The Holy Spirit and the Divine Feminine (Cont’d)
Questions Concerning the Female Component of the Godhead (Cont’d)
CONSIDERING ALL THE evidence in The Old Testament, verifying the Holy Spirit as being the feminine component of the Godhead, what could’ve created such an about-face with The New Testament writers? Are we to assume that some unique aspect of the Advent of Christ triggered this change in how we’re now supposed to view the Holy Spirit? To find out, let’s turn to those New Testament passages that reveal what Jesus said about this matter. After all, when it comes to the question of divine gender, who else can give us a more accurate “insider’s view” than the Son of God Himself? This is especially true, considering that the theologians who insist the Holy Spirit isn’t feminine fall into two camps.
The first camp claims that God is so far above His creation, He can’t even be said to have a gender. So, when God, as Infinite Spirit, attaches to “Himself” the idea of “maleness,” as an anthropomorphic attribute, He’s only doing this for the sake of human understanding. Based on this assumption, then, that God, the Father, isn’t actually masculine, it’d be just as presumptuous to view the Holy Spirit as being feminine.
Then, according to the second camp, portraying the Holy Spirit as anything other than an “it” is theologically unsound because, in their view, the Holy Spirit isn’t even part of the Godhead. To them, the so-called “Trinity” is unscriptural, and therefore the Holy Spirit can’t be addressed as a person at all. Thus, having been stripped of any semblance of personhood, the Holy Spirit is reduced to being a mere agent for good on God’s behalf, and so should only be spoken of impersonally.
Of course, that’s why, I insist, only what Jesus tells us about this subject can provide an antidote for such—dare I say—nonsense.
Based on the gospel record, then: Is there any evidence that suggests Jesus thinks the Godhead is such an abstract force that He’s humoring us when He speaks of God as His Father? And if so, does this mean there’s also evidence that Jesus views the Holy Spirit as being a similarly impersonal force? Said Jesus to His disciples:
“In My Father’s house are many mansions. If it weren’t true, I’d have told you…” Then, Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” And Jesus replied, “Don’t you know Me, Philip? Have I been with you this long, and still you ask Me that? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father, so why would you say to Me, ‘Show us the Father.’ Don’t you believe that I’m in the Father, and that He’s in Me? And I’ll do whatever you ask in My Name so the Father may be glorified in the Son… “And anyone who loves Me will obey My teaching. My Father will love them, and We’ll come to them and make Our home with them. Anyone who doesn’t love Me won’t obey My teaching. These words you hear aren’t My own, but they belong to the Father Who sent Me. “All this I’ve spoken while I’m still with you, but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My Name, will teach you all things, and will remind you of everything I’ve told you…”
So, within the space of just ten verses, Jesus referred to God as the Father nine times. In all, He referred to God as the Father more than one hundred times in John’s Gospel and some sixty-five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Based on that count, then, either Jesus told us the truth about God over one hundred and sixty-five times or He fudged the truth over one hundred and sixty-five times, all because He didn’t have the heart to break the bad news to us.
The One Who was born into the world with the express purpose of testifying to the truth didn’t really want to tell us Moses was misrepresenting the Lord when he said humans were made in God’s image. Instead, we’re supposed to believe that Jesus was telling us that God was our Father in the same way that adults fudge the truth about things children are incapable of understanding, like when we tell them storks bring babies home because they can’t bear to hear the truth about how it really happens. In other words, Jesus told us a little white lie.
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The Holy Spirit and the Divine Feminine: Questions Concerning the Female Component of the Godhead
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I mean, just think about it: Here we’ve waited century upon century for the Word of God to incarnate, to grow up, and to begin His teaching ministry. His clearly stated purpose was to testify to the truth, and just when He had His big chance to fulfill that high calling, He fudged it. At least that’s what the theologians who insist that Scripture merely anthropomorphizes the Godhead would have us believe.
So, if these theologians are correct in viewing God as Infinite Spirit and therefore utterly impersonal by nature, then can you imagine the look on Jesus’ face when Philip asked Him to show them the Father?
