doctrines of the Established Church, like the theories of any other body, can be criticized in print as they never could until the end of last century. Men can read the cons as well as the pros. We can all study the origin of our religion.
The result of such study is startling to those who, having been educated as orthodox Christians, first undertake it in later life, and to those who do not themselves undertake it, but hear the result.
Confining our attention once more to the Virgin Birth story, we find that very few laymen who have studied its origin still believe in it, and that even among the clergy most of the more thoughtful and better-educated men acknowledge that there is insufficient testimony for the doctrine, and that therefore it is open to doubt, or even that it is not credible.
"But," they say, "what can we do? Convocation has repeatedly discussed this question of what it calls 'Modernism,' and has as often re-affirmed its determination not to tamper with any of the traditional doctrines of our Church. We entered the Church before we realized, or had even heard of, the arguments which now appear to us unanswerable; we believe that we are doing good work in our parishes; we believe very firmly in a Christianity which we do not think is dependent upon the miraculous and supernatural elements introduced long after its founder's death into the story of his life. Are we to give up our work because it involves the nominal acceptance of a doctrine which we consider to be of no great importance? Several generations must always pass away before any new idea permeates the mind of the general public, and so we are unable to obtain immediate acceptance of our views. Are we not justified in remaining at our posts, and in using the words of our creeds in a symbolic sense or with some private reservation? The public is not yet ripe to be told the truth."
This is not an altogether fanciful speech put into the mouth of an imaginary sceptical parson. Every man who has been on sufficiently intimate terms with clergymen, and has sufficient acquaintance with modern criticism of the doctrines of the Church to discuss theology with them, will know that it is but a paraphrase of what he has often heard said. In country parishes, here and there, parsons may yet be found who have never studied any criticism of their own doctrines; but, with these exceptions, the above speech closely indicates the attitude taken up by both the higher and the lower ranks of the clergy of to-day. And it is difficult not in some measure to sympathize with such an attitude, dishonest though it really is. We cannot demand that all men should be heroes unless, in our conceit, we believe that we ourselves would always be heroic. It requires a great deal of courage for these men to proclaim openly and aloud that they have ceased to believe in a doctrine in whose truth they have, on every Sunday for many years, officially affirmed their belief. It requires a great deal of courage to give up one's life's work, one's livelihood, and one's ambitions, and to confess a mistake which has been pointed out by those very same sceptics whose views, and whose objects even, one has hitherto regarded as altogether evil.
To few men does it fall to have to confess that an opinion they had hitherto always held, that something they had up till now always taught as irrefutable truth, that what will appear to others as the very cornerstone of their doctrines, is really false. To fewer still would such a confession mean loss of some, perhaps of all, income, deprivation of their social position, and possibly homelessness.
It is improbable that our leading clergy will ever candidly admit the validity of modern research and criticism so long as their careers in an Established Church depend upon the orthodoxy of their expressed opinions, and upon their adherence to the creeds which were taken over from the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation.
It is, apparently, easy to deceive oneself by appeals to Faith (which is too often a synonym for wilful blindness) when any other course means the loss of all that one has been taught to hold dear, and also the loss of a hard-earned position in life.
Charitably we must give credit for self-deception to distinguished ecclesiastics and to other clergymen who evidently fully realize that such doctrines as that of the Virgin Birth are untenable, but who do not candidly admit their disbelief in them; who, on the contrary, elude the making of definite pronouncements on the question by discussing symbolical and allegorical and metaphorical interpretations, and thus attempt to connect some remote spiritual values with grossly material mythology. They deceive themselves, we must suppose, into thinking that some good cause is served by acquiescence in deceit, and into believing that an ethical superstructure need not necessarily be founded upon the bed-rock of truth. Such self-deception is the only charitable explanation of essays which practically admit the invalidity of these doctrines being written by men who retain positions theoretically tenable only by those who accept, without any reservation, the creeds of our Anglican Prayer-book.
By any one who has followed the theological and ecclesiastical controversies of recent years, the gradual surrender of this Virgin Birth doctrine, veiled though that surrender still is, will have already been noticed, and the names of the principal ecclesiastical dignitaries who have tacitly admitted that surrender will be well known.
Having, however, no desire to indulge in personalities, nor to pick out by name from so many clerical sceptics those who have already aroused the indignation of the less well-informed members of the orthodox flock, the only names which will be here mentioned are those openly affixed to the title-pages of the books quoted.
