“In a world of fugitives the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away,” so claims Agatha in T. S. Eliot’s play, “The Family Reunion.”[1] Elliot’s aphorism captures a peculiar irony of the modern age: Those who remain faithful to ancient truth are often accused of retreating from progress. Readers of this journal are well-versed in Machen’s placement among those who remained steadfast in the bluster of theological fragmentation and disintegration. In Machen’s context, new sciences promised a mastery of nature, and historical criticism promised to cull the Bible of superstition. These deviations were thought to maintain the church’s relevance and expand its messaging among its secular observers. Predictably, our reflections on Machen’s posture and activity throughout the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy tend to prioritize his forthright apologetic in his timeless Christianity & Liberalism (1923). Rightfully so, as Peter Lillback claims, because Machen’s classic “has become the seminal work that distinguishes historic Christianity from the subtly but utterly distinct and divergent theology of the modernizing church.”[2] Across our own landscape, when revisionist modernisms emerge, we tend to stabilize our responses by recalling, as Douglas Kelly summarizes, that “Machen emerged as an international champion of biblical authority and evangelical theology.”[3] To borrow from Eliot again, Machen not only remained steadfast, he contended against the theological fugitives plundering “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

Among the college-age students I teach in theology and ministry courses, awareness of Machen is remarkably limited. His name rarely appears in their theological vocabulary, and when it does, it is usually as a faint echo of what was taught in a church history course, often confined to what we noted above. Scarce are the students who are aware of Machen’s decades-long defense of the virgin birth (or to be precise, the virginal conception). Yet within the same intellectual atmosphere that unmoored orthodoxy from its biblical and theological foundations, to affirm that a first-century Jewish girl conceived a child by the Holy Spirit appeared to many as quaint at best and delusional at worst. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s 1922 sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” references the impasse:

It is interesting to note where the Fundamentalists are driving in their stakes to mark out the deadline of doctrine around the church, across which no one is to pass except on terms of agreement. They insist that we must all believe in the historicity of certain special miracles, preeminently the virgin birth of our Lord.[4]

More broadly, as Daryl Hart explains,

What was at stake in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy was not the secularization of America but the secularization of the church. During the 1920s and 1930s, Protestants faced a choice between retaining either the status of the church or the message of the Gospel.[5]

Machen refused to surrender, standing still while the world rushed past him, convinced that the Christian faith could not survive the loss of the supernatural without forfeiting its very essence. Reflecting on Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ, William Baird writes, “How Machen accomplished the immense amount of research displayed in this work while he was center of the storm that raged in church and seminary is testimony to his enduring fortitude.”[6] In what follows, we will trace Machen’s argument and consider the significance of his defense. His presentation, as we will discover, was not the product of nostalgia or sectarianism, but the steady outworking of theological conviction.

A Providential Thesis

At the dawn of the twentieth century, conservative Protestants identified what they regarded as the essential doctrines of historic Christianity: the inerrancy of Scripture, the virginal conception of Christ, his substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, and power to perform miracles.[7] The General Assembly formally affirmed these as “essential and necessary” articles of faith in 1910 and yet again in 1916. The modernist’s formal response soon followed in the Auburn Affirmation (1924), which sought to distinguish between the “facts and doctrines of our religion” and the “particular theories” used to explain them.[8] In effect, this reframing allowed one to affirm the incarnation while denying the virgin birth, thereby signaling a decisive shift in the theological fault lines of American Presbyterianism. Thus, “in the space of thirty years, an existing consensus of conservative orthodoxy had been reduced to being one option among others.”[9] In response to the Auburn Affirmation, Machen argues, “The Affirmation declares the virgin birth to be a theory; Holy Scripture declares it to be a fact.”[10]

As Hart argues, Machen does not fit neatly within the standard categories of American fundamentalism. This observation is important today, especially when easy compartmentalization blurs the boundaries of those involved in this theological struggle. Though Machen stood among the most visible defenders of orthodoxy, he was neither a populist nor a separatist. Internationally educated and deeply devoted to the Reformed confessions, he resisted both dispensational theology and the interdenominational spirit that characterized the movement. Hart therefore concludes that Machen is best understood as an intellectually robust, confessional Presbyterian whose loyalty rested firmly in the historic creeds and polity of the church.[11] Thus, Hart claims,

The best way to guard against liberalism, he believed, was not through an interdenominational union of conservatives but rather through fidelity to historic Protestant creeds, reinforced by strong church ties. . . . He repeatedly counseled conservatives in all denominations not to abandon their confessional loyalties.[12]

Recounting his seminary studies, Machen acknowledges, “In Germany I obtained practically no contact with conservative scholarship, but listened almost exclusively to those who represent the dominant naturalistic point of view.”[13] Machen’s final year of seminary required the selection of a thesis topic. Ned Stonehouse notes that his assigned subject, “A Critical Discussion of the New Testament Account of the Virgin Birth of Jesus,” was not of his own selection. As Stonehouse explains, “It is thus interesting that the subject of the virgin birth of Christ which was to fascinate him throughout his career, and which resulted in the production of his opus magnum, was not of his own choosing.”[14] Yet what began as an academic exercise would become the defining concern of his academic life, and his thorough analysis exhibited his awareness of the academic literature and the precision with which he championed his defense.

