Still Running Off at the Keyboard

SOPHIA AND GNOSTIC CHRISTIANITY

Russian theologian Sergii Bulgakov developed the concept of Sophia/wisdom "as the nature of God revealed to creation." He reinterpreted the Trinity as well according to Dr. Mikhail Sergeev's paper presented at the World Congress of Philosophy in Boston, August 1998:

Sophia, or God's nature, while remaining the same, in Bulgakov's view, discloses its different aspects in every person of the Holy Trinity. He emphasizes that, without being a hypostasis itself, Sophia, is nevertheless always hypostatized and cannot be separated from each of the hypostases as, for example, from the person of the Son or Logos. Instead, Bulgakov points out, "The Divine Sophia is not just the Son... nor only the Holy Spirit either, but a di-unity of the Son and the Holy Spirit as the one self-revelation of the Father."

Apparently he didn't get his message across because Sophia has been turned into a hypostasis by others. According to the Sophia Foundation of North America, in "the Septuagint, believed to have been completed by the second century B.C., the Hebrew word Chokmah was rendered as Sophia."

Staying with a Hebrew train of thought, the explanation of Sophia continues:

Solomon's relationship with Sophia was mystical, gnostic, and magical: he was united with Sophia; he received divine knowledge from Sophia; and he accomplished divine works through her help and guidance.

What's more, according to the Sophia Foundation

Solomon was guided and inspired by Sophia regarding the plan and design of the temple. He summoned the master builder, Hiram of Tyre, who built the temple, "an exalted house, a place for the Lord to dwell in forever" (Kings 8:13). The temple of Solomon represented a culmination of the sacred work of Sophia accomplished in pre-Christian times through her guidance of certain leading representatives revered by the people of Israel (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Joseph, Moses). "She prospered their works" (Wisdom 11:1). Seen in this light, it would appear that the pre-Christian revelation of Sophia culminated in the Wisdom of Solomon, for people came to Solomon from far and wide, including the queen of Sheba, who saw "all the wisdom of Solomon, [and] the house that he had built." (I Kings 10:4).

Sophia in pre-Christian times could not have been the Sophia of the Trinity since the Son had not yet appeared on the world scene, and the God of the Old Testament appears as a singular hypostasis. Only later understanding of the Trinity could accommodate Bulgakov's explanation of Sophia as a connector between the Three Persons. Was wisdom personified in Old Testament Hebrew concepts? We have the Scripture evidence that wisdom was considered feminine, but we also have the evidence that Judaism believed in One God.

The Sophia Foundation would like us to come to understand that the Divine Feminine can be found in many religions. As we discover this, they hope that we will be led to "a more profound comprehension of Sophia as the 'World Mother' who has the possibility of establishing peace between the different religions, denominations, and cultures as we enter into the Age of Aquarius."

Are a Pagan concept of "World Mother" and a Roman Catholic concept of the Blessed Virgin as mother of the human race find compatibility? It is hardly a foregone conclusion, though some see compatibility in the two ideas.

Turning to another source of teaching on Sophia, called "Meditations," the Ecclesia Gnostica website offers Gnostic homilies delivered by Rev. Steven Marshall, one of which is titled "A Homily for The Annunciation to our Lady". There we can learn that

1) The Jesus of the Gnostics is a post-resurrectional mystery figure, the living Jesus, and is primarily a spirit, a pneuma. The Gnostic Jesus was not a person who died and disappeared, never to be heard of again, but an ever present reality in the inner life of his Gnostic followers, the ever coming and redeeming Logos. Therefore historical descriptions or theological speculations regarding any physical phenomena of conception and birth are of little consequence to the religious experience of the Gnostics. 2) In contrast to the dominant paradigm about women in early times the Gnostics do not view maternity as the principle value of the feminine. By the importance given to Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic writings, we can see that women signify the conceivers and birth givers of a deeply spiritual process in the life of the Gnostic, a role far transcending their biological role of conceiving and bearing children. Also, the Gnostics tend to view conception and birth as more of a tragedy than a joyful event. Many Gnostic writings identify incarnation with death and ignorance, as opposed to life and consciousness.

Is this the thinking motivating the feminist movement?--But that's off-topic.

