Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Does God have chromosomes?
[00:00:04] Guest post by Douglas Waitson, MD, read by Ken Teutch what happens when a modern physician starts asking difficult questions of familiar biblical stories? Here is one answer, an intriguing post covering a topic that will not have occurred to most of us. Let's think about how a virgin birth works when now? Unlike antiquity, we have a pretty good idea of how births work in general. If God made Mary pregnant through the spirit, what does that have to say about the nature of Jesus at the biological level and, well, the chromosomes of God? This platinum guest post is delivered to us courtesy of platinum member Doug Waidson. As I've mentioned before, platinum members can publish posts for other platinum members, and they then vote on one to go to the blog at large. Doug won twice recently, so here's the second one. I have to admit here is something I never thought of before, but I don't know. Does it sound controversial to you?
[00:01:12] Does God have chromosomes?
[00:01:16] Doctor Ehrman has many posts discussing the technical difficulties of the two birth stories of Jesus presented in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. I want to concentrate on one aspect of Jesus birth from a medical science perspective. You probably know that the gospels of Mark and John began with Jesus already an adult. Perhaps they did not think there was anything unusual or special about Jesus birth, or maybe it just did not matter for their portrayal of Jesus. On the other hand, Matthew and Luke, using the traditional author names assigned to those gospels, clearly have reason to detail Jesus birth. They both make a point of having Jesus born in Bethlehem, as was thought befitting for the messiah, but then raised in Nazareth, since people knew that was Jesus hometown. But both also make a point of saying that Jesus did not have an earthly father, but rather in some way God himself was the father, so Jesus was literally the son of God. It is also worth reviewing James Tabor's guest posts about the father of Jesus.
[00:02:26] Matthew phrases it as she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit without explanation for how that was done. Luke says, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you, and for that reason the holy child shall be called the Son of goddess. But how would the Holy Spirit impregnate Mary? No details are given. However, the early Christians may have been conditioned to accept such an idea. In Genesis six, we are told that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old men of renown.
[00:03:19] Genesis six, two and four.
[00:03:23] There was a book that came to be known as first Enoch that was known to Christians and Jews in the first century. It is explicitly quoted in the epistle of Jude in the New Testament. It explains quite clearly that angels mated with earthly women and also taught people various arts like metallurgy and warfare. Greek and roman mythology also contained tales of the gods having children with humans like Hercules. So I doubt it was hard for those in the first century to accept the idea that God, through the Holy Spirit, could impregnate Mary, especially since they did not have any clue about the microscopic processes that took place at conception. Some thought that the man implants a homunculus or seed into the woman. Some thought it was just done by the gods in answer to prayer. Even in the Bible, there are several stories of women getting pregnant in response to prayer. Some thought both the man and the woman contributed something to produce an embryo. Getting closer. Now we know that a single cell from the man merges with a single cell from the woman to create a fertilized egg. Zygote the great thing about this from an evolutionary biology perspective is that it provides a mixture of genetic material. Diversity tends to help with adaptation and survival. Consider the bad results of inbreeding. We now know that the Father and mother each have their genetic material DNA contained in 46 chromosomes, 23 matched pairs. The male sperm and the female egg each contain one set of the pairs. When the egg is fertilized by the sperm, it then contains the necessary full complement of 46. So what does any of this have to do with Jesus? Well, orthodox christian doctrine states that Jesus was fully God, but also fully human. So Jesus had to have a full complement of 46 chromosomes, 23 pairs, with father and mother each contributing a set. It was no problem for human Mary to contribute her set. But does God have chromosomes? Where did his set come from? God is thought of as an eternal, transcendent being, absolutely superior to everything else in the universe and beyond. Our genes contained in our chromosomes are the instructions for how our bodies develop and function. They determine not just what we look like, but, to a large degree, who we are. We receive them from our parents and pass them on to future generations. Why would a being like God have or need genes? He did not have parents. Muslims would say he doesn't have children either, although christians obviously think he had one. Does God need genes to control his inner functions, a supreme being subject to its own genes. It really does not make sense to think of God as having genes and chromosomes. So did God have to create a set of chromosomes to implant into Maryland? He must have. How could Jesus be fully human without a full set? Now, we are not quite there yet, but let's assume I have the ability to go into a lab and construct a set of chromosomes. I fertilize an egg with these constructed chromosomes and implant it into a woman's uterus so that she eventually gives birth to a child. Am I that child's father?
[00:06:54] Maybe in a figurative sense, but only in that sense. It is not my genetic material. I am not literally that child's father. It would be more accurate to call me the child's co creator with the mother rather than his father. So perhaps we should be calling Jesus the creation of God rather than the son of God. But of course thinking of Jesus as a creation of God led to huge controversy in the early church. Arianism. Jesus is supposed to be co eternal with God and of the very essence of God. But that still leaves the question of where the human part of Jesus got his genetic material. I suppose one could argue that God could create genetic material, but he also mystically put his spirit into the physical being of Jesus. So he was in some sense God's son. But that's not really what makes a person a son of his father.
[00:07:49] That sounds more like another early church controversy. Adoptionism. If Jesus was crafted by God, like Adam in the garden, and then adopted by God, then the issue of chromosomes in fatherhood is irrelevant. Or if Jesus was simply a human adopted by God, who somehow imbued him with his spirit, then this speculation about chromosomes is unnecessary. Perhaps docetism would also work. Jesus only appeared to be human, but was not really so. He did not need any chromosomes. But the orthodox doctrine of Jesus as fully human while being the son of God seems problematic to me in light of modern knowledge.
[00:08:31] This article may seem silly to you, but what do you believe about the nature of Jesus? If there was a virgin birth, where did that second pair of chromosomes come from? Was Jesus the creation of God rather than the Son of God? Was he physically the creation of God but spiritually the son of God? Was he simply humanity but exalted to divine status by God? Was he only exalted to divine status in the minds of his disciples? If modern theology wants to be taken seriously, then it needs to accommodate modern knowledge and not pretend that we are living 2000 years in the past, in the days of Hercules and the Nephilim.
