Why I Reject the Immaculate Conception... and you should too!

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If you read the title of this video or saw the thumbnail, you may think I've fallen into some kind of damnable heresy.

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Because yes, I do reject the immaculate conception. But here's the thing, there's a good chance that you do too.

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In fact, there's a really good chance that you don't even know what it is. And that's what we're going to talk about today on Your Calvinist Podcast, which begins right now.

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Welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am your Calvinist.

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What do you think when I use the phrase immaculate conception? Does your mind immediately go to the virgin conception of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, where the Bible says that God through the Holy Spirit overshadowed the

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Virgin Mary and conceived in her womb the baby Jesus? Well, a lot of people think that when you hear the phrase immaculate conception, but that's not technically what that phrase is about.

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In fact, what we're going to learn today is that the immaculate conception, as far as doctrine and dogma is concerned, is not about the conception of Jesus, but instead is about the conception of Mary.

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And so we're going to learn how the theology of the immaculate conception is not one that's found in the

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Bible, but instead is found through church tradition, specifically Roman Catholic church tradition.

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Now, back to the show. One of our most common beliefs as Christians is the doctrine of the virgin conception of Jesus.

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Often people talk about the virgin birth, and I like to remind people that it wasn't the birth of Jesus that was the important part in regard to her being a virgin, but it was the virginal conception, that Mary was a virgin when the angel

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Gabriel came and spoke to her and told her that she was going to have a child. She says, I don't know a man. I've never known a man.

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I'm a virgin. How can this be? And so when we talk about the doctrine of the virgin birth, we're usually more specifically talking about the virginal conception.

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And certainly that was a miraculous event, what we would call a miraculous conception.

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And so it can easily be confused when we hear someone say the immaculate conception, immaculate being clean or kept from any type of sin or impurity to be immaculate.

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And certainly Jesus was. I don't want to confuse and indicate somehow that Jesus's conception wasn't free from sin.

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Certainly it was. But that's not the point when we hear people talking about the doctrine of the immaculate conception.

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And the issue that comes up with the immaculate conception is the issue of Mary herself.

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And as I noted already in the introduction, the belief is that Mary, in her conception, was kept from original sin.

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Now, I don't want you to think this is something that I'm inventing or something that I'm making up. So I'm going to cut to a video from Father Mike Schmitz.

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This is a Roman Catholic teacher who has a large online presence. I'm going to give him an opportunity just for a few seconds to explain this doctrine from his perspective.

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So as you can see, the doctrine of the immaculate conception is about the conception of Mary, not about the conception of Jesus.

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And it's founded on the principle of the doctrine of original sin. Now, if you're unfamiliar with original sin, this is referring to how the sin of Adam affected all humankind.

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All men are affected by Adam's sin. We read about this in the Bible. In Romans chapter 5, it says,

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And it goes on to say that we die because of what Adam did, and we live because of what

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Christ did. And this is why Christ is called the new Adam or the second Adam.

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So Adam represented us in sin, Christ represents us in righteousness.

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And the doctrine of original sin is an anthropological doctrine, meaning it addresses the nature of man.

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Anthropology is the study or the doctrine of man. And we come to the conclusions about original sin from the

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Scripture, and we would hold, at least as a Calvinist, I would hold to an

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Augustinian view of original sin, meaning that the teachings about how sin came through Adam and have been passed down to all men is something that was understood prior to Augustine but really was developed and articulated best after the time of Augustine.

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And so this is why when we get to, say, Martin Luther and John Calvin, who were

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Augustinian in their anthropology—and I've taught on this before, last year at the Y -Calvinism conference,

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I talked about how Calvin and Luther both shared an Augustinian anthropology—and that's why they would come to similar conclusions about man's depravity, because basically original sin says that we are born in sin, that we come into this world as transgressors because of our relationship to Adam.

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And we base this on passages like Ephesians chapter 2 that says that we are dead in trespasses and sin because we are, by nature, children of wrath.

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That's part of our nature. Why is it part of our nature? Is that the way God created Adam in the beginning? Did he create him as an object of wrath?

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No. But when Adam sinned, his sin had an effect that affected all men.

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His sin has been passed down, as it were, to all people, and therefore there's no one in the world who is without sin save the

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Lord Jesus Christ. But in the theology of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the argument is that Mary also was kept from sin.

