By the twelfth century, says Hans Urs von Balthasar, something had gone awry in some corners of Eastern and Western theological reflection on the Virgin Mary. This does not mean that von Balthasar disagrees with later Catholic doctrines about Mary, such as Mary’s Immaculate Conception—her grace of complete freedom from original sin at her conception. On the contrary, von Balthasar is a strenuous defender of such doctrines. However, he notes that in the thought of Germanus of Constantinople, Richard of St Laurent, Guibert of Nogent, and others, ‘Mary’s universal intercession is heightened to a quasi-divine “omnipotence”, which is hers because the Son, who was obedient to her for so long on earth, remains obedient to her in heaven’ (von Balthasar 1992: 313). In such theologies, her grace is such that she takes on attributes that belong solely to Christ and to God. For Engelbert of Admont, Mary even becomes by grace an ‘equal’ co-redeemer with Christ, recapitulating the equality between Adam and his helpmate, Eve. Von Balthasar rightly worries that such theology ‘threatens to apply to Mary the specifically Christological attributes and even all the divine attributes’ (von Balthasar 1992: 312). In some theologians, von Balthasar finds the notion that we can ‘attain divine grace “more quickly” through her than through her Son, who is preoccupied with justice’ (von Balthasar 1992: 315). Von Balthasar points out that fortunately, such theologians were always met by others of stature who corrected their serious errors.
Why did such errors arise at all, however? As von Balthasar observes, the root of these errors—as well as the root of true teachings about Mary—is the biblical portrait of Mary as the mother of the divine Word, and the sheer wonder that this inspires. Von Balthasar asks rhetorically, ‘Who can find words and concepts to express both the intimacy (such as exists between Mother and Child) and the infinite distance (between God and the creature)?’ (von Balthasar 1992: 297). To be mother of the Redeemer is not merely to be a conduit; rather, it is a mission, rooted entirely in grace and for which Mary is prepared by grace. If the apostle Paul’s mission comes through a powerful and converting grace, then Mary’s mission—which is far greater, since it is to bear in her very womb and to be the very mother of the divine Son, as well as to go with him to the Cross—must involve a unique grace. This grace is inseparable from the work of her Son, and yet a circular movement is identifiable here, since there would have been no work of Christ had not Mary, his mother, freely assented by grace at the Annunciation. Von Balthasar puts the point this way: ‘God could not violate his creature’s freedom. But where did the grace that made this consent possible come from—a consent that is adequate and therefore genuinely unlimited—if not from the work of reconciliation itself, that is, from the Cross? (And the Cross itself is rendered possible only through Mary’s consent.)’ (von Balthasar 1992: 297).
One way to avoid exaggerating Mary’s stature is simply to deny that such questioning about Mary’s grace is necessary or reasonable. In some Protestant theology, for example, the notion that Mary received a special grace to configure her to her extraordinary mission is simply not entertained. In part, this has to do with certain biblical passages that seem to depict Mary as a very ordinary woman who was confused about, or even in some way opposed to (at the outset at least), what Jesus was doing. In Mark 3, for example, just after some of Jesus’ friends came out ‘to seize him’ because they thought that he had gone mad, Jesus’ ‘mother and his brethren came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him’ (Mark 3:31). Jesus, however, ignores them on the grounds that only those who do God’s will are his true family. For Catholics, of course, this teaching is further confirmation that Mary is chosen to be his mother precisely because, by grace, she is able to assent entirely and with perfect freedom to God’s will for her. The Protestant biblical theologian Scot McKnight argues that Mary deserves honour for her gradual and confused struggle, in faith, to accept that her Son has to die (see McKnight 2007: 144). He denies that she was a ‘super-saint’ or ‘a model we are called to imitate’, and he affirms instead that ‘she was special because she trusted God as an ordinary woman with an extraordinary vocation with ordinary faith’ (McKnight 2007: 147). On this view, Mary was just like you or me in her faith and grace, with the difference being that she had the objectively extraordinary vocation of being Jesus’ mother. Going somewhat further, but along essentially the same lines, the Protestant members of the ecumenical Dombes Group in southern France grant that ‘God’s gift to Mary certainly precedes the moment of her fiat, but it is not necessary, theologically, to move backward from that point and to assert a holiness granted to Mary from the moment of her conception’ (Blancy and Jourjon 2002: 107).
