Mary: Redemption and Preservation

WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

FAITH AND REASON
Vol. VII, No. 2
Summer 1981
Christendom College

The following analysis of Mary’s redemption attempts to clarify the Catholic understanding of how it can be said that a person conceived without original sin can be said to be redeemed at all. The importance of William Marshner’s technical treatment of this traditionally vexing question, including his use of modal logic, will be apparent to those who regard it as a chief function of theologians to defend and advance the Faith by precisely answering as many potentially devastating questions as possible. Thus, Marshner proceeds to eliminate false understanding of Mary’s redemption so that a proper understanding might leave the central doctrines of the Church less open to attack.

TOWARDS A RELATIONAL THEORY OF OUR LADY’S CO-REDEEMERSHIP

Prof. William H. Marshner

Prof. J. M. Alonso

Ex «Ephemerides Mariologicae» Matriti – 1977

Catholic theologians are agreed that the Mother of God, considered as «universal principle of intercession», plays a rôle in the subjective redemption (or redemption in actu secundo) of all those who in fact enter into this redemption. The question which divides counsels is her role in the objective redemption (or redemption in actu primo). Is she a factor in this redemption primarily or even exclusively because her fiat was a condition sine qua non for the Incarnation, or because her actions enter into the constitution of the objective redemption itself, being acceptable to God the Father not alongside the actions of her Divine Son but together with them per modum unius?

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