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And the way that she was kept from sin is that in her conception, she was held back from receiving that original sin.

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She was kept clean from the taint of that original sin, so that did not pass on to her.

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Therefore, she came into the world having been conceived cleanly or purely, and now she bears no original sin.

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And for those who believe this, they would also say she bears no practical sin either.

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So not only does she not have a nature of sin, she also doesn't have a practical practice of sin, because it is believed in this belief system that not only was

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Mary conceived perfectly, but she also lived a perfect life, that she did not sin.

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And this is fairly well believed by many people, especially, as I said,

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Roman Catholics, who hold to this sinlessness of Mary as official Church teaching.

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So I want to talk a little bit about the history of this particular doctrine and sort of how it works and where it comes from, but also why

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I, as a Calvinist, as a Protestant, don't agree that this is something that is necessary to believe.

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And here's the thing. When we talk about this theological doctrine, certainly it can be discussed and debated, but when something is declared dogma, that means the debate is over.

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And this is one of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, here's the thing, and I have some notes here.

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It didn't officially become dogma until—I have the date here, excuse me just a moment as I pull it up—the date was

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December the 8th, 1854, was when it officially became dogma.

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It was Pope Pius IX in his papal bull, and Ephabilis Deus on December the 8th, 1854, he declared

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Mary to be, quote, preserved free from all stain of original sin from the first moment of her conception, end quote.

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But it has to be understood, and I want to say this from the outset, I'm not saying that the first time anyone believed this doctrine was until the 1850s, but it took that long for it to become official dogma.

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And that simply means that you must believe this if you are a Roman Catholic. You must believe this.

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This is not optional teaching, as I think it was John Paul II who said there shouldn't be cafeteria

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Catholics where he says, you take this and you don't take this. You know, when you go to the cafeteria, you don't take—you take what you want when you're at the cafeteria, but we don't want cafeteria

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Catholics who take one doctrine and don't take other doctrines. When you're a Catholic, you believe all these things.

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And again, if I'm in error, if you're a Roman Catholic and you're watching this, this is how

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I understand it. If it is official Church teaching, if it's dogma, it's not optional. You guys are supposed to believe this.

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So again, as a Protestant, we're not under the authority of this papal bull. We don't recognize the authority of the

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Pope, so we don't have to believe this. But it's important to, again, point out that it wasn't that people didn't believe this until 1850.

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There were those who believed it. In fact, all the way back into the early Church, there were those who believed that Mary had a specific form of purity and holiness.

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And there are several Church fathers that recognize her as having a specific type of purity, a specific type of cleanness, a specific type of holiness.

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And so we have to understand that that did exist. There were those who believed it.

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There were those who taught it. It wasn't as if it didn't get taught until the 1850s, but it wasn't until the 1850s that it was official

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Church teaching in the Roman Catholic Church as official dogma. And part of that was because of medieval developments.

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In the 12th century, debates arose among theologians like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who questioned the idea, and John Dunt Scotus, who defended it, and arguing that Mary was preemptively saved by Christ's merits.

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And that's another part of this that's very important. The argument is not that Mary herself was sinless in and of herself, but rather that she was kept from sin prior to receiving original sin, receiving the taint of original sin.

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And so the argument goes, well, Jesus is still her Savior. He just saves her preemptively.

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And this is like in the video that I showed earlier from the Roman Catholic teacher.

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He makes the argument of it being like a vaccine.

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He said that if you're sick and you receive a vaccine, it can help you.

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But if you're not sick and you receive a vaccine preemptively before you get sick, it can also help you.

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It can save you. So a vaccine can save you if you're sick, but a vaccine, if it keeps you from getting sick, also saves you.

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And so his argument was that all the rest of humanity are already sick.

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We're already receiving the punishment due to Adam's that original sin.

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And so because of that, we are in need of Jesus to save us.

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He becomes our, in this illustration, the vaccine. But for Mary, according to this teaching,

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Mary receives the vaccine before getting sick, before receiving the original sin, before she was conceived.

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She's kept from this, and therefore it's like receiving a preemptive vaccine on her behalf.

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Now, again, I'm not saying I agree with this. I just want to fairly present the situation. Mary is kept from original sin prior to receiving that taint of original sin, and therefore she lives her life without sin.

