Was the birth of Jesus physical or miraculous?

[Chrystabelle]

Some Roman Catholics in the following link are suggesting that, during and after the birth of Jesus, Mary's uterus (womb) was closed. The suggestion is that his birth was miraculous.

http://motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=552&Itemid=80 (http://motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=552&Itemid=80)

Does anyone here agree with this? Any passing Roman Catholics, please give your opinion too. Thank you.

[SirTimothy]

I do not agree with this. This would seem to lead on to the idea that Jesus felt no pain on the cross... :doh:

Timothy

[Wiffey]

I believe he was physically born...and what could be more miraculous than God incarnate coming into the world as a baby born to a Virgin? [for the record, I don't think physical birth makes the Theotokos any less virginal because virginity is about purity more than about an intact hymen.]

I think the whole emphasis on the "closed womb" is a reflection of a male aversion to the normal messiness of childbirth. And their inability to view a physiologically normal woman as pure...

Aside: Why do some folks need to make the Blessed Virgin super-human before they honor her? She was so awesome because she was so humble and endured great suffering for the love of God. It seems to imply an underlying message that she must have been different from normal women, which is why she was pure and special to God, and worthy of love and respect. As opposed to regular women who are impure and unworthy. Just my take on the matter...

BTW, among the Eastern Orthodox, this is NOT a dogma...so it arose after the first 1000 years of the Church and has only been set forth as dogma by the RCC.

[TomUK]

I was hoping you would post this after a didn't get a chance to respond the other day.

There was a time when the character of Mary was under attack, i assume because they felt that by degrading her they would be also be attacking the product of her womb - Christ. The methods they used to attack her were by denying things such as the virginal birth or the perpetual virginity for example. Thanks to the intervention of a couple of Church Councils and the writings of the Fathers these doctrines are now largely accfepted as traditional Christian thought.

It is my feeling however that in an attempt to protect the name of Mary from spurious attacks, some bodies (most notably the Roman Catholic Church) gave her titles and ascribed doctrines to her which are consistent with tradition, scripture or reason. The most notable of these being the doctrine of the immaculate conception, a doctrine which in my opinion detracts from the character of Blessed Mary. I believe that this idea of of a miraculous birth also detracts from Mary, as well as the person of Christ. Why on earth wouldn't Mary feel pain during childbirth? St Paul offers us the earliest account of the Christmas story in the bible.
"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman." Mary was a simple women, who through her equally simple act of obedience now spends eternity with Christ, interceding for us all. The whole company of heaven rejoiced at the news of the birth of the saviour, but neither scripture nor tradition even hints that they released Mary from the pain or act of childbirth.

Our understanding of Mary was fine for around 1800 years. I see no reason to begin asscribing new and false doctrines to her now.

[Naomi4Christ]

I don't see any reason to believe anything other than Mary going into labour and giving birth. Why would anyone want to believe something that it not either explicit or implicit in scripture?

That thread the other day was the first I have ever heard of Jesus just appearing. Made me wonder if All Fools' Day was a few days early this year.

[Naomi4Christ]

but neither scripture nor tradition even hints that they released Mary from the pain or act of childbirth.

Thinking about this - if you believe in the immaculate conception, would you not say that Mary did not inherit a sinful nature from Adam (and presumably Eve)? Therefore, would that not mean that she would not feel pain (cf Genesis 3:16)?

Of course, this does not mean that she did not experience contractions and dilation. It is very possible to have a painless natural birth (I have had one).

Anyways, none of this supposition has much scriptural support, so it is something that God thinks we do not need to know, however much we may want to know it.

[AngCath]

we must not fall into the error of reducing Jesus from being FULLY HUMAN.

[SirTimothy]

we must not fall into the error of reducing Jesus from being FULLY HUMAN.

Or in fact of Mary being FULLY Human. This suggests otherwise.... if Mary wasn't fully human, then neither could Christ have been.

Timothy

[ContraMundum]

Some Roman Catholics in the following link are suggesting that, during and after the birth of Jesus, Mary's uterus (womb) was closed. The suggestion is that his birth was miraculous.

http://motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=552&Itemid=80 (http://motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=552&Itemid=80)

Does anyone here agree with this? Any passing Roman Catholics, please give your opinion too. Thank you.

Oh, these people are just being silly. Really.

They're inventing novel doctrine to protect a doctrine that doesn't need protection because the scriptures are clear that Mary was a virgin, and silent about whether or not her hymen was intact or whether or not her virginity would be effected by the state of her physical body. Their hypothesis has no support in scripture or ancient ecumenical consensus. It's just silly and a waste of time.

This kind of theology is why Cricket was invented- to keep those with a disposition with for an idle mind away from theology and focussed in its own blurry way on other irrelevant matters instead, thus protecting the faith from needless twiddle.

1Ti 1:4 Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith:

[AngCath]

Was the birth of Jesus physical or miraculous?

the Incarnation was a miracle. the birth was natural. Jesus: fully God, fully man.
This is what is essential to our faith and is testified to us by Holy Scripture.

[Chrystabelle]

Oh, these people are just being silly. Really.

