On Profanity

One of the drastic social changes I've noticed over the course of my life--and I suspect this is even more evident to those a generation above me--is the prevalence of profanity as accepted everyday speech. Even further: as expected everyday speech, to the point where lack of profanity is sometimes more noticeable than its presence. It has crept into countless texting abbreviations and communication shorthand on social media, becoming the commonplace backdrop of online interaction. If you're not swearing, it is now rather more difficult than it used to be to convey, in informal writing, that you feel emotionally invested in a topic. Words that a generation or two still functioned as vehicles of shock and offense have now become mere markers of emotional authenticity. There's a certain irony to this, of course: profanity's main linguistic role lies in its shock value, so I have a prophetic suspicion that there may be some new swear words coming in the future, since the old ones have now become so humdrum.

But it's worth backing up a step and asking what it says about us, as a culture, that profanity has become so prevalent. It sometimes seems that one can't click on a single "reel" or "short" without seeing people swearing on the sidewalk at each other. Profanity has become, quite frankly, boring and pedestrian. Even more: it is yet another sign that we're far more inept at using our own native language than most of the generations that preceded us. I recall reading a C. S. Lewis extract that said that the use of italics (as a way of implying a stress) was the sign of a poor writer; a good writer should be able to evoke the feeling he intends without recourse to such devices. In a way, profanity has become the italics of our culture; it's now just a sign that people are failures at communication. We've been blessed with a language that has the most robust and vibrant vocabulary of any language ever, and yet many people can't seem to convey the emotional tenor of their speech without drawing on the lazy man's arsenal of swear words. They could at least, one might hope, do as Shakespeare did, and create elegantly foul-mouthed insults that show some spark of creativity and reason. 

But that objection is a mere trifle. I can't expect every sidewalk barbarian to insult me like the Bard. There's something deeper in the issue of profanity, which I'd like to probe for a moment. If I were to imagine what my profane fellow citizens thought of my reaction--how I felt when I heard them swear--I think they'd probably guess that I felt shocked or offended. Because I'm a pastor, sometimes people who know that try to curb their speech, and it's clear they do it because they don't want to offend me. Some, of course, may find some casual pleasure in the idea of shocking a devout person by lobbing a few f-bombs here and there. But I don't think any of them would actually guess what I really feel. It's not offense.

I feel pity. I feel sorry for them. And that's honest, sincere sorrow--I'm not saying that in a judgmental sense. I'm not looking down my nose at them, nor am I shocked or offended. Rather, I grieve for them. Yes, I think perhaps that's the right word--I grieve for them, and for what they're missing. They are blind to wonders that they don't even know are there. And so it saddens me--not for my sake, but for theirs.

Where does that grief come from? It arises from seeing what profanity really is, and it's right there in the name itself. Profanity is a reference to that which is profane--i.e., the opposite of holy, the antonym of sacred. Sometimes swear words are references to things that are coarse or dirty by definition, but many times they are coarse references to holy things. I would honestly feel better about our culture if profanity was still shocking and offensive, because it should be. Anything that blasphemes the sacred should be utterly shocking. And that's what our swear words were meant to do: in English, swearing is often a direct reference to theological truths, to sex, or to the dignity of our fellow human beings: all among the highest and holiest things our God has seen fit to give us. So why do these terms no longer shock and offend? Because our culture, by and large, has decided that these things are not sacred. The awe-inducing, soul-satisfying weight of holiness is now a complete unknown. Our culture has no point of reference anymore for how to encounter that which is truly sacred, and so even the highest and holiest things are simply accepted as trivial, or trash, or targets for mockery.

Only those things that are held as inviolably precious still have the power to shock and offend. There are only a few English words for which that's still the case, and it shows what is seen as sacred in this culture: namely, markers of personal identity. If you use a coarse word to identify someone else's race, gender, or orientation, then you have stepped over one of the last inviolable lines in our culture, and society will hold you accountable. But they're the only ones--none of the old unspeakable words, that spoke coarsely of theological mysteries or sexual union, retain their power now. Such words are now so devoid of power that they run off the tongue like mere space-fillers. 

