The Singular Participation of Mary Immaculate in the Merits of Christ

In this connection, Scotus, being the ever Subtle Doctor, introduces a line of reasoning drawn from the christological principles of his opponents, though these are principles, as we saw above, that he does not adhere to himself. If the motive for Christ's Incarnation is the need to rid us of original sin- as so many of Scotus' contemporaries held-rather than to remove any given individual's actual sin, then Christ is more immediately the Reparator of our original sin than our actual sin. But everyone in the theological tradition of the West, holds that Christ preserved Mary from actual sin. Since Christ's more immediate and primary function is, however, to remove original sin, then, on the principles of Scotus' opponents, it seems that, to realize His primary function in Mary's case, Christ would have to preserve Her from original sin.¹

Returning to the third of the manners of perfect mediation, namely that concerning obligation, Scotus argues as follows: A reconciled person is not obliged in the highest degree to the mediator unless he or she obtains the highest good that can be conferred by the mediator. But the innocence of being preserved from original sin is possible, and is the highest good that can be conferred by the mediator. Therefore, no one will be bound and obliged to Christ in the highest degree, if Christ does not preserve someone from original sin.² Obviously, Scotus' argument assumes that there is a greater excellence in preserving a person from evil, than in allowing them to commit evil and then freeing them from that evil, and Scotus proceeds to argue for the plausibility of that assumption.³

Now it appears that Scotus has shown that, in all three of the manners required for perfect mediation, Christ's preserving Mary from original sin is required. Yet, he adds two other independent considerations that one might label persuasive, on the grounds that they are not based on strictly deductive reasoning, as the foregoing arguments have been. The first of these persuasive considerations is that it seems unfitting for no one to be indebted to Christ for innocence, when there are so many souls indebted to Him for reparation of sin; the second, bearing upon the heavenly community, points out that it seems unfitting that no human soul should be indebted to Christ for innocence, while all the angels in heaven are innocent.⁴

What we have here are materials for dealing with the first of the challenges to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, namely, 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. Christ's Mother would not simply be indebted to Him in the manner of ordinary persons who are indebted to His salvific act for the remission of their contraction of original sin and their commission of actual sin; rather, Mary would be indebted to Him for the even greater gift of innocence:

For Mary would need Christ in the highest degree as Redeemer, since She would have contracted original sin by reason of ordinary propagation unless She had been prevented from doing so through the grace of the Mediator. So just as others need Christ, so that through His merit their contracted sin may be remitted, so all the more does She need Christ as the Mediator who prevents sin, so that it should not be contracted by Her at some point, and so that She not actually contract it.⁵

2) ad secundum

Having dealt with the first challenge, Scotus turns to what he considers to be the lesser problem of propagation. The argument from propagation holds that the biological origins of Mary determine Her to contract original sin. But, Scotus points out that, in the case of ordinary baptized persons, this infectio carnis remains even after the conferral of the grace of Baptism that eliminates original sin. Therefore, if God can, through grace, cause the infectio to be unavailing in the case of the baptized, he could even more in the case of Mary, by pouring forth such grace at Her conception that She would be utterly unaffected by the infectio, even at the instant of Her conception.⁶

In this regard, we should note-because of its bearing upon our subsequent reflections-the care Scotus takes to argue (against the objection that, if Immaculate, She would have such things pointlessly) that despite lacking original sin, our Lady does have pains, worries, and suffering. His reasoning is that temporal punishments are useful to our Lady since She merits by means of them.⁷

3) Ad tertium sive problema S. Bernardi

Now, we must face up to the formidable objection arising from the later medieval interpretation of Bernard. In the first instance, Mary is a daughter of Adam since She is a human person. Hence, in Her very first moment of existence as an ontological subject, She must, it seems, have contracted original sin.

Scotus' reply to this line of objection draws upon his own explanatory device of the instants of nature. This device is frequently employed by Scotus to account for logical or ontological priorities and posteriorities that obtain either within a given entity or within a moment of duration. For example, in explaining the way that divine ideas govern creanda, as opposed to creabilia, Scotus proposes that there is a set of logical priorities and posteriorities within the divine knowledge: first, God knows himself and everything that can be created, without attaching to it any note of "to be made"; second, God wills that certain things are to be made; third, the actual intelligibility of the things to be made is constituted in the divine mind.⁸

If we turn to the issue of the Immaculate Conception, we find Scotus employs this same approach. Opposites can be compared either in the order of time or in the order of nature and, in each of these orders, opposites cannot be true simultaneously. One opposite may, however, be prior by nature to another in the sense that, given the nature of the subject, one of two opposites would obtain, unless some outside agent prevented it. The nature of Mary's soul precedes both original justice or the grace equivalent to original justice, and the lack of original justice. Nonetheless, the latter, namely, the lack of original justice, belongs primarily to the soul in its own right since, after the Fall, the soul more naturally lacks-rather than has-original justice; just as in Aristotelian metaphysics, matter more properly lacks-rather than has-form, when it is considered apart from the activity of the agent. Yet, if we do not prescind from the external agent in the case of Mary's soul, we can say that there was no point in time when She had sin, though Her soul would have contracted sin left to itself, after the manner in which matter, left to itself, will lack form. Considered as an ontological subject, Mary's soul is prior to either state: original justice and lack of original justice; of its own "nature" as daughter of Adam, it tends toward the latter, but its tendency is never realized in the order of time because of the preventative of Christ's meritorious grace.⁹

