This topic further discusses the Holy Spirit (HS), and links & contrasts the HS to the virgin Mary who bore Jesus. My other topics about the Godhead or God Family are: “Holy Spirit Personification”, Holy Spirit’s Identity”, “Godhead in Prehistory”, “Tri-unity of God”, “Jesus Was the Old Testament God”, “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has a God”.
Jesus said of Himself in Lk.7:35, “Wisdom is justified by her children”. Jesus indicated He is the Child of Wisdom…“her”. (Pr.7:4 wisdom is sister, not brother.) The New Testament (NT) and the Old Testament (OT) Septúagint/LXX Greek term for Wisdom is sophía (Strongs g4678). Nowhere in the NT did Jesus call Mary His ‘mother’ (or call Joseph His ‘father’)!
The gospel writers naturally refer to Mary & Joseph as Jesus’ mother & father, His parents. Lk.2:27 “The parents brought in the child Jesus.” Mt.13:55 “Is not this the carpenter’s son, and His mother called Mary?” Jn.6:42 “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” Mary even refers to Joseph as Jesus’ father. After finding Jesus at the temple, Lk.2:48 “His mother said to Him, ‘Son, Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you”. But Jesus replied to her in v.49, “Didn’t you realize that I must be in My Father’s affairs?” Jesus was Fathered by God.
Jesus said in Jn.16:28, “I came forth from the Father”. Mary gave birth to Jesus, and her husband Joseph was Jesus’ legal father. Lk.3:23 “Jesus, being supposedly the son of Joseph.” Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ biological father. Mt.1:18 “When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with Child by the Holy Spirit.” Jesus’ virgin birth! Mary & Joseph knew that Joseph didn’t father Jesus/Yeshúa. (also see the topic, “Jesus’ Virgin Birth”.)
Father God is Jesus’ Father, and Jesus referred to Himself as the Child of Wisdom (Lk.7:35), His Mother. Rather than calling Mary, ‘mother’, Jesus referred to the surrogate Mary as “woman”. Jn.2:4 “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?” Jn.19:26 “When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!”
Jesus was completely God in the flesh…both His Father and Mother are God! The womb of Mary, the “woman” as Jesus lovingly called her, served to form Him in the flesh to become the God-Man. The 300s AD Apostles Creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary”. Mary birthed Jesus. Ga.4:4 “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.”
Lk.1:35 “The angel said, ‘The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of The Highest will overshadow you [Mary]; therefore the Holy One to be born shall be called Son of God.” Orthodox Study Bible Lk.1:35 “Note the revelation of the Holy Trinity: The Father (The Highest), the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The Father overshadowed the HS upon Mary, and God’s Son Jesus was conceived.
Chinese preacher Witness Lee was part of the Christian work started by Watchman Nee. Lee’s Living With and In the Divine Trinity”, p.39 “Lk.1:35 shows the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary…the Most High, God the Father, overshadowing Mary…and the birth of the holy thing, the Son of God. Thus the entire Divine Trinity was involved in the conception.” The Son was conceived into Mary by His Parents, who are both God.
So Jesus is also God! His blood factors, so to speak, were only Divine. As Jesus grew in Mary’s womb, Mary’s own blood didn’t penetrate her fetal wall. In 1Pe.1:19, Peter wrote of “The precious blood of Christ”. God’s “own blood” (Ac.20:27-28)…formed from the Father and the HS!
Father God didn’t somehow have sex with Mary, who was engaged to the man Joseph (Mt.1:18). It would’ve been adultery to have sex with a married or betrothed woman. De.22:23-27 God’s penalty for such adultery was severe. Surely, Father God wasn’t an adulterer!
Furthermore, Mary was of a different kind…she was the human kind, not the Godkind. God’s principle of biogenesis reflects each creation reproducing only according to its kind (ref Ge.1:11-12, 21, 24-25, 6:19-21, Mt.7:16, 1Co.15:38-39). Father God is Spirit, not flesh, Jn.4:23-24. The term incubus pertains to a spirit having sex with a human woman. Heathen gods, such as Zeus/Jupiter, supposedly had sex with mortal women and produced offspring.
Jesus wasn’t some Nephílim type of offspring (Ge.6:1-4, 1Enoch 6:1-4, Jude 6-7)! see “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God”. Father God didn’t go after strange flesh of another kind (Mary) and commit sin. Ge.19:4-5, 24 God destroyed the Sodomites who desired perverse sex with the two angels who visited Lot. Le.20:15-16 God’s penalty for beastiality (sex with a different kind) was severe!
