In the excerpt below, I provide web links to Restoration Scripture, and add words in bold for emphasis, and words in brackets as my own commentary, in order to show a potential theology of a heavenly mother figure as the personification of Wisdom as Sophia. After presenting the scholarship of Marcus Borg, I will then conclude with a possible way of seeing within the Restoration, a heavenly mother figure as Sophia.
I will be quoting from Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg. Starting on page 128, Borg writes:
In Jewish wisdom literature, wisdom is often personified in female form as “the Wisdom Woman.” Consistent with this personification, wisdom is a feminine noun in both Hebrew (hokmah) and Greek (sophia). Among scholars, it has become common to name this personification Sophia, even when the reference is to a Hebrew text. …
This personification is first developed in the opening chapters of Proverbs. The Wisdom Woman, Sophia, appears in chapter 1, speaking in a public place like one of the prophets of ancient Israel: Sophia cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? “How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?”
“Give heed to my reproof,” she continues. And then she says:
I will pour out my thoughts to you, I will make my words known to you.
The first half of this verse–“I will pour out my thoughts to you”–can also be translated, “I will pour out my Spirit upon you,”[5] a function attributed to Yahweh in prophetic texts.[6] This is the first hint of a possibility that will soon become explicit: that Sophia is a personification of God.
[5] Proverbs 1.23; O’Connor, The Wisdom Literature, pp. 71-72.
[6] One such text is to be found in Joel 2.28: “I [Yahweh] will pour out my spirit on all flesh.”
… In the second half of the speech [in Proverbs 8], she speaks of her role in creation. She was in the beginning with God before the world was created:
Yahweh created me [Sophia] at the beginning of God’s work, the first of God’s acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
Not only was Sophia with God from before the beginning, but she participated in God’s creative work:
When God established the heavens, I was there. . . . When God marked out the foundations of the earth, I was beside God as a master worker.[9]
Here there is the suggestion that it was through Sophia that God created the world. Sophia was the chief artisan who executed the divine plan.[10] The same point is made earlier in Proverbs:
“Yahweh by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding God established the heavens.”[11]
[Footnotes]:
[9] Quoted verses are Proverbs 8.22-23, 27a, 29b-30. “Master worker” (Proverbs 8.30) can also be translated as “nursling” or “child,” but the close connection to being “beside God” in the creative acts referred to in 8.27-29 suggests that “master worker”–one assisting in creation–fits the context better.
[10] So also O’Connor, The Wisdom Literature, p. 67.
[11] Proverbs 3.19.
To return to chapter 8 of Proverbs, Sophia then speaks of her dwelling place in the presence of God:
“I was daily God’s delight, rejoicing before God.”
Yet she also dwells in the world; Sophia speaks of “rejoicing in the inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”[12] She continues by speaking of her present role. She is the source of life: “Happy are those who keep my ways . . . ; happy is the one who listens to me . . . ; for whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from Yahweh.”[13] Finally, she concludes by inviting people to her banquet of bread and wine: Sophia has set her table. She has sent out her servant girls, she calls from the highest places in the town,
“You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense, she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.”[14]
[Footnotes]:
[12] Proverbs 8.30b-31.
[13] Proverbs 8.32b, 34a, 35. See also 3.13-18, where Sophia is spoken of as more precious than gold, silver, and jewels, and as “a tree of life to those who lay hold of her.”
[14] The banquet is described in Proverbs 9.1-6; quoted words are from 9.2b-5. Other references to the Wisdom Woman in Proverbs include 3.13-18, 4.5-9, and probably 31.10-31, a passage that has typically been seen as a description of “the ideal wife.” O’Connor, in The Wisdom Literature, pp. 77-79, persuasively argues that the passage is best understood as a description of Sophia, for the functions of the “strong woman” are not those of any actual or potential wife in ancient Israel, given the role of women in that culture.
The Jewish personification of wisdom as Sophia, and the attribution to her of divine qualities, becomes even more developed in two intertestamental books–Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon.[15] In Sirach, written around 180B.C., Sophia again speaks of her origin in God “in the beginning”:
From eternity, in the beginning, God created me, and for eternity I shall not cease to be.
