The great enigma
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The person of the Immaculate Conception co-created the world.
Since God alone can create, the Virgin created nothing; but she co-created, because her Fiat allowed the Father to draw the world from the void by giving it life through the Incarnation of the Son. The Immaculate therefore existed before the world, as she confirms in the Book of Proverbs (8:22-23), where she is identified with Wisdom: "The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity".
But why would the Incarnation have created the world?
Throughout eternity, God knows within himself all possible worlds, which are virtual and thus have no existence of their own. God alone is real and God alone exists, but he can transmit his reality, his existence, his life (as he said) to the virtual world of his choice by incorporating himself within it, by incarnating himself, with the consent and co-operation of his Mother, who as such exists "from eternity".
Today, the creative Incarnation is obscured by the redemptive Incarnation.
Mary as co-redeemer? This question is still given a great deal of study and sometimes gives rise to theological disputes which would be settled by a dogmatic definition.
In contrast, the question "Mary as co-creator"? is hardly a current issue, but we will nevertheless consider it and attempt to reach an answer.
In the Litanies of the Holy Virgin, the invocation "Mother of the Creator" comes immediately before "Mother of the Saviour". This divine maternity, already accepted for Marian co-redemption, could also be accepted in the case of Marian co-creation. We will at least attempt to prove this by recourse to the Epistle of the Mass of the Immaculate Conception celebrated on 8 December.
The crucial passage is from the Book of Proverbs, or Wisdom, in which the Church recognizes the Immaculate Conception and describes its precedence with respect to all the elements forming the world: "The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity". And when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was the craftsman at his side? (8:22-23, 29-30).
Here the Immaculate Conception is not a symbolic figure but a person: that of the Virgin Mary, who called herself by this name at Lourdes.
The passage cited implies that the person of the Immaculate Conception existed before the creation of the world, and participated in the creation because she was "the craftsman at his side "when the Lord" marked out the foundations of the earth".
The word "craftsman" is the translation of a rare Hebrew word, rendered in the Jerusalem Bible as "master craftsman". In the version of the Société Biblique Française we find: "pendant ce temps, je l'aidais comme un architecte" ( "during this time, I assisted him as an architect"). This is active collaboration - a business relationship, as it were. According to this passage, then, the Immaculate Conception is indeed the co-creator of the universe. Her cosmic influence is poetically visualized by Saint John in the Book of Revelation: "A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head" (12:1).
Clearly, it is most improbable that a Jewish woman born under the Roman Empire should have participated in the creation of the universe. If this woman is the Mother of God, however, then the improbable becomes plausible.
To understand how the Immaculate Conception could have engaged in such a remarkable prior activity, we must go back before the origin of the universe.
The Immaculate Conception was "brought forth as the first of his works". She was thus already present before the creation, but she had neither body nor soul. These were created much later, when she was conceived in her mother's womb and incarnated as a person - just as her Son was later incarnated in her body. From then until the Assumption, however, she probably had no awareness of the previous activity of her person, being confined to her worldly body.
If we accept that the act which created the universe, and which creates it continually (the reasoning for this will be set forth below), is the Incarnation, then it becomes obvious that the person of the Immaculate Conception co-created the universe. The Immaculate Conception was the willing receptacle of the Incarnated, and for this reason obviously co-operated in the Incarnation, and hence in the act of creation.
However, this co-operation could have begun with the Fiat. Why was it necessary that the Immaculate Conception be "appointed from eternity" as an intermediary between the decision to create the universe and the actual creation?
The decision to create, and thus to incarnate, was made throughout eternity by the three divine Persons of the Trinity. Divine immutability, which is an article of faith, claims that God does not change. God thus did not first want not to incarnate and subsequently wish to incarnate; he always desired the Incarnation, and hence the receptacle of the Incarnation - i.e. the Immaculate Conception - was conceived of throughout eternity.
The Incarnation was not simply a temporary operation conducted nine months before the birth of Jesus. Since the decision to create, from eternity to the centuries of centuries, the Incarnation has been unfolding throughout the universe, creating it continually by giving it first a natural life, with a view to its realization, and then, through its completion, eternal life.