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And of course, there are those who believe that she even did not die, but that she was assumed into heaven.

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And so all of these doctrines sort of fit together. You have the idea that Mary was kept from sin, that she lived a life without sin, and then she didn't even experience the punishment of sin, which is physical death.

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Rather, she was taken up into heaven. And so all of this leads to some very interesting beliefs about Mary, and beliefs that aren't founded in Scripture, because the

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Scripture doesn't tell us that Mary was conceived without sin. The Scripture doesn't tell us anything about Mary's conception.

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It doesn't tell us that she lived a life without sin, and it doesn't tell us about her being assumed into heaven.

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All of these things come from Church tradition. They come from beliefs that are passed down, but not things that are given to us in sacred

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Scripture. And this is one of the areas where Roman Catholics and Protestants do divide, and that is on the area of authority.

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In the Protestant churches, we hold the Scripture as the sole infallible authority.

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It is—that's what sola scriptura is. It is the sole infallible—it is the

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Bible alone, or the Bible is the only infallible authority in the

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Church. And in Roman Catholic theology, there is sometimes described as a three -legged stool of authority.

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You have the Scriptures, which are an authority. You have Church tradition, which itself is an authority.

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And you have the magisterium, which is the teaching authority of the Church, of which the

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Pope is the head. And so with that, you end up with the ability to make proclamations that are not in Scripture.

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They can proclaim that Mary was conceived without sin. They don't need a

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Scriptural proof for that. They can proclaim that Mary lived a life sin -free. They don't need

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Scriptural proof for that. And they can proclaim that Mary was assumed into heaven, that she was taken up into heaven.

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They don't need Scriptural proof for that. And that's why when a Protestant comes along and says, but wait, what does the

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Bible say? It doesn't always really matter when it comes to Roman Catholic teaching, even though there are those who would argue from the

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Roman Catholic position that these things are taught in the Bible, but not explicitly.

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Like, for instance, the way that some of the passages are discussed.

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If you ask, well, where do you find these things in the Bible? One of the places that will sometimes go is to Genesis 3 .15.

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Genesis 3 .15 says that I'll put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring, talking about at that moment referring to Christ, that he is the offspring of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.

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And that woman reference there, some people believe that's a reference to Mary, whose enmity with sin was her enmity.

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That enmity between her and the serpent would be enmity between her and sin.

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And so she would hate sin. She would have no part in sin. She would be pure. Now, I think that's a stretch, but that's one of the ways that certain scriptural passages are used.

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Another one that's very important is Luke, where it says that she received from the angel a message that she was full of grace.

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And the phrase full of grace is believed by some to be saying that she had grace from the beginning, that she was the object of grace from the moment of conception.

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And again, the text doesn't say that. That's assuming into the text something that is not there.

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It's reading into the text something that's not there. Certainly it does call her, you know, the favored one, the one who is full of grace, but the idea of her receiving that grace at some point in the future, particularly at her conception, is having to read that into the text.

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The text doesn't say that specifically. Elizabeth, her cousin, calls her blessed among women.

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Of course, we're very familiar with that phrase. That phrase comes up when the Roman Catholics talk about Mary. They call her the blessed virgin

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Mary. Also, that's another doctrine believed about Mary, the doctrine of what's known as the perpetual virginity of Mary.

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So not only was Mary conceived without sin, according to these doctrines, but she was also kept from sin.

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She never sinned during her lifetime. She was also kept a perpetual virgin. Even after the birth of Christ, according to Roman Catholic teaching, she did not have a relationship with Joseph that was conjugal.

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She remained a virgin until she was assumed into heaven. These are the things that are believed. Again, there is no scriptural reference for this.

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There's no proof of this. In fact, the scripture seems to indicate the opposite when it talks about Jesus having siblings, which you would assume were siblings through Mary, even though Roman Catholics and others who hold this doctrine would say that those siblings came from another marriage that Joseph was a part in, either indicating that Mary was

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Joseph's second wife, or that he took a second wife after Mary, or that he had a wife prior to Mary who passed away, and he had children from that marriage.

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Again, all of these things are not found in the scripture. What's interesting, when we actually go to the

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Bible and we look at these things, what we find is there's actually very little about Mary in the

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Bible. I mean, total passages that actually name her explicitly, because the name

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Mary, obviously, is in the Bible several times because there are different Marys. There's Mary the mother of Jesus. There's Mary Magdalene.