She speaks of her presence everywhere:
I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist. I dwelt in the highest heavens, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud. Alone I compassed the vault of heaven and traversed the depths of the abyss. Over waves of the sea, over all the earth, and over every people and nation I have held sway.
Then the author speaks of Sophia pitching her tent and dwelling in Israel. God “chose the place for her tent” among the people of Jacob, and she was in the tabernacle in the wilderness until she came to dwell in Jerusalem. Sophia is here, among other things, identical with the Shekinah, the divine presence. Finally, as in Proverbs, Sophia also hosts a banquet.[16]
[15] Sirach is known by a number of different names: “The Wisdom of Ben Sira,” “Ecclesiasticus” (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes), and “The Wisdom of Jesus ben [son of] Sirach.” It is typically abbreviated “Sir.” or “Ecclus.” Though Protestants put both Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha, they are canonical in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
[16] All of this is found in chap. 24 of Sirach. Quoted words are from verses 9, 3-6, 8. The banquet is referred to in 24.19-21.
In the Wisdom of Solomon, a book written near the time of Jesus, the divine qualities of Sophia are most developed.[17] Sophia is “the fashioner of all things,” and the “mother” of all good things.[18] Then, in a remarkable passage, she is spoken of as:
. . . a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits. . . .
Those are, of course, all attributes of God. Moreover, like God, she is everywhere present: “she pervades and penetrates all things.” Sophia “is a breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty” and “a reflection of eternal light.” Like God, she is omnipotent and the sustaining source of life:
Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things.
She enters into relationship with people: “In every generation, she passes into holy souls.” She is the source of prophetic inspiration, making people “friends of God and prophets.”[19]
[17] Like the wisdom books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, this book is attributed to Solomon, the “patron saint” of wisdom in Israel. It is a late work, however, written by a Jewish author living in Alexandria in Egypt, probably in the first century B.C., though some suggest a first century A.D. date.
[18] Wisdom of Solomon 7.22, 11-12. And, as in Proverbs and Sirach, Sophia is present from the beginning: Wisdom of Solomon 6.22.
[19] This speech about Sophia, put into the mouth of Solomon, begins in Wisdom of Solomon 7.7. Quoted verses are 7.22-23, 24b-25a, 26a, 27. See also 8.6, which refers to her as “fashioner of what exists.”
Finally, it is she who was active in the history of Israel from the very beginning of the Old Testament story. We are accustomed to hearing God spoken of as the one who led Israel out of Egypt. But in Wisdom of Solomon, it is Sophia who does this.
A holy people and blameless race Sophia delivered from a nation of oppressors. . . . She brought them over the Red Sea, and led them through deep waters; she drowned their enemies, and cast them up from the depth of the sea.[20]
Thus in the book as a whole, she has qualities and functions normally attributed to God.[21]
What are we to make of the remarkable role of Sophia in the wisdom tradition of Israel? Though long noticed by scholars, it was most often seen simply as an interesting use of the literary device of personification. But more is involved, as recent scholarship has shown. In these books Sophia is closely associated with God, at times becoming indistinguishable from God in terms of the functions and qualities ascribed to her, so that one may speak of a “functional equivalency” between Sophia and God.[22] Thus the language about Sophia is not simply personification of wisdom in female form, but personification of God in female form. Sophia is a female image for God, a lens through which divine reality is imaged as a woman.[23] In short, the use of Sophia language involves female imagery for speaking of God in the biblical tradition itself.
[20] Wisdom of Solomon 10.15, 18-19. This chapter begins the story of Sophia’s involvement in Israel’s history with Adam and continues through Noah and the patriarchs to the exodus. The story continues into chap. 11.
[21] This remarkable book has been more important in the history of Christianity than the noncanonical status given to it by Protestants would suggest. Augustine, for example, refers to it almost eight hundred times; see David Winston, “Solomon, Wisdom of” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 6, p. 127.