Let’s look at the early church understanding of the feminine prototype in God…before the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) became dominant.
But first, Philo Judaeus (25 BC–50 AD), The Works of Philo, AI2:14:49 “The mother of all things…the wisdom of God”. Again, Jesus indicated He was the Child of her, Wisdom/Sophia (Mt.11:19 KJV). Pr.1:20-23 “Wisdom lifts her voice, ‘I will pour out My Spirit upon you.” She is the Holy Spirit.
Early church writings in various countries attest to the feminine (fem) HS. The fragmentary Gospel to the Hebrews was written in Greek (probably at Alexandria) in the early 100s AD for Jewish Christians. The HS is Jesus’ Divine Mother in its Christology. In one quotation Jesus declared, “My mother, the Holy Spirit took Me, and conveyed Me to the great mount Tabor”.
Odes of Solomon, the earliest Christian hymnbook (probably written in Aramaic Syriac, pre-125 AD), translated by James H. Charlesworth, p.33-34 Introduction “Among Christians who worshiped in Aramaic and Syriac, the Holy Spirit was perceived to be feminine. The Odist may serve us well in recovering the feminine in our lives and worship”. Two sample Odes: Ode 28 “And from that (Life) is the Spirit that is within Me. And it cannot die because She is life.” Ode 36 “I rested on the Spirit of the Lord, and She raised me up to heaven. And She caused me to stand on my feet in the Lord’s high place. [Christ speaks now] For according to the greatness of the Most High, so She made Me.”
Hippólytus of Rome (170–235 AD), in a fragment written in Greek, depicted “Isaac as an image of God the Father, wife Rebecca an image of the Holy Spirit, son Jacob an image of the church and of Christ”.
Marius Victórinus of Rome (360 AD) Advérsus Áruim 1:58 (Latin) said the Spirit was Jesus’ Mother.
Robert Murray Symbols of Church and Kingdom, p.25 “The Syriac Fathers, as is well known, attributed female gender to the Holy Spirit in the first centuries after Christ; seeing the Holy Spirit especially as ‘Mother.” Following are writings reflecting the fem HS from a few ‘fathers’ of the Eastern Church:
Áphrahat (280–345 AD) wrote in Syriac in Persia. Demonstrations VI “The Spirit, She opens the heavens and descends, and hovers over the waters; and those who are baptized put Her on.”
Éphrem the Syrian (306–373 AD) was perhaps the most significant of all the Syriac language fathers, called the “greatest poet of the patristic age”. In Hymnén de Ecclésia, he identified the Spirit as feminine.
Macarían Homilies (late 300s) were written in Greek at Edessa in Turkey. “Instead of an earthly father you are seeking the heavenly Father, and instead of a mother who is subject to corruption, you have as Mother the excellent Spirit of God, and the heavenly Jerusalem.” (ref Ga.4:26)
Martyríus Sáhdona (630 AD) Book of Perfection 1:3:13. This Syrian theologian writes of the person “Who has been held worthy of the hovering of the all-holy Spirit [Ge.1:2], who, like a mother, hovers over us as she gives sanctification; and through her hovering over us, we are made worthy of sonship”.
John of Dályatha (700s) wrote in east Syria, calling the Spirit the mother and begetter (Letters 51:11).
Moses bar Képha (813–903), celebrated bishop near the Tigris River, wrote in a Syriac homily, “The Holy Spirit hovered over John the Baptist, and brought him up like a compassionate mother”.
The early Eastern Church originally believed the HS was She/Her. But after some time, the Syriac church lost or suppressed the original OT & apocryphal Jewish concept of the fem HS or shekínah. By the 500s AD, a masculine (masc) HS was becoming more the norm. Possibly this was due to Western influence, and because some heretical groups misused the feminine imagery.
Russian Orthodox author Sergei Búlgakov (1891–1944) Sophia The Wisdom of God, p.1. “The church of St. Sophia in Constantinople. The grace, lightness, wonderful symmetry of the structure; an ocean of light pours in from above and dominates the whole space below…is artistic proof of Her existence.” p.5-6 “The time has come for us to sweep away the dust of the ages and to decipher the sacred script. The theme of Sophia never had any place in Western theology. Protestantism showed itself particularly barren in this sphere. Unfortunately, the sophialógical barrenness of Western theology influenced Eastern theology also in a negative direction…a divergence from the true wisdom of the church.”
