Sophia

As I've said previously, I think that the New Testament's primary mode for expressing the value they found in Jesus is to transpose him onto preconceived categories.  Thus Jesus is expressed as the 'new Moses', the 'new Elijah', a prophet of old.  Often these concepts applied to Jesus are an awkward fit.  Jesus lines up with such molds in some places, but in others couldn't be further away from what those ideas expressed.  

This is why calling Jesus the Messiah is only partially applicable.  There were several lines of thought as to what the Messiah would be.  Jesus obviously was a better fit for the idea of the 'priestly Messiah' who would liberate the people by leading them into a new spiritual depth where God himself would be moved by their purity to come and save Israel.  The problem was, that this view was a minority view.  Most people who expected a Messiah, expected a military general to drive Judah to triumph.  When they referred to the Messiah as the "Lion of Judah" they weren't just giving lip-service;  they believed the Messiah would make Judah into Rome and Rome into their slaves.  Thus, Jesus was a horrible Messiah.  Quite literally, as a Messiah, he was a complete failure.  Still, the NT gives him this title with frequency because it is a means to express what they have failed to find a good way to articulate.  

They transposed the person of Jesus onto the concept of the Messiah, and for those who came to understand Jesus, the concept was redefined.  And, this is what I believe to be the foremost method that the NT uses to teach the identity and importance of Jesus to people who had never met him.  So, moving on . . . 

It's funny that we pay so little attention to the 400 year gap that is present between the Testaments of the Christian Bible.  We treat that period as a boring era when God was taking a breather getting ready to send/become Jesus to fix our problems once and for all.  That attitude is one of the peaks of Christian idiocy.  

There was an astounding volume of literature produced by Jewish culture during those years.  Much of it is included in the Apocrypha which we have conveniently excluded since Bibles are heavy enough as they are.  The problem is that the Apocrypha and many of the books that didn't even make the cut to be considered  Apocrypha-worthy are the very books which set the tone for the culture that Jesus and his contemporaries lived in.  Jesus and his friends knew those books almost as well as they knew the Hebrew Bible.

One prominent feature of that time period was the emergence of Sophia.  The Wisdom of God stepped out in that culture as a mythic figure which delineated new ideas about God and his relation to the world.  Nonetheless Sophia was controversial, since she was . . . well, a she.   Sophia was in many ways separate from God, she acted on her own, and yet she was also a part of God.  It was possible to see her acting on her own, or, in her actions, to see God himself taking action.  Sophia was supposed to be an eternal aspect of God.  There was never a time when she was not with God, and a part of God.  She was there when God created the world, and by her God created all things.

If you've ever read the New Testament the parallels become staggering.  It becomes readily apparent that Jesus is not just a prophet of Sophia, but actually in the earliest contexts Jesus' disciples saw him as Sophia incarnate.  In fact, most of the hyperbolic claims of the New Testament concerning the ontology of Jesus, the Son, originated with the idea of Jesus the embodiment of Sophia.  

Notice this, no Jew would cry blasphemy at the equation of Jesus with Sophia, but unilaterally Jews and Muslims would anathematize the equation of Jesus with God.  The difference is subtle but infinitely important.  

God is active in Sophia, but in the context where Jesus lived, Sophia did have an identity of her own.  Thus, when Jesus is understood as the incarnation of Sophia, the same concept applies:  God is active in Jesus, but Jesus is also his own.  

There was a problem with this transposition:  Sophia is feminine.  Around Jesus' own time Jewish society was shifting from a period of being more egalitarian to one which was more patriarchal.  Under the influence of Greco-Roman culture the feminine was increasingly relegated to a place of inferiority, and so the equation of Jesus with a feminine expression of the Absolute God was feared to be distasteful for Greek Christians.  A slow process of repression began.  So, during the years of writing the NT we notice the idea of Jesus as Sophia fading from the scene.  By the time John was written the idea of Logos was preferred over Sophia to express that Jesus was pre-existent without the disgrace of assuming he was inspired by God's feminine side.

This understanding of Jesus reconciles claims of his pre-existence and clarifies how Jesus "came" from God.  I also find that it offers hope that our basic doctrines don't automatically put us in enmity with over one sixth of the world population (Muslims and Jews), and don't make us look like fools to the remaining two thirds of other faiths.  It also restores some of my respect for the Gospel of John trying to find a new way to express an idea that was causing a lot of controversy . . . only I think his solution leaves us with more problems than it fixes.

The main people currently trying to lead the resurgence of Sophia theology are Christian feminists like Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza.  I feel though that ecumenical Christians also have an important stake in reclaiming the role which Sophia played in early Christian faith, since Sophia helps us to reconsider the dogmas which have long lead us into exclusiveness and misunderstandings about the very man that we center our beliefs around.