It seems to me that defenders of Catholic teaching on Mary’s grace need to give an account of why moving ‘backward’ from Mary’s fiat is biblically justified and theologically necessary. In the present essay, therefore, I attempt to do this by paying particular attention first to the biblical understanding of ‘grace’. I argue that biblically speaking, grace is associated with God’s election (or choosing of a person for mission) and with the justification and sanctification of that person. In Mary’s case, she received an extraordinary election that was paired, I suggest, with an extraordinary sanctification that empowered her with the freedom to live out her lifelong mission of being the mother and helper of her Son. As a second step, I show that the Fathers of the Church, while disagreeing with each other in certain ways about Mary’s sanctification, recognized the fundamental connection between grace, election, and sanctification. Due to limitations of space, I am able to give brief attention only to the perspectives of Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, and John of Damascus (for further discussion see Gambero 1999). In the medieval period, I briefly survey the controversy over whether Mary’s election and grace were such that she fittingly could be and was perfectly sanctified at her conception. Again due to limitations of space, I treat only the positions of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Finally, among more modern theologians, I very briefly refer to the positions of Matthias Scheeben and John Henry Newman, two Catholic theologians who were prominent in the period directly after the promulgation of Mary’s Immaculate Conception as a dogma.
With the Orthodox theologian Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, I affirm that ‘[b]ecause of the unique event that took place “in the fullness of time,” Mary enjoys an intimacy with God her Savior that will never be duplicated’ (FitzGerald 2004: 88). Writing from a Catholic perspective, I do not have space in this chapter to go into disputed issues such as the nature and transmission of original sin, about which Catholics are free to hold various theological opinions. Indeed, my reflections on Mary and grace do not extend beyond setting forth some basic foundations for the Catholic position. The contested issues are simply too complex for a Handbook chapter, and so I can do no more than provide an indication of the basic rationale for the Catholic doctrinal development on the topic of Mary and grace. Although my analysis of Mary and grace here is admittedly too limited, therefore, I hope that it begins to suggest why Mary’s grace of election and sanctification is rightly held to be quite extraordinary indeed. Judith Dupré states that ‘cocooned in a bubble of doctrinal privilege and exemption that is denied to others, Mary’s person is “bleached of blood and guts” and her image idealized beyond human recognition’ (Dupré 2010: 11). By contrast, I will argue that Mary’s grace is a privilege of election and sanctification that is given to her for her human mission on behalf of others: just as Paul is chosen and sanctified by grace for his mission, so is Mary, but in a greater way as befits her unique mission of radically welcoming God’s will and embracing God’s Word as the new Eve at the Annunciation and the Cross.
In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel, sent by God, greets the Virgin Mary with the following words: ‘Χαῑρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῡ’, translated in the Revised Standard Version as ‘Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!’ (Luke 1:28; see Fitzmyer 1981: 345–6, where he prefers the translation ‘favoured woman’ over ‘full of grace’). The passive participle κεχαριτωμένη comes from the verb χαριτόω, ‘to bestow favour upon’ or ‘to bless’; and it corresponds to the noun χάρις, ‘favour’, ‘grace’, ‘goodwill’. When the Gospel of John states that ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14), the word translated as ‘grace’ is χάρις. Likewise, when Paul states that all who believe ‘are justified by his grace as a gift’ (Rom. 3:24), the word translated as ‘grace’ is χάρις. Indeed, Paul employs χάρις innumerable times, as we would expect from an author for whom God’s grace is so utterly central.
In Second Temple literature, John Barclay has found what he terms ‘six perfections of grace’ with respect to the grace of God or to divine gift-giving (Barclay 2015: 70). These perfections are superabundance, singularity of motive (solely benevolence), priority (the initiative comes from the divine giver, not from the recipient), incongruity (an undeserved gift), efficacy (God’s gift accomplishes in the recipients what he intends), and non-circularity (God seeks no repayment or return gift). With regard to the perfection of efficacy, Paul emphasizes that God’s grace, ‘through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 3:24), accomplishes our justification. When in faith we accept God’s free gift, we live ‘under grace’ and sin no longer has ‘dominion’ over us (Rom. 6:14), not least because we receive ‘the Spirit of Christ’ (Rom. 8:9). When Christ’s Spirit indwells us, we are no longer ‘dead because of sin’ but rather are now ‘alive because of righteousness’ (Rom. 8:10; see Wright 2013: 720 for the meaning of Rom. 7:7–25). Arguably, therefore, in being freely and gratuitously justified by the grace of the Spirit, we are at the same time efficaciously sanctified by the Spirit so as to be his living temple (see Barclay 2015 for the long history of controversy over this topic; for an important recent contribution see Pitre et al. 2019). We are able to present our ‘bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God’ (Rom. 12:1). Specifically, we are able to ‘cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light’ (Rom. 13:12), so that we experience ‘righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ and obtain the new status of being ‘acceptable to God’ (Rom. 14:17–18).
