The Holy Spirit
I have called the Holy Spirit a she, and in doing so have created concerns that have brought some discussion. Simple things can become very complicated, and that is the case presently. With just one reference saying that the Holy Spirit has feminine traits and calling her a she suddenly makes me a New Age heretic and Gnostic.
Rather than neither attacking the accusations nor making excuses for myself, I will speak about my faith and address these concerns in the context of the greater view of my beliefs, understandings and how I got to where I am. This is not an overly brief dissertation that can be said in three paragraphs and it is not overly lengthy dissertation of 50 pages or more.
Firstly, I believe in the Holy Trinity that is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. I believe the Father created the universe and the Son and the Holy Spirit were present at that time. I believe that Christ is the Way the Truth and the Life, and the one called Christ is Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified and rose again from the dead. I do not believe that Christ is a universal idea that transcends all religions and beliefs. Furthermore, I do not believe that all spiritual paths lead to salvation.
I went to a monastery of sorts in a town not far from me, called Mother’s Love Trust. There I encountered a belief that there are many ways to the roof, a rope, a ladder and stairs. All ways work you must chose one path and stay on it. I agree that all religions are spiritual and all religions can increase your spiritual awareness. Religions other than Christianity teach ways to have unity with the cosmos, but in Christianity, Jesus is the only Way to have true unity with the Creator of the Cosmos, an ordered universe. That is, not only do I have unity with the One who created the universe but also with the same One who gives it order. This understanding goes beyond spiritual awareness to a unity with the One and all who follow the One. This understanding leads me to reject that all spiritual paths lead to eternal life with One, who is called God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
So with that said let’s return the Holy Spirit.
I began an exercise to find references to The Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. Such references would have to exist because God is in three persons and God is always present and so therefore The Holy Spirit must have been always present. The problem was is that I could not find any direct references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. However, I found many indirect references that speak of the “spirit of God,” but none directly talked of a Holy Spirit. Then I looked beyond the name and into the actions of the Holy Spirit. I asked, what does the Holy Spirit do for us or give us, that God did for or gave people in the Old Testament? I found several references.
In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is our Advocate; the Holy Spirit gives us wisdom and understanding; the Holy Spirit inspires. We can only know Jesus through the Holy Spirit. We can blaspheme the Father and the Son and be forgiven but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not forgivable. The list goes on and on. But, if the Holy Spirit is so important then why isn’t there more said about the third person of the Holy Trinity in the Old Testament? That is a puzzle.
Perhaps the problem I had was not in what I was looking for but rather in how I was looking for it. I was taught that Christ is the lens through which we view Holy Scripture. So then, how do I look at Christ? So much of my understanding of Christ comes through medieval theology and that is not always good.
Medieval Sacrificial Theology
After the fall of the Roman Empire the Roman Catholic Church needed an army to protect it. The Church looked not to the Holy Spirit for protection but to the papacy and the papacy looked to kings like Charlemagne to protect the Church. The pope claimed authority over Charlemagne by crowning him the Holy Roman Emperor. Out of this came the understanding that the Pope is the highest authority of the Church even when the Pope disagrees with Holy Scripture, in doing so the Pope elevated the importance of tradition and made the Holy Scriptures secondary to understanding God.
Theology became even darker. Holy Spirit was no longer the way to Jesus, but the Church was. In fact the teachings developed into a complex hierarchy of saints through which Christians prayed to finally approach Mary, the mother of Jesus who then brought our pleas and petitions to Jesus. The relationship to the Church was primary and relationship to God was secondary. Jesus was viewed as an angry judge and Mary was the mediatrix and advocate, that is the Virgin Mary possessed traits that belong to Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Before Catholic theology went too far adrift, Anselm of Canterbury taught that God had a plan of salvation from the beginning and that plan was made full when Jesus died on the cross. The sins of our first parents and our individual sins brought dishonor to God and that through the sacrificial death of Jesus, honor was restored and God’s plan for our salvation was made complete.