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There's a few others who are called Mary. But the explicit references to Mary as the mother of Jesus name specifically about 20 times, 19 or 20 times in the

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Gospels, and then she's indirectly referenced five or six times also in the Gospels.

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So we're looking at the total times that Mary is referenced in the Gospel is about 25 times.

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And in all of those times, we read nothing about these dogmas that are later associated with her life.

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So one of the questions that comes up is, well, where did this stuff come from?

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Did this come out of whole cloth? Was this invented out of nowhere? How did people come to these conclusions?

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Well, one of the ways that they have been influenced is by extra biblical writing.

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There was a writing early on, we would say probably about the middle of the second century, which is right around 150.

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That's middle of the second century. There was a book called the Proto Evangelium of James.

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And even though it doesn't speak of the immaculate conception of Mary, being that she was kept from sin, it does talk about her conception.

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It talks about her parents. It talks about her receiving, essentially, an exceptional sanctity that she was different from other women.

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From what I understand, the new Mary movie, which is out right now on Netflix and has been produced by the bastion of biblical fidelity,

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Joel Osteen, apparently some of that movie was taken from the

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Proto Evangelium of James, which talks about Mary. And it is, again, it doesn't mention her conception being without sin, but it portrays her as living a sacred life, living a life of fidelity.

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And so that's one of the places where some of this teaching about Mary comes from.

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So it's not from the Bible. It's from extra -biblical sources where some of this information is drawn from.

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Of course, not the doctrine of original sin. And here's the thing about that. The doctrine of original sin, as articulated by Augustine and later, really wasn't as well understood and as well articulated at that time in history.

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So it makes sense that it wouldn't have addressed the doctrine of original sin in the second century as clearly as it would in the medieval church.

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But still, having said that, it does portray Mary as exceptionally pure.

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And so this idea of Mary being a particularly sanctified saint—in this regard, a completely sanctified saint, a sinless saint—is something that has been believed by some in early church history.

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And that shows us how it could be introduced and passed down through the ages.

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And again, it's debated and has been debated about things like, okay, the logic of it.

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Okay, so if Mary is without sin, does that mean that when we talk about the universality of sin, does that now only apply—not only does the exception apply to Jesus, but does the exception apply to Jesus and Mary?

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So, for instance, I remember James White telling this story, and this is in the early days of him doing apologetics with Roman Catholics.

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He was doing debates with Roman Catholics, and one of the debates that they did was on the subject of Mary.

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And one of the men was telling the story about how the woman who was caught in adultery when she was brought before Jesus, and Jesus said, let the one without sin cast the first stone.

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And again, I'm not telling this story. This is me retelling a story that James White told that this Roman Catholic teacher told.

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He said, a rock flew over Jesus's shoulder, hit the woman, and Jesus turned and said, not you,

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Mom. So the idea was that there was someone who could throw the stone in that story of Jesus with the woman, and the person who could throw the stone was

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Mary, because Mary was without sin. Now, again, the Bible doesn't teach this.

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This is something that is imposed upon the Scripture. Even when we take the scriptural references that I mentioned—to

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Mary being full of grace, to Mary being blessed among women—that does not say that Mary was without sin.

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And even the idea that Mary is the bearer of God, which was a term which would play very much into the early

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Church as far as debates, particularly the Nestorian debate, where the issue was whether or not she should be identified as theotokos—theotokos meaning the

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God -bearer or the mother of God—that question of her being the mother of God was part of what was being debated there in the

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Nestorian controversy. And the question is, well, if she's the bearer of God, if she's the mother of God, how could she be sinner?

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How could a sinner bear God? And so that's, again, where some of this theology develops out of somewhat of an attempt to logic our way out of a seeming conundrum.

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And that is, well, how can you have the pure Son of God delivered through a sinful womb?

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So how do you deal with that? Well, you end up with a sinless womb.

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You end up with a sinless person. Mary is sinless because she's kept from sin. She's kept from original sin.

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She's kept from practical sin. She doesn't sin at all, and she's perfect.

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She's immaculate. Therefore, she's the immaculate one able to bear the Savior. But then you have the question of regression, and this is something that I often wonder about, and that is, okay, so now we have to go back to Mary's mother and father.