How can we represent the Immaculate Conception in the beginning, when she had neither body nor soul? Her being was her person, and as such the person of the Immaculate was endowed with sanctifying grace in its plenitude. The three aspects of the Trinity thus resided and worked in her and through her to guide the world to its final purpose: the Incarnation, that is, the advent of Christ, which is, as we will see, scientifically plausible.
Among the infinity of possible worlds, the universe we know seems to be the only one to meet all the right conditions for the development of intelligent life. If its fundamental constants had been even slightly different, humanity would not have been able to evolve.
This is why cosmologists have developed the anthropic principle, which states that the purpose of the evolution of the universe was the advent of humanity. The metaphysical implications of this concept have aroused misgivings in scientific circles.
Nevertheless, this is the principle we will now adopt, but in a more precise form.
Throughout eternity, God knows all possible worlds within himself: the one which will be created, and the ones which will remain in a virtual state.
The act of creation involves transmitting reality into the virtual world selected to receive it. But what is reality? Reality is existence. Before the creation, however, God alone existed. His only means of creating one of the possible worlds was therefore to breathe existence into it by incorporating himself into it, by incarnating himself. But is this line of reasoning theologically sound?
First, let's go back in time. During the 13th century, theologians asked whether the Son would have been incarnated if humanity had not sinned. Saint Thomas Aquinas answered first "yes" and then "no". Duns Scotus answered in the affirmative, arguing that the reason for the Incarnation was to manifest and glorify God. As the Catholic Magisterium has not reached a decision, the question remains open. It is thus legitimate to assume that the Son was incarnated to create the universe by breathing reality - "the life" as he said - into it through his presence. The creative incarnation is currently obscured by the redemptive incarnation.
Some may object that the Son cannot be the origin of the universe since he was incarnated billions of years after the beginning of time. This argument is not valid, as the universe became real in anticipation of his coming: the effect preceded the cause. Similarly, his mother, the Immaculate Conception, was preserved from original sin in anticipation of the coming of Jesus within her: again, the effect preceded the cause. Thus we once again come across the anthropic principle, but in a far more precise form: the universe developed not for the coming of humanity, but for the coming of one man: Christ.
God was in no way obliged to carry out the Incarnation, as he knew in himself all of its possible outcomes. God incarnated freely, out of love, and it was thus out of love that he chose the variant which would create the greatest number of blessed but also, in a dramatic trade-off, the greatest suffering for himself. The Incarnation is Love freely crucified. Granted, humanity has its sufferings as well, and must also face death. In the words of Saint Paul, however, "our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18). Hell itself is preferable to non-being, and all its occupants have freely chosen it instead of Heaven.
What is the logic of the act of creation? The process of the creative Incarnation is the same as that of the redemptive Incarnation: the Son is sent on a mission by the Father, from whom he proceeds. But why is the creative mission possible? In the Epistle to the Colossians, Saint Paul sketched an intratrinitary answer to this question by linking the creative role of the Son to the fact that he is the image of the Father: "He is the image of the invisible God... For by him all things were created" (1:15-16).
As the Son is the image of the Father, he should be able, like the Father, to be a principle twice and to have a second term.
Ad intra (within the Trinity), however, the Son is only once a principle and has only one term: the Holy Spirit. It is therefore only possible ad extra (outside of the Trinity, from nothing, from the void) that the Son could be a principle twice, in the image of the Father, and have a second term: himself.
To be ad extra the image of the Father who is the principle of the Son, the Son must also be the principle of the Son and therefore the principle and term of himself, his Father giving him paternity. In this sense, all things come from the Father, and the Son will reproduce his image - this is his ad extra creative mission. As principle, the Son creates the invisible universe; as term, he creates the visible universe in which he will be incarnated.
If, as we have assumed, the Incarnation was the act that created the world, then the Virgin Mary, who is a co-agent of the Incarnation, is necessarily the co-creator of the world.
Despite the explicit passage from the Book of Proverbs, the creation of the Immaculate Conception "from eternity" is difficult to accept.
If we accept the hypothesis of the creative Incarnation, however, then even though the existence of her person did not precede that of her body, the Virgin Mary nevertheless co-created the world through her Fiat, which made the Incarnation possible.