As good and well as that may sound, it leaves me with a small dilemma. Isn’t God a loving God? Why would a God who loves us so much want to restore honor to Himself by demanding a sacrifice. An angry god demands sacrifices. I get angry with my children and as sinful as I am I do not demand death, and God is perfect and holy. Yet, it seems fine with Anselm and many who follow his teaching that God demanded death. Jesus was sent to give us eternal life with God for our benefit not God’s. I am not in anyway rejecting all the teachings of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, for he wrote great many things, which are very beneficial for us today. I am only questioning his understanding of sacrifice. I will not forget that Anselm influenced Thomas Beckett and Thomas Aquinas.
As Church leaders were more directly influenced from his teachings the Church’s iconography changed. Bishops commissioned images such as statues, carvings and stain glassed windows in the cathedrals to depict their understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice, and therefore churches had more images of Jesus bleeding in the 12th and 13th Centuries. The blood and gore of his death became a mainstay in churches in the 12th Century after St. Anselm’s death; Jesus as the sacrifice became very popular with the bishops and these images influenced believers for centuries after. Some of this iconography included Jesus with the crown of thorns and blood dripping from his forehead; Jesus nailed to the cross with blood dripping from the nail wounds and from his pierced side. This understanding of the necessity for blood is still with us today as can be seen in Mel Gibson’s popular film The Passion of the Christ.
Jesus’ death doesn’t seem very sacrificial or gory in the Gospels, by the fact that blood is never mentioned. His death is a humiliating one but not gory. Enough details are given to know that he was indeed humiliated and crucified but the images of dripping blood and torn flesh are absent in the four Canonical Gospels. I can not ignore that the notion of a sacrifice was around in the first Century about 900 years before Anselm, in Hebrews 10 that the apostle states:
. 11And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God,’ 13and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’ 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, 16‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,’ 17he also adds, ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’ 18Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
19 Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
The apostle talks about Jesus’ blood as a single sacrifice that takes away our sins. So Anselm wasn’t teaching anything that new. It is important to notice that apostle who wrote Hebrews is also encouraging converted Jews to stop reverting to the Judean practices to avoid persecution and encourages them remember their baptisms and cling to their faith without wavering. And in the midst of this passage lies a reference to the Holy Spirit who testifies that God will forever forget our sins and lawless deeds.
And it is here where I struggled. Since Jesus was forgiving sins before he died on the cross then why did his death have to be sacrificial? Was Jesus’ death on the cross more than a sacrifice? I concluded that his death was not a sacrifice alone but also a humiliation on the path toward exultation. Crucifixion during the Roman Empire, was an eradication of identity. The person was placed on a cross and over the head was the crime that the person had committed, such as rebel, thief, murderer, etc. Only non-Roman citizens were crucified, and their death was not caused by bloodletting but through agonizing suffocation. The corpse was usually on the cross until the dogs and birds ate way at the flesh and face until all that remained on the cross was rotting tissue on a skeleton and the sign indicating the crime. This was not unlike the Old West in the USA when horse thieves were hung and the body was on display at the Sheriff’s office porch with word “Horse Thief” hanging around the neck to act as a deterrence for other would be criminals. In this manner, Pontius Pilate was saying crucifixion would be the fate of all Judean Kings and they best beware. I see his death now more as a humiliation than a sacrifice as I did in the past.
I consider myself a Christian and call Jesus the Son of God and the son of man. The term “son of god” was title used by the Roman Emperor’s; Tiberius whose reign coincided with Jesus’ life used this title as well. In this manner, I see Jesus as the most powerful and most important man on the face of the earth. Also, Jesus is the son of man, at title that would mean literally nobody. His death on the cross then was the lowest point of his life and his resurrection then would be his greatest. Therefore his crucifixion was not so much as a sacrifice but as bridge between humanity and God.
Knowledge and Wisdom
I used to think like the Gnostics do in that all matter is evil and only the spirit is good. I saw Jesus/God indwelling in a human form and that the human form died and God lived on. I wrestled with this idea for some time. I dismiss that understanding, but I still hold to the idea that we must know something. The Gnostics taught that they possessed secret knowledge and that only through understanding this secret knowledge could anyone be saved. One of their secrets was to that in order for Grace to fully abide the greatest sin needed to be committed and usually this meant a sin of a sexual nature. This of course is a direct contradiction to what Paul states in Romans.
