II. A Doubt

15. But there is a doubt about what someone is called ‘mother’ because of, and how this could be saved in the present case.

A. First Opinion

1. Exposition of the Opinion

16. There is an opinion [Aquinas, Albert the Great, Giles of Rome] that the father alone has the idea of what is active and the mother the idea of what is passive, so that she just ministers the matter for the offspring and in the seed of the father alone is there a force active and formative of the offspring.

17. This seems to be the opinion of the Philosopher Generation of Animals [1.21.730b8-24, 2.4.740b24-25, and n.4 supra], when he compares the virtue in the seed of the father to the artisan and the matter ministered by the mother to the wood from which the artisan makes a bench.

18. From this too appears that Augustine is for this proposal in Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.20 n.35, where he says Christ did not descend from parents according to seed-reasons; but if the blessed Virgin had been active with respect to the formation of her Son’s body, it would seem that that body was formed according to seedreasons.

2. Rejection of the Opinion

19. But against this [n.16] there is first a fourfold argument about other mothers:

[i] Because forms of the same species are followed by natural powers of the same species; but male and female are of the same species, Metaphysics 10.9.1058a29-34, b21-24; so their forms are followed by a power of the same idea; therefore if the form of one is naturally followed by an active vegetative power, likewise too is the other’s. And this reason is confirmed, because otherwise the vegetative power of the latter and the former would differ as active and passive differ, and thus they would be powers of an altogether different idea.

20. [ii] Further, the father naturally loves his son more than the son the father, just as “each naturally more loves his work than conversely,” from Ethics 8.12.1161b24-26, 9.7.1167b34-35; and this argument holds because of the fact that the benefactor is more affected toward the benefitted than conversely; but the mother loves her son more than the father does, as is plain from Aristotle in Ethics 8.14.1161b26-30, 9.7.1168a24-26; therefore it seems that her son is in some way her work.

21. [iii] Further, a son is sometimes more like his mother than like his father; so there is in the mother too some active power. The proof of the consequence is that “an agent aims to make the effect like itself” [Generation and Corruption 1.7.324a9-11], so that the effect is only made like something because of some action.

22. It is said [Aquinas] that the seed of the mother principally tends to make the offspring like the father and, secondly, that because of lack of obedience in the matter the seed of the mother fails of what it tends to do and does what it can - and thus, since alteration does not change to anything at all but to the opposite, the likeness is made to the opposite and so to the mother.

23. Against this: in that case a hot thing that is impeded and unable, because of the impediment, to make the effect perfectly like itself, will make it like the cold - and this seems impossible, because the impeded hot will only not make the effect like itself; therefore if the effect is made like the cold, this is from another agent, not merely from the impeded hot. So, in the issue at hand, from an impediment resisting the active power of the father there is only got this negation, that the offspring is not made like the father; however the offspring will only be made like another from some other active cause - and if this be thus granted in the issue at hand on the part of the mother, the intended conclusion is obtained.

24. Further, to say that ‘the mother is only a sort of vessel in which, as in a place suitable for generation, the offspring is generated, and generated from something of her as from matter’, does not seem to give more to the mother than to the earth in the generation of a mineral (if the mineral is generated from the earth and the earth itself -containing the something that is corrupted - is a fitting place for generation of such a body); nay rather, it does not seem to give to the mother more than is given to a human being in respect of the generation of a worm because the worm is generated from some moisture that has become putrid, and this in a place fitting for its generation; and then the human being would lack nothing in being the mother of the worm save that the worm is not of the same species. But this perhaps does not take away [the human being the mother] if a horse may be called the father of a mule and an ass the mother.

25. [iv] Further, this opinion [n.16] in the issue at hand about this Mother [sc. Mary] is rejected by the remark of Damascene ch.46, “The Holy Spirit came over her.. .giving her a susceptive power for the deity of the Word as well as a generative power at the same time;” but if Mary were only a passive principle there would seem no reason that the Holy Spirit should join to the susceptive power a generative power at the same time.

B. Second Opinion

1. Exposition of the Opinion

26. Now if another opinion be held [GalenGalen, On the Use of the Parts of the Human Body 14, “Nature has thought out a way to provide a double principle of generation for fetuses, that one of them indeed should be male and the other female;” “The woman herself has all the parts that the male has; but if she has some of them smaller and others larger, the art of nature is here too to be admired, that it did not - even in women - make anything less that ought to be more, nor again anything more that was fittingly less;” “It is sufficient enough to reckon that the male’s seed provides the principle of motion and that the women’s seed confers something on it for the generation of the animal.” William of Ware Sentences 3 q.13, “Others say the opposite, and this is the opinion of Galen, that both the man and the woman cooperate in this formation, but the chief part of the action is on the part of the man and the less chief on the part of the woman.” ⁴⁷], that that any mother is, along with the father, an active cause with respect to the formation of the offspring’s body, although a less principal and a secondary cause and making with the father one total cause - then to save how Mary was mother seems more difficult than when positing the first opinion [n.16]; for it is plain that she ministered the matter, even the whole matter, for Christ’s body, but it is not as plain how she could have cooperated with the Holy Spirit in the forming of the body.

