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THEOLOGY

Duns Scotus and the Immaculate Conception

by René Laurentin

The Immaculate Conception, Giambattista Tiepolo, Prado Museum, Madrid

     I would like to make a brief addition to my article on the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Immaculate Conception printed in 30Days  in November.
     The work on Duns Scotus, continuing at the Fransciscan Antonianum University in Rome, have furnished new elements that I didn’t have available when writing my article: the book by Father Stefano Cecchin OFM on the Immaculate Conception, and another text in the process of publication.
     Briefly. The ongoing critical edition of the works of Duns Scotus attests now that he did not only establish the possibility and aptness of the Immaculate Conception but that he decidedly affirmed it. If in some writings the necessary prudence held back the affirmation of which he was the promoter par excellence, the affirmation is clear in his lectures at Oxford and Paris and in many of his writings: Mary did not contract original sin (Ordinatio II, d. 3, q.1). In this same writing (Ordinatio III, d. 1, q.1, n. 21), he not only says that God could have «preserved» Mary, but explicitly concludes: then God did so.
     And for that matter it was what one of his Paris student picked up very well, in his now published notes: «The perfection of the Mediator requires... preservation from any sin, even original sin: hence the Virgin was exempt from any original stain» (Reportatio parisiensis, III, d. 3, q. 2).
     Scotus has had more importance and recognition for the doctrinal matters that he was first to expound, creating and setting out exactly the notion of preservation and connecting the Immaculate Conception of Mary to the merits of Christ the Redeemer only, rather than for the affirmation of that preservation. But there is no doubt that he did affirm it in many of his writings and lectures; and this new light thrown by the critical edition of Duns Scotus deserved to be stressed. That is why I thought it important to make this clarification that fills out what I said about the fundamental role of Duns Scotus in the history of this dogma.