Old Doctrine, New Standing

On 8 December 1854, Pius IX issued Ineffabilis Deus, in which he dogmatized the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The bull reads,

Teachers are warned against thinking otherwise in their hearts and put on notice of canonical penalties should they dare to speak, write, or otherwise publish to the contrary. In the Middle Ages, the status quaestionis was different. From Anselm forward, the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary remained a controversial thought-experiment in philosophical theology, one in which the doctrine was floated and developed, defended and opposed, promoted and denounced, back and forth, with the verdict remaining outstanding for centuries, right down until 8 December 1854.

Broadly speaking, thought-experiments explore the consequences of a set of assumptions without any prior commitment to their truth. Such analytical exercises are the stuff of medieval philosophy, whose students were trained in dialectic and practiced in the ars obligatoria, to sharpen their skills in tracking implications from posited cases (such as “if Socrates crosses over the bridge, my last statement was false”). Thought-experiments have a serious role in theory development. Setting out the axioms, postulates, and definitions, and proving many theorems, may furnish a detailed knowledge of Euclidean geometry, but appreciation for the system radically deepens when one runs the thought-experiment of Riemanian geometry by taking the parallel postulate away. Medieval philosophical theology mounts some thought-experiments to investigate what Scripture, ecclesial pronouncements, and tradition underdetermine (e.g., Anselm's consideration of whether God originally intended heaven to be filled by angels only, or by humans as well); others to explore theses contrary to theological consensus and even dogmatic definition (e.g., the persistent interest in consubstantiation after IV Lateran). Some thought-experiments chart implications contrary to necessary fact (e.g., what could divine power do if it weren't necessarily good?). Still others consider contrary to contingent fact conditions (e.g., would God have become incarnate anyway, even if Adam had not sinned?). Because philosophy is the backbone of medieval theology, its dogmatic tenets repeatedly provoked philosophical thought-experiments—transubstantiation, about whether Aristotelian accidents really had to exist in a subject; incarnation, about whether individual substance natures could quasi-exist in a subject after all; Trinity, about whether relations might ever constitute instead of presupposing their relata—and resulted in creative metaphysical innovations.Footnote ² In the Middle Ages, the thought-experiment about Marian immaculate conception was controversial, not only as to its substance, but also as to what sort of thought-experiment it was.

Background Soteriological Postulates–“In Adam's fall, we sinned all.”

Medieval thinkers explored the question of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the context of a family of doctrines regarding Adam's fall and its consequences. For them uncontestable were claims that as a matter of historical fact, Adam was the primal progenitor of all actual human beings; that although Adam began with a highly functional agency that was easily able to meet its obligation to observe God's commandments, Adam disobeyed God; that the consequences of the sin of the primal progenitor, of the first parents, redound on their descendants and de facto on the whole human race (the way the family participates in the symbolic and concrete disgrace of the courtier); that the consequences include death, physical vulnerability, dysfunctional soul-body relations, and psycho-spiritual disarray.

A further step explained the inheritance of consequences juridically or quasi-legally in terms of inherited guilt (culpa) and liability to punishment, so that the consequences of Adam's fall are justly visited as punishments, not only upon Adam but also on his descendants. Those who hold with inherited guilt proceeded to distinguish between the guilt or sin one has by virtue of one's origin (original guilt or original sin) from that the individual incurs by reason of his/her own acts (actual guilt/sin).

It was yet a separate and further step to posit a biological explanation of how such consequences are passed from primal progenitor to offspring through the generations. In some of his works Augustine had posited the seminal transmission theory. After the fall, soul-body disorder and psycho-spiritual disarray in the primal parents means that sexual intercourse is always accompanied by lust or concupiscence. Purity and defilement conceptuality seized the foreground. Uncleanness is “catching.” Lustful sexual intercourse by the parents engenders contaminated flesh, and the contaminated flesh infects the offspring's soul.

Beginning Systematically: Anselmian Intimations

In Cur Deus Homo, Anselm's focus is on Christ. He spends the whole first book arguing that divine purposes for Adam's race cannot be fulfilled without a God-man. In the second book, Anselm turns to further questions about what else would have to be true of the God-man to fulfill the soteriological job Anselm has designed for Him. Adam's race can render to God what it owes, its debt can be paid with justice, only if satisfaction is made by a member of Adam's family. But Christ will not have any capital with which to pay the debt, if He is personally mired in the disabilities and liabilities that make it impossible for other members of Adam's race any longer to render to God what they owe. The purity and defilement calculus, the seminal transmission theory lurk in the background as Boso (Anselm's interlocutor) asks:

Contamination is catching. The Blessed Virgin Mary was seminally propagated and would have become contaminated by her parents. Even if Christ were not seminally propagated, even if the Blessed Virgin Mary were Christ's only human parent, she was infected and Christ would have caught it from her.

The challenge provokes Anselm to thought-experiments that bear the fruit of two different, to his mind, independently adequate responses. Neither focuses on, but both bear on the question of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Cur Deus Homo account contends that by virtue of being a God-man, Christ is pure through Himself. It appeals to the excellence of Christ's saving work to explain how His humanity was not assumed from tainted forebears. Christ's obedience to death was so pleasing to the Godhead that it is efficacious, not only for the then present but also future members of Adam's race; it reaches backward to cleanse the elect who came before Him during their ante mortem careers. Anselm does not elaborate exactly when or from what they are cleansed, and so does not itemize the respects in which the Blessed Virgin Mary would have been immaculate. But the logic of the argument would require the elect to be free of whatever the offspring would have “caught” from them in the course of their biological derivation.

Anselm observes that original sin is a topic in its own right, and returns to give it focussed attention in De conceptu virginali et de originali peccato. There Anselm makes three points that loomed large in later debates about the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. First, Anselm insists that nothing merely material, but only the soul can be the subject of sin. God made rational creatures with reason and will and endowed their wills with a separable affectio iustitiae and freedom (the power to preserve justice). Creatures are unable to endow themselves with justice. Unlike God, if they are just, they are just through another (per aliud). They owe their justice to God, both in the sense of having it from God as the source, and in the sense of being obliged to God to preserve uprightness of will for its own sake. For Anselm sin is the failure to preserve justice, and original sin is the lack of required justice. Given the commonly held mediate animation theory—that what is seminally produced in the mother is not immediately animated (infused with a soul) but only after the material is shaped into an organic body (40–46 days after conception for males, 80 days for females)—Anselm concludes that original sin cannot begin at conception but only at animation. Because the parents produce only the flesh and not the soul, original sin cannot be seminally transmitted in conception itself.Footnote ⁴