What I do understand though, in order for Jesus to be the Way to eternal life he had drop to the lowest spiritual level, Hell, and then to rise to the highest spiritual level, “The Right Hand of God, where his enemies will be made a footstool for his feat. This is not an easy concept to grasp, and even the disciples who were with Jesus for three years did not understand Jesus’ humiliation and exultation until they received the Holy Spirit.
In John’s Gospel Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into them. In Acts the Holy Spirit comes like a rushing wind and a tongue of fire lighting on top of their heads is the sign that they received the Holy Spirit. How we receive the Holy Spirit doesn’t seem as important as what happens when we do. After receiving the Holy Spirit the disciples had the knowledge of what Jesus’ ministry was all about, and they had the wisdom to know what they had to do. Jesus to me now is the bridge between humanity and God, and the Holy Spirit gives us the wisdom so that we can understand more fully God’s love and this works in us and changes us. So with a new look at Jesus, the lens of through which I look at the Holy Scriptures, and believing that is the Holy Spirit that gives the insights to understand, I then returned to the Old Testament.
I was selecting the readings for the Great Easter Vigil service at my home church. The one that really stood out for me was from Proverbs 8
Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
2On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
4“To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
5O simple ones, learn prudence;
acquire intelligence, you who lack it.
6Hear, for I will speak noble things,
and from my lips will come what is right;
7for my mouth will utter truth;
wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
8All the words of my mouth are righteous;
there is nothing twisted or crooked in them.
19My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold,
and my yield than choice silver.
20I walk in the way of righteousness,
along the paths of justice,
21endowing with wealth those who love me,
and filling their treasuries.
4“You that are simple, turn in here!”
To those without sense she says,
5“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”
Wisdom is a feminine noun and is personified as a woman. While I briefly attended Western Theological Seminary I heard a seminarian say that it is possible that the Holy Spirit is a woman. I didn’t think much of it then. My former pastor on Pentecost Sunday said while standing at the pulpit that she thinks of the Holy Spirit as a woman, equating the Holy Spirit with Sophia. Although Sophia is usually viewed as a goddess of wisdom, the word for wisdom in the New Testament is Sophia, and in the Hebrew, hokmah. Because the Hebrew and Aramaic possess only feminine or masculine nouns, hokmah is a feminine noun and the writer of Proverbs clearly calls Wisdom a she.
In my search for the presence of the Holy Spirit I found the qualities of the Holy Spirit in Wisdom, not just in Proverbs, but in Psalms and Ecclesiastes as well.
It is interesting to note that throughout history the Christian God has been associated with a woman. In the Holy Land ancient altars to YWHW have been found along with an altar for YWHW’s consort. Wisdom was deified in Western culture in during the Roman Empire until the 4th Century CE. Christian iconography in the Greek Churches of Eastern part of the Roman Empire depicts images of the Holy Trinity along with the goddess Sophia. In the Latin Church, it was the Virgin Mary who was elevated and seen as a fourth person among the Holy Trinity.
What is worse to think that the Holy Spirit is a female deity or to include a deified woman in equal status with the Holy Trinity? I am not alone in thinking that the Holy Spirit is a woman and furthermore believing that there is a feminine presence in the Godhead is nothing new to Christianity or to Judaism. Yet, somehow I have managed to shock those who are close to me by referring to the Holy Spirit as a she. I think it is more shocking to view the Virgin Mary as an equal with the Holy Trinity, and Wisdom a goddess among the Holy Trinity.
The Church is the body of Christ and the Bride of Christ. As the body of Christ we are all part of the greater whole endowed with spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit to carry out what is required of us. And what does the Lord require of us?
Micah 6:8He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Is that an echo of Proverbs that I hear? It seems to me that the Holy Spirit directs us to love and humbly walk with the Lord our God—the way of insight.