Unlike the Eastern Church, the RCC claims, “At no time has the Church referred to the Holy Spirit as ‘She’ when speaking of the person of the Holy Spirit”. (The Catholic Exchange 2006) The RCC insists the HS be referred to as ‘He’.
Instead of a fem HS…the RCC developed excessive veneration of the virgin Mary. Their Mariology is quasi-idolatry/Mariolatry. They greatly reverence Mary, say she never sinned, and some pray to her.
Official Mary veneration is seen from the 430 AD Council of Ephesus, when Mary was given the title Theotókos/“God-bearer”, or Mother of God. (Yet nowhere in the NT did Jesus call Mary, ‘mother’.)
Earlier, Irenaeus (130–200 AD) of France had called Mary the new/second Eve. In his analogy, the pregnant Mary and Jesus the 2nd Adam (1Co.15:45) were of the same body…as Eve & Adam were of the same body, before Eve was separated (Advérsus Háereses 3). But Irenaeus’ comparison doesn’t overly venerate Mary. (Irenaeus also wrote, “The Son is rightly called Word, the Spirit is called the Wisdom”.)
Peter Damian (1007–1073) was an Italian cardinal. He connected Mary with Wisdom/Sophia as the omnipotent Throne of Wisdom. “The blessed virgin can do whatever she pleases, both in heaven and on earth. All power is given to thee [Mary]…nothing is impossible to thee.” (Serm.1 de Nat. B. Virg.)
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was a French abbot. To Bernard, Mary is the mother of humankind! “At the command of Mary, all obey, even God.” (De Excel Virg, cap 12) “Mary is our Mediatrix.” (Second Sermon for the Feast of the Assumption) “Let us cast ourselves at the feet of this good Mother.”
St. Bonaventure (1221–1274) was an Italian of the Franciscan order. To him, Mary is Co-Redemptrix (Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary). “The Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven.” “The Holy Spirit intends Solomon’s words about Wisdom [in Proverbs, Wisdom of Solomon] to be understood of the most excellent Virgin Mary.” Bonaventure transposed Jesus’ real Mother, Wisdom (the HS)…to Mary! Bonaventure also wrote, “That woman (namely Eve), drove us out of Paradise and sold us; but this one (Mary) brought us back again and bought us”. (de don. Sp. 6; 14 Bonaventure)
As a child, the Beatles’ Paul McCartney was baptized a Roman Catholic. Later, in 1970 even he sang, “In my hour of darkness, mother Mary comes to me; speaking words of wisdom…Let It Be”.
Over the centuries, the RCC has made Mary/Mariolatry a counterfeit or substitute for the scriptural position of Wisdom/Sophia/Mother. Yet a counterfeit presumes a prior genuine! It was Wisdom who sat beside God’s throne as Queen. Wisdom of Solomon 9:4 “Wisdom that sits by Your throne.” She was beside YHVH at the beginning. Pr.8:22, 30 “I [Wisdom] was beside Him, daily His delight.” The real Queen of Heaven (Je.7:18) wasn’t a counterfeit Astárte…not Deméter…not Isis…not Mary!
The surrogate Mary carried and birthed Jesus the Son of God. She’s a godly woman. But not a co-redemptrix or mediatrix, not due near-goddess status! The RCC believes Mary was always sinless. However, Mary herself indicated that she too needs a Savior! Lk.1:46-47 Mary exulted, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior”. Mary knew she was a sinner needing a Savior, just like all of humanity.
Christians believe we are born-again (“from above”). But most today give little thought to the Mother such birth implies. John saw in Re.12:1, 5, 14 “In heaven a Woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. She gave birth to a Son to rule all nations. And two wings of a great eagle were given to the woman, that she might fly.” (God said in Ps.2:7, “You are My Son, Today I have begotten Thee. I will give the nations as Your inheritance.”) Re.12:17 “The dragon made war the with the rest of Her offspring.” The Woman isn’t Mary. Re.12 reflects the begetting HS and Spirit-filled church/offspring.
Is.66:7 “Before she travailed, she brought forth a man child.” v.13 “As one who his Mother comforts, so I will comfort you.” The HS is the Comforter/Helper. Jesus said in Jn.14:26, “The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in My name”. In the Old Syriac Jn.14:26, the Comforter/HS is “She” (as YHVH is as Mother in Is.66:13). Also Ac.9:31 “In the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the church multiplied.”