Second, if the seminal transmission theory was a starting point for Boso's question in Cur Deus Homo, Anselm's definition of original sin and relocation of its subject brings him to refocus on the juridical or quasi-legal explanation of its inheritance. In De conceptu virginali, Anselm distinguishes between those of Adam's offspring whose propagation lies, broadly speaking, within the scope of natural human powers and the parents' will to exercise them, from those whose propagation lies outside the scope of natural human reproductive powers. Paradigmatic of the former are human beings begotten the normal way by bisexual intercourse. Eve is an obvious example of the latter, since she was made from Adam's rib. Anselm explicitly notes that biblical examples of children from over-age parents (e.g., Isaac from Abraham and Sarah, John the Baptist from Zechariah and Elizabeth) belong in the first category, because they are begotten by the will of their parents and through miraculously restored natural reproductive powers.Footnote ⁵ Anselm then hypothesizes that God determined that if Adam did not sin, Adam's natural offspring would be reproduced in the condition in which Adam himself was created; but if Adam sinned, Adam's natural offspring would be reproduced in the condition into which Adam fell. Here condition includes both legal and concrete dimensions; in the latter case of fallen humanity it ranges over the quasi-legal obligation to have justice and the liability to punishment for not having it, as well as the concrete punishments—psycho -physical dysfunction, psycho-spiritual disorder, physical vulnerability and mortality—themselves . Biological descent is relevant, not because the parents' biological acts somehow cause original sin in the offspring, but because it makes the offspring members of the class to whom the laws apply.

Christ's human nature is excepted precisely because His reproduction was not natural in the relevant sense, but virginal.Footnote ⁶ In De conceptu virginali, ch. 18 Anselm explicitly notes that on this juridical or quasi-legal explanation, Christ's purity can be secured quite independently of whether or not his mother was pure. It is not necessity but propriety that drives the conclusion of Marian purity. In a statement much quoted in later debates (and this is the third salient point in the treatise), Anselm exclaims, “it was fitting that the Virgin be beautified with a purity than which a greater cannot be conceived except for God's,” because “the Son was naturally one and the same common Son of God the Father and of the Virgin.”Footnote ⁷Potuit, decuit, fecit, as the later slogan would say. What Anselm does not observe is how the soteriological statutes he attributes to God do not open any loophole that would except Mary from the common inheritance of Adam's race, because traditional Marian infancy narratives model her conception on that of John the Baptist—another case of voluntary use of miraculously restored natural powers.

Celebrating Mary

Anselm's Marian thought-experiments were occasioned by the systematic development of his distinctive soteriology. But there were other triggers in liturgical practice. Celebrating the feasts of the Annunciation and—thanks to Augustine among others—the Assumption was uncontroversial. In some places (notably England and parts of Gaul) the Conception was also being observed. Theory interprets, rationalizes and/or critiques praxis. Theologians and religious leaders began to comment on the propriety of this feast. One commonplace principle was that saints are to be celebrated for their sanctity, and hence only for those occasions in their lives at which they were sanctified. In a letter attributed to Anselm as late as the fourteenth century but probably actually due to Eadmer, the author reasons that the feast of the Conception ought to be celebrated because Mary was immaculately conceived. Eadmer bolstered this liturgical argument with an exegetical argument from the lesser to the greater: If Jeremiah (Jer 1:5) and John the Baptist (Luke 1:41–44) were sanctified in the womb before their birth, how much more should the queen of angels and the tabernacle of the Son of God be entirely free from sin from her very beginning.Footnote ⁸

In his Letter to the Canons of Lyons,Footnote ⁹ Bernard of Clairvaux reasoned from these principles in the opposite direction, warning against celebrating the feast of the conception, because Mary was—like all other bisexually propagated humans—conceived in original sin. Bernard was noted for his Marian devotion, and recognized Mary's privilege as preeminent among the saints.Footnote ¹⁰ Nevertheless, Bernard contended that immaculate conception for the Blessed Virgin Mary was a “false honor”Footnote ¹¹ that would actually undermine Marian privilege: Mary would no longer be the only member of Adam's race to conceive a child without original sin; her mother, St. Anne, would have as well.Footnote ¹² Still more serious, immaculate conception for the Blessed Virgin Mary would undermine the preeminence of Christ. For a human being conceived without original sin would not need a savior. Christ will not be the universal savior unless the privilege of being conceived without original sin belongs to Him alone.Footnote ¹³

For Bernard, Marian immaculate conception was a thought-experiment contrary to firmly established doctrinal tenets, one that ought to be denied liturgical expression. Yet, Bernard's opposition provoked further thought-experiments: Does either the bisexual propagation of Mary by her parents, or the preeminence of her Son really rule out the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Complications and Clarifications

Integrating Augustine and Anselm: Early Franciscans at Paris dug deeper into the nature and consequences of original sin.Footnote ¹⁴ They were impressed with Anselm's definition of original sin as lack of required justice, but were loathe to lose the prospects for causal analyses that Augustine's seminal transmission theory seemed to afford. Alexander of Hales proposed treating “lack of original justice” as the formal aspect of original sin, while regarding concupiscence as its punitive consequence. Footnote ¹⁵ Regarding the first, Alexander identified original justice as a superadded habit that inclines the will to remain in a state of natural goodness. The loss of original justice means the loss of a positive inclination to good, which loss leaves the will able to incline to evil, but does not by itself constitute a positive inclination towards evil. So far as punitive consequences are concerned, Alexander surveys how they pervade the lower human dimensions—the flesh; the vegetative, nutritive, and generative powers; the sense appetite—which in turn foment dysfunction. The flesh excites the senses to perceive forbidden objects and then desire to seek them; the sense appetite excited by the flesh moves the rational appetite—where alone original sin, strictly speaking, is located.Footnote ¹⁶

Continuing to harmonize, Alexander wants seminal transmission to figure not only in the causal but also in the juridical or quasi-legal explanation of original sin: being bisexually propagated by members of Adam's fallen race is what makes the offspring Adam's heirs to whom the divinely instituted laws of inheritance apply. Inheritance of the bodily conditions is justified by the fact that the bodies of naturally propagated descendants of Adam are seminally contained in Adam. And the soul's natural desire to be united to the body begets a natural tendency to be weighed down by its defects and to share in its punishment and thus to lack original justice.Footnote ¹⁷ Alexander attempts a (justly neglected) metaphysical analogue of seminal transmission to explain why it is right for Adam's descendants to inherit the obligation to have original justice: Namely, that in Adam's soul was created not only the individual but the universal nature of every soul, so that our souls were contained in Adam as particulars in a universal.Footnote ¹⁸

Seminal transmission produces contaminated flesh; mediate animation implies that the soul infused into contaminated flesh will itself become contaminated. But “contamination” is now a broad category, including the whole multiplicity of effects consequent upon the fall—those in the body, in the vegetative and sensory appetites, and in the rational soul.

