Jesus Sophia: Returning to Woman Wisdom in the Bible, Practice, and Prayer

By Sally Douglas

In this groundbreaking book, Sally Douglas excavates biblical and early Christian understandings of Jesus as the female divine. Drawing from her expertise as a New Testament scholar and theologian, Douglas accessibly sets out the evidence for Jesus Sophia and then explores its practical implications, both for the church--often suffocated by God-as-male imagery--and for our day-to-day lives. Questions about discipleship, biblical interpretation, and theology are investigated in relation to Jesus Sophia's hospitality, friendship, anger, non-retaliation, and care for all things. In this process understandings of the cross are revisited, female imagery for God is reclaimed and celebrated, fresh and ancient practices of faith are offered, and inclusive, exquisite liturgies are shared. With dynamism, humor, faithfulness, and creativity, Douglas encourages, unsettles, and supports readers, as they discover Jesus Sophia for themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Mar 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666793253

Sally Douglas

Sally Douglas is a biblical scholar, theologian, author, and Uniting Church Minister whose work disrupts neat categories. Through attending to biblical and early church texts, Sally investigates the question ‘so what might this mean for us?’. She publishes regularly and is a Research Associate and Associate Lecturer at Pilgrim Theological College, within the University of Divinity, Melbourne. Her books include Early Church Understandings of Jesus as the Female Divine: The Scandal of the Scandal of Particularity (Bloomsbury T&T Clark 2016) and The Church Triumphant as Salt: Becoming the Community Jesus Speaks About (Coventry, 2021). 

Book preview

Introduction

As you hold this book in your hands you may be excited by the title, the artwork, and the contents. On the other hand, you may be angry or anxious about what you might find in the pages that follow. As we begin, I would like to offer a few words about what this book is, and is not, attempting to do. We will be investigating long overlooked biblical understandings of Jesus as the female divine and exploring the potential theological implications of reengaging with these understandings in our churches and in our own lives, day by day. This book is not an exercise in reimagined new-age spirituality. Nor is this work prompted by so-called woke agendas. Though it must be noted, the use of such language is problematic, because the term has been co-opted to denigrate opposing views and shut down confronting truths. In this book, the i mpetus for recovering the centrality of understandings of Jesus as the female divine emerges from a different sphere. Here we reconnect with earliest Christian traditions and find ourselves returned to an ancient and faithful proclamation of the church. What is more, in reclaiming the expansiveness of this early church view, we are confronted afresh with the radical contours of Christian faith and practice.

As we orient ourselves for this exploration, a note about how I arrived here. During my biblical and theological studies as a candidate for ordained ministry in the Uniting Church in Australia, I occasionally heard rumors that there was a female divine figure in the Bible. These rumors held a certain appeal. However, as a student focused on critical biblical analysis, I was dubious. I imagined that these claims were likely based on one or two obscure references that had been vastly overblown. In time, I was to discover how wrong this assumption was.

After completing postgraduate studies, I served a parish made up of six rural congregations. In time, I yearned to return to academic research, and at the conclusion of this placement I embarked upon an interdisciplinary PhD, spanning biblical studies and theology. My research was focused on christology. This is the theological sphere that explores understandings of who Jesus is, that is, questions about Jesus’ status (or not) as divine. Many of you will be aware that there continue to be heated debates in Christian circles about Jesus’ status in the early church. In recent decades it has been popular in some circles to assert that Jesus was not initially understood as divine, but rather Jesus was made into a divine figure only in later centuries, to serve the agendas of an increasingly hierarchical and empire-shaped church. Others insist that Jesus was always understood as the God One, from the beginning of the Christian story. In my research I wanted to return to primary sources from the first and second centuries of the Common Era, in order to engage with this critical question.

As I became deeply immersed in the research, I was astonished to discover that this female divine figure, Wisdom, Woman Wisdom, or Sophia (the Greek for Wisdom), was present and significant in the Old Testament and intertestamental texts. Even more shocking, I was to discover that again and again in the New Testament Jesus is imaged as her. More than that, it became increasingly clear that Wisdom christology—understanding Jesus in relation to Woman Wisdom—was pivotal in the ignition of earliest proclamations of Christian faith. To spell this out, the evidence indicates that church communities did celebrate Jesus as the God One from a very early period, and as they did this, they celebrated Jesus as her, the female divine, the One from the beginning, now enfleshed in person in Jesus.

As I dived more deeply into the primary sources, I discovered that just as Jesus is celebrated in the language and imagery of this female divine figure in the New Testament, early church writers also continue to understand Jesus as Sophia. I remember one day, surrounded by books in the local public library, being surprised by tears as I read an overlooked, first-century Christian hymn. These tears were, in part, prompted by the beauty of the words. However, I suspect they also sprang up because this understanding of Jesus in relation to Sophia has been ignored and suppressed for so long in the church, and people have been left to thirst.

