1. It is not possible
to give an extended treatment of Pelagianism here. This heresy was a reaction
against Manichean pessimism and took the form of an excessive optimism
concerning the capabilities of human nature, to the detriment of the necessary
role of grace. During the first phase of his controversy Pelagius
argumentatively presented Augustine with the case of the Virgin “whom it is necessary
to recognize as sinless.” Until then no one had expressed Mary’s
holiness in such a clear-cut formula. In such heated argumentation there
could have easily arisen the temptation to discuss the heretic’s thesis. Saint
Augustine resolved the difficulty from the beginning with a genial touch. He
granted the opponent’s statement, but gave it a wholly different meaning: this
sanctity of hers was an exception, having God’s grace as its principle,
and not free will alone.
2. Julian of
Eclanum carried the conflict onto more delicate terrain in discussing the
absence not of actual sin but of the sin of the human race. This Pelagian
author was thus the first to deny explicitly that the Virgin Mary had ever been
subject to the say of original sin. To Augustine he objected, “By the
original condition [that you attribute to her] you give Mary herself over to
the devil.” Augustine himself cites the famous objection as it must have been
made to him. (Opus imperfectum adversus Julianum, 4, 122; PG 45: 1217)
Here the bishop of
Hippo did not in reply show as masterly a touch as in the preceding
controversy. He sought a way out with an ambiguous text. Looking back on his
text, of course, it is possible to discern the two requirements of the
tradition, namely, the universal need of redemption and Mary’s exceptional mode
of redemption in being preserved from all sin. But subsequent authors for
centuries to come were to see in Augustine's text a denial of the privilege of
her Immaculate Conception. (René Laurentin, A Short Treatise on
the Virgin Mary [6th ed.; trans. Charles Neumann; Washington, D.
C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022], 69-70, emphasis in bold
added)
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