27. Answer to this is made as follows [Bonaventure], that she ministered a matter that had an active force in it, but the force did not have any action because its action was anticipated by the Holy Spirit, who suddenly formed the body from the matter ministered to him; the Virgin then was mother (holding this opinion about a mother’s action) because of the fact she provided the matter and - as far as concerns her part - she had wherewith to act but another stronger agent [sc. the Holy Spirit] prevented her power in the acting. An example is given: fertility was given to Aaron’s rod [Numbers 17.6-8] by which it was able to have actively produced flowers and fruits successively, but it did not produce them because the fertility was prevented by the divine power suddenly producing them.

2. Rejection of the Opinion

28. On the contrary: if fire were most perfectly active and had a passive thing - as wood - near to it, yet was prevented by another stronger agent that heated the wood, in no way would the fire be the agent cause with respect to the heat; but if ‘fire generating heat’ is fire ‘being father of heat’, then in no way would the fire be father of the heat. So it is similarly in the issue at hand: if a mother is an agent cause, Mary would not be called mother because of her active power alone if she was prevented from acting.

29. This is confirmed by their example: for if a tree were called father or mother of the fruit it produces, yet Aaron’s rod, although it would have been fertile in being able to produce fruit and did not produce it, would nevertheless not have been father or mother of the fruit. This is also proved in the issue at hand: for no man was father of this Son, although someone [sc. Joseph] had the active power by which he could have acted as father in the formation of this body, and he did not act, being prevented by the Holy Spirit.

C. Third Opinion

1. Statement of the Opinion

30. In another way [William of Ware] it is said that a supernatural power was conferred on Mary whereby she was able to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in an instant.

2. Rejection of the Opinion

31. On the contrary: this supernatural force would be an ‘accident in an accident’ [cf. Metaphysics 4.4.10007a31-b13] of Mary’s nature; but if she acted in the formation of Christ’s body only by this accident, then she did not thus per se and truly and naturally act in the formation of this body as other mothers do, who act of their own nature in the formation of their offspring’s bodies; for it does not as truly belong to a stone to diffuse sightOn the diffusing and concentrating of sight by colors, Aristotle Topics 1.15.107b29-32, 3.5.119a27-31, 7.3.153a36-38, Scotus Ord. 1 d.4 n.12. ⁴⁸ (which belongs to it through its whiteness, and this is an accident in an accident in it) as it belongs to a stone to go downwards (which belongs to it through its nature as a natural accident).

32. Similarly, where will the supernatural accident be? If in the intellect or will then it does not seem to be a reason for acting in the generation of her Son, which is an action that belongs principally to the vegetative power; but if it is placed in the vegetative power, then it seems a wonder how that force should be capable of a supernatural accident.

33. Further third, how will this force, from the fact it is created, be able to cooperate or be the idea of cooperating in an instant with the Holy Spirit, when it is, however, unable to be anything in Mary’s nature?

34. Further, how is an accident the formal idea of producing a substance, which is the term of generation?

35. But if it be said [William of Ware] that the supernatural power is as it were an intrinsic perfection conferred on the vegetative power in Mary, then it seems wonderful how this force would have been made more intense than it would be if she had generated naturally, because then she would be more than mother.

36. Likewise, how will this intense force be able to act in an instant and yet the non-intense force [sc. the natural power to generate] is not able then to act? For forms of the same idea, even if one is more perfect than another, seem to be similarly disposed for acting in an instant or in time, though one of them may produce something more perfectly than another (as is plain in the case of a more perfect and less perfect light, each of which illumines equally instantaneously though one illumines more perfectly than the other).

D. Scotus’ own Opinion

37. One can say that, if acting belongs to the mother as to a less principal cause, then Mary was truly mother, because the whole of the action that is due to the mother belonged to her.