The attention of those hitherto ignorant of the existence of clerical scepticism on this subject must now be drawn to the statements made by clergymen themselves during the past few years, and to do this without mentioning any names is impossible, since when quotations are made from published books it is only fair to mention their names, so that the reader may, if he desires, not only verify the words quoted, but also study their context. Where, however, the words quoted do not appear under their actual speaker's name in any generally accessible book, or are the words of accusers and not of the accused, names will be omitted.
In 1902 a learned bishop, in a lecture upon "The Historical Trustworthiness of the Gospels," stated that "the evidence of our Lord's birth of a virgin was not part of the original Apostolic teaching."
In 1917, when a well-known dean was created a bishop, a loud outcry arose among the more conservative of the orthodox to the effect that he was a heretic and did not believe in "an Incarnation effected by miracles," and had stated that the nature of "Our Lord was a severely normal humanity," and that the story of the Virgin Birth was "generally assumed by the learned to belong less to history than to poetry."
Another very well-known and influential ecclesiastic, a dean of great learning and eloquence, has written a series of essays in which he practically admits the validity of modern criticism of this and other Christian doctrines. He occupies one of the most distinguished positions in the Church, and attracts crowded congregations to listen to his sermons. Yet he has apparently ceased to believe in the creeds which are repeated in his cathedral.
Referring to a certain bishop's refusal to ordain deacons who do not ex animo believe in the creeds, though the same bishop allowed some latitude of belief in the case of the Thirty-nine Articles to which the candidate had-at the same time-to make his formal assent, the Dean states that, though there are some men who abstain from entering the Church because they are required to give their assent to these creeds,
"There are many others who recognize that knowledge grows and opinions change, while formularies for the most part remain unaltered; and who consider that, so long as their general position is understood by those among whom they work, it would be over-scrupulous to refuse an inward call to the ministry because they know that they will be asked to give a formal assent to unsuitably worded tests drawn up three centuries ago . . . . No loyal Christian wishes to impugn a doctrine which touches so closely the life of the Redeemer as the account of his miraculous conception, which appears, in our texts, in two books of the New Testament. If the tradition is as old as the Church, which is very doubtful, it must, from the nature of the case, rest on the unsupported assertion of Mary, the mother of Jesus; for Joseph could only testify that the child was not his.
It is therefore useless to reinforce the Gospel narrative by appealing to "Catholic tradition," as if it could add anything to the evidence. It is significant, however, of the Bishop's own feelings about tradition that he quietly sets aside the plain statement of the Synoptic Gospels that Joseph and Mary had a large family of four sons and more than one daughter by their marriage. This statement, which is doubtless historical, became intolerable to the conscience of the Church during the long frenzy of asceticism, when marital relations were regarded as impure and degrading; and in consequence the perpetual virginity of Mary, though contradicted in the New Testament, became as much an article of faith as her conception of Jesus by the Holy Ghost, . . . . it becomes a duty to point out that, on ordinary principles of evidence, the story must share the uncertainty which hangs over other strange and unsupported narratives . . . . We should have preferred to be silent on this delicate subject but for the fact that some men whom the Church can ill spare have been advised officially not to apply for ordination on account of their views about this miracle. Fortunately, the practice of demanding more specific declarations than the law requires has not been adopted in most dioceses."
When some of our bishops and deans range themselves upon the side of all modern learning, disbelieve in the Virgin Birth, and treat the Resurrection story as an allegory, is it not time to alter the articles of faith, and to admit to the ministry those who are unable to subscribe to those ancient accretions to Christianity, the Creeds, but who would, if they were allowed to do so, take part in the work of social regeneration to which the Churches hold the keys? An honest and open repudiation, instead of a tacit acquiescence in other men's repudiations, would enable a large body of fervent workers to co-operate in whatever good work these ecclesiastics have at heart, and would alienate only those who are both ignorant and conservative.
These bishops, when an outcry arises among such folk, appear to lose courage. They recede from the critical standpoint which has alarmed their followers and endangered their positions, they recant the "heresies" of their more independent days, and they avoid as far as possible all further references to doctrines so difficult to believe and so dangerous to deny. When we turn from the "we would if we dared" attitude of these Churchmen in conspicuous places to the theologians who are more free to speak their own minds, we still find the same hesitation openly to avow the doubts by which even the most orthodox are assailed.