Timing the Intervention(s): Even though none of these early Franciscans embraces the immaculate conception or even immaculate animation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, their further articulation of the consequences of Adam's fall for his descendants forwards the debate by explicitly mapping the points at which God might intervene to cleanse her:

They agreed that 1) cleansing the parents would do no good, because sanctification affects the person not the nature, and baptism removes the guilt (the requirement to have original justice) but not the punishments (the stimulus carnis or the fomes peccati). The legal move of freeing the parents from guilt would not clear the offspring legally; and it is the punishments (in the parents' flesh and sensory appetites) that cause the contamination of the flesh the parents engender in the child.Footnote ¹⁹ The early Paris Franciscans likewise dismissed 2) immaculate conception not only for Bernard's reason—that it would compromise the preeminence of Christ as universal savior—but also because of perceived metaphysical difficulties. Sanctification is rebirth which would presuppose birth; yet, by mediate animation, her soul does not exist at the moment of conception. All that is there to be cleansed at the moment of conception is her flesh. But if it were from the beginning scoured of the consequences of Adam's fall, how do you explain the fact that she died?Footnote ²⁰ For them, the preeminence of Christ as universal savior joined the reflection that redemption presupposes sin to exclude 3) immaculate animation as well.Footnote ²¹

For these early Franciscans at Paris, thought-experiments about immaculate conception and animation had already been conducted; a negative verdict on them, more or less settled by past debates. These friars were also convinced by past exegetical arguments from the lesser to the greater (from Jeremiah and John the Baptist) that 4) the Blessed Virgin Mary was cleansed of original sin before birth. Putting this conclusion together with the annunciation story (Luke 1:26–56), prompted a different thought-experiment, to ponder the difference between her first in utero and her second ex utero sanctification. Original sin in the rational soul does not come in degrees; if the requirement of original justice is removed before birth, there is nothing further to be done. But concupiscence does come in degrees, which enabled them to reassert Marian privilege with respect to in utero sanctification: In the Blessed Virgin Mary, concupiscence was so diminished that she was confirmed in goodness, having no inclination either to mortal or to venial sin. In John the Baptist, only the inclination to mortal sin was altogether removed; he was able to sin venially, but not habitually so. In Jeremiah, concupiscence was diminished only to the extent of putting mortal sin out of reach. In her second ex utero sanctification, however, concupiscence was altogether extinguished in the Blessed Virgin Mary.Footnote ²²

Bonaventure's Consolidation

Bonaventure inherits this status quaestionis that gives presumptive weight to mediate animation and a hybridized Augustinian/Anselmian theory of original sin; that takes it for granted that the Blessed Virgin Mary as God-bearer was sanctified, and raises questions about when, to what extent, and in what respect? Like his predecessors, Bonaventure rejects both immaculate conception and immaculate animation. By contrast with his earlier confreres, he features both positions and gives the case for each extensive and respectful consideration.Footnote ²³

Celebrating the Conception: Bonaventure returns to the liturgical argument for immaculate conception from the local (English and Gallic) celebration of the feast of the Conception. If saints are to celebrated only for their sanctity and hence only for those occasions in their lives at which they were sanctified, the feast can be legitimate only if the Blessed Virgin can be sanctified before her animation. Bonaventure responds with a distinction: It is one thing to say that it is within divine power to cleanse her flesh of all contaminants; and another to speak of her as being sanctified. Mediate animation makes the literal sanctification of the infant at its conception, impossible, because its soul does not exist yet. Neither could grace in her soul cleanse her flesh before animation. Literal sanctification of the parents at the time of conception has no direct effect on the child's soul, because the parents do not produce the soul (rational souls are infused by God). Literal sanctification of the parents at the time of conception is likewise irrelevant to the purity of the flesh they engender, because it is not the lack of justice in their souls but the presence of its punishments in their flesh and sensory appetites, that causes contamination in the child's flesh. Nor does the fact that the Holy Spirit does one miracle in enabling pious old parents to reproduce, show that the Holy Spirit did another miracle to enable them to beget taint-free flesh.Footnote ²⁴

Considered as arguments for the doctrine of immaculate conception, Bonaventure finds these liturgical considerations unpersuasive. But he does not conclude that the liturgical practice is therefore indefensible. Bonaventure is moved by the fact that even if the universal church does not celebrate a feast of Mary's conception, some do celebrate it out of special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Unlike Bernard who reproached the canons of Lyons for putting the feast on their calendars, Bonaventure says that he dare not altogether praise them, or absolutely reproach them. He dares not altogether approve, because authorities noted for their Marian devotion do not support the feast: Ancient fathers who did not issue decrees to celebrate it and more recently Bernard who adamantly opposed it. Moreover, their stance is bolstered by the liturgico-metaphysical argument—that saints are to be celebrated only for occasions at which they were sanctified, while literal sanctification at conception is metaphysically impossible.Footnote ²⁵

Nevertheless, Bonaventure dares not altogether reprove the celebration, first because, some say it was commanded in a vision.Footnote ²⁶ Since the claim is not authenticated, Bonaventure reasons, we are not compelled to believe it. But since it is not contrary to orthodox faith, we are not compelled to deny it either.Footnote ²⁷ Moreover, liturgical practice admits of a more flexible rationale than indicated above. Perhaps the solemnity celebrates the sanctification on the day of the conception, because the day of conception is certain while the day of sanctification is not. This is not a bad idea because one can give thanks to God not only for what is present but what is future, and celebrate even though there is a present defect that will later be supplied.Footnote ²⁸ Bonaventure concludes:

So far as Bernard's opposition is concerned, Bonaventure speculates that Bernard was trying to rule out the error of believing the virgin sanctified in conception rather than trying to diminish our devotion.Footnote ³⁰

Immaculate Animation? Responding to the next question—whether the Blessed Virgin Mary was sanctified before contracting original sin, Bonaventure clarifies that. Since sanctification can happen only where there is a soul, the real issue is about immaculate animation—whether grace was infused into her soul at the first instant of its creation, grace of such intensity as to overpower her corrupt flesh's tendency to contaminate her soul. Bonaventure treats immaculate animation as a live option, a respectable theological position. Rehearsing the case made by some unnamed and now unknown adherent, Bonaventure records much to be said in its favor. First, there are arguments from “fit”: Surely Christ would obey the decalogue's injunction to honor father and mother, and freedom from original sin would be the highest honor Christ could confer on the Blessed Virgin Mary.Footnote ³¹ Again, Marian privilege recognizes how it is fitting for the Blessed Virgin Mary to enjoy greater sanctity and worthiness than other saints (e.g., John the Baptist who was sanctified in the womb before birth).Footnote ³² It is fitting that there be an intermediate case between us—who have broad-sense original sin in both body and soul—and Christ, who has it in neither body nor soul: namely, the Blessed Virgin Mary who has it in body but not in soul.Footnote ³³

Second, there is a positive argument from the authority of Anselm in De conceptu virginali et de peccato originali, ch.18, in favor of making the Blessed Virgin Mary mediatrix in the sense of assigning her a degree of holiness higher than all of the other saints but lower than Christ's.Footnote ³⁴

Third, and most strikingly, immaculate animation is not incompatible with Holy Scripture and the Christian faith, because—contrary to earlier critics—it does not violate christological preeminence. The immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary depends on Christ just as much as the graces of the other saints do. There is a difference between always having a trait and having that trait independently. Where others are freed from original sin by Christ after they fell, the Blessed Virgin Mary was sustained lest she fall.Footnote ³⁵ Other authorities that seemingly tell against immaculate animation can be construed to mean that the Blessed Virgin Mary was not free from the cause of the original infection (concupiscence in the parents; contamination in the flesh she receives from them), but they do not have to be taken to deny that she was free from the effect (original sin in the rational soul).Footnote ³⁶

