The Doctrine of Mary's Salvation: Revisited
The Doctrine of Mary's Salvation: Revisited
For Mary to fulfil her mission as the Mother of Jesus, the God-man, God prepared her by cleansing her of all sin. Therefore, in her totality, she is devoted to the service of the Lord.
This is a revisitation and correction of an article published some time ago on Apologia Anglicana, when, as an Anglican, I was sympathetic to the theory of the Immaculate Conception. While I now reject the Immaculate Conception as an heresy, as taught by St. John Maximovitch and St. Paisios the Athonite, I hold the main point of the article: the sinlessness and salvation of Our Lady.
And my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.
Luke 1:47
Mary, a lowly woman, was predestined to bring forth the Saviour of the world: God Himself. Such a great vocation—that is, to become the Mother of God—required a great preparation by God Himself.
Preparation for Vocation
When God sends someone out on a vocation, He prepares him first. God gives each man the grace for his own calling. For example, to prepare him for his prophetic vocation, the Lord sends a seraph to the Prophet Isaiah. The seraph touches his lips with a burning coal, saying to him:
And it touched my mouth and said, ‘Look, this has touched your lips and will take away your transgressions and will purge away your sins.’ And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people?’ And I said, ‘Look, I am here; send me!’
Isaiah 6:7-8
Isaiah is cleansed and sanctified in preparation for being sent.
Mary's Vocation: Virgin and Mother
Because of this, the Lord himself will give you a sign: Look, the virgin will conceive in the womb and will bear a son, and you will call his name Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14
The Prophet Isaiah shows that St. Mary’s vocation is twofold: to be both virgin and mother; and that she will receive a preparation proper for these callings. First, to be a virgin, she would live her life consecrated to such a calling, living in the Temple from the age of three until the age of twelve when she was given to the widower, St. Joseph (Protoevangelium of St. James 7-9).
Second, to be the Mother of God, as opposed to merely a station in life, involves the whole person. To be the mother of Jesus, who has no human father, is to necessarily be the giver of his human nature. Jesus’ human nature comes exclusively from Mary, since Jesus is, as St. Paul emphasizes, a son of Adam to redeem the sons of Adam, ‘God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,’ for those under the law (Gal. 4:4).
To provide for Jesus’ human nature, the Father could not have just created ex nihilo another instance of humanity. Instead, Jesus needed to truly be a son of Adam like all men. Therefore, Mary as the source of Jesus’ humanity needs her nature prepared for the Incarnation. In His very Incarnation, He has the end in mind.
Our Lord—by taking human nature from Our Lady alone—saves all men who have that very same nature of Our Lady. Christ, by the instrument of His human nature, works the salvation of man.
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Matthew 26:26-28
Therefore, since Mary was to provide—from her very self—the instrument for the salvation of the world, her very self would need to be prepared for this purpose.
Can Jesus Save Himself?
Given that Our Lady needed to provide Our Lord’s instrument of salvation, then—at some point—it needs to be made wholly immaculate, for darkness scatters from light; both sin and divinity could not dwell in the same person, since He is without sin. This is not to say that Christ is unable to scatter the darkness and cleanse from sin, for—as we see in the Haemorrhaging Woman—His mere presence and touch does not become defiled but cleanses the defiled.
Rather, the issue is that natures do not exist on their own but are always hypostatised: instantiated in a person. And the quality of sin—from a sinful nature—could never be ascribed to the divine person of the Son. Also, if it were made immaculate in the person of Our Lord, then He would not be the great High Priest. This is because this unique, plenary dispensation of saving grace would come from the merits and work of Christ on the Cross, from which all grace and salvation flows. And the Cross itself is possible because the Word Incarnate acts as both high Priest & Victim. However, as that great High Priest, unlike a merely human and fallen high priest—who ‘is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people’ (Heb. 5:3)—Jesus Christ does not offer the sacrifice for Himself. Instead, it is only offered for those who are in sin.
Therefore, if Jesus Christ does not offer the sacrifice for Himself, then it cannot be applied to Himself. The problem then becomes apparent: the human nature of Jesus Christ cannot be purified while it is truly His.
Since Christ does not ‘save Himself’, nor could sinfulness be ascribed to the divine person, the human nature He was to receive must have been made immaculate in the person of Our Lady. This is why the dignity of Mary’s divine maternity necessitates her salvation. To be the Mother of God, to provide Our Lord an immaculate instrument of salvation, Mary’s human nature, in her person, is made all-holy and immaculate.
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Romans 8:3-4
The Moment of Mary’s Salvation
Having established that Mary’s divine maternity necessarily involves her plenary sanctification, the Scriptures must be searched for the moment of that salvation. On the one hand, and as I had previously argued, her vocation begins at her conception. So, it is proposed that the fullness of preparation occurs then. However, each man’s vocation involves his self in some sense, which begins at conception. Or, rather, every member of the elect God has chosen ‘in him before the foundation of the world’ (Ephesians 1:4). Therefore, the moment of preparation must be determined by what is necessary for the vocation itself.