At the outset of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul praises ‘the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus’, a grace that ensures that believers ‘are not lacking in any spiritual gift’ (1 Cor. 1:7). God’s grace enables Paul to fulfil the mission entrusted to him (see 1 Cor. 15:10). By the ‘grace of God’, the members of the Macedonian churches are able to outdo each other in liberal almsgiving (2 Cor. 8:1). When we are truly caught up in Christ’s grace, we act in accordance with Christ’s supreme love. In so doing, we manifest the interior power of ‘the surpassing grace of God’ in us (2 Cor. 9:14).
Thus far, I have shown two things: grace is God’s free gift to us of justification in Christ, and grace enables us to live in a way that is holy and charitable. A third aspect is the close connection Paul draws between grace and God’s calling or election of a person. Speaking of his own calling to be an apostle of Christ, Paul says that God the Father ‘had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace’ (Gal. 1:15; see Barclay 2015: 354). God’s calling is rooted in God’s sending of his Son for our salvation. When we accept in faith God’s gift of justification in Christ, we thereby ensure that we ‘do not nullify the grace of God’ (Gal. 2:21). To nullify the grace of God is to reject Christ, which would be to reject our own calling.
Paul emphasizes the priority of God’s grace in enabling our openness to the gospel. Those who accept Christ are ‘chosen by grace’ and therefore not chosen ‘on the basis of works’ (Rom. 11:5–6). Our faith—as well as all our other capabilities in Christ—comes to us due to ‘the grace given to us’ (Rom. 12:6; cf. Rom. 12:3). As the Letter to the Ephesians proclaims, ‘God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved). … For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing’ (Eph. 2:4–5, 8).
This calling or election by God’s grace not only justifies us but also sanctifies us. Through divine election, we have been chosen by God ‘before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him’ (Eph. 1:4). Our holiness or sanctification redounds not to our own aggrandizement but ‘to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved’ (Eph. 1:6). God redeems, justifies, and forgives us by the blood of Christ, ‘according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us’ (Eph. 1:7–8). Due to ‘the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus’ (Eph. 2:7), God enables those to whom he has given grace to live no longer according to the fallen fleshly passions (see Eph. 2:3). Instead, indwelt by the Spirit, we now take our place in ‘the household of God’, thereby becoming ‘a holy temple in the Lord’ (Eph. 2:21). With respect to the grace of God, election and sanctification are inseparably joined. We see this again in Ephesians’ praise of God’s ‘eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Eph. 3:11), by which believers receive the indwelling Spirit and are ‘rooted and grounded in love’ (Eph. 3:17).
Paul also notes that while the Spirit apportions various ‘spiritual gifts’ (1 Cor. 12:1), love is the highest calling. Certainly, Paul himself has been ‘called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus’ (1 Cor. 1:1), and such a calling is no small thing. Paul has been given the grace of being one of ‘God’s fellow workers’ (1 Cor. 3:9). Yet, Paul observes that the core of his calling consists in configuration to Christ through self-sacrificial love. He says to the Corinthians that ‘I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world’ (1 Cor. 4:9).
Paul has been chosen for a great mission—to be an apostle of Christ, indeed the apostle to the Gentiles. He has been chosen by God’s grace, rather than because of his own strength: ‘I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling’ (1 Cor. 2:3). Joined to his grace of election (his being chosen for a unique mission) is the grace of sanctification that enables him to accomplish his mission. This sanctification by grace shapes his way of acting: ‘When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate’ (1 Cor. 4:12). He affirms that ‘we have the mind of Christ’ (1 Cor. 2:16), and he urges the Corinthians to ‘be imitators of me, as I am of Christ’ (1 Cor. 11:1). However, he does not presume upon this sanctification, but rather humbles himself. He recognizes that ‘if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! … I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified’ (1 Cor. 9:16, 27). To be holy is to pour oneself out in self-sacrificial love; and Paul therefore emphasizes, ‘I try to please all men in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved’ (1 Cor. 10:33). Explaining the meaning of election and sanctification by grace, Paul observes: ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9). Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God, and yet this exalted status showed itself in the profoundest humility. Paul therefore urges the Philippians: ‘Do nothing from selfishness or conceit. … Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death’ (Phil. 2:3, 5–8).
