Paper Presentation

Subject : Feminist Theology

Topic : Feminist Pneumatology:
 Feminine Images and Metaphors of Holy Spirit- Sophia
 Reclaiming Women’s Spirituality
Lecturer : Mrs. Tonchingsangla
Presenters : Eziza, Nokyinwaba, Rangdoula, Watijongla and Zumchilo (Group 9)
Respondents : Abeni, Likihi, Manenkala, Tarenjungla, Vipeni and Phenrongwibo
(Group 2)

Introduction
The quest to find feminine attributes in the Godhead is ongoing, as many women yearn for an
understanding of God that they can relate to and identify with. For them, the church, the
church’s traditional view of the “patriarchal God” is not only too limited but too limiting. In
the search for a more inclusive understanding of God, the feminine “Sophia” has for many
persons become a bridge between traditional Christianity and feminist concerns. “Sophia” is
a transliteration of the Greek noun meaning “wisdom”.1

Holy Spirit and the Problem of Gender

Holy Spirit, especially since the 4th Century, has been acknowledged by the main stream of
the Christian Church as the third person of the Trinitarian God. According to the
Constantinopolitan creed (381), the Holy Spirit is “the Lord and Giver of life who proceeds
from the Father and the Son, who is worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son.”
This Trinitarian understanding of God is indeed a theological necessity and is well founded in
the scripture. At the same time, theologians have had difficulty in accepting the Holy Spirit as
part of trinity on equal terms as the Father and the Son. Secondly, it has been pointed out the
traditional way in which the Holy Spirit is presented as a male person, does not at all fit in
with the Father-Son combination. When there is a Father and a Son, one tends to think
naturally of a mother, so as to complete the symbolism of the unity of a family.2

Since the metaphor of a father has already been used for centuries in relation to one of the
persons in the trinity, it is quite legitimate for us to introduce a corresponding metaphor (the
female) in relation to another person of the trinity so as to express the mystery of their unity
in the best possible way. And such a possibility is kept open in the case of the Holy Spirit.3

Forgetting the Spirit: For despite the pervasiveness of the dialectic experience of Spirit,
theological articulation about the spirit has traditionally lagged considerably behind reflection
on God unoriginate source of all and God incarnate, classically named Father and Son
respectively. The cumulative effect of the meager western pneumatological tradition has been
that the full range of the reality and activity of God the Spirit had been virtually lost from
much of theological consciousness. As Heribert Muhlen observes, when most of say God, the
Holy Spirit never comes immediately to mind; rather, the spirit seems like an edifying
appendage to the doctrine of God. Without a proper name, the spirit is widely acknowledged
by theologians today, usually in colourful language to be the forgotten God. The Spirit is
“faceless,” as Walter Casper phrases it; something “shadowy,” in John Macquarrie’s words.
1
Priscilla Papers, Who is Sophia? Cbeinternational.org. 1994. Pdf (13/02/20, 2:30).
2
Leelamma Athyal, “Pneumatology and Women,” in a reader in Feminist Theology, edited by
Prasanna Kumari (Madras: Gurukul Publication, 1993), 80-81 (Hereafter Leelamma Athyal, “Pneumatology…)
3
Leelamma Athyal, “Pneumatology…, 83.

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Yet another reason has been propose for neglect of the spirit. While scripture considers the
spirit more of an impersonal then a personal power, the resonances of some ancient language
and symbols indicate that it is appropriate to speak of spirit in metaphors of female
resonance. Spirit is associated with atleast three terms: Spirit, indwelling, and wisdom, or
Ruah, Shekinah or Hokmah/ Sophia.4

Feminine Images and Metaphors of Holy Spirit – Sophia:

Spirit Sophia in Action: In speaking of Spirit-Sophia’s deeds it is pointing to the gracious,
furious mystery of God engaged in dialectic of presence and absence throughout the world,
creating, indwelling, sustaining, resisting, re-creating, challenging, guiding, liberating and
completing.
i. Vivifying: The whole universe comes into being and remains in being through divine
creative power, creator spiritus. This creative function relates the spirit to the cosmos as well
as to the human world, to communities as well as individuals, to new productions of the mind
and spirit as well as to new biological life. While not frequently repeated theme in scripture,
this activity is commonly pre-supposed in the biblical association of divine Spirit with life
and the breath of life. In the beginning she hovers like a great mother bird over her egg, to
hedge the living order of the world out of primordial chaos (Gen.1:2). God’s energizing
presence can be spoken of in a spatial metaphors that point in their contrasting ways to her
life-giving, beneficent power: the spirit dwells within all things (Wis 12:1): she encompasses
the struggling world as a great matrix (Acts 17:28): she pervades the universe as one who
holds all things together (Wis 1:7). These metaphors point to a powerful connectedness as the
hallmark of her touch.5
ii. Renewing and Empowering: Brokenness and sin are everywhere, a situation that makes
the full life and harmony of creation exist more of future hope than as past or present fact. In
this intractable circumstance the vivifying power of divine spirit comes to expression most
intensely in fragmentary moments of renewing, healing, and freeing when human imbecility
and destructive ill will are held at bay or overcome and a fresh start becomes possible. Spirit
Sophia is the source of transforming energy among all creatures. She initiates novelty,
instigates change, transforms what is dead into new stretches of life. Wherever the gift of
healing and liberation in however partial a manner reaches the winterized or damaged earth,
or peoples crushed by war and injustice, or individual persons weary, harmed, sick, or lost on
life’s journey, there the new creation in the spirit is happening.6

