Wisdom, arise!
- Proverbs 1:20-33
- Wisdom of Solomon 7:26 – 8:1
- Isaiah 50:4-9a
- Psalm 116:1-9
- James 3:1-12
- Mark 8:27-38
God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
Whenever we start to read the Wisdom passages of the Bible we cross a gender line. I use that word here in its correct, linguistic meaning. The Hebrew word for wisdom, Hochmah, and its Greek analogue, Sophia, are both feminine words. Therefore the Bible’s authors and translators put in female pronouns. This is true of every available resource I have. Sophia/Wisdom/Hochma is a female.
This is picked up in the newage movement, insisting that Sophia/Wisdom is a Goddess oppressed by patriarchy. Oddly enough many of the same people who would go looking for the Goddess Sophia based on her pronouns are quick to point out that the use of Male Pronouns for God the Father are, simply, cultural baggage. (In my own neo-pagan past, a group to which I belonged taught Sophia was the Bride of the Logos. This creates an interesting transgendered image of Jesus, I think: marrying himself!) The Canadian Anglicans even have a hymn that praises Holy Wisdom. That it is sung to the ancient “Salve Regina” tune (Hail Holy Queen enthroned above, O, Maria) makes it a very funny pun.
We get into ever deeper symbolic problems when, in the East, at least, Sophia is seen at once as a sign of the Pre-incarnate Son of God and, in some ways, as a sign of the Theotokos. But also the Holy Spirit.
The problem, of course, goes back to the issue of gendered language. I am one with the Saints who offer us inclusive images of God, Father/Mother (as in Gregory of Nyssa). In a very real way they also offer us gender-inclusive images of God the Son, as Sophia/Logos (as in Julian of Norwich).
Again, I don’t think Wisdom/Sophia is a Goddess. Neither is Wisdom/Sophia a different hypostasis of the Trinity, a fourth lef, if you will, to a three legged stool. She does all the things that Jesus is reported to have done. She is with God, the Father, a reflection of his light, the fullness of him. She is, I think, rather clearly, only female because of language and culture (just as God the Father is so only because of language and culture). Certainly Jesus was a male but I think – as with so much of our theological language – what we say about the Gender of God says more about us than about God.
God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
What are we to make of these two passages together, since the one can not contradict the other? Mindful that “wisdom” is not “book learning” but rather God, himself, how does “denying self and taking up our cross” (note, it’s not Jesus’ cross – but each has her own cross to take) parallel with “Living with wisdom”?
What does it mean to equate “living with wisdom” with “taking up your cross?”