1. On the Action of the Mother in the Formation of Our Bodies

38. To understand this one needs to know that in the formation of our body there is first a local motion from the place of the body to be corrupted to a place fitted for the generation from it of an organic body. This local motion is followed by a shaping of that changed body, and the shaping is not without local motion. Third there follows a condensing of the body to be corrupted, and this is an alteration that precedes the generation of a denser body from the less dense body, and this alteration is not without change of place, by which is not acquired a new place but a smaller space is occupied. In the last instant of this alteration the form is induced, by which the body is completely organized, whether the form is, according to some, the intellective soul or, according to others, some other form preceding it [cf. infra 4 d.11 q.3] - and this, according to both of them, whether the form is single for the whole organic body and the heterogeneous parts, or whether the form of the whole is different from those that are the proper and substantial forms of the heterogeneous parts, or whether still in a third way there is no form for the whole organic body different from the partial forms of the heterogeneous parts; and according to this third option, a body’s being completely organized would be for all the partial forms to be completely induced. And although, according to this third option among these, one could posit that not all the partial forms are induced simultaneously but one is induced first, for which a shorter alteration would suffice, and another later, on which a longer alteration would follow further - yet, according to all three, there is something in the last instant which was not there before and without which the body is not completely organized.

2. On the Action of the Blessed Virgin in the Formation of Christ’s Body

39. When applying this to the matter at hand, there seems to be doubt whether there corresponded to the three aforesaid motions [n.38 init.] three briefer motions in Mary, just as in us, and whether in these three motions Mary acted as second cause and the Holy Spirit as principal cause.

40. For if this be posited, then it will not be posited that anything later assumed by the Word existed at any prior time in a created supposit but only that it was corrupted into something assumed by the Word; nor would it be posited that anything in the changes, which elsewhere require a long succession, existed here without succession and suddenly, and that in them Mary cooperated in an instant with the Holy Spirit; for even if she cooperated with the Holy Spirit in the induction of the ultimate organic form that is the disposition for receiving the intellective soul, yet she would not have cooperated in those three previous motions; for what require succession in us are those three motions, and not the ultimate induction of the substantial form of the organic body.

41. But if the three motions are denied to have existed in this case, and it is said that the whole thing happened in an instant, namely that at some single time the blood was dispersed in the body of Mary and never moved during time into the womb, and was not thus shaped and condensed, but that there was in the ultimate instant of the time a shaped and dense body (just as is the case at the term of the three motions, if the three had preceded), I still say that the blessed Virgin could have cooperated with the Holy Spirit in the instantaneous action, both as to the substantial form of the term and as to the shape and density (even though they were suddenly induced).

42. My proof of this is that, if she had not been able to cooperate, this would have been for one of three causes: either because she did not have a less principal active causality with respect to the term induced or with respect to the terms induced; or because she was not able to use the active force for inducing the terms in this way; or in a third way because, although she was able, yet she was prevented by a greater force that did the whole thing and did it wholly.

43. The first is rejected because she did have the active power as do other women [n.37], and had it for the same terms for which other women also have it; but other women have a less principal active force with respect to the ‘where’, the shape, the condensing too of the substantial form.

44. And if you say, according to one of the three options [sc. the second, n.38], that there are in the whole many specifically different substantial forms for the heterogeneous parts, for inducing which all at once no mother has sufficient active force but one form must be induced prior in time to another being induced, and that so it is here - on the contrary: an active power that does not have an adequate term can act at the same time with respect to another term (because the reason that it can only act on one term at the same time is that the term is adequate to its power; and it most of all has power for many non-adequate terms if those terms are included in the first single term that is adequate to it); but no partial form is the adequate term of this sort of power but the form of the whole organic body is, otherwise the power would not be sufficient for the form of the whole; therefore since all the partial forms are included in the whole, which is the adequate term, it has power for all of them all at once.

45. The rejection of the second [n.42] is that some means are necessarily means for a more imperfect power that are not necessarily means for a more perfect power; for a natural agent has to proceed through determinate means, because it is subject to that order (for the order is fixed beforehand by the superior agent) - but a supreme agent, which is not subject to this order in its acting (because it fixed it voluntarily beforehand), does not have to proceed through these means in its acting. - From this I argue that the Holy Spirit and Mary are a more perfect agent than would a created father and Mary herself have been; therefore the means through which the action of a natural father and Mary would have had to proceed, if Mary had conceived by a man, were not necessary in the action of the Holy Spirit and Mary.

