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simspt
Guest
Did Thomas Aquinas view Mary as being without sin?
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Student09
Guest
Yes, St. Thomas believed and wrote that Mary’s soul was purified from all stain of original sin while she was still in her mother’s womb. He just didn’t believe that this happened at the moment of conception, because it was thought then that the soul was infused into the body sometime after conception.
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thistle
Guest
Thomas Aquinas did not believe in the Immaculate Conception. However, it was not dogma at that time so his opinion then was not against Church teaching.
If you read The Catechetical Instructions of St Thomas Aquinas and the section on the Virtues of Mary, Aquinas states “Christ excelled the Blessed Virgin in this, that He was conceived and born without original sin, while the Blessed Virgin was conceived in original sin, but was not born in it.”
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simspt
Guest
Did Mary need redemption by Christ in the view of Aquinas? What is the Catholic teaching today on this?
THANKS for your info on this subject.
John
THANKS for your info on this subject.
John
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Mintaka
Guest
Of course Mary needed redemption. It’s just that, unlike most of us, she received redemption at the very moment of her conception in her mother’s womb, instead of at some other time during her life. She manifested her redemption throughout her life by persisting in faith and sinlessness. She received grace from God to be cleansed of original sin at the earliest possible moment; and she received grace from God to help her remain sinless.
Of course, unlike most of us and unlike Adam and Eve, she also chose to cooperate with God in that whole not-sinning thing…
Of course, Mary’s redemption is best seen in her song the Magnificat, but there are lots of poetic comparisons to her redemption as being like the first light of humanity’s redemption, cast ahead of Him by the Sun of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection. She has also been described as being part of humanity’s firstfruits of salvation (which fits with the whole Second Adam, Second Eve comparison). Lots of beautiful stuff has been written along these lines, including some nice hymns.
(Of course, God, existing in eternity, made the Crucifixion work in the past as well as in the future for our redemption. The Fathers used to say all kinds of great things about how the crossbar of the Cross pointed back into the past and forward into the future, up into the heavens and down into the depths of the earth, representing the fact that Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice and its saving power truly affected all times and places ever. Mary was a convenient example of this; but you’ll find theologians and Fathers going through whole lists of ways that Christ’s Crucifixion affected Biblical history. It’s yet another way to look at the whole type/antitype foreshadowing thing.)
But to sum it up… yes. St Thomas Aquinas and all Catholics believe that Mary needed and received redemption from sin, from her Son’s death and resurrection. It just took effect on her a lot earlier in her life than when she stood on Golgotha or woke up on Easter morning. (And a good thing too, or she never could have stood all that.)
Of course, unlike most of us and unlike Adam and Eve, she also chose to cooperate with God in that whole not-sinning thing…
Of course, Mary’s redemption is best seen in her song the Magnificat, but there are lots of poetic comparisons to her redemption as being like the first light of humanity’s redemption, cast ahead of Him by the Sun of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection. She has also been described as being part of humanity’s firstfruits of salvation (which fits with the whole Second Adam, Second Eve comparison). Lots of beautiful stuff has been written along these lines, including some nice hymns.
(Of course, God, existing in eternity, made the Crucifixion work in the past as well as in the future for our redemption. The Fathers used to say all kinds of great things about how the crossbar of the Cross pointed back into the past and forward into the future, up into the heavens and down into the depths of the earth, representing the fact that Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice and its saving power truly affected all times and places ever. Mary was a convenient example of this; but you’ll find theologians and Fathers going through whole lists of ways that Christ’s Crucifixion affected Biblical history. It’s yet another way to look at the whole type/antitype foreshadowing thing.)
But to sum it up… yes. St Thomas Aquinas and all Catholics believe that Mary needed and received redemption from sin, from her Son’s death and resurrection. It just took effect on her a lot earlier in her life than when she stood on Golgotha or woke up on Easter morning. (And a good thing too, or she never could have stood all that.)
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Catholic_Dude
Guest
This is a kind of tricky area: St Thomas didn’t believe in the IC only in so far as he believed the soul didn’t enter the body until a few days after conception, thus IC was impossible (there was no such thing as ‘moment of conception’ in his framework). This is because they didn’t know when ensoulment occurred, and thus were working on an imperfect framework. That said, He (and others) believed the Blessed Virgin was cleansed from original sin at the earliest possible moment of ‘conception’, which in some ways is the Medieval version of IC. He states some nice reasoning in the Summa.
This (of course) is not the same as the solemnly defined Dogma of ‘at the very moment’, which was not formally binding until Bl Pius IX.
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