[22] See also Johnson, She Who Is, p. 91; Johnson speaks of “the functional equivalence between the deeds of Sophia and those of the biblical God.” See also her helpful review of five different understandings of Sophia language on pp. 90-93.
[23] This is a recent emphasis of scholarship. See Johnson, She Who Is, pp. 91-92: Sophia is “Israel’s God in female imagery” and “a female personification of God’s own being in creative and saving involvement with the world”; “Sophia personified divine reality.” Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, in In Memory of Her (New York: Crossroad, 1985), p. 132, speaks of “the female Gestalt of divine Sophia,” and of God imaged “in a woman’s Gestalt as divine Sophia.” According to James Dunn (cited in Johnson, She Who Is, p. 91 and p. 289, n. 29), Sophia is God, revealing and known. Roland Murphy, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 6, p. 927, points out that Sophia is of God, born of God, in God, and then asks rhetorically, “Is Wisdom not the Lord, who turns toward creatures and summons them through creation?” O’Connor, in The Wisdom Literature, says: “She is herself God” (p. 83), and “To follow Wisdom, to embrace her and to live with her, is finally to live with God” (p. 85).
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
To turn now to the New Testament, there are a number of passages in the synoptic gospels that associate Jesus with the figure of Sophia. On one occasion, Jesus is reported to have said:
Therefore also the Sophia of God said, “I will send them prophets and emissaries, some of whom they will kill and persecute,” so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world.[24]
[24] Luke 11.49-50 = Matthew 23.34-35. It is thus a Q passage, though only Luke has the introductory phrase that refers to Sophia. It is difficult to know whether Matthew deleted it from Q or Luke added it. In favor of the former possibility is the fact that another Q passage (to be treated next) has Jesus referring to Sophia: Luke 7.35 = Matthew 11.19.
Of most importance for our purposes is the introductory phrase, in which Jesus speaks for divine Sophia. Speaking her words, he is the envoy or emissary of Sophia. In another verse, Jesus speaks of himself as a child of Sophia. At the end of a passage that reports criticisms directed against Jesus and John the Baptizer, Jesus says:
John the Baptizer has come eating no bread and drinking no wine; and you say, “He has a demon.” The Son of man [a reference to Jesus himself] has come eating and drinking; and you say, “Behold, a glutton and a wino, a friend of tax collectors and sinners [outcasts]!” Yet Sophia is vindicated by her children.[25]
Here Jesus speaks of himself (and, implicitly, of the Baptizer as well) as a child of Sophia. Taken together, these two passages imply that the early Christian movement saw Jesus as both the spokesperson and the child of Sophia, and that Jesus himself may have spoken of himself in these terms.[26]
There are further associations between Sophia and the mission and message of Jesus in the synoptics. The connection to Jesus’ image of God as compassionate, as “like a womb,” is striking.[27] To say that God is like a womb is to say that God is like a woman, just as the personification of God as Sophia suggests that God is like a woman; and Jesus is a spokesperson for the compassion of Sophia/God. The centrality of banquets and banquet imagery, especially Jesus’ festive meals with outcasts, may also be connected to Sophia. Most often scholars have connected this practice to images of the messianic age as involving a banquet with the Messiah. This is possible. However, the association of Sophia with a banquet is at least equally strong in the Jewish tradition. Perhaps the banquets of Jesus are the banquets of Sophia.
[25] Luke 7.33-35 = Matthew 11.18-19. Matthew has “wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” whereas Luke has “by her children.” Luke’s version is more likely that of Q. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (New York: Doubleday, 1981), pp. 679, 681. Fitzmyer further notes that Luke probably added the word all to the Q saying, which originally referred to John and Jesus together as wisdom’s “children.” Matthew’s revision actually takes the relationship between Jesus and Sophia one step further: he speaks of Jesus’ deeds as the deeds of Sophia, thereby identifying Jesus with Wisdom herself. See also Matthew 11.28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. . . . For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The passage echoes Sirach 51.23-26, which speaks of Sophia’s “yoke,” and therefore the Jesus of Matthew speaks as wisdom. On Jesus as wisdom in Matthew, see James D. C. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), pp. 213-15; Johnson, She Who Is, pp. 95-96; and sources cited by both.