How, then, do we answer St. Bernard? There was a sanctification and cleansing of Mary from sin at the moment of Her conception, not in the sense that She contracted original sin, but in the sense that She was cleansed and sanctified from the fault that would have been present, had Christ's grace not been poured forth into Her soul at the temporal moment of Her conception.¹⁰ Scotus has finally, at the outset of the fourteenth century and some seventy years after the sermon of Robert Grosseteste, rendered intelligible the contrary-to-fact possibility envisaged by Grossteste: Mary has been shown to be both cleansed by Christ's salvific merits, yet never actually stained in the order of time.

Mary's Continued Unique Participation in the Merits of Christ

The topic of the Immaculate Conception is only one area in which the Marian reflections of Scotus have borne much fruit for the Church's teaching. In regard to the Annunciation, Scotus insists that Mary was biologically active in the formation of our Lord's body, just as other mothers are active causes of their sons, and that our Lord was genuinely a Son of Mary as well as a Son of God. Here, as elsewhere, Scotus' thinking has anticipated much later science and theology.

First, we should note that Scotus insists on the claim that all mothers are active, biologically and otherwise, in regard to their offspring, contrary to the predominantly Aristotelian model of passivity, both in medicine and theology, in the early fourteenth century. Second, he argues for a role for Mary in the formation of our Lord's body, no matter what the details prove to be, regarding whether or not our Lord's body was formed in stages, a point on which medieval biology provided scant evidence. The essential point for Scotus is that She cooperated-thanks to the grace provided through the merits of Christ-with the Holy Spirit in such a way that She is truly, as an active cooperating cause, the Mother of Christ, and is not merely the location or material cause of the body of Christ.¹¹ (On this point, another of Scotus' metaphysical teachings plays a role, namely, the doctrine of coordinated, partial efficient causes.)

Reflections on the Breakthrough

In any history of medieval theology, Scotus' Mariology must be accounted a breakthrough. Here, I would like to offer some further reflections on that breakthrough. Regarding the coredemption, I believe we have the presence of popular piety among the faithful, that sensus fidelium that is so key to the advancement of doctrine, and functioned exemplarily in the case of the development of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. What we have in summary in Scotus' Marian teaching, is the following picture: Because the Incarnation itself is not necessarily tied to Redemption, but is contingently ordered to Redemption, each of the elements of the Incarnation, as redemptive, take on a special significance. Mary's Immaculate Conception flows from the idea that, inasmuch as God could have saved humans without even becoming man, the Redemption that is accomplished through such a manifestation of the divine largesse, is the most perfect mode of redemption, not only making our Lady beholden to our Lord, but more beholden than any other of the redeemed since the manner of Her Redemption was the greatest. Our Lady, furthermore, was an active participant in becoming our Lord's Mother, as is seen in the Gospels, and this activity, in Scotus' view, even expresses itself at the biological level, through the grace springing from the merits of Christ and the co-causality of the Holy Spirit.

So far, so good. The first of the reflections I would propose is with the possibility of extending these scotistic teachings along the lines suggested by Fr. Fehlner, but drawing upon slightly different texts than he does in his excellent study. Here, I would like to call our attention to one particular argument against Mary's Immaculate Conception and Scotus' illuminating response. First, the argument:

Again, She suffered pains and this cannot be for any other reason than because of original sin since such pains were not inflicted upon Her unjustly; therefore, they must have been because of original sin. Or they would have to be because She took them up voluntarily, but this cannot be true because this belongs to Christ alone.¹²

Second, the reply:

To the fourth argument, when the argument is made regarding Her suffering because She underwent hunger, thirst, sadness, and death, I say that these points are not conclusive. For the truth is that She did not take on such sufferings voluntarily to redeem us in the way that Her Son did, but rather the Redeemer merited for Her lack of the weightier punishment, namely, lack of original sin, but did not merit for Her lack of the lesser punishment, since this was useful for Her as in this category are Her hunger, thirst, Her sorrow at Her Son's own passion, and the punishment of Her own death. That is why, even though Christ could have merited for Her continuous glorification, since it is, nonetheless, more praiseworthy to have glory from one's own merits than without any such, She was not preserved from such meritorious punishments inasmuch as they were useful for Her. Therefore, Christ merited for His Mother most perfectly as far as the lack of the greater punishment, but not the lesser, namely, because it was useful for Her in terms of merit. That is why it is believed that on the occasion of the Passion of Her Son, She merited in the highest degree because of Her suffering along with Him.¹³