Who Is Sophia?

First Congregational Church of Evanston, IL: September 17, 2006, 15^thSunday after Pentecost

Proverbs 1:20-33; Wisdom of Solomon 7:28-8:1 – Rev. Dr James E. Roghair

Wisdom of Solomon 7:26-8:1

[7] 26 For she [Wisdom] is a reflection of eternal light,

a spotless mirror of the working of God,

and an image of his goodness.

27 Although she is but one, she can do all things,

and while emaining in herself, she renews all things;

and makes them friends of God, and prophets;

28 for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.

29 She is more beautiful than the sun,

and excels every constellation of the stars.

Compared with the light she is found to be superior,

30 for it is succeeded by the night,

but against wisdom evil does not prevail.

[8] 1She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other,

and she orders all things well...

Who Is Sophia? What Is She?

When I was in college, I took a voice class – not that I learned very well how to sing. There was just one other student in the class – and he wasn’t that outstanding a singer, either. I don’t remember the song I sang, but I remember his song was “Who is Sylvia, what is she?...” Some of you musicians may remember that one.

And this week as I started to prepare for this sermon, that song was ringing in my ears, and so this sermon title: “Who is Sophia?” And the other question, What is she? As you surely already know, sophia is the Greek word for wisdom. So, who is Wisdom and what is she?

ReImagining Conference

In the early 1990's an ecumenical group of women met in Minneapolis for a ReImagining Conference. And Oh, what a storm of protest arose after that event. There were accusations of heresy, and worse. The more conservative voices in various denominations of Christ’s church were outraged. Women at this conference had lifted new voices. They were raising up in new ways some old ways of thinking about God and Christian theology. One of the things they were thinking about is the image of Sophia.

The Wisdom of Solomon

Sophia is prominent in the book the Wisdom of Solomon, so I wanted to read the passage from it today. This reading is,indeed,an alternate lectionary reading. But most of us probably have not ventured far into the Wisdom of Solomon. It is one of those books called Apocrypha, or sometimes Deuterocanonical. We Protestants have been aware that these mysterious books are somehow in the Roman Catholic Bible, but not in ours. And so we have mostly ignored them.

This week, I sat down and read the whole book of the Wisdom of Solomon. It is an interesting read– only 19 chapters, and beautifully crafted. It was probably written within 30 or 40 years of Jesus’ Birth – before or after. It is a Jewish book, but was probably not written in Hebrew, but in Greek. It was likely not written in the Holy Land, but in Alexandria, Egypt. It is a book that is thoroughly Hebrew in its poetic construction, but very Greek in its philosophical underpinning. It is a book that was on and off Canonical lists in the early years when those lists were being developed. It even showed up as one of the New Testament books in one early list.

I hope that reading this Deuterocanonical passage has not shocked your sensibilities. Although I know it would be highly offensive to some, I hope most of you won’t mind. And I promise I won’t do it often.

Sophia in the Wisdom of Solomon

Perhaps the questions, Who is Sophia? What is she? aren’t continually ringing in your ears. Indeed you may be tempted to say as my wife did when I shared the sermon title with her, she said, “Who is asking?” Perhaps none of you are really are.

But I would be very surprised if some of you have not questioned Who is God and what is he/she? Maybe you didn’t think it was appropriate to ask it out loud. But I think it is a legitimate part of our work as people of faith to use our minds. The question of Who is Sophia? at least has a little bearing on the question of who God is.

ReImagining Backlash

In an extremely right wing newspaper the headline screamed out after the second ReImagining conference in Minneapolis in 2000: “Sophia Upstages Jesus at ReImagining Revival.” The article begins, “‘Who is not here?’ That was the question conference convener and Presbyterian minister Sally Hill asked almost 900 women who gathered here ... to revive their ReImagining God movement. ‘Here we taste, see and savor how good it is to be in our bodies’ declared conferees in the words of their opening ‘milk and honey’ ritual. But again Hill asked, ‘Who is not here?’ As conference themes unfolded, the answer came clear. The missing person was Jesus Christ. (The Layman)”

I am sure that those who planned and most of those who participated in that conference did not find Jesus missing. But rather they were encouraged to look at Jesus Christ, God the Father and the Holy Spirit with new eyes as a result of their new experiences.

Wisdom Readings Help with Who God Is

For me, these two Wisdom readings help to ask the question of who God is. But these passages have different views than the way standard conservative orthodox Christian theology. Does that mean that Jesus is missing? At best Jesus is seen in a new light.

