As we saw in the previous post, one thing MacQuarrie is concerned to do is to understand salvation in personal and relational terms rather than the impersonal categories of some traditional theology. We saw this at work in his argument against the strongly monergistic sola gratia position; since salvation entails the healing of a personal relationship between us and God, it must also involve a response on our part, allowing, of course, that the initiative always belongs with God.

This concern for using personal categories also informs MacQuarrie’s discussion of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. In taking this approcah he hopes to show that the close connection of these dogmas with the central Christological affirmations will be made apparent.

Conception

MacQuarrie offers an extended account of the meaning and significance of Mary’s conception that goes beyond, but includes, normal biological conception. This extended sense has three components: Mary’s conception in the mind of God, or what we might call her election; Mary’s origin in the context of Israel, which prepared humainty to receive God’s visitation in the Incarnation of his Son; and finally Mary’s conception in the bosom of her family, her parents Joachim and Anna, and nurturance in the ways of Jewish piety. He elaborates this extended “moment of conception” to show the ways in which Mary was related to God and his purposes from the very beginning of her being.

Immaculate

But what sense is to be given to the idea that Mary was conceived “preserved intact from all stain of original sin”? Again, MacQuarrie wants to shift from impersonal categories, where sin is understood as a quasi-physical “stain” that we each inherit from our parents, to a more personal and realtional understanding.

Though we have indeed abandoned some of the crudely mechanical and materialistic views about the transmission of original sin, no realistic theologian denies the fact that there is a human solidarity in sin and that this persists from generation to generation. The dogma of Immaculate Conception is not tied to any outmoded belief about how sin is transmitted, and does not stand or fall with such beliefs. (p. 70)

MacQuarrie thinks that a better account of sin can be given in terms of “separation,” or “alienation,” or “estrangement”:

Sin is separation or alienation from God, and where there is alienation from God, it seems to be the case that there is usually alienation from other people and even alienation within the individual self. But if such alienation characterizes the several dimensions of human life, we can see how it perpetuates itself from generation to generation and weighs upon every individual human life. This pervading alienation is original sin, but we see that it is nothing positive in itself. It is fundamentally a lack, a lack of a right relatedness. To say this is in no way to minimize sin, for a lack or deficiency produces distortion. But the inner heart of sin, if one may so speak, is not something positive, but an emptiness. (pp. 70-1)

I think it starts to become clearer now what it might mean to say that Mary was conceived without original sin. It means that, from the very beginnings of her being, Mary did not lack that relationship to God, the absence of which constitutes our alienation. MacQuarrie suggests that, instead of saying that Mary was “preserved from the stain of original sin,” we might put it more positively by saying that she “was preserved in a right relatedness to God.”

An equivalent affirmative expression would be to say that she was always the recipient of grace. She was surrounded with grace from her original conception in the mind of God to her actual historical conception in the love of her parents. (pp. 71-2)

Of course, at this point we can, and should, raise the familiar Protestant objection that, if God was able preserve Mary from original sin, what need was there for the work of Jesus? And doesn’t Mary threaten to obscure the place of Christ himself, as she may have from time to time in popular devotion?

MacQuarrie offers four responses to this objection. First, he asks, can we claim anything less than what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception claims in light of the fact that Mary was Theotokos, or God-bearer, in the full personal sense? In other words, can we say that Mary could’ve nurtured her Son in his relation to his heavenly Father if she herself was alienated from God?

Secondly, he points out that any grace claimed for Mary is entirely in light and on account of the person and work of Jesus. “Mary has her significance not in herself but because of her relation to Christ. The latter’s saving work reaches backward in time as well as forward” (p. 74).

Third, Mary and Jesus exhibit different kinds of righteousness. Jesus is not just an example or ideal, but Redeemer and Mediator. He creates new possibilities of life for his followers. Mary, meanwhile, is the exemplar of the “old righteousness of trust and obedience, developed in the people of God from Abraham onward” (p. 74).

Finally, he returns to the charge of Pelagianism, that the idea of Mary’s cooperation with divine grace imperils the principle of sola gratia. While, as we say, MacQuarrie affirms the synergistic implications, he flatly denies that the dogma implies Pelagianism. Quite the opposite when we consider that God’s prevenient grace is at work from the beginning and that the election of Mary is due not to her own merits, but those of her Son.

Summing up, I think we might see the Immaculate Conception as expressing the fact that God, in his providence and prevenient grace, prepared a “place” for his Son to come into the world. The entire history of Israel leads up to this and comes to a point in Mary, who herself becomes the tabernacle of the Lord.