Miracles : parthenogenesis and resurrection : (some side-lights on theological subjects) / by J. Foster Palmer.

  • Palmer, J. Foster (James Foster)
Date:
[1914]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Miracles : parthenogenesis and resurrection : (some side-lights on theological subjects) / by J. Foster Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    inadequate to explain the changes that have taken place since the beginning of life on earth. There is little evidence of evolution among the pathogenic bacteria, and in the geological strata there are breaks which show that life in the world has not been continuous* * * § Geologists tell us no living form can have survived the Lias period. (3) Before approaching directly the subject of the third of the series of natural laws I am bringing forward, viz., bi-sexual genera- tion, I must introduce it with a few preliminary observations, from a more or less theological point of view, on the great exception to this law which fills so important a place in theology. I am not a theologian nor a casuist, and must venture to ignore what appear to me to be more or less subtle theological distinctions. I can only speak of parthenogenesis in terms of conception. I assume (rightly or wrongly) that those who deny the Virgin Birth deny it in toto and ab initio. It may be otherwise. There may be those who separate conception from pregnancy, and pregnancy from parturition, and deny one, or two, or all. To me the question of conception covers the whole ground. Some theologians, I am aware, insist also on a miraculous and painless delivery,* or rather, perhaps, no delivery at all, but a miraculous transference from a completely closed uterus to the outside world.! Those who do so rely chiefly on the word (<nrapyavw<rev,l the idea being that it would be impossible for a mother personally to wrap up a child immediately after a normal delivery. This, of course, is an un- warranted assumption, while the words <y*rco “great with child,’ at ■t]pipatipointing to a definite period of time,§ and the verb tuctw, “to bring forth,” repeated twice, all seem to indicate a normal pregnancy and a normal delivery. The miracle, as I see it, is in the conception only. The discussion above referred to, in fact, is patristic, or pei'haps scholastic,|| and much as the fathers and the schoolmen have done in keeping up the intellectual evolution of the race in the early and middle ages, I hope that in the present age we have learned the lessons they taught us, and, though perhaps we hardly recognize it ourselves, have advanced beyond them. To put it plainly, I suggest that the members of the Kensington Clerical Club are quite as well * “ Sine dolore matris.”- S. Thomas Aquinas. t Christus exivit de claustro virginis utero, et ita vulva non aperuit.—Ibid. — Sum^m Theologize. X S. Luke ii, 7. § Christmas Day is exactly nine months after Lady Day (The Annunciation). Notk.—In the present day the discussion practically resolves itself into one between the orthodox theologians and the “ higher critics,” as the Scriptural historians now call themselves.