This blog explores both historical and current events guided by the thought of the leading thinkers, past and present, of this school or movement of theology. Refer to the Classic Posts, Great and Contemporary Thinkers, various links of all kinds, in addition to the Archives themselves. David is the founder and manager of this website, but many friends contribute to it on a regular basis.
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Sunday, April 12, 2009
Why the Immaculate Conception?
"Death itself would start working backwards." (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, p160).
I'm taking liberty with C.S. Lewis's Narnia by applying the quote above to our mother Mary, but the above quote fits well with what Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus said: that Mary was preserved from sin by the merits of Christ.
I like Karl Rahner's very Scotist approach to this - i.e., as the "radical case of redemption", Mary was redeemed by preservation from sin rather than by deliverance from sin. According to Rahner, "On account of this central position of hers in the divine economy of redemption, whereby she conceived salvation for all, and, for herself, her own sanctification, she is, and the Church is ever more clearly and explicitly conscious of this belief, the absolute and radical case of the redemption of humanity. She is the person who was redeemed in the most perfect way, and so she is the prototype of the redeemed, and of the Church in general, comprised in the will of God decreeing the redemptive and therefore triumphant Incarnation of the Word of God".
I envision time and the family tree of Christ running backwards, wherein Chirst is not at the tip top of the tree but rather is it's roots. (It helps to imagine the tree upside down.) Christ's saving blood pours down down into the tree, down into the death of his fathers, allll the way down to Adam and Eve. Like a red river running backwards, from the sea all the way to the headwaters of sin. Mary is the delta.
2 comments:
I like Karl Rahner's very Scotist approach to this - i.e., as the "radical case of redemption", Mary was redeemed by preservation from sin rather than by deliverance from sin. According to Rahner, "On account of this central position of hers in the divine economy of redemption, whereby she conceived salvation for all, and, for herself, her own sanctification, she is, and the Church is ever more clearly and explicitly conscious of this belief, the absolute and radical case of the redemption of humanity. She is the person who was redeemed in the most perfect way, and so she is the prototype of the redeemed, and of the Church in general, comprised in the will of God decreeing the redemptive and therefore triumphant Incarnation of the Word of God".
The following will be inchoate but it helps me:
I envision time and the family tree of Christ running backwards, wherein Chirst is not at the tip top of the tree but rather is it's roots. (It helps to imagine the tree upside down.) Christ's saving blood pours down down into the tree, down into the death of his fathers, allll the way down to Adam and Eve. Like a red river running backwards, from the sea all the way to the headwaters of sin. Mary is the delta.
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