46. But if you say [Richard of Middleton] that this non-necessity of means is only because of the infinity of the power of the Holy Spirit, but that the necessity for means always remains equal as regard a created power, so that it cannot act with respect to the term unless it proceeds through the means necessary for it - on the contrary: if the term had been reached through the means, the agent would not produce the term by reason of the means, because the means do not then exist; so it would precisely then produce the term because it has then a power active with respect to the term; therefore if any power brings it about that the result not come through means but that the agent is disposed to the term as it would be disposed in the term if it had proceeded through means, then the same agent, which did not pass through means, can act in the same way as if it had passed through them. But the Holy Spirit could bring it about that there was here no passage through means, as the argument stated before proves [n.45]; and along with this can stand the fact that the active power of Mary would have been the same as, through the means of such a passage, it would have been; therefore by that active power she can as equally act on the term, having omitted the means, as if she had passed through the means before acting on the term.

47. The rejection of the third [n.42] is that the Holy Spirit acts freely, and therefore does not necessarily act according to the utmost of his power; therefore he can extend himself to something along with the causality of a second cause cooperating with him, and so he can supply the power of a natural father, or even act more efficaciously than a natural father (if there was one). And Mary will be able to cooperate according to her causality, because nothing is taken away from her by the fact that the Holy Spirit has his own causality, for he does not, by anticipation, take away her causality, although he does supply eminently the causality of the other cause with which she could be co-cause.

48. With these three positions rejected, the following argument can be formed: every active cause that has power with respect to some effect, and that is not prevented by another that totally causes the effect, can, in the instant in which the effect is produced, act for the producing of it; Mary was an active cause of this sort if other mothers are of such a sort, and this as a non principal active cause;     therefore etc     .

49. This is made clear by the authority of Damascene [n.25], that the Holy Spirit ‘gave her a susceptive power but also at the same time a generative power’; not that he gave her the fertility by which she cooperated, but she had it naturally, for she was not sterile, and she could, according to that fertility, have cooperated in the production of her Son if a natural father had generated him; but the active power of an inferior cause is remote when the superior cause is not acting, so that an inferior cause is only ever in proximate power for an effect when the superior cause acts, because the superior cause is determined first and, once it has been determined, the inferior cause cooperates necessarily if the inferior cause is a natural cause.

50. Now according to the common order, the active power of the mother is of a nature to be subordinate to the active power of the father, and so the proximate power for generation is of a nature to be conferred on the mother by the father, but not the remote power, which is her first act whereby she is said to be fertile.

51. This proximate power was not conferred on Mary by such a cause [sc. by the active power of a natural father] but only by the Holy Spirit, who is possessed of the force of the principal cause; and therefore the Holy Spirit gave her ‘generative force’, that is the proximate power of generating, according to the natural force whereby she was naturally fertile; but he gave her ‘susceptive force’ insofar as she was generative of the Word. For just as the nature - to which the generation was as to formal term - was only in obediential potency for being united with the Word, so the Mother only had obediential potency for being the Mother of the Word; for by this was she Mother of the Word, that the Word was subsisting in the nature united to him.

3. A Doubt about the Mother’s Action through Seed-Reason

52. But there is here a doubt, because if, according to what was said in the question on seed-reasons [Lectura 2 d.18 nn.26-28, 36], a seed-reason is not the principle of action in generation, for it does not then remain, just as neither does the substance it is consequent to, but it is only the reason for acting in the alteration that precedes generation (and here [in Christ’s case] no alteration preceded generation) - then the result is that there was here on the part of the Mother no action through seed-reason, and so neither through any active force in the matter provided.

53. This would have to be conceded according to what was there said [n.52]; but yet the Mother herself was able immediately to act in the instant of generation, because she was immediately present and had active generative force with respect to the term of the action.

54. And perhaps so it is in the case of other mothers, that they act not only through the active force in the matter provided but that also - after the active force in the seed, just like the substance in which it is, has been corrupted in the instant of generation - they act immediately for producing the term of generation.

55. And this seems probable, because once the body - thus altered in that instant -has been put in place through a divine power outside the womb, generation would not happen, and yet there would be the same passive element there and the same proximate agents from the mother alone (as it seems). And then, if the seed of the father is posited to be corrupted in that instant, namely because it is part of the offspring, the mother would more truly be acting than the father, because she is acting immediately in the instant of generation and the father is not, but is so only in the preceding alteration through the active force that was in his seed; or if it be posited that the father’s seed remains in the instant of generation and the active force remains in it, and the seed is not converted into the body of the offspring but, after the formation of the body, dissipates into something else, then still in the instant of generation the mother will be able to act and the father through the diminished force in the seed.

56. Nor does it seem particularly unacceptable to attribute so much action to the mother, because, once the father’s seed has been emitted, the whole of the ensuing formation up to birth seems principally to follow the conditions of the mother (whether she have a warm and well disposed womb etc.).