Jesus Sophia in Action

i. Preaching, Ingathering, and Confronting: In his brief ministry Jesus appears as the
prophet and child of Sophia sent to announce that God is the god of all inclusive love who
wills the wholeness and humanity of everyone, especially the poor and the heavy burdened.
He is sent together all the outcast under the wings of their gracious Sophia-God and bring
them to shalom. This envoy of Sophia walks her paths of justice and peace and invites others
to do likewise. Scandalous though it may appear, his inclusive table community widens the
circle of the friends of God to include the most disvalued people, even tax collectors, sinners,
prostitutes. In all, his compassionate, liberating words and deeds are the works of Sophia re-
establishing the right order of creation: “Wisdom is justified by her deeds” (Matt 11:19). The

4
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who is: the Mystery in Feminist theological Discourse (New York:
Crossroad, 1995), 130. (Hereafter Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who…).
5
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who… 133-134.
6
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who… 135

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friendship and inclusive care of Sophia are rejected as Jesus is violently executed, preeminent
in the long line of Sophia’s murdered prophets.7
ii. Dying and rising: Faith in the resurrection witnesses that Sophia characteristic gift of life
is given in a new, unimaginable way, so that the crucified victim of state injustice is nit
abundant forever. Her pure, beneficent, people-loving spirit seals him in new, unimaginable
life as pledge of a future for all the violated and the dead. This same spirit is poured out on
the circle of disciples drawn by the attractiveness of Jesus and his gracious God, and they are
missioned to make the inclusive goodness and saving power of Sophia God experientially
available to the ends of the earth.8

In the light of the original Gospel story of Sophia’s envoy and prophet it becomes clear that
the heart of the problem is not that Jesus was a man but that more men are not like Jesus, in
so far as patriarchy defines their self-identity and relationship. Reading scriptures through
feminist hermeneutics makes it possible to affirm that despite the subsequent distortion
something more than the subordination of women is possible, for Jesus-Sophia’s story of
ministry, suffering, final victory and new community signify love, grace and shalom for
everyone equally, and for the outcast, including women most of all.

Mother-Sophia in Action
i. Mothering the Universe: Holy wisdom is the mother of the universe, the unorginate, living
source of all that exists. This unimaginable livingness generates the life of all creatures, being
herself, in the beginning and continuously, the power of being within all being. “From whose
womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven?” (Job
38:29). The answer is God the Mother. She freely gives life to all creatures without
calculating a return, loving them inclusively, joyfully saying the basic words of affirmation,
“It is good that you exist.” Her creative, maternal lover is the generating matrix of the
universe, matter, spirit, and embodied of all living and inanimate creatures and the complex
interrelationships between them that constitute “the world”. All creatures are kin to one
another and therefore, where spirit has reached the breakthrough of human intelligence,
creatively responsible for one another. All creatures are siblings from the same womb, the
brood of the one Mother of the universe who dwells in bright darkness. In her, as once
literally in our own mother, we live and move and have our being, being indeed her offspring
(Acts 17: 28).9
ii. Establishing the Mercy of Justice: creating and sustaining the universe, God as mother is
concerned not only with the good of privileged individuals but with the well-being of the
entire household of the world. Aquinas glimpsed this when he set up the analogy: as human
justice is to the community or the household, so the justice of God is to the whole universe.
Because God desires the growth and fulfilment of the whole interconnected world, the
oikoumene, her attention is turned in a special way toward the ones most in need. Their
deprivation and suffering is not only their personal concern- and indeed it is that- but shows
that something is wrong with the way things are ordered in the larger world. God’s maternal
will for the good of the whole world motivates a preferential option for the last, lowest and
least, espied in human acts that attempt to redress imbalance and bring about right order. God
as mother is therefore allied with concern for justice and calls forth an ethic of care for justice
in those who are “born of God”.10

7
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who… 157
8
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who… 158
9
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who… 179
10
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who Is…, 181.

