Sophia the Holy Spirit brings us to fullness of life

The Holy Spirit, Sophia, is active throughout time and throughout the cosmos. Within the Trinity, Abba is the person most responsible (but not solely responsible) for the creation and sustenance of the universe. Nevertheless, all three persons create and sustain together so the cosmos may bear the imprint of agapic love. For this reason, we find Bible passages that describe the participation of each Trinitarian person in creation. Here, we will concern ourselves with the contribution of Sophia.

Reading the Trinity back into the Hebrew Scriptures, we find Sophia present in the very beginning: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2 KJV; see also Proverbs 3:19–20; 8:22–31; Psalm 104:30).

At the outset, God the Trinity intended the universe to be more than dead matter. God intended the universe to be full of Spirit, which is to be full of Life. For Spirit to be present, not just at the beginning, but in the beginning, God embeds Spirit within every aspect of the universe, revealing the divine commitment to richness of experience. Self-organizing matter isn’t enough; the cosmos must host a great expanse of feelings, desires, dreams, and decisions. The cosmos must provide a topography of affects that grants import to existence.

Sophia fulfills matter by lifting it into the heights of Spirit. She does not neglect material existence; she consummates it. In so doing, she rejects any language that implies existence is “nothing but” matter. We hear such language frequently: love is “nothing but” the neurotransmitter oxytocin, consciousness is “nothing but” a neurological illusion, morality is “nothing but” an evolutionary adaptation of social animals. To materialist assertions that “spirit is nothing but matter,” Sophia replies, “Yes, spirit is matter . . . and more. Spirit is abundance.”

We can discern this abundant quality within the universe: “God’s Spirit adorns the heavens,” states Job (26:13a). Due to this adornment, things are not mere things; they are ensouled, they are sacred, they are beautiful. Sophia as Spirit is the superfluous boon in the universe, the net positive that we never earned but always enjoy. She is embedded in reality as its source of significance, weaving meaning into the cosmos and turning life into instruction.

Sophia’s presence is the presence of life itself, therefore it is the presence of grace itself. Knowing Sophia is a gift: “Happy are you when you find Wisdom, when you develop discernment. For she is more profitable than silver and brings yields greater even than gold. . . . Her paths are pleasant ones, and all her roads lead to peace” (Proverbs 3:13, 17).

Sophia’s specific divine charge is the unification, harmonization, and enchantment of our interior life or subjectivity. “Subjectivity” is a philosophical term that refers to our private thoughts, feelings, memories, and desires, to which only we have direct access, but which we can share with others through various forms of communication. Our human subjectivity finds its precedent in the divine subjectivity of each Trinitarian person, just as our intersubjectivity (deep relationship to one another) finds its precedent in the Trinity.

God is the ground of being, and not just physical being, but all being—emotional, moral, spiritual, rational, aesthetic, mathematical, etc. God is maker of all things, visible and invisible, and God embraces all that God has made. We, made in the image of God, are made for fullness of being, to embrace all that God has made. We are matter and spirit, body and soul, reason and emotion.

To neglect any aspect of ourselves diminishes our personhood. Sophia neglects nothing. She sees beneath appearances and teaches us to do the same, granting us interior awareness, helping us to recognize the interior awareness of others, then connecting everything and everyone to generate a living communion. Through this unceasing process, she frees us from the impoverishing illusion that we are the only important thing alive. She connects depth of self to depth of self, soul to soul, bringing to experience what was always true and helping us to live plumb with creation as intended.

“The glory of God is a human being, fully alive,” writes Irenaeus, and Sophia within us secures this glory. As our inhabitant, Sophia empowers the process of theosis, through which we draw ever closer to God, taking on God’s nature (John 10:34; following Psalm 82:6). Sophia transforms us according to the likeness of God (Ephesians 4:24) and clothes us in Christ, granting us adoption as the children of God (Galatians 3:26–27). Through the work of Sophia, we become increasingly divine until our petty egotism dies to the fullness of Christ, which is the fullness of life. We cease to be hovels of the self, becoming instead temples of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Such internal transformation changes everything around us, placing us in a new cosmos, more beautiful and promising than the previous. We are becoming one with ourselves, one with God, and one with the cosmos. Falling ever deeper into love, we are becoming agapic, hence nondual.

Jesus’s revelation of agapic love is limited by his sheer humanity—the finitude of his this-worldly work. One human life, even a divine human life, cannot exhaustively reveal the infinitude of divine potential. The inherent limitation of Jesus’s teachings, their limitation to one culture and one language in one time, coupled with the imperially enforced brevity of his ministry, leave space for us to learn more. Sophia teaches us more.

As the Spirit of the universe, Sophia acts throughout the universe. Jesus the Christ plays the role of absolute participant, acting in a particular time and particular place with particular people, sanctifying our particularity. Sophia acts everywhere so that Jesus can act somewhere; Sophia acts in all times so that Jesus can act in one time. Hence, Sophia continues revelation, infusing agapic love into all times and all places through inspired people, of every religion and no religion, guiding the cosmos toward the divine love that Jesus so perfectly revealed. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 163–164)

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For further reading, please see:

Matthews, Caitlín. Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God. Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books, 2013.

Irenaeus of Lyons, “Against Heresies,” §7: Gloria enim Dei vivens homo. Literally: “For the glory of God is the living person.”

Elizabeth Johnson. Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit: Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1993.