Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 83:1 (Spring 2021)
Article: Views Of The Virgin Birth Ninety Years After Machen: An Analysis Of Interpretation Related To Jesus’ Infancy Narratives Since 1930
Author: William B. Bowes

WTJ 83:1 (Spring 2021) p. 49

Views Of The Virgin Birth Ninety Years After Machen: An Analysis Of Interpretation Related To Jesus’ Infancy Narratives Since 1930

William B. Bowes

William B. Bowes is a PhD student in New Testament at the University of Edinburgh.

Since the publication of J. Gresham Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ in 1930, there has been a wide variety of popular and scholarly engagements with the content and implications of Jesus’ infancy narratives. Machen’s weighty defense was among the most thorough treatments available at its time, and it cemented his already seminal role as a bastion of theological conservatism in the midst of a changing era. Many of the initial responses to Machen’s work were positive, and with a few exceptions, publications produced in the decades immediately following were largely supportive of historic, traditional interpretations of the virgin birth. However, in the second half of the twentieth century, publications began to reveal a greater divide between the methodology and conclusions of interpreters, with a greater proliferation of dissenting voices. Within the last three decades, publications about the infancy narratives have reflected a further shift, namely, that the virgin birth has come to be viewed by an increasing number of interpreters as not only false but harmful. Even with more dissenting voices, there has also been an increase in defenses of the doctrine, following in Machen’s footsteps. This article will review how Jesus’ infancy narratives have been interpreted since 1930, examining developments over time. The analysis will begin with an examination of Machen’s original work and the responses to it, and will proceed by analyzing literature related to the virgin birth over the three thirty-year periods that have followed, with a view to affirming Machen’s arguments, interpretations, and enduring influence.

Since its original publication in 1930, J. Gresham Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ has been lauded as a classic, and as one of the most thorough and comprehensive works on the significance and historicity of Jesus’ virginal conception as described in the Matthean and Lucan infancy narratives.1

WTJ 83:1 (Spring 2021) p. 50

Whether his readers have agreed with his conclusions or not, Machen’s text is still referenced today and indeed should be, as it is a masterful defense of the doctrine which engages with critical scholarship and stands strongly. Machen’s purpose in writing was to elucidate the origins of the doctrine and to determine what one should think of it, noting that regardless of the controversy surrounding it, its belief by the church throughout history is indisputable. Mache...