Machen’s Defense

By 1912, Machen had already begun to lay the groundwork for what would eventually become The Virgin Birth of Christ. That year he published three significant essays, two of which were later reprinted as a booklet, while the third, dealing with the second century, would become the opening chapter of his later volume, placing the testimony of church history in conversation with the biblical record.[15] The two exegetical studies were substantially revised and appear as chapters 4 and 5 of the completed work. These early writings formed the foundation upon which the larger project was constructed. A further development occurred in the spring of 1927, when Machen delivered the Thomas Smyth Lectures at Columbia Theological Seminary under the title “The Integrity of the Lucan Narrative.” These lectures, later published in the Princeton Review, became the central architecture of the book’s claims.[16] While the finalized book draws upon these earlier publications, more than half of the volume represents new research and synthesis, particularly in its treatment of the historical background and the development of the doctrine within the early church.

The first eleven chapters assume the historicity of the virginal conception and present the positive evidence in its favor. The remaining chapters frame the contrary hypothesis (that the event did not occur) and then examine alternative explanations for the origin of the narratives in Matthew and Luke. The design reflects Machen’s confidence that the truth of Christianity requires no special pleading. Readers of Christianity and Liberalism can detect Machen’s same candor, only now exercised in a densely documented, text-by-text defense of the Gospel accounts.

Rather than exegesis, Machen begins with the witness of the early church. By the opening of the second century, belief in the virginal conception was already universal, found in creedal forms and echoed by Ignatius and others. Fringe actors who denied the doctrine did so for dogmatic rather than textual reasons. Machen concludes that the church’s confession was not an afterthought of later theology but the natural continuation of apostolic testimony. This early witness becomes Machen’s first line of argument: The doctrine is ancient because it was already embedded in the earliest Christian memory.

Machen moves from history to the Gospel of Luke, which occupies the center of his case. Luke’s infancy narratives, he argues, are not later additions or adaptations but integral to the Gospel as a whole. The language, rhythm, and atmosphere are Semitic, revealing a Jewish milieu untouched by later Gentile speculation. Luke, though he may have used sources, is no compiler of legends. Luke shapes his material faithfully within the historical framework of his Gospel, and Machen demonstrates that every attempt to excise or minimize Luke’s references to the virgin birth creates new contradictions rather than resolving old ones. The narrative coherence depends on the miracle being genuine.

Machen subjects the theories of German criticism to exhaustive scrutiny and finds them wanting. The verses describing the virginal conception cannot be removed without undermining the narrative structure itself. The comparison between the annunciation to Zechariah and that to Mary, for instance, reveals that the virgin birth is not a tertiary embellishment but the organizing center of Luke’s story. The contrast between the aged couple who conceive in their later years and the young virgin who conceives by the Holy Spirit dramatizes the transition from the old covenant to the new.

In turning to Matthew’s account, Machen contests the notion that Matthew’s inclusion of the virgin conception results from later insertions, and such an argument lacks support in the manuscript tradition or within Matthew’s internal style. Together, Matthew and Luke present independent yet harmonious accounts that reinforce one another’s credibility. Their differences are not contradictions but evidence of separate sources, perhaps reflecting distinct family perspectives (i.e., Luke from Mary’s, Matthew from Joseph’s).

After establishing the unity and reliability of the biblical narratives, Machen widens his investigation to questions of history and worldview. Here the issue becomes philosophical as well as textual: Can one admit the miraculous at all? For Machen, the modern rejection of the virgin birth is symptomatic of a deeper and more destructive malady, the a priori denial of the supernatural. Rationalists who wish to retain the ethical core of Christianity while rejecting its miraculous frame, he contends, end by constructing another religion altogether. The decision between faith and skepticism ultimately rests on whether one believes that God acts within history.