As the Bride of Christ we eagerly wait for our Bridegroom to return, and we want our Lord Jesus to return to a Bride that has been faithful. I see the Holy Sprit as the one who steers the Church away from false teachings so that Christ will return with an undefiled bride. She is the Church’s companion who gives the Church strength and insight. It is easier for me to see a woman in this role than a man. And does it really matter? John the Evangelist took a neuter noun for the Holy Spirit and used the masculine pronoun, he. Why?
The Ephesus Dilemma
In the city of ancient Ephesus there stood one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Temple of Artemis. Men could pay to frolic with one of the priestesses, or watch other men frolic with them. Sexual unity with a priestess in the Temple of Artemis was understood as having union with the goddess herself.
It is no wonder to me that John the Bishop in Ephesus used the pronoun he when referring to the Holy Spirit. It also explains why in Ephesians and the letters to Timothy there is a plea not to let women lead in the Church. A female leader could be seen and most likely would have been seen as a priestess, on the same level as one in the Temple of Artemis. This means that men might have approached and most likely would have approached a female church leader for sexual coupling in order to be in unity with God. The female leader would have been compromised and the Gospel message would be highly ineffective, and that is if she weren’t raped. The Temple of Artemis was standing and still in use when Constantine called for the bishops to assemble in Nicea. The Asia Minor bishops had strong influence at the Council of Nicea and this same council wrote the Nicene Creed, where the Holy Spirit is referred to as a he.
The final chapter to the Temple of Artemis came in AD 401 when St John Chrysostom tore it down. We are living more than 1600 years after that event and presently women are leaders in politics, business and in some Churches. Perhaps it would be more grammatically correct to say that the Holy Spirit is an “it”, rather than a “he.”
The Holy Spirit does indeed possess many feminine traits. Like I said earlier, I am not the only one who refers to the Holy Spirit as a she. Does this make me and all who do heretics? I am a heretic? If so, where are my beliefs unorthodox?
The many topics that I have left untouched which include but are not limited to, Original Sin, the Presence of Christ in Holy Communion, Free Will and Predestination--perhaps at another time.
I have called the Holy Spirit a she, and in doing so have created concerns that have brought some discussion. Simple things can become very complicated, and that is the case presently. With just one reference saying that the Holy Spirit has feminine traits and calling her a she suddenly makes me a New Age heretic and Gnostic.
Rather than neither attacking the accusations nor making excuses for myself, I will speak about my faith and address these concerns in the context of the greater view of my beliefs, understandings and how I got to where I am. This is not an overly brief dissertation that can be said in three paragraphs and it is not overly lengthy dissertation of 50 pages or more.
Firstly, I believe in the Holy Trinity that is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. I believe the Father created the universe and the Son and the Holy Spirit were present at that time. I believe that Christ is the Way the Truth and the Life, and the one called Christ is Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified and rose again from the dead. I do not believe that Christ is a universal idea that transcends all religions and beliefs. Furthermore, I do not believe that all spiritual paths lead to salvation.
I went to a monastery of sorts in a town not far from me, called Mother’s Love Trust. There I encountered a belief that there are many ways to the roof, a rope, a ladder and stairs. All ways work you must chose one path and stay on it. I agree that all religions are spiritual and all religions can increase your spiritual awareness. Religions other than Christianity teach ways to have unity with the cosmos, but in Christianity, Jesus is the only Way to have true unity with the Creator of the Cosmos, an ordered universe. That is, not only do I have unity with the One who created the universe but also with the same One who gives it order. This understanding goes beyond spiritual awareness to a unity with the One and all who follow the One. This understanding leads me to reject that all spiritual paths lead to eternal life with One, who is called God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
So with that said let’s return the Holy Spirit.
I began an exercise to find references to The Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. Such references would have to exist because God is in three persons and God is always present and so therefore The Holy Spirit must have been always present. The problem was is that I could not find any direct references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. However, I found many indirect references that speak of the “spirit of God,” but none directly talked of a Holy Spirit. Then I looked beyond the name and into the actions of the Holy Spirit. I asked, what does the Holy Spirit do for us or give us, that God did for or gave people in the Old Testament? I found several references.