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Evaluation
Spirit-Sophia: So powerful is the association of spirit with the meaning evoked by these
female images that in recent years the theory has grown that one of the key if unarticulated
reasons for the tradition’s forgetfulness of the spirit lies precisely here, in the alliance
between the idea of Spirit and the roles and persons of actual women marginalized in church
and society. Elizabeth A. Johnson states “ when we realize that in the bible the spirit’s work
includes bringing forth and nurturing life, holding all things together, and constantly
renewing what the ravages of time and sin break down. This is surely analogous to traditional
“women’s work,” which goes on continuously in home, church, and countless social
groupings, holding all things together, cleaning what has been messed up, while seldom if
ever noticed and hence anonymous. Neglect of the Spirit and the marginalizing of women
have a symbolic affinity and may well go hand in hand.”11

Jesus-Sophia: For despite the potential benefit devolving from the history of Jesus the Christ
feminist theology raises a most stringent critique, pointing out that of all the doctrines of the
church Christology is the one most used to supress and exclude women. At root the difficulty
lies in the fact that Christology in its story, symbol, and doctrine has been assimilated to the
patriarchal world view. If Christology now remains androcentric, the logical answer to the
searching question “Can a male saviour save women?” can only be no. Therefore re-speaking
Christology by telling the gospel story of Jesus as the story of Wisdom’s child, Sophia
incarnate; by interpreting the symbol of the Christ to allow its ancient inclusivity to shine
through; by explicating Christological doctrine to unlock what is of benefit all these feminist
interpretation can see Christ as the true liberator of women.12

Mother-Sophia- For despite the value of maternal metaphors in human language and the
legitimacy of their occasional appearance in biblical language and theological tradition, it is
highly characteristic of Christian speech that the origin and care-giver of all things is named
almost exclusively in terms of the paternal relationship. However, the experience of
originating others and of nurturing them into maturity is not solely a male one but is intensely
female on a fundamental biological and psychological level. Women conceive, bear in their
own bodies, and give birth to new persons; human beings receive life and nurture from their
mothers in a diversity of ways; and the consequent complex relationship is profoundly
formative of persons and society. Human relationship to the creative origin of the world
traditionally expressed in relation to God as father is thus excellently carried in the symbol of
God as mother. Women’s living and life-giving experience as mothers is fitting metaphor for
speech about the gracious Sophia-God of Jesus and her world-renewing spirit.13

Reclaiming women’s spirituality

Anne Carr makes an important distinction between “women’s Spirituality” and feminist
spirituality.” Women spirituality refers to the ways in which women, in contrast to men,
relate to the ultimate dimension of life as distinctive as women themselves, as women seem
more related to nature and to other people. Whereas, feminist spirituality arises from the
consciousness of women’s oppression and is a quest to overcome women’s marginalisation in
religion as in every other sphere of life.14

11
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who Is…, 130
12
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who Is…,151-154
13
Elizabeth A Johnson, She Who Is…, 172
14
“Reclaiming the Truth of Women’s Lives: Women and Spirituality,” http://www.theway.org.uk. Pdf
(13/02/20, 1:30 pm).

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Women have, always practice faith, prayed, and live life of holiness; and all the major world
religions honour at least a handful of women saints, such as Julian of Norwich, Teresa of
Avila, and Catherine of Siena. Women’s experiences of faith have gone largely unrecorded
down the ages and women’s spirituality has been a mostly ‘hidden tradition,’ because of two
reasons15:
i. Women’s spirituality was exercised mostly at home, and thus took expression in the care
and nurture of others. Johnson describes it as, “the renewal of the fabric of life, the
replenishment of physical and spiritual sustenance.”
ii. When women expressed their faith in more tangible form, it tended to be true small scale
and occasional means such as journals, letters, hymns, poems, or crafts which have not been
accorded public recognition.

