1)  The claim that a woman called Mary conceived a child in her womb by parthenogenesis.²   The concern is whether this happened at the particular time, place, etc., that it is alleged to have happened.   As such, the doctrine is clearly true or false.
2)  Given that the child conceived was the Word of God (through which God reveals Himself), the virginal conception has a theological meaning – just as the way a text begins may have implications for the meaning of the text as a whole.
3)  Describing how the doctrine has been articulated historically and how it has actually operated in people’s lives – treating the doctrine indirectly through its social embodiment in practices etc..

This article is a response to an article by Andrew Murray entitled, ‘Emptying History: The Virgin Mary as Myth’.   Despite its title, Andrew Murray’s article does not emphasise the second element (mythical) described above but the third (mythological), and to a small extent the first (factual).   This article will emphasise the second element, and so it will not be a direct confrontation.   Neither article is much concerned with defending or attacking the first (the factual) element.   Each element is inseparable from the other two, but the distinctions are worth bearing in mind for clarity about the purposes of this discussion.
The title of Andrew Murray’s article suggests that he is going to discuss the myth of the Virgin Mother, i.e. the theological meaning which her life has for the Church.   But he does not do this, not even when discussing the uses to which it has been put in recent centuries.   Thus he cannot draw out any philosophic significance of the doctrine either.   Certainly he cannot discuss the doctrine indirectly without saying something directly about its content, but this latter is almost exclusively confined to the first element.
This article will be concerned with explicating the role of the philosopher in Philosophy by drawing out philosophic significance from the doctrine of the Virgin Mother.   I shall not be questioning Andrew’s claims, barring one or two cases which he may prove ready to concede, nor do I have any reason to doubt them.   I will not be looking at the role the doctrine of the Virgin Mother has played and plays historically in the Church – I shall just assume that Andrew’s facts are correct.   But note how I have already made what I think is a serious criticism of his article.   It is not just that the title of his article is misleading, but its placement in a Philosophy magazine clearly suggests that it is to be taken as a contribution to Philosophy, and yet the mythical element is more directly relevant to Philosophy than the mythological element.
But before I launch into Philosophy, let me plug one gap in Andrew’s account.   I accept that there was little devotion to Mary in the first four centuries of Christianity.   This shows that development in the understanding of Mary’s role was not due to pressure from without, from fertility cults, etc., as superficial detractors like to imagine.   Attention to Mary did not even develop immediately after Constantine, so there is no question of some sort of last-minute compromise with pagan beliefs in the endorsement of Christianity by the Roman Empire to clinch the triumph.   On the other hand, the virginal conception was believed in by Christians in the first four centuries, but was rather an embarrassment, appealing neither to sensation seekers nor to philosophers.   It was only in the light of the christological controversies (‘quarrels in the upper echelons [spelling corrected] of Church and state,’ as Andrew Murray puts it) that its theological significance came to the fore.   Thus it was for intellectual reasons that the Marian cult was let loose to run its course.³

Andrew Murray states, ‘… the feature that makes the Marian myth wholly distinctive is her complete disassociation from human sexuality, conjoined with her divine motherhood.’   This is not strictly speaking true in two respects.   Firstly, there is not a “complete disassociation from human sexuality” unless you interpret ‘sexuality’ very narrowly, almost restricted to just the act of sexual intercourse itself.   One cannot even claim that all physical aspects of sexuality were excluded, since clearly her motherhood involved some of them.
Secondly, the Marian myth is not “wholly distinctive” if we consider Philosophy in our survey of myths.⁴   In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus such a myth of virgin birth is implied; indeed it is a corollary of the primary, dominating motif of the whole dialogue, Socrates’s claim to be acting as a midwife to the eponymous character of the dialogue.
This notion of midwife is used to explain the Socratic method, i.e. the method of questioning which Socrates originated, and Plato illustrates in most of his dialogues.   Let me take the dialogue Meno as an example, where Socrates is portrayed as applying it to the character Meno.   Meno begins by putting his views forward confidently, but under questioning by Socrates he is forced into contradicting himself, making him confused where he had felt he understood.   While undermining Meno’s complacency, Socrates tries to hold up a note of hope, to argue that the confusion was necessary for the development of a better understanding.   Socrates downplays his contribution to the ideas that develop, always maintaining that he has merely been prodding Meno to produce what was already in him.   Hence arises the theory that all knowledge is recollection.
This modesty of Socrates, which can sometimes strike one as tiresomely disingenuous on the personal level, seems to be much more convincing in the dialogue Theaetetus, where Socrates has to struggle to draw Theaetetus out into the open, i.e. induce him to give birth.   The image of midwifery helps us to keep clearly in mind that Socrates is acting in a spirit of friendliness and co-operation, indeed suggesting a note of gentleness.   Even before the image has been put forward or the discussion of knowledge begun, Theaetetus has already made the admission, ‘If it depends on my zeal, Socrates, the truth will come to light…   I have often set myself to study that problem, when I heard reports of the questions you ask.   But I cannot persuade myself that I can give any satisfactory solution or that anyone has ever stated in my hearing the sort of answer you require.   And yet I cannot get the question out of my mind.’ (148e  Dialogues⁵ p. 853).
Admittedly, Socrates seems to be credited in the passage just quoted with initiating the conception, but this may be taken in the manner of being a remote cause.   Nowhere in the whole dialogue is there even a hint of Socrates being the father; and we are clearly dealing with a virginal conception.
During the dialogue, the sophist Protagoras, famous for the slogan, ‘Man is the measure of all things,’ is also referred to mythically as a virgin parent.   Socrates says, ‘He [Protagoras] would have put up a good fight for his offspring.   But he is dead, and here are we trampling on the orphan.   Even its appointed guardians, like Theodorus here, will not come to the rescue.’ (164e  Dialogues p. 870).   The disciples are regarded as trustees or guardians of Protagoras’s “child” – i.e. of his logos (account).   The disciples (in Philosophy) are not themselves the mental offspring of their teacher.