Nevertheless, Bonaventure finds immaculate animation to be a controversial minority report, and judges the second opinion—that the sanctification of the Blessed Virgin Mary follows her contraction of original sin—to be “more common, more reasonable, and more secure.” More common, because almost everyone holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary had original sin, given the many penalties that she suffered, where it is not said (as with Christ) that she suffered them voluntarily for the redemption of others but that she contracted them involuntarily from her parents.Footnote ³⁷More reasonable, because nature should precede grace in time as well as naturally prior to grace. Therefore, the soul is united to the flesh (to give the human natural being) before grace is infused in the soul by God. Therefore, because the flesh is infected, it is apt to infect the soul infused into it with guilt. Therefore, it is necessary that original sin precede sanctification.Footnote ³⁸More secure, because it agrees more with the authorities of the saints, who usually make an exception only in Christ's case. Even if piety honors the mother, it should honor her divine son more.Footnote ³⁹ Bonaventure cites both authorities (Rom 5 and 3:23; John 1; Augustine; Bernard) and arguments against this thesis, all but one of which focus on the pre-eminence of Christ as universal savior, redeemer, liberator, doors-of-paradise-opener. Christ plays this role in relation to all human beings. Immaculatists to the contrary notwithstanding, to say that the Blessed Virgin Mary was sanctified without contracting original sin, would imply that there was an exception to these rules with the result that he does not play this role in relation to His mother.Footnote ⁴⁰ Echoing earlier authors, Bonaventure speculates that the mother would be upset, if her excellence were so amplified as to diminish the glory of her Son. She wants her Son to be extolled more than she herself is, because the Creator should be honored incomparably more than the creature.Footnote ⁴¹ Nor does Anselm, in De conceptu virginali et peccato originali, ch.18, mean to say otherwise: When he says that she is maximally pure, he means free from actual not original sin; to say that conception is from a maximally pure mother, is to imply that she is maximally pure at the time of Christ's conception.Footnote ⁴² Nevertheless, even if Bonaventure denies immaculate animation, he finds it defensible to claim that her soul was freed from original sin immediately after the first moment of its existence.Footnote ⁴³

More Evident Privileges: Having brought the issues of immaculate conception and immaculate animation onto center stage, Bonaventure turns to Marian privileges about which there was more consensus: namely, sanctification before birth and freedom from actual sin. The liturgical argument for the former is stronger, because the whole church celebrates Mary's birth. Likewise in favor is the nowfamiliar exegetical argument from the lesser to the greater from Jeremiah and John the Baptist.Footnote ⁴⁴

Bonaventure rebuts the worry that Mary's freedom from all actual sin would compromise the preeminence of Christ by insisting that He would still be freer of sin than she, because Christ was sin-free in every time and in every state and because He lacked original as well as actual sin; while the Blessed Virgin Mary was free from original sin sometime after animation but before birth, and immune from actual sin from the time she arrives at the use of free will.Footnote ⁴⁵ To theological authorities (e.g., Augustine and Bernard) that firmly support this conclusion, Bonaventure adds positive considerations of fittingness derived from the Blessed Virgin Mary's soteriological roles. As God-bearer, she is “the spouse of God and of the whole Trinity” and “mother of the Son.” Purity and defilement considerations make it appropriate that she be “immaculate in mind and spotless in flesh.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Again, she is “an advocate for sinners.” But in a patron/client system, the advocate uses the favor she enjoys to plead the cause of others. If sin is what turns God against us, it is fitting that the advocate for the human race have a clear conscience herself.Footnote ⁴⁷ Again, one-over-many intuitions are powerful, demanding a paradigm for every class. Marian privilege identifies her as “the glory and crown of the just,” the one who exhibits the greatest sanctification to be found among naturally propagated merely human beings.Footnote ⁴⁸

Freedom from actual sin is not the greatest degree of sanctification logically possible for merely human beings, however. Putative facts of Marian biography (her bisexual propagation, her death), the seminal transmission theory, and christological preeminence have already weighed in to insist that her flesh was infected with the consequences of the fall. Since the fomes peccati sets up a proneness to sin and a resistance to good that—without miraculous interference—make venial sin inevitable, the question arises whether the fomes peccati was merely dormant in Mary, or whether it was uprooted in one of her sanctifications. To account for her freedom from actual sin, it would not be necessary to remove the qualities; it would be enough to obstruct their effects. Returning to the distinction between her first in utero and her second ex utero sanctifications, Bonaventure appeals to a principle of fleshly conformity between parents and offspring and the purity and defilement calculus to insist that the fomes was repressed in her first sanctification but eradicated in her second.Footnote ⁴⁹ What the Son of God has consecrated by inhabiting, should not be contaminated or violated in any way.Footnote ⁵⁰ Bonaventure recognizes this will constitute another Marian privilege insofar as no other mere humans are altogether confirmed in goodness before death.Footnote ⁵¹ At the same time, conformity to Christ puts an upper bound on her ante-mortem perfection: it wouldn't be fitting for Christ to have an immortal mother since He was mortal.Footnote ⁵²

Inverting the Order of Consideration

Bonaventure's discussion proceeds from the more controversial—the sanctification of the flesh before animation, the sanctification of the soul at the moment of animation—to the less controversial: the actual sinlessness, the repression and subsequent eradication of the fomes peccati, and the confirmation of her will in goodness. But the logical trend towards the magnification of Mary is best displayed when this order is turned upside down.

1) We begin with Mary's conciliarly defined soteriological role as God-bearer. When we ask what the requirements would be for this job, we are helped by the biblical account of the annunciation in which the archangel Gabriel addresses Mary as full of grace at the time/moment of her conception of Jesus (Luke 1:28). The purity and defilement calculus insists that this would mean uprooting of the fomes in the flesh, confirming the will in goodness at the time of Christ's conception and through her God-bearing by which consummation she is a spouse of God. The uprooting of the fomes peccati and confirmation of her will in goodness at the time of conception and throughout the God-bearing would be further supported by the principle of prima facie conformity between parent and offspring—itself a defeasible principle because Christ's perfection will excel hers by virtue of hypostatic union. There is the further liturgical argument: The whole church's celebration of the feast of the Annunciation, the immaculate conception of her Son. Insofar as the Annunciation is not only a feast of Christ but also of Mary, it tells in favor of some sort of sanctification for her at that time.

2) Temporal generalizing over her future life span is then rationalized. Appeal to the authority of Ambrose for the argument that the womb once consecrated by the indwelling of the God-man must never be violated afterwards, extends—by parity of reasoning—to freedom from fomes peccati and confirmation in goodness throughout her ante mortem career. Via the purity and defilement calculus, the doctrine and the feast of the Assumption are justified: The flesh that was the temple of the God-man should not be allowed to undergo putrefaction; the one who was spouse and co-parent of God should not be defiled in the future.