In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is our Advocate; the Holy Spirit gives us wisdom and understanding; the Holy Spirit inspires. We can only know Jesus through the Holy Spirit. We can blaspheme the Father and the Son and be forgiven but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not forgivable. The list goes on and on. But, if the Holy Spirit is so important then why isn’t there more said about the third person of the Holy Trinity in the Old Testament? That is a puzzle.
Perhaps the problem I had was not in what I was looking for but rather in how I was looking for it. I was taught that Christ is the lens through which we view Holy Scripture. So then, how do I look at Christ? So much of my understanding of Christ comes through medieval theology and that is not always good.
Medieval Sacrificial Theology
After the fall of the Roman Empire the Roman Catholic Church needed an army to protect it. The Church looked not to the Holy Spirit for protection but to the papacy and the papacy looked to kings like Charlemagne to protect the Church. The pope claimed authority over Charlemagne by crowning him the Holy Roman Emperor. Out of this came the understanding that the Pope is the highest authority of the Church even when the Pope disagrees with Holy Scripture, in doing so the Pope elevated the importance of tradition and made the Holy Scriptures secondary to understanding God.
Theology became even darker. Holy Spirit was no longer the way to Jesus, but the Church was. In fact the teachings developed into a complex hierarchy of saints through which Christians prayed to finally approach Mary, the mother of Jesus who then brought our pleas and petitions to Jesus. The relationship to the Church was primary and relationship to God was secondary. Jesus was viewed as an angry judge and Mary was the mediatrix and advocate, that is the Virgin Mary possessed traits that belong to Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Before Catholic theology went too far adrift, Anselm of Canterbury taught that God had a plan of salvation from the beginning and that plan was made full when Jesus died on the cross. The sins of our first parents and our individual sins brought dishonor to God and that through the sacrificial death of Jesus, honor was restored and God’s plan for our salvation was made complete.
As good and well as that may sound, it leaves me with a small dilemma. Isn’t God a loving God? Why would a God who loves us so much want to restore honor to Himself by demanding a sacrifice. An angry god demands sacrifices. I get angry with my children and as sinful as I am I do not demand death, and God is perfect and holy. Yet, it seems fine with Anselm and many who follow his teaching that God demanded death. Jesus was sent to give us eternal life with God for our benefit not God’s. I am not in anyway rejecting all the teachings of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, for he wrote great many things, which are very beneficial for us today. I am only questioning his understanding of sacrifice. I will not forget that Anselm influenced Thomas Beckett and Thomas Aquinas.
As Church leaders were more directly influenced from his teachings the Church’s iconography changed. Bishops commissioned images such as statues, carvings and stain glassed windows in the cathedrals to depict their understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice, and therefore churches had more images of Jesus bleeding in the 12th and 13th Centuries. The blood and gore of his death became a mainstay in churches in the 12th Century after St. Anselm’s death; Jesus as the sacrifice became very popular with the bishops and these images influenced believers for centuries after. Some of this iconography included Jesus with the crown of thorns and blood dripping from his forehead; Jesus nailed to the cross with blood dripping from the nail wounds and from his pierced side. This understanding of the necessity for blood is still with us today as can be seen in Mel Gibson’s popular film The Passion of the Christ.
Jesus’ death doesn’t seem very sacrificial or gory in the Gospels, by the fact that blood is never mentioned. His death is a humiliating one but not gory. Enough details are given to know that he was indeed humiliated and crucified but the images of dripping blood and torn flesh are absent in the four Canonical Gospels. I can not ignore that the notion of a sacrifice was around in the first Century about 900 years before Anselm, in Hebrews 10 that the apostle states:
. 11And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God,’ 13and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’ 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, 16‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,’ 17he also adds, ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’ 18Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
19 Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
The apostle talks about Jesus’ blood as a single sacrifice that takes away our sins. So Anselm wasn’t teaching anything that new. It is important to notice that apostle who wrote Hebrews is also encouraging converted Jews to stop reverting to the Judean practices to avoid persecution and encourages them remember their baptisms and cling to their faith without wavering. And in the midst of this passage lies a reference to the Holy Spirit who testifies that God will forever forget our sins and lawless deeds.
