ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 27 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> I'm thinking of a concept that we introduced earlier in this course and I wonder if it has applicability here. Does the immaculate conception have anything to do with the sinlessness of Jesus? >> DR. DAVID SCAER: Okay. Here -- Nick, here we're going back to the phrase immaculate conception. Certainly immaculate conception is not a phrase that is found in Lutheran theology. In all, it is very strange. However, we live in the United States. And many churches are called the Church of the Immaculate Conception. The major Roman Catholic basilica in the Washington, D.C. is called the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. The United States is dedicated to its patron saint, which is the Virgin Mary, and the immaculate conception. And there is a lot of devotion which is attached to the immaculate conception. The late Pope John Paul II dedicated his pontificate to the Virgin Mary and more specifically to the immaculate conception. And as mentioned, this phrase is used so frequently that it has crept over into common Lutheran thinking. And some people connect it with the virgin birth. And very strangely -- maybe not strangely at all -- the sinlessness of Jesus is connected -- has been connected by some to the virgin birth. Now, this is kind of strange. Some people -- and I don't think there's absolutely any theological or biological support for it -- have suggested that the man's -- that our sinful nature is carried with the male gene. This is just plain ordinary speculation. And we should not really pay too much attention to it. Christ is not only sinless. He cannot sin. The sinlessness of Jesus is not connected to the virgin birth. The sinlessness of Jesus is specifically connected to the fact that he is God. Now, we know that God is sinless. That means he doesn't do anything wrong. I feel very uncomfortable speaking about God as sinless. Because God is not subject to any authority which is higher than himself. And that God is himself righteousness. We talked about that previously. That Christ -- that Christ is -- that Christ himself is righteousness. When we speak of Christ's sinlessness, it looks like we're measuring him against some external standard. Even the Ten Commandments. I don't think we want to do that. Because he himself is -- he himself is holy. If you want to put the word sinless into a positive connotation, the word sinless -- we would use the word holy, pure. Now, is it proper to speak about Christ as sinless? It is. Because one of the ways in which Christianity can be destroyed is by suggesting that Jesus was a sinful being. This has been -- maybe people don't use that terminology. But it certainly is suggested in a book like the DaVinci Code which for many, many weeks was on the best seller list at the top of the list. There has been many attempts in the film industry to picture Jesus in rather unfortunate terms which are completely untrue. That maybe he had a wife on the side. Or maybe he engaged in activity which he shouldn't have. Or how about -- you wouldn't remember the -- I use the term records. That kind of dates me. But Jesus Christ Superstar in which he's put forth as a kind of a pathetic leader who starts a cause which he cannot bring to fruition so he has no other choice but to die in his boots. And the way they are going to attack Christianity is to attack the person of Jesus. So the doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus is an extremely important doctrine. And maybe one which we would have to address now that we wouldn't have to address before. Now, the Jewish community from the time -- from the time that Jesus proclaimed himself as the Messiah wanted to portray Jesus in a very negative light. The Jewish picture of Jesus is not positive. It's amazing that the -- that Islam, the language of the Muslims, is much more protective of the person of Jesus. What is very sad is that from the Christian church itself, from its presidents, its bishops, its theologians and its pastors, Jesus is sometimes portrayed as an inadequate leader. So this is an extremely significant doctrine. If we say that the sinlessness of Jesus is some way connected to the virgin birth, that the virgin birth is the cause of Jesus' sinlessness, we are really saying something else about marriage and sexual relationships between people. Now we don't have to mention that there are many perverse sexual relationships between man and a woman and between people of the same gender. But we never want to say that the sexual relationship itself is sinful. Because that means that by having children, we -- we ourselves would be perpetuating original sin. Now, a part of the ethic of the Roman Catholic Church is that celibacy is a higher form of Christian life than marriage. This is a position we simply do not accept and which we cannot tolerate. Now, there could be for very good reasons that some people do not get married. And St. Paul explained it. That you have more time to do the work of the Lord. But at the same time it was -- the marriage was the ordinary relationship between man and woman. And there was -- sinlessness is no more connected to celibacy than it is to marriage. And so sometimes the concept of the virgin birth of Jesus, that is Jesus was conceived by Mary without the help of any male, is seen as a model for the celibate life in the Roman church. And we must be very careful, in fact, about doing this because we have to encourage marriage rather than putting religious obstacles up before people. And of course, this was what the Reformation was about. That's why Luther did not have -- Luther would have been content not to get married. But he wanted to make a statement. It might be strange to say that getting marriage was a religious statement. But it was. And if there was ever a person committed to the virgin birth of Jesus, it was Luther. And he had a very high appreciation for the Virgin Mary. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***