Ninjahound

A lot of work has been done on the historicity of the virgin conception of Jesus - very learned work - and many scholars seem to disbelieve or at least doubt whether the 20th C scientific definition of a "virgin conception" actually took place.

Many early Christians seemed to think that because Jesus was, in a sense (which I won’t try to define) God as well as human and was without sin then he must have been physically seperate and could not be quite as human as we are - from whence the doctrine of a different conception process evolved.

Note that Jesus is never recorded as making an issue of his birth in the gospels, nor attaching importance to his conception or birth process compared with his fellows.  Whereas he does highlight his special relationship with God and make some amazing and wonderful claims and does explain in some detail his death and what that will achieve.

Does God, our omnipotent and omniscient God, really need a super-human Jesus to fulfil the mission that Jesus actually did fulfil?  Isn’t it possible that Jesus was the first, and so far only, human fully to grasp God’s will for us on earth and to carry it out in his life? And that God said "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased" in recognition of this accomplishment.  Could it not be that Jesus accomplishments, his miracles, his healing, his brilliantly clear expositions of God’s truths, were possible because of the quite exceptional quality of his prayer life, a prayer life that brought him closer to God than anyone else ever has, so much so that he could exclaim "I and my father are one" without God contradicting him?

If this is so, is our faith weakened? Does it lose anything? I don’t think so.

Peter Farmer