“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth.” Such is the way J.R.R. Tolkien described how the One Ring was lost in the lore of Middle Earth. Yet, the same could also be said about of the traditions we celebrate each year around Christmas.
If you grew up in church, then you have been inundated with the Christmas message in every conceivable way—carols, pageants, sermons and cantatas. Yet, I would submit that many a church-goer has a “fruitcake” view of Christmas. A fruitcake is a little bit of this and that thrown together into a unsavory loaf, so too many believers have a mishmash of good and bad theology. Much of what we have been taught or assumed about Christmas seems to be more tradition than truth. Not to mention that Christmas has mostly been hijacked by retailers and turned into a secular, commercialized mess.
In fact, according to recent research done by Pew, today less than half of Americans (46%) say they celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. Moreover, when “evangelicals” were asked three basic questions about the Christmas story only 57% agreed they were all true as reported by the Bible. The questions were: (1) Was Jesus virgin born? (2) Were wise men guided by a star to baby Jesus? (3) Did angels announce the birth of Jesus to shepherds?[1]
Of course, many of these problems are the result of a skyrocketing biblical illiteracy rate in and outside the church. Biblical illiteracy leads to another problem—when you don’t know the Bible then you don’t know when an unbiblical idea or a flat-out lie is being presented or preached.
Christians are to “search the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11), and “walk in the truth” (3 John 4), so that we are not “taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition… and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). With that being said, here are three common theological errors made during Christmas time and why they are wrong.
Error 1: The Immaculate Deception
The Roman Catholic Church invented the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as part of their elaborate system of Mary adoration. The teaching was formally accepted as Catholic dogma in 1854 and has been expounded over the years as Popes have elevated Mary to the title of “Queen of Heaven” and “Co-Redemptrix of Mankind.” In fact, the later Dr. Walter Martin (author of the classic work Kingdom of the Cults), noted “7 steps of deity” that the Roman Catholic Church implemented which moved Mary from a peasant girl to a goddess.
According to the Catholics, the IC alleges that “Mary was, from her very conception in her mother’s womb, preserved free from all stain of original sin.” That is, Mary was born with no sin nature and was kept sinless her whole life. Catholics argue that this doctrine should be accepted along with the virgin birth, because it helps explain why Jesus did not inherit a sin nature when He was born of Mary.
Mary was undoubtedly a godly woman and “highly favored” as the angel Gabriel said, divinely chosen to be the mother of the Messiah (Luke 1:28). No doubt she is one of the greatest women to have ever lived and should be respected for her place in the Gospels. However, she was not sinless. The teaching of the IC doesn’t have a single verse to back it up. Not only that, but the IC was unknown to the apostles and alien to the church fathers for centuries before it evolved.
Instead, we know that Mary was a sinner because the Bible says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) and in Mary’s praise-filled, humble prayer in Luke 1, she says, “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (v. 47). The logic is simple—if she were sinless, she would not have needed a Savior. By contrast, there are numerous verses in the Bible which teach that Jesus was the only sinless Savior (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 2:22).
Error 2: Jesus Came into Existence on Christmas
Ligonier ministries released the findings from their 2020 “State of Theology” report. Shockingly, 65% of believers agreed with the statement, “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.”[2] Wow! What a scathing indictment against the theological deception of American Christians. This kind of thinking crops up around Christmas, because many have the unbiblical notion that somehow Jesus, like you and me, didn’t exist before His birth, even though the Bible is replete with verses about the eternality of Christ (John 1:1-3; Micah 5:2; Col. 1:16)
To be clear, those who agree with the above statement are supporting an ancient heresy known as “Arianism,” which is still being taught by Jehovah’s Witnesses today. Basically, Arian was branded as one of the church’s most notorious heretics at the Council of Nicea, which convened in 325 AD to hammer out a definitive doctrinal statement on the nature of Christ.
There were two schools of thought being argued at Nicea by two prominent theologians—Arius and Athanasius. Arius denied that Christ was co-eternal with the Father and Holy Spirit and held that Jesus was created by the Father as “the firstborn of all Creation” (a misinterpretation of Colossians 1:15). Athanasius argued that Jesus was co-eternal with the Father and Spirit and that “the incarnation was not the subtraction of deity, but the addition of humanity.”
After months of deliberations, the council produced the foundational Nicene Creed which upheld the Biblical view of Christ as defended by Athanasius—which in part states, “the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages…true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and was made human…”
Fun Fact—one of the important leaders present at the Council of Nicea was Nicholas the Bishop of Myra. Nicholas was known for his generosity and compassion. Embellishments of his life were told and retold until he became the basis for Santa Clause. Although, eyewitnesses who attended Nicea said that at one point the debates became so heated, and Nicholas became so enraged at Arius, that he slapped the heretic in the face! Talk about a real church fight!
Error 3: The Virgin Birth Is Pagan Plagiarism
Skeptics and critics allege that much of Christianity was not based upon divine revelation, but that it stole from pagan sources. This was a major theme in Dan Brown’s wildly successful The Da Vinci Code which claimed that, “Nothing in Christianity is original, everything of importance in Christianity from communion, to Jesus’ birthday, to the deity of Christ and the virgin birth, to Sunday worship was taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions.”[3]
The Greeks had a legend that the world conqueror Alexander the Great was the son of Zeus. The myth goes that Zeus took the form of a serpent and slithered into the bed of Olympia, Alexander's mother, where he seduced and impregnated her. The ancient Egyptians had a goddess by the name of Isis who miraculously produced a son named Osiris when she was impregnated by a sunbeam (This was mostly likely taken from the earlier Babylonian form of Semiramis and Tammuz).
In the first century Roman world there was the cult of Mithras, which was popular among soldiers. Romans believed that Mithras was born of a virgin called “the Mother of God” and was considered the mediator between heaven and earth. Following a bloody, ritualistic baptism, celebrants would eat bread and drink wine that was said to have turned into blood. They also worshiped on Sunday and believed Mithras’ birthday to be December 25. Adherents also believed that one day Mithras would return to separate good from evil on the Day of Judgment.
Even early church fathers
such as Jerome and Origen commented on Mithraism’s parallels with Christianity.
Lee Strobel thoroughly demolished this poppycock in his book The Case for the Real Jesus:
“Some of the supposed parallels break down upon close examination. Greek mythologies are full of anthropomorphic gods who lust after human women, which is decidedly different from Jesus’ story. The mythological offspring are half gods and half men and their lives begin at conception, as opposed to Jesus, who is fully God and fully man and who is eternal but came into this world through the incarnation. Also the Gospels put Jesus in a definitive historical context which has been verified by history and archaeology. The argument of pagan derivation assumes too much in the way of parallelism and overlooks the radical differences.”[4]
Those are three common errors that seem to always come around each year with Christmas. Perhaps, you have believed some of them, and if so its time to repent and renew your mind (Rom. 12:2). Or, you could be witnessing to a skeptic who has lots of questions. Now you have what you need, so that you can give “every man an answer for the hope that is within you” (1 Pet. 3:15). -DM
[1] MICHAEL LIPKA AND DAVID MASCI, “5 Facts About
Christmas in America,” Pew Research, 18 December 2017
<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/12/18/5-facts-about-christmas-in-america/>
[2] “A Majority of Americans Think
Jesus Is A Great Teacher Yet Reject His Claims to Be God” Ligonier
Ministries, 27 August 2020 <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/a-majority-of-americans-think-jesus-is-a-great-teacher-yet-reject-his-claims-to-be-god-301119281.html>
[3]
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New
York: Double Day, 2003), 232.
[4]
Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 179.
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