The Virgin Mary

Monday, December 8, 2025

Why is it so important that Mary was a virgin? I’m not a feminist theologian and can’t speak anything approaching authoritatively on the subject, but I’ve got some ideas.

1. Sex is icky.
2. People are icky. We are all tainted by original sin, which, apparently, is transmitted by sex.¹
3. Jesus’ birth had to be extra special, just like Caesar’s.
4. Jesus’ father was God, not Joseph. (See also points 1,2&3.)²

Yes, I’m being tongue in cheek, but I really do believe most of the arguments for Mary being a virgin are post-hoc and performative. Contemplating the gritty details of Jesus’ conception and birth forces us to see him as truly human—people say they believe that, but I don’t think most of us avoid thinking about the implications, so we can avoid the ick. We don’t have to be gross, but we need to be realistic.

Thomas Aquinas is likely guilty for our beliefs about original sin, with an assist by John Calvin and total depravity. One can be realistic about our tendency to be jerks without insisting that is an innate part of who we are and is transmitted by sexual reproduction. One also can forgive Tom and John for having an uninformed view of human genetics, but I, personally, am inclined to be harsher on their view of human nature. We’re clearly screwed up, but it’s not because of sex, and it isn’t absolute.

Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God mirrored those of Augustus Caesar, which puts the lie to the claim that Jesus wasn’t interested in politics. He most definitely offered himself as the anti-Caesar, which was a poke in the eye to Israel’s Roman overlords and likely what got him executed by the machinery of the Roman state. Luke recounts the virgin birth (really, the virgin conception) in his account to signal in first century code that 1-Jesus was unique, and 2-Jesus was the anti-Caesar. I won’t say the virgin birth is necessarily ahistorical, but it isn’t a hill I’d die on. It could even be true as a culturally coded message (Jesus came to challenge Caesar) without being true (i.e. historical) in a western, post-enlightenment, hyper-rationalist sense. We need to chill.

Luke is consistent in his claim when he gets to the genealogy of Jesus:

Luke 3:23 NRSVUE Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli.

Matthew nods to it, while still tracing Jesus’ ancestors through Joseph:

Matthew 1:16 NRSVUE and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, who bore Jesus, who is called the Messiah.

The other gospel writers don’t give a genealogy, and other New Testament writers don’t refer to a virgin birth—it just doesn’t seem to have been a major issue for early Christians. Given the damage done by purity culture in the 90s and 2000s, I wonder if giving room for some variation in beliefs about the mechanics of Jesus’ conception could help us to have a healthier view of our own humanity and our own bodies. If we truly believe we have been created by God, then we should believe that creation is good.

#thought