Rev. Marshall associates Sophia with the Blessed Virgin:

Mary hears the voice of her angelic and divine soul; she follows the Light which is above every power of the Father. In the story of Sophia, Sophia errs in following the false light of the Arrogant One. Leaving her consort, she brings forth the Demiurge, an imperfect god who is responsible for all of the tragedy of the human condition.

Marshall relates in his homily that "In the Pistis Sophia [a Gnostic scripture], Mary conceives spiritually through the accepting of the Redeemer as the soul of the child in her womb." Rev. Marshall indicates further that "In this fashion Mary takes on the culmination and embodiment of the redemptive role and destiny of the Holy Sophia."

Should there be any doubt about the Gnostic value of Sophia, he writes:

Sophia is very important to us. Everything we do in this Church can be viewed as a cover for her acknowledgment and recognition in a culture where in times past the right to do so was paid for with our lives. Witches were not the only ones who were burned in the inquisition. Before them the last remaining Gnostics of European culture, the Cathars, were hunted down and burned as heretics. We are the hidden Children of Sophia. We are the protectors and guardians of her secret Gnosis. We acknowledge the darkness of this world and that, even in this more enlightened age, we could be imperiled and persecuted for her sake. And yet, in this place of darkness we have known her light. As in the prophetic verse of Isaiah, "They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."

These mysteries are within us. We can experience the conception of Christ within our own souls.

In Gnostic doctrine Sophia becomes a feminine being. Rev. Marshall also indicates that Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje point "to an increased activity of the divine feminine in the collective psyche."

Explaining a Gnostic interpretation of the Annunciation further, Rev. Marshall writes:

Applying the hyletic level of reality to the mystery of the Annunciation, we are dealing with a reconstructed history of earthly events. The Gospel of Philip seems to profess the position that Mary was a real woman who had sexual intercourse with a real man in the process of conceiving and giving birth to Jesus. "The Lord would not have said, 'My father in heaven,' if he had not had another father, but he would have said simply my father." (The Gospel of Philip) Although the various Gnostic sects differed in their emphasis concerning the physical versus the spiritual reality of Jesus, the virgin conception and virgin birth were viewed as spiritual rather than physical realities by most of them.

Gnosticism, based as it is on occult experiences of visions, locutions, automatic writing, clairvoyance, etc., is not a doctrine set in stone. Each Gnostic decides for himself what he will believe and what he will not believe There really is no set doctrine for everyone. In Rev. Marshall's description of the Annunciation he clarifies further:

To further point us in the direction for discovering the pneumatic reality, the Gospel of Philip intimates that something is missing from the conventional creed of the mainstream Church about the conception of Christ: "Some said Mary conceived of the Holy Spirit. They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive of a woman." Not only does this passage affirm that the Holy Spirit is a female power but it also acknowledges that a masculine polarity is necessary for the conception to occur. In the announcement of Gabriel, the angel describes two spiritual powers rather than one. "The Holy Spirit (the Mother) shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest (the Father) shall overshadow thee." Jesus had a mother and father according to matter--the hyletic reality. He also had a mother and father according to spirit--the pneumatic reality. What distinguishes this from the theological explanations of psychic [mental, that is intellectual] Christianity is that it comes from the Gnostics' direct experience of their own spiritual mother and spiritual father. Unless we also have this experience, then it remains merely another belief.

The Gnostics are not averse to acknowledging Marian apparitions. They simply give them a Gnostic interpretation:

The appearances of the Virgin at Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje in recent times points to an increased activity of the divine feminine in the collective psyche. When in 1950 the Pope proclaimed the Dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin, it was not just an exercise in ecclesiastical authority but predicated upon the personal visions and experiences of himself and others.

Stephan A. Hoeller, Bishop of the Gnostic Catholic Church, gives us a further look into the direction Gnostic Christianity is going. In an online paper titled "Goddesses, Yes Goddess No!: The Feminine and Multi-Centered God Image" he writes:

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have fixated their spiritual imaginations upon the image of God as a unitary supreme reality--an image which excludes diversity and plurality. The rising feminist consciousness of our era has identified one result of this view of God as "Patriarchy" and taken exception to it. The remedy suggested for this is the replacement of the solitary male God with a Goddess, or, as she is frequently called, "the Goddess."

