Sinless I: Defining the Immaculate Conception (Take 2)

What does it mean to say that Mary was immaculately conceived?

I was dissatisfied with my first post on the Immaculate Conception, so in honor of the Solemnity, I thought I would try again. 

The first thing you need to know about the Immaculate Conception is that it is not the same as the Virgin Birth. The Virgin Birth refers to the doctrine that Christ had only one earthly parent, Mary, who was a virgin at the time of Christ’s birth and remained so the rest of her life. To say that someone was conceived immaculately does not mean they were conceived without sexual intercourse (pace Augustine and the Shakers), but rather that they were conceived without sin. This phrase, “without sin,” deserves a closer look. 

There are two ways one can be “without sin.” The first, stricter sense, would be to avoid committing any discrete sins. A moment ago I parenthetically mentioned Augustine. As the theologian most esteemed by Catholics and Protestants both, his witness is relevant here: 

Having excepted the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, on account of the honor of the Lord, I wish to have absolutely no question when treating of sins—for how do we know what abundance of grace for the total overcoming of sin was conferred upon her, who merited to conceive and bear him in whom there was no sin?—so, I say, with the exception of the Virgin, if we could have gathered together all those holy men and women, when they were living here, and had asked them whether they were without sin, what do we suppose would have been their answer?”¹

As is my custom with block quotes, I went to bold bits of the paragraph to highlight the main point, but stopped when I realized I was bolding everything. Augustine wants to raise “absolutely no question” about Mary when treating of sins—that’s astounding! His reverence for our Lord is so deep that he doesn’t even want to raise the shadow of slander against Mary.² I’ll have something to say about the notorious “All have sinned” passage in a later post, but for now, just note that one of the greatest theologians of all time is only troubled to show how greatly he wants to avoid giving the impression that Mary might not be an exception. 

Per this strict sense of “without sin,” Mary never, at any point in her life, commits a sin. As at the wedding in Cana, she ever points us to her Son and says, “Do whatever He tells you.” This sense is relatively uncontroversial through the Fathers. This is important, because sometimes when Protestant apologists claim that the Immaculate Conception is a late doctrine, rejected by such luminaries as Thomas Aquinas, they miss that Thomas, along with the other theologians they cite, consistently endorses this strict sense of Mary’s being “without sin.” 

So what does Thomas reject, and why do Catholics believe it anyway? The second, broader sense of “without sin” captures not only the doctrine that Mary never committed any sins, but also that she was miraculously preserved from the stain of original sin. Once again, we’ve run into a term that must be defined before confusion “spirals out of amok,” to quote Michael Scott.³ 

Original sin is sometimes incorrectly understood as something like original guilt, as if the very same guilt that Adam incurred for his sin rests on us all. This is not the case, and never has been, except perhaps insofar as certain preachers have proved true the Proverb, “Much zeal without knowledge is not a good thing.” Instead, original sin is the doctrine that we carry within us the wound, the stain, the contamination of Adam’s sin. The serpent, so to speak, has not simply been let into the garden, but into our hearts. It is not the sort of thing that would show up on a rap sheet:

Eric Anderson
-Spoke in anger, x4
-Acted vaingloriously, x13
-Lustful thoughts, x3
-Over-ate, x7
-Original sin, x1
-Skipped Bible reading, x4

(This is a made-up, fictional sample because of course I do not do anything wrong. [Acted vaingloriously, +1] Oh shut up.)

One reason to doubt that “original guilt” is right is that it’s silly. Yes, God does visit punishment to the third, and the fourth generations, but this is not because He’s really mad and just wants to drive His point home. Rather, sin has destructive consequences, and its destructive nature overflows to harm innocents. A raging alcoholic parent will indeed leave scars on a family that will take generations to heal. God’s favored form of punishment in the Bible is simply giving us over the consequences of our sin. And, anyway, no one who wants to interpret the first bit as meaning the guilt of a sin extends a few generations is willing to take the next bit about steadfast love and mercy to the thousandth generation the same way. No one at all thinks that the merits of your ancestor four hundred generations back counts in your favor in court.