[26] See Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, pp. 130-40 (especially pp. 132-35). On the historical Jesus and Sophia, see also Johnson, She Who Is, pp. 156-58.
[27] See chapter 3 of this book [Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time].
There may also be a connection to the Kingdom of God. As already noted, throughout much of this century scholars have typically understood language about the Kingdom of God to refer to the eschatological or apocalyptic Kingdom, that future coming Kingdom that was to bring an end to the world as we know it.[28] But John Dominic Crossan in his recent book on Jesus argues that, with the collapse of the apocalyptic understanding of the Kingdom, we should probably see the meaning of Jesus’ Kingdom language in the context of the wisdom tradition.[29] That tradition also spoke of a Kingdom, and the Kingdom of which Jesus spoke may well be the Kingdom of Wisdom and not a Kingdom coming with the fires of the final judgment.
Some of this discussion is speculative, and whether it can be affirmed with confidence depends upon future research. But what can be said with confidence is that the synoptics portray Jesus not only as a wisdom teacher but also as one intimately related to Sophia.
[28] See chapter 2 of this book, p. 29, and n. 21.
[29] John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), pp. 287-92.
PAUL
… [Paul] speaks of Jesus as the Sophia of God.
… Justification by grace, on the other hand, is justification freely given by God as a gift. Its effect is to deliver us from the life of anxious striving and of the self-preoccupation that goes with it. For Paul, this is the central significance of the gospel of Christ:
We are now justified by God’s grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Christ is the end of the law.
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.[33]
[33] Romans 3.24; Romans 10.4.; Galatians 5.1.
… “Justification by works,” or “life under the law,” is life in the world of conventional wisdom, with its emphasis upon requirements and rewards. Life by grace is the alternative wisdom of Jesus, with its emphasis upon the compassion and Spirit of God. Paul explicitly used wisdom language to describe these two different ways of being in the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians, a letter written around the year 54. In response to factionalism within the Christian community in Corinth, Paul developed a strong contrast between “the wisdom of this world” and “the wisdom of God.” Implicitly, the factionalists (who, it is to be remembered, were Christians) were living by “the wisdom of this world.” This apparently consisted of identifying with a particular interpretation of the gospel, or possibly of identifying with a particular Christian leader. The factionalists had been saying, “’I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas.’”[36] Paul countered by speaking of “the wisdom of God” (which he also spoke of as “the foolishness of God” because it is the opposite of “the wisdom of this world”), which “destroys the wisdom of the wise.” The wisdom of God is “Christ crucified,” which shatters the wisdom of this world. It is grounded in “the Spirit that is from God” and not in “the spirit of the world.”[37] Its fruit is unity and not division.
In short, the contrast between “the wisdom of this world” and “the wisdom of God” is the same as the contrast between conventional wisdom and the alternative wisdom of Jesus. Like Jesus, Paul subverted the world of conventional wisdom; and he spoke of an alternative wisdom grounded in the grace of God as known in Jesus. There is thus a striking continuity between the wisdom teaching of Jesus and the center of Paul’s message.
In addition to this continuity, Paul also spoke explicitly of Christ as “the wisdom of God.”
We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.[38]
Some lines later Paul wrote: “God is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God.”[39]
[36] 1 Corinthians 1.12
[37] Respectively, 1 Corinthians 1.19, 23; 2.12.
[38] . 1 Corinthians 1.23-24. It is interesting to speculate about why “Christ crucified” is a stumbling block to Jews. The notion of a crucified Messiah was apparently unknown in the Jewish tradition, and was perhaps an impossible combination of terms. It may function as a koan does in Zen Buddhism–namely, as a paradox that shatters accepted ways of thinking. It thus may be a “Christian koan.”
[39] 1 Corinthians 1.30.