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Okay, so Mary's conceived without sin. She's kept from original sin. So were her parents also?

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The answer is no. There's no one who's arguing that her parents were immaculately conceived. But again, it seems like a regression now, because if Mary had to be without sin, why did her parents not have to be without sin?

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And someone will say, well, Mary didn't have to Mary didn't have to come through a sinless womb for her to be sinless.

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And so the question, we raise our hand and say, well, then why did Jesus? Why would it be necessary for the mother of Jesus to herself be sinless?

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Why is this a necessary doctrine? I understand how we get there logically.

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Okay, God is coming through this womb. We want to consider

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God to come through a holy womb. How could that be?

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Well, she has to be kept from sin to be holy. I understand the logic of how you get there. The problem is, this is not something that is necessary, because in the very same way that Mary could have been kept from the sin of her parents,

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Jesus could have been kept from any sin of Mary. And it's just taking another regression step back to say, well,

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Mary had to be kept from it. Well, her parents didn't, and their parents didn't. So again, I think you understand if you're kind of following my logic here, there's nothing that says that Mary's sinlessness is necessary for her to be able to bear the

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Christ child. That is something that is being imposed, because the

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Scripture certainly doesn't teach it. In the couple dozen passages that we have that I mentioned already that mention

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Mary either by name or by inference, none of them say that she was sinless.

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None of them say that she was conceived without sin, that she was lived her life without sin.

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None of them even allude to that, other than calling her full of grace and, of course, as we said, blessed among women.

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So this is why, as a Protestant, as a

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Calvinistic Protestant Reformed thinking teacher, when

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I come to Mary, I want to believe everything the Bible teaches me about Mary.

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But the Bible doesn't teach a lot about Mary. What's so interesting is all of the theology that surrounds

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Mary in regard to who she is and what she did, and even some of the typology that's introduced.

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If you go back and watch the video from the Catholic teacher that I showed a little while ago, he references a comparison between Mary and Eve.

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He says, like, Jesus is the second Adam, or the last Adam.

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He says Mary is the last Eve. And he even goes on to say that there was the team that brought the fall, and then there's the redemption team.

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Now, I don't want to say that's Catholic teaching. This might just be from this one individual, so I certainly don't want anyone to say, well, that's not what the

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Church teaches. OK, I get that. But this is what he taught in the video, and perhaps

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I could just, for a second, let me just throw a clip of him saying that in here. Let's look at these two stories.

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Let's look at the story of the fall, right? In Genesis chapter 3, you have one man and one woman, and they're both without original sin.

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So Jesus isn't the first person without original sin, and Mary isn't the first person without original sin. Adam and Eve are made without original sin.

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Now, Jesus is called the new Adam, right? By Saint Paul. So there's old Adam, Genesis chapter 3.

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Jesus is called the new Adam. Question, if there's an old Adam and an old

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Eve, and there's a new Adam, doesn't it also make sense that there would be a new Eve? Let's look at the story.

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Genesis chapter 3. Here's the woman without a sin, and an angel of light appears to her, you know, one of the shining ones.

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Nahash is the Hebrew word. It means the glistening ones or the bright ones. Lucifer, the light bearer. An angel of light appears to this woman without original sin,

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Eve, and he speaks words to her that cause her to disbelieve and disobey. She says no to God, and yes to the words that cause her to disbelieve and disobey.

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She takes that disobedience, hands it on to the husband, the man, who then hands that disobedience and death to the whole world.

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We're all descendants of Adam and Eve. We all inherit that original sin. We all inherit the disobedience and death. Now, that's the fall team, those two, but there's also a redeem team.

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In Luke's Gospel, what do you have? You have this woman without original sin, Mary, and an angel of light, Gabriel, appears to her and he speaks words to her that cause her to obey and believe, to believe and obey.

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When she says yes to God's message in that and trusts him, she then hands on that obedience to the one conceived in her womb, the man, who then when he says yes to the

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Father, he hands on life to the whole world. So just like the woman to the man, man to the world of the fall, in the

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New Testament, in the new creation, the redeemed team from the woman to the man, from the man to the world.

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That's why Eve is called the mother of all the living. Mary is called the mother of all the redeemed.

