but it still takes two to tell that story
Some people think Jesus wasn't really born of a virgin. That it was all a historical metaphor. I decided I'm not one of those people. All in a day's work.
"This foolishness is, of course, a way of saying that no proof is possible either way. No one can prove, historically, that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. No one can prove, historically, that she wasn't. Science studies the repeatable; history bumps its nose against the unrepeatable. If the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two of Luke had never existed, I do not suppose that my own Christian faith, or that of the church to which I belong, would have been very different. But since they do, and since for quite other reasons I have come to believe that the God of Israel, the world's creator, was personally and fully revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, I hold open my historical judgment and say: if that's what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?"
"This foolishness is, of course, a way of saying that no proof is possible either way. No one can prove, historically, that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. No one can prove, historically, that she wasn't. Science studies the repeatable; history bumps its nose against the unrepeatable. If the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two of Luke had never existed, I do not suppose that my own Christian faith, or that of the church to which I belong, would have been very different. But since they do, and since for quite other reasons I have come to believe that the God of Israel, the world's creator, was personally and fully revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, I hold open my historical judgment and say: if that's what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?"