Backwards extensions are more difficult to justify. There is nothing explicit in Scripture about the Blessed Virgin Mary's birth or childhood. She appears on the scene at the annunciation.Footnote ⁵³ So there have to be arguments from analogy and—taking it as a premise that the Mother of God is preeminent among the saints—from the lesser to the greater.

3) Sanctification in the womb is rationalized by reading Jer 1:5 and Luke 1:41–44 literally as opposed to metaphorically—to imply that Jeremiah and John the Baptist were sanctified in the womb. The inference is then drawn—from the lesser to the greater—that Mary was sanctified in the womb. This conclusion was again bolstered by liturgical practice: The universal church celebrates the feast of her birth.

4) Mary's freedom from actual sin was reasoned to the same way. Taking for granted that sanctification was such as to keep Jeremiah from all mortal, John the Baptist from all mortal and from habitual venial sins throughout his life, the argument concludes—from the lesser to the greater—that Mary should be free from all mortal and from all habitual venial sins and further via Marian preeminence to the claim that she was free from all actual sin.

5) To return to immaculate conception or immaculate animation, a variety of arguments is deployed. Some read Jer 1:5—“before I formed you in the womb, I knew you”—literally to mean that sanctification precedes the organization of the fetal body and so precedes animation. Then, from the lesser to the greater, the same must be true of Mary. Alternatively, others argued via Marian privilege from the claim that Jeremiah and John the Baptist were sanctified in the womb after animation, to the claim that Mary's condition must be even better: cleansed from conception, or sanctified at the instant of animation. Again, there is the idea that Christ would honor her as much as a mere human could/should be honored (perhaps in obedience to the decalogue), and that it is possible that she be cleansed from conception or at least from animation. All of these were reinforced by the liturgical argument: the still local but spreading celebration of the feast of the Conception.

Emerging from this is the picture of “a great chain of sanctification” with Christ, the God-man, at the top and Mary in the middle, between Christ and other merely human beings. Mary stands ahead of biblical forerunners such as Jeremiah and John the Baptist who were preserved from mortal and/or habitual venial sins. Next come great penitents such as Mary Magdalene and Francis of Assisi, who were guilty of both original and actual sin but in their ante mortem life times crucified the flesh with all its desires. Next come the other saints who more or less approach such mortification. This hierarchy is meant not to humiliate but to hearten us ordinary pilgrims. For though we are far behind, the lower participates in the higher, both concretely insofar as we enjoy their patronage, and symbolically insofar as we share in the glory they bring to Adam's family. That is why we give all thanks and praise to Christ and celebrate the feasts of the saints.

From a systematic point of view, Mary becomes—like the human soul of Christ'a site for exploring how much and in what patterns God might sanctify human beings. There is the standard story of our experience, and the soteriological plot line as it applies to us ordinary mortals here below. But how could it be different? How much damage could a human being be spared, how much repaired, how much could a human being upgraded, how soon, and for what reason? Since we are in the realm of soteriology and eschatology, the thought-experiment probes the possibilities within the context of various narrative constraints. Aquinas thought the metaphysical proximity (via hypostatic union) of Christ's human nature to the divine word would flood it with all of the excellence it could possibly hold. But this tide of upgrades has to be partially dammed up, so that Christ will have the passible and mortal flesh He needs to accomplish His saving work. Likewise, the Blessed Virgin Mary does not have every privilege metaphysically possible for merely human being, because Marian biographical traditions insist that she was bisexually conceived, that she suffered and she died. Thought-experiments about Marian privilege—like that of all the other saints—are also subject to systematic constraints: Their degree of sanctification must be lower than Christ's, dependent on Christ, and otherwise compatible with Scripture and ecclesial pronouncements.

In the next generation, William of Ware structures the thought-experiment another way, in terms of metaphysical proximity to a divine person. For medieval Aristotelians, a person is a supposit of a rational nature, where a supposit is an individual substance subject (e.g., Socrates, Brownie the donkey, Beulah the cow). Normally and naturally, individual substance natures—this humanity, that donkeyhood, that bovinity—are individual substance subjects'socrates, Brownie, and Beulah—and so are their own supposits. But an individual substance nature can—by divine power but not by any natural power—be assumed by an “alien” substance subject (e.g., an individual human nature by the divine word). Moreover, creatures are said to be in obediential potency with respect to states and conditions that cannot be produced by any created natural power but that are metaphysically possible and producible by divine power.

Given these notions, Ware distinguishes three levels of metaphysical proximity. There is the obediential potency that creatures have insofar as they remain in their own supposit (e.g., of Jeremiah and John the Baptist, while remaining the very individual substance subjects that they are, to receive sanctifying grace at or after animation while still in the womb). There is the obediential potency of creatable substance natures to be supposited by something else (as was the case with the human nature of Christ). And in between, there is the obediential potency that pertains to a creature while remaining in its own supposit but bearing a special relation to the divine supposit: namely, Mary's in being the Mother of God. In mothering, Mary remains the individual substance that she is, but is the one from whose flesh is taken the flesh that gets hypostatically united to the divine word. The Marian thought-experiment explores which divine special effects this intermediate level of metaphysical intimacy makes it fitting for her to receive.Footnote ⁵⁴

Metaphysical Muddles: Simul Iusta et Peccatrix

Pace Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure argued that to celebrate the feast is not necessarily to glorify Mary for her conception; one could observe the solemnity of the conception by reason of her sanctification which occurred at an unknown date. In Quodlibeta XV, q. 13, Henry of Ghent confronted a question (probably raised by the English students at Paris) designed to put him on the spot: Whether the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated precisely by reason of her conception? Footnote ⁵⁵ Henry promptly distinguishes two senses of “conception”—one referring to the initial mixing of seeds (conceptio seminis); the other, to animation (conceptio hominis). Since sanctification is possible only at or after the instant of animation, only the second sense is relevant.Footnote ⁵⁶ But was Mary immaculate at the instant of animation? Henry inherits the problematic: The liturgical argument drives towards an affirmative, while Mary's bisexual propagation by Joachim and Anna and the seminal transmission theory demand a negative answer.

