Mary, did you consent?

Abstract

The Christian and Islamic doctrine of the virgin birth claim God asexually impregnated the Virgin Mary with Jesus, Mary's impregnation was fully consensual (virgin consent), and God never acts immorally (divine goodness). First, I show that God's actions and Mary's background beliefs undermine her consent by virtue of coercive incentives, Mary's comparative powerlessness, and the generation of moral conflicts. Second, I show that God's non-disclosure of certain reasonably relevant facts undermines Mary's informed consent. Third, I show that a recent attempt by Jack Mulder to rescue virgin consent fails. As divine goodness and virgin consent are more central to orthodoxy, Christians and Muslims have powerful reason to reject virgin birth.

In defence of Mary's consent: a response to Hereth

“…. [and her] response of faith included both perfect cooperation with “the grace of God that precedes and assists” and perfect openness to the action of the Holy Spirit’ (John Paul II (1988), §13, p. 67).…”

“…13.While Mary is called the spouse of the Spirit in the Catholic tradition (see John Paul II (1988), §26, p. 98), it is not quite right to say that the Holy Spirit as such is the Father to Jesus. Here we might consider Scheeben (1946), 80, where we read: Yet by this operation the Holy Ghost does not stand in the relationship of father to Christ: (a) He appropriates the humanity to the person of the Son of God as a second nature, for this human nature is not taken from the substance of the Holy Ghost and hence is not similar to His nature; (b) He uses the divine substance in the person of the Logos for the composition of Christ, for He communicates it, not as something which arises from Himself, but as something which is the principle of its own being.Thus, we needn't say that Christ has two fathers, one by way of his eternal begetting of the Father, and the other by way of his temporal begetting by the Spirit and Mary.…”

“…16.See John Paul II (1988), §14, p. 69, who compares Mary's faith with the faith of Abraham. Kierkegaard's famous text, Fear and Trembling , is also something to consider here.…”

“…This presupposes that Mary was, in the Christian sense, and as the ‘first to believe’ (John Paul II (1988), §26, p. 100), ‘redeemed in a more sublime manner’ precisely by the anticipated merits of her Son, which is what the Catholic tradition claims about Mary (John Paul II (1988), §10, pp. 61–62).…”