His body lay under neither guilt nor effects of original sin.
The body being entirely free, could not transmit the stain to His
soul.
No preventive grace needed.
Jesus Christ contracted neither debt nor stain.
Jesus Christ is not redeemed, but the Redeemer.
It will thus be seen how accurately St. Thomas speaks of the "flesh"
or body of our Blessed Lady. For it should be remembered that,
according to St. Thomas, the human body is animated in succession by
(1) a vegetative, (2) a sensitive, and (3) a rational soul. Hence his
assertion that "the flesh of the Blessed Virgin was conceived in
original sin" (Q. 14, A. 3, ad 1) means that the body of the Blessed
Virgin, being descended from Adam both materially and seminally,
contracted the bodily defects which are conveyed by seminal
generation, and are the results of the privation of original justice
(Q. 69, A. 4, ad 3). Before animation, therefore the body of the
Blessed Virgin would not be infected with the guilt of original sin,
because privation of grace can only be in that which is the subject
of grace, viz. the rational soul. Nevertheless, before animation the
body of the Blessed Virgin, being seminally descended from Adam, was
such that it would have been the means of transmitting the taint of
original sin to the rational soul at the very first instant of
animation, unless the grace of the Redeemer intervened and sanctified
her soul "in that self-same instant," thus redeeming her and
preventing her from contracting the guilt of original sin.
Why, then, does St. Thomas say that because the Blessed Virgin was
not sanctified before animation, therefore she could be sanctified
only after animation?
Such a conclusion would hold if it were a question of the order of
Nature: "a thing must be before it is such (_prius est esse quam esse
tale_)"; and therefore the soul must be, before it is sanctified. But
if St. Thomas held for a posteriority of time, no matter how short,
we ask how it was that he did not perceive the fallacy of the
argument, since it might be neither before nor after, but in the very
instant of, animation.
The question is answered thus: St. Thomas as a Doctor of the Church
and in matters which were not then _de fide,_ is a witness to the
expression of the faith of his time. Hence his line of argument
coincides with, because it follows, that of St. Bernard, Peter
Lombard, Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure. It was
not likely that St. Thomas would differ from the great masters of his
time, who failed to understand that the grace of redemption might at
the same time be one of preservation and prevention. Nor is it likely
that St. Thomas had any reliable information about the movement* in
progress at that time towards a belief in the Immaculate Conception.
[*Principally in England, where, owing to the influence of St. Anselm
(1109), the doctrine was maintained by Eadmer (1137). Nicolas of St.
Albans (1175), Osbert of Clare (1170), Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of
Lincoln (1253), William of Ware (1300), who was the master of Duns
Scotus (1308)]. No doubt he knew something of it, but the names of its
promoters would have weighed little with him as against those of
Bernard, Albert, Peter, Alexander, and Bonaventure. And it must not be
forgotten that among those who upheld the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception, not a few ascribed the privilege as being absolute and not
one of preservation and Redemption. Hence it is that St. Thomas
insists on two things: (1) that the Mother of God was redeemed, and
(2) that the grace of her sanctification was a grace of preservation.
And, be it remarked in conclusion, these two points, so much insisted
on by St. Thomas, are at the very basis of the Catholic doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception.
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