Our text of Henry's question reflects many layers of redaction. If his contem-poraries are to be believed, Henry's first bold response was to have it both ways.Footnote ⁵⁷ Philosophers distinguish, not only what is temporally prior, posterior, or simultaneous, but also—following Aristotle—what is naturally prior, posterior, or simultaneous, where natural order marks some sort (which sort was controversial) of explanatory priority. Just as they speak of instants of time (T1, T2, T3 …) in connection with temporal location, so Henry is willing to talk of signs or instants of nature (N1, N2, N3 …) to mark relative positions in the natural order. Moreover, since among those that are temporally simultaneous, one can be naturally prior to another (e.g., essential causes are temporally simultaneous with but naturally prior to their effects), it is possible to distinguish many signs or instants of nature at a single instant of time (e.g., the essential cause C exists and acts at [T1, N1], while its effect E exists at [T1, N2]). Why not say that at a single instant of time (Ta, the instant of animation), Mary's soul is infused into contaminated flesh and so has original sin, lacks grace, and is eligible for sanctification at the earlier sign or instant of nature (Ta, N1) and that her soul receives divinely infused grace at a later sign or instant of nature (Ta, N2)? To lend plausibility to this idea, Henry offers the analogy of a bean that is thrown into the air but hit by a falling stone. Henry says, the last moment of the bean's upward motion is the same as the first moment of its downward motion.Footnote ⁵⁸

Godfrey of FontainesFootnote ⁵⁹ and William of WareFootnote ⁶⁰ countered, the reason not to say that the Blessed Virgin Mary is simul peccatrix et iusta is that it is obviously contradictory. Because instants of time are really indivisible, the distinction of signs or instants of nature within a single instant of time will have to be a distinction of reason (i.e., a function of the mind's conceiving of the single instant of time in different ways). But no mere distinction of reason can underwrite the simultaneous inherence of real contraries in the same subject apart from any real division of signs/instants of nature and apart from any real division of the subject itself.

Duns Scotus, who is himself attached to distinguishing instants of nature within the same instant of time or within God's eternal now, agrees. Henry's misuse of the metaphysical machinery—to allow a quality really not to inhere and really to inhere in the same subject simultaneously—provokes one of Scotus's more explicit accounts of his own understanding of the notion. Taken one way, the naturally prior includes whatever a thing would have of itself apart from any external cause. This way, Mary's not being justified would be naturally prior to her being justified, because—left to herself—Mary would not be justified but rather a daughter of Adam.Footnote ⁶¹ Taken another way, natural priority abstracts from whatever is inessential and considers only what follows from the essential nature of a thing.Footnote ⁶² This way, Mary in herself is naturally prior both to not being justified and to being justified, because neither is essential to being human. Neither way is it implied that Mary was really without grace at the time of her sanctification, because something external—namely, Christ—did cause her to have the grace which—left to herself'she would have lacked.Footnote ⁶³

Aristotelian Revisions

Wounded Nature versus Lost Gift: Henry of Ghent picks up on Augustine's remarks that the fall “wounds the nature” and his talk of the will's originally having power to control all bodily movements and sensory appetites and so power to preserve uprightness and immortality. From this, Henry infers that original justice must be a natural condition of the will in its purely natural stateFootnote ⁶⁴—in particular, an inherent quality. This natural quality is lost by sin, which makes the straight will crooked and unable to control the lower powers or to secure immortality. Henry reasons that if original justice were a donum superadditum, a supranatural quality, then the purely natural state would lack original justice as much as the fallen state, and both would be equally worthy of punishment.Footnote ⁶⁵

Against Henry, Scotus counterposes an Aristotelian anthropology, which insists that human beings are essentially rational animals. So far from being a punitive consequence, the rebellion of the lower (animal) against the higher (rational) powers is natural to human beings'a natural consequence of what human beings are. Scotus explains that human beings have many sensory faculties; each sensory appetite, its own object. Moreover, sensory appetites act naturally--unless obstructed, to the limit of their powers—and so seek their objects as much as they can. Scotus adds a premise from Avicenna—that where multiple powers are in the same essence, the intense acts of one obstruct the acts of the other—and concludes that intense acts of sensory appetites would obstruct reason (make it difficult for reason to function and difficult for reason to control them), and that reason ought to try to obstruct sensory appetites.Footnote ⁶⁶ Moreover, Aristotelian animals are naturally mortal. What was given to Adam and Eve in the garden was not immortality in the sense of the impossibility of dying, but the possibility of not dying by eating of the tree of life, by protection from guardian angels, by divine protection, and by good self-government.Footnote ⁶⁷ Since it is the natural, not a punitive condition of Aristotelian animals to have conflicting appetites and to be mortal, harmony of appetites and ability not to die must be attributed to dona superaddita.Footnote ⁶⁸

Demythologizing the Infection: One of the biggest obstacles to immaculate animation is posed by the seminal transmission theory of original sin, with its chain of contamination through inherence and being inhered in. The semen catches it from the animating soul of the parent, and the animating soul of the offspring catches it from the inseminated flesh. Scotus records a row of objections that this is unscientific. First, the biology of Scotus's day identified semen as an inanimate by-product of nutrition. But what the father's soul does not animate, it does not “infect” by inherence.Footnote ⁶⁹ Even if parental lust were an efficient cause of some morbid quality in the inseminated flesh, that quality would not remain to infect the child's sensory appetites, because the inseminated flesh undergoes many substantial changes to turn it into an organic body fit for animation, and Aristotelian qualities do not survive the corruption of their subjects.Footnote ⁷⁰

Juridical or Quasi-Legal Transmission: an Alternative Account: For his part, Scotus rejects all such traditional attempts to explain original sin in terms of the fomes and/or concupiscence. Taking his inspiration from Anselm's De conceptu virginali et peccato originali, Scotus defines “original sin” as “lack of required justice” and offers his own juridical or quasi-legal explanation of its transmission.

On Scotus's account, original justice is a supranatural quality in the will that inclines the will to higher delectables, to God above all instead of the pursuit of whatever the sensory appetites propose. God gave original justice to the whole nature in Adam, and God justly requires it in all those to whom He gave it—namely, all those in whom the nature exists. Scotus makes it clear that the original donation is a matter of divine statute—that “divine law … lays it down” that so long as the father does nothing to forfeit the gift (by sinning), original justice will be given to the offspring with the same regularity as a natural process: Not because the father causes it to be passed on, but because God has made it a policy regularly to confer original justice on offspring of parents who keep God's commandments, just as God now makes it a policy to create and infuse an intellectual soul into a human fetal body when it is perfectly organized.Footnote ⁷¹

As with Anselm's account in De conceptu virginali et de peccato originali, natural propagation is relevant, not because it naturally causes fomes in the flesh or sensory appetite or because it naturally prevents original justice in the soul, but because it makes the individual fall under the law about Adam's family, under the divine policy not to confer original justice on Adam's descendants given that he sinned. Adam's sinning is a positive demeritorious cause of original sin in his descendants, while God's not giving justice is the negative cause.Footnote ⁷² Scotus adds that if Adam hadn't fallen but Cain had, the same legal situation would pertain to Cain's descendants by virtue of being his descendants.Footnote ⁷³ Just as Anselm's explanation in De conceptu virginali et de peccato originali makes irrelevant the flesh's infection or lack thereof, so also Scotus's.Footnote ⁷⁴ Nevertheless, there is a sense in which the flesh itself can count as an instrumental cause, not because it is an efficient cause of qualities in the child's soul, but because the semen itself contains the active power of producing a child of Adam, and it is through being a child of Adam that someone falls under the law and so acquires a legal obligation to have original justice.Footnote ⁷⁵

Christological Preeminence, Recalculated

The other major objection was that immaculate animation for the Blessed Virgin Mary would be unfitting, because it would detract from the preeminence of Christ. Bonaventure's immaculatist begged to differ: Because there is a difference between always having a property and having it independently, immaculate animation is compatible with salvation through Christ and hence does not jeopardize His preeminence as universal savior. William of Ware, Duns Scotus, and Peter Aureol go further, contending that maximally perfect mediation entails immaculate animation for some naturally propagated descendant of Adam. Once christological preeminence has been seen to demand the award, Marian privilege can take over to identify her as the winner of the prize.