The early Syriac writers quoted above didn’t present the HS as a literal woman. But by the 500s AD she became masculine. It seems the concept of a fem HS became dangerous to the structure of the church. By the time the HS became a confirmed member of the trinity (Council of Constantinople in 381 AD), the HS was described as masc, despite having nurturing fem qualities! But Ge.1:2, 26-27 females too embody God’s image! Male and female both are created in the image and likeness of God.
Martin Luther was reportedly “not ashamed of speaking of the Holy Spirit in feminine terms”.
Count Zínzendorf (1700–1760), leader of the Moravian church, wrote of himself: “I have during my lifetime not eaten of the foods which were formerly forbidden them; I have employed the Sabbath for rest many years already, and our Sunday for the proclamation of the gospel – that I have done without design, and in simplicity of heart.” (Budingsche Sammlung, Leipzig, 1742, sec. 8, 224, letter written in 1738.) To Zinzendorf, the HS was Creator (Ge.1:2, 26 “Us”) and Mother. “She has created the world with the Savior and now is remaking every child until it is a new creation, and becomes one in the spirit with him; She nurses and watches until it is grown.”
God said of Jesus in Lk.3:22, “You are My beloved Son”. The apostle Paul quoted Ge.2:24 regarding Adam & Eve in Ep.5:23-33. Paul midrashed that Christ will marry the HS-filled church. v.30-32 “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to His wife. This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” The ascended and betrothed Jesus leaves His Father and Mother (HS/Wisdom) to marry the church/Bride! And Adam had left God, with Eve (Ge.2:24-25, 3:23).
From Aphrahat’s Demonstration X, “As long as a man hasn’t taken a wife, he loves and reveres God his Father and the Holy Spirit his Mother”. Re.19:7-9 is Jesus’ metaphorical marriage to Christians.
As part of the collective future “Bride” of Christ, male Christians may feel uncomfortable singing love songs of praise to Jesus. Eventually we’ll be with Him, together forever. Re.22:17 “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.” We can be Jesus’ Bride because we’re all begotten by the fem (Mother) Spirit. In Jn.3:3-8, Jesus said you must be born again of the Spirit. The “offspring” of the HS (again Re.12:17).
Ro.8:29 Jesus the Son of God is the “firstborn of many brothers and sisters”. Jesus is also the brother of all who are children of God via the HS. v.11 “He who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” v.15 “You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, we cry out ‘Abbá, Father.” Christians are adopted children of Father God and Mother HS. Jesus is our elder Brother. 2Co.6:18 “You shall be sons and daughters to Me’, says the Lord Almighty.” (That’s not to say that Christians become God as the Creator God is God.)
Jesus said in Jn.5:19, “The Son can do nothing of Himself”. Yet Jesus the Son personified the virtues & attributes of Father God and Mother HS/Wisdom. (see “Holy Spirit Personification”.) Paul saw the Spirit-filled Jesus too as wisdom. Col.2:2-3 “Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Jesus is the Son and emissary of Wisdom the HS. Paul wrote in 1Co.1:24, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”. Wisdom originally was “brought forth” a she in Proverbs (8:1, 24). And in Lk.7:35, Jesus said He’s the Child of Wisdom/“her”. Lk.4:14 “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.” Jn.3:34 “God gives Him [Jesus] the Spirit without limit.”
Though Jesus could do nothing of Himself, His power & wisdom came from His Divine DNA, so to speak, from His Parents. Mt.13:54 “Coming to His home town they were amazed and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom, and these wondrous powers?” Jesus the Son as God inherited wisdom & power from God! (Lk.13:34 Jesus isn’t effeminate, yet the HS in Him could even empathize as a mother hen.)
God is one/echád (De.6:4, Jn.10:30). The Father, HS, Son are one…all three of the God kind & Family.
In the NT, Jesus never referred to Mary as His mother (or Joseph as His father). By the early 300s AD, the church was embroiled in the Arian controversies. Many didn’t want Jesus begotten before time began. But in the 300s AD, many did want women suppressed. A quandary existed. So they hushed scriptures which related to Wisdom/sophia the HS having been “brought forth” in past eternity…though Wisdom herself says in Pr.8:25 LXX, “He begets [gennáo g1080] Me”. (see “Godhead in Prehistory”.)
Over the centuries AD, Mother Wisdom/Sophia became assimilated into the cult of the virgin Mary. Mary, the counterfeit or replacement for Wisdom, was elevated. Mariolatry ensued in the RCC.
Bible Topic Exposition 