How the divine essence is to be understood as conceived and born.
Likewise doubtprovoking are these words of Athanasius in his letter to Serapion: “The uncreated divine essence was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary.” 
Now, the Master says in his third book of the Sentences, dist. VIII, that what is not begotten of the Father is not properly said to be born of the Mother, lest some reality, of which the term filiation is not predicated in the divine order, should enjoy such predication in the human. Hence, since the divine essence is not born of the Father, so neither can it be said to be born of the Mother.
But it is to be noted that just as the divine essence is said improperly to beget or to be begotten via an eternal generation in so far as the essence stands for person and so is understood to beget, because the Father who is the essence begets, so in the same way the divine essence is said to be born of the Virgin, because the Son of God, who is the divine essence, was born of the Virgin.
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