Why the Virgin Birth?
How did the early church fathers end up thinking along the lines they did about Mary? That is to venerate her as sinless and a perpetual virgin. As a protestant I could not imagine how good Christians could ever go there. One line of thought they might have followed is to ask themselves about the virgin birth. It is clearly taught in scripture so there is no doubt it happened. The question is why did Jesus need to be born or a virgin? What was the point?
The first thing I thought of was that it was evidence that His birth was miraculous. But a miracle is only useful as evidence if it is verifiable. The virgin birth can’t be independently verified. It is to easy to say Mary lied. If you don’t suppose she would lie you could speculate she might have been drugged and raped. This could explain the hallucination of the angel as well. It is not like the resurrection where the evidence is hard to explain away. The virgin birth is only believable if we already accept Jesus as a miraculous person.
So if it isn’t much help in convincing people of who Jesus what else is there? Why would God want Jesus to be born of a virgin? It seems like God had a reason for making the mother of Jesus to be pure and holy. There is a logic in that. Once you accept that this is the most likely reason for the biblical phenomenon of the virgin birth then it makes sense to ask how far that purity and holiness goes. Does the logic of her virginity end when Jesus is born? Does the logic of purity and holiness extend to sinlessness? Why would God go halfway in making her pure and holy?
I can see the logic in God making Jesus’ mother evil. He might want to demonstrate His power to work good things from unholy means. I can also see the logic in God making Jesus’ mother very holy. Those two extremes both make sense as possibilities. The protestant position of a mother who is unremarkable makes less sense. To say Mary was not really specially good or bad seems seems to miss the significance of what is happening through her. It makes the angel’s superlative in Luke 1:53 seem out of place.