If we return now to the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Mother, we find that there is no mention of any midwife.   If a midwife was needed, then we may presume Joseph played the role.   But in turning our attention to the Christian doctrine we immediately find that the emphasis is not on the relationship between Mary and Joseph, but on the relationships between God, Mary and Jesus.⁶   In the dialogue Theaetetus, the notion (conception?) of virgin birth is not made explicit since the emphasis is not on the relationship between Theaetetus and the logos (account) of knowledge he is trying to articulate, but on the role of Socrates in helping him.
Let us consider first what the equivalent of God and Jesus would be for Theaetetus.   Theaetetus does not relate to what he is proposing simply as to his brainchild.   He is also trying to relate to the truth – he wishes to give a faithful account of what knowledge is.   He fails – all his brainchildren prove to be wind-eggs (phantom pregnancies), as Socrates demonstrates.   If he succeeded, then the particular account of what knowledge is, the particular brainchild, would actually be the conception of knowledge itself.   His faithfulness to what knowledge is would have produced what knowledge is, just as Mary’s faithfulness to God produced God.
The passivity attributed to Mary in her relation to God’s activity closely parallels the myth of empirical objectivity: passivity to what is given through the senses, i.e. readiness to accept evidence even though it may not be expected, nor favourable towards one’s particular hypothesis.   The active/passive distinction is much misunderstood in its characterising of personal relations.   The distinction makes good sense as a biological criterion for sexual differentiation, since sexual intercourse gives it an unambiguous physical application (giving/receiving).   But to try to use it to categorise personalities is merely to attempt to rationalise one’s prejudices.   Someone who is not active is not an agent, and therefore not strictly speaking a person at all.   (Choosing to allow something is an active choice, and all personal acts can be understood in this sense.)
This negative notion of passivity as applied to Mary, where the emphasis is on Mary not being active, rather than seeing Mary’s passivity as an active response, does not reflect merely an anti-feminist tendency.   It reflects a more general tendency to portray the characters of saints as inert as possible, even while pretending to honour them, so that we do not feel challenged by them.
Given the possibility of a virginal conception, we could easily imagine it as having taken place without Mary knowing about it.   However, Luke’s account leaves us in no doubt about the importance of Mary’s consent.   The annunciation provides the archetype of an act of faith (an act of Mary’s).   While Mary could not have brought about the conception by her own efforts (hence my earlier use of the word ‘parthenogenesis’ may be misleading to biologists²), the conception was not simply something she consented to but was her consent itself; Jesus was her Word (logos) as well as God’s.

The different emphasis in Plato’s portrayal of Theaetetus’ conception and the Christian portrayal of Mary’s means that one important aspect is lacking in Plato’s; viz., the event of conception itself.   Socrates, it is true, does refer to midwives making good matchmakers (149d Dialogues p. 854), and Theaetetus himself gives a brief history of his thinking in a passage already quoted (148e Dialogues p. 853).   But this merely goes to emphasise the continuity, and there is no attempt to focus on the event of conception itself as a radical discontinuity within the development of Theaetetus’s thought.   In other words, Plato does not grapple with the problem of how an account of what knowledge is could begin to be given: either Theaetetus can already give such an account and merely needs prompting by Socrates; or he cannot give an account at all, and no amount of discussion with Socrates is going to produce one.   And indeed, that a theory of knowledge should have a beginning is as incongruous as that God should have a beginning.
The problem of beginning an exposition belongs to all philosophic issues by their very nature.   It’s because of this problem that Plato believes that knowledge is recollection, that Wittgenstein could write, ‘Philosophy leaves everything as it is,’ that Hegel’s introductions swell up and need introductions in their turn, and so on.   The way out of this dilemma is to distinguish the philosophic theory from its exposition, so that the latter can be taken to have a clear specific beginning in history.   Such a theory is then free to be an Idea which is "recollected", a theory which leaves everything as it is, in the subtle sense which can include the historical fact of its exposition as something radically new.   (A theory does not exist unless it is expounded, but that does not invalidate regarding the theory as existing prior to its exposition.)   (God is unchanging, yet always doing something new.)
This article may seem rather strange and obscure (unlike Andrew Murray’s).   This is because, like Theaetetus, I am floundering about rather than presenting you with a consolidated position, or a settled, limited viewpoint.   At first, as you read this article, you will have presumed that there was some idea or meaning waiting to be grasped by you, though you may have begun to have doubts as you read on.   If this article should come to be published, Andrew Murray’s article acting as midwife, the question arises as to who the father is (as writer I am its mother).   This question is related to the question of whether we are dealing with a real or a phantom pregnancy as discussed in Plato’s Theaetetus.   But one can modify Plato’s use of the metaphor by talking, not in terms of phantom pregnancy, but still birth, in the sense that Theaetetus’s child may exist in the form of words, but whether those words have meaning, i.e. can survive Socratic scrutiny, is a question of whether they can be born alive.