Wednesday, December 19, 2018
In the form of the natus ex virgine (born of the virgin) sinful sexual life is excluded as the origin of the human existence of Jesus Christ.
But this is understandable and significant only if we keep in mind the fact that the limitation of man achieved in the ex virgine, the meaning of the judgment on man therein expressed, cannot be discerned at all from the side of that which is limited or judged, that is, of the sin of man, but only from that of Him who limits or judges, that is, of what God is, wills, and does here in excluding the sinful life of sex.
The mystery of revelation and reconciliation consists in the fact that in His freedom, mercy, and omnipotence, God became man, and as such acts upon man.
By this action of God sin is excluded and nullified.
And to this particular action of God the natus ex virgine points.
It is the sign that the sinful life of sex is excluded as the origin of the human existence of Jesus Christ.
In that God in His revelation and reconciliation is the Lord and makes room for Himself among us, man and his sin are limited and judged.
God is also Lord over His sinful creature.
God is also free over its original sin, the sin that is altogether bound up with its existence and antecedent to every evil thought, word, and deed.
And God–but God only–is free to restore this freedom to His creature.
This freedom will always be the freedom of His own action upon his creature, and so the negation of a freedom of this creature’s own.
Since it lives by His grace, it is judged in its own will and accomplishment.
If the natus ex virgine with its exclusion of the sinful life of sex points to this gracious judgment of God, it really signifies the exclusion of sin in the sense of peccatum originale (original sin).
That it does actually point to this gracious judgment of God, we realize when we consider that in the birth without previous sexual union of man and woman (of which Scripture speaks), man is involved in the form of Mary, but involved only in the form of the virgo Maria, i.e., only in the form of non-willing, non-achieving, non-creative, non-sovereign man, only in the form of man who can merely receive, merely be ready, merely let something be done to and with himself.
This human being, the virgo, becomes the possibility, becomes the mother of God’s Son in the flesh.
It is not, of course, that she is this; but she becomes it.
And she does not become it of her own capacity; she acquires capacity by the act of the Son of God assuming flesh.
It is not as though this non-willing, non-achieving, non-creative, non-sovereign, merely ready, merely receptive, virgin human being as such can have brought anything to the active God as her own, in which her adaptability for God consists.
It is not as if virginity as a human possibility constitutes the point of connection for divine grace.
from Karl Barth, “The Miracle of Christmas”, Church Dogmatics I.2, page 191-192.