Machen further explores the so-called accusations of silence in the wider New Testament. Critics note, for example, that Mark, John, and Paul lack direct reference to the virgin birth. Machen grants that the doctrine is less frequently mentioned than the resurrection but insists that its comparative absence is precisely what one would expect. The evangelists wrote from eyewitness testimony; Paul wrote occasional letters, and never with the intentions of a biographical treatment. Thus, the absence of explicit wider New Testament reference does not imply ignorance or denial but authorial selectivity with differing aims. Moreover, Machen reiterates, the doctrine fits perfectly within Paul’s Christology: The second Adam must be a new creation, not the product of the old.

If the virgin birth were not historical, how did such a belief arise? Machen’s insertion of this question provides the opportunity to survey two major hypotheses, Jewish and pagan derivation, both popular among scholars of the “history of religions” school. The Jewish theory fails, Machen notes, because the Old Testament contains miraculous births but no virginal ones, and Jewish theology of the period, with its strong sense of God’s transcendence, would not have generated such a notion. The supposed link to Isaiah 7:14 cannot explain the rise of the doctrine, for Jewish interpreters did not connect that prophecy to a virgin-born Messiah.

The latter, pagan-derivation theory, fares no better. Comparisons with Greco-Roman and Near Eastern myths collapse under scrutiny, Machen explains. None of the supposed parallels truly describes a virginal conception. Even where early Christian apologists such as Justin Martyr drew analogies to pagan stories, they did so rhetorically, not as sources. The infancy narratives are stubbornly Jewish in idiom and theology, and their sober tone bears no resemblance to the extravagances of myth. In the end, Machen concludes that if the virginal conception were not a fact, modern criticism has not yet offered a plausible account of how the story originated.

Across these fourteen chapters, Machen’s method is remarkably even-handed. A first-rate scholar, Machen avoids ridiculing his opponents, yet he exposes the internal contradictions of their theories. His analysis rests on two pillars: first, the positive coherence of the biblical witness; second, the inability of rival explanations to account for the data. Together, these support the historical and theological credibility of the miracle. In the preface to the second edition (March 1932), Machen argues, “When the objections to the supernatural have once been overcome, there are removed with them, in a much more far-reaching way than is sometimes supposed, the objections to the birth narratives as a whole.”[17] For Machen, this was the heart of the crisis. He saw that once the supernatural was expelled from the gospel, Christianity would dissolve into ethics and sentimentalism. The virgin birth is not an isolated marvel but the necessary expression of a gospel that begins with divine initiative and ends with divine accomplishment. The miracle of Christ’s conception belongs organically to the same supernatural order as the resurrection, for both are signs that salvation is God’s work from first to last.

Implications

The obvious import of Machen’s contribution is his demonstration that the doctrine of the virgin birth is not a removable or peripheral miracle, but an integral, “organic part of a mighty redeeming work of God.”[18] Its practical significance is that it fixes the time and nature of the incarnation. By his conception in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit, the divine Son truly assumed complete human nature from its very beginning. This foundational fact assures us that our Savior is fully God and man, ensuring that his subsequent life, death, and resurrection were truly the work of a uniquely qualified redeemer. On the other hand, denying the virgin birth inevitably leads to an impoverished or defective understanding of Christ’s person. As Machen argues, those who reject the virgin birth

often profess belief in the “incarnation”; but the word is apt to mean to them almost the exact opposite of what the New Testament means when it says that ‘the Word became flesh.’ To these modern men the incarnation means that God and man are one; to the New Testament it means rather that they are not one, but that the eternal Son of God became man, assumed our nature, by a stupendous miracle, to redeem us from sin. Seldom does any real belief in the incarnation go along with a rejection of the miracle of the virgin birth.[19]

From a practical theological standpoint, the virgin birth provides a necessary explanation for Christ's sinlessness and his unique position as the “Second Adam.” Machen emphasizes that if Jesus had been born in the ordinary natural way, he would have been a product of the fallen human race, inheriting the same guilt and power of sin that plague all of Adam’s descendants. Machen explains,

Paul clearly regarded Jesus Christ as no mere product of what had gone before Him, but as an entirely new beginning in humanity, the second Adam, the Founder of a new race. Could such a Person have been derived by ordinary generation from the men who had existed before Him upon the earth; could He, in the ordinary sense, have had a human father?[20]

The supernatural conception by the Holy Spirit, however, establishes Jesus as a new creation. The theological and practical wisdom here is rather obvious: A Savior who needed saving would be no Savior at all; therefore, the manner of his birth guarantees his fitness to save.