They're inventing novel doctrine to protect a doctrine that doesn't need protection because the scriptures are clear that Mary was a virgin, and silent about whether or not her hymen was intact or whether or not her virginity would be effected by the state of her physical body. Their hypothesis has no support in scripture or ancient ecumenical consensus. It's just silly and a waste of time.

This kind of theology is why Cricket was invented- to keep those with a disposition with for an idle mind away from theology and focussed in its own blurry way on other irrelevant matters instead, thus protecting the faith from needless twiddle.

1Ti 1:4 Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith:

Unfortunately, I come from a family where these fables are considered to be the gospel-truth. My extended family are extreme Roman Catholics who worship Mary. You may have noticed, in the link, that Pope John Paul II was likening Mary's intact uterus, from which Jesus came, to the intact tomb from which he rose. With the backing of the Pope, people like my family can take the moral high-ground on this subject.

[gtsecc]

Well, the church has always connected the Birth with the death in multiple ways, from the Mhyrr brought by the Wise men, the Babe wrapped in cloth after birth, the body wrapped after deatrh. The womb and the Tomb have always been theologically connected, maybe sometimes to the extreme.

[Fish and Bread]

I think a lot of these Marian issues are tied in with one's view of the church and the authority thereof. If one believes that God handed the keys of the kingdom to Peter and that he handed them off in a line right on down to Benedict XVI and that the Roman Catholic Church is the institutional church from the bible, issues like the Immaculate Conception and so forth, through improbable scripturally if scripture is approached by itself as a lone authority, aren't too hard to assent to, because they don't contradict scripture. If one doesn't believe in the basic assumptions surrounding the Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church that Roman Catholics have, then of course one is likely to reach far different conclusions about these sort of doctrines and dogmas.

Ultimately, the question that seperates the Vatican from all the churches and denominations outside of communion with it is one of authority, not one of theology. If the authority issue could be resolved, the theology would fall right into place.

Without getting too graphic here, I think it's safe to assume that Jesus' birth at least visually seemed to occur in a normal way. There is some thought within Roman Catholicism that within Mary's body was a tunnel of light and Jesus sort of passed through in the normal way (from the uterus downward) and came out in the same place, but was kind of passing through things like a ghost passes through walls, those not damaging anything on his way out. I don't have a problem with that type of suggestion, though it seems rather unnecessary. The virgin birth seems rather unnecessary to me, too, though, but presumably it was important to God.

That brings up an interesting point, which is that, actually, if I were God, Mary and Joseph probably would have married and had sex and by the power of the Holy Spirit, produced Jesus, a powerful affirmation of the miracolous underpinnings of the sexual act and it's good and proper place in the Christian marriage -- God recreated in an act of maritial love. It seems to undermine sex and marriage to make Mary a virgin with the implication that's such is the only way she'd be "pure" enough for God, which further implies that sex is less than pure.

But if we're going to go so far as to say that Mary was a Virgin, and that such was important, and I think both scripture and tradition lock us into that pretty firmly, then these other arguments seem unimportant. We've already got the implication that sex isn't the optimal state of purity, so why not imply the same about natural childbirth? It's kind of like we've already thrown the whole thing out the window anyhow.

Part of being Christian is admitting that we don't get to decide what's right and optimal, though. If God wants to have a virgin get pregnant, it's his call. If he wants to have a childbirth that leaves someone physically intact afterwards, that's his call, too. To be Christian is in part to say "Thy will be done", even if it's not our will. That's part of my struggle with Christianity and I think it's part of most people's struggle with Christianity, to one extent or another. But I don't think the solution is to try to redefine the faith to what we think it should be rather than taking it as it is.

To be perfectly honest, there are a lot of things I flat out don't like about Christianity, but has anyone ever come up with a better idea? It's the best religion we've got, and I think it may well have the side benefit of being true. Where else can we go? Witness this Gospel passage, set after Jesus spoke some controversial words:

John 6:66-69

It's kind of, well, a bummer, quite frankly, but I suspect that St. Peter was right when he implied there is really no where else to go. Not truly. If we become some other religion or adopt a version of Christianity that's most to our liking, aren't we just fooling ourselves? In changing our perception of God, does God change? And in seeking what we think is the most good, will we always find God? Remember, people disagree on what constitutes good, some people are always going to think what God does is wrong sometimes, if they're honest with themselves, aren't they? But can we truly oppose God? Do we know better than him? Are we not going down the same futile path of suffering as the fallen angels when we attempt this?

I'm not really talking about physical or miraculous births anymore. I think it's a false distinction anyhow, most ways one slices it, Jesus' birth was both physical *and* miraculous. It's just a rant that's gone a bit off-topic. :) And half of this is just me thinking out loud and trying to work these issues out for myself. A lot of the questions really are questions, not statements disguised as questions. I'd love to read some comments with people's thoughts on them.

[karen freeinchristman]

"you must spread some rep around before giving it to John again"! :thumbsup:

[PaladinValer]

The Incarnation has nothing to do with the humanity of St. Mary or Jesus.

Jesus was born both physically and miraculously. His birth was just like any other baby; the only difference was that He had no earthly father and that He was born without original sin.