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So you heard what he said. He called Mary and Jesus the redemption team. As Eve passed on the fruit to Adam and Adam then through his sin passes on his sinfulness to all mankind,

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Mary gives us Christ and through Christ there comes redemption and righteousness for all mankind.

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Therefore, there is this typological view where Adam is typifying

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Christ in the negative and Eve is typifying Mary in the negative.

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You have the negative, Eve and Adam. You have the positive, Mary and Jesus. And this leads to some really,

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I think, really dangerous theology where it places Mary in a position of almost being a participant in our redemption.

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Now, there are those who consider Mary to be co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix.

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That is something that I don't want to get into today because that's not yet official

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Catholic teaching, but that is believed by some. And so it needs to be at least considered the fact that this is how you get to that point.

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You see them as a redemption team. Mary participating with Christ in the redemption of mankind.

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By Mary being the God -bearer, she gives us Jesus, and Jesus then becomes our

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Savior, and therefore Mary is participating in our salvation. Again, this is not something that I believe.

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I think it is good if we exalt Mary for who she is in Scripture.

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She is the one who carried the Christ child. She's the one who received the message from the angel with joy.

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She sang. She gives us the wonderful Magnificent, where she testifies of her trust in the

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Lord. And there are so many wonderful things, positive things, about Mary that can be said, but when those things are, as it were, perverted or contorted, exaggerated, added to, to the point where now we have to say we're believing things about Mary that not only are not in the

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Bible, but lead us to incorrect conclusions about her participation in our salvation.

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There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

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That has to be understood. That has to be believed. Mary is not a mediator between us and Christ.

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Jesus is the mediator between God and man. And we don't add another mediator in there.

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We don't add someone to the redemption team. It's an unnecessary inclusion and,

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I think, a dangerous one. And so when I say I don't believe in the

37:47

Immaculate Conception, this is why. I don't think it's necessary to believe.

37:53

In fact, I think it's necessary to not believe it. Because even though there have been those who have believed it down through the ages, who've developed it and have come to conclusions about it over time, it is not something that is derived from Scripture.

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It is not something that is necessarily drawn out of Scripture. It's something that has to be imposed upon the

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Scripture. And so I reject the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

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I don't think it's necessary. In fact, I think it is dangerous.

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I think it's a false teaching, and I think it should be rejected. So I'm sure you have thoughts and opinions on this.

38:36

I'm sure you have some ideas about what you think about the

38:41

Immaculate Conception of Mary. Perhaps this is the first time you've heard any of this. And maybe when you saw the thumbnail for this video, you thought,

38:50

Keith's lost his mind. He's denying the virgin birth. I don't deny the virgin birth. I am thankful for the virgin conception of Jesus, because that doctrine is taught in the

39:04

Scriptures. But the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is not taught in the

39:13

Scriptures. Now, I am going to cut now to a quick commercial, and when

39:19

I come back, I want to talk for just a few moments about the virgin conception of Christ and another important theological truth that we need to talk about around Christmastime.

39:32

I talk about this a lot around Christmastime, so I want to do this with you now. So here's my friend

39:38

Chuck from Private Family Banking. When I come back from this commercial, I'm going to tell you about what's known as the

39:44

Alma and Bethula controversy. Hey listeners, this is Chuck with Private Family Banking.

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Glad to be here with you today. It's a chilly day here in South Texas. You can see the pool behind me is covered up for the winter, but you know what's not covered up?

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It's legacy planning. It's putting postmill talk into postmill action. Get a hold of me today, chuck at privatefamilybanking .com,

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or schedule a meeting using the link below. See you soon. God bless. So something very interesting happened.

41:31

I recorded the entire portion, the last portion of this podcast on the

41:37

Alma Bethula controversy, which is about the question of the virgin birth.

41:42

And then I went out to dinner with my family and was doing some things before I was ready to post this video.

41:48

And lo and behold, Protestia posted a video of a United Church of Christ pastor arguing that Jesus wasn't born of a virgin because that's biologically impossible.

42:00

And he argued the very thing that I'm going to address in this video. So I came home and I said, before I put in the last portion of this video, where I talk about the

42:12

Alma Bethula controversy, which you'll find out what that is in a minute, I want to show a quick clip of what

42:18

Protestia posted tonight from this United Church of Christ pastor. And I want to simply say that what he's going to say is not correct.

