Berard Vogt

“ For he who prevents lest one offend, is a more perfect mediator than he who merely reconciles after the offense.” 37
Scotus tells us here that redeeming grace which preserves from original sin is greater than that which merely purifies from sin incurred, and therefore Christ was Mary’s Redeemer and Mediator more perfectly by preservative redemption. By preserving Mary from original sin, in view of the foreseen merits of his sacrifice on Calvary, Christ did not merely redeem her, He pre-redeemed her. This implies far greater grace and a far greater excellency of redemption. ”

“ There is only in her at the first moment of her existence a twofold relation: that of a daughter of Adam, for which she is indebted to her human generation, subject to the common law and establishing the debt of sin; and that of a daughter of God, which she owes to the privileged sanctification which has protected her from the consequences of the common law and extinguished in her the debt of sin by a special application of the foreseen merits of the Saviour.
"It may be said,” writes Scotus, "that all children of Adam are subject to original sin if nature be left to itself. ”

“ THEOLOGIANS generally hold that though Mary was actually exempt from original sin, she incurred the need or debt of contracting it, because otherwise her Immaculate Conception would not be the effect of atonement. We may distinguish a twofold debt, proximate and remote. The remote debt merely signifies membership in the human race, based on the ordinary mode of human propagation. The proximate debt involves inclusion in the willful act by which Adam, as representative of the human race, rejected the grace of God and implicated human nature in sin. ”

“ Duns Scotus, as is well known, defends the primacy of the predestination of Christ; in other words, the view that our Lord would have become man even if Adam had not sinned. According to the Subtle Doctor, Christ, the God-Man, was predestined first and absolutely in the divine plan of creation. To say that he had no other purpose in becoming man than the redemption of the human race would be equivalent to making the divine predestination of Christ the Son of God to glory, dependent upon Adam and his foreseen fall into sin. ”

“ In addition, God freely bestowed upon Adam a supernatural gift, original justice, which raised him to the supernatural order and made him an adopted child of God with a right to heaven. Original justice, in its essence, signifies sanctifying grace. But as bestowed upon Adam, it included concomitant preternatural gifts binding man to God by inclining his will toward God and by serving as a check on the body, keeping it in subjection to the soul, thus establishing perfect harmony in his dual nature. ”

“ To appreciate properly the Subtle Doctor’s defense of the Immaculate Conception, it will prove helpful to recall his views on the nature of original justice and original sin. They are found principally in his Oxford commentary on the second book of the Sentences, distinction thirty-two.
When God in His goodness created man, He united in his being an animal body with a spiritual soul. By the rational powers of the soul man resembles God, in Whose image and likeness he is made. In endowing man with the gift of liberty, God made him a moral being responsible for his actions. ”

“ After Baptism, then, these two things are simultaneously found in the same person: he is a natural child of Adam, and yet does not have original sin. Now, inasmuch as there is no greater repugnance in the first instant than in any other, it follows that a person may be cleansed in the first instant as well as in any other, from sin which would be found in him if nature had been left to itself.” 41
Scotus continues: "Mary, then, needed redemption more than anyone else. She needed redemption so much the more, the greater the good conferred upon her. ”

“ Among the reasons appealed to by his opponents, the leading one was the dignity of Christ as Universal Redeemer and Mediator. This was irreconcilable, they asserted, with Mary’s exemption from original sin. Scotus restates the objection as follows: ’’One reason is the excellence of her Son, Who as Universal Redeemer opened the gate of heaven to all. But if the Blessed Virgin had not contracted original sin, she would not have needed a Redeemer. ”

“ Original sin involved another problem for the scholastics. Owing to their mediate animation views, the school men placed an interval of time between active and passive generation, that is, between the natural generative act of the parents and the actual coming into being of the new human person at the moment God infuses the rational soul. ”

“ Since the schoolmen believed the seminal fluid to be without life, in their view the causality of the male principle in disposing the materials furnished by the mother to the organized pattern required for the induction and functioning of a vital principle, was not a vital but a physical compounding activity. There was no immanent life present in the human embryo prior to the induction of the soul. The body must first attain to proper organization before it could become a potential receptacle of the soul. ”

“ With a fine feeling for psychological procedure he cleared the ground by removing the arguments of his opponents, and only then offered his own solid and luminous appeal to the honor and merits of Christ and of His Blessed Mother, on behalf of her great prerogative of the Immaculate Conception. ”

“ This central difficulty was the Pauline teaching found in the Epistle to the Romans, concerning the need of universal redemption: ’’Through one man sin entered into the world and through sin death, and thus death has passed unto all men because all have sinned. ”

“ Scotus calls this twofold will in God His antecedent and His consequent will. 12 By His antecedent will God destined every descendant of Adam to receive original justice. By His consequent will God does not bestow original justice upon mankind because of the sinful disobedience of Adam, whom He had constituted the head of the human race. ”

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“ He also postulates a succession of vital principles in man. When the formative power of the paternal semen has sufficiently disposed the materials provided by the mother, a vegetative soul is generated in this fundamentally organized matter. ”

“ In his Libri Sententiarum, which became the official textbooks of the schools and as such the basis of the great theological commentaries of that century, Peter Lombard states 6 that the Blessed Virgin bore the taint of original sin, but was entirely cleansed before she became the Mother of Christ.
Alexander of Hales, the first Magister Regens of the newly founded Franciscan school at Paris, and one of the first Summists, shared the views of Peter Lombard concerning Mary’s sanctification after her conception. So did John of Rochelle and William of Melito. St. ”

“ Ex prima ratione magis videtur sequi oppositum quam propositum, quia ex hoc quod Filius Dei fuit redemptor universalis, sequitur quod fuit perfectissimus mediator; ergo habuit perfectissimum modum mediandi, quem potuit habere respectu excellentissimae personae sub ipso. Sed actus perfectissimus praeservat ab omni peccato, quia nullus perfecte placat pro aliquo nisi praeveniat offensam, si posset ”