The book of Proverbs which we seldom delve into very deeply, is a part the genre of Jewish wisdom literature. The bulk of the book is just what its title suggests – proverbs: Good words to live by – words handed down from parent to child – from generation to generation – in much the style of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. But before the book launches into the actual proverbs, the son (to whom the teaching is addressed) is invited to look at two persons demanding his attention. The son is to choose one for marriage. There is Wisdom (Sophia in the Greek translation) and the other is Folly. The choice is not an unbiased one. For the young man is being encouraged to take Sophia for his wife.

Wisdom calls from the gate – that place where commerce, politics and social intercourse took place. She calls the youth to make wisdom a part of his life and to reject folly. The many wise words – the proverbs are the things he will get from taking Wisdom as his wife.

Wisdom is the Capable Wife

Then, after all of the statements and sayings are finished, comes the very end of the book with an ‘Ode to a Capable Wife’ – surely some of you have been at funerals – or maybe even at weddings where this has been read as a literal statement of who and what a human wife is to be. But perhaps it is more appropriately seen as the culmination of the discussion of wisdom – here personified as a wonderful and capable female figure to whom any and all of us – male and female – might wed ourselves.

Further Personification in The Wisdom of Solomon

The book of the Wisdom of Solomon goes further in its personification of Wisdom, though. For there, Wisdom is a reflection of the eternal light of God. She is the one through whom God created all that God created. She is the one through whom God forgives us. She is an expression of who God is in our human lives

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Wisdom and Logos

This is where the Wisdom thinking becomes so interesting to me. For it is not hard to make the leap from the words about Wisdom in the Wisdom of Solomon to the opening words of the Gospel of John in which we hear that the Word of God (Greek Logos) – whom we are to understand as Jesus Christ – was at the beginning and that all that was created was created through this Word.

Then we hear that the word is the Light of God, the Light of the World and that the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. There is an affinity between the thoughts about Sophia and about Logos – about Wisdom and the Word.

Wisdom and the Holy Spirit

But it is hard not to recognize another affinity – that between Wisdom and the Holy Spirit. For we have all been taught that the Holy Spirit is that part of God which lives within us. The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, the Advocate. But if God lives within us, is it illegitimate to describe that God living in us as Sophia or Wisdom, but legitimate to describe that God as the Holy Spirit? Many feminist Christians have been liberated by understanding Sophia to be a legitimate way of understanding God within us.

The Sex of the Spirit?

There are many ways that these thoughts come to us. I will never forget the rather hair-raising experience for my late wife, Willa. She was not the first woman ordained to ministry in the Presbyterian Church, but she was early enough that the women who had been ordained knew what number each was. And so, it was still pretty much a man’s world.

So when she stood before the Presbytery of Newark (NJ) as that presbytery’s first female candidate for ordination, words about the Holy Spirit came up, and Willa used the pronoun “it” in reference to the Spirit. She was immediately pounced on for using that word. And she came back immediately with the response, “Well what sex is the Holy Spirit?” Laughs all around, and no one tackled that question any further. We have no answer.

I would propose that the sex of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with the question of how we know God within us. And if the feminine imagery of Wisdom – of Sophia if you will– helps you understand and speak about God, try it on.

Not a Goddess but a Way of Recognizing God in Us

Sophia, is not a goddess – although there were surely sects who did that to her. But she is a personified way of perceiving who God is in our life and experience – much as the Holy Spirit is.

On a website called ‘Voices of Sophia,’ I found this quote at the very top: “ Sophia is the Greek word for "wisdom". Wisdom/Sophia language comes from a strong biblical tradition. In the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures Sophia has a significant relatedness to God. In the letters of Paul, Jesus is described as the "Sophia of God" (1 Cor. 1:24)

Whether seeing Sophia as a ‘reflection’ or an ‘aspect’ of the Triune God, feminist thinkers find value in the Sophia tradition. It invites insights for our understanding of God and asserts women's right to claim their own experience in relationship to the Bible and in speaking of God to the Church (Voices of Sophia Website).”

Take the Liberating Point of View

It is in an attempt to offer you this liberating viewpoint, that I have brought you the two Sophia passages. I hope they are meaningful to some of you women. Perhaps you have chafed at all male language in theology and hymnology.

But Wisdom language is not just for women. The God we all know and experience comes to us – male and female – in many guises that are not encased in rigid gender terms. And if we are always thinking and feeling, trying to come to terms with the rigid and never changing puzzle of the Trinity, this might help us take another look.

And so I offer you Wisdom –Sophia – another of God’s faces.

Amen.