The wisdom of God: Sophia and Christian theology - Cover Story

Christian Century, Oct 19, 1994 by Leo D. Lefebure

Still other feminists, however, have turned to Sophia as a Christian image of God that supports their decision to remain rooted in historical Christianity. They bring to Sophia both a suspicion of the patriarchal context of the Christian tradition and also a search for ancient images supportive of women's dignity and experience. The most developed discussion of Sophia in recent feminist theology is by Elizabeth A. Johnson in She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (1992) and, with reference to the ecological crisis, Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit (1993).

In the earlier work Johnson proposes a threefold method of deconstructing the patriarchal use of images and language, retrieving alternative wisdom from the tradition's neglected resources, and then reconstructing a vision of Christian faith for the future. Acknowledging the incomprehensibility of God and the inadequacy of all finite symbols, Johnson insists on the necessity of using both male and female images for God. Because male images have dominated the tradition for so long, Johnson contends, Christians need to experiment with female images like Sophia to do justice to both the biblical witness and the experience of women today.

Johnson focuses her discussion on the Trinity, naming the three persons Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia and Mother- Sophia. Her intention is not to exclude the more familiar male images of the Trinity but to add to the repertoire of trinitarian language. While this may be shocking to some Christians, the example of Marius Victorinus demonstrates that a similar usage was known in the early church.

Johnson's appropriation of biblical Sophia for feminist theology is, however, somewhat more paradoxical than her discussion acknowledges. Though she does note the general patriarchal context of the scriptures, she does not apply her own first step of deconstructing the patriarchal use of images to the specific biblical descriptions of Sophia. Her treatment of biblical wisdom passes over in silence the specific patriarchal settings of Sophia's first appearances. Johnson presents Sophia in Proverbs 1-9 as an overwhelmingly attractive figure, with no sign of Newsom's concern that the voice of Sophia effectively buttresses the patriarchal social order. Even the Book of Sirach, arguably the most misogynist book of the wisdom corpus (cf Sir. 25:13-26), appears in a positive light as Johnson abstracts the appealing description of Sophia in chapter 24 from the harsh negative judgments on women in the very next chapter. Because Sophia on one level represents the teaching of the wisdom tradition itself, she shares in the patriarchal bias of the tradition and must herself be transformed before being accepted as a feminist image. Ruether, for one, has argued that this project faces insuperable difficulties.

While Johnson's recontextualizing of Sophia is more complex than she acknowledges, it is not without biblical and theological support. Camp's research on Sophia, which does take seriously the patriarchal setting of the early texts, offers important support for Johnson's project. As Camp has shown, the experiences of resourceful Israelite women breaking through the limitations of patriarchy provided the context in which Wisdom could be symbolized in female form and could mediate the presence of Yahweh.