By Angus Harley

This time we take a closer look at a central aspect of Bonhoeffer’s myth theology, namely, the virgin birth.

The virgin-birth myth

Let us read Herr Bonhoeffer on the virgin birth as taken from his Christological ‘masterpiece’, Christ the Center:

“The question, ‘How?’, for example, underlies the hypothesis of the virgin birth. Both historically and dogmatically it can be questioned. The biblical witness is ambiguous. If the biblical witness gave clear evidence of the fact, then the dogmatic obscurity might not have been so important. The doctrine of the virgin birth is meant to express the incarnation of God, not only the fact of the incarnate one. But does it not fail at the decisive point of the incarnation, namely that in it Jesus has not become man just like us? The question remains open, as and because it is already open in the Bible.” (Christ the Center, 105).

Bonhoeffer relates three levels of ambiguity to the virgin birth. 1) It is historically questionable, meaning that historical-critical investigation renders it unlikely. 2) It is dogmatically dubious. How so? Partly due to the biblical witness being so (here Bonhoeffer engages in a form of circular reasoning). Also, presumably, due to dogmatic theology not really capturing the central thrust of the virgin-birth narrative (see ahead). 3) The biblical text itself does not commit to a clear message of a virgin birth.

Not ‘how’ but ‘what’

Accompanying these three levels of ambiguity is Bonhoeffer’s statement about the ‘how’ of the incarnation. The ‘how’ is rendered meaningless due to the above three factors of ambiguity. What counts is not ‘how’ God became flesh- through a virgin birth- but the mere fact that he did become flesh. In fact, the sole point of the ‘myth’ of the virgin birth is to convey the simpler thought of what God united with: man. The God-man Christ Jesus.

So, Bonhoeffer concludes that the virgin-birth narrative of Scripture as it stands fails to reach the high note of the incarnation: namely, that God became flesh, a flesh in which he became man just like us. What does this imply? Bonhoeffer’s theology of the flesh is that it represents the realm of frailty, sin, and weakness. A doctrine of the virgin birth is ambiguous because it does not give us a clear picture of God who took on himself all that man is in his frailty, including the sin aspect.

Recycling myth

We must bear in mind that unlike Bultmann, Bonhoeffer loved to repurpose all of the myths of Scripture. We saw that in his account of Genesis 1, he denied that God shaped man from the earth as a potter shapes clay, yet he boldly asserted the scientific model of Darwin that man did ascend from this world. In this way, Bonhoeffer repurposes the biblical narrative. In regard to the virgin birth as attested in the Scripture, even though it is mythology, it is not wasted in Bonhoeffer’s system. As we saw above, its primary usage, according to Bonhoeffer, was it existed as a primary witness to the incarnation. The ‘how’ of the virgin birth is discarded as a husk; and the kernel of the ‘what’ is retained.