In modern orthodox apologetics the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is generally avoided. The word "Incarnation" is, it is true, often used, but only in such a way that it might mean anything. That the reader of these apologetics is unlikely to believe the Virgin Birth story seems taken for granted, but instead of a frank grappling with the doctrine we find such assertions as these:-
"Some doctrine of the divinity of Christ is necessary." Though "we are not concerned with the exact meaning or formulation of the identity thus asserted" (in the orthodox creeds) "between Jesus and God," we must regard his death "as the act of God himself."
"If he were not God . . . . ," his goodness would be of no importance; so we must think of him differently from the way we think of Socrates, for example. And so, for these reasons, we look upon his self-sacrificing death as "an essential part of the activity whereby God is God."
" . . . . we need an assurance of the triumph of good in the world at large; and for such an assurance we need to believe that the life and character of Jesus were, in a pre-eminent sense, the life and character of God." By which we mean "at least that God was in Christ in such sense that the work of Christ was the work of God, and the character of Christ a clue to the character of God."
"And the practical meaning of the assertion of the divinity of Christ is that these qualities [inexhaustible love of men and readiness for self-sacrifice in their behalf] characterize God himself."
"This [change of character and abandonment of self to the will power of another] is what the Greek Fathers were trying to express when they thought of Christ as uniting in himself the substance of Divinity with the substance of Humanity which is present in all individual men. The expression was imperfect, because too materialistic; but the idea which they were trying to express is vital to any theology of the Atonement."
So these apparently are the best explanations orthodox scholars can give of the words: "Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary." It is diluted Gnosticism, but apparently the best defence that can now be offered for the retention in our creeds of an "imperfect expression."
It purports to be a "re-statement" of Christian doctrine, but it is really a polite denial of that doctrine- a denial concealed as much as possible under a torrent of words.
We need a certain assurance because it is vital to some other theological doctrine; for that assurance we need a certain belief; therefore we accept that belief. That belief is not indeed the same as that expressed in the creeds; but that expressed in the creeds may, if watered down until it retains only a metaphorical meaning, have some sort of resemblance to it. As the doctrine, when expressed in crude terms, is incredible, we are to regard it as having a new and esoteric meaning.
Once more we refuse to face actual facts, and try, unsuccessfully, to devise imaginary facts to suit our theories.
If this new Gnosticism meant-as it logically should mean-the repudiation of all the metaphysical orthodox doctrines of the Incarnation, and a concurrent concentration upon the Spirit of Christianity, expressed not only in the lives led by the Neo-Gnostics, but also in the ideals which they preach, no sceptic could reasonably complain of the still remaining vestiges of mysticism which characterize it; but to the orthodox apologists it means nothing of the kind.
It only means, it appears, that the unavowed Gnostic retains the verbal doctrine and his own claim to orthodoxy, though he does not believe in those doctrines, or at any rate does not believe them in their ordinary literal sense, and though his only better claim to orthodoxy than other heretics is that he desires to remain in the State Church.
Rather than cut himself adrift from his Church, rather than desert those whom he regards as his fellow soldiers in battle, he stifles his thoughts, he tries to doubt his own doubts, and in torrents of rhetoric he attempts to conceal from others what he can no longer hide from himself. Like some financiers on the eve of bankruptcy, he postpones the evil moment by devising and issuing balance-sheets which do not disclose the real position of affairs.
Again, we find in this same work, as a re-statement of the Virgin Birth doctrine, the assertion that "the real Incarnation consisted in the demonstration that God is Love . . . . " This gets over "the supernatural conception of [Jesus, which it is] difficult to accept on intellectual grounds," but leaves nothing at all of the orthodox doctrine.
Though we are at a loss to understand how a demonstration can be an Incarnation, we are not now quarrelling with the re-statement; we only point out that repudiation would be a better word than re-statement, and ask how we can honestly repeat the creeds if we accept this new definition of the word "Incarnation."
All the other theories by which theologians have endeavoured, while surrendering the fact of the Virgin Birth, to retain the doctrine of the Incarnation are equally open to the objection that they retain phrases from which all meaning has been abstracted.