42:28

And I'm going to show why during the last portion of this video. I just found it very interesting that I had already recorded the last part of this video.

42:37

I didn't see this Protestia video beforehand, went out to dinner, opened up my phone, saw this video, and I said, you know what?

42:43

I can't post the podcast this week without including this portion. Now, if you know Church Soup, you've seen this guy before.

42:50

This guy's hugely liberal with his interpretation of the Bible. And he's going to say Jesus was not born of a virgin.

42:56

That's just impossible. So watch this. And then I'm going to cut through to my video that I recorded earlier.

43:03

So it's going to be sort of a weird cut, but it's going to cut through to my video earlier where I talk about people who don't believe in the virgin birth because of their understanding of what

43:14

Isaiah meant in Isaiah 7 .14. So check this out. All right.

44:02

Now that you've seen that video, here was my response—remember, recorded before I ever saw that—to this question of what did

44:09

Isaiah mean when he said the virgin shall conceive. Here we go. So as I said in the beginning of this video,

44:16

I disagree with the immaculate conception of Mary, but I believe in the virginal conception of the

44:23

Lord Jesus Christ. I do believe that Jesus Christ came born of a virgin. But when

44:29

I was a kid in our church—and remember, I pastor the same church I grew up in, even though back then it was a much different church—it was part of the old

44:38

Disciples of Christ movement, which is the theologically liberal, sort of socially liberal arm of what's known as the

44:47

Restoration movement. The more conservative side would be like the Church of Christ and the Independent Christian Church, but the

44:53

Disciples of Christ tended to be more liberal. And so even though our church was always pretty conservative, there were influences of liberal teaching that made their way in, and one of them was a pastor who came to our church in the 1980s.

45:08

And he taught that the virgin birth was not true. Well, he didn't last very long.

45:16

It was so interesting. I talked to Ms. Hoffman, who was my Sunday school teacher when

45:21

I was a kid. She's the one who told me a lot of this story, because I was too young really to remember. She said, well, when we hired him, we didn't even think to ask if he believed in the virgin birth.

45:30

We thought everybody believed in the virgin birth. The virgin conception of Jesus was just everybody believed that, but apparently this gentleman didn't.

45:39

And so the question arises, well, if we have the authority of the Scripture, and the Scripture is pretty clear about this subject, why would anyone come to the conclusion that Jesus was not born of a virgin?

45:53

And so I want to address that subject during the last part of today's podcast, because I talked in the first half about why

46:01

I disagree with the Immaculate Conception, and I do, but I want to again reinforce just how important it is to believe in the virginal conception of the

46:10

Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to give you a short lesson, which is very similar to lessons

46:18

I've given at my church over the years, a lesson I call the Alma Bithula Controversy.

46:25

And where does this come from? What does this mean? The two words, Alma and Bithula, are both Hebrew words which refer to virgins.

46:33

The word Alma is more generic, referring to a maiden, and the word Bithula is more specific, referring to a virgin.

46:42

And so when the book of Isaiah prophesies the coming of the

46:47

Lord Jesus Christ in Isaiah 7 .14, it says, "'Behold, the Lord himself will give you a sign.

46:53

The virgin will conceive and bear a son.'" Well that phrase, that word that's used there by Isaiah, under the inspiration of the

47:02

Holy Spirit, wrote this word. He wrote the word Alma, which is more technically the word for maiden than it is specifically

47:11

Bithula, the word for virgin. And so that has led some to conclude that Isaiah was not prophesying about a virginal conception.

47:25

So when we get to liberal scholarship and liberal theology, there is a lot of argument about, well, this wasn't really the prophecy, and therefore when

47:44

Matthew is quoting Isaiah and applying it to Jesus, that he's quoting it improperly.

47:51

Now right away you see what's being considered. The Scriptures are not inherent and infallible and inspired, but rather the works of men, and ultimately that Isaiah had meant one thing, and Matthew changed it into something else, that it was contorted and changed into something else.

48:12

And so it does lend to the question, well, why would

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Isaiah use the term Alma rather than the term Bithula?

48:24

And we don't know why God would inspire the use of one word or the other, but what we do know is that both words reference the idea of a virgin.

48:34

A maiden would be someone of marriageable quality, i .e., a virgin.

