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The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection (CCC366). The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" [Gen 2:7] Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God. (CCC362). The first Adam was made by the last Adam, from whom he also received his soul, to give him life (CCC359).
By calling God "Father", the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God (CCC239). In Israel, God is called "Father" inasmuch as he is Creator of the world [Dt 32:6; Mal 2:10]. Even more, God is Father because of the covenant and the gift of the law to Israel, "his first-born son" [Ex 4:22] (CCC238). He is the Father in a special way only of Christ, but he is the common Father of us all, because while he has begotten only Christ, he has created us. Then also say by his grace, "Our Father," so that you may merit being his son (CCC2783).
"In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was God... all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" [Jn 1:1-3]. The New Testament reveals that God created everything by the eternal Word, his beloved Son. In him "all things were created, in heaven and on earth... all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" [Col 1:16-17] (CCC291). St. Paul tells us that the human race takes its origin from two men: Adam and Christ... The first man, Adam, he says, became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. The first Adam was made by the last Adam, from whom he also received his soul, to give him life... The second Adam stamped his image on the first Adam when he created him. That is why he took on himself the role and the name of the first Adam, in order that he might not lose what he had made in his own image. The first Adam, the last Adam: the first had a beginning, the last knows no end. The last Adam is indeed the first; as he himself says: "I am the first and the last" (CCC359).
Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption. The Son of God is begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father (CCC465). He is naturally Son of the Father as to his divinity and naturally son of his mother as to his humanity, but properly Son of the Father in both natures" [Lk 2:48-49] (CCC503). Jesus referred to himself as "the Son" who knows the Father, as distinct from the "servants" God had earlier sent to his people; he is superior even to the angels [Mt 11:27; 21:34-38; 24:36]. He distinguished his sonship from that of his disciples by never saying "our Father", except to command them: "You, then, pray like this: 'Our Father'", and he emphasized this distinction, saying "my Father and your Father" [Mt 5:48; 6:8-9; 7:21; Lk 11:13; Jn 20:17] (CCC443).
Jesus calls himself the "only Son of God", and by this title affirms his eternal pre-existence [Jn 3:16; 10:36] (CCC444). He who exists as Son of God before all ages, indeed as God, of one being with the Father (CCC663). He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God [Heb 4:15] (CCC467). Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal Son of God made man. He 'came from God', [Jn 13:3] 'descended from heaven', [Jn 3:13; 6:33] and 'came in the flesh' [1 Jn 4:2] (CCC423). The Father has through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son" (CCC246).
We are brethren not by nature, but by the gift of grace, because that adoptive filiation gains us a real share in the life of the only Son, which was fully revealed in his Resurrection (CCC654). We can adore the Father because he has caused us to be reborn to his life by adopting us as his children in his only Son: by Baptism, he incorporates us into the Body of his Christ; through the anointing of his Spirit who flows from the head to the members, he makes us other "Christs." God, indeed, who has predestined us to adoption as his sons, has conformed us to the glorious Body of Christ. So then you who have become sharers in Christ are appropriately called "Christs." The new man, reborn and restored to his God by grace, says first of all, "Father!" because he has now begun to be a son (CCC2782).
He who believes in Christ becomes a son of God. This filial adoption transforms him by giving him the ability to follow the example of Christ. It makes him capable of acting rightly and doing good. In union with his Savior, the disciple attains the perfection of charity which is holiness. Having matured in grace, the moral life blossoms into eternal life in the glory of heaven (CCC1709). Participation in the divine life arises "not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" [Jn 1:13] (CCC505). Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. [Jn 1:12-18; 17:3; Rom 8:14-17; 2 Pet 1:3-4] (CCC1996). Through the power of the Holy Spirit we take part in Christ's Passion by dying to sin, and in his Resurrection by being born to a new life; we are members of his Body which is the Church, branches grafted onto the vine which is himself: [1Cor 12; Jn 15:1-4] [God] gave himself to us through his Spirit. By the participation of the Spirit, we become communicants in the divine nature.... For this reason, those in whom the Spirit dwells are divinized (CCC1988).
To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom [Mt 18:3-4]. For this, we must humble ourselves and become little. Even more: to become "children of God" we must be "born from above" or "born of God" [Jn 3 7; 1:13; 1:12; Mt 23:12] (CCC526). "Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!"' (Gal 4:6) (CCC742). Baptism makes the neophyte "a new creature," an adopted son of God, who has become a "partaker of the divine nature," [2 Cor 5:17; 2 Pet 1:4; Gal 4:5-7] member of Christ and co-heir with him, [l Cor 6:15; 12:27; Rom 8:17] and a temple of the Holy Spirit [lCor 6:19] (CCC1265). The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature" [2 Pt 1:4]: For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God. For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods (CCC460).
To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of "predestination", he includes in it each person's free response to his grace (CCC600). God is eternal blessedness, undying life, unfading light. God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to communicate the glory of his blessed life. Such is the "plan of his loving kindness", conceived by the Father before the foundation of the world, in his beloved Son: "He destined us in love to be his sons" and "to be conformed to the image of his Son", through "the spirit of sonship" [Eph 1:4-5,9; Rom 8:15,29] (CCC257).
From all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son. The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother (CCC488). To become the mother of the Saviour, Mary was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role. The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as "full of grace" [Lk 1:28]. In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God's grace (CCC490). Mary, the all-holy ever-virgin Mother of God, is the masterwork of the mission of the Son and the Spirit in the fullness of time. For the first time in the plan of salvation and because his Spirit had prepared her, the Father found the dwelling place where his Son and his Spirit could dwell among men. In this sense the Church's Tradition has often read the most beautiful texts on wisdom in relation to Mary [Prov 8:1-9:6; Sir 24] Mary is acclaimed and represented in the liturgy as the "Seat of Wisdom" (CCC721).
We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely "out of nothing" (CCC296). Those whom he fore knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified [Rom 8:28-30] (CCC2012). The splendour of an entirely unique holiness by which Mary is enriched from the first instant of her conception comes wholly from Christ: she is redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and chose her "in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love" [Eph 1:3-4] (CCC492).