In what sense is Christ the wisdom of (and from) God? In particular, are we to understand “wisdom of God” in these verses as resonating with the nuances of divine Sophia? It is possible, and if so, it means that Paul spoke of Jesus as the Sophia of and from God.[40]
There is yet one further connection between Jewish language about Sophia and the language Paul used to speak about Jesus. In a couple of passages, Paul speaks of what we call the preexistence of Christ–that is, Christ existing from eternity with God and being active in creation. The first of these is in a compact formula in 1 Corinthians:
There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.[41]
The second passage, which is Pauline even if we cannot be certain that it is from Paul himself, expands the description of Christ’s role in creation:
Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in [or by] him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers–all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.[42]
The language here used about Christ is, of course, language used about Sophia in the Jewish tradition, which had shaped Paul. It not only describes Jesus in the language of divine wisdom, but in effect identifies Jesus with wisdom.[43] The preexistence of Christ is thus in fact the preexistence of divine Sophia. For Paul, Jesus is the embodiment of Sophia.
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
The presentation of Jesus in wisdom language is even more striking in the final voice from the New Testament that we shall consider, the gospel of John. The prologue to John’s gospel (which may have had its origin as an early Christian hymn, which the author of John then incorporated into the beginning of the gospel) begins with some of the best-known words in the Bible.[44] As I quote it, I will substitute the Greek word logos where the English translation reads “Word.”
In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God. He [the logos] was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him. And without him not one thing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. . . . He [the logos] was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. . . . And the logos became flesh and dwelt among us.[45]
[40] Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, pp. 188-92; she includes these verses in her data base for arguing that the pre-Pauline (and thus very early) Christian missionary movement had a “Sophia christology.” She also cites the following pre-Pauline hymns or hymn fragments as reflecting Sophia theology: Philippians 2.6-11; 1 Timothy 3.16; Colossians 1.15-20; Ephesians 2.14-16; Hebrews 1.3; 1 Peter 3.18, 22; John 1.1-14.
[41] 1 Corinthians 8.6.1 Corinthians 8.6.
[42] Colossians 1.15-17. Colossians (along with Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians) is among those letters about which scholars are divided regarding whether they were written by Paul himself. To say that Colossians is Pauline indicates that it has strong affinities with Paul’s thought, whether written by him or not. For a compact treatment of the question, see Victor P. Furnish, “Colossians,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol 1, pp. 1090-96.
[43] See especially Dunn, Partings of the Ways, pp. 195-97.
[44] John 1.1-18. If this passage is based on an early Christian hymn, verses 6-8 (which speak of John the Baptizer) appear to be an insertion added by the author of the gospel.
[45] John 1.1-4, 10, 14.
It is important in these opening verses of the gospel not to think of “Word” or logos as referring to Jesus, if by Jesus we mean “Jesus of Nazareth.” Reading it as “Jesus” is unconsciously encouraged both by the later Christian doctrine of the Trinity and by the use of masculine pronouns in the Greek original and in English translations. But masculine pronouns are used because logos is a masculine noun in Greek, not because the referent of he is Jesus. John is not saying, “In the beginning was Jesus,” as if John thought Jesus of Nazareth was present at creation. Rather, that which became incarnate in Jesus–namely, the logos–was present at creation. It is the logos (not Jesus) that was with God and that was God.[46]
[46] ”Jesus” is first referred to in verse 14: “The logos became flesh and dwelt among us.” These few words are, in effect, John’s story of Jesus’ birth. The tendency to hear the whole of the prologue as referring to Jesus is illustrated by a recent conversation following a lecture in which I had said that the historical Jesus was not omniscient–that as a first-century person Jesus probably thought that the earth was at the center of the universe, that it was flat, and so forth. My questioner, an intelligent, well-educated Christian lawyer, said that he thought Jesus would have known that the earth was round, the sun at the center of the solar system, and so forth because Jesus had been present at creation and would have seen it all. His basis for thinking so was his reading the whole of John 1 as if it referred to Jesus of Nazareth.