Given Scotus's Anselmian definition of original sin, the issue of freedom from or infection with original sin doesn't come up until the moment of animation. Immaculate animation is achieved by infusing grace in the soul from the first moment of its existence. But for Scotus the role of the grace is not the efficient-causally overpowering of fomes in the flesh (as it was for Aquinas and Henry of Ghent and later Aureol). Its relevance is instead legal: Namely, that for legal purposes the infused grace is equivalent to original justice, so that Mary's having it satisfies the legal requirement for having original justice that divine statutes impose on every member of Adam's race.

Scotus argues for his major premise—that the maximally perfect mediator has a maximally perfect act of mediating for some person whose mediator he isFootnote ⁷⁶—from three angles. First, to be maximally well-pleasing to God, the mediator's deed would have not simply to remove offense, but to prevent God from being offended in the first place.Footnote ⁷⁷ Second, to be maximally efficacious in shielding the beneficiary from evil, the mediator's deed would have to take away the greater evil as well as the lesser—original sin which is worse than actual sin.Footnote ⁷⁸ Third, to be maximally obliged to the mediator, the beneficiary would need to receive from him the maximal good that can be had from him—innocence or preservation from guilt and not just guilt removal.Footnote ⁷⁹ Scotus makes the same point with rhetorical questions: “why should many souls be indebted to Christ for grace and glory and none for innocence?” “There are many innocent angels. Why should there be no innocent souls in heaven but the soul of Christ?”Footnote ⁸⁰

Mary's dependence on Christ means that she is still subject to what we might call “counter-factual contamination”: She would have been subject to guilt if grace had not been infused into her soul. Likewise, she is still subject to counter-factual exclusion: The door would have been closed to her by reason of her origin, if Christ had not opened it.Footnote ⁸¹

Thought-experiments about what maximal perfection would do, easily discover premises that prove too much, that establish more than theological consensus can support, more than systematic considerations desire, and/or more than experience can bear out. The hypothesis that self-diffusing Goodness would share itself out as much as it can, would pour into creation as much as creation can receive, urgently raises the problem of evil in general. The claim that maximally perfect mediation would render the maximum benefit and shield the beneficiary from every evil, runs contrary to traditional Marian biography that she suffered hunger and thirst, fatigue and pain, and that she died. Systematic constraints impose, the beneficial side effects of sanctification must be less in her than in Christ. Christ's humanity was passible and mortal; He voluntarily assumed these conditions as a means to the end of His saving work. By analogy, Scotus reckons, Mary's humanity was involuntarily subjected to only those defects that were useful for earning merit.Footnote ⁸²

Peter Aureol considers a different objection: By parity of reasoning, couldn't we prove that Christ as maximally perfect redeemer would liberate all humans from their sins? For to free one human, is great; two, greater; all, maximal—what you would expect from a perfect redeemer. Yet this conclusion would be contrary to Scripture and hence to theological consensus.Footnote ⁸³ Aureol counters that perfect redemption does not maximize the number of individuals redeemed, but uses maximal methods of redeeming. Aureol floats the following analogy: By a given method of writing the letter “a”, a scribe can produce 100 or 1000 tokens; what makes one scribe more excellent than another is not the number of letters written but the way he writes them.Footnote ⁸⁴ Yet, if excellence in a scribe is expertise in the range, variety, and elegance of the styles in which s/he can write, should we not say that excellence in the redeemer is merely a matter of power to redeem? Aureol denies it, insisting that “redemption” signifies not merely power but act: A maximally perfect redeemer would not remain in potency but would be in act with respect to redemption (i.e., the maximally perfect redeemer would not rest content with mere power or ability to redeem, but would actually exercise it to redeem someone).Footnote ⁸⁵

The Slippery Slope of Marian Privilege

Entering the thought-experiment a generation after Scotus, Peter Aureol wrote two highly sophisticated treatises in defense of immaculate conception, from which there is space to lift out only the most salient developments.Footnote ⁸⁶

Refocussed Definition: Anselm and Scotus define “original sin” as “the lack of required justice,” thereby indicating that what is at stake is not the mere absence or presence of a quality, but the fact that the one who lacks or has it owes it to God to have it. Because requirement is juridical or quasi-legal, they attempt to account for its application to Adam's descendants in terms of divine legislation and its removal (e.g., from the baptized) in terms of legal waivers, and to separate this from biological or metaphysical causal considerations about qualities being produced in the flesh (inanimate or otherwise) and in the soul. Certainly, Scotus thinks that what counts as meritorious, as prima facie or definitively worthy of eternal life, is defined by free and contingent divine statutes. Scotus recognizes, and Ockham after him emphasizes, how God could have refrained from establishing the category of merit, and could have laid down different positive laws governing it.

Aureol finds it clearer to bring these convictions directly into the definition of “sin” generally and “original sin” in particular: What is essential is being offensive to God, being an object of divine hatred. Aureol distinguishes three norms against which sins (peccata) are measured. Philosophically, a peccatum is a deviation from the natural course or order (e.g., a three legged horse or a blind sheep). Ethically, a peccatum is a deviation from morals, from the judgment of right reason. Theologically, the norm is the divine will, and a peccatum is what is divinely nilled or hated by God.Footnote ⁸⁷ There may be extensional overlap (but not total coincidence) in what counts as sin relative to these criteria, but the formal definitions are different. For example, something may be morally wrong because it involves producing a natural defect or deprivation.Footnote ⁸⁸ Aureol goes along with the idea that—while it is contrary to divine Goodness to dispense from the first table of the decalogue—God could dispense from the second table, even though adultery, theft, and homicide could not fail to be sins ethically speaking. Aureol insists, the divine will is a higher rule than right reason, which is the rule in mores and Aristotelian ethics.Footnote ⁸⁹ Even if habitual rebellion in the sensory appetite is what God actually hates, God would not have to hate it; those who have it would not have to be counted children of wrath. God could freely and contingently choose not to hate it. Indeed, God regularly does give up on being offended by such psycho-spiritual dysfunction in the baptized.

In the same vein, Aureol distinguishes between contracting original sin de jure and contracting it de facto. De jure guilt pertains to the whole nature as it was contained in fallen Adam, and to each individual in whom the nature exists. Materially, this means all descendants in which habitual rebellion is seminally transmitted by lustful bisexual intercourse. Guilt is remitted individual by individual so that de facto—e.g., after baptism—God does not take offense at the individual. Every descendant of Adam is by nature a child of wrath de jure, but some are liberated from it by grace so that it is not de facto imputed to them.Footnote ⁹⁰ Without metaphysical miracles, such an individual is simul iustus et peccator.

