Tin yous question the virgin birth and nonetheless exist a Christian?

A painting of the Proclamation on the high altar of the Servitenkirche in Vienna (Dreamstime)

It's a tough sell: A immature, unmarried teenager gets meaning, but the father isn't a homo but God himself. And the girl is a virgin -- and (some believe) remains i even after she delivers a strapping baby male child.

That'due south the story of the virgin nascency, one of the central tenets of religion for the earth's 2 billion Christians. The story is embraced by every branch of Christianity, from Eastern Orthodoxy to Mormonism, Catholic and Protestant.

And still, many theologians, pastors and other Christians say the virgin birth gets short shrift at Christmastime. Finding the thought hard to swallow, many believers would rather focus on the beautiful little baby in the manger instead of the unusual way he got at that place.

Yet for other Christians, the virgin nativity is a bargain-breaker. Yous can equivocate about other biblical miracles, such equally whether Mary'due south son was really able to turn water into vino, just the virgin birth must exist accepted as gospel.

Without it, they say, much of Christianity falls apart.

"To remove the miraculous from Christmas is to remove this primal story of Christianity," said Gary Burge, a professor of New Attestation at Wheaton College. "Information technology would dismantle the very center of Christian thought and take abroad the keystone of the arch of Christian theology."

Why is the virgin birth the lynchpin of Christianity? Was it miracle or metaphor? And can you phone call yourself a Christian if you can't take the idea?

For Burge, an evangelical and author of Theology Questions Everyone Asks, the virgin nativity is essential. His thinking goes similar this: If Jesus was non virgin-born, then he was not the son of God; if he was non the son of God, then he was just another crucified man and not the cede that would redeem the sins of the globe.

"In Jesus, nosotros don't have a prophet who merely speaks as a human beingness almost God. We accept a son of God who presents the father to us," he said. "It is a huge difference, absolutely huge. Put in jeopardy the Virgin nativity ... and Christianity but becomes a man gesture instead of a divine revelation."

Burge's thinking has a lot of followers. A recent Pew Inquiry Middle poll institute that nearly three in four Americans think the virgin birth is historically accurate. Amidst evangelicals, the effigy is even higher: 96 pct.

Just the virgin birth is plant in only two of the four Gospels. In Matthew, an affections tells Joseph: "Exercise non fearfulness to take Mary as your married woman, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." In Luke, an angel tells Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Almost High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy -- the Son of God."

Mary'south famous response -- "How can this exist?" -- has been echoed by skeptics and believers ever since. Some translations have Mary citing her virginity or her condition equally a single woman or, more cryptically, "I know non a man."

Some scholars see the absence of the virgin birth in the other ii Gospels -- John and Mark -- as bear witness that the story originated after Jesus' death. Information technology was a way to make Jesus special, to testify he was who he said he was to a skeptical earth.

Only Ben Witherington, a professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, finds proof of the virgin birth in its supernatural aspects. Why, he said, would anyone wanting to create a new religion arts and crafts such a far-fetched story?

"Matthew and Luke feel compelled to tell the states the story because they are utterly convinced that is how it happened," he said. "Nobody would believe them unless there was clear, compelling evidence information technology really happened. If yous but wanted nice metaphors that would not enhance anyone's hackles, this is not the story you would come up with."

Other scholars bespeak to the writings of the Apostle Paul. Paul's life overlapped with Jesus (fifty-fifty though they never met), withal he also never mentions the virgin nascency. He says Jesus was "born of a woman" and his birth was "nether the police." Some scholars say Paul doesn't specify a virgin birth because there wasn't one; others say his words imply Jesus did non have an earthly father.

Withal the story originated, past 381 A.D., the belief in information technology was formalized in the Nicene Creed, a profession of faith used past all branches of Christianity except Mormonism. Although dissimilar versions vary in the verbal diction, the creed says that Jesus "came down from heaven, and was incarnate past the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made human."

But some contemporary Christians see it every bit a metaphor, not a miracle. For John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop and author of Born of a Woman, the story becomes more powerful when stripped of its supernatural elements.

"Mary had to produce without losing her virginity, and that'due south an interesting trick," Spong said. "I think that denigrates our humanity. Biology is kind of wonderful -- a man and woman are in dearest and they create a kid that represents both of them, and I think that is a powerful symbol and wonderful one."

Yet rethinking Mary to that extent goes too far for Christian Smith, a Notre Dame sociologist of religion.

"If God is not capable of a miracle like the Virgin birth, then what kind of God is that?" he said. "If you abandon the doctrine of Jesus being fully God and fully human, then he becomes just a great teacher. But and then what is the point of the decease on the cantankerous if it doesn't necktie dorsum to God incarnate, God with us?"

Gay Byron, a Presbyterian minister and a New Testament professor at Howard Academy, said i reason some Christians question the virgin birth is the church has done a by and large poor job of explaining information technology.

"At that place are many 'Marys' out at that place who find themselves in unexpected situations and often marginalized from support and encouragement to arrive through to a vocal of praise," she said. "Then this story matters today just as much as it mattered over ii,000 years ago. And so we who believe continue to share the story and open up new possibilities for connecting to the realities in our world today."

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