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Question Two. Wherefore and How Christ’s Body did not Contract Original Sin as Other Bodies did
54. About the sanctification of Christ’s body I ask wherefore and how that body did not, like other bodies, contract original sin.
I. On a First Way of Speaking
55. I say that, according to the Master [Lombard], there was some portion in Adam from which all his sons are created.
56. And some posit that something of this portion was not infected in Adam but was preserved pure in him up to the generation of Christ.
57. But against the first statement [n.55]45: since a finite quantity, by a finite taking away from it repeated several times, can be consumed, and especially such a little quantity as would have had to be emitted by Adam in the procreation of his sons, that quantity will seem now to have been totally used up.
58. But if you say that it was multiplied in itself the way the Master says 2 d.30 ch.14 n.2 and Hugh of St. Victor On the Sacraments I p.6 ch.37 - this does not seem it could happen without a miracle (as with the loaves [e.g. John 6.9-11]); and thus it was not possible for the father to generate the amount that there is on the part of the body’s form without a miracle, and this does not seem probable.
II. On a Second Way of Speaking
59. Those who do not hold here to the Master respond in different ways according to diversity in ways of understanding original sin.
A. First Way
60. Those who state that the sin is contracted because of infected flesh, which is sown in concupiscence [Bonaventure, Aquinas, Giles of Rome], say that the whole flesh of Mary was sanctified and thus what was assumed to form the body of Christ was sanctified before it was assumed, so that there was no infection there at the moment of the soul’s infusion.
61. But the argument against this is first that, if the blood of the blessed Virgin were what the body of Christ was formed from (according to Damascene ch.46), then consequently, since this blood was never animated with the soul of the whole body [sc. of the Virgin] or of any human being, it never contracted the stain from a sinful soul, and no reason for the stain can be assigned on the part of it nor can any sanctification be assigned for the body generated from it.
62. But if it be said that the active power that formed the body from the blood was infected in the parents, and so the generated body was infected - this does not seem true if the Holy Spirit immediately formed the body from that blood.
63. Further, it does not seem probable that there was corruption without generation of any kind; but if the sanctification and cleansing of the flesh were the corruption of the diseased quality and yet there was no generation of any other positive quality, then there was no generation of grace, because that flesh was not capable of sanctity.
B. Alternative Way
64. Alternatively, according to the way of Anselm, who says that original sin is the lack of owed justice (as was touched on in 2 dd.30-32 n.50 supra), it is plain why Christ did not contract original sin, because he was not a natural son of Adam and so was not debtor for original justice. For those alone received justice in Adam who were going to be descended from him according to seed-reasons, that is, with respect to whom Adam possessed the idea of natural father according to propagation; hence, just as he alone could have preserved the justice, so he alone could have lost it; and therefore, if Christ had been a pure man and not God, but miraculously born of a Virgin, he would not, according to Anselm, have contracted original sin.
65. This opinion is evident from him in On the Virginal Conception ch.11, and express in ch.18f., where he holds that a twofold reason can be set down for the innocence of Christ: the sanctification of the Virgin, and the formation of his body miraculously, not by common propagation; either would suffice for Christ being born innocent.
66. Hence is plain the reason for the tithing of Levi and not of Christ.46