Scholars have long noted the close relationship between what John says about the logos and what is said about Sophia in the Jewish tradition. Sophia was present with God from the beginning, active in creation, and is present in the created world.[47] This functional equivalency between logos and Sophia suggests that it is legitimate to substitute Sophia for logos, “Wisdom” for “Word,” in the prologue to John’s gospel. Moreover, because Sophia is a feminine noun in Greek, the pronouns also become feminine:[48]
In the beginning was Sophia, and Sophia was with God, and Sophia was God. She was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through her. And without her not one thing came into being that has come into being. In her was life, and the life was the light of all people. . . . She was in the world, and the world came into being through her, yet the world did not know her.
And then the climax is reached: “And Sophia became flesh and dwelt among us.”[49] Jesus is the incarnation of divine Sophia, Sophia become flesh.[50]
[47] One more similarity may be cited. Verse 10 of John’s prologue says that even though the logos was in the world, “yet the world did not know the logos.” So also with Wisdom/Sophia: in the Jewish tradition, it is often said that she was ignored.
[48] See Stevan Davies, The New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 169. The claim that “Wisdom” (as much as or more than logos) lies behind the Johannine prologue is quite old; see Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 418, and sources cited there. Davies suggests that the author of John uses the masculine noun logos rather than the feminine noun sophia because Jesus was male. For further comments about why John may have chosen logos rather than sophia, see Johnson, She Who Is, pp. 97-98.
[49] There is a further connection. The Greek word translated “dwelt” actually means “tabernacled” or “tented.” This is said about Sophia in Sirach 24: she “tented” within Israel. The importance of wisdom categories is not restricted to John’s prologue, but runs throughout the gospel. See Dunn, Partings of the Ways, pp. 226-27, and sources cited there.
[50] Even Saint Augustine, not typically thought of as having much feminist sensitivity, speaks of Jesus as the incarnation of Sophia: “She was sent in one way that she might be with human beings; and she has been sent another way that she herself might be a human being.” De Trin 4.20.27; cited in Johnson, She Who Is, pp. 156-57.
A COMPLEMENTARITY OF CHRISTOLOGICAL IMAGES
Our exploration of the role of Sophia as wisdom in the Jewish tradition and in the New Testament discloses a number of things. It enables us to see a nice symmetry between Jesus as a teacher of wisdom and the early movement’s image of him as one intimately related to Sophia. As the voice of an alternative wisdom, Jesus is also the voice of Sophia.
It also enables us to glimpse what may be the earliest Christology of the Christian movement.[51] The use of Sophia language to speak about Jesus goes back to the earliest layers of the developing tradition. It is also, as we have seen, widespread across the tradition. According to the synoptics, Paul, and John, that which was present in Jesus was the Sophia of God. This points not only to the centrality of Sophia language in the formation of the early Christian movement, but also to a gender complementarity of Christologies. For early Christianity, Jesus was the Son of the Father and the incarnation of Sophia, the child of the intimate Abba, and the child of Sophia. This awareness is very helpful for us in an age of growing sensitivity to the issue of inclusive language. It also points to the impossibility of literalizing Christological language. The multiplicity of images for speaking of Jesus’ relationship to God (as logos, Sophia, Son–to name but a few) should make it clear that none of them is to be taken literally. They are metaphorical.
[51] See also Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, p. 134; and Dunn, Partings of the Ways, p. 195: wisdom is “probably the single most important category in the development of earliest christology.”
This is important to understand in a tradition whose Christological and devotional language has been dominated by patriarchal imagery. Trinitarian language and liturgical formulae that speak of “Father and Son” easily create the impression that this is the definitive Christian way of speaking about God and Jesus. But it is useful to realize that the dominance of father/son imagery reflects the fact that Trinitarian thinking took shape in a patriarchal and androcentric culture. To imagine the impossible: had the Trinity been formulated in a matriarchal culture, Jesus might still be spoken of as “son,” but one may be quite sure that he would not be spoken of primarily as Son of the Father.[52]
[52] See Sandra M. Schneiders’s interview on the multiplicity and metaphoricity of images for God in the Bible: “God Is More than Two Men and a Bird,” U.S. Catholic, May 1990, pp. 20-27. I find her title especially illuminating.
