Conservatives and Feminists Differ on Figure of Wisdom

“Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver and her revenue better than gold.

--Proverbs 3:13-18 “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.”

--Wisdom, speaking in

Proverbs 8:22 “Wisdom ( Sophia ) is vindicated by all her children.”

--Jesus, speaking in Luke 7:35 Biblical conservatives in Presbyterian and United Methodist circles have charged that the biblical figure of Wisdom, an aspect of God occasionally personified in Proverbs and embodied by Jesus in parts of the New Testament, has taken on the image of a goddess for some feminists today. But most participants in a controversial conference say it is not so.

In a blessing over milk and honey at the “Re-imagining 1993” women’s conference last November in Minneapolis, the ritual invoked Sophia, the Greek word for wisdom in the New Testament, which was written in Greek.

Some examples quoted by the conservative Methodist magazine Good News:

“Our maker Sophia, we are women in your image: With the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life. . . . Our mother Sophia, we are women in your image: With the milk of our breasts we suckle the children; with the knowledge of our hearts we feed humanity.”

James V. Heidinger II, editor of Good News, said the homage to Sophia and other conference presentations were “radical departures from historic Christian doctrine and teaching.”

A retired Methodist bishop, Earl Hunt, speaking generally of feminist attention to Sophia, termed it a heresy that “staggers the religious mind” and “must be eliminated.”

But one participant, Catherine Keller, who teaches theology at Methodist-related Drew University in Madison, N.J., said, “Sophia is a metaphor, nothing less and nothing more.

“Feminists who are looking for a goddess are quickly disappointed in Sophia.”

The Rev. Jeanne Audrey Powers, a national ecumenical official with the United Methodists, said feminist scholars who have “begun to find feminine elements in the godhead and who are seeking to remain within the church are sometimes condemned as radical for trying to find elements in Scripture and tradition that they can relate to as women.”