On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 7
ON THE VIRGINAL CONCEPTION, AND ON ORIGINAL SIN
Chapter 7 In what way the seed of a human being is said to be unclean and to be conceived in sins, even though there is no sin in it
I think by now it has become quite evident from what I have said that sin and injustice are nothing, that they exist only in a rational will, and that no being is properly called "unjust" other than a will. And so it appears to follow that either an infant has a rational soul (without which it cannot have a rational will) from the very moment of conception, or else original sin is not present in it as soon as it is conceived. Now no one thinks it has a rational soul from the very moment of conception. For it would follow that every time a human seed17 perishes, even from the very moment of its reception, before it attains human form, the human soul in it is damned because it is not reconciled through Christ, which is completely absurd. So we must emphatically reject this horn of the dilemma.
Yet if an infant does not have sin from the very moment of conception, why does Job say to God,"Who can make clean one who was conceived from unclean seed? Who but you, who alone have being?"18 And how is there truth in what David says:"In iniquities was I conceived, and in sins my mother conceived me"?19 I will therefore investigate, if I can, in what sense infants are said to be conceived from unclean seed, in iniquities, and in sins, even though sin does not exist in infants from the very moment of their conception.
Certainly Scripture often asserts that something is the case when it is not, on the grounds that it is certain that such a thing will be the case.It is in this sense that God says to Adam regarding the forbidden tree,"On the very day you eat from it, you will die":20 not that on that day he underwent bodily death, but that on that day he received the necessity of dying some day.And Paul speaks in a similar way about the necessity of dying some day:"But if Christ is in you, the body is dead on account of sin, but the spirit is alive on account of justification."21 After all, the bodies of those to whom he was writing were not 17 The Latin for 'seed' is semen, but Anselm clearly does not have in mind what we call
'semen', since he will talk about the semen that Christ received from his mother. Rather, by semen he means whatever it is that grows in a mother's womb and is eventually born. Keep in mind that Anselm does not know enough about embryology to give any precise characterization of the semen, which is why translating semen as 'fetus' (as is sometimes done) or 'embryo' seems wrong.
18 Job 14:4.
19 Psalm 51:5 (50:7).
20 Genesis 2:17.
21 Romans 8:10.