So original sin isn’t original guilt, but rather an inherited condition, an inheritance we ourselves are not guilty for, but which, once we have it, becomes our responsibility. It’s not my fault that my nature is fallen. It is my fault when I sin. There is no necessity to sin, after all. I could always abstain from this sin, this one in front of me. God even promises that He will provide “a way out.” And when I fail to resist, that is when I commit a discrete sin and become not only fallen but guilty. 

The teaching of the Immaculate Conception, then, is that Mary was preserved from her conception from the stain of original sin. In the words of a Spanish Christmas folk song, 

Ríu, ríu, chíu, la guarda ribera,
Dios guardó el lobo de nuestra cordera
El lobo rabioso la quiso morder
Mas Dios Poderoso la supo defender
Quísola hacer que no pudiese pecar
Ni aun original esta virgen no tuviera.

For our friends who did not briefly major in Spanish, here’s a (very wooden) translation:

Riu riu chiu [onomatopoeic bird of prey sounds], [cries] the river guard
God kept the wolf from our lamb
The raging wolf tried to bite her
God Most Powerful took to her defense
He sought to make her so she’d not sin
Not even original [sin] did this virgin have

It’s cooler in Spanish. 

This is the more esoteric detail that Aquinas gets wrong. For Thomas, Mary still needs Baptism because she needs to be washed not for guilt, but for healing from original sin. On the contrary, says the Church, she was kept entirely from the “lobo.” Sin had no foothold in her who was to become the “Portal of Salvation,” the door through whom our Redemption would enter the world. No bite of sin, no touch of inequity.⁴

Let me address an error now so it doesn’t spiral out of amok later. Mary is not simply tough-willed, a really strong person who didn’t need Christ like the rest of us. The teaching of the Catholic Church is rather that the graces she received are a proactive application of Christ’s work. What precisely does this mean? I suppose this is an appropriate place to punt to mystery. Before I’m accused of copping out, I’d like to ask: just why couldn’t God preserve someone from original sin? Is it beyond His power? If so, why? Does the Bible say He’s incapable of such a feat? It would seem impious to say so. 

One more word. It is true that this doctrine was only defined in 1854. But it was taught and believed almost universally. When Pope Pious IX was considering solemnly declaring this as a dogma of the Church, he surveyed every bishop for their views on the matter. Ninety percent indicated they wished the doctrine to become official Church dogma. I will comment on this further in another post, but for the moment I think it important to note that this was no unilateral power-play, and the widespread support of the bishops shows its organic connection to the life of the Church. It came at a time when the importance of the body badly needed to be reaffirmed, as well as the dignity of those that society (i.e., industrialists) viewed as discardable. 

In summary, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception states that Mary, the Mother of God, was miraculously kept pure by God from the moment of her conception. I think of this as the “advanced force,” preparing the way for the true invasion to make landfall. In the glorious body and soul of Our Lady, God was slinking behind enemy lines, preparing the way for Christ right in the midst of Satan’s apparently completed campaign against the human race. This is why Mary is the Morning Star: she is not herself the Sun, but when you see her, you know Who is coming, and that the night is not long for this world. 

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1. Nature and Grace 36:42, A.D. 415. Quoted on ChurchFathers.org

2. I mentioned this in the original post, but it’s worth contrasting this with what I encountered at seminary. I was in a class at Princeton Theological Seminary in which guest speaker Dr. Natalie Wigg-Stevenson, director of MDiv studies at Toronto School of Theology, speculated that it is a “very fair question whether God raped Mary.” (I walked out of class soon after that—I suddenly sympathized with G.K. Chesterton’s The Ball and The Cross, which features a Catholic ready to duel to the death for Mary’s honor.) To counter such disgusting slander, we should be ready to emphasize that Mary’s “Be it done unto me according to thy word” comes totally free. But how? How could a sinful human, prior to the descent of the Holy Spirit, make such a pure, unreserved self-gift to God? One answer is that she was prepared from her conception specially for this task, to be ready for the “yes” to God that the whole world hung on. 

3. Not to be confused with the wizard of the same name burning in the 8th Circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.

4. Thomas held this view well before the dogma was defined, so there’s no question of him being a heretic. You’re only accountable to what the Church has defined. In things defined: unity. In things undefined: freedom. In all things: charity.