One can only get to that place--where holy things are spoken of as worthless--if one has not experienced the weight of holiness, has never understood the unimaginable splendor of the sacred. And it's not just Christianity that used to understand such things--it was the common experience of humanity at large to pause in awe before the sacred and the numinous, and to cut short one's words in the presence of holy things. So those who no longer have that capacity are not just missing the glories of the gospel, as eternally tragic as that is--they are also missing a profound and deep aspect of what it is to be truly human. They are like people who have plucked out their eyes to make themselves intentionally blind, or burned off their hands so they cannot feel the exquisite textures of the world around them. Their spiritual senses have become so dulled by the mockery and cynicism of profane things that they have lost a fundamental human capacity. It's not simply that nothing is holy to them anymore; it's that nothing can ever be holy to them in that condition.

Profanity may feel like a small and casual vice, but on a societal level, it points to something far more worrying: a creeping darkness that has cut off our ability to perceive the wonder and glory of the most precious things in life. In the face of such a darkness, let us pray for the light to dawn anew, and in the meantime, we shall grieve what we have lost.

New Song: "Grateful Praise" (Patriotic Hymn)

This is an updated version of one of my old songs (which can be found under the title "O God, Who Watches All Our Ways"), now set to a new tune. It aims to be a patriotic hymn inspired by a biblical vision of citizenship.

Disclosure: The lyrics and the lyric video are entirely my own original work, and I used online music generation tools for the vocals and instrumentation on the audio track. I want to support real artists and musicians, so I've chosen not to monetize or promote generative audio— I will not put it on any streaming platforms, and the YouTube video is unlisted rather than public. It is only accessible here, via my personal blog, as a kind of demo: a sample of what my lyrics might sound like when performed with full instrumentation. It is shared in this limited fashion for my own local parishioners and for devoted readers of my poetry. If you're a musician interested in partnering on a project like this, I'd love to hear from you. (thepeaceandthepassion@gmail.com)

Photography: Ricketts Glen State Park

See, I am doing a new thing! 

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? 

I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

- Isaiah 43:19

The Evangeliad - Acts 1:15-21

During those days of patient devotion,

Uplifted with expectant emotion,

Peter stood forth so that he could address

A matter that urgently needed redress:

The assignment of the unoccupied spot,

Made vacant by Judas and what he had wrought.

So standing before the company's sight--

A hundred and twenty disciples of Christ--

Peter then spoke: "Brethren, listen and know:

That which the holy Scriptures foretold

Required fulfillment in what's taken place,

Yes, all that we've witnessed here in these days.

For all that the Spirit said long ago,

In words that David himself had set forth

Concerning Judas, who served as a guide

For those who captured our Lord ere he died--

The words of those prophecies come to bear

On us, who the Master's commission now share.

For Judas was numbered one of our own,

A witness to all that we've seen and known,

A sharer, indeed, of this ministry

Which we remaining Eleven received.

For there in the Psalms, you will find this said

Of him who betrayed, and now is dead:

'Desolate shall his appointed place be,

And empty, undwelt, is his vacant seat.'

And this, too, again, the Psalms have to say:

'Let his place of office another take.'"

(For Judas perished, as came the report,

Just shortly after he betrayed the Lord;

From Judas' coins, the price which he sought

To give over Christ, a field was bought.

And there in that place, the Iscariot died.

His body, distended, hanging up high,

Fell and burst open--a gruesome demise,

Played out in view of Jerusalem's eyes.

Soon everyone knew, as swift the word spread

That Christ's betrayer had ended up dead.

And so "Akeldama" they called the place--

"The Field of Blood" was henceforth its name.)

A New Argument for the Truth of the Virgin Birth

A few months ago, I posted a defense of the historical reliability of the virgin birth accounts in Scripture (you can read it here). It was not an exhaustive treatment, and after some further research, I'd likely frame some of it rather differently. But instead of weakening my conclusions, I think I've stumbled upon a point that strengthens them. In the course of some apologetics dialogues with a parishioner, it became clear that one of the most-used skeptical arguments against the virgin birth not only doesn't fit the data; the data actually provide a fairly significant argument in favor of the virgin birth.