My extensive investigation of Jesus Sophia in the biblical text and in the early church formed the basis of my doctoral research and was published to international acclaim by Bloomsbury T. & T. Clark in the Library of New Testament Studies series as Early Church Understandings of Jesus as the Female Divine: The Scandal of the Scandal of Particularity. This is an academic volume. For those who wish to explore the biblical analysis and early church evidence in granular detail, and engage with an extensive bibliography for further reading, I recommend this book. I also commend to you the scholarly work of others, in particular Elizabeth Johnson and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, who both made significant contributions to the recovery of Sophia within the sphere of biblical studies in the 1980s and 1990s.¹

In this book, however, the focus is different. Here we will begin by tracing key biblical passages that speak of Sophia, and of Jesus in relation to this female divine figure, and we will unpack this evidence sufficiently, so that we have footholds for the climb. Then we will trek further, through different terrain, exploring one of the most important theological questions that there is: So what? We will engage with questions such as:

•So what might this mean for how we construct imagery for God in the church?

•So what might this mean for spiritual practices?

•So what might this mean for how I pray this morning?

•So what about anger?

•So what might salvation mean? and

•So how might I live in relation to others and the earth?

You may like to read this book with others, or on your own. You may like to read small sections or whole chapters. Along the way, you are invited to engage with the wondering questions, perhaps by journaling, or by making art, through conversation with others, or as you spend time in nature. You will also find prayers at the end of each chapter that take up the themes we explore. You are welcome to fold some of these prayers into your own daily rhythms or the life of your worshipping community.

Thank you for being brave enough to join me on this wild adventure.

Every blessing for the journey.

Sally

Saint Jude’s Day

2022

1

. See Johnson, Jesus, the Wisdom of God and She Who Is,

150

–

69

; and Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her,

130

–

40,

and Jesus, Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet,

139

–

54

.

1

Come and See

Whom are you looking for? (John 20:15)

In accounts of the resurrection in John’s Gospel, we witness the power struggle between Peter and the beloved disciple, as they race to see who will get the tomb first and who will go in before the other (John 20 : 3 – 10 ). Amidst this competition, the author turns our gaze to a quieter scene. Jesus has been executed, now his body is missing, and Mary the Magdalene is standing in the garden outside the tomb weeping (John 20 : 11 – 18 ). Understandably. First angels ask her why she is crying, and then we hear that Jesus—yet unrecognizable—appears to Mary repeating the question about the tears. Jesus goes on to ask Mary, Whom are you looking for? ¹ (John 20:15). As we search for meaning and purpose and a way of being steady and hopeful in this world this is a question for each one of us.

The answer to this question, however, is not found in neat responses that contain the correct set of words. The author of John gently reminds us of this. Only days before this encounter with Mary, in another garden on the night Jesus is betrayed, Jesus asks the police the same question. Seeking to arrest Jesus, they arrive in the dark and Jesus asks them, not once, but twice, Whom are you looking for? (John 18:4; 7). Each time the police respond by saying, Jesus of Nazareth (John 18:5; 7). While they say the rights words (according to Christians), it is clear to readers that they are not looking for—that is, seeking to pay attention to—Jesus. They are only looking for Jesus for their own purposes, to arrest him as they have been commanded to by those in authority. On Easter morning, when the risen Jesus asks Mary this same question, she does not offer a formulaic response. Instead, as the faithful, first apostle, she simply expresses her longing to be where Jesus is, even in his death (John 20:15).

There is much insight here. While Christians through the centuries continue to answer the question Whom are you looking for? by claiming the name of Jesus, often such responses share the texture of the police’s response, rather than Mary’s. This occurs when Jesus-answers are drained of meaning through insistence upon the recitation of particular words about Jesus, in order to be considered faithful. While the criteria for the correct formulation of words varies across denominations and time, this tendency persists.

Responses to this question Whom are you looking for? have also been made anaemic through selective, habitual reconstructions of Jesus that have proliferated throughout the worldwide church. Time and again we Christians tend to whittle down our images of Jesus to reflect various versions of our own image, or the images of those who hold power. We see this pattern of crafting Jesus into our preferred likeness expressed in a multiplicity of ways. In the West, there is stubborn insistence upon pretending that Jesus is white. For churches soaked in anti-Semitism, Jesus’ Jewishness is eradicated. Across cultures and denominations, churches who wish to avoid Jesus’ disruptive call in the Gospels to live in radical generosity and in solidarity with the poor, focus on Jesus’ crucifixion and emphasize life in the realm beyond death. For those denominations who seek only an ethics-based Christianity, claims about Jesus’ divinity in the New Testament are minimized. All around the globe, in Christian churches in which patriarchal power structures dominate, androcentric constructions of God-as-male prevail. This is despite the reality that, as we will discover, the New Testament evidence indicates that Jesus is celebrated in the language and imagery of the female divine in the earliest church. Destructive consequences flow from each of these, and other, habits of making Jesus, the God One, small and conveniently packaged to fit within our own lives with minimal inconvenience.