And it is here where I struggled. Since Jesus was forgiving sins before he died on the cross then why did his death have to be sacrificial? Was Jesus’ death on the cross more than a sacrifice? I concluded that his death was not a sacrifice alone but also a humiliation on the path toward exultation. Crucifixion during the Roman Empire, was an eradication of identity. The person was placed on a cross and over the head was the crime that the person had committed, such as rebel, thief, murderer, etc. Only non-Roman citizens were crucified, and their death was not caused by bloodletting but through agonizing suffocation. The corpse was usually on the cross until the dogs and birds ate way at the flesh and face until all that remained on the cross was rotting tissue on a skeleton and the sign indicating the crime. This was not unlike the Old West in the USA when horse thieves were hung and the body was on display at the Sheriff’s office porch with word “Horse Thief” hanging around the neck to act as a deterrence for other would be criminals. In this manner, Pontius Pilate was saying crucifixion would be the fate of all Judean Kings and they best beware. I see his death now more as a humiliation than a sacrifice as I did in the past.
I consider myself a Christian and call Jesus the Son of God and the son of man. The term “son of god” was title used by the Roman Emperor’s; Tiberius whose reign coincided with Jesus’ life used this title as well. In this manner, I see Jesus as the most powerful and most important man on the face of the earth. Also, Jesus is the son of man, at title that would mean literally nobody. His death on the cross then was the lowest point of his life and his resurrection then would be his greatest. Therefore his crucifixion was not so much as a sacrifice but as bridge between humanity and God.
Knowledge and Wisdom
I used to think like the Gnostics do in that all matter is evil and only the spirit is good. I saw Jesus/God indwelling in a human form and that the human form died and God lived on. I wrestled with this idea for some time. I dismiss that understanding, but I still hold to the idea that we must know something. The Gnostics taught that they possessed secret knowledge and that only through understanding this secret knowledge could anyone be saved. One of their secrets was to that in order for Grace to fully abide the greatest sin needed to be committed and usually this meant a sin of a sexual nature. This of course is a direct contradiction to what Paul states in Romans.
What I do understand though, in order for Jesus to be the Way to eternal life he had drop to the lowest spiritual level, Hell, and then to rise to the highest spiritual level, “The Right Hand of God, where his enemies will be made a footstool for his feat. This is not an easy concept to grasp, and even the disciples who were with Jesus for three years did not understand Jesus’ humiliation and exultation until they received the Holy Spirit.
In John’s Gospel Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into them. In Acts the Holy Spirit comes like a rushing wind and a tongue of fire lighting on top of their heads is the sign that they received the Holy Spirit. How we receive the Holy Spirit doesn’t seem as important as what happens when we do. After receiving the Holy Spirit the disciples had the knowledge of what Jesus’ ministry was all about, and they had the wisdom to know what they had to do. Jesus to me now is the bridge between humanity and God, and the Holy Spirit gives us the wisdom so that we can understand more fully God’s love and this works in us and changes us. So with a new look at Jesus, the lens of through which I look at the Holy Scriptures, and believing that is the Holy Spirit that gives the insights to understand, I then returned to the Old Testament.
I was selecting the readings for the Great Easter Vigil service at my home church. The one that really stood out for me was from Proverbs 8
Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
2On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
4“To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
5O simple ones, learn prudence;
acquire intelligence, you who lack it.
6Hear, for I will speak noble things,
and from my lips will come what is right;
7for my mouth will utter truth;
wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
8All the words of my mouth are righteous;
there is nothing twisted or crooked in them.
19My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold,
and my yield than choice silver.
20I walk in the way of righteousness,
along the paths of justice,
21endowing with wealth those who love me,
and filling their treasuries.
4“You that are simple, turn in here!”