Many skeptics will frame their reconstruction of events this way: (1) the only significant prophecy of the virgin birth in the Old Testament, Isaiah 7:14, uses a word that doesn't necessarily imply virginity (and there was a stronger word for "virgin" available in Hebrew, which the text does not employ); (2) when the OT was translated into Greek in the Septuagint, this term was erroneously rendered with a Greek word that more strongly implied virginity; (3) when the early Christian community read Isaiah 7:14 from the Septuagint two centuries later, after the events of Christ's life, they assumed that the Messiah had to be born of a virgin; (4) so they made up a false narrative about Jesus's birth to fit the presumed meaning of the prophecy.

There's some surface-level merit to this argument, enough that it might sound pretty convincing to those unwilling to actually research its claims. But I did research its claims, and they don't really hold up. I'll lay out the textual issues with the "virgin" terminology below, going into a bit more detail than my previous post, but the real thing that sinks the skeptical argument--and this new insight is the one I want to highlight--is that Step #3 of their argument doesn't actually fit the facts. What we know about Jewish interpretation in this period suggests that while most did accept a reading of Isaiah 7:14 implying virginity, they did not read this as necessitating a miraculous virgin birth. In other words, there was no contemporary expectation that the Messiah would have to be born of a virgin. The only reason for early Christians to read the Isaiah 7:14 prophecy that way, then, is because they actually believed a virgin birth had happened.

Let's dig into the details. First, the terminology: Isaiah uses the term 'almah to describe the person who will bear this child, and the term does not necessarily mean "virgin" (though the vast majority of 'almahs would, in fact, be virgins). Some modern Bible translations acknowledge this by translating ‘almah as “young woman.” But it’s not entirely true to say that there was a better or clearer word for “virgin” in ancient Hebrew, and the issue comes down to a linguistic aspect called semantic range--the scope of different meanings and implications a single word can have, along with the complex connotations that ride along with the term. When translating a term from one language into another, it's simply the case that the semantic ranges for those terms usually will not be a perfect match. That means that if we're looking for a particular English meaning, like "virgin," it's linguistically unlikely that there would be a single word that maps exactly on the meanings and connotations that our word conveys. And that disparity is exactly what we find in this case.

Where our terminology of "virgin" highlights the presence or absence of sexual activity, the available Hebrew words tend to add in other social aspects alongside (though absence of sexual activity, in the case of both words and depending on usage, was also an assumed part of the semantic range). ‘Almah does not simply mean “young woman.” It specifically designates a young woman of marriageable age, usually applicable until the birth of her first child. So it included under its umbrella both unmarried women (culturally assumed to be virgins) and young married women who had not yet borne children. The etymology of the term plausibly indicates that it originally leaned more toward the former class than the latter, as it indicates a connection with the root words for something “hidden” and “enclosed,” often employed in literary allusions to virginity (as in Song of Songs). Even in later usage, it still tended predominantly toward young, unmarried women (so, virgins). But is it a straight-up word for our word “virgin”? No, because ancient Hebrew didn’t have a word that only meant that, in the absence of other social considerations. 

The only other candidate is betulah, but this is not an exact gloss for “virgin” either. A betulah was a young woman who was still under her father’s care. Culturally, then, it was assumed that all betulahs were virgins, and that was certainly a prominent implication of the term, but not its sole meaning. It included an aspect of social placement relative to her father’s house, an aspect which we just don’t have in our word “virgin.” Further, even the virginity aspect of betulah is not quite as exact a match as people make it out to be. In at least one place in the OT, a betulah is associated with having a husband—Joel 1:8, while translated in various ways because of this particular textual difficulty, literally says, “Mourn like a betulah in sackcloth, grieving for the husband [ba’al – “husband,” not “betrothed” or “bridgegroom”] of her youth.” This might refer to a young bride, no longer a virgin, who had to resort back to her father's care because of her husband's death.

So here’s where we start to see the difficulties. We want a word that maps exactly onto our linguistic concern for the “virgin” aspect. But there’s no exact fit; words just don’t work that way across languages and cultures. Both ‘almah and betulah would have carried a significant implication of virginity. And while one might be able to say that betulah maps a little more closely onto the semantic range for virgin than does ‘almah, I think that’s all you can say. It’s a matter of a few degrees, not a black-and-white contrast. This is important to understand: by choosing ‘almah instead of betulah, Isaiah was not choosing against a possible reading of “virgin.” Both terms can easily fit that bill, depending on usage and application.

