23 Jan The Intimate Relationship between Sophia and the Holy Spirit by Trinh Huynh
The traditional Chinese character“Ming” (明) consists of the character of the sun on the left and that of the moon on the right:
It means both “light” and “wisdom”. Did not ancient Chinese wisdom already hint to us that “light” and “wisdom” are intimately related?
“Ming” appears almost literally in the Bible at least twice, one in the very beginning, one near the end. In the Book of Genesis, we find that the sun and the moon were first separated on the fourth day of Creation, which was also the day when “light upon the earth” was first mentioned, or created, explicitly. There we read, on the fourth day:
“…God madethe two great lights–the greater lightto rule the day and the lesser lightto rule the night–and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness…”
Thus was the first explicit appearance of “Ming” in the Bible: the light upon the earth from the sun and the moon. And we also learn that, as Steiner described in the lecture series “Genesis” (GA122), this holy light which was always kept separated from the darkness was the direct working of the Holy Spirit, who is called in the Book of Genesis, in Hebrew, the “Ruach Elohim”.
Then, “Ming” appears explicitly the second time, if not earlier, in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation, in John’s exalted image of “the woman clothed with the sun”. There we read:
“And an exalted sign was unveiled in the world of spirit: a woman clothed with the sun, the moonunder her feet, her head adorned with the crown of the twelve stars. And she was with child and cried out in the labour and pain of giving birth… And the woman gave birth to a child: a son. He shall shepherd all peoples with an iron staff…”
We know that the woman in this mystical fact is Sophia, the divine being of feminine wisdom. Thus putting together these two explicit appearances of “Ming” in the Bible, we can sense an intimate relationship between the Holy Spirit and Sophia. The outward light in Genesisbecomes the inward light in Revelation, and in between the two points of time stands the Mystery of Golgotha, when Christ united himself with the earth, and thus through him, the outward light is becoming the inward light of divine wisdom in the human soul.
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Both Sophia and Holy Spirit primarily concerns themselves with the task of making things whole again. This will be made clear in the following.
In the lecture series of Temple Legend (GA93), especially lectures 17 and 18, Steiner described how the female wisdomwas transferred to man. It is the wisdom of “receiving, listening, watching — to taking in from the surroundings” that was first given to Cain, where he then “tilled the ground”, that is, to work strenuously in order to make senseof what he was given. In this way, with female wisdom in him and with his physical will, man has been transforming the earthly world.
Following Steiner’s guide in his Philosophy of Freedom, we can experience deeply this female wisdom. It is precisely the activity of thinking, which calls forth the concepts to connect the percepts together. Without thinking, the whole world, as perceived by man, would appear to him as a disconnected, chaotic world of percepts, and hence is utterly useless to him. But through his thinking, he makes it wholeagain. Thereby he gives meanings to the otherwise chaotic, meaningless world.
Thus, in ourpurethinking, where our world of percepts has freed itself from the world of sins, that is, the earthly world, where the percepts are now the products of thinking that is conscious of itself, then in such thinking, we can experience how holy Sophia works in us. Thereby our thinking “gains concrete life” in our feeling.
That disconnected, chaotic world of sins is the sicknessof the Father God, as we learn from the Act of Consecration of Man, and we can deeply experience the sickness in human striving. And so we can also experience the activity of Christ in us if we actively join him, as “he receives the world from the Father, and makes it wholethrough the (Holy) Spirit, in all cycles of time to come”, here quoting the text of the Act. Thus, when we truly say as Paul says, “Not I, but Christ in me”, we can then work through the Holy Spirit, to heal the sickness of the Father. “May our thinking live in the life of the Holy Spiritin all cycles of time to come.”, as it was said in the Act of Consecration of Man.
Thus here again we can sense the intimately relationship of Sophia and the Healing Spirit.
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Steiner once profoundly described the Holy Spirit as the “redeemed Lucifer”. We know that Lucifer, in the sense meant here, is the original cause of the disconnected, chaotic world.
But here once more we can sense how the divine feminine wisdom Sophia, with her healing activities of making things whole again, redeems Lucifer, and is thus intimately related to the Holy Spirit. This is perhaps best illustrated by the Japanese’s ancient art of “Kintsukuroi” with the following image taken from the Internet:
The broken pieces are Lucifer’s, but the recollected pieces are Sophia’s, or the redeemed Lucifer’s.