In short, God’s grace produces election, justification, and sanctification—and we discover that the greatest missions among God’s people are in fact those that embody the most humility and self-sacrificial love. Everything must serve ‘the work of Christ’ (Phil. 2:30).
We are now prepared to return to the Virgin Mary’s χάρις, or grace, that fits her to be addressed by the angel Gabriel as κεχαριτωμένη. Like Paul, Mary has been uniquely chosen by God’s grace for a mission. The angel Gabriel tells her that ‘you have found favour [χάριν] with God’ (Luke 1:30). The χάρις that Mary has received is that she is the one chosen to give birth to the Messiah of Israel, who will reign forever and who is ‘Emmanuel’, ‘God with us’ (Matt. 1:23).
Mary’s grace consists not only in her election, but also, as becomes clear, in the sanctification that follows therefrom. Empowered by grace, she replies to the angel Gabriel—and thereby to God—in a manner that makes clear that she embodies holy Israel, God’s bride. Recall God’s complaints about his beloved people Israel. In Isaiah’s prophecy, for example, the Lord complains: ‘Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. Why will you still be smitten, that you continue to rebel?’ (Isa. 1:4–5). God’s people fail to obey his life-giving word; instead, they worship various gods and deal unjustly with their neighbours. In contrast, by God’s χάρις, Mary responds to the news that she is to be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah by replying, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38). She obediently makes her whole life available for the mission that God gives her.
The χάρις that Mary has received is so great that her cousin Elizabeth, ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’, is prompted to cry out about her: ‘Blessed are you among women’ (Luke 1:42). No woman has ever been more blessed, due to God’s χάρις, than is Mary. She is most blessed because, as Elizabeth says (in a saying redolent of David’s exclamation before the Ark of the Covenant in 2 Samuel 6:9), Mary is ‘the mother of my Lord’ (Luke 1:43). Mary’s son is our Lord; her son is the Son of the Father; her son is God, the ‘Word’ who ‘was God’ and who ‘became flesh and dwelt [or tabernacled; ἐσκήνωσεν] among us, full of grace and truth’ (John 1:3, 14). What merely human mission could be greater than being the mother of the Word, the mother of one’s Lord and Creator, the mother of the whole world’s Redeemer? She is no mere physical conduit, let alone simply a friend of Jesus; she bears, not only physically but also spiritually (‘let it be to me according to your word’), her Creator and Redeemer. Her ‘let it be’, rooted in God’s χάρις towards her, shows not only her unique election but also her unique sanctification as the holy embodiment of God’s people Israel, bearing Israel’s Lord and Messiah.
In the Gospel of Luke, Mary recognizes the extraordinary character of God’s grace towards her. If Paul was ‘called by the will of God to be an apostle’ (1 Cor. 1:1), and if all believers have been ‘destined … in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ’ (Eph. 1:5), Mary has been called and destined for a uniquely intimate relationship with her Son. She knows that it is appropriate that ‘henceforth all generations will call me blessed [μακαριοῡσίν]’, this latter being the same word that Jesus uses in his beatitudes (Matthew 5). She knows that she has received a blessing that is as unique as it is utterly extraordinary; ‘he who is mighty has done great things for me’ (Luke 1:49). What has been done for her is not only a grace of unique election and sanctification (enabling her to say yes to her mission), but also a grace that will enable her as a result to pour herself out in Christ-like self-sacrificial suffering. She will join the new Adam at the Cross, and be united to him there as the bride (holy Israel, the new Eve, the Church) to the Bridegroom.