Some of these are briefly mentioned by Lobstein in his essay on "The Virgin Birth of Christ," to which students can refer. Here we are not concerned with mystical theories of an incarnate "Word," or of the re-incarnation of a pre-existing Being, but with the doctrine that Jesus was "conceived" by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin; and that doctrine is not in any measure salved by postulating some totally different theory of Divine incarnation, even if any of these theories were comprehensible or supported by any evidence. This, as a matter of fact, none of them are. To say, as some of the apologists do, that, as Jesus was God, he must have been miraculously born, is to reverse the usual argument and substitute the question for its answer-to assume what is required to be proved, and make that assumption evidence of the proofs. It used to be argued that the fact of the Virgin Birth was evidence that Jesus was God; some of the new defenders of the faith say that the fact that Jesus is God is evidence that he was born of a virgin!
Again, to say that even if the Virgin Birth is not an historical fact it is "a religious truth," may be good theology, but is certainly bad logic. And that, apparently, is the best claim that many theologians can make for the retention of the doctrine.
This distinction between historic facts and religious facts was originally made by Catholics, and is, it appears, supported by some such argument as this:-
No event which happened at any particular moment of time and in any particular region of space is of any importance whatever. Historians may concern themselves with such matters, but philosophers are not interested in them. The only things which are real, the only things which are of importance, are men's conceptions. Even if Jesus never lived, Christ has for ages lived in men's minds. That imaginary Christ was born of a virgin and rose from the dead. That Christ is everlasting. That Christ is real.
This, unless we greatly misunderstand them, is their idea of a religious truth which is independent of historical truth.
So they repeat the creeds about an Ideal, and regard that Ideal as Reality! So, though the allegations upon which its original doctrines were founded may be exploded, the Church still stands secure upon a metaphysical basis!
The Church remains. Another shake to the kaleidoscope gives a new pattern to the old doctrines. The Church is all-important; the truth of doctrines is unimportant. The Church is everlasting; facts are but fleeting episodes. The Church has always been the idol of Catholic theologians, and those who foresee its old supports in ruins hasten to prop up the structure with anything that comes to hand, lest it fall with them. In the eternal flux of all things, its shape may dissolve into new forms, but so long as it preserves its entity its lovers will think that they can trace the lineaments of its romantic youth. The very perversity of their arguments is a measure of the feeling which these modernists have of the impossibility of defending the doctrines of their Church as facts.
"It does not follow that harmony of faith with the truths of reason and facts of experience is the best or essential condition of its credibility."
"It rests with each of us by an act of will to create the sort of world to which we shall accommodate our thought and action."
In other words, because our faculties are limited, because our senses are imperfect guides, we are to dethrone our intellects and substitute our untrammelled wills as dictators! Most of us, however discontented we may be with our present rulers, will hesitate before we depose them in favour of autocrats so irresponsible and contentious-rulers whose capacity for forming wise judgments seems even more limited and imperfect than that of our present ones.
Whatever may be the fate of this doctrine of the Virgin Birth, it will not be retained if its retention involves an avowed abrogation of reason and experience.
Some theologians are anxious to part with, if they cannot satisfactorily "re-state," the doctrine, and believe that Christianity would remain as strong or stronger without it. Whether that is so or not so time will certainly show, as, tacitly or openly, even the orthodox are gradually surrendering a position which they find is no longer tenable.
At every Church Conference and at most Convocations the subject crops up, and the lament is heard that "orthodoxy is in ruins."
At a Conference of the Churchmen's Union held last year at Cambridge, a learned doctor of divinity said that "our study of Christ's life showed us him with a fully human nature and consciousness of intimacy with God and dependence on him, never a consciousness of actually being himself other than human. The orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation could only be maintained to-day by help of the very doubtful hypothesis of a complete depotentiation of the divine son."
Hundreds of similar statements could be quoted from speeches delivered at other congresses of professedly orthodox clergy and laymen. And not only Anglican but Roman Catholic priests also disbelieve this Virgin Birth doctrine and yet find it compatible with their disbelief to retain their positions in the Church and to repeat its creeds.
Some "devout Catholics . . . . believe Joseph to have been the real and natural father of Jesus," and some of these devout Catholics are priests. These priests, it appears, defend their equivocal position by saying that they use the word "virgin" as meaning " young woman," thus reversing the process by which Isaiah's Hebrew word "almah" was erroneously translated "virgin." In their desire to retain their old creeds they are reduced to such quibbles.
