Sad modernist notion
Sir: It is rather sad to see Admiral Liardet trotting out those old ‘modernist’ notions that I thought had been put to rest some time ago (Letters, 12 January). I leave aside his gratuitous libel of some of the Fathers of the Church — I dare say the City of God can stand it.
But it is ironic that, in citing Galatians iv 4, he hits on a text which, far from showing that St Paul had not heard about the Virgin Birth, carries the clear implication that he did know about it. What biographer has ever commented of his subject that he was born of a woman? We all were. It would be an absurd tautology.
The Apostle must therefore mean something more, and it seems reasonable to suggest that he means that Christ was born, in human terms, exclusively of a woman, without male agency.
Turning to the old chestnut that ‘virgin’ was a mistranslation of ‘young woman’, I am confident that the Gospel writers had as firm a grasp of both the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint as Admiral Liardet. First, the term ‘young woman’ referred to the subject’s status, not her age: she was unmarried and, unless of easy virtue, a virgin; so he is attempting to distinguish between things that do not differ. Second, it will be remembered that the event of a virgin conceiving and bearing a son was to be a sign. What kind of sign would have been provided if merely a young woman had borne a child — it happens all the time — and why should the fruit of such a quotidian occurrence be named Emanuel, God with us?
Dr Brian Campbell
Glasgow
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