Picture it, if you can. In that moment, when Jesus could’ve told Philip the “truth”—that is, according to the Gospel of the Infinite God of Impersonal Reality—He told them: “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father!” So, based on the theory of those who insist God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are so infinite They’re impersonal by nature, Jesus flat-out lied when He described Them as being otherwise. And He especially lied when He insisted He was in the Father, and the Father was in Him!
But, I, for one, don’t think He lied at all. I think He told us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help Him God. And I do so because, unlike all those who love to strain out gnats and swallow camels, Jesus was willing to die for what He believed. He was willing to die for what He told us to be true. And He was willing to do so rather than fudge the truth, which He said didn’t come from Him but, instead, came straight from His Father. So to Hell with anyone who’d suggest otherwise. I prefer to hitch my wagon on the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I prefer to go with Jesus on this one.
In doing so, we’d also have to accept that if Jesus told us that God is our Father, then it’s not too difficult, based on what we now know of the biblical portrayal of the Holy Spirit’s—dare I say—femininity, to understand what was really being said in Genesis:
Then Gods said, let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness. So Gods created mankind in Their image … male and female, They created them.
I mean, really, how blind can you be not to see the obvious in light of all we’ve outlined? What is it again?
Let’s see: God, the Father… Jesus, the Son… Gods, not God, creating mankind in Their Own image… Mankind created as male and female… All of creation, for that matter, from the highest primates to the lowest invertebrates, even insects and plant life, created as male and female… And finally, the Holy Spirit, as Comforter and Advocate, an equal member of the Godhead…
Hmmm, let’s see. If all this is true, then how could all of creation have been accomplished through the agency of only God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son? Pardon me for asking the obvious: If there’s a Divine Father and a Divine Son, then where the heck is the Divine Mother? Or should I say: Pardon me for asking a question so obvious that it would only occur to that bewildered child looking at some naked emperor, strutting about as everyone in the kingdom pretended to admire him as if he were wearing new clothes.
And by analogy, what I mean is, even though a child isn’t sophisticated enough to know where babies come from, they’re at least intelligent enough to know that whenever children are involved, a daddy and a mommy are involved. And the fact that children can understand something so basic about the human condition means that adults are clearly as knowledgeable when it comes to perceiving the reality of the Holy Spirit as the Mother of all creation in union with God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son.
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SO, NOW THAT WE’VE GATHERED a great many facts from the biblical record to help solve this mystery, we’re in a much better position to appreciate the following details contained in the historical record. The first thing we need to remember is how the translators of The Old Testament wrestled with translating the Name of God, where He was spoken of as El, singular, and as Elohim, plural. And so, in their honest, though ill-advised, effort to differentiate the monotheistic nature of Hebraism from all other polytheist religions, they translated the Hebrew word Elohim as “God” instead of “Gods.”
In a classic case of history repeating itself, a similar situation reared its ugly head when New Testament writers were faced with the task of trying to communicate the truth about the Holy Spirit’s gender. In this instance, I’m talking about the fledgling Church’s attempt to differentiate itself from one of the most formidable contenders to first-century orthodox Christianity. I’m talking about Gnosticism—a theology embraced by a thriving community of believers who, in addition to possessing manuscripts which were viewed as being part of orthodox Scripture, also held to a wide range of other Gospels that vied for the attention of the saints.
Without going into too much detail as to why Gnosticism was correctly considered a threat, suffice it to say, there were, as with all great misconceptions, which Gnosticism could be so categorized, points of theology that were worth considering, whereas most of them clearly were not.
Among the Gnostics’ more questionable doctrines was their rejection of Christ’s humanity in favor of seeing His Advent on Earth as being one of pure spirit. Accordingly, they rejected the possibility that the resurrection of Christ was a genuine historical event, because if Jesus were not human, then the events surrounding the so-called “resurrection” were merely symbolic and not in fact genuine. This more than anything else was why orthodox Christianity vehemently opposed Gnosticism.
