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January 18, 2005
In Defense of Mary the Virgin
[Originally published in Islam Online]
In their recent books entitled Mary: The Mother of Jesus and Mary: A Dogmatic Journey, two "Catholic" writers, the journalist Jacques Duquesne and the theologian Dominique Cerbelaud, display an overt disbelief in the virginity of Mary the mother of Jesus Christ. Mr. Duquesne argues that it is a belief that is "not compatible with science." Mr. Cerbelaud asserts that the faith in the virgin birth came about "for reasons that spring from collective psychology."
I believe both arguments to be inconsistent and based on a flawed understanding of science. Before explaining these, however, let me elaborate on why the virgin birth matters for me — since some non-Muslims might wonder why a Muslim cares about this controversy at all.
The Virgin Birth According to the Qur'an
As a Muslim, I am a passionate defender of the virgin birth of Christ, and all Muslims should be so. Why? Because this is one of the very important themes in the Qur'an.
The Qur'an tells a great deal about the birth, works, and miracles of Jesus (`Isa in Arabic). His story starts with the angels' call to Mary (Maryam in Arabic) by which they declare the miracle of God — a son without a father. Mary is surprised:
She said, "My Lord! How can I have a son when no man has ever touched me?" He said, "It will be so. God creates whatever He wills. When He decides on something, He just says to it, 'Be!' and it is." (Aal `Imran 3:47)
There are many passages in the Qur'an in which Mary is highly praised. We read that angels said to her, "Maryam, God has chosen you and purified you. He has chosen you over all other women" (Aal `Imran 3:42).
In another surah, An-Nisaa' 4:156, those who propose "a monstrous slander against Maryam" are cursed. Actually, there is quite a long surah in the Muslim Scripture titled "Maryam" (Mary) in which the nobility of Mary and the virgin birth is told in detail. In another surah, we read,
"Maryam, the daughter of `Imran, who guarded her chastity — We breathed Our Spirit into her and she confirmed the Words of her Lord and His Book and was one of the devout." (At-Tahrim 66:12)
These verses make clear that Mary — along with Jesus himself — is a sacred figure for all Muslims. Thus, any disrespect, insult, or attack on Mary or Jesus Christ is directed also toward Islam. We can add Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, and many other Old Testament figures to the list — they are all praised in the Qur'an.
I suspect this will be news to some non-Muslims. But what is stranger still is that it will be news to some Muslims, too. Unfortunately, we see a lack of passion in the Islamic world when it comes to the defense of prophets other than Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). He is, of course, the Prophet of Islam and very dear to us Muslims, but the Qur'an in Surat An-Nisaa' 4:152, orders that Muslims should not "differentiate between any of [God' Messengers]."
We Muslims should rediscover that Qur'anic principle. We should also realize that defense of faith is not done by slandering or assaulting its critics in barbarity, but by refuting their arguments in civility. Let me now concentrate on the latter.
Are Miracles "Unscientific"?
I have said that the arguments put forward by Jacques Duquesne and Dominique Cerbelaud about the virgin birth are inconsistent. The reason is that the earliest sources that tell us about the virgin birth — the Gospels — are also the earliest sources from which we learn that a woman named Mary actually lived. Mary is the devout Jewish woman who gave birth to Jesus Christ without a biological father, according to the Gospels — and from a Muslim point of view, according to the Qur'an.
One can reject the Gospels, of course, but how can one then be rightfully called a Christian? If one proclaims to be a Christian — as Duquesne and Cerbelaud apparently do — then how can one question the virgin birth? British writer A. N. Wilson, in his book Jesus, which is "written with a profound skepticism about Christianity," points out that, "there is no logical justification for dividing the infancy narratives of the New Testament from the rest."
Not surprisingly, in fact, the doubts and denials about the virgin birth come not from any internal evidence in the Gospels — or any historical account, for that matter — but from an incredulity that derives from its supposed clash with "science." This would seem most probably to be the real prime mover of Duquesne and Cerbelaud. The virgin birth is obviously a miracle, and they take it for granted that a belief in miracles is "unscientific." In fact, this is a common trait among modern thinkers when faith in any miracle is expressed.
Yet, that is also exactly where they are wrong. In fact, science doesn't tell us that miracles can't happen. It only tells us that miracles don't happen now. It shows that the natural world around us is operating within constant laws of physics and chemistry. Thanks to these laws, fire always burns, the dead never arise, and nobody walks on water. However, science can't tell us that this was always the case in history nor that this necessarily will always be so in every instance in the future.