With these tools in hand, Aureol turns to a threefold defense of the immaculate conception (= animation) of Mary: potuit, decuit, fecit.

Potuit: So far as possibility is concerned, Aureol's legal emphasis readily furnishes an argument from God's role as chief legislator. divine will is the norm. Therefore, God has greater power to spare and dismiss offenses than any human being or other rational creature. But a human being can remit offense and guilt commited against him and freely forgive. Therefore, so can God forgive the guilt that the soul of the Virgin would have contracted at the instant of union with the flesh.Footnote ⁹¹ Again, the legislator who institutes a law, can—for good reason and singular privilege—make exceptions for some persons. God is the One Who instituted this law, that the soul would contract original sin from its union to flesh that has been seminally produced by lustful bisexual intercourse. Therefore, if God wanted, God could make an exception to allow for immaculate animation in Mary's case.Footnote ⁹²

Decuit: Aureol turns his re-definition of original sin to rhetorical advantage: Surely, it would be unfitting for the Mother of God to be hated by God at any time in her life. Aureol combines already secured Marian concessions with traditional exegetical conclusions to drive home the point. Theological consensus has it that the Blessed Virgin Mary has a lifetime immunity to venial and actual sin; and that her body is corporeally assumed and so preserved from worms, rotting, and incineration. But original sin is more hateful to God than any venial or actual sin. Likewise, spiritual pollution is more detestible than bodily pollution. Therefore, if it is fitting for the Blessed Virgin Mary to be free from venial and actual sin and bodily decay, it is fitting for her to be free from original sin from the beginning.Footnote ⁹³

Fecit: Arguments for fit in the region of omnipotent goodness can seem tantamont to proofs of fact. But as we have seen, considerations of propriety are notoriously defeasible, because fit can be calculated from so many angles. Our a priori estimates have to be weighed against one another and the testimony of Scripture, ecclesial pronouncements, secondary authorities, and experience. Scotus defends potuit and decuit, and ingeniously rebuts the charge that immaculate animation would run counter to the preeminence of Christ with the counter-argument that maximally perfect mediation seems to require it. Nevertheless, when it comes to fecit, Scotus response is terse and provisional. Whether the Blessed Virgin Mary had original sin in utero for a period of time, or for only one instant, or whether she was the subject of immaculate animation:

Aureol also writes “without prejudice” to a wiser and truer opinion and with expressed willingness to accept correction from the apostolic see of Rome.Footnote ⁹⁵ But he is bolder and more expansive in declaring his conviction that “it can be held without danger to the faith that God preserved her de facto.”Footnote ⁹⁶

1) Bernard's Letter to the Canons of Lyons is not decisive, because Bernard himself admits that he is not infallible on this subject by expressing his own willingness to accept correction from the church. 2) The English and the Gauls who celebrate the feast of the Conception sing antiphons and responses that wouldn't be true or appropriate if the Virgin were conceived in original sin de facto as well as de jure.Footnote ⁹⁷ Nor should one stick on the fact that seminal conception is not to be feasted for itself. Rather the feast is proleptic, looking forward to immaculate animation and to Mary herself who shines through the conception.Footnote ⁹⁸ 3) No creed or council determines this question. Neither part is defined. Therefore, either part can be soundly held.Footnote ⁹⁹ To the objection that councils define the sayings of the saints as authoritative, Aureol replies that insofar as they are inconsistent with one another, the councils cannot be imposing them as infallible authorities, because this would lead to contradictory dogmas.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In particular, since the saints come down on both sides of the question of immaculate animation, their testimony cannot be taken to exclude it as an acceptable position.Footnote ¹⁰¹

4) More than his predecessors, Aureol squarely confronts the many proof-texts from the Bible and the saints that seem literally to imply that all were born in sin and all are redeemed by Christ. In reply, he appeals first to the authority of traditional patterns of exegesis (found in Augustine inter alia), which treat such universal generalizations as loose usage and as admitting of exceptions. Otherwise, Aureol admits that Mary falls under these generalizations de jure (insofar as she is a member of the race to whom they apply) but not de facto (insofar as she is exempted by legal waivers and/or causal obstruction)Footnote ¹⁰²'simul iusta et peccatrix after all.

Picking the Fruits

The harvest is plentiful. This fragment of the debate about immaculate conception is enough to illustrate how medieval thought-experiments—whether or not they produced agreement—bore the fruit of theoretical refinements. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the doctrine of original sin had become much more articulate than when Anselm's speculation began. Augustine's picture of the fall as wounding human nature and his seminal transmission theory of inheritance were subjected to philosophical and scientific critique. The then-up-to-date biology of mediate animation forced distinctions among kinds of contamination (whether of flesh, sensory appetites, or the intellectual soul) as well as the identification of times at which and different ways and means by which such defilements could be removed (e.g., because of mediate animation, infused grace comes too late to prevent but only in time to oppose or overpower morbid qualities in the flesh). mediate animation also implied a distinction between immaculate conception and immaculate animation—one that the 1854 dogmatic definition fails to observe. Aristotle's biology further challenged seminal transmission's metaphor of infection by inherence (the father's soul does not inhere in the matter of the semen, and any qualities the father caused in the semen would have been corrupted by its substantial changes into an organic body). Likewise, Aristotelian anthropology was brought forward to show that disharmony between flesh, sensory appetites, and the rational soul comes naturally. So far from reflecting damage, it is the outworking of what it is to be animal as well as rational, in short, of what it is to be a human being.

Already in Anselm but re-emphasized in Scotus and Aureol, there is a break-through recognition that inheritance is not at bottom a biological but a juridical or quasi-legal category. The relevance of biological origins or concrete conditions of body and soul to legal standing depends on the legislator, on what the legislator makes of it. Since in this case God is the law-maker, and in soteriology God is free to do anything compatible with divine goodness, the way is open to say that Mary was legally in the clear ab initio, and to let the degree and nature of any continuing concrete dysfunctions be dictated by other desiderata in God's plan.

These shifts of attention got reflected in refocussed definitions. If seminal transmission leads one to concentrate on concrete dysfunctions—ignorance, difficulty, a morbid quality in the flesh, and fomes peccati in the sensory powers—Anselm's identification of the soul as the subject of sin, drives him and Scotus to define “original sin” in terms of something that the soul lacks but ought to have. Aureol takes the statutory character of original sin more fully to heart when he locates its essence in being hated by God.

Besides all of this, the clarification of metaphysical notions about qualitative change and instants of nature, opened the way to distinguish always having a trait and having that trait independently—Mary is free of both original and actual sin throughout her existence, but she depends for this on the merits of Christ—and cleared the path for the startling conclusion that a maximally perfect mediator entails immaculate animation. Debate also exposed the flexibility of tradition—how liturgical celebration is not in fact rigidly principled, and how traditional patterns of exegesis can easily be used to remove apparent contradictions between immaculate animation and Holy Writ. Such wealth of medieval analysis did not precipitate any definitive ecclesiastical determination, but it did allow negative presumptions to be lifted, and did put the church in a position to decide the question with open eyes.