Women’s spirituality was often forced into marginal, compensatory, or descending forms
existing in uneasy tension with “mainstream.” Though marginalised, sanitised and repressed,
however, the writings and exploits of women of faith have not been entirely lost, and the
historical scholarship over the past two or three decades have been dedicated to rediscovering
these female spiritual traditions.16
Modonna Kolbenschlag, identify four characteristics of women’s spirituality: passion,
imagination, resistance and solidarity:17
i. Passion: Reclaiming incarnation: From the womb of history, people have feared and
worshipped the passion associated with life, sexuality, fertility and death, and the life-bearing
and life-giving powers associated with women. One way of dealing with fear is to redirect it
into hatred and rage. As feminist documented women’s bodies have been treated as property
to be flaunted and traded, as territory to be conquered, as moral quicksand to be avoided. A
women’s spirituality reclaims the holiness of our inspirited bodies and the gift of passion as a
force to move as onward. Rosemary Haughton reminds of the “passionate God” whose being
is to love and embrace us in that love.
ii. Imagination: Reclaiming symbols: Feminist scholars have documented women’s
exclusion from the ranks of those who shaped the symbols and meanings which became the
dominant myths of our civilisation. The exclusion was not accidental nor is it ended, as
evidence by the virtual absence of women from position of influence in fields such as
government, religion and communication, fields recognised as keepers of our symbol
systems. Women’s spirituality draws on the power of imagination do develop symbols which
mirror alternative views of reality. For instants, Haughton’s suggests that, if the symbol of
Eve was used by a male dominated culture to connote “women’s enact sinfulness, her power
to degrade and corrupt or... divine punishment laid on all womankind,” then Jesus
empowerment of women could be described as “re-creation of Eve.” Imagination is the
foundation of a spirituality of hope, a spirituality of the poor. Women maybe closer to the
fount of imagination because the stand on the fringes of the world’s power.
iii. Resistance: Reclaiming the struggle: Marcuse says, the success of the system is to make
unthinkable the possibility of alternatives, then imaging alternatives is an act of subverting
the system, an act of resistance. For many women, spirituality has taken on the character of a
struggle for survival, at one level, it is expressed in their refusal to accept unquestioningly, as
reflective of universal human experience, the definitions, doctrines, worldviews, prohibitions

15
Nicola Slee, “the Holy Spirit and Spirituality,” in the Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology,
edited by Susan Frank Parsons (Edinburgh: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 172-173. (Hereafter Nicola
Slee, “the Holy Spirit…).
16
Nicola Slee, “the Holy Spirit…, 173.
17
“Reclaiming the Truth of Women’s Lives: Women and Spirituality,” http://www.theway.org.uk. Pdf
(13/02/20, 2:30 pm).

5
and patterns created by men. For example the developmental models, based on the
observation that persons pass through predictable stages as they grew toward cognitive,
emotional, moral and religious maturity are commonly accepted. However, studies of
women’s lives reveal that their perspective on maturation, identity formation, social, roles
and responsibilities, and decision making often differ from the so called ‘normative’ views
and patterns. A spirituality of resistance deeply threatens those who are charged with
protecting the system from change, whether in the name of God’s will or the future of
civilisation. Feminists know that the journey will take them perhaps many times to the point
of impasse, where once consoling symbol shatter, where formally sustaining bonds must be
broken.
iv. Solidarity: Reclaiming the community of life: Christian feminists believe that the Good
News summons and creates a community. Such a view does not seeks to bury individual
responsibility in the collective conscience, but rather to correct the distortions which have
made morality and spirituality a private affair between God and each person. The image of
‘connection’ describes the feminist commitment to a relational way of knowing, living, acting
and praying. Women who gather to worship in ‘communities of nurture’ as Ruether
describes, the movement of Women Church, appear divisive to some threatening to others.
Like all assemblies of subjugated people, they provoke contempt and even fear among those
who hold power but the goal of the feminist is not to replace men in power whether
ecclesiastical or secular with women so as to overturn the arrangements of oppression. They
seek a whole new approach to power. Women’s common experience of powerlessness links
them across historical, cultural and religious boundaries keeping alive the ‘dangerous
memory’ of their suffering, and making concrete their solidarity with other women across
socio-economic lines are central items on the feminist agenda. It is central to the women
spirituality which refuses to divorce private experience from public life, or personal
conversion from political transformations.

The reclaiming of women’s lost tradition can lead to mixed reactions from present day
women and men of faith. On the other hand the discovery of the wealth and depth of
women’s spiritual traditions may evoke joy and a sense of empowerment in contemporary
believers. On the other hand the reality of the suppression and marginalisation of women’s
traditions can generate anger and pain and increase a contemporary sense of alienation.18

Conclusion
Feminist spiritualties and theologies of the Spirit can both be understood as part of a wider
movement within contemporary culture to critique, enliven, and transform institutional forms
of faith, and, at the same time, as one of the most significant contributions to that wider
movement.

18
Nicola Slee, “the Holy Spirit…, 175.

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Bibliography

Athyal, Leelamma. “Pneumatology and Women.” In A Reader in Feminist Theology. Edited

by Prasanna Kumari. Madras: Gurukul Publication, 1993.
Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who is: the Mystery in Feminist theological Discourse. New York:
Crossroad, 1995.
Slee, Nicola. “The Holy Spirit and Spirituality.” In The Cambridge Companion to Feminist
Theology. Edited by Susan Frank Parsons. Edinburgh: Cambridge University Press,
2004.

E-Book
“Reclaiming the Truth of Women’s Lives: Women and Spirituality,”
http://www.theway.org.uk. Pdf.
Priscilla Papers, Who is Sophia? Cbeinternational.org. 1994. Pdf.