might not at any time be under debt of contracting it, and that she be preserved from actually contracting it.” 38
In this way did Scotus lay to rest the centuries-old objection derived from the Pauline doctrine concerning the need of universal redemption. Rightly understood, this doctrine will not offer any difficulty preventing Mary’s noble prerogative. The need of incurring original sin, and equally the need of universal redemption by Christ, was not denied by Scotus. Nor did he claim that Mary as a daughter of Adam escaped this universal law.
Mary was a daughter of Adam, he explained, before she became an adopted daughter of God. Therefore, she was subject to original sin and in need of redemption. As a child of Adam she would, in the ordinary course of events and according to the ordinary course of nature, have incurred Adam’s debt like the rest of mankind. But in the order of time God could give her sanctifying grace at the very moment of her conception. In this way Mary, though a child of Adam in the order of nature, would be made a child of God by the infusion of grace before original sin could take effect in her soul.
"Every natural child of Adam,” writes Scotus, "is a debtor of original justice, and is deprived of it through the sin of Adam. Therefore, everyone has that in him whence he should contract original sin. But if grace were given to anyone in the first instant of the creation of the soul, that person would never lack original justice. Still this would not be of oneself, but by the merits of another (if one does receive grace on account of the merits of another). Hence, as far as one depends upon oneself,
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