Isaiah 7:14
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with
child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
Matthew 1:23
"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and
they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
The
central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God
became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results
from this. Just as every natural event is the manifestation at a particular
place and moment of Nature's total character, so every particular Christian
miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the character and
significance of the Incarnation. There is no question in Christianity of
arbitrary interferences just scattered about. It relates not a series of
disconnected raids on Nature but the various steps of a strategically coherent
invasion—an invasion which intends complete conquest and 'occupation'. The
fitness, and therefore credibility, of the particular miracles depends on their
relation to the Grand Miracle; all discussion of them in isolation from it is
futile.
The
fitness or credibility of the Grand Miracle itself cannot, obviously, be judged
by the same standard. And let us admit at once that it is very difficult to
find a standard by which it can be judged. If the thing happened, it was the
central event in the history of the Earth—the very thing that the whole story
has been about. .... It is easier to argue, on historical grounds, that the
Incarnation actually occurred than to show, on philosophical grounds, the
probability of its occurrence. The historical difficulty of giving for the
life, sayings and influence of Jesus any explanation that is not harder than
the Christian explanation, is very great. The discrepancy between the depth and
sanity and (let me add) shrewdness of His moral teaching and the
rampant megalomania which must lie behind His theological teaching unless He is
indeed God, has never been satisfactorily got over.
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