The gospels teach and the liturgy proclaims that Jesus Christ was born on earth from the Virgin Mary. According to the “mind of Christ” which is given to believers by the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit (see 1 Cor 2), it is evident that it could not be otherwise. The reason is simple. Jesus is the Son of God. God is His Father from all eternity. If there is anything unique, original, totally unprecedented in the scriptures, and absolutely undeniable about the teaching of Jesus Himself, it is this: He, and only He, can call the Most High God, Abba, Father! He does so in the pages of the gospels nearly two hundred times.
Jesus’ father is God. Therefore He can have no human father. He has to be born of a virgin. Saint Matthew sees the virgin birth as the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel (which means, God with us)” (Mt 1: 23; Is 7: 14). Although scholars dispute the word “virgin” in this text, saying that it can also mean “young woman,” it is clear from the Greek word used by the evangelist, as well as from his entire narrative, that he literally means a virgin who has had no intercourse with a human husband.1
Although there are certain discrepancies between the infancy narratives in the gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, there is no discrepancy at all concerning the virgin birth of Jesus. Saint Luke gives the story in greatest detail. Mary asks the angel directly about how the birth can take place when she says, “I have no husband” (Lk 1:34). We all know the angel’s answer.
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” (Lk 1:35)
Church tradition claims that Saint Luke received the story of Christ’s birth from Mary herself, seeing in his statement, “and His mother kept all these things in her heart,” a not-so-veiled reference to the source of his information (Lk 2: 51). But whatever the case, his teaching is clear. The Messiah is God’s Son who has no human father (see Lk 3: 23).
A great and marvelous wonder has happened today:
A virgin bears a child
And her womb suffers no corruption.
The Word is made flesh
Yet does not cease to dwell with the Father.
Angels with shepherds give glory,
And with them we cry aloud:
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.2
Why are you filled with wonder, O Mary?
Why are you amazed at what has happened In you?
“I have given birth in time to the timeless Son,
Yet I do not understand how I conceived Him.
I have not known a man;
How then could I bear a child?
Who has ever seen a birth without seed?
But as it is written:
When God wills, the order of nature is overcome.”
Christ is born of the Virgin in Bethlehem of Judea!3
~Adapted from Thomas Hopko, The Winter Pascha: Readings for the Christmas-Epiphany Season
1 Some also claim that the Isaiah text has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus but indicates a happening in the prophet’s own time. Whether or not this is so has little to do with the use of the text in the gospels since, in classical Christian interpretation, the prophets need not know the ultimate meaning of their words, and many historical events in Israel’s history are taken as “types” or “figures” of events to take place later, with a totally new meaning, in the messianic age. It is interesting to note that the prophet’s words to Ahaz, “The Lord Himself will give you a sign,” have given rise in Orthodox tradition to the name for the icon of the Virgin Mary with her hands extended in the praying position and the Christ Child depicted within her. It is called the “Theotokos of the Sign,” or simply the icon of “the Sign.”
2 Compline of the feast of the Nativity. The use of expressions such as “without corruption” or “without defilement” for the birth of Christ and the womb of Mary are “ontological” not “ethical” statements, The point is that Christ’s birth takes place in a miraculous manner, leaving Mary’s virginity intact. This in no way compromises the reality of the birth as “opening Mary’s womb” since the gospel claims that her womb was opened (Lk 2:23), and the icons of the feast depict midwives washing the newborn Christ Child. The Church opposes any attempt to deny, or even to minimize, the genuiness of Christ’s humanity, which is officially defined by the fourth ecumenical council in Chalcedon as identical to our own. See above, pp. 95-96.
3 Matins of the feast of the Nativity.