We can perhaps sympathize with, though we cannot excuse, those who refuse to part openly with their former beliefs, even when they can no longer credit them. It is not ignoble to stick to old friends long after we have discovered them to be altogether untrustworthy; but it is reprehensible to insist that others should also trust them, and it is both reprehensible and ignoble to stick to them merely from fear of what others will say. It cannot be right for leaders of opinion to use their influence to make men place their trust in doctrines which they do not themselves trust.
At a Church Congress held in Birmingham during October, 1921, the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking of the repudiation of the old "creedal verities," said:-
"Nor, I think, are there many thoughtful people among those who "profess and call themselves Christians" who can read without disquiet some of the phrases, negative or critical, taken from formal utterances which have recently been given to us by responsible theologians of the Church. They come to us in the garb, quite honestly worn, of an adventurous attempt to include within the ambit of a reasonable Christian faith what seems to most of us strangely like a repudiation of the very essence and intention of our Creeds. Such adventures, however you describe them, are not unnatural in an age of eager thought, new discovery, and scientific as well as theological unrest. We can appreciate their generous motive, whatever our view as to the manner or success of its accomplishment. But the utmost carefulness is necessary as to the way in which these expressions are made public . . . . Personally, I think that we shall increasingly find the gain of resting upon old words rather than on new, realizing always that the old phraseology, with all its steadying force, has, partly from the very fact of its age, been "patient," and is "patient" still, of different interpretation and different application from one generation to another......."
"The Creeds, we are assured, are out of date. I have spoken of the absolute need of an alert and open mind for the assimilation of new knowledge upon the things of Christ as the changeful generations pass. But I definitely disbelieve in the redrafting of our ancient Creed, either by central authority or by local enterprise. Were it not that I know the earnestness as well as the learning of those from whom the recommendation comes, I should, when I remember that we have in England some 14,000 parishes, find it difficult to take seriously such words as these: "Modern Churchmen should have the right to modify the use of the Creeds, and to produce, if they will, alternative Creeds for use in parishes where they are desired by the parishioners, provided always that this be done in a wise, loving, and orderly fashion, and with the authority of the Bishop." Poor Bishop! If there be a matter in which it is wise to rest on the old bases, "stare super antiquas vias," it is here. Of course, the actual words, as such, have no imperishable value. They belong to and are limited by the thoughts-theological, metaphysical, scientific-of the age in which they were written; and we have a right, when using them, and when interpreting their phrasal meaning, to give due weight to the growth of human knowledge. But, so far as experience has yet shown us, they will not, when rightly used, fail us in our need."
Not a word, be it noted, did he speak in defence of the truth of those creeds which he desires to retain because of the insuperable difficulty of re-drafting them in a manner which would satisfy the various congregations of 14,000 parishes, though, "of course, the actual words, as such, have no imperishable value." It is expediency, not truth, which concerns him.
The clergy who afterwards spoke in this same Congress were similarly silent about the truth of the doctrines which had been attacked. They discussed in vague terms whether some undefined differences of opinion should not be permitted within the folds of the Church. Reluctant as one must be to criticize individuals who are moved, as one believes, by motives fundamentally good, can one refrain from stigmatizing such speeches as these as intellectually dishonest? Whatever the motives may be that prompt men to say that expressions of truth should not, without precautions, be made public, such secrecy can serve no good end.
There can be no two or more different interpretations of plain statements of fact, and it is mere delusion-of self and of others-to speak of such various interpretations.
Another prelate has recently published his views upon this question. The Bishop of Ontario, having studied the criticisms made on the Church's creeds at the Cambridge Conference of the Churchmen's Union in 1921, takes pen in hand, not, as might be expected by the faithful, to defend the truth of those creeds which he periodically repeats, but to point out some of the probable consequences of amending them. He claims to speak on behalf of "the plain man," of members of his flock who are not expert theologians-who are, in short, "ignorant no doubt of the theological speculations and conflicts" of which the creeds were the outcome. Of this plain man the Bishop says:-
"Some well-meaning people would like him to be troubled by the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. But he refuses to be troubled. It fits in with his conceptions of Christ as the Son of God, and he considers that the evidence for it is just about as strong as for any other fact concerning Christ. He is well aware that the ascension into heaven and the session at the right hand of God can only be symbolical representations of the truths they are intended to convey; but he does not see how these truths could be more effectively set forth if they were translated into language believed to be more in accordance with modern ideas."
