I’ve witnessed miracles. I’ve seen a man’s leg grow an inch as fervent intercessors gathered around him with laid on hands. I’ve found myself in the nexus of uncanny synchronicity. Friends have told me of tumors shrinking before their eyes in prayer. After you’ve experienced these things, even the more surreal “trans-natural” phenomena you hear about in the lives of saints don’t seem surprising; bilocation, levitation, resurrection/resuscitation from the dead.
Do I “believe” in these things? Well, Paul Tillich’s definition of faith implies an “in spite of.” Faith (or belief) must include a chasm of the unknown that one jumps across without any certainty of what or who might catch you. In spite of this unknown you make the jump anyway. Tillich calls this courage. Faith, by its definition demands courage and courage demands a real unknown - a real cause for anxiety.1 These "more-than-natural” phenomena in themselves really don’t require faith or belief. I affirm these things can and do happen because I’ve seen them happen. They simply are a part of the human experience (they might not be common but they do happen enough). What’s more they happen in every religion known to the human family and in every age of human history.
These things are factual, credible. To affirm this doesn’t take much courage. It doesn’t require much of me.
In the Nicene Creed, the historical Church asks us to “believe” a laundry list of things. The current season emphasizes “I believe…he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary.” It does not take any faith whatsoever to affirm this statement. It does not require anything of me. Saying statements and “facts” about God or Jesus requires acculturation, indoctrination, “formation” in a certain cosmology or mythology but it does not require faith. The “I believe” of the Creed is more of an identity marker rather than anything about real belief.
Br. David Steindl-Rast describes our religious traditions as aqueducts that can quickly and effectively bring us the Living Water. We are acculturated to the language and accessibility of the “aqueducts” of our respective cultures. What we are more used to (or what strikes something from our formative experience) is usually how we can most easily and naturally access the Living Water.2 The language and nuances of these aqueducts are not unimportant (be affirmed, theologians!) because culture and society are not static, language morphs, meaning morphs. In other words, the aqueducts wear out and need constant upgrading so that the Living Water can easily reach us and not get clogged in outdated “waterways;” not get lost in translation or transmission.
Yet far too often we are totally distracted by these aqueducts and we forget the real purpose of their existence: to channel Living Water. True faith believes in the Living Water - its existence, its sustenance, its healing properties, its foundation for life, connection, the web of ecology, all of reality. And the effects of this belief are truly wonderful; all of the “trans-natural,” “psycho-somatic” miracles listed above flow from it…but they are not It.
I have to be candid and say that I do not believe that the Virgin birth is a literal story. Most scholars will clearly show its non-historicity with some relatively simple analysis and historical-critical textual criticism of Matthew and Luke (the only Biblical works mentioning it. Paul never mentioned it, who wrote and died decades before these texts were written. It was not important to the Markan narrative, written before these texts). The late theologian/pastor, Marcus Borg, affirms Jesus’s literal-historical healing ministry because those healings have a (relatively) common history. But a Virgin birth has simply never literally happened in human history.3 (Many Christians feel this all the more affirms the story’s historicity, arguing that this shows Jesus’s exceptionalism. This has far too easily drifted into imperial Christianity and Constantinianism and has contributed to much of the Euro-centrism and settler colonialism of Western culture. But this is another topic for another day).
Does all of this mean that we must lose our “faith” and leave it all for the wolves? No. And here is why.
A Virgin birth may not have literally happened in human history, but stories of Virgin births have been abundant. In the Hindu tradition the “Self [begets] all creatures” through a female figure. In Finnish mythology a virgin of the air descends into the sea where she becomes pregnant. There are folk stories of the Buddha descending from heaven into the womb. The list goes on. In mythology in general, the archetypal hero/heroine’s journey often begins with a virgin birth. 4 What does faith really mean when it comes to story and mythology? Story is a major facet of Br. Steindl-Rast’s cultural “aqueducts.” Myths bring Living Water to us. What is brought to us in the myth of the Virgin birth?
In my wife and partner’s journey of coming home to herself, she has deeply identified with the story of the Virgin birth. If we can look at virginity, not as a sign of literal “chastity” but as a sign of a woman belonging to herself, the Advent journey takes on a much richer meaning; a meaning that points us in the direction of transformation…a true “jump” into an unknown. For a woman to birth God all on her own, without the “insemination,” “input,” guidance, even help of a man is truly revolutionary in our Western culture. It means that a woman has all she needs within herself to be truly generative and for many women, this belief, this faith that they belong to themselves does require a leap across a dark chasm that has constantly bombarded them with messages that they are only generative in relation to and even in service to a man (in a romantic capacity or otherwise). The story is pregnant with all kinds of meaning, but this is just one facet that is still relevant for our culture today where women (and men, and other genders) still feel the effects of our patriarchal inheritance.
I deeply believe in the sacredness and holiness of this story, but I do not believe that it literally happened. Nor do I think that really is the point. This Advent, if you find yourself uncomfortable with what some would call “doubt,” you might try asking a deeper and more multi-faceted meaning out of the story, other than the literal-factual play of events. It is a story we are meant to find ourselves in, whether we have literally given a Virgin birth or not.
Related Resources
Borg, Marcus J. Jesus A New Vision: spirit, culture, and the life of discipleship. New York: Harper Collins, 1987.
Bultmann, Rudolf. Jesus Christ and Mythology. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958.
Campbell, Joseph. Thou Art That: transforming religious metaphor. California: New World Library, 2001. a wonderful chapter 6 on Understanding the Symbols of Judeo-Christian Spirituality beginning with the Virgin Birth on p. 62
Hudson, Kim. The Virgin’s Promise: writing stories of feminine creative, spiritual and sexual awakening. California: Michael Wiese Productions, 2010.
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: a woman’s journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine. New York: Harper Collings, 1996.
Tatar, Maria. The Heroine with 1,001 Faces. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2021.
Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith. (New York: Harper Collins, 1957), 1-34. see also the third section entitled “Symbols of Faith” on faith and myth.
David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer: an approach to life in fullness. (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1984), 84-122. a wonderful distinction between faith and beliefs
Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: the historical Jesus and the heart of contemporary faith. (New York: Harper Collins, 1994)
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with A Thousand Faces, Bollingen Series XVII, 3rd ed. (California: New World Library, 2008), 255-270.
“It is by grace, through faith, you are saved, not of your own doing, lest anyone should boast. It is the gift of God not a result of works lest anyone should boast,” the Apostle Paul writes to the believers in Ephesus. He might have added a word about honesty, like yours. Call it childlike faith, trust, or even hope, but can one ever be transformed apart from honesty? Your honesty is a grace invitation to follow wherever truth may lead believing intellect is an asset, not a liability, in the journey into intimacy with God. Loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, AND MIND is a transformational invitation you beautifully accept and winsomely extend. Thank you!