In this recent video, Sir Anthony makes various relevant points. As I said in part 1 of this series, his linguistic argument against “pre-existence” is not his only one. At 3:11ff he gives a version of the linguistic argument I’ve been criticizing. It seems to me that the title of this video is false. To have been “begotten of God” I think, just means to be the Son of God – “begotten” neither means nor uncontroversially implies having been caused to come into existence.
I completely agree with him, by the way, that the NT strongly and repeatedly warns against any teaching that Jesus is not a real human being. But as we’ll see, we Christians disagree about what it is to be a real human being. And what it is to be a real human being is a philosophical question, and one not definitively settled by the Bible.
At 1:29-1:51 Sir Anthony says, basically, that it is doubtful that a human can exist as a non-human before its human existence, i.e. before its conception. At 4:21-38 he seems to make the stronger assertion that any human must come to exist in his or her mother’s womb.
Of course, there are test-tube conceived babies. I think he means to assert that any human must come into existence at his or her conception – at the union of a human sperm and egg. He presents this as if it is simply what 2 John 7 says, but of course, it is only insisting on the genuine humanity of Jesus – to have “come in the flesh” is to have been a real, flesh and blood human – not an illusion of a human or an “aeon” in disguise or something.
An aside: I don’t think the NT really tells us the mechanics of the virgin birth: did God create a human sperm to unite with Mary’s egg, or did he just miraculously change a non-fertilized egg of hers into a zygote? I have no idea. I would think that either one counted as a “conception” or, as the NT puts it, as God having made Mary pregnant.
But does being a real human imply having come into existence no earlier than the union of a certain sperm and a certain egg?
The answer is: it depends!
- If a human being is a purely material object, then yes it is obviously impossible for you to have existed before a single one of your parts existed. So if materialists about human selves are correct, the answer is yes.
- Another view with some popularity amoung philosophers right now is that a human being isn’t just a physical object with the right parts in the right order, but rather that a human is a certain living biological organism. But this, surely, doesn’t go back to before its conception. So if these philosophers, called “animalists,” are right, the answer is yes.
- But what if a human being is essentially a soul? It seems possible that a soul should should at one time exist disembodied, and then come to be embodied – and maybe that’s all it takes for a soul to be human – to be embodied (whatever that is exactly) in a human body.
Such a view is explored in eminent Christian philosopher William Hasker’s The Emergent Self. His position, roughly, is that God has so made the world that when a certain sort of brain comes to be, it naturally causes to exist a soul, which uses the brain in thinking. This soul, in principle, can survive death, and God ensures that it does, and that it is resurrected in the future. The position is neutral about whether or not this soul existing without a body would be conscious, or be able to do anything. And note that Hasker (correctly) puts no stock in traditional arguments for “the immortality of the soul.” Nor does the view imply that human souls pre-exist. Presumably it implies that human souls come to exist some time during the existence of the fetus – not at conception, but perhaps by the end of the first trimester? (This may be a welcome conclusion, given the number of spontaneous abortions, aka miscarriages which occur.)
See the last chapter of that book, “Prospects for Survival” for a nice discussion of the possibilities for life after death given various views about human persons. Particularly interesting are the arguments against this scheme, which I think some unitarian Christians have held: that death is your ceasing to exist, then there’s a longish period where you don’t exist, and then at the resurrection God causes you to start existing again. Essentially, the view is that humans have a time-gap in their existence.
But that’s beyond the scope of this series – perhaps another time.
Hi Scott,
Technically, no. I think he became a man when he came into existence. I assume that what is a man is essentially a man, and so can not have even not been a man.
You’re right that any Chalcedon-kosher theory of incarnation must say that Jesus used to not be a man, because it is clear that the man Jesus is supposed to be personally identical to the eternal Logos. Of course the kicker is: how could this be so? And Chalcedon both refuses to tell us any story there, and even forbids speculation on the subject. (Which of course we philosophers merrily ignore. 🙂
“It would seem that belief in the incarnation of God is of one piece with some sort of Trinitarian theology.”