The belief that this was always the case in history does not come from "science," but from a philosophy called naturalism. Naturalism holds that nature is all there is and there are no supernatural entities, such as God, to have influence over nature. This philosophic view is a belief, not a testable, observable fact. Therefore, when people object to the virgin birth or other miracles told in the Qur'an, they are doing so not because of science, but because of their faith in naturalism.
The Demise of Naturalism
However, there would seem to be some very bad news emerging for the naturalists. Science, which they used to see as their main instrument and ally, has turned against them in recent decades. The more we learn about the natural world, the more we come to realize that what might be legitimately termed "miracles" really happened in the past.
One big nail in the coffin of naturalism has been the Big Bang theory, which showed that the universe had a beginning. The discovery of a genesis of the natural world was a major blow to atheists such as Carl Sagan, who used to reiterate the naturalist dogma, "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be," as if it were a scientific fact, in his TV series Cosmos, which was nothing more than atheist indoctrination.
A second big nail has been the Anthropic Principle, as scientists call it. This means that virtually all the constants of the physical world, including the structure of our galaxy or the Solar System, are constructed in the best possible way to accommodate human life. This "fine-tuning" of the universe speaks for a supernatural design and intervention in the natural world — a more technical definition of what we call a "miracle."
Yet a third big nail in naturalism' coffin has been the discovery of greater and deeper complexities of life. These complexities refute the widespread myth that Darwinism is an adequate explanation of the origin and diversity of life on earth. That' why the late Francis Crick, an atheist and co-discoverer of DNA, had to use the "M-word" when he declared, "the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."
The more we learn about the natural world, the more naturalism looks incredible and miracles look factual. The most recent and spectacular testimony to this fact has been the conversion of arch-atheist Anthony Flew to theism. At age 81, after decades of fierce atheism, Anthony Flew has concluded, "some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe." He added, "A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature."
Christians, Be Christians!
In a world where dedicated atheists come to realize the existence of "a super-intelligence" that shaped the natural world, it is surprising to see "Christians" who deny that the "super-intelligence" in question has intervened in history.
Here, then, we have mainly a theological problem, but also a practical one. As a Muslim, I see Christianity as my ally in the effort to redeem this misguided world — misguided by many forms of materialism, hedonism, lust, and arrogance. But I want to see my allies firm in their faith. And, of course, many of them are. But for those who are not, may I point out what the Qur'an says about Christians:
"The people of the Gospel should judge by what God sent down in it. Those who do not judge by what God has sent down, such people are deviators." (Al-Ma'idah 5:47)
The denial of the virgin birth and other miracles is such a deviation. We Muslims have to — and definitely will — stand against it.
Posted by Mustafa Akyol at January 18, 2005 3:56 PM
Mr.Akyol:
An excellent piece.
Speaking from within the Christian tradition, perhaps I can do a little to explain the occasional person who calls himself a "Christian" but who does not believe in the factuality of the virgin birth.
Keep in mind the difference between the claimed origin of the Koran, and the claimed origin of the Bible. In the former case, instructions and information delivered by God directly through a single messenger; in the latter, a collection of stories and recollections and instructions and information and morally/theologically-tinged literature written by men whose lives were deeply moved by God and whose words -- according to later assertions -- were therefore inspired by God. For Christians, it is the theological unity of the Bible in spite of its disparate sources which provides some of the evidence of divine intent and inspiration. (There is also, of course, the verse "all scripture is God-breathed..." but at the time that was uttered/written, "scripture" would have referred exclusively to the torah and tanakh.)
In the Bible, there are passages which are clearly parables; the Bible announces them as such. There are passages which are clearly histories written by an author with an "editorial slant" or agenda. There are passages which are mere eye-witness testimony. And there are passages which are literary and cultural, often written in verse. And, on occasion, Christians have debated in good faith about whether certain passages represent eye-witness testimony, or parable.
So, it is perhaps possible -- just barely -- for a person to call himself a "Christian" while not believing in, or expressing doubt in, the Virgin Birth. It is described in the beginning of two gospels (Matthew and Luke) and some (few) say that it was a later, fanciful, addition to them. Such a person could, as a scholarly opinion, argue that these hypothetical additions were not God-inspired, and represent a later corruption of the text.
If that same person nevertheless still held that Jesus (a.) was YHWH Himself in human form, (b.) taught the teachings recorded in the New Testament, especially including the forgiveness of sin, (c.) was crucified, buried, dead, but rose again on the third day, was seen by many witnesses in a glorified resurrected state, (d.) instructed his followers to "wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit" and to "make disciples of all men, teaching them what I have commanded you", and (e.) after making promises to return again at the "end times", vanished from the earth...if a person believed and acted upon all that, he could doubt the Virgin Birth and still call himself a Christian.
