Bishop Shelby Spong, although dodgy on quite a few theological issues, has some interesting things to say about virgin birth. He claims that at the time the Gospels were written it was thought that a child was conceived by the sperm of the man alone and the woman was just the oven to put it in. By claiming that Jesus was born of a virgin he was therefore claiming that it was a purely divine conception, not half human – half divine as our modern scientific understanding makes it appear. Of course the fact that our science no longer supports this claim strongly suggests it was not an historical virgin birth (well, science in general strongly suggests it was not an historical virgin birth) but it gives us a better insight into the message the writers were trying to convey, which has got a bit lost since we learnt about fertilisation.

Frosty:

An alternative view to John’s – I think, the idea that God is omnibenevolent developed slowly over time. The Bible itself was written over such a long period of time, that what people needed from a God had changed between the beginning and the end, so to speak. Indeed, the God of Exodus does not appear to be all loving, by the Gospels he has aquired a much more loving streak and by the time you reach systematic Christian theology he is omnibenevolent. You can tell a lot about the needs and priorities of a society by the way they picture God.

However, much more interesting, are the moments in the Bible where the picture of God clashes with the values of society at the time. The most noticable, being the idea that the Messiah could be crucified. It is in those moments that you see the paradigm shifts that, be they man-made or God-made, changed the world.

In my current flippant mood I’d like to say: AT LONG LAST YOU CHRISTIANS ADMIT IT!

Obviously I can’t answer for John here, but I’d imagine that the various messengers He has communicated with (not to mention the fairly proactive role He took in the Old Testament in general) would automatically qualify Him as interventionist. However, the implication is that he does not /always/ shape things, just lets them run their course (even if it was He who implemented said course). That’s how I’d view the argument, but obviously John may have a different perspective than me.

I don’t understand the interventionalist bit. You can’t intervene in a movie, whether you know the ending or not. Or does the analogy not stretch that far?

Or hang on, do you mean that Jesus was God deciding to play a part in the movie and that was a special-case intervention?