Salvation, Redemption, and the Primacy of Christ

1.6 At an opposite extreme is a current objection to the Scotistic thesis on the absolute predestination of Christ: without the fall of Adam, the salvation won for us by Christ would not be so perfect, because without the element of mercy, the love of God for us would have been less.¹ Whereas the previous objection claims that if there is a Mediator, he can only be one, because God is one (and so logically eliminates any formal role for the humanity of Christ, including his mystical members), this objection, typical of our contemporary neopatripassians, claims the exact contradictory: for God to be truly good and merciful, there must be, as it were, a sin on man's part so that there can be a merciful mediation on the part of God. So it seems, when we look at the redemption from a merely historical perspective. This is, above all, the evolutionary point of view.

The error can only be corrected when we begin our reflection from a metaphysical standpoint, that is, from within the divine counsels of salvation. There, we realize the concept of redemptive liberation from sin depends on a prior positive, that of the joint mediation of Jesus and Mary, principally in Jesus, subordinately in Mary in virtue of a unique preservative redemption. We might say that from the point of view of those who hold, as primary motive for the Incarnation, redemption from sin, any definition of the Immaculate Conception must depend on a prior definition of redemption in terms of sin. From the point of view of those who affirm the absolute primacy of the Incarnation "before the foundation of the world," any definition of liberative redemption from sin must depend on a prior definition of the Immaculate Conception in terms of the absolute predestination of Christ, prior to any consideration of sin. It is the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, or preservative redemption which, from within, makes plain the full mystery of redemption and of mercy which is not supremely great because of the accident of sin, but whose greatness, in the context of sin, is made plain to us by the mystery of the Immaculate. This is the link of the Immaculate with original sin.

This is a curious objection to Scotus and the great tradition to which he gave birth, for it illustrates exactly what is wrongheaded in making redemption the primary motive of the Incarnation and the ratio of its excellence in the practical order. Sin, in this scenario, is not merely permitted in view of the Incarnation, but is an indispensable means to a greater glory of God, as though avoiding sin would conclude in a lesser glory. This, according to Scotus, is irrational; yet, it is one of the major factors fueling revolutionary revisions of the concept of redemption, e.g., in circles around Teilhard de Chardin and K. Rahner, where the fundamental thrust of Christology is adoptionist (from below, rather than from above, in terms of the preexistence and prior predestination of Christ) and evolutionary (the perfection of the Incarnation is not at the virginal conception, but only at the term of the evolutionary process).²

1.7 These two ways of approaching the redemption- seemingly from opposite directions, yet both involving radical, pantheistic or dualistic errors concerning the first article of the Creed-are at the root of the two major misconceptions of the redemption in modern times. The first is the Protestant, in particular Calvinist viewpoint, which does not so much reject the fact of a redemption, but conceives it in such wise as to exclude our cooperation or mediation as a derogation from that of the "one Mediator." The attack is directly on the Catholic concept of subjective redemption by way of a theory of faith alone, but which indirectly leads to a rejection of vicarious redemption in favor of "substitutionism." Not even Christ merits or satisfies actively as man; He merely endures pain that should have been ours.

The second is the modern Pelagian view that redemption, strictly speaking, involves no questions of satisfaction, justice and injustice, merit and satisfaction as the preliminaries for elevation to the order of grace, but only an example of how each can make a fundamental option to be honest and sincere, the fides qua of the anonymous Christian, or the fundamental option under grace. Curiously, both approaches, however different, converge on a very similar notion of faith without doctrinal content. Scotus rejects both, precisely on the basis of the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. Without this, the redemptive work, culminating on Calvary, would be missing its Marian coefficient, hence, not perfect redemption-subject, indeed, to radical misrepresentation like the Incarnation. Let us now first see how Scotus goes about this, and how the theological tradition initiated by him further articulates this definition of redemption in underscoring the distinctive place of the Immaculate Mother therein.

II. Defining Perfect Redemption with Scotus "Analogically"

2. When we say redemption is to be defined in the proper sense analogically, we mean that it is not to be defined primarily and, as it were, exclusively in terms of a reference to liberation from sin, or ransom, but rather in terms of reference to the holiness of the divine Redeemer and Immaculate Coredemptrix. That holiness is without blemish in both, but according to a certain proportion: in Christ absolutely, in Mary in virtue of Her salvation-redemption by Christ. We say further that Christ is the One Mediator, not to the exclusion of activity by others, but as He is the one who makes this possible in others: first in Mary, and then through Her, our cooperation in being freed from sin. Mary's salvation, prior to the formation of Adam and Eve, includes a reference to redemption, because she is predestined to be a daughter of Adam, so that the Son of God might be the "Son of man," viz., of Adam. Hence, without anyway being under the moral headship of the first Adam, Mary nonetheless is part of the human family and so when preserved, in effect, redeemed, in such wise that our liberation from sin (including Adam and Eve) is, in fact, effected by Her maternal mediation.

