Certain things in Christianity are central to its theology and doctrine, and central to the Gospel. Arguably, others are secondary. Two people arguing whether or not Judas the Betrayer ended up in Heaven or not, or whether anyone can lose their salvation for that matter, is perhaps interesting, but is not going to put God’s redemptive work on hold or challenge the truth of the Gospel - the Gospel that proclaims that God created a perfect world, we messed it up with our sin, and yet, God sent his own Son in the form of Jesus Christ to be crucified and resurrected so that we might be able to be forgiven and have a relationship with God himself.
Within the last five years, an author and pastor by the name of Rob Bell brought up this idea in his book, Velvet Elvis. The book resulted in a ton of controversy, and there are pages and pages of discussion, critique, and even hatred that were generated as a result.
While in some respects I think people were missing the bigger point of the book and Bell might even be smirking somewhere because he wanted people to question ideas, think critically, and not believe everything they read in books, that’s beside the point and I’m hoping to avoid making any more judgments on the issue or taking any sides. Because already, I’ve offended someone or there’s a person reading this (if people actually read my blog to begin with!) that will either now quit reading or forget what the greater picture of the rest of the blog was about anyway. And kind of like Bell likes to say, “This isn’t about that.”
The part of Bell’s Velvet Elvis that made people particularly peeved was his claiming that if, tomorrow on the news we found out that people proved that Jesus wasn’t actually born to a virgin and he could be linked to a biological father (I’m paraphrasing), it’s not something that should shake our faith too immensely since the virgin birth is not foundational to the Gospel or to God himself. He also tosses in a bit of Biblical scholarship and adds that there might be reason to believe that the idea of being born to a virgin was probably based on Isaiah 7:14 and may have been misinterpreted or mistranslated along the way. Though Bell maintains that he believes in the virgin birth, people highly disagreed that the virgin birth was not something foundational to the Christian faith and the Gospel.
We could do a little dance and try to determine who’s right and who’s wrong, but here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately that reminded me of this discussion:
It’s virtually unanimously supported that Mark was written first of the four gospels. One gospel account starts with a narrative about how Jesus has existed for all eternity, two have accounts of Jesus’ birth, and one mentions absolutely nothing prior to the beginning of his ministry and picks up when Jesus is about 30. The author of the latter gospel account?
Mark.
So what did Christians believe about Jesus’ beginnings or birth prior to Matthew and Luke’s accounts showed up on the scene? Did they care? (It’s obviously possible that people heard about the virgin birth through word of mouth even if it wasn’t written down, but for now we’ll stick with what we do know, and that’s that Mark includes nothing about the virgin birth in his narrative.)
The point is that the redemptive power and the truth of the Gospel were just as redeeming and true before Matthew and Luke’s accounts were written as they were after with the introduction of the virgin birth. Prior to that, people were still sinful and in need of a savior, Jesus was still “the ransom for many,” He was still crucified and resurrected, and the Gospel still changed lives.
What’s fascinating to me much more than this discussion of the virgin birth is how much of the theology and doctrine that we have comes from meshing together what we know about God from the many different books in Scripture. Sounds simple, and it’s completely logical, but it’s also very interesting.
Let’s use our virgin birth example:
Most evangelical Christians believe that Jesus has “existed” for all of eternity and was “sent” to earth where he was born to the Virgin Mary. He started at the right hand of the Father, and there He sits until He comes back again. This is most clearly found in the Gospel of John where the author depicts Jesus as the embodiment of the “Word of God,” having existed from “the beginning.” However, John says nothing about a virgin birth.
This comes from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, likely based on a source that both writers had access to. Matthew and Luke, however, never explicitly mention anything about Jesus having existed for all eternity. Jesus had a definite beginning when he was born to Mary.
Some scholars say that this weaving together of different thoughts from different books of the Bible does an injustice to what the writers wanted to convey and that doing so essentially creates a fifth gospel account. I disagree.
While it’s true that each author had their own reasons for writing and themes and ideas that they wanted to emphasize, if we believe that these books that we have in the Bible were divinely inspired by God, it makes sense for us to think logically, pray, and figure out our theology and beliefs based on the entirety of the Bible.
The Gospel is big. As much as we try to sum it up in four points or one sentence, it can’t be done. This is the same Gospel that allows us to become children of God, redeems our pain and weaknesses, gives us a right relationship with God, and is our only source of hope.
-CK
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