Unfortunately, opposing Gnosticism also meant opposing many of the manuscripts that supported their views, among them The Gospel of Thomas. Containing the so-called “secret sayings of Jesus,” Thomas not only echoed many sayings in the accepted texts, but it also provided provocative details that lent themselves to the idea of the feminine aspects of the Deity.
Said Jesus, according to Thomas:
Whoever doesn’t hate his father and his mother, as I do, cannot become My disciple. And whoever doesn’t love his father and his mother, as I do, cannot be My disciple… But My true Mother gave Me life…
So, in throwing out texts like The Gospel of Thomas, whatever potential they might have held for upholding this ancient view of the Holy Spirit as the Mother of Christ was quietly swept under the rug of hidden history.
Of course, in laying blame for the rejection of such thinking on the door of Gnosticism alone would prove to be just as shortsighted as those Gnostics who refused to embrace the tenants of orthodox Christianity.
Truth be told, the other driving force that added to the resistance of the reality of the feminine nature of the Divine is something that’s always clouded humanity’s thinking. That other opposing factor is the idea that sin, and therefore death, came as the result of the actions of the first woman—in fact, the mother of us all—Eve.
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The Holy Spirit and the Divine Feminine: Questions Concerning the Female Component of the Godhead
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Since the earliest days of humanity, there’s been a distinctly schizoid attitude toward women. Whereas all cultures revered the role of women because of their nurturing, loving maternal aspects, there’s also been an equal and opposite reaction borne of envy, fear, and self-loathing on the part of men. And never more so in the hands of those men who, in direct opposition to the totality of its message, claim The Bible provides proof of women’s negativity. But to do that, men have had to severely distort the truth of Scripture in their war with women.
Naturally, they point to that earliest scenario where Eve first ate the Forbidden Fruit. In the process, though, they embrace a thoroughly selfish bias, which is clearly as one-sided as Adam’s himself. When questioned by God about why he was hiding among the fig trees, Adam took no responsibility for his own actions. Quite to the contrary, his instant and emphatic reaction was: “The woman You gave me, God, gave me the Fruit, and I ate!” (Genesis 3:12)
In this single statement are the seeds of an ancient war that rages to this day. Adam wasn’t man enough to confess his own inadequacy in the equation. According to him, it was either the women’s fault for talking him into eating the Fruit, or it was God’s fault for providing the woman in the first place. So began, at that very moment, man’s war with both women and God, which is why even such luminaries among the Church Fathers, one Augustine, wrote with all sincerity—misguided though he was:
What’s the difference, whether it’s in a wife or in a mother, it’s still Eve, the temptress, we must beware of in any other woman.
And to think: A pillar of the Church proudly proclaimed those words. Yet in light of the truth of Scripture, they’re nothing more than the misogynistic ravings of a man who clearly rejects the message of a true apostle of Christ, who emphatically rejected the notion that Eve should be blamed for the Fall of Mankind. Said Paul: “By one man sin entered the human race, and death by sin, and so death spread throughout all humanity.” (Romans 5:12)
And the reason Paul said this is because when we look to the total narrative of Scripture, we see that long before God provided Eve as a companion for Adam, He clearly stated the terms concerning the prohibition to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. By the time that eventful moment in history rolled around, the first man knew exactly what he was doing and consequently will forever bear the burden of his own actions—not God and not Eve.
What’s worse, not only have women suffered because of this kind of patriarchal manipulation of Scripture, but we now see how this same attitude of self-righteous smugness has infected a correct view of the Godhead. Furthermore, in gracefully enduring the consequences of such myopia, two things become all the more apparent in this timeless struggle.
Just as women have revealed the truth of their character by suffering injustice with a dignity that could only come from a God Who endured a similar travesty at Calvary, we detect a parallel regarding the mischaracterization of the Holy Spirit. And only because the Spirit of God can rightly be viewed as the Mother of creation could She—pardon me for inserting that forbidden pronoun here—have ever endured what only a mother can endure, until finally She receives her due credit for being the most faithful, loving, and gracious Mother of all.