God’s χάρις guides her path of humility and self-sacrificial love on behalf of her Son. The self-sacrificial path begins already in the fact that ‘I have no husband’ (Luke 1:34); in the fact that her betrothed, Joseph, determines ‘to send her away quietly’ because she is pregnant (Matt. 1:19); in the fact that when she is ready to give birth she must travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem where she gives birth in a stable (Luke 2:7); and in the fact that the holy family has to flee from Herod’s terrible wrath and to be exiles in Egypt ‘until the death of Herod’ (Matt. 2:15). The aged Simeon, who rejoices in the Temple after seeing the infant Jesus, recognizes that Jesus’ path will be one of suffering; he will be ‘a sign that is spoken against’ (Luke 2:34). Simeon prophesies to Mary that she will share in this suffering of her Son: ‘a sword will pierce through your own soul also’ (Luke 2:35; cf. John 19:25). Especially given the cruciform example of Paul’s life, this is what we would expect of one who, through the grace of her extraordinary mission, is blessed above all women and who is configured to her Son’s humility and self-sacrificial love.
For Irenaeus of Lyons, who wrote in the late second century, Mary is the new Eve, obedient in the very ways that Eve was disobedient. Irenaeus notes that just as Jesus, in his obedient death upon the wood of the Cross, recapitulates Adam’s disobedience with regard to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so also Mary recapitulates Eve. Like Eve, Mary was betrothed to a man and received the communication of an angel; but unlike Eve, Mary did not sin. Irenaeus observes that ‘just as the former [Eve] was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should bear God, being obedient to His word’ (Irenaeus 1994: 547, translation slightly emended). Irenaeus presents Mary as the ‘advocate’ of Eve. He explains Mary’s election by grace to be the new Eve: ‘as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience’ (Irenaeus 1994: 547).
Writing in the early third century, Origen recognizes the unique stature of Mary’s election by grace. Commenting on Luke 1:28, he states: ‘The angel says, “Hail, full of grace.” The Greek word is κεχαριτωμένη. I do not remember having read this word elsewhere in Scripture [that is, the Scriptures of Israel]. An expression of this kind, “Hail, full of grace,” is not addressed to a male. This greeting was reserved for Mary alone’ (Origen 1996: 26). Origen concludes that no wonder Mary feels fear when greeted this way, because she would have known that no one else in the entirety of Israel’s history had been greeted in such a glorious way. In Origen’s view, Mary’s election by grace would have been from the beginning, but Mary’s sanctification by grace took place at the Incarnation: she ‘was filled with the Holy Spirit when she began to carry the Saviour in her womb. For, as soon as she received the Holy Spirit, who was the creator of the Lord’s body, and the Son of God began to exist in her womb, she too was filled with the Holy Spirit’ (Origen 1996: 29).
Origen emphasizes the sense of awe with which Mary’s cousin Elizabeth greets her. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth calls Mary blessed among women, and the Spirit cannot be contradicted. When Mary states that God has ‘regarded the low estate [ταπείνωσιν, best translated ‘humility’ or ‘humiliation’] of his handmaiden’ (Luke 1:48), Origen asks how Mary, who was privileged to have the Christ child in her womb, can be said to possess ‘humility’, which in the ancient world was not a virtue. Origen answers that what God regards or looks upon is Mary’s virtues, her justice, temperance, and wisdom as well as her humility, which, as Origen insists, is in fact a virtue (Origen 1996: 35). Beginning with the Annunciation, Mary’s election and sanctification by grace go together.
Reflecting upon Mary’s mission, Augustine (354–430) observes a couple centuries later, ‘Do you wonder that David [in Psalm 110:1] should regard his Son as his Lord, when you see that Mary was the mother of her Lord?’ (Augustine 1952: 48). Jesus is David’s son in the sense that he comes from the line of David; but Jesus is Mary’s son in a literal way. Augustine emphasizes this literalness when, in a sermon for the feast of Christmas, he states, ‘Disposer of all ages in the bosom of the Father, He consecrates this day in the womb of His mother; in Him [the Father] he remains, from her He goes forth. Creator of heaven and earth, He is born on earth under heaven. … Ruler of the stars, He nurses at His mother’s bosom’ (Augustine 1952: 85). Mary nurses the Creator and Ruler of the universe, who dwells eternally with the divine Father. Her womb contains the Messiah of Israel, the Son who creates all things. He is ‘the Creator of Mary, born of Mary’ (Augustine 1952: 90). Mary is the one from whom the Son of God receives his flesh: ‘He, who had always been with His Father, brought into the light of this world the flesh which He received from His mother’ (Augustine 1952: 104). When we ponder such things in faith, we begin to perceive the unfathomably extraordinary election that Mary has received by God’s grace.