To those without sense she says,
5“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”
Wisdom is a feminine noun and is personified as a woman. While I briefly attended Western Theological Seminary I heard a seminarian say that it is possible that the Holy Spirit is a woman. I didn’t think much of it then. My former pastor on Pentecost Sunday said while standing at the pulpit that she thinks of the Holy Spirit as a woman, equating the Holy Spirit with Sophia. Although Sophia is usually viewed as a goddess of wisdom, the word for wisdom in the New Testament is Sophia, and in the Hebrew, hokmah. Because the Hebrew and Aramaic possess only feminine or masculine nouns, hokmah is a feminine noun and the writer of Proverbs clearly calls Wisdom a she.
In my search for the presence of the Holy Spirit I found the qualities of the Holy Spirit in Wisdom, not just in Proverbs, but in Psalms and Ecclesiastes as well.
It is interesting to note that throughout history the Christian God has been associated with a woman. In the Holy Land ancient altars to YWHW have been found along with an altar for YWHW’s consort. Wisdom was deified in Western culture in during the Roman Empire until the 4th Century CE. Christian iconography in the Greek Churches of Eastern part of the Roman Empire depicts images of the Holy Trinity along with the goddess Sophia. In the Latin Church, it was the Virgin Mary who was elevated and seen as a fourth person among the Holy Trinity.
What is worse to think that the Holy Spirit is a female deity or to include a deified woman in equal status with the Holy Trinity? I am not alone in thinking that the Holy Spirit is a woman and furthermore believing that there is a feminine presence in the Godhead is nothing new to Christianity or to Judaism. Yet, somehow I have managed to shock those who are close to me by referring to the Holy Spirit as a she. I think it is more shocking to view the Virgin Mary as an equal with the Holy Trinity, and Wisdom a goddess among the Holy Trinity.
The Church is the body of Christ and the Bride of Christ. As the body of Christ we are all part of the greater whole endowed with spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit to carry out what is required of us. And what does the Lord require of us?
Micah 6:8He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Is that an echo of Proverbs that I hear? It seems to me that the Holy Spirit directs us to love and humbly walk with the Lord our God—the way of insight.
As the Bride of Christ we eagerly wait for our Bridegroom to return, and we want our Lord Jesus to return to a Bride that has been faithful. I see the Holy Sprit as the one who steers the Church away from false teachings so that Christ will return with an undefiled bride. She is the Church’s companion who gives the Church strength and insight. It is easier for me to see a woman in this role than a man. And does it really matter? John the Evangelist took a neuter noun for the Holy Spirit and used the masculine pronoun, he. Why?
The Ephesus Dilemma
In the city of ancient Ephesus there stood one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Temple of Artemis. Men could pay to frolic with one of the priestesses, or watch other men frolic with them. Sexual unity with a priestess in the Temple of Artemis was understood as having union with the goddess herself.
It is no wonder to me that John the Bishop in Ephesus used the pronoun he when referring to the Holy Spirit. It also explains why in Ephesians and the letters to Timothy there is a plea not to let women lead in the Church. A female leader could be seen and most likely would have been seen as a priestess, on the same level as one in the Temple of Artemis. This means that men might have approached and most likely would have approached a female church leader for sexual coupling in order to be in unity with God. The female leader would have been compromised and the Gospel message would be highly ineffective, and that is if she weren’t raped. The Temple of Artemis was standing and still in use when Constantine called for the bishops to assemble in Nicea. The Asia Minor bishops had strong influence at the Council of Nicea and this same council wrote the Nicene Creed, where the Holy Spirit is referred to as a he.
The final chapter to the Temple of Artemis came in AD 401 when St John Chrysostom tore it down. We are living more than 1600 years after that event and presently women are leaders in politics, business and in some Churches. Perhaps it would be more grammatically correct to say that the Holy Spirit is an “it”, rather than a “he.”
The Holy Spirit does indeed possess many feminine traits. Like I said earlier, I am not the only one who refers to the Holy Spirit as a she. Does this make me and all who do heretics? I am a heretic? If so, where are my beliefs unorthodox?
The many topics that I have left untouched which include but are not limited to, Original Sin, the Presence of Christ in Holy Communion, Free Will and Predestination--perhaps at another time.
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