Christmas Without the Angels
By Dwight Longenecker, The Imaginative Conservative:
People are not abandoning the churches because they are too religious, but because they are not religious enough. They understand that if a religion is about no more than mouthing spiritual platitudes and working at the soup kitchen, then they don’t need to get up early on a Sunday and troop off to church to hear bad music and a shallow sermon…
I can remember my dismay when studying theology at Oxford to come across the modernist interpretation of the seventh chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy. Church goers will remember the King James version of verse fourteen: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
The professor said in his usual languid way, “Of course the word alma which is translated ‘virgin’ can just as easily, and more probably be translated ‘young woman.’ There is no real reason to put upon this text a supernatural meaning.” This learned essay disputes the point, but there is another problem of which the question of interpretation of one Old Testament term highlights. The reason it was suggested that alma means “young woman” not “virgin” was not out of any concern for precise and proper translation of ancient texts, but out of a preconceived notion that the supernatural is impossible, and St. Matthew’s idea of a virgin birth was not only quaint and outdated, but mistaken.
This is the tiresome (and now mostly discredited) drive to demythologize the gospels. The modernists argue, “Modern people cannot be expected to believe in miracles and so forth, so let us have the birth of Christ, but not from a virgin. We will have the shepherds, thank you, but not the angels. Wise men are allowed, but not the wonderful star of the magical, mystery tour.
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