The question I wish to ask here is, what if the principal fault should not so much be with the gender of our God, but with the fact that he is seen as single and solitary? One might even argue that the masculine orientation of society and religion is but a result of a much more fundamental issue, that of monotheism. It may be that the one-dimensional norm of our culture can be traced not to the fact that we think of the deity as male, but to the fact that we think of it as one.

He goes on to site Nietzsche and the theologians Richard Niebuhr, Thomas Altizer and William Hamilton as sources that dare to claim God is dead and propose polytheism. There is opposition, as Hoeller acknowledges:

The demise of the monotheistic God cannot be asserted without arousing the often violent opposition of those who are wedded to such shibboleths as "The Lord our God is One" and "There is no God but God." And even those who evaluate their traditions in terms that are chiefly mystical are rarely disposed to give up their monotheistic fixations. Thus many devotees of mystical Islam intend to elevate the image of the singular personal God to the status of a universal and all-encompassing Oneness. But monotheism, even when disguised as monism, still tends to retain its original shortcomings.

The best way to surmount such difficulties, it would seem is the way offered by psychology, which by detheologizing metaphysical concepts and by demonstrating their reality in the psyche, lifts them out of the realm of dogma.

Voila! We have moved from Roman Catholicism to Gnostic Christianity.

It takes only a moment of thought to recognize that a lot of the Gnostic concept has moved into Roman Catholicism via the Marian movement. Channeling is the next logical step once Gnosticism secures a foothold through sanctioned visionary experiences for everyone. We Roman Catholics have come much closer than we realize through Pentecostal activities and the Charismatic Renewal to embracing the Gnostic heresy. The Church was on far safer ground in the past when visionary experiences were considered to be rare and were tested by the Church before acceptance was given. Hoeller has laid out for us where this will lead--into goddess worship, and into polytheism. Before we say it could never happen, we must take into consideration the feminist movement in the Church especially as it manifests in the women's religious communities. Goddess worship has taken hold there. Will polytheism be next? Or more realistically, will Sophia as a separate hypostasis of the Trinity embraced via Soloviev and Bulgakov who are taken up by Roman Catholics as a result of John Paul II's enthusiasm for Soloviev's East-West union, gradually cause us to see the members of the Trinity as separate Gods? Unless someone puts on the brakes, I submit that is a real possibility, especially as Gnosticism grows in acceptance which it is doing presently through the words and actions of those who believe they are having heavenly visions, and through those who are unsatisfied with Catholic doctrine. As Hoeller puts it:

...if we are sick of the vengeful and jealous God of our fathers, we should also take heed of the shadow side of the solitary Goddess whom some would resurrect. Polytheism offers a way out of this dilemma.

We adopt his claim that a jealous God of our fathers is necessarily sick and vengeful when we assert that "God is love" to the exclusion of His other traits. God is indeed love, but He is more than love, and we should not forget His judgment. Balance is always essential.

Hoeller closes his argument for polytheism with this analysis:

Our attachment to the monotheistic god image has caused us to repress many splendid archetypal deities. The wholeness, not only of our souls but of the world, requires us to invite these numinous beings to take their places in our religious and cultural lives. It would be best if in doing this we could refrain from trying to evoke a monotheistic feminine deity fashioned in the image of Jehovah, our long-time afflictor. Neitzsche's Olympians exclaim in Thus Spake Zarathrustra, "Is not just this godlike, that there are gods but no God?" To which we may add "and that there are goddesses, but no Goddess!"

Are we poised to travel Hoeller's path--ready to take the plunge into polytheism?

I would suggest that at least insofar as von Balthasar's, Griffith's, Kropf's Pennington's and Keating's approval of MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT, we are. Adding weight to that argument is the evidence that within the Medjugorje movement there are people who are far less critical of visionaries than is required. The Sophia Goddess Blessed Virgin Mary of Archbishop John should not find a home in Roman Catholicism, but apparently she has. No doubt the Neocathars such as James Twyman are pleased, as resurrecting occult experiences and replacing dogma and the priesthood with these experiences is very much on his agenda.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!