Feminist Pneumatology

1. Understanding the Nature and Work of Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is co-equal with God the Father and God the Son and is of the same essence. Yet He is also distinct from them.  Scripture describes the Holy Spirit in personal terms, not as an impersonal force, when it says that He teaches, guides, comforts and intercedes. He possesses emotions, intellect and will. The Holy Spirit spoke to Philip and gave counsel to the church at Jerusalem. He was sinned against and lied to.

The Christian who is indwelt by the Spirit is indwelt by God. The Holy Spirit possesses the attributes of deity, such as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence and eternality. He does works only God can do, such as creating, regenerating and sanctifying. He is equally associated with the other members of the Trinity.

The Holy Spirit today plays a major role in the application of salvation to the individual. It is the Spirit who brings conviction to the unbeliever and causes him to see the truth of the gospel in a clear light. The Holy Spirit unites the believer with Christ and places him in the body of Christ, the church. The Holy Spirit controls the believer who yields to God and submits himself to God's Word. When these conditions are met, the believer lives in the power of the Spirit and produces the fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells the believer permanently. The Holy Spirit seals the believer. The Holy Spirit sovereignly bestows spiritual gifts or abilities for service to every believer. Although His restraint of evil in the world today will cease with the rapture, He will continue to be present in the earth. In the tribulation period the Spirit will be involved in salvation and filling. In the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Spirit will be in God's people and the Spirit will be upon the King.

Elizabeth Johnson maintains that we have forgotten the Holy Spirit, the Spirit whose presence "is consistently linked with the power to denounce social wrongdoing, announce comfort for those who are suffering and bring about justice for the poor." The Spirit is compassionate; the Spirit is a giver of life, she said. The Spirit enables us to experience righteous anger, to resist evil, "to utter the prophetic word." She can be seen in acts of giving and receiving forgiveness, in caring for the helpless, "in hoping against hope in the face of overwhelming oppression, suffering or death or, in the absence of felt hope, in the sheer grit to go on."

Johnson critiques the use of male language to describe God. The way the faith community uses language reflects what it views as the highest good. No language is adequate to God.

Leelamma Athyal argues that the Church is a charismatic community. The Charismata are the gift of the Holy Spirit. And if they are gifts, then it gives no person any ground of boasting. Athyal reiterates that the Holy Spirit in relation to the Church’s life and ministry is that she imparts upon the Church various gifts for the common good of the community.

Athyal stressed the works of the Holy Spirit and women role as a Mother. Holy Spirit provided the right setting for the rest of the creation to take place. Her presence was an indispensable element in the whole creative process of god. In the creation story of the Book of Genesis, the universe was the result of the hovering of the spirit of God over the waters of chaos.

2. Personification of Holy Spirit

Personification is giving something human characteristics, or anthropomorphism.  In divinity, there may not be gender as we know it.  But the three Persons do have characteristic functions.  Within the God Family of Father, HS, and Son…are both masculine and feminine characteristics.

God reflects masculine roles: Ps.103:13 Father.  Ho.2:16 husband.  Ps.98:6 king.  Ex.15:3 warrior.

God reflects feminine roles: Is.66:13 Mother.  Is.42:14 pregnant.  Ps.123:2 mistress.  Ps.22:9 midwife.    

Yet the Godhead has feminine traits too!  Ro.8:20-23, 26 “The whole creation groans and suffers pains of childbirth. We having the Spirit groan, waiting for the redemption of our body.”  The Jewish apostle Paul portrayed the HS as a midwife, helping creation and humanity towards re-creation. Mahesh Chavda wrote in The Hidden Power of a Woman: “In Judaism, unlike Christianity, God has never been viewed as exclusively male or masculine.”  Many Jewish scholars think Adam was created with dual gender.

Personal imagery for the HS/Wisdom is seen too…in Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom of Sirach (WSir), Wisdom of Solomon (WSol).  Pr.1:20 “Wisdom lifts her voice.”  “Her” is a feminine pronoun. Wisdom is a personified entity or hypostasis (a Greek term used in early Christian writings) of God’s divine essence.

Jewish physicist Albert Einstein said that “Israel wouldn’t experience salvation until it returned to feminine divinity.” (quoted in Patricia Taylor’s The Holy Spirit: The Feminine Nature of God.)  In Jewish thought, the fem Shekinah is the Divine Presence which can be sensed within human souls.  Jewish wisdom theology/sophialogy in BC times (also in Philo) saw God’s Presence dwelling with Israel via the Shekinah.  ref Ex.40:34-35 the Shekinah glory cloud!

Wisdom/Sophía/Chokmáh was never a nature or agricultural goddess like Asherah, or Demeter in Greece.  Mariolatry is a later Roman Catholic Church counterfeit as a substitute for Wisdom or Shekinah…the RCC’s Mary is near to goddess status, such as Isis.