There is profound irony here. At the heart of Christian faith is the wild proclamation that in the person of Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col 1:19). All the fullness. On the deepest of levels, if this is true, this means that in Jesus’ living and being as recorded in the Gospels—in Jesus’ teaching and serving, feasting with and feeding, healing and befriending, liberating, challenging, and exposing evil, and in Jesus’ nonviolent dying and rising in forgiveness—we encounter the fullness of who and how God is. This reality requires not simply our intellectual acquiescence, or the recitation of particular words. Instead, this demands the transformation of our understandings of God, the reshaping of our priorities and the remaking of the contours of our relationships, as we continue to look to—and seek to be with—this One. Perhaps this is why in the church we often prefer to slice off and preserve those aspects of Jesus that fit most easily within our own existing narratives.

Recognizing the (Man-Made) Landscape

This book does not seek to challenge the multitude of idols that the church has made. Instead, we will explore just one aspect of the fullness of Jesus, as the fullness of God—an aspect that has been ignored and minimized for century upon century. Perhaps in doing so, fresh light may spill over into other areas. As we will trace together, within the biblical text, in the Gospels, in the letters, and in some of the earliest evidence we have in Christianity (hymn and prayer fragments embedded within these New Testament texts), again and again Jesus is celebrated in the language and imagery of the female divine. While this evidence is recognized by biblical scholars, this knowledge has seldom made it beyond the academy and out into the wild, messy challenge of seeking to be a disciple of Christ in daily life.

Before we embark upon this investigation, let us first familiarize ourselves with the landscape we inhabit, focusing the lens so that we can identify its key elements. God-as-male imagery has dominated the church across time and culture for so long that it can be difficult to recognize, because it is everywhere. Patriarchal bias is reflected in the fact that while lip service may be given to the theological understanding that God is beyond gender, churches continue to insist upon utilizing liturgies, hymns, and art that image God as male. This is poor biblical exegesis that, at the very least, denies the proclamation of the first creation story in which it is celebrated that God makes humanity, male and female, in God’s image (Gen 1:27). This insistence upon only imaging God as male also ignores the numerous metaphors across the Bible in which God is imaged as female (for example, see Ps 131; Isa 66:10–13; Matt 23:37–39). The notion that the God who composed the universe is a man, or must only be addressed in male language, reflects inadequate theology. Indeed, when the vastness of the universe is considered, the obsession with making God male is seen for the absurdity that it is. What is more, for Christians insistent male-only imaging of God makes a mockery of trinitarian understandings—the mystery that we hold to that within God’s self, God is in community, the Holy One-Sacred Three.

The ramifications of this androcentric construction of God, the insistence upon making God male, have been appalling. This restrictive imagery malnourishes everyone: children, women, men, and nonbinary people, all those who seek relationship with the fulsomeness of who God is, and who they themselves are. The idol of making God male also fortifies misogyny. In some churches, exclusive reliance upon male God imagery provides foundations for the denial of women’s God-given gifts for leadership, including ordination. Tragically, the impacts of this insistence reach beyond issues of church leadership. By only utilizing male imagery for God, the equality of women, who like men are made in the image of God, can be denied in the home, and violence and abuse against girls and women are given resources to flourish.

Consistent constructions of God-as-male do not only impact on issues of theology, gender, and equality. The obsession with making God male also influences another sphere entirely. In Western communities emerging from the paradigm of Christendom, when people beyond the church hear the word God, with tedious regularity they assume that an old, bearded man on a cloud is being referred to. This is the God depicted in Renaissance art and co-opted in popular culture for the punch line of jokes. The imagery of this God on a cloud, dispensing rewards and punishments, resembles Santa far more than the God of Christian faith. I coined the term santafication to speak of this widespread misapprehension. While, perhaps, amusing there are sombre consequences that flow from this obsession with making God male. For as long as Santa-God imagery dominates the public imagination, vast swathes of the community beyond the church will have no interest in exploring the way of Jesus, yet will continue to ache for meaning and the experience of homecoming to the divine. Language has consequences. For as long as the church maintains its idolatry of insisting upon exclusively male language and imagery for God, the possibility of authentically encountering and sharing the good news of Jesus with people beyond the church will be limited.

Before we proceed further, a note of caution. In recognizing the destructive outcomes of insisting upon using only male language and imagery for God, it is not being suggested that female imagery for God is the great balm for all the church’s patriarchal wrongs. Also, in highlighting the importance of reclaiming ancient and faithful female divine imagery, it is not being proposed that all male imagery for God must be rejected. Furthermore, it is not being pretended that female imagery for God will be helpful for all people. The human capacity to inflict harm and hurt is not confined to one gender. Men, women, and nonbinary people are all capable of grievous hurt and violence. For those who have suffered abuse from the hands, heads, or hearts of women, perhaps especially from mothers, female God imagery may be the very last thing that will offer nourishment or liberation. At least at first. This reality does not negate the importance of retrieving female divine imagery. Instead, this reality reminds us not to fall for the temptation of simply replacing one idol for another. As disclosed in Jesus’ love of telling thick, multidimensional stories, beyond our desire for simple categories of good and bad, virtuous and cancelled, saved and condemned, it is within the spaciousness of complexity and paradox that we come closest to life and truth.

Jesus Sophia

The church’s habitual focus upon God-as-male and the persistent minimization of more expansive biblical imagery for God has made it difficult to see the treasure within our midst. In the earliest