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What would divine wisdom be for, if it was notfor the human being? By raising this question, I am suggesting that Anthroposophia, the being of “the wisdom of the human being”, is Sophia herself. In the lecture series titled The History and Requirements of the Anthroposophical Movement in Relationship to the Anthroposophical Society(GA0258), Steiner told us that Anthroposophia is going through the human phaseas a real yet invisibleperson among us and guide us:
“Anthroposophia is actually an invisible person who walks among visible people and towards whom we must show the greatest responsibility for as long as we are a small group. Anthroposophia is someone who must be understood as an invisible person, as someone with a real existence, who should be consulted in the individual actions of our lives… That Anthroposophia should be seen as a living being is an essential condition of its existence. It will only be allowed to die when its group of supporters has expanded immeasurably.”
We know, as Steiner told us in his lectures on the Holy Isis (e.g., GA202), that the Holy Isis is Sophia. And thus we can see the connection between what Steiner said here about the being Anthroposophia, that she “will only be allowed to die when [her] group of supporters has expanded immeasurably”, and the legend of Isis and her brother-husband Osiris, who is the Christ. We are told that Osiris allowed himself to be cut into pieces that were scattered over the world. And nowIsis is finding back the fragments of her husband to give life to him again. But since she was, is, and will always be holy, she cannot incarnate fully as a visible human being, but only as an invisible one, who is seeking to guide and work through us.
In healing the sickness of the Father, and in giving freedom to human beings, the Son has allowed himself to be cut into pieces by the Adversary. He has become lost fragments in human souls, until there are a sufficiently great number of human souls who actively unite themselves with Sophia. Only then Sophia can die in her ongoing human phase, that is, to be fully conscious of, or unite with, or truly knowher true self, namely her husband the Christ. The human soul can only be fully conscious of its-self, can only unite with or truly knowits true self, when it can die and say, “Not I, but Christ in me”. Even the divine, holy feminine also needs to go through the sufferings of the human phase of evolution to become fully conscious of her primal brother-husband, of her self.
“Know thyself!”, urged the Greek Mysteries.
And again here we sense the working of the Holy Spirit in the being Anthroposophia guiding us. Did Christ, when he was in his human incarnation, not promise us that he would send us his Comforter after him? In John:14, we read that Christ said to us:
“If you truly love me, you will take my aims into your will. And I will pray the Father, and He will send you another Comforter, the giver of spirit-courage, who will be with you for this whole earthly aeon, the Spirit of Truth. Not all people can receive him. They do not see him and do not recognize him. But you know him, for he guides you as a higher being above you, and he will enter your innermost heart.”
We can reflect this saying of Christ together with what Steiner said which was just quoted above.
May we not, once more after Golgotha, readily dismiss another most divine being who may be walking in our midst as a human being!
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The title of this writing is “The Intimate Relationship between Sophia and the Holy Spirit”, but it is clear that I have argued more. Indeed I am suggesting that they are one and the same being.
I believe that by bringing the two conceptstogether this way, we can understand both beings, even if truly not identical, much better, since they are so intimately related. Would not the saying of John the Baptist, “I baptize with water, but one greater than I will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”, be all the more significant now if we realize there the working of Sophia in the work of the Holy Spirit? Or would it not be all the more moving if we realize Sophia was next to her brother-husband, when, in the form of the dove, she hovered over Jesus Christ after his baptism in the Jordan? Or would we not understand freedommore deeply if we now realize that in Whitsun, the festival of human freedom (see, e.g., lecture 1 of Steiner’s Temple Legend), it is Sophia in the Holy Spirit who unites with her husband in us, so that out of this union of the divine feminine and the divine masculine, true human freedom is born?
The divine feminine is not only wisdom, but it is the evolving wisdom that is “the source of all life”. We know that Adam named his wife, Eve, after this. This Life gives meaning to the Word (see, e.g., lecture 7 of Steiner’s Gospel of LukeGA114), and was onceunited with the Word at the very beginning, and this Life is also the Light of human beings, the Holy Spirit uniting mankind. This primal union can be read from the beginning of the Gospel of John:
“In the very beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was a divine being.
He was in the very beginning with God.
All things came into being through him,
and nothing of all that has come into being was made except through him.
In him wasLife,
and the Life wasthe Light of human beings.
And the Light shines in the darkness;
and the darkness has not accepted it…”
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Appreciation: Most ideas in this writing arose from the countless discussions with my dear friends: Lan Nguyen, Jonah Evans, and Robert McKay. I am responsible for the weaving them together, and thus also for any of its errors.
Trinh Huynh, Toronto, Holy Nights 2018
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