However, in my experience, most who doubt the Virgin Birth do so not on Christian grounds (that is to say, based on pure concern for the reliability of the text) but on Naturalist Philosophical grounds (that is, because a Virgin Birth would be a miracle, and they don't believe in miracles). Such a person might go on attending a Christian church all their lives, calling themselves a Christian on the basis of their family and upbringing and the holidays they observe, but they would not, in reality, be Christians.
For Christianity is a faith which holds the Supernatural as central: It holds that Jesus was no prophet, but that when he said, "Ye say that I AM", he was using the most emphatic Aramaic idiom ("Ye say" = "You have said it exactly correctly") and describing himself using the unspeakable name of God which God had told to Moses "I AM", or the Tetragrammaton YHWH, which can be construed as a form of the verb "to be", asserting "I Am, I have been, I always will be; I eternally AM."
The Incarnation and the Resurrection, then, are the core miracles of Christianity. The earliest Christians (circa AD 60) were already known for asserting that if these were not true, their beliefs were useless, but that anyone could ask around and examine the empty tomb, and learn the truth of these things, if they cared to do so.
What, then? Does that mean that, within the Christian tradition, one could deny every miracle EXCEPT the Incarnation and Resurrection, and still validly profess "Christianity"?
Probably not. As with the above example of the Virgin Birth, one can hypothetically suggest a person who doubted this miracle or that on the basis that the text was a later corruption, or that a particular passage was never intended, even by its author, to be taken entirely literally. The latter, indeed, is what many Christians (far more than those who doubt the Virgin Birth) believe about Genesis chapters 1 & 2, and about the Book of Job: They say, "Here we have cultural tall-tales, not eyewitness testimony: For the dialogue is spoken in verse (which human beings are not prone to do) and there was no human author present to be an eyewitness (as when satan and God discuss Job in heaven) and it provides a very mythical-sounding explanation for why snakes have no feet."
One can hypothetically suggest a person who was able to come up with similar "debunkings" of every miracle in the Bible apart from the Incarnation and Resurrection, and thereby achieve a sort of "lowest common denominator" form of Christian belief.
But it never happens that way. A person who asserted that SO many miracles were not factual would inevitably be doing so NOT out of an objection to so much of the text, but out of an objection to the existence of Miracles, ever. And such a person might call themselves "Christian", but they could not be in reality, Christian.
In Summary: Were this a century in Western Civilization similar to earlier centuries, I would say that "The debate between Naturalism and Supernaturalism is the great philosophical clash of our times." But it sadly isn't, because philosophical debate in the public square has been deeply undermined by the general ignorance of most opinion-leaders of all things philosophical.
Still, Naturalism has gained a privileged place in the academy for cultural and historical reasons which it could not have earned on the basis of logic alone, and nowadays it requires serious effort and thought for a Christian to overcome some of the Naturalistic assumptions in which our culture unknowingly swims, and live out his (entirely intellectually defensible) faith.
With you, Mr. Akyol, I exhort Christians to "be Christians"! Although the Virgin Birth question is, by itself, too specific to represent a clear diagnostic line between true Christianity and a mere cultural observance of Christian forms, the broader issue of genuine belief in (a.) the Supernatural, (b.) specifically, the God of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition, (c.) His Son, and (d.) the central miracles of Christianity IS a fairly clear line.
Christians are called by God to many things, but at a miniumum, they should conquer in themselves the errors of thought which are symptomatic of our age, and embrace, not a wishy-washy collection of platitudes, but the supernatural and sovereign deity who took the initiative to become their salvation. Christians, be Christians.
--R.C.Hamrick
Posted by: R.C.Hamrick at February 8, 2006 5:54 PM
I think that the previous post correctly tries make significant points. However, there is one glaring and disburbing error:
"For Christianity is a faith which holds the Supernatural as central: It holds that Jesus was no prophet, but that when he said, "Ye say that I AM"
Jesus not being prophet? This is a mistake that anyone informed with the basics of Christian theology should be able to avoid. Its true that in Christianity the nature and roles of Jesus as Deity, as Savior, as Teacher, Jesus as the Messiah, and as, King are important, And, these are emphasized much more (especially Jesus as deity, Jesus as savior, and Jesus as Messiah). Nevertheless, Jesus, according to the Bible and Christianity, IS a prophet. For example, In Matthew chapter 15, he does not perform miracles because his audience does honor him as a prophet:
"Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor"-- Matt. 13: 57
Later in the same Gospel, as Jesus approached Jerusalem, the crowds recognized him as such:
"The crowds answered, "This is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth into Galilee"-- Matt. 21:27
In Luke, when informed that Herod intended to kill him, he replied:
..."Go and tell that fox , "I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. In any case, I must keep gong today and tomorrow and the next day--for surely NO PROPHET can die outside Jerusalem"---Luke 13:32-33
One can make an entire Biblical study of the Prophetic nature of Jesus' ministry.