With regard to Mary’s motherhood, Augustine revels in the paradoxes of grace: ‘Born of the Father, He made us; born of His mother, He remade us. He was born of the Father that we might be; He was born of His mother that we might not be lost’ (Augustine 1952: 136). He pursues the same theme repeatedly: ‘The Ruler of the stars nurses at a mother’s breasts, He who feeds the angels! He who speaks in the bosom of His Father, is silent in the bosom of His mother’ (Augustine 1952: 132). Mary cares for the needy and hungry Jesus, who is the divine Son. Mary’s own son is the Father’s Son!
In light of his appreciation for Mary’s chosenness by grace for this wondrous vocation, when Augustine turns to Pelagius’s list of those who ‘are said not only to have lived without sin, but to have lived justly’, it is no wonder that Augustine agrees with Pelagius in singling out Mary (Augustine 1992: 52). Otherwise, Augustine argues that Pelagius, in compiling his list of Old Testament saints, has not recognized that ‘even just persons’ pray to God to forgive their sins (Augustine 1992: 52). For Pelagius, piety requires that we hold that Mary was sinless. Augustine affirms that Mary’s unique grace makes her an exception from the general rule that he otherwise presses against Pelagius, namely, the rule that original sin means that all humans other than Christ are sinful. Augustine states, ‘I make an exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in whose case, out of respect for the Lord, I wish to raise no question at all when the discussion concerns sins—for whence do we know what an abundance of grace for entirely overcoming sin was conferred on her who had the merit to conceive and bear him who undoubtedly was without sin?’ (Augustine 1992: 53–4). Scholars continue to debate the meaning and construction of this passage on various grounds, not least as to whether the passage should be read as a statement or as a question. But Augustine clearly thinks that the extraordinary grace of Mary’s election is connected with an extraordinary grace of sanctification. Despite his eager desire to refute Pelagius, and despite his firm conviction that, owing to original sin, all the others on Pelagius’s list were indeed sinners, he is willing to make an exception for Mary. This exception flows from his awareness of the greatness of her grace of election, as the one who is the mother of Christ and thus the mother of God (as the Council of Ephesus would declare a year after Augustine’s death).
In light of the Council of Ephesus, the eighth-century theologian John of Damascus begins his discussion of Mary by proclaiming her to be ‘properly and truly Mother of God (Θεοτόκος)’ (John of Damascus 1958: 292). By God’s grace, Mary was chosen to bear ‘not a mere man’ but ‘God made flesh’ (John of Damascus 1958: 292). Damascene warns against calling Mary ‘mother of Christ’ because this phrase, while true, continues to be associated with the Nestorian denial of the unity of God and man in Christ. He speaks of Mary as elect by God’s grace, ‘predestined in the eternal foreknowing counsel of God’ (John of Damascus 1958: 362). Like Augustine, Damascene considers that we can perceive the greatness of Mary’s election by reflecting upon the paradoxes involved in her motherhood. Thus, he states, ‘To the Creator she gave that He might be created, to the Fashioner that He might be fashioned’ (John of Damascus 1958: 364). He also notes that just as Eve was taken from the side of Adam without being the result of physical procreation, so now the new Adam comes from the new Eve without being the result of physical procreation.
In a homily that is either by John of Damascus or by a near contemporary, we find Mary described poetically as ‘the most manifest mountain of the Lord … which surpasses and transcends every hill and every mountain, [that is to say], the height of men and angels, from which Christ the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20) was pleased to be cut bodily’ (John of Damascus 2008: 61). Mary ‘surpasses and transcends’ all other mere humans both in her graced election and in her graced sanctification. After all, her glorious uniqueness is that ‘she was the receptacle not just of the activity of God, but essentially of the hypostasis of the Son of God’ (John of Damascus 2008: 62). The holy ark of the covenant and the holy tabernacle are thus types of Mary. Damascene praises her election to be the mother of the Lord, and he goes on to praise her unique justice and sanctity, noting that by God’s grace Mary ‘escaped the notice of the powers and principalities and “the flaming arrows of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16)’ and ‘dwelt in the bridal chamber of the Spirit’ (John of Damascus 2008: 62–3). Mary is the new Eve, and thus she is the restored ‘beauty of human nature’, fully ‘obedient to the divine will’ (John of Damascus 2008: 63). She is also the restored Israel, the true bride of God and bearer of divine mercy. She is robed in ‘the well-ordered comeliness of her virtues, and adorned in the grace of the Spirit whose glory is within’ (John of Damascus 2008: 65). Damascene praises her as one devoted entirely to God and as one whose ‘whole being is the bridal chamber of the Spirit’, with a ‘pure and unblemished’ heart (John of Damascus 2008: 66–7). Among all mere humans, Mary receives rightful praise from all generations as the ‘chosen glory of the human race’ (John of Damascus 2008: 69). An extraordinary grace of election and an extraordinary grace of sanctification are joined in Mary.
