The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord | Page 5

the great
Church of Alexandria. Their testimony to the place which the
Virgin-Birth holds in the Church is clear and unhesitating. Clement
speaks of the whole dispensation as consisting in this, "that the Son of
God who made the universe took flesh and was conceived in the womb
of a Virgin . . . and suffered and rose again."*
-- * Strom. vi. 15. 127. "Hede de kai he oikonomia pasa he peri tou
kuriou propheteutheisa, parabole hos alethos phainetai tois me ten
aletheian egnokosian, hot' an tis ton huion tou theou, tou ta panta
pepoiekotos, sarka aneilephota, kai en metra parthenou
kuoporethenta . . . teponthota kei anestramenon legei." --
7. Origen.
In the De Principiis, Origen writes: "The particular points clearly
delivered in the teaching of the Apostles are as follows: First, that there
is one God, . . . then that Jesus Christ Himself who came [into the

world] was born of the Father before all creation; that after He had been
the minister of the Father in the creation of all things--for by Him were
all things made--in the last times, emptying Himself He became man
and was incarnate, although He was God, and being made man He
remained that which He was, God. He assumed a body like our own,
differing in this respect only, that it was born of a Virgin and of the
Holy Spirit."*
-- * De Principiis, Lib. I., Pref., 4. "Species vero eorum quae per
praedicationem apostolicam manifeste traduntur, istae sunt, Primo,
quod unus Deus est . . . tum deinde quia Jesus Christus ipse qui venit,
ante omnem creaturam natus ex Patre est. Qui cum in omnium
conditione Patri ministrasset (per ipsum enim omnia facta sunt);
novissimis temporibus se ipsum exinaniens, homo fictus incarnatus est,
cum Deus esset, et homo, factus mansit quod erat, Deus. Corpus
assumsit nostro corpori simile, eo solo differens, quod natum ex
Virgine et Spiritu Sancto est." --
In his Treatise against Celsus he exclaims: "Who has not heard of the
Virgin-Birth of Jesus, of the Crucified, of His Resurrection of which so
many are convinced, and the announcement of the judgment to
come?"+
-- + Contr. Celsum, i. 7. "Tini gar lanthanei he ek parthenou gennesis
Iesus kai ho estauromenos kai he papa pollois pepistreumene anastasis
autou, kai he katangellomene krisis." --
Think for a moment what all this agreement--this consensus of tradition
implies. The testimony of these writers clearly shows that in the early
part of the second century, and reaching back to its very beginning, the
Virgin-Birth formed part of the tradition or doctrinal creed of the
Church, and that this tradition was believed to be traced back to the
Apostles. It has a place in the earliest forms of the Creed: it is insisted
upon by the earliest Apologists. It is not merely in one Church or two
Churches, in one district or in two, that this tradition is found. It is
everywhere. In East and West alike. It is so in Rome and in Gaul (by
the testimony of Irenaeus). It is in Greece (by the testimony of
Aristides). It is in Africa (by the testimony of Tertullian); in Alexandria
(by the testimony of Clement and Origen); in Asia (by the testimony of
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Ignatius); in Palestine and Syria (by the
testimony of Ignatius and Justin Martyr). Irenaeus, if any one, should

know what the Apostles taught, for before he came to Rome he had
been the pupil of Polycarp in Asia, who had himself sat at the feet of St.
John. "Everything that we know," says Mr. Rendel Harris, "of the
Dogmatics of the early part of the second century agrees with the belief
that at that period the Virginity of Mary was a part of the formulated
Christian belief."* How could the belief in the Virgin-Birth have taken
such undisputed possession of so many widely separated and
independent Churches unless it had had Apostolic authority?+ What
other explanation can be given for the fact? There is as complete a
consensus of tradition as could reasonably be asked for. It is impossible
to imagine that the doctrine of the Virgin-Birth can have been suddenly
evolved in the early years of the second century. The only adequate
explanation is that it was a substantial part of the Apostolic tradition. It
may be worth while here to quote the words of so distinguished a
scholar as Professor Zahn, of Erlangen. "This [the Virgin-Birth] has
been an element of the Creed as far as we can trace it back; and if
Ignatius can be taken as a witness of a Baptismal Creed springing from
early Apostolic times, certainly in that Creed the name of the Virgin
Mary already had its place .... We may further assert that during the
first four