A reader’s comment in a recent post brought this issue to my attention. Lots of fun!
I should have figured that once genetics became established, theologians would realize that they had a problem. Two big problems, actually. The first, which I’ve discussed before, is that we’re all supposed to be descended from a man and a woman who were a couple living at the same time and place (Adam and Eve, of course). Because this is not possible, scientifically inclined theologians have tried to save the Original Sin Couple for well over a decade. I won’t describe their solutions, but they are the subject of constant argument at the moribund BioLogos site (see here for a FAQ on Adam and Eve).
A bigger question, discussed at tedious length at the Evangelical Christian website below, is this: if Jesus was part human and part divine, but was born of a human mother (Mary), what was his genetic constitution? Clearly Joseph didn’t have a part in inseminating Mary, and if Jesus was a human, with 23 pairs of chromosome and a Y, did one set of chromosomes, containing an X, come from Mary, and the rest from God? That is, did God contribute half of Jesus’s genome, or did he create Jesus’s genome entirely?
Given the lack of evidence that a divine Jesus existed, or that even a Jesus person existed (some, like Bart Ehrman ,see Jesus as a real person but not divine: a messianic apocalyptic Jewish preacher), this argument would seem superfluous. Or trivial–like the number of angels waltzing on a pinhead. But Christians need answers, and so Finding Hope Ministries (FHM) supplies us with theirs.
Click below to read:
FHM first lists all the possibilities—eliminating the possibility Jesus was haploid, containing only 23 chromosomes from Mary, which would make the Savior inviable (and not male), but would explain the middle initial in “Jesus H. Christ”):
It seems there are only 3 options for considering the composition of Jesus’ DNA:
- Jesus has 100% Mary’s DNA with a divinely created Y chromosome to make Him male. [JAC: But did God take out one of Mary’s two X chromosomes, or was he XXY, a male with Klinefelter syndrome?]
- Jesus has 50% DNA from a human female (Mary) and 50% DNA from God, to replace that of a human male.
- Jesus has DNA created entirely by God at the time of His conception.
Several have proposed God supplied a Y chromosome to add to the X chromosome of Mary’s egg cell (ovum), which programmed for the male gender of Jesus. In so doing God bypassed defective genetic weaknesses of the Adamic (male) genome. However, this is a fallacious argument, as 22 other chromosomes must be contributed to match the other 22 chromosomes Mary produced in her ovum cell.
God, of course, could have done anything.
FHM then analyzes the Catholic position, which they ultimately reject (their bolding):
The Roman Catholic Church embraces the second option: Jesus has 50% DNA from a human female (Mary’s) and 50% DNA from God (to replace that of a sinful human male). This enabled Mary to supply Jesus’ humanity. God the Holy Spirit miraculously encapsulated the Divine nature in Jesus human body. Mary and the Holy Spirit each contributed 50% to the end result. But doesn’t Mary fall under the category of all humans who are born sinners? Catholic theologians cite Mary’s “Immaculate conception” as contributing a sinless human nature to Jesus. Catholics believe Mary was without sin when she bore God’s Son. Mary is considered the “Holy Mother of God.” She remained a virgin after delivering Jesus (according to the Catholic church). Therefore, Roman Catholicism insists Jesus’ other brothers and sister mentioned in Scripture (James, Jude, etc) were not siblings but cousins—not birthed by the Virgin Mary. The Holy Scriptures teach Jesus’ siblings were born of Mary, who did not stay a virgin after Jesus’ birth. But the question about whether they share Jesus’ DNA remains unanswered. Let us further examine the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.
To ensure that Jesus was without Original Sin given that he had a human mother, Catholics adopted (in 1854!) the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: that Mary was sinless from the moment of her own conception—as sinless as the pre-serpent Adam. If so, then her offspring, Jesus, was also born without Original Sin. To ensure that Jesus’s brothers and sisters remained sinful, it was proposed that they were not the result of Mary’s insemination by God. Instead, they were “cousins,” which I presume means fathered by Joseph with another woman. Adultery!
The Catholic solution is thus this, as stated by FHM:
Catholics teach Mary was sinless and conceived in perfection. They therefore propose Mary contributed Jesus sinless human nature. Jesus’ DNA would then consist of 50% contribution from Mary, and perhaps more if God only added the ‘Y’ chromosome.
Catholic theologians admit the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, as defined by Pope Pius IX was not overtly taught prior to the 12th century. They also agree Biblical Scripture can’t prove this teaching. But they claim the doctrine is implicitly contained in the teaching of the church Fathers.
The church Fathers, of course, didn’t know anything about heredity, much less about the Y chromosome, so I’m not sure how that solution is “implicit” in their teaching. BUT to evangelical Christians such as those from FHM, this doesn’t solve the problem. Why? For two reasons. First, as they note:
Most Protestants reject the doctrine of Immaculate Conception. They do not consider the teaching authoritative because it is not supported by Biblical Scriptures.