Sort of – I think speculation about the divine nature of Christ much precedes any really trinitarian theology; so we have a lot of early people like Origen, who believe in the incarnation of *the Son of* God (whom they address as “God”), but who are not trinitarians, but rather unitarians. So the divine christology is prior in time, and also I think prior in most catholic Chrisitans’ conceptual scheme. My experience is that, e.g. American evangelicals neither know nor care much about any Trinity theory per se, but they think the core claim of historical Christianity is “the deity of Christ” – which is usually thought of as he a God being personally identical. This is of course inconsistent with the New Testament, and should be rejected on that basis.
https://trinities.org/blog/archives/3295
“Once one prefers Unitarianism to (some sort of) Trinitarianism, then all talk of the Incarnation of God is to be rejected.”
As traditionally understood, I think yes. Still, unitarians will think that in a sense God – his power, his message, his presence – was and is in Jesus. e.g. John 14
Also John 1, understanding the “Logos” to be not an eternal self but rather something like God’s plan, and Col 2:9, etc.
Dale,
On your view, do you deny that “Jesus became man”?
Put in the form of a modus ponens:
If the Son of God became incarnate, then the Son of God pre-existed becoming incarnate.
The Son of God became incarnate.
Therefore, etc.
It would seem that belief in the incarnation of God is of one piece with some sort of Trinitarian theology. Once one prefers Unitarianism to (some sort of) Trinitarianism, then all talk of the Incarnation of God is to be rejected.
What do you think?
Dale
Thanks. Brown as you will see “Stresses” the fact that the synoptics know not a word about preexistence.
What he believes for himself is another matter (at the end of the book he vaguely does and does not think the VB is true!).
But exegetically he is quite clear what Luke and Matt meant by what they wrote. Common sense itself dictates that these writers and angels intended to be understood!
I don’t think Paul ever imagined a non-man Messiah! It was not an issue, he simply said that “the Son of God” was the descendant of David and came into existence from a woman as such too. (Rom 1:1-2) Rather obviously that is what Luke his companion said too.
One could however say that in I Cor. 15 is stressing the fact that it is wrong to say that the spiritual man came before the human Jesus. He says it was the other way round.
First Adam and then Jesus, the second Adam. Not the other way round.
Dunn’s writings are helpful here.
I would say that the synoptic records are the primary evidence for us, as opening Scripture for the NT. They could not have made it much clearer than that Mary had a baby by miracle and that miracle constituted him Son of God!
What happened by the time of Justin Martyr is shockingly awful. The Son came to Mary and engineered his own conception. This is a give away.
See the Anchor Bible by Fitzmeyer on Luke 1:35.
Anthony – thank you for those lengthy quotations from Brown. That indeed looks like a magisterial book, and I’ve ordered a copy for myself.
I have to say, though, that it appears that things are as I before said: he is theorizing, I think correctly, about what Luke and the author of Matthew *assumed* about Jesus beginning to exist. I don’t see him saying that they were explicitly asserting this, however. I don’t think he cares much about the distinction between assuming and asserting; he’s trying to construct a story about the evolution of catholic orthodoxy.
Your assertion that Mt and Lk are deliberately contradicting some sort of early pre-existence christology is interesting, but consider that if that was what they were doing, (1) they could have far more clearly asserted this, and (2) they would perhaps have been more careful with their “I have come” sayings. As far as I can tell, though, they are just merrily assuming that Jesus is a man – though virginally begotten – and so like other men did not used to be something else pre-conception.
Again, consider Paul, slightly earlier. We find him battling any claim that Jesus was not a man. But in your view, is there reason to think he fought against pre-existence christologies as such, by clearly and stoutly affirming that Jesus began to exist?
We can of course argue that being a human implies having come to exist some time post-Adam. But that will be a philosophical argument.
SMW
Thanks for your good comment.
You are absolutely right. At Chalcedon the idea is that GOD the Son preexisted. But Christians often refer to the Son of God as that God who preexisted.
John speaks of the human being THE SON of Man as preexisting and that of course is true, since the SON of Man is that human being and he is there in vision in Dan 7.
Jesus said that his “flesh (the human being) came down from heaven.” He was using the common idiom that coming from heaven does not mean you have to descend literally but that you are God’s gift to the world.
Would you point to the comments where someone said that “a human being preexists his person”? Thanks so much.
The point is that Luke and Matt know of no preexistence at all, since the Son of God begins to exist, is begotten by God, in Mary. Matt. 1:18, 20 and Luke 1:35 are decisive and definitive. The massive work by Brown on the Birth of the Messiah just confirms this simple fact.