Doubtless the Bishop's feelings would be extremely hurt if he knew that some of these plain men of whom he speaks call it dishonest to say things which are not true, and would regard themselves as liars if they stood up in church and stated that they believed "he ascended into heaven," when what they actually believe is something indefinable, of which these words are now said to be only a symbolical representation. The Bishop's "plain man" -apparently an uneducated one-may find that the Virgin Birth doctrine fits in with his conceptions of Christ as the Son of God, but he does so because he has formed his conception of Christ as the Son of God from the Virgin Birth story which the Bishop and his colleagues have assured him is true-not because he has studied the evidence and discovered, like the Bishop, that every other dogma concerning Christ is based on evidence equally flimsy. The doctrine must be retained, so the Bishop argues, because, "so far from hindering, it helps his [the plain man's] belief." And so he goes on, without making any claim or presence that the doctrine is true, to urge its retention because it is the cornerstone of orthodox Christianity.
"Modernist Christology may of course be the true explanation of the facts . . . . but to the plain wayfaring man it is no sort of substitute for his belief in him 'who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate also for us.'"
Can a prelate who thus sums up his argument for the retention of the ancient dogmas complain if he is accused of having no regard for the truth? Can he complain of men's indifference to the religion which he teaches when he practically admits that its doctrines are only retained because their retention will enable him and his ecclesiastical fellows to keep their hold on "the plain man"? What scorn would he not pour upon the priest of any other cult who showed such indifference to actual historical facts, such a neglect of logic, and such acquiescence in, and even encouragement of, deception? That he and others fear the results which might follow an acknowledgment of past errors is no excuse for attempting to conceal the errors, or for, still worse, continuing to affirm their belief in them.
The attitude of these leading ecclesiastics reminds one of the words written about eighty years ago with reference to all that mass of myths which mediaeval Christians taught and believed-myths so ridiculous that no one now credits them; myths about miracles performed by saints, voyages made by the apostles, and tricks played by the Devil.
"Moreover, far from being combated by the clergy, the popular errors were ardently supported by them; they saw in them a means of re-exciting public devotion, and without doubt also of binding the people to sacerdotal authority by a faith which was all the more ardent the more it was ignorant."
But the clergy should not forget that men and women of the twentieth century are better educated, and therefore less credulous, than men and women of the Middle Ages, and that the policy of pandering to ignorance can only postpone, and not avert, the day when all men will know what they themselves already know.
Until archbishops, bishops, and lesser clergy pluck up courage and firmly grasp the nettle which at present they finger so gently, they will suffer, and quite rightly suffer, from their own dishonest timidity. To baser motives will be imputed their equivocal positions. So long as they refuse to discard a doctrine in which only their most ignorant followers believe, so long will they run the risk that men who cannot credit it will also suspect that the moral values which they themselves connect with that doctrine are equally open to doubt. No good cause can find support for ever from a discredited doctrine. Some men for all time, all men for some time, may be induced to accept it; but all men will certainly not accept it for all time.
We have now completed our survey of the Virgin Birth story; but lest, in reading so great an accumulation of evidence, the argument has been lost sight of, a brief summary may not be out of place. That argument was as follows:-
First, that the evidence for this occurrence is very meagre and very contradictory.
Secondly, that for such a story to be credible it would require to be supported by really reliable evidence from witnesses of whom something is known; whereas our witnesses are unknown men, writing at an unknown date, but a date that must have been at least a hundred years after the events they describe.
Thirdly, that a very large number of other stories of virgin and otherwise miraculous births were told and believed at this period in the world's history, though none of them were true.
Fourthly, that men were ready to accept such stories without any adequate inquiry, as in those days men had very curious ideas about what was physically possible in matters of conception.
Fifthly, that many early Christian sects had never heard, or, if they had heard, did not believe, this story; though some of them told somewhat similar metaphorical stories.
Sixthly, that, if the authors of the chapters in which the story is told wished to invent such a story, they could have found all the details, which form part of it, in other and older stories about gods.
And, lastly, that the doctrine itself, and the rites and ceremonies connected with it in the heyday of Catholicism, before the Protestant split, were pagan in origin.
Those are the points which have to be considered before we can affirm our belief that Jesus was born of a virgin human woman and "conceived by the Holy Ghost" or by God himself. And those are the points which have been considered by all those modern divines who no longer believe, though they dare not publicly disown, the Virgin Birth doctrine.
Next: APPENDIX I CHRISTMAS DAY