48:40

And so it's not improper to translate Isaiah 7 .14,

48:47

the virgin will conceive. But there are some translations that don't.

48:53

Some translations use the word maiden at that verse or at that passage, and those translations have specifically generally been rejected by conservative scholars as being obscure, obscuring the truth that Isaiah was referencing a virgin.

49:13

And when someone says, well, how do you know Isaiah was referencing a virgin? Well, when we go to the

49:18

New Testament, and the New Testament quotes this passage from Isaiah, the

49:24

New Testament uses the Greek word for virgin, which is the word parthenos.

49:30

And so the argument is that the New Testament writers certainly understood what

49:36

Isaiah was writing, and they translated it parthenos. No question what parthenos means.

49:43

Parthenos is virgin. So whether Isaiah used Alma or Bithula, the

49:49

New Testament writers interpreted that use of the word Alma as parthenos, or virgin.

49:58

But then the argument goes, well, those men were influenced.

50:04

They were biased. They were trying to prove a point about Jesus. Certainly the

50:09

Gospels are written after Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection. So they were trying to make a point about Jesus, and they were taking something that Isaiah never intended, and adding the idea of a virgin to his text.

50:26

Well, here's the issue with that. When we go into the

50:31

Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, which preceded the life of Christ, written approximately 200 years prior to Jesus, and the

50:45

Old Testament is translated into the Septuagint, into the Greek, we go to Isaiah 714, and we find that the

50:53

Septuagint uses the word parthenos. It uses the word virgin. Now, if this is before Christ came, these translators of the

51:03

Septuagint could not be influenced by Christian thinking, could not be influenced by the birth, death, burial, resurrection of Christ, can't be influenced by Christian thinking,

51:13

Christian teachers, because those things hadn't come yet. Those things didn't exist in time yet. And so these men reading and translating

51:23

Isaiah's prophecy translates it as virgin.

51:30

So we have every reason to believe from the Scriptures that Jesus is born of a virgin, that he was conceived in the virgin's womb, and that that event was prophesied almost 700 years in the writing of Isaiah the prophet, who said,

51:57

Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son. So that's what

52:03

I call the Alma Bethula controversy, and how we come to the conclusion that what Isaiah meant when he wrote was, in fact, a virgin.

52:13

And by the way, I never really finished the story earlier, but yeah, that guy who taught that there was no virgin birth in our church, he didn't last very long, because even at that point in our church, we were not tolerating that, because that is false teaching.

52:30

It's one thing to deny the Immaculate Conception, which I do. I deny the Immaculate Conception of Mary because it's not in the

52:36

Bible. But as Christians, we cannot deny the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

52:42

Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of the virgin by the

52:47

Holy Spirit. He came into this world and was, in fact, without sin.

52:54

He's the only one who was without sin—not Mary and not anyone else.

53:00

Jesus is the single sinless Lamb of God, and he is the only one who can take our sins and represent us before God.

53:12

So as I close out this podcast today, as we begin to draw everything to a close and what we've learned, let me just again point you to the

53:21

Lord Jesus Christ. Not to Mary or to any other saint, but if you right now are not a believer, if you are outside of faith in the

53:33

Lord Jesus Christ, the Bible says that all of us are sinners. Every single one of us is a sinner other than Jesus Christ.

53:42

Our sin deserves God's punishment. All of the sins that we have done, the

53:48

Bible says, are breaking God's law, and we stand in God's courtroom as guilty of having broken his law and deserving of his punishment.

53:57

But in the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law and give us the adoption as sons.

54:10

And so today, if you would turn from your unbelief and trust in the finished work of the

54:18

Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved.

54:24

And if you've never done that before, I want to encourage you. Turn from your unbelief.

54:30

Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Get yourself a Bible. Read it.

54:35

Find yourself a Bible -teaching church. Go and attend. Be discipled.

54:41

That's my encouragement to you today. I want to thank you again for listening to your

54:47

Calvinist podcast. I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and I want to again thank you for supporting our show.

54:57

And if you haven't yet, and you're enjoying what you're watching, please hit the subscribe button. And if you enjoyed today's show, hit the thumbs up button.

55:05

And if you didn't, hit the thumbs down button twice. Thank you for listening to your

55:10

Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.

55:17

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55:31

So I mix a manly drink, then I hit the

55:36

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55:43

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56:09

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