Further, there are other significant reasons why Isaiah might have chosen ‘almah.  For example, one could make a case that in Mary’s situation, ‘almah is just the better fit for her social condition—definitely an ‘almah, but, at least on some readings, maybe not a betulah anymore—she was betrothed, and early traditions indicate that her own father had long since passed away. So why wouldn’t Isaiah 7 use betulah, which would indicate virginity in a slightly more unambiguous way? Maybe because it wasn’t the right word for what Mary was. If one wanted to stress virginity-as-such, then betulah would likely be the clearer term, but that runs into two problems: first, as already noted, Mary didn’t fit the other social elements of a betulah, and second, the prophecy does double duty in making reference to both proximate and future events, and in this case it seems pretty clear that the partial proximate fulfillment in Isaiah’s day was not understood as a virgin birth. For the prophecy to do what it was called on to do, it had to have some ambiguity packed in; there’s no way around that. So does that still leave the Christian interpretation of the passage leaning on a word that might-or-might-not clearly indicate virginity? Sure. But Hebrew just doesn’t give us a better word choice in this instance, to meet the purposes the term had to serve.

At this point, it’s instructive to note that the Jewish Septuagint translators, two centuries before Christ, chose to translate the term as parthenos—a reasonable translation choice, given the available overlaps of the semantic ranges between Hebrew and Greek, and one that leans fairly directly (though again, not entirely unambiguously) toward the implication of virginity. Most scholars today accept that this is the reason the Jewish translators of the Septuagint made this choice: they believed that the implication of ‘almah in Is. 7:14 included virginity, otherwise they likely would have chosen a different word. That’s something of a supposition, but it’s pretty widely held. We don’t have a lot of evidence for exactly how pre-Christian Jews read ‘almah in Is. 7:14, but the scant evidence we do have, including the Septuagint, leans in favor of the idea that they genuinely saw it as saying “virgin.”

But the fact that pre-Christian Jews apparently thought the passage spoke of a virgin does not necessarily imply that they believed the Messiah would have a miraculous virgin birth. All the evidence (or lack thereof) shows that that was not an idea that entered their minds. Most people get this element wrong, so it’s important to be clear, or else the lack of pre-Christian Jewish messianic expectations centered on a virgin birth might look troubling. Take, for instance, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include midrashes on Is. 7 that convey no sense of a future virgin birth. Could the fact that there was a lack of Jewish expectation of a virgin birth mean that we’ve been reading Is. 7:14 wrong all along? No, I think that framing it that way is actually looking at it backwards, and in fact the evidence before us paints a pretty strong picture that what happened here was, indeed, the virgin birth of Christ.

Let me explain. Our best readings, especially as based on the Septuagint, suggest that Jews in the centuries before Christ likely did read ‘almah in Is. 7:14 with an implication of virginity, but (from the Dead Sea Scrolls and elsewhere) that they did not assume that this indicated a miraculous virgin birth. They simply read the verse, quite naturally, as implying a prudent gap in the middle: “The virgin [who will then get married and have sex] will conceive and give birth to a son…” That’s a pretty natural way to read the verse, to be honest. God chooses a virgin, and it makes sense that he’d pair her up with someone, and they will have a baby. Pre-Christian Jews seem to have thought that ‘almah implied virginity from what we can tell, but there was no significant textual reason to jump from there right to a miraculous virgin birth—not unless you knew of one that had actually happened, that is!

I think this element clearly undercuts the skeptical position. Skeptics frequently make the argument that the pressure of a messianic expectation connected to a virgin birth forced the earliest Christians to make up a story that fit that mold. But that skeptical argument no longer holds water, because there is no evidence for any such messianic expectation. The standard Jewish reading of the text, even when read as “virgin,” was simply not seen to necessitate a miraculous virgin birth, and so there would have been no pressure on early Christians to make up the story of the virgin birth just to fit it. No one had yet envisioned Is. 7:14 in that manner (at least, that we know of), so there would have been no pressure at all to use the passage as a motivator to fraudulently make up a whole infancy narrative. Once we realize that there were no significant expectations of a virgin birth, the whole concept of Matthew and Luke frantically scrambling to make up a story that fits that reading falls away into silence. Rather, the best explanation for the Christian attitude to the text is that the virgin birth actually happened, and then, in light of that event, Christian exegetes were able to see and make sense of Is. 7:14 in a way that no one had ever really considered before.