For Our Lady, it was not necessary that her salvation be effected at the very moment of her conception. Rather, the grace of God is capable of fully healing man of every defect, brokenness, and sin: just as He will do for every member of His elect in the eschaton. Indeed, that is the message of the Gospel! The universality of sin in all men is central to the Gospel of the one man who overcomes sin and death.
As St. Paul reflects on the Scriptures’ treatment of man’s fallen condition,
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
Romans 5:12-14
It is this totality of man’s sinfulness, the subjection of all mankind to death that required one man, Christ Jesus, to be the wholly sinless Saviour. The Fathers are insistent on this reality: Jesus Christ is the only man since Adam who was wholly and entirely without sin. St. Augustine, the Hammer of Pelagians, needed to take great effort to emphasise this.
From this bondage, then, we are set free by the Lord alone. He who had it not, Himself delivers us from it; for He alone came without sin in the flesh.
-St. Augustine, Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John, 41:5.
And as well:
For He came in the flesh, that is, in the likeness of sinful flesh, but not in Sinful flesh, because He had no sin at all; and therefore became a true sacrifice for sin, because He Himself had no sin.
-St. Augustine, Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John, 41:5.
Therefore, knowing that Christ alone is without even sin in the flesh (that is, original sin and concupiscence), the Scriptures can be sought also for His relationship with His Mother and the rest of mankind.
In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh
St. Paul teaches that God sent His Son ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin’ (Romans 8:3). How is it that Our Lord could be in the likeness of sinful flesh if He is sinless and if Our Lady were devoid of all sin from conception? Rather, Our Lord is unique in being conceived in the likeness of sinful flesh but not as sinful flesh. St. Augustine exegetes this passage in such a manner.
Whilst by those who faithfully read, faithfully hear, and faithfully hold fast the Holy Scriptures, it cannot be doubted that from that flesh, which first became sinful flesh by the choice of sin, and which has been subsequently transmitted to all through successive generations, there has been propagated a sinful flesh, with the single exception of that “likeness of sinful flesh,”—which likeness, however, there could not have been, had there not been also the reality of sinful flesh.
-St. Augustine, A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants, Chapter 58 (36)
Therefore, Our Lord, being the Son of Our Lady, was made in the likeness of sinful flesh: Our Lady’s flesh, a daughter of Adam. This excludes her from having received the grace unique to Our Lord: being sinless flesh (that is, being preserved from original sin and concupiscence at her conception). However, knowing that St. Mary was indeed fully conformed in holiness, we need to look to the Scriptures for indications of the moment of her salvation.
Mary: Full of Grace
Greetings, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!
Luke 1:28
When St. Gabriel appears to St. Mary, he announces her to be favoured or graced. This is often rendered in devotional and Latin texts as ‘full of grace’. Much has been said in light of this traditional rendering, but the literal sense of the verse must be considered primarily. κεχαριτωμένη comes from the verb ‘to favour (or grace), and it is formed in a way to indicate that it has already happened to her, simply meaning: favoured woman. While many make much of this word, it can certainly be said that it indicates that she has thus far been faithful. And it shows that the Lord’s favour does not start here but rather leads here.
St. Gabriel, giving the Lord’s promise and the means by which it will occur to Our Lady, explains:
The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
Luke 1:35
This passage makes clear that the Incarnation, that very event which gives the reason for her sanctification and vocation, will be wrought through the descent of the Holy Spirit and divine overshadowing. It is here, then, that the Scriptures indicate the completion of her salvation: the moment of plenary salvation, sealed by Our Lady with her obedient faith: ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38). Because of this, when Our Lady visits St. Elizabeth, she can truly say of her: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’ (Luke 1:42). And, as Our Lady chants, her excelling blessedness is due to ‘God my Saviour’ (Luke 1:47) who saved her from all sin.
Mary: the Perfect Christian
Given that Our Lord is uniquely sinless and that Our Lady’s sinlessness did not occur until the Annunciation, it is clear that Our Lady would have been conceived in original sin and suffered from concupiscence. However, far less than denigrating the Mother of Our Lord, this exalts her! For having suffered in the same quality of nature as all of us, she showed the perfect struggle against sin. It is very telling that while St. Augustine ascribes the unique privilege of being sinless flesh to Our Lord, he takes great care to not ascribe the grace of never having chosen to sin (to follow the concupiscence of the flesh) to only Our Lord, since it is also true of Our Lady. For at every movement of concupiscence, she overcame by the Lord’s grace. It can truly be said of her most perfectly that Jesus Christ trampled Satan under her feet (Romans 16:20).
We beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that, as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an Angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection. Through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
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