The idea that the Son of God of God the Son of God existed before the miracle in Mary alters the whole story dramatically and makes Jesus a different sort of person.
Matt and Luke were almost certainly penned in the 70’s or 80’s to bar any predating of the Son. But it still happened! And this may explain the chaos of division in which the churches now find themselves. It is important to have the right Jesus with the right birth-certificate and ORIGIN (Matt.. 1:18).
God created Adam as we know and Luke lists this activity as a son being OF his father. Luke is not concerned to say that isaac was the result of human sex but Adam was not.
That is too obvious to be stated. So in Luke and Matthew the begotten one comes into existence by miracle from “holy spirit”– the reader is supposed to know that this is not a sexual begetting, but it it is still a procreation.
SMW
As far as I know, trinitarian Christology claims that a non-human, preexistent “being” called “God the Son” took on flesh at the Incarnation.
Does this mean that the triune Godhead ADDED a human nature? If so, doesn’t this CHANGE the triune God?
I’m curious as to why the assumption has been that Chalcedonian Christology claims that a human being existed before his conception? My understanding is that the second person of the Trinity “was made man,” that is, this person assumed or took on or gained a second nature: a human nature. It’s not a question of whether a human pre-exists his conception, it is a question of whether a divine person can be ‘hypostatically united’ to an individual human nature, no?
Here is a summary of Raymond Brown who is with us in Luke and Matt.
In his magisterial exegesis of the Birth Narratives Raymond Brown translates Matthew 1:20 “the child BEGOTTEN in her is through the Holy Spirit. In verse 16 he gives us “of her was BEGOTTEN Jesus called the Christ.” He then tells us that genesis in verse 18 means “birth, creation, genealogy.”
Here are quotes from Brown (p. 291):
Dale, I would answer this by saying that there is a critical difference between begetting in the womb and conceiving. Yes, of course everyone knows that the event is one.
But the words do not equally describe what the father does! Fathers don’t conceive, they father, or beget.
What seems to me such a quibble is this: One has 40 occurrences of exactly the same word gennao for the production of children by the father and their birth from the mother is implied too.
In Luke we read “of X,” (rather than begotten by…)and when we come to Adam being “of God” no one quibbles and says that no mother’s womb was involved.
The sense is obviously that Adam came into existence from God, ie was created.
It is at the level of simply realism and common sense that we read Matt and Luke as teaching that no human father produced the Son.
The Son is begotten by God. Commentary points out the deliberate divine passives when we get to Jesus. Abraham begat Isaac but Jesus ‘is begotten’ by God.
I don’t see how if could be clearer.
Nor do the major commentaries, including R Brown who emphasizes the fact that Matt and Luke preclude an existence prior.
If one wants to say that John and Paul say something different, that is one’s right, but I think it is so labored not to see what Matt and Luke intend.
Their whole point is missed if God is not the father of Jesus, the begetter of Jesus I Jn 5:1 makes a special point of this. What do you think is meant by the Father being the begetter and then the Son “the one who was begotten” in I Jn 5:18?
Another point we can make is that in both cases of a passive form of the verb, as WBC says, we have the sense of God’s action.
That is in 1:16, the Son is brought forth from Mary. That is brought forth with God as the cause. God is the implied subject of the action.
Matthew also highlights the conception stage and says “what is begotten in her” is from the HS.
Again the passive verb implies the divine activity.
The whole story is very easy and clear> The Son is a miraculous procreation with God as the Father.
Jesus later calls God his Father often and Matt. 1:16, 18, 20 establish the grounds for this.
The same point is revealed with equal clarity in Luke 1:35 where the subject is God’s Son and the reason for his being the Son is precisely the miracle in Mary.
The KJV tries to fudge a little with its “for this reason ALSO he will be Son of God.
But that introduces a confusion into the text because it tries to lead us to think that there is ANOTHER reason for his being Son of God.
That would be the eternal sonship, or generation, of the much later creeds.
When Matthew speaks of the genesis of Jesus in 1:1, introducing his chief character, he recalls the same language of the LXX (on which he relies a lot) as the genealogies in Gen. 5.
This is very obvious to the commentaries.]
Dale,
But why put “conceived” when GENNAO (in a woman’s womb) never ever means that?!