So again, it’s only after the virgin birth of Christ that Christians went back to this passage with new eyes and were able to perceive what had lain out there in the open all along. That’s actually the way most of the Messianic prophecies in the OT played out, and I don’t think it’s fair to the text to assume that this one should somehow play by different rules. The pattern matches God’s consistent habit of declaring his “mystery” through the ages, often by hints and allusions that will only fully make sense later on, and then revealing it all in Christ when the veil is taken away.

Are there other possibilities here that critics can appeal to? Sure, in the absence of evidence, the only limit is their imagination. Skeptics could try to impugn Mary by making the story a fraud she perpetrated to cover up an infidelity, or suggest the implausible notion that culturally distant ideas from mystery-religion myths had a formative influence on the earliest layer of Christian belief. All of those are pretty wild stretches, though—a grasping for alternative explanations because one simply doesn’t want to believe the plainest one: that early Christians were convinced the virgin birth actually happened, and that’s why they told the story. The main counter-narrative that has so often been told—that the expectation of a miraculous virgin birth forced early Christians to make up the story—simply doesn’t fit the available facts.

All things considered, when looking at early Christianity as it was actually situated in Second Temple Judaism, the best explanation for their reading of Is. 7:14 is that they honestly believed the virgin birth was true, otherwise there would have been no pressure or need to appeal to that passage at all.

Praise and Endorsements for My New Book

Friends, after nearly a decade in the works, my new book is out in the world (available from Amazon and Wipf & Stock). I recently got to see a few of the endorsements that have come in for it, which I thought I'd share here:

"Matthew Burden is a Eugene Peterson for our time: thoughtful, practical, and with a deep love for Christ's church. With The Evangeliad, he provides a new angle on the ancient truths of the Gospels that will seep into our hearts with meter, rhyme, and insightful turns of phrase."

- David Strunk, poet and lead pastor of the Church of the Redeemer, Maryville, Tennessee

"Matthew Burden has created a wholly unique offering within the field of contemporary Gospel studies, though it was not unknown in the Middle Ages! [...] Readers already (overly?) familiar with the texts will now see them with very fresh eyes."

- Dr. Craig L. Blomberg, internationally renowned expert on the Gospels, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of New Testament, Denver Seminary

"Readers of Burden's rendering of the biblical Gospels have a unique opportunity to grow both in their knowledge of Jesus and in their love of the highest matter in poetic form."

- Dr. Jeremy Larson, expert in Milton studies, associate professor of humanities at Regent University

"Equally ambitious and astute [...], this narrative in verse bids us to 'come and see' for ourselves anew who Jesus was and is."

- Dr. Laurie A. Dashnau, professor of English and writing, Houghton University

"The Evangeliad is a rare and radiant gift to the Church. Matthew Burden has taken the familiar story of Jesus and rendered it in a poetic form that feels both ancient and astonishingly new. These lines move with the cadence of Scripture, the tenderness of devotion, and the sweep of epic storytelling. As one who loves the Gospel and serves the people of God, I commend this work with joy. It invites the reader to slow down, breathe deeply, and behold Christ with renewed wonder. Burden’s craftsmanship honors the biblical text while opening a doorway into contemplation—an invitation to sit in the shade of beauty and let the story of Jesus speak again to the heart."  

- Archbishop Robert Gosselin, Confessing Anglican Church

New Song: "O Come, Ye Weary"

An updated version of a song I wrote a few years ago, set to a new tune. (You can find the older version on my Songs page, as "Hymn for the Weak and Weary".)

Disclosure: The lyrics and the lyric video are entirely my own original work, and I used online music generation tools for the vocals and instrumentation on the audio track. I want to support real artists and musicians, so I've chosen not to monetize or promote generative audio— I will not put it on any streaming platforms, and the YouTube video is unlisted rather than public. It is only accessible here, via my personal blog, as a kind of demo: a sample of what my lyrics might sound like when performed with full instrumentation. It is shared in this limited fashion for my own local parishioners and for devoted readers of my poetry. If you're a musician interested in partnering on a project like this, I'd love to hear from you. (thepeaceandthepassion@gmail.com)