The medieval theologians in the West wrestled with how to assess the connection between election and sanctification in Mary. Like the Fathers of the Church, they believed that such an extraordinary election could not exist without an extraordinary sanctification, since God’s χάρις both elects for a mission and sanctifies, as we saw in the letters of Paul. Regarding Mary’s radical holiness, the medieval theologians had no doubt (see Gambero 2005). The only question was when her full sanctification was completed. Recall that Augustine leaves this particular question unanswered, even as he refuses to attribute any sinfulness to her, whereas Origen thinks that she was sanctified fully at the instant of the Incarnation.
Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) supposes that Mary was not perfectly sanctified at her conception, but he adds that neither did original sin ever have any kind of free reign in her. Instead, Aquinas thinks that the fomes—the inclination (after the Fall) of sensual concupiscence towards evil—existed in Mary at her conception due to original sin, but ‘remained fettered’ by grace through the work of ‘Divine Providence preserving her sensitive soul, in a singular manner, from any inordinate movement’ (Aquinas 1981: Summa Theologiae III.27.3). Somewhat like Origen, then, Aquinas considers that Mary was fully sanctified only at the moment of the Incarnation, when ‘it is to be believed that entire freedom from the fomes redounded from the Child to the Mother’ (Aquinas 1981: Summa Theologiae III.27.3). Aquinas does not, however, believe that Mary ever experienced an actual sinful movement of either the sense passions or the will, since she was already almost entirely sanctified at her conception. Aquinas reaches this position about Mary’s sinlessness not out of a mere respect for tradition, but from his profoundly biblical understanding that the grace of election and the grace of sanctification cannot be separated. As he puts it, ‘God so prepares and endows those, whom He chooses for some particular office, that they are rendered capable of fulfilling it, according to 2 Cor. iii.6: (Who) hath made us fit ministers of the New Testament. Now the Blessed Virgin was chosen by God to be His Mother. Therefore there can be no doubt that God, by His grace, made her worthy of that office’ (Aquinas 1981: Summa Theologiae III.27.4). Worthiness here is understood in terms of humility, obedience to God, and self-sacrificial love, precisely the attributes that Mary shows in her response to the angel Gabriel and in her Magnificat. Mary receives this grace not merely because she is Jesus’ familial relation, but because her relationship to her Son is a true mission in the order of grace, for which she has been specially chosen and prepared. She is the one who is able to freely and fully say, as the embodiment of holy Israel and the Church, ‘let it be to me according to your word’.
For Aquinas, the reason why Mary was not perfectly sanctified at her own conception was that if she did not bear original sin, then it does not seem that Christ could have been her Saviour—and we know in faith that Christ is the Saviour of all humans (see Aquinas 1981: Summa Theologiae III.27.2 ad 2). John Duns Scotus, writing in the late thirteenth century, recognizes that the problem raised by Aquinas is surmountable. The reason that Scotus wishes to surmount the problem is one that Aquinas himself appreciates: namely, Mary’s unique and utterly efficacious election, involving the entirety of her life, must (on the biblical grounds sketched above) be tied to a unique and utterly efficacious sanctification, inclusive of the entirety of her life. Scotus observes that if God perfectly sanctified Mary at her conception, God would have done so in order to prevent Mary from having the weight of original sin burdening her interior life at any stage, and God would have done so in light of his predestination of the whole life of Christ (as the Redeemer) and in light of his predestination of the whole life of Mary (as the mother of Christ). Scotus notes, therefore, that ‘Mary most of all needed Christ as a redeemer; for she would have contracted original sin by reason of her common birthright were she not prevented by the grace of her mediator’ (Scotus 2000: 49). With regard to the objection that Mary could not have been redeemed by Christ’s Passion prior to his actual Passion, Scotus points out that God sanctified many Israelites who had faith in Christ’s Passion but who died prior to Christ’s Passion (see Hebrews 11) (Scotus 2000: 53). Mary’s perfect sanctification by God, then, comes about in view of Christ and his redemptive Passion, so that every moment of her life is always in complete service of her Son for whose service she is elected by God. The fact that she is sanctified prior to Christ’s Passion does not entail that her sanctification lacks an intrinsic relation to Christ’s Passion, by which human beings are redeemed from original sin.
