Lewis, The Virgin Birth, & Red Herrings

Once again, I thank God for the uncanny insight and clarity with which Lewis cuts away the debris of modern thought. In his book Miracles, he includes a chapter on Red Herrings - insubstantial objections to the possibility of miracles happening. Taking the virgin birth as an example of the sloppy thinking that most Philosophical Naturalists bring to the table, Lewis says,

...you will hear [modern] people say, 'The early Christians believed that Christ was the son of a virgin, but we know that this is a scientific impossibility'. Such people seem to have an idea that belief in miracles arose at a period when men were so ignorant of the course of nature that they did not perceive a miracle to be contrary to it. A moment's thought shows this to be nonsense: and the story of the Virgin Birth is a particularly striking example. When St. Joseph discovered that his fiancee was going to have a baby, he not unnaturally decided to repudiate her. Why? Because he knew just as well as any modern gynaecologist that in the ordinary course of nature women do not have babies unless they have lain with men. No doubt the modern gynaecologist knows several things about birth and begetting which St. Joseph did not know. But those things do not concern the main point -- that a virgin birth is contrary to the course of nature. And St. Joseph obviously knew that. In any sense in which it is true to say now, 'The thing is scientifically impossible', he would have said the same: the thing always was, and was always known to be, impossible unless the regular processes of nature were, in this particular case, being overruled or
supplemented by something from beyond nature. When St. Joseph finally accepted the view that his fiancee's pregnancy was due not to unchastity but to a miracle, he accepted the miracle as something contrary to the known order of nature.

For all of our differences with first century Jews (or any other people for that matter), we are more alike that we realize. Unbelief lurks now as it did then, only today we hide behind the pretense of "knowing better".