My point is, while there are important differences between Islam and Christianity, Jesus being a prophet is not one of them. I do think, though, that even if Christians have a good understanding about Jesus' prophetic role, it is still very easy for Christians and Muslims to talk past each other.
Its been my experience that when Muslims talk to Christians about Jesus' ministry, they do so as an effort to find common ground. The first few times this happened, I didn't see what was going on, and as a result, it took longer than necessary to break the ice. The problem, I see, is the difference in attitude towards Jesus in Christianity, and Muhammad in Islam. For Muslims, Muhuammad is the ultimate/last Prophet who revealed the Koran. So they figure (I admit, I am going out on a limb, so if I am mistaken, I would glady appreciate the correction) that Jesus must have performed a similar ministry for Christians. In other words, Just as Muhammad, as a Prophet received and delivered the Koran, Jesus, as a Prophet, delivered the Gospel (muslims call it the Ingil).
when Christians think about Jesus, however, they think of his role as savior (He that died on the cross and victoriously resurrected). So when they hear a Muslim discuss Muhammad and Jesus, a Christian may assume (I made this assumption before I read up on Islam) that Muhammad plays a similar role in Islam (at least as some sort of Savior).
When Muslims talk to a Christian about Jesus being a Prophet, thats their way of saying, "hey, I understand you are a Christian, and thats great!" Now, that doesn't mean that they don't want you to convert to Islam, but the point is, when the intent of a Muslim who discusses Jesus as a Prophet is to break the ice.
"Therefore, that faith in Christ may find a solid ground of salvation, and so rest him, we must set out with this principle, that the office with he received from the Father consists of three parts. For he was appointed ... Prophet, King, and Priest..." Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapter 15 (Jean Calvin).
Posted by: Victor at February 13, 2006 12:09 AM
Victor is correct; I goofed.
The error was an error of omission; when I stated that Jesus was "no prophet", my intended phrasing was "no mere prophet". For of course Christians believe that Jesus could and did perform the role of prophet. (My point, however, in context, is that Christians also believe that Jesus was far more than a prophet, and that the "more" includes items of a purely Supernatural and Miraculous nature.)
My bad. And here I thought I'd managed an error-free post for a change. The things that spell-check can't catch outnumber those it can.
Regards,
R.C.Hamrick
Posted by: R.C.Hamrick at February 15, 2006 3:12 AM
R.C. Hamrick., Maybe Microsoft can add a Theology Check feature to internet explorer ;)
I think you bring up a great point about Christianity and the roles of Jesus that go beyond being a prophet. Just think of how many Hymns and Praise songs are devoted to Jesus as Deity, Jesus as Savior, Jesus as Messiah, and Jesus as Lord.
I can't think of a single worship song that is about the role of Jesus as a Prophet.
With my experience with Muslims (although I don't think that Mr.Aykol will do this), they want the conversation to go from Jesus being a Prophet to Muhammad being a Prophet, and of course, as a Christian, my interest is discussing the Gospel, which brings up all the other roles you brought up. At best, this conversation turns into "this is what Christians think" and "this is what Muslims think" type of conversation (which has happened to me), and at worst, the conversation can simply end on a bad note (which has also happened to me). In other words, I just don't think that Jesus being a Prophet provides common ground necessary for some type of unity with Muslims.
This is, not just because the importance of the other roles of Jesus in Christianity, but because the most important thing a prophet does is delivers a Message from God, and if one can't agree on what His prophecie's actually were, then that conversation is cut short.
From what I've seen, the best way for conversation (and this website is the best example I've seen of this), is a philosophical discussion about the nature of relgion, science, and ethics.
This, of course, has alot of obstacles. In certain circles (especially among many Protestants), philosophy is seen as a threat against religion and a source of unbelief.
It seems like many Christians after the Reformation, and many Muslims after al-Gazzali, and certainly both after modernity, have become very suspicious of philosophy (I've actually been to a Nazarene church that thought philosophy was "Evil", and I was told by a teacher of a madrassa that philosophy is harmful).
Posted by: Victor at February 15, 2006 9:34 AM
PS
my point is not that a philosophical approach is bad. I think its great.
Its just that many see it as suspicious or threathening.
Posted by: Victor at February 15, 2006 9:36 AM