On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 18/Chapter 19
ON THE VIRGINAL CONCEPTION, AND ON ORIGINAL SIN
conceived in this way ought to have been endowed with no less justice or happiness than that with which Adam was created—even if he were not God, but merely a human being. For both these things seemed equally unreasonable: that sin or the punishment for sin should fall on him from any ancestors through such propagation, and that God should spontaneously make a rational nature unjust, or should make a rational nature unhappy who did not deserve it on account of injustice.
Chapter 18 It was not necessary that God be conceived from a just virgin, as if he could not have been conceived from a sinful woman; but it was fitting that he should be conceived in this way Therefore, although the Son of God was most truly conceived from a most pure virgin, this did not happen by necessity, as if a just offspring could not reasonably be generated from a sinful parent through this sort of propagation.
Rather, this happened because it was fitting for the conception of this human being to come about from a most pure mother. Indeed it was fitting that the Virgin should be radiant with a purity than which no greater can be thought, except for that of God himself. For to her God the Father entrusted the gift of his only Son,whom he loved as himself,as one begotten from his own heart and equal to himself, so that there should be by nature one and the same Son of both God the Father and the Virgin; and the Son himself chose to make her substantially his mother; and the Holy Spirit willed and worked so that the one from whom he himself proceeded would be conceived and born from her. Now in the book in which I offered my other explanation for what is under discussion here, I also explained how the Virgin herself was purified by faith before that conception.34
Chapter 19 How the explanation offered here both harmonizes with and differs from the one I offered elsewhere
To my intellect it seems that each of these two explanations is, by itself, a sufficient answer to the question at hand; but the two of them taken together abundantly satisfy a mind that is seeking both force in reasoning and suitability in action.And although both explanations are aiming at the same conclusion, they do differ in this respect: the one I have offered here shows, with no 34 See Cur Deus Homo, Book 2, Chapter 16.