this submerged wisdom strand creates an intrinsic openness about our understanding of God. Traditional male Christologies are seen as a conclusion (we now know what God is like because we have the definitive disclosure), while a sophialogy leaves a continuing openness, which from a feminist perspective is good.
Elizabeth Johnson has also made the recovery of Sophia a way of challenging the patriarchy embedded in classical Christology. She argues that the “Jewish figure of personified Wisdom (Hokmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek)” enabled “the fledgling Christian community to attribute cosmic significance to the crucified Jesus, relating him to the creation and governance of the world, and was an essential step in the development of incarnational christology.”25 For Johnson, a recognition of the genesis of the Biblical understanding of the Christ in female imagery provides a justification for feminine imagery of God. So she talks about the Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia, and Mother-Sophia.26 For Johnson, if you see Jesus through Sophia, then you can see the ministry of Jesus in a different way. Don Schweitzer accurately summarizes Johnson’s position as follows:
The quest for the historical Jesus shows that what was characteristic of Jesus as Sophia/Christ was not his sex but the liberating gestalt of his ministry, which brought liberation from an oppressive status quo to women and men. It was this, not his sexuality, that led to his death and thus to his resurrection/vindication as the Christ. Through his resurrection, Jesus becomes present in all those, male and female, who gather in his name and live out his message in redemptive ways.27
For Johnson, once we see the significance of Sophia, it then changes the way we see Jesus – everyday living within the kingdom is more important, inclusion is central, and relationships should be rectified across boundaries.
There is, in my view, a persuasive argument that recognizes that Sophia language is an important and faithful Biblical Christology. While I do want to safeguard an “authoritative” revelation disclosed in the Eternal Wisdom made flesh (so in that respect I would want to disagree with Schüssler Fiorenza),28 it is important to recognize that the type of Christology emerging from the Sophia tradition is different. It has a different tone to the Christologies of Anselm and Aquinas. And this different tone can be seen when we contrast Elizabeth Johnson with Anselm (see Box 2.8).
Box 2.8
The author has a problem here. The author fears that the Christology of Elizabeth Johnson might not be sufficiently high to be authoritative as reliable revelation of God to humanity. Yet the author wants to affirm the direction these Christologies are moving. This is called “anticipating an objection.” A good author anticipates potential criticisms of the argument and offers a response embedded in the text.
For Anselm, we need the omniscience of Jesus for reasons of authority. This creates the Jesus of power who can perform miracles, attract disciples, and provide moral clarity. For Elizabeth Johnson, the tradition of Sophia stresses inclusion, justice, and participation. Omniscience promises that all answers are provided. Wisdom actually invites us to a place which is more paradoxical. As Stephen Barton observes:
for wisdom is not just a body of knowledge, it is also a way of seeing which attends to what lies hidden as well as to what lies on the surface. Insofar as it attends to what is hidden, wisdom is a way of seeing which has the potential for being innovative, paradoxical, ironic and subversive. Here, the place of the wise is taken by the fool, the place of the strong by the weak, the place of the mature by the child.29
Wisdom is not knowledge of every true proposition; instead, wisdom can see the simple truths within the complexity. Wisdom implies an open-endedness; a wise person never assumes that they know everything; there is always more to learn.30
The argument here is simple: conceptually, when we think about what an incarnation involves, we do not need a God-man who is able to speak every language or know the number of calories in every type of soda. Neither of these skills would disclose to us the nature of God. Such skills would just reveal a God of parlor tricks. Instead, our need is for a life from which we can learn of the love, compassion, and radical call for inclusion (see Box 2.9).
Box 2.9
The author has made his case. This sentence is the one you would quote if you were summarizing this argument in a publication. The reader will accept the argument if this distinction between wisdom and “cognitive knowledge” is persuasive.
Incarnation and a Person with Down’s Syndrome
Herein allow me a confession: much as I love Jesus, part of me wishes that instead of a Jewish male, the Eternal Wisdom had taken the form of a person with Down’s Syndrome. In my experience a person with Down’s is a much more reliable vehicle for disclosing the life of God than most other people. Their obligation to live in the present, their deep compassion and empathy, their sense of fun, and their exceptional capacity for inclusion are all built in; their very biology makes them ideal vehicles for the disclosure of God.
It is true that if God had been incarnate in a person with Down’s, then there would have been a different teaching style. The parables and stories would have been different. The conversations with opponents would have to resort less to good argument and more to intuitive assertion. But this could have all worked: humanity near such a life could still see the reality of God residing in that life in a unique way. It could have still been a life that provoked worship from those around that life.
Now much is made of the challenge of a male Jesus for women. The objection is simple: the experiences of men and women are distinctive; Jesus never knew the challenge of the menstrual cycle or the distinctive experience of childbirth. So how can a male Jesus be representative of all humanity?
The standard answer is simple: to be a human one has to be a particular human. You have to be born into a family, at a certain time, or a certain gender. Although the Incarnation could have taken a variety of forms, it did need to be a form – a particular person. And the Jewishness, maleness, and first centuryness are all part of what it is to be a human person.
However, it is also recognized that the fact that Jesus was male does not mean and cannot mean that women are not complete full forms of humanity. So the first reason why this exercise matters is simply this: it is important for Christian theologians to stress that people with special needs are complete and full forms of humanity. We recognize that it is a contingent fact that the Incarnation took the form of a first-century male and not a logically necessary one. In the same way that God could have been incarnated as a woman, so I am arguing God could have been incarnated as a person with Down’s Syndrome (see Box 2.10).
Box 2.10
At this point, the author links this argument to the wider argument of incarnational possibilities. The point is made that the Incarnation of God in the form of a male Jew was contingent, not logically necessary. This means that the Incarnation could have taken a different form.
Incarnation and Jesus
Election is a mystery. It was the Jewish people who were chosen; it was Mary the mother of Jesus who gave birth to the Christ. Jesus was able-bodied; Jesus was male; and Jesus spoke Aramaic and was heavily shaped by a Jewish apocalyptic worldview. One important purpose of this exercise is that once one recognizes that conceptually God could have taken the form of a person with Down’s, then we can liberate our study of the New Testament and let Jesus be Jesus.
The joy of this argument is that Bart Ehrman, the New Testament scholar, could be right and Jesus could still be God. Once we let go some of the classical expectations that we have of the Incarnation,
