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Randal Rauser

Home of progressively evangelical, generously orthodox, rigorously analytic, revolutionary Christian thinking (that's what I'm aiming for anyway)

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virgin birth

Christmas, Virgin Mary, and the Problem of Child Brides

December 22, 2021 by Randal

There are certain questions that linger in the shadows of Christian faith. Due to their awkward, difficult, disturbing implications, we are reluctant to ask them. And the Christmas story has been a catalyst for many such questions. For an earlier generation under the sway of modernist skepticism about miracles, the doubts often centered on whether […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: Conversations with My Inner Atheist, virgin birth, virgin conception

Debating the Virgin Birth: A Christian/Atheist Conversation

December 24, 2017 by Randal

For this Christmas Eve, I repost my 2013 Reasonable Doubts debate on the virgin birth with Jonathan Pearce. This debate was prerecorded and as a result, it doesn’t have the same crackle as a live debate (the heated repartee; the gotcha moments; the laughter and applause of a fired-up audience). On the upside, being scripted and […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: debate, Jonathan Pearce, virgin birth

Is the virgin birth an essential doctrine?

December 18, 2017 by Randal

Since we’re in the midst of Advent, it would seem to be a good time to pose a question about the relative importance of the doctrine of the virgin birth. (By the way, the term is infelicitous since the doctrine in question is really about whether Jesus was virginally conceived. Be that as it may, the […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: christology, dogma, theology, virgin birth

How young was the Virgin Mary … and was that too young?

December 24, 2015 by Randal

I’ve posted some more-or-less heart-warming Christmas greetings in years’ past. See 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011. This year I’m going to instead offer a brief word on the Virgin Mary. If not particularly heart-warming, hopefully it is at least thought-provoking. And if honest about the problems it raises, hopefully it is not impious for doing so. Let’s start […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: Christmas, Mary, virgin birth, virgin conception

What the virgin birth isn’t

March 10, 2011 by Randal

Last week I told The Atheist Missionary that my very next post would be on the virgin birth. It wasn’t. Was that baloney? No. Neither was it a lie. It was a statement about a future state of affairs that I believed to be true but which, due to my scattered mind, turned out not to be. […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: Marcion, Tertullian, virgin birth, virginal conception

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