The nineteenth-century German Catholic theologian Matthias Scheeben remarks that ‘[i]n the controversy over Mary’s Immaculate Conception [which was dogmatically defined in favour of the Scotistic position in 1854], the champions of both sides regarded it as a special glory of the ever-blessed Virgin and her Son that grace was imparted to her through the merits of her Son’ (Scheeben 2006: 444). Despite the controversy between Thomists and Scotists, it was never in doubt for either side that God’s grace towards Mary was dependent upon Christ; nor was it ever thought that Mary could be preserved from original sin and thereby sanctified in a unique manner without this grace flowing from Christ’s Passion. Thomists and Scotists agreed that God’s choosing (by his χάρις and from eternity) of Mary for such a glorious mission as being the mother of God and the new Eve meant that Mary uniquely received the grace of sanctification, in order to be able to respond with perfect humility, obedience, and self-sacrificial love to the angel Gabriel on behalf of Israel and the whole human race. In a letter written in 1860, John Henry Newman explains that Mary ‘is indisputably among those whom our Lord suffered for and saved; she not only fell in Adam, but she rose in Christ, before she began to be’ (Newman 2001: 328). Just as she could be and was condemned in Adam prior to her conception, so also she could be and was perfectly sanctified in Christ at her conception (so as not to contract original sin), through God’s foreknowledge of Christ’s Passion. Elsewhere Newman points out that God’s grace towards Mary in her sanctification rests upon the greatness of God’s grace towards Mary in her election, since Mary ‘in one respect … surpasses all even possible creations, viz., that she is Mother of her Creator’ (Newman 2001: 247). This mission in the order of grace is inseparable from Mary’s humility and love, since otherwise the angel’s revelation to her of such a mission would be simply a cause of pride, and since a sinful person (locked to some degree in a disordered love of self) could never have consented, in a manner inclusive of the entirety of her life, to such a mission with true obedience and a perfectly free and complete gift of self.
In his recent book A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies, the late Jesuit theologian Edward Oakes devotes a chapter to Mary’s immaculate conception on the grounds, he says, of ‘its ecumenical potential’ (Oakes 2016: 229). Oakes argues that the content of the Catholic dogma about Mary’s grace ‘actually dovetails quite neatly with important Reformation concerns, especially the topoi of unmerited grace and predestination’ (Oakes 2016: 229). Oakes may be overly optimistic here, since for most Protestants the idea that Mary was conceived without sin is a foreign concept that they cannot adopt for a number of reasons, including an emphasis on the ongoing sinfulness and weakness of all merely human participants in the drama of salvation this side of the eschaton. For some Protestants, election and justification by grace are not intrinsically linked with the interior renewal of the person in question. For Catholics, by contrast, justification and sanctification, while distinct, are inseparably joined due to the transformative indwelling of the Spirit that is accomplished in the justification of the sinner, chosen by God for a mission in the service of Christ. As this pertains to Mary, her extraordinary grace of sanctification—in which she was preserved from original sin at the moment of her conception—corresponds to the extraordinary mission for which she was chosen by God from all eternity, that is, to be the new Eve and mother of her Lord, who is the Redeemer of the whole human race (herself included).
Notwithstanding the ecumenical divergences, it is noteworthy that Martin Luther himself held that Mary was sinless, which seemingly suggests an awareness on Luther’s part that her extraordinary election was tied to an extraordinary sanctification. Commenting on Mary’s Magnificat, Luther notes that Mary ‘freely ascribes all to God’s grace, not to her merit. For though she was without sin, yet that grace was far too great for her to deserve it in any way’ (Luther 1956: 327). Elsewhere in his writings, he consistently affirms that Mary was not marked by sin, although he does not take a position on the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception or celebrate its feast. For Luther, Mary’s exalted station and Mary’s pure humility are due solely to God’s grace. Given Luther’s sense here for the biblical link between God’s electing χάρις and its work in interiorly equipping Mary for her extraordinary mission, perhaps we may hope that the Catholic view of Mary and grace may yet possess the ecumenical potential that Oakes optimistically envisaged, building upon ecumenical work that has already been accomplished (see for example Blancy and Jourjon 2002; Braaten and Jenson 2004).