Machen views the doctrine as a touchstone of one’s view on biblical authority.[21] Since the virgin birth is clearly and historically narrated as a fact in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, its denial fundamentally involves rejecting the trustworthiness of the biblical record in the sphere of external, supernatural events. For Machen, those who claim to accept the “ideals (or what they call ‘religion’)” of Scripture but dismiss its historical facts are separating the gospel from its foundation in a mighty, world-changing work of God.[22] The practical choice presented to the Christian is one of supernaturalism versus naturalism. Do we believe in a God who intervenes miraculously in history to redeem humanity or one whose actions are limited by human experience? Our answer exposes our reliance upon or our rejection of the Bible’s trustworthiness.

Finally, as we celebrate the incarnation with other believers, we are comforted by the

supreme wonder that not some lesser one, but the eternal Son of God, He through whom the world was made, should not despise the virgin’s womb, but should consent to be born as a man and dwell among us; it is no doubt a wonder, too, that the manner in which He should come should be found in a creative act of God’s Spirit in Mary’s womb.[23]

Our attention upon the incarnation testifies to the depth of Christ’s condescension and willing entry into the lowliest of human circumstances for our sake. We are reminded and thus we proclaim that our salvation rests not on human effort or philosophy, but on a divine work wholly outside the capacity of man. The practical wisdom is in the resulting confidence: If God performed this greatest of miracles to bring a sinless redeemer into the world, then we can rest assured in the efficacy of our redeemer’s work on the cross and in the resurrection. The virgin birth is thus a constant, tangible sign of a supernatural gospel that alone can save.

Endnotes

[1] T. S. Eliot, “The Family Reunion,” in T. S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays (1909–1950) (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1952), 281.

[2] Peter Lillback, “Foreword,” in J. Gresham Machen, Christianity & Liberalism, legacy ed. (Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), vii.

[3] Douglas F. Kelly, “John Gresham Machen (1881–1937),” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 3rd ed., eds. Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell (Baker Academic, 2017), 515.

[4] Fosdick’s sermon can be found online in several places, but this quotation is from https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5070/.

[5] D. G. Hart, “Holding the Line,” Tabletalk (March 1, 2006), final paragraph. https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/holding-line.

[6] William Baird, History of New Testament Research (Fortress Press, 2003), 2:356. This quote was discovered in Bernard Aubert’s comprehensive and exemplary essay, “J. Gresham Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ: Then and Now,” Unio Cum Christo, vol. 2, no. 2 (October 2016): 135–155.

[7] Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates (Oxford University Press, 1991), 24–25; 77–79.

[8] Formally titled, “An Affirmation Designed to Safeguard the Unity and Liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United Sates of America.” See Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy, 78.

[9] Nathan P. Feldmeth, S. Donald Fortson III, Garth M. Rosell, and Kenneth J. Stewart, Reformed & Evangelical Across Four Centuries: The Presbyterian Story in America (Eerdmans, 2022), 258.

[10] J. Gresham Machen, “The Virgin Birth, the Auburn Affirmation, and the Presbyterian Advance,” The Presbyterian 98 (February 9, 1928): 12.

[11] See D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (The John Hopkins University Press, 1994), 151. This edition of Hart’s work can be found online (see: https://archive.org/details/defendingfaithjg0000hart/page/150/mode/2up) and was reissued by P&R Publishing in 2003.

[12] Hart, Defending the Faith, 151.

[13] J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity in Conflict,” from the PCA Historical Center (https://www.pcahistory.org/documents/machen-conflict.pdf), 255.

[14] Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir, 4th ed. (Banner of Truth, 2020), 85.

[15] J. Gresham Machen, “The Hymns of the First Chapter of Luke,” The Princeton Theological Review [hereafter: PTR] 10.1 (1912): 1–38; “The Origin of the First Two Chapters of Luke,” PTR 10.2 (1912): 212–77; and “The Virgin Birth in the Second Century,” PTR 10.4 (1912): 529–80. See also, Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir, 197–99.

[16] J. Gresham Machen, “The Integrity of the Lucan Narrative of the Annunciation,” PTR 25 (1927): 529–86.

[17] J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1930; repr., 1932), x. Hereafter, all page references to this book will be placed in parentheses. This online edition can be found here: https://archive.org/details/virginbirthofchr0000mach/page/n5/mode/2up.

[18] Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ, 217.

[19] Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ, 391.

[20] Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ, 262.

[21] Albert Mohler references Machen in his own query of biblical authority and the virgin birth. See, “Can a Christian Deny the Virgin Birth?” (December 23, 2008): https://albertmohler.com/2008/12/23/can-a-christian-deny-the-virgin-birth/.

[22] Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ, 384.

[23] Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ, 283.

Justin McLendon is a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and serves as professor of theology at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. Ordained Servant Online, December, 2025