Sophia, The Holy Wisdom of God

16th Century Russian Icon of the Enthronement of Holy Wisdom

By Victoria Boyd and Edited by Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

“Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing froward or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge. Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.” Proverbs 8:1-11 

Introduction 

In this study, we will look at the origin of Holy Wisdom and discuss what the Fathers of the Church have to say about the divinity of the Wisdom that founded the world, the Story of St. Sophia, and the study of Wisdom, called “Sophiology.” We will also talk about the ultimate goal of women in the Church, which is manifesting the virtue of Christ in the female, as we see outlined in these Scriptures. While men strive to function in the priestly and patriarchal paradigm revealed in Christ’s Incarnation, women strive to function in the creative and counseling paradigm that is revealed in Scripture as the person of Divine Wisdom. Both are callings to self-emptying, sacrifice and constructive Fatherhood and Motherhood within the Church. Both are necessary and should not be confused. 

Holy Wisdom 

Proverbs 3 was written by King Solomon, but in a prophetic voice, as an oracle of God. He reveals the place of “Chokma”, called “Holy Sophia” in the Christian Tradition, and shows that Wisdom in the one through which God the Father created the world. In this identification, the Church Fathers identify Wisdom with the pre-incarnate Christ. Many of the Scriptural passages that link the personage of Wisdom with God are found in the Orthodox Old Testament, but have been cut out of the Protestant Bible. 

The Holy Wisdom of God, Latin Manuscript, c.1200 AD, Google Art Project

A Word About the Septuagint 

The Orthodox Church uses the ancient Christian Bible, called the Septuagint, which was translated into Greek from the earliest Hebrew Manuscripts in the 2nd century before Christ. The Apostles almost exclusively quote the Septuagint in the New Testament. It has 11 extra books that current Protestant Bibles no longer contain, due to Martin Luther’s dislike for them. They were translated into English from the original languages and given a separate place between the Old and New Testaments in the Anglican King James Bible, called the “Apocrypha”, but they are interspersed in the Old Testament in the Ancient Christian Tradition, and called the “Deuterocanonical Books” by the Orthodox. The Masorectic Hebrew Old Testament, used by European Jews at the time of the Reformation, was misunderstood by Protestants to be the “Original Hebrew Scriptures”. The modern discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient Syriac Peshitta, the Ethiopian Ge’ez Bible, and the old Latin and Slavic translations, prove that the Masorectic Text was not the original, but an 8th Century AD “corrected” version of the Hebrew Bible by those who rejected the Christian interpretation of Messianic prophecy. Therefore, the Protestant exclusion of these Ancient Christian books of the Old Testament was illegitimate and based upon a flawed premise. 

Divinity and Femininity 

Proverbs personifies Divine Wisdom as a woman, who existed before the world was made, revealed God, and acted as God's agent in creation (Proverbs 8:22–31; Wisdom of Solomon 8:4–6; Sirach 1:4,9). Wisdom dwelt with God (Proverbs 8:22–31; Sirach 24:4; Wisdom 9:9–10) and being the exclusive property of God, it was originally inaccessible to human beings (Job 28:12–13, 20–1, 23–27). It was God who "discovered" wisdom (Baruch 3:29–37) and gave her to Israel: "He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. Afterward did he shew himself upon earth, and conversed with men." (Baruch 3:36–37; Sirach 24:1–12). 

16th Century Russian Icon of Holy Wisdom Bestowing Gifts Upon Men

As a female figure (Proverbs 8, Sirach 1:15; Wisdom of Solomon 7:12), Wisdom addressed human beings (Proverbs 1:20–33; 8:1–9:6) inviting to her feast those who are not yet wise (Proverbs 9:1-6). In the Wisdom of Solomon 7:22b-8:1 there is a famous passage describing Divine Wisdom as a woman, including the passage: "For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore can no defiled thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God, and prophets." (Wisdom 7:25–27). Solomon, as the archetypal wise person, fell in love with Wisdom: "I loved her, and sought her out from my youth, I desired to make her my spouse, and I was a lover of her beauty." (Wisdom 8:2). The Scripture consistently portrays wisdom as a woman’s overwhelmingly attractive and powerful attribute. (1 Peter 3:3-4) 

Despite being identified with the feminine in the Old Testament, St. Paul clearly identifies Wisdom with the Person of Christ in 1 Corinthians 1:21-24 - “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the Wisdom of God.” 

St. Sophia and Her Daughters 

In the Early Western Church, a story arose out of the martyrdoms of the Emperor Diocletian which reflect the biblical pattern of the veneration of Holy Wisdom. It is said that a Greek-speaking widow of Milan converted to Christianity, taking the name of “Sophia” and raising her children, three beautiful daughters, in the love and admonition of the Lord. She named her daughters “Faith”, “Hope” and “Love”, and raised them to serve the Church as holy virgins, working in the Church to serve the widows and fatherless. They were sent to Rome to serve the Church there, but upon arrival, evil soldiers immediately lusted after the girls and tried to force them into prostitution. Resisting these advances, the girls were killed by the soldiers for their purity and Christian Faith, and buried along the Appian Way. Their mother stood guard over their graves, weeping and crying out to God, until she, too, died on the third day, having not eaten food or drank water during her vigil. She was buried next to her daughters by beggars who took pity on her, and after this, miracles began occurring on that section of the road. Not long afterwards, a shrine sprang up to St. Sophia and her three daughters, and