2.1 For Scotus, perfect redemption with a Marian coefficient does not mean Christ would be an imperfect Mediator had He not redeemed us in this way, nor does it accept the Pelagian, evolutionary Christology which radically eliminates the need of a Redeemer to merit for us before we can cooperate. Rather, it means He would not have bestowed on us so perfect a salvation, had He not done so in a Marian way, just as the Incarnation would not have been so perfectly accomplished, had it not had its Marian coefficient in the person of the Virgin Mother. The unique role of Mary, both in respect to the Head of the Church, and to the Church as Body of the Head, hinges on Her sanctity or blessedness: greater than which none can be conceived and only God can understand, that of the Panhaghia, of the Virgo virginum.³ This is true, in respect to both the Protestant, in particular Calvinist error, that no human nature is sufficiently holy to satisfy for injustice, and in respect to the Pelagian, that all are so holy that no mediation-satisfaction is absolutely necessary, viz., that salvation (whatever it is) is available independently of Christ.

2.2 The theological proof for the Immaculate Conception in "our theology" depends, via the analogia fidei, on the prior truth of redemption being perfect because with a Marian coefficient- above all at its center and consummation, the sacrifice of Calvary, prolonged in the Mass. At the same time the truth, so demonstrated, reveals the premise making possible both the divine Maternity, the Coredemption and the maternal Mediation or spiritual Maternity of Mary in the economy of salvation. So seen, the Protoevangelium, Gen. 3: 15, is a marvelous, condensed synthesis of all that the concept of "perfect redemption" means in the Franciscan school.⁴

This form of argumentation is not a feature of the Franciscan perspective only; it is a truism of the history of theology, as the history of Spanish Mariology in particular clearly and decisively demonstrates.⁵ It is the merit of the Franciscan school, however, to have first formulated the truth about perfect redemption, therefore revealing the correct notion of redemption as it was, in fact, accomplished by Christ for the Church in terms of the holiness of Mary: viz., of Her belonging, within the economy of salvation, to the order of the hypostatic union antecedently to being a daughter of Adam, but at the same time being a daughter of Adam because She was first predestined to be Mother of God, not merely new Eve, but the Virgin Earth. Hence, She belongs not to the order of fallen nature, yet is "our fallen nature's solitary boast" (Wordsworth). Precisely because of the Immaculate Conception our personal, active cooperation in "filling up what is lacking to the sufferings of Christ in the Church" (cf. Col 1: 24) is not only made possible in fact, but is also an aspect, insofar as it passes through the mediation of Mary, of the superabundance of Christ's saving work in contrast with the relative universality of Adam's sin. Adam's sin touches all in his seed (except Mary) without their personal cooperation; whereas all predestined and redeemed in Christ share the blessings of redemption through their active cooperation, either personally or vicariously (as with babies). The latter is more perfect than the former. On this point Scotus and Scotism insist mightily.

The Immaculate Conception, therefore, has a double sense: negative, as preservation in fact from contracting any taint of original sin, including the debitum; and positive as belonging to the order of the hypostatic union, above the angels as Bonaventure observes and so, their Mediatrix. In virtue of the redemptive work of Christ, the good angels were preserved from sinning, but unlike the Virgin Mother they do not, as the rest of mankind does not, pertain to the order of the hypostatic union. Or we may formulate the point thus: historically, in the order of execution, in fact, preservative redemption initially denotes some relation with the order consequent on original sin; metaphysically, or in relation to the order of divine intentions and to the mystery of the triune Godhead, preservative redemption in Mary entails a mystery prior to the fall.⁶

2.3 The contribution of Scotus was above all, that of establishing, the basis of Mary's holiness qua Immaculate, for realizing our perfect redemption as had been planned in the eternal counsels of salvation. Within the ongoing Marian movement, inaugurated by St. Francis of Assisi, centered on the mystery of the Immaculate Conception as basis of our perfect conformation to Christ crucified and ground for the "immaculatizing" of the Church (cf. Eph 5:27), Scotus' work gave rise to a Mariological school renowned for the promotion of the Immaculate Conception, the Coredemption, and the Assumption-Queenship-Mediation of the Virgin Mother.

2.4 The key word here is "perfect" as qualifier of redemption. Our redemption from sin might have occurred in many ways, indeed be variously defined in abstracto. In fact, the redemptive salvation wrought could not be more perfect and, hence, cannot be correctly defined except in reference to this Marian coefficient of the Incarnation, as John Paul II points out in Redemptoris Mater, explaining the Marian sense of Eph 1: 6, in relation to Luke 1: 28 (to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he has gratified us; full of grace). Perhaps not intended, the papal exegesis is also a comment on the three quasi-infinites of St. Thomas: the Incarnation, divine Maternity, and our salvation, which the Creator could not make more perfect in any possibly more perfect world and so, in effect, a comment on perfect redemption according to Scotus.