by William Duraney

Created on: February 21, 2009

To understand that Mary, the Mother of God, is "divine," it must first be understood what is meant by the term itself. Mary is not God, but she is the Mother of God. Therefore, though she is not God, she is more like God than you or I and therefore worthy of the title "divine."

Many Muslims believe that Christians believe in 3 gods: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Mother (Mary). However, this is not what is meant by the doctrine of the Trinity. The Holy Trinity is, first of all, not three gods, but One God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Without delving too deeply into Trinitarian doctrine, it should suffice to say that Mary is not in some way a part of God.

Mary, like you and I, is God's creature. Yet she is the "first" creature in the mind of God. That is not to say that she actually came first, because God is eternal and it confuses the issue to use the term first in its temporal sense with regard to creation. However, ontologically speaking, it can be said that Mary is the first (or primary) creature. This is because God the Son chose to become incarnate. Again, though in the course of history Jesus isn't born before everyone else, we can't talk about time (or change, for that matter) in God, which leaves us to say that Christ's incarnation is "from the beginning" of creation. Therefore when God was creating man and woman, he had as his "models" the primary man, Christ, and the primary woman, Mary.

For the same reason, viz. that Christ was incarnate "from the beginning," Mary is His mother from the beginning and therefore, being the one from whom he took his flesh, which was perfectly united to his divine Nature, he needed flesh which was in no way affected by the stain of sin. Therefore he opted to created Mary without original sin, from the moment of her Immaculate Conception. [Side Note: Isn't it beautiful how, just as Eve took the flesh of Adam (the rib), so too the New Adam, Christ, took flesh from Mary, the New Eve, the Mother of all the living? (cf Genesis 3:20)]. It was not necessary for St. Anne (Our Lady's mother) to be Immaculate as well (and the whole chain, ad infinitum), because Mary has a fully human nature, and is therefore fully a creature. In other words, she was "saved" like you and I, but unlike us in that her salvation was secured "before" (again, the problems with temporal language) her very creation. Christ (qua second person in the Trinity) is not created, and therefore needed to assume flesh which was perfect since

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