The post Understanding the miracle at the heart of Christmas appeared first on Anglican Mainstream. by Martin Davie, Christian Today: At the heart of Christmas is the celebration of the miracle that took place when Jesus was conceived in...
The post Understanding the miracle at the heart of Christmas appeared first on Anglican Mainstream.
by Martin Davie, Christian Today:
At the heart of Christmas is the celebration of the miracle that took place when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. In this article I shall explore three issues in relation to this miracle, the nature of the miracle, how this miracle fits in with the way God normally operates in the world, and why the miracle took the form that it did.
Starting with the nature of the miracle, the first thing to be noted is that what we are talking about, according to the biblical account, is a virginal conception rather than a virgin birth. There is nothing in Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:1-7) that says there was anything miraculous about the birth itself. What was miraculous was how Jesus was conceived and the person that resulted from that conception.
The nature of that miracle is well summarised in the second of the Church of England’s Thirty Nine Articles, ‘Of the Word, or Son of God which was made very Man,’ This states:
The post Understanding the miracle at the heart of Christmas appeared first on Anglican Mainstream.