I think you are not seeing the possible evasion of some translation parallel to the attempt of some scribes to get rid of ORIGIN and put “birth”. These texts are horribly embarrassing to orthodoxy.
Begetting is the work of the Father, NOT the mother and this surely is the whole point of the virgin birth. There is no good reason to miss-translate I think. If this is not a mistranslation, please show where GENNAO in the womb means conceive.
The semantic meaning of beget is to cause “to come into existence”, is it not? It is the causative of ginomai (all authorities).
Genesis does not immediately recall the word in Genesis? How come everyone else I have read sees this?
My assumption that people do not exist before birth literally is built on biblical theology!
There is a way to describe a transformation of a person into something else. Matthew has avoided this entirely, here and everywhere else.
Luke 1:35 is even clearer, if possible. The reason and basis for Jesus being the Son of God is expressly ascribed to the miracle.
Gennao can in Luke refer either to the begetting or the birth, it makes no difference!
The point that language cannot make more clearly is that the reason for the Sonship is the virgin birth. This is a very simple idea.
What do you propose then as the right understanding of the Birth “narratives”?
Thanks.
Dale
Agreed but again, we must turn to the way THEY understood it not US:
“So what do you propose then for the exact meaning of “to gennethen en aute“?”
Hi Anthony,
I have no objection to the translation “conceived in her,” but I don’t think that really differs in meaning from “begotten in her.” I think either is fine, as either can mean what the father typically does in biological procreation. Even “procreated” or “fathered” might be ok. Either way the English is properly left as vague as the Greek. But your “brought into existence” adds more, I mean, it is more specific – I regard it as an interpretive gloss on Jesus generation, i.e. on the procreative happenings that led to his birth.
I don’t see Gen 1 as really being in view here. The topic is Jesus “genesis” (1:1) yes, but then we have geneology and account of his miraculous conception and birth – not a story of his creation, at least, not that I can see. And I emphasize that it would be very convenient for me if I could see it there!
It is a point of philosophy, not grammar, that to be conceived is to come into existence. Specifically, a philosophical account of what a human person is, and of the limits of its temporal career. You have philosophical assumptions about human beings which imply that a human person can’t exist before his conception. I say this not to criticize you – we ALL have philosophical assumptions about human persons – but just to urge you to focus on this assumption and what might be said for or against it.
“soul” certainly does in many places just mean “living being” or “human being”.
Then again, in some places it seems to be something which is a component of a total living human organism which might in principle exist apart from a body:
http://bible.cc/revelation/20-4.htm
Many theologians have made a big dramatic dichotomy between “the Greek mindset” or Greek philosophy vs “the Hebrew mindset” or outlook, etc. Be careful! This can and does mislead!
Dale,
Thanks this is very useful. It lays out the facts nicely and you use the phrase “plain and simple:”
My point to you: Where does GENNAO in the womb (not birth) ever mean conceive? The elephant in the room is showing here.
You know how RV and others carefully alert us to the literal meaning of gennao in 1:20.
The act is that of the Father, ie the creative activity of God. Everyone sees echoes of GENESIS 1 here, of course.
The virginal BIRTH is not remarkable the virginal conception/ begetting is the whole point of the miracle.
So what do you propose then for the exact meaning of “to gennethen en aute“?
I say “that which is brought into existence = begotten in her”.
What can possibly be objected to here? Do we really have to sidestep and say “well, this is not sex from a human being?”
I glad you mention the desperation of some Trinis to make “I have sent” mean the Incarnation! This shows the Titanic battle which is on.
Orthodoxy has long lost the Gospel as Jesus preached it and a loss of his identity is thus almost predictable.
Dale
Quibble about words and definitions and whether or not Samson preexisted his birth etc. 😛
Whilst I cannot account for ALL of the Hebrews [i.e., some like the Sadducces didn’t even believe in an “after-life”], I would say that in general it seems their definition of “soul” was COMPLETELY different than the Greco-Roman view which eventually defined the “Western”, dualistic view. i.e., for the Hebrews the “soul” was composed of BOTH body and the breath of God [Gen 2.7; 1Cor 15.45].
Hence, you get scripture like “the soul who sins shall die” [Ezek 18.4, 20]; “the dead know nothing” [Eccl 9.5]; “Those we served before are dead and gone. Their departed spirits will never return!” [Isa 26.14] etc.
