My dear MHGinTN, I will ignore your evident ire toward me. I am not trying to force a “scientific” explanation of what is plainly called a miracle. On the other hand I am not about to deny the clear testimony of the Holy Scriptures and the equally plain confession of Christendom that Jesus Christ is born of Mary and that Mary is indeed His mother. That simply means what it means in the case of every other mother/son incident, that is, mother and son share genetic material. That is as far as I care to go.
Remember, this was occasioned by your saying, post #51, “Jesus was not genetically a child of Mary,” to which I replied, “Excuse me ... huh?” You have now admitted in the point at which I questioned you that you said more than you should have in saying that Jesus was not genetically a child of Mary. She is His mother. Period. Or the Bible lies.
So, that’s it. I’m done. I was not trying to make the case for her immaculate conception, not at all! But I was defending the historic, Christian faith and the integrity of the Holy Scriptures. Mary is the mother of our Lord, with all that that implies. Period. It is a miracle, the further details of which are, therefore, beyond Scriptural proof and the subject only to our - almost certainly fruitless - speculation. Which is precisely the reason why the Apostle Paul wrote to young pastor Timothy: “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh ...” (1 Timothy 3:16)
Now, as to the issue at hand. When a woman has an embryo implanted in her uterus which embryo was conceived in vitro, she is absolutely called the mother of the child who gestates in her womb. We agree that Mary was the Mother of Jesus and that he was conceived in her uterus, I take it.
Sadly, you have not offered a single thing to show Biblical proof of Mary being the genetic Mother of Jesus, yet that is what you were up about. Adn BTW, I happen to believe Jesus could well have been born from Mary and she remain a Virgin. Jesus did, fater all, leave the tomb without rolling away the stone, so how much easier to leave Mary's womb in the same fashion.
Our discussion must needs always come down to the miraculous, authored by God Almighty. What miracle is not yet decided, IMHO. I see several very plausible miraculous ways God could have 'done it', brought Jesus to Mary's womb AND conceived Jesus without using an ovum from Mary. If you refer to believe Jesus is genetically descended from Mary, I warmly support you faith in that. I just have no evidence from scripture, so far.
In assuming Mary's ovum was used by God, you take that belief by faith alone.
We have Biblical declaration that Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb, by The Holy Spirit of God. How the zygotic Jesus arrived in Mary's womb will be miraculous in any final analysis, if one believes The Bible. I believe the Bible.
And one last point to ponder: did you know that when a woman gestates a child in her womb, there remian alive in her body cells built by that child during gestation, likely for the rest of her life. The Science of Embryology discovered that fact within the past 15 years. An amazing thing that! Something physical of Jesus remained with Mary long after He was born from her womb.