Thus it is not the case that Jesus is literally “the Son of God,” though he can also be spoken of metaphorically in other ways, such as the Sophia of God. Rather, both are metaphors. What they have in common is that they point to Jesus as one whose relationship to God was so intimate and deep that he could be spoken of as the son of Abba and the child of Sophia. We do not (and probably cannot) know whether this way of speaking began while Jesus was still alive, or whether these images were present in his own consciousness. True, it is plausible to see a connection between this language and what we can surmise about his experience. The intimacy of the metaphors is consistent with seeing the pre-Easter Jesus as a spirit person. As one who knew the Spirit, Jesus may have imaged and/or experienced the Spirit as Abba and as Sophia. But did he, in addition, think of himself as “son” (in some special sense) of the one he called Abba? Did he think of himself as a child or emissary of divine Sophia? Given the nature of our sources, I find it difficult to imagine how a judgment of historical probability could be reached on this particular matter.[53]
[53] To every attempt to speak of “the christology of Jesus” (if by that one means whether he held ideas about himself similar in some ways to the post-Easter estimate of him), one can only say, “It could be so, but it could so easily be the product of the community.” Perhaps more than any other part of the developing tradition, “christological” passages must be systematically suspect: they represent the area of the community’s imaging and thinking that underwent the greatest development after Easter. This judgment, I want to emphasize, applies to the question of Christology in particular, and not to the gospel tradition in its entirety (I think we can make quite strong historical probability arguments about many parts of the tradition).
Yet though we cannot know whether these images were part of the self-understanding of Jesus, it is clear that imaging Jesus as “Son of God” and as “the wisdom of God” is in the oldest stratum of the movement’s developing traditions. Thus, whether or not these images tell us anything about the consciousness of Jesus, they put us in touch with the earliest stage of the community’s process of Christological image making and reflection. Strikingly, “Son of God” and “Sophia of God” are both found in that earliest stage.
The presence of both son and wisdom Christologies in the early movement affects the popular image of Jesus, the Jesus we have met before.
Their presence points to gender complementarity in thinking about Jesus, which is quite new to many people. Beyond that, they also move Christological thinking out of the literalistic framework that most often accompanies the popular image. The multiplicity of early Christological images–“son” and “wisdom” and others–leads to the recognition that this language is metaphorical.
This recognition subverts the common impression that Christian faith involves believing that Jesus was literally “the Son of God.” It is a helpful subversion. The literalistic reading of “Son of God” narrows the scope of Christology by giving primacy to one image. It also is very hard to believe, in part because of uncertainty about what is being affirmed when one says Jesus was literally the Son of God.
But when “Son of God” is seen instead as one metaphor among several, it opens up the possibility of a much richer understanding of the significance of Jesus as experienced and expressed in the early Christian movement. The issue is no longer believing that Jesus was literally the Son of God, but appreciating the richness of meaning suggested by the multiplicity of Christological images. He was “the Son,” yes, but also the incarnation of the Word, which was also the Wisdom of God. He was the Son of God, the logos of God, and the Sophia of God.[54]
[54] To illustrate the claim that all Christological language is metaphorical, I share a story that I owe to John Dominic Crossan. Asked by an exasperated questioner, “Do you believe Jesus was the Son of God or don’t you?” Crossan replied, “Yes–I believe he was the Son of God, and the Word of God, and the Lamb of God.” The point of the reply is clear, even though it was not appreciated by the questioner (who said, “You theologians! You’re all alike!”). Just as Jesus is not literally “the Lamb of God” (he was not a sheep), and not literally the Word of Cod (what would that mean?), so also he is not literally “the Son of God” (what would it mean for this to be literally true–biological sonship?). Rather, all involve the metaphorical use of images.
The point Marcus Borg makes about the language of both Sophia and Son as metaphor is further backed up by the book The Real Paul: Recovering His Radical Challenge by Bernard Brandon Scott, wherein he explains that:
The proof that an emperor is god’s son is his defeat of the nations. Rome’s military victories demonstrate that the gods favor Rome. This is precisely the argument made in stone by the Arch of Titus.
