Okay, but the doctrine of the immaculate conception is about Mary’s conception. Whether the Scotistics or Aquinas think it was necessary the Church today does, otherwise why the doctrine status?
The connection is that the Church’s doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception, which all Catholics must believe, seems to be bolstered by the idea that Mary was the new ark, a pure vessel necessary to house God in her womb. How can it be, that it was necessary for Mary to be free from original sin (and sin in general) in order to house God, but people today take communion, the body and blood of God, into their often times mortally sinful bodies all the time without death? This was not so in the Old Testament as the High Priest, when he went into the Holy of Holies had to have a rope tied around him in case he had sin and died in the face of God.
RCE,
Well, what I was trying to get at is that it isn’t “necessary” as you say, for her to be free from that stain of original sin.
Let me give you a little of the background of how the original and strong defense of Mary’s immaculate conception was conceived by Bl John Duns Scotus, and let’s see if it helps. First, his theology marks a bit of a turning point in thinking on the Incarnation. Prior to Scotus, most of the pondering had taken place along the lines considering what God might have done, assuming a different order of things (like if Adam hadn’t sinned).
But Scotus being the great realist he is, begins with reality, the fact of the Incarnation in history and ponders from there. Ironically, Scotus assigns almost a secondary role to Christ as Redeemer, in terms of the purpose of the Incarnation. Most fundamentally, God intends his Son to be lord and king of the universe, and only secondarily, so to speak, is Christ’s en-flesh-ment for the purpose of redeeming fallen souls.
In the Incarnation, a human nature is created, assumed by the Eternal Word, and supernaturalized by God’s grace, as Allan Wolter, OFM puts it. And in this great ennobling of all of human nature, in Christ becoming the “last Adam,” the most perfect way to do so is to include male and female. Since Christ’s own hmanity is male, God chooses the next most perfect of God’s works-the Blessed Virgin Mary as the female. And in this, both sexes are included in this act of the Incarnation. Hence, He is lord over all and redeemer of all, as well.
After Scotus has done this work, he basically gives a “more perfect” argument. The more perfect way for God to have extended this “grace of God in Christ Jesus” to male (in Christ) and female (in Mary) is to have her be free from not only actual sin once the age of conscience had been achieved (which all admitted already), but also to have her like her Son in another important respect, to even be conceived free from sin.
