Shortly before his death in February 2012, Father Bruno Holtz, who for decades was one of the pillars of the work of St Justin in Fribourg and Geneva, wrote a series of eighteen ‘images’ to popularise the life and thought of the second-century Christian philosopher St Justin, patron saint of our work. In this 14th episode, Justin explains that Jesus was born of a Virgin.

Conceiving a human being without the participation of a man is, humanly speaking, impossible. As Jesus once said that nothing is impossible for God, we must examine in faith whether the conception of Jesus in Mary’s womb was a virginal conception. For Justin’s interlocutor, Tryphon, as for most people today, this is nonsense. In the book of the prophet Isaiah, Justin quotes the discussion with King Ahaz: ‘The Lord continued to speak to Ahaz, saying, ’Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the depths or in the heights. And Ahaz said, ‘I will neither ask nor tempt the Lord. Isaiah said, ‘Listen, then, O house of David! Is it too little to fight with men? How can you also quarrel with the Lord? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. His name will be Emma- nuel. And Justin adds: ‘That in the race of Abraham according to the flesh no one was ever born or said to be born of a virgin, except our Christ, is clear to us.’

A MYTHOLOGICAL TALE?

Tryphon replies that the text does not say ‘the virgin’, but ‘the young girl’. Then he reproaches Justin, saying that a virginal conception of Christ by Mary is no more serious than the fable of the birth of Perseus by Danae, who was a virgin, after Zeus had showered himself on her in the form of a shower of gold.

JUSTIN’S RESPONSE

To which Justin replies: ‘Tryphon, I want you to be well persuaded, you and all men that, even if out of malice or mockery you say worse things, you will not get me out of my purpose: on the contrary, the words or facts which you think you can use to confound me, it is in them that I will always, with the testimony of the Scriptures, draw the proofs of what I say.’

Justin explains that the demons were aware of God’s plan to send his Son to earth to save mankind from sin and death, that they knew that the incarnation had to take place through a virginal conception. To make Christians ridiculous long before the fact, the demons invented the fable of the virginal conception of Danae by Zeus.