Source: location: 661
The power of [Paul’s] title “his son” derives from its juxtaposition with “crucified by Rome.” Paul’s apocalypsis/revelation implies a counter-world to that of the Roman Empire. It is an anti-imperial insight. We have to always keep this in mind because of our tendency to see Jesus as son of God as “just” or “only” religious [in terminology] and therefore devoid of political implication.
Location: 672
The titles of son and father are explicitly imperial titles. The emperor is a son of god, often so proclaimed on coins, and father of the fatherland (pater patriae). The way these titles are employed in dealing with Paul’s apocalypsis/revelation walks along the line of sedition. It directly and explicitly contests Rome’s ideology. The traditional interpretation of Paul sees his main opposition as Judaism, but our line of argument suggests that his main opponent is Roman ideology. The Augustinian/Lutheran understanding of Paul has clearly understood Judaism as the opposite of Paul’s new religion, Christianity. But our exploration is suggesting that Rome fills that place.
Location: 677
In other words, Paul was using the religious language of the Empire that spoke in terms of a universal fatherhood of God among gods and the Roman Emperor as Son of God. Therefore, it appears that Paul was taking his Christ experience and expressing it in the metaphorical language of the Roman Empire in order to subvert it. We also learn from scholarship that Paul speaks of Gentiles being adopted into Israel which is another Roman Imperial concept. We also know that Paul refers to his followers/members of his assemblies as Sons. Yet he clearly had women followers, but continues to use the masculine pronoun Sons to refer to all of his followers. This further supports Marcus Borg's contention that Paul’s is using metaphorical language based on a particular patriarchal culture which is further supported by Bernard Brandon Scott who argues that Paul is seeking to subvert the language metaphors of Roman Imperial religion, by using its language of father and son to offer a counter divine "son" with Jesus as Son of God.
After writing the above and quoting Borg and Brandon I was reading through the book From Literal to Literary: The Essential Reference Book for Biblical Metaphors by James Rowe Adams, and on pages 272-273 he explains that the word adelphoi means "from the same womb." He then quotes John 3:5-7 and explains that the "Spirit" is metaphorically like a womb that nurtures new Christians so they can be born anew into a new consciousness. Since Christians are from the same "womb" of the Spirit they are all brothers and sisters. In most translations adelphoi is translated brethren or brothers; but Adams points out that the NSRV rightly translates it often as brothers and sisters as that is how it was interpreted by its early Christian readers.
Combining the scholarship above, I think a reasonable case could be made for thinking of "Heavenly Mother" as Sophia. If Sophia was with Jehovah as divine Wisdom (or a Logos-presence described above by Marcus Borg), as one of the gods mentioned in D&C 121:32, could they (Sophia & Jehovah) have chosen one of the spirit Intelligences in Abraham 3 to embody on earth her divine Wisdom, by acting as a human vessel of her divine nature, the divine nature of Sophia as a heavenly mother spirit full of compassionate energy? Could this give new meaning to 2 Peter 1:4 and Collosians 2:9, as God's fulness could include Sophia and her Wisdom (Wise presence), thus the divine nature could include Jehovah and both the masculine and feminine Logos described above? So that when Jehovah talks about "the works which my hands have made, wherein my wisdom excelleth them all [all the Intelligences]" (Abraham 3: 21, emphasis added), that this would include the wisdom of his copartner Sophia and her creative works mentioned in Proverbs 8, as well as the masculine Logos as the spirit/Intelligence of Abraham 3:24 (who is the Only Begotten of Moses 4), who chose to be the savior/healer on earth; and was thus concieved and infused (as a body of flesh per Mosiah 15: 1-5) with the divine DNA and noomatic energy of Sophia as the feminine Logos/Wisdom (the divine-presence of Love, hence "God" is Love) and the divine DNA of Jehovah (a Man of War) who is also loving in His own way; and then this Intelligence, the Word of God (see Moses 1:32) was born through a human woman but had the dual divine DNA of Jehovah and Sophia: and thus it's no wonder that Jesus of Nazareth was the perfect example of love and strength, compassion and assertiveness, etc. Is that a theological possibility?
Suggested Reading:
> Sophia of the Proverbs and the Feminine Divine
