LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The Birth of Christ

Snt,—We gratefully acknowledge the valuable contribution which Mr. Wilson Harris is making to theological discussion in the Spectator. More particularly we welcome his insistence (p. 721) that "the whole- basis of Christianity is a fact in history." For it is as history, and not as legend, that we who hold to " the traditional belief " accept " the Virgin Birth."

The "perplexities" which Mr. Wilson Harris elucidates arc all, of course, familiar to the student. The explanation, however, that, before her death, Mary confided in Luke. as both doctor and historian, all the salient facts of her Son's birth, seems quite adequately to meet them all. It at once accounts for their late publication, and gives us as one supreme authority that essential one of the Mother herself.

It was in fact against any legendary interpolation that the leaders of the early Church were particularly on their guard. " We have not," they said (2 Peter, 1-15), " followed cunningly devised fables." Dr. Montagu James has collected some fifty of their legendary acts, gospels, etc.; and the fact that all these were rigidly discarded by the early Church is evidence of this. As legend the Virgin Birth would be a most shock- ingly blasphemous fabrication: as history it is of extraordinary reassurance, as entirely confirming everything else that we know of Christ. Two corrections I venture with much respect to append:—

(1) It seems scarcely fair to credit Luke with a genealogy "through Joseph," as he appears to dissociate himself from the traditional list by inserting the words " as was supposed."

(2) Can it be alleged that "Outside the Roman Catholic Church belief in the Virgin Birth has never become a dogma "? In the words of the "Quincunque" (common to both the Church of England and the Church of Rome) we affirm that " the right faith is that our Lord Jesus Christ ... is God and man, God of the substance of His Father ... and man, of the

substance of his mother perfect God and perfect man." Could any- thing be more dogmatic or more complete?—Yours faithfully,

Sefton Court. Liverpool. H. GRESFORD JONES, BP.

Ste.—In the article in the Spectator on the Birth of Christ, the statement that "outside the Roman Catholic Church the belief in the Virgin Birth has never become a dogma " is surely one that may cause bewilderment, and even distress, to those of your readers who are mem- bers of the Anglican or Eastern Orthodox communions.

So far as the ordinary layman is concerned, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth can be accepted on one ground only—i.e., that it is a dogma, by which is meant a doctrine taught by the Church, not merely as a " pious opinion " which members of the Church may accept or reject as they think fit, but as an " article of faith," the acceptance of which is required (nominally at any rate) as a condition of communion.

If the Virgin Birth is not a dogma of the Church, it would be of interest to know which of the articles of faith enumerated in the creeds are dogmas and which are not! How c'an we ordinary laymen investi- gate historical, biblical and other grounds for belief, not only in the Virgin Birth, but in such doctrines as those of the Trinity or of Purgatory (if that is what " He descended into hell" means) or of the resurrection of the body or indeed of the Incarnation itself ? We can't. If they are not dogmas to be accepted because they arc the authoritative teaching of Holy Church, how can we, unversed in theology and history, find other grounds for a belief in the great mysteries of the Christian faith ?

—Yours, &c., W. H. ALLEN WHITWORTH. Manor Farm, Rendham, Sasmundham.

Mr. Wilson Harris writes:—

(1)J made an obvious and unimportant, but not excusable, slip in attributing the stories of the manifestations to Joseph and Mary to St. Luke and St. Matthew respectively, instead of vice versa.

(2) Exception is taken to my use of the word " dogma." Possibly there is some more suitable term. I simply meant that in this country belief in the Virgin Birth was not regarded as an essential article of faith outside the Roman Catholic Church. More than one Anglican Bi&hop has declared himself unable to accept it. In the words of Dean Armitage Robinson: "To say that the historical fact of the Virgin Birth is a cardinal doctrine of the faith is to use language which no Sgtod of Bishops, so far as I am aware, has ever ventured to use."

(3) The date of St. Luke's two books is a question on which scholars notoriously differ It is perfectly possible that they are earlier than ko. 64. I have followed the conclusions of the late Bishop Hunkin, who, tiler a full survey of all the authorities, suggests a date of about 85 for the Gospel. Sir Frederic Kenyon puts it at some ten years earlier. •

(4) The parenthetical ("u was supposed to which Bishop Gresford Jones refers, bears all the marks of a subsequent interpolation, and is so regarded by various commentators of recognised weight.

.(5) Is the assumption that Mary confided in Luke quite so simple? It is not known how long Mary lived after the last mention of her in the New Testament, some six weeks after the Crucifixion. By A.D. 56 (or 54); the date of the first reported visit of Luke to Palestine, she would, if still alive, have been between 70 and 80. It seems more probable that the two did not meet than that they did, though Mary may have gone with St. John to Asia Minor.

(6) My article aimed at stimulating, not controversy, but study and reflection. Its only purpose was to indicate that two views about the Virgin Birth are possible, and to urge that holders of either should display a spirit of Christian sympathy and understanding towards holders of the other. To Mr. Allen Whitworth's submission that the individual should abdicate his own reasoning faculties in favour of the authority of the Church I can make no reply. It is, of course, a tenable attitude, but it is separated by too wide a gulf from my own.