FEMINIST PNEUMATOLOGY-2

Continuation of sub-points

3. Feminine Images and Metaphors of Holy Spirit- Sophia

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza in her book Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophets engages with Divine Wisdom (Sophia

). According to Fiorenza and also with Elisabeth Johnson, Divine wisdom is a motive found throughout both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures. Fiorenza seeks to show how sophialogy, the proclamation of Jesus as the prophet of divine wisdom and its personification, precedes any concept of Christology.

Attributing the Holy Spirit in metaphor of wisdom, Sophia, personified a woman. Indeed, there does seem to be some openness to associating what is traditionally thought of as feminine with God, since in the Bible God is sometimes depicted as a woman and significant words associated with God in Hebrew are feminine in form: shekinah (God’s presence), hokmah (wisdom), ruah (spirit). God as androgynous is yet another attempt to capture the idea that God has masculine and feminine traits.

4. Reclaiming Women’s Spirituality

Pneumatology helps us to have a unitive vision of Reality. Our understanding of the Holy Spirit enables us to overcome the sexist tendencies in our theology and praxis. The work of Holy Spirit in relation to the Creation, to the World of Redemption and to the existing Church is unity in difference and partnership-in-community. It can correct the erroros of the male-dominant theology which we have inherited from the past; and what could ultimately result from it is a theology of partnership.

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza argues that a radical feminist spirituality is often formulated over against the patriarchal theology and sexist praxis of Christian churches.

Joan Leonard opines that the feminist spirituality differ from other spirituality, it is a spirituality that incorporates the central elements of feminist consciousness. It is the spirituality embraced by those who have experienced feminist consciousness-raising. She continues stating that feminist spirituality is an invitation to explore three aspects of human experience in relation to that which a person names the scared, the divine or ultimate concern. These are 1) the richness of human experience, 2) the religious depth in human experience and encounter and 3) the human response to the latter as a revelatory reorientation of experience.

There is a neo-feminist spirituality movement which countered the believed that body is feminine and Spirit is masculine, so body is inferior to spirit likewise women are inferior to men. According to Felicity Souter Edwards in her “Neo-Feminist Spirituality, neo-feminist spirituality is trying to look upon the interconnection between both male and female consciousness. Ivone Gebara claims that the feminist spirituality is the spirituality of liberation.

The women’s spiritualities has its own right. It is based on the premise that women from
different socio-cultural backgrounds experience themselves, their God and their world
differently; no one culture can claim to speak normatively for all women. A feminist spiritually reclaims the holiness of our en-spirited bodies and the gift of passion as a force to move us onward. This reclaiming of women’s spirituality can help understanding that women’s consciousness is strong and influence and its higher consciousness can even question and be very helpful in attaining women’s liberation. It helps makes sense female power and all the society including women and men in understanding Holy Spirit in its true power as the transformation of an individual and also the society.

Sunita Noronha opines that women spirituality is the need of the hour because women are not given equal opportunity due to power of socialization and men have sought to  put down women’s spirituality and have tried to marginalize their contribution in religion, culture, literature and history, however, women have had great spiritual power, they have a prophetic message to proclaim, and also they have a deep mystical truths to share.