Indeed. The Immaculate Conception was just made up to solve the problem of getting a sinless part-human Jesus—to save the Trinity. But if you reject this construction, then you face another problem: if Jesus really did contain some of Mary’s genome, and she still had Original Sin, then Jesus would also bear Original Sin. But he couldn’t have, for then he wouldn’t be Jesus. Thus the Christians are forcd to accept the third solution—God created the entire embryo of Jesus:
It is more likely Mary nourished and “made” the infant Jesus from a single cell being conceived (created) only by God. She gave it a virgin birth, protecting it from any sinful genetic contribution from the ‘seed of man.’ But God the Holy Spirit conceived and created the initial cell of Jesus that ultimately grew into the baby child born nine months later. This was God’s miraculous conception without a man and without a woman.
. . . The Biblical record supports God intervened only once in human genealogy when Jesus became man. God picked Mary as the woman who would birth His Son because of His grace, not because He needed a sinless vessel to pass purity onto His son. Mary provided nourishment and protection for God’s Son as He developed in her uterus. The virgin birth confirmed the purity of Jesus at childbirth. So God the Holy Spirit placed a God-designed conception in the womb of Mary and she functioned as a surrogate mother. God created His human nature. Jesus existed eternally as Deity. His God nature was never created, contrary to the teaching of Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses.
They cite scripture to support this (read the article), but of course Catholics cite scripture to support their own view. The thing is, if God can create a fertilized egg containing no human genome, and then make Mary bear it for nine months, why couldn’t he have created Jesus de novo without a pregnancy? That’s another question that I’ll leave to the readers, but I suppose pregnancy is part of the story that Jesus had at least some humanlike origin.
It gets even funnier when FHM explains why Mary could not have been without sin (remember, they reject the Immaculate Conception). It involves her having mutations in her DNA, mutations caused by SIN:
Inherent sin in the human genome produces inherited physical mutations. Over many generations, the human population has experienced myriads of genetic mutations, and these defects have been incorporated into the common human gene pool, affecting every infant ever born. This is why the lifespan of men has declined from 900+ years in the pre-Flood world to 200+ years of Abraham’s contemporaries and ultimately to 70-80 years today. Mary did not live to be 900 years old. She was not martyred at a young age. Her body suffered the ravages of imperfection. She had a defective human genome and died a normal age (approximately 60) for a woman of that time.
Why sin produces mutations is unresolved, of course, and not all mutations are “defects”. But this solves the problem of a sinless Jesus born of a human mother, and kills another bird as well: the remarkable decline in human longevity since Biblical days. No more Methuselahs! How clever these theologians are! And it solves the problem of Jesus being both human and divine: the “human” bit wasn’t based on DNA, but on looking like a human and having been gestated in a human womb:
His body was truly “in the flesh,” but only “in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Jesus grew in the Mary’s womb like any other baby, yet he was different from all others. He was not genetically related to either Mary or Joseph, for both had an inherited sin nature. Jesus was sinless and without genetic flaw. He was the spotless and sacrificial Lamb of God who offered Himself as a perfect propitiation (payment satisfactory to God) for the sins of mankind.
. . .But the most amazing miracle God performed was His creation of the “second Adam” at conception. He fashioned the first Adam on the sixth day of creation as a full-grown man without sin and in God’s image. Adam was not born of a woman. He received no human DNA from earthly parents. Yet he was fully human. God created Jesus at conception in His image without any DNA contribution from earthly parents. Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him” (John 14: 7).
Problem solved! Oh, those clever Christians! They then summarize if the readers weren’t able to follow the argument:
However, the church has always taught Jesus is 100% human and 100% Deity (preexisting His incarnation as the Son of God -“the Word”). The third option presented earlier satisfies all these requirements: Jesus has DNA created entirely by God at the time of His conception. His Divine nature did not need to be created, as it was eternally present prior to His birth. God the Holy Spirit provided a human body untainted by the fallen sin-nature of Adam at conception and placed it in the uterus of a virgin, Mary. She carried this child for the nine months of a normal pregnancy as a surrogate mother. This infant had no mutations or defects because Jesus was truly created the “second Adam” in the image of God—like the “first Adam.” God created the first Adam and Eve without sin as perfect adults. Sin entered both of them at the fall, and subsequently infected the entire human race. God similarly created Jesus’s human body at conception, so He could experience everything human from the beginning to the end of a human life. Hebrews 4:15 explains: “He was at all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” 2 Cor. 5:21 states: ” For He made him who had no sin to be sin for us. ” God became man to sacrifice Himself for the sins of mankind. The name “Jesus” means “God saves.”
Clearly the Catholics got it wrong! The clever theologians at Finding Hope Ministries have not only been able to show up those duplicitous Catholics, but found a way that Jesus can still be 100% human AND 100% divine and yet free of those sin-caused mutations. And it also explains the evolutionary reduction in human lifespan over the last two millennia! I am dumbfounded with admiration.
Can you believe that people get paid to ponder stuff like this? What’s even more incredible is that people believe these solutions.
