Virgin Birth

The virgin birth (more precisely, the virginal conception) is the doctrine that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary without the participation of a human father (Matt. 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38). Matthew presents it as fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 — 'the virgin (parthenos in the LXX) will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel' — and Luke records the angel Gabriel's announcement: 'The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; so the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God' (Luke 1:35). Both evangelists independently affirm that Mary was a virgin at the time of conception, and both present Joseph as legal but not biological father.

The virgin birth has been a defining test of orthodox Christology since the second century, when docetic and Ebionite tendencies denied either Christ's genuine humanity or his divine pre-existence. ISBE notes that the doctrine is not the basis of Christ's sinlessness (which is grounded in his divine nature) but rather the mode by which God entered human existence without subjecting the eternal Son to ordinary human generation. The silence of Paul and other epistles is sometimes noted, but epistolary letters addressing other issues are not arguments from silence against an early tradition multiply attested in the infancy narratives. The virgin birth is confessed in the Apostles' Creed ('born of the Virgin Mary') and is affirmed across all major Christian traditions as integral to the doctrine of the incarnation.