“The use of the word beget to denote the coming into existence in the womb!”
Sir, let me see if I can repeat back the way you are thinking about this.
In human reproduction, the action of the father is begetting, and this is active. What the mother does is conceives, which is passive.
(I think nowadays we think of conception as accomplished by both mother and father via their sexual cells), but that’s just a quibble about the word conception.)
In any case, what is begotten is a zygote or fetus – the biological precursor to a human baby. The angel in Mt 1:20 says, in the old Young’s Literal Translation:
” ‘Joseph, son of David, thou mayest not fear to receive Mary thy wife, for that which in her was begotten is of the Holy Spirit…”
In other words, it was the power of God which acted in Mary, begetting this… could be a zygote, embryo, or fetus. Those are what comes from a normal begetting.
Let’s throw aside dualism. Suppose we say that a human self is a certain sort of complex, living organism. On this view, you might think that such a thing first comes to exist in the second or third month, when we have a brain organized and complex enough to produce certain sorts of brain activity. But the begetting happened some time ago – we date her pregnancy to the conception (or conception and implantation?). Would the “begetting” then, in your view, the metaphysical generation of a human self, occur, say eight weeks after conception?
The passage is short – let’s step back for a wide view:
The plot line is clear and simple. Joseph is afraid that Mary is pregnant by another man. The angel tells her that this is not so, rather, she is pregnant because of God, and this child will, incredibly, save his people from their sins.
The author seems not at all concerned with the time of Jesus’ coming into existence. Yes, he probably has assumptions about this, but that is just not his topic here. The issue is why Mary is pregnant.
Are we not foising *our* interests on the author if we assert that he is *asserting* Jesus to have been brought into existence in Mary’s womb? (Even if this is in fact his assumption.) It seems to me that at most here we have a witness to there being no claim of pre-existence for Jesus whenever this gospel was written (c. 70-90?). This is a crucial piece of evidence, and so one distinguished scholar has striven mightily to so that *really* the synopic authors all *assume* Jesus pre-human existence, because they record his “I have come” sayings.
Back to the text – you are insisting that the words translated “conceived” should be translated “begotten,” or perhaps in your view more accurately: “brought into existence.” But the author’s point just does not require that more specific claim. It seems far too harsh to me to insist that readers who don’t take the term that way are missing the obvious. The obvious here is that it was no man, but rather God who made Mary pregnant.
“Why don’t we put the other miraculous birth accounts of Sarah, Samson’s mother and Elizabeth to the same test?”
Test? I don’t follow you..
“I don’t think reading these Hebraic accounts with a Western philosophical mind helps any either. Why don’t we keep it within its cultural/textual context? i.e., what was the Hebraic belief regarding “human nature”, the prophesied Messiah, etc?”
The belief was that the Messiah should be a man. I assume you are suggesting that Jews did not believe in souls? I think that is far from clear, to put in mildly. In fact, one can make a case from the NT that they did. Don’t suppose that all dualists about human beings are platonists or greeks etc. Anyone who thinks that the concept of a ghost is not contradictory, or who thinks that out of body experiences, or certain “near death” experiences conceivably could be accurate, is a dualist – someone who thinks that a human being is a soul which is (typically and naturally) in and perhaps tightly integrated with a human body. The Greek theses that the body is the prison of the soul, that the body is essentially bad or of little value, that the soul is naturally immortal – nothing obligates the dualist to accept these, and all the intellectuals I know who are dualist reject these theses.
Dale,
I suggest that you are diverting, with your point about the “mechanics” of the VB. I think you may miss my single point.
The use of the word beget to denote the coming into existence in the womb!
That is all that needs to be believed here. Matthew is the place to start as we enter the holy ground of sacred Scripture.
Luke follows up with the same story exactly.
Most commentary knows full well that this a new creation of the second Adam.
No need to make John and Paul contradict them! I think they do not when proper attention is paid to the texts, often avoiding the modern popular mistranslations in some verses”.
Dale
Why don’t we put the other miraculous birth accounts of Sarah, Samson’s mother and Elizabeth to the same test?
I don’t think reading these Hebraic accounts with a Western philosophical mind helps any either. Why don’t we keep it within its cultural/textual context? i.e., what was the Hebraic belief regarding “human nature”, the prophesied Messiah, etc?
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