Selected Exegesis

The announcement of the birth of Christ and Mary (a.s.) becoming a mother without a husband, which was contrary to custom and outside the known laws and traditions governing the system of creation, was astonishing for Mary (a.s.). In response to this amazement, apparently an angel from God explained and announced how she would become a mother, that with these very characteristics she would certainly become a mother and her having a child was definite. The emergence and birth of Christ (a.s.) was supernatural and of the nature of a special divine gift and bestowal, not of the nature of the effect of announcement and suggestion. When God wills the creation of something, with the issuance of the existential command and without need for normal causes and means, that thing comes into being. God addresses the knowledge-based existent (the non-existent in essence) and gives it objective form. This address is of the nature of an illuminative relation (iḍāfa ishrāqiyya) that creates the related.