The Singular Participation of Mary Immaculate in the Merits of Christ

The present article divides into three uneven parts. In the first and lengthiest part, I outline Scotus' teaching on the Immaculate Conception as this finds its root in popular piety, is received by him and articulated through some of his characteristic philosophical and theological teachings, and is defended by him, quite brilliantly, against potentially devastating objections. Second, I shall briefly sketch some distinctive elements of Scotus' views on Mary in terms of Her ongoing, unique participation in the merits of Christ; these elements have to do mainly with Scotus' account of Mary's motherhood. Thirdly, and this is the most speculative portion, I shall offer some reflections on how principles used by Scotus, in his accounts of Christ and Mary, might be extended to the doctrine of co-redemption. My reflections at the end of the paper, moreover, are largely inspired by Fr. Fehlner's excellent article written some ten years ago on the coredemption of Mary;¹ what I shall be offering here are, in effect, some supplementary and coordinate observations.

The Immaculate Conception: Popular Piety

The discussion of the Immaculate Conception at the end of the thirteenth and the opening of the fourteenth centuries is driven by the concern of theologians to cope with the increasing popularity of the feast celebrated on December 8th. In the West, the feast was first popular in the British Isles where it seems to have originated in Anglo-Saxon monasteries. The extent to which this element of popular piety had reached the highest circles within British culture, is something we may readily appreciate if we turn our attention to a sermon given by Robert Grosseteste around the year 1230:

You are altogether beautiful and there is no stain in you.

There was no stain of original sin in the Virgin Mary at the time of Her birth. For how could Holy Church celebrate Her birth if She were still in sin at the time of Her birth? And so we believe that She was cleansed of original sin in the womb of Her mother. Such a cleansing could have taken place, however, in one of two different ways. In one way, it could have taken place so that She truly had original sin for some time after the infusion of Her rational soul but was cleansed and sanctified through the working of the Holy Spirit sometime before Her birth from the womb of Her mother. In another way, however, the cleansing could have taken place in such a way that She was cleansed and sanctified at the time of the infusion of Her rational soul. In the latter case, the cleansing would not be from sin that actually was present for some time, but rather from sin that would have been present if Mary had not been sanctified at the time of the infusion of Her rational soul.²

This text's outlining of the second possible manner of Mary's cleansing, that is, its description of what we call the Immaculate Conception, shows that, even within the rarefied atmosphere of mid-thirteenth century Oxford, the marian devotion among the faithful had made its presence felt. When we analyze Duns Scotus' account of the Immaculate Conception, we shall see the extent to which the pluperfect subjunctives of Grosseteste's Latin (infuisset ... nisi... fuisset) will occupy the attention of the Subtle Doctor and point towards the solution of one of the chief objections to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The breakthrough that Scotus' thought represents in marian theology consists in his placing our Lady at the heart of the Christian story, next to Her Son; it is seen in several areas, but the two that concern us immediately are the role of Mary in the Incarnation and Her own Immaculate Conception. Scotus' breakthrough arises from numerous themes in his own thinking. In philosophy, these themes are: the primacy of the will, the notion of a nature having essential properties that entail necessary effects, the metaphysics of contingency, and the logic of modality. In theology, the themes are the intelligibility of the contingent and the singular, the generosity of God in saving us, the consequent intelligibility, beauty, and order in salvation history, and, above all, the primacy of Christ. Hence, before beginning our marian reflections, we must outline, however briefly, Scotus' Christological teaching.

The Immaculate Conception: A Brief Sketch of Scotistic Christology

The place to begin for understanding Scotus' account of our Lady is with his account of our Lord. There is, indeed, an intimate connection between Scotus' views on the Incarnation and his theory of the Immaculate Conception since he maintains that our Lady needs to be immaculate in order to fulfill Christ's own role as perfect Mediator. But Christ's role as Mediator and Savior is one that is itself contingent, since Scotus claims, contrary to most of his contemporaries, that Christ would have come even if Adam had not sinned and, thus, the glory of Christ's human nature is the essential and unconditional goal of the Incarnation, not simply the reparation for sin.

In the different versions of Scotus' commentary on Sent. III d. 7, the Ordinatio and the Parisian lectures, the same question is raised, "Whether Christ was predestined to be the Son of God." (Utrum Christus praedestinatus sit esse Filius Dei). Predestination is understood by Scotus as the foreordaining of someone or something to glory. Glory is, then, the primary end of any predestination, whether Christ's predestination, or that of any other person. Yet, the glory of Christ is wholly, indeed infinitely, unique; the glory of Christ's soul far transcends the glory of any other human or angel. This alone hints, to Scotus' mind, that his contemporaries are incorrect to assign human redemption as the chief and main motivation behind the Incarnation. Christ's coming as Redeemer is, the Subtle Doctor admits, rooted in the fact of Adam's sin and its consequences; nor would Christ have had a body subject to death and suffering if Adam had persisted in the way of righteousness.³ But Christ's coming as such, is ordered to the glory of human nature in Christ's person; and Scotus thinks implausible, any view making such a great good depend upon the lesser good of the Redemption and glory of the elect:

Nor is it probable that the highest good in things only finds its occasion solely on account of the lesser good.⁴

The systematic context for all of Scotus' marian teaching is found in two key ideas: Christ's Incarnation expresses a beauty and metaphysical perfection that could have occurred (and perhaps would have occurred) even apart from human sinfulness; and the mode and specificity of the Incarnation springs from the fact of human sinfulness and the human need for salvation. What these two points combine to mean is that God becomes incarnated so as to save us in a way that expresses the depth of the divine love for us; the order displayed in salvation history, moreover, reflects that love and its beauty. God could have, after all, simply willed to save us without any suffering by his divine Son. The very contingency of the divine will ad extra means that the historical unfolding of the story of our salvation expresses both a narrative and a metaphysically significant sequence.⁵

What we can say about the immediate, historical context of Scotus' discussion of the Immaculate Conception is that many contemporary theologians were maculists, and at Paris, in particular, the maculists were in the majority. Even at Oxford- where native liturgical practices had, as we have seen from the sermon of Grosseteste, more influence upon theological thinking-maculists were not unknown; and William Ware, a teacher of Duns Scotus and an inspiring immaculist, found himself constrained to defend the Immaculate Conception under considerable pressure from his Oxford colleagues. Theologically speaking, moreover, the more prominent maculists thought that they had convincing arguments ruling out even the possibility of the Immaculate Conception.

The Immaculate Conception Proper

In Scotus' texts on the Immaculate Conception, which invariably begin with the question "Whether the blessed Virgin was conceived in original sin" (Utrum beata Virgo concepta fuerit in peccato originali), we find an impressive array of theological authorities aligned against the view that Mary is conceived without original sin. Among these various authorities, including John Damascene, Augustine, Leo the Great, Gratian, and Anselm-the one that weighed most among the theologians of the time is that of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great defender of the prerogatives of our Lady. Contemporaries of Scotus interpret Bernard's remarks in his 174th epistle, and his views expressed in a sermon on the occasion of the feast of the Assumption, to imply the following argument: If Mary were not conceived in original sin, She would have either been cleansed of it prior to being conceived or at the very time She was conceived. She cannot be cleansed of original sin before She is conceived since there is, as yet, no nature capable of being cleansed; but She cannot be cleansed at the very moment of Her conception either, since that would imply a contradiction: She would simultaneously be both cleansed and not cleansed. The only conclusion possible is that She contracted original sin at one point of time and then was subsequently cleansed of that stain by the grace of Christ.⁶

Three Challenges

What confronts Scotus, then, are the following challenges: 1) how to explain Mary's need for the redemptive act of Christ in spite of Her lacking all sin in the order of time, both original and actual; 2) how to account for Her not contracting original sin despite the fact that Her body was brought into being in the ordinary manner; and 3) how to deal with the technical issue of how the Immaculate Conception is even possible in light of what I shall call St. Bernard's problem.

Scotus' Replies to the Three Challenges

1) ad primum

Scotus begins with the Christic context of the Immaculate Conception and, hence, with the second of these challenges: Just as Christ is the most perfect love for God on the part of the creature, so too Christ is the most perfect Mediator between God and man. The most perfect Mediator must have the most perfect act of mediation possible for the person on whose behalf He mediates. But, Scotus contends, the most perfect type of mediation would not obtain unless Christ merited preserving Mary from all original sin: any other manner of mediation would not perfectly reconcile humankind to God, would not perfectly free humankind from the evil to which it was subject, and would not produce the most strict obligation on the part of the one reconciled.⁷

To allow us to see the first of these ways in which the mediative act is perfect when it leads to the Immaculate Conception and not otherwise, Scotus gives us an analogy drawn, in part, from St. Anselm's reflections on the redemptive Sacrifice of Christ. Let us say a certain individual so angers and injures a king that not only he, but all of his offspring are detestable in the king's eyes and the king proceeds to disinherit them. Such an injury cannot be repaired unless an innocent third party should offer the king a gift more pleasing than the offending injury. As each son is born, the king grows increasingly offended, being reminded of the original offense, but on each occasion the innocent, third party mediates by offering a gift more pleasing than the offense. If we continue this analogy, we are led to speculate that an even more perfect type of mediation than that of having the offspring cause offense, and then having the offense remitted, would be to mediate in such a way that the offspring does not cause offense initially. Now it is just such a more perfect mode of mediation that Scotus believes is involved in the case of Mary. Christ, as perfect Mediator, would not perfectly mediate and would not please the Blessed Trinity in the highest degree, unless He prevents the inherited fault from occurring in some instance. But Christ is the perfect Mediator. Therefore, He has prevented the sin of Adam from occurring in some instance.⁸

Turning to the second manner in which the most perfect mediation should be realized, we can observe that the most perfect Mediator must merit removing every punishment from the person reconciled. Original fault (culpa originalis) is a greater punishment, however, than even the lack of seeing the Divine Essence since it harms the mode of the functioning of our intellectual capacity and nature. Therefore, if Christ, as perfect Mediator, has perfectly reconciled humankind, He has merited removing not the least, but even the greatest punishments from humankind in the instance of, at least, someone. But no one is more suitable for this honor than Christ's own Mother. Hence, He has so removed the greater fault in Her case. A corroborative argument is that if the greatest punishment for an offspring of Adam is that the King, i.e., God, should disinherit him thanks to his being a descendant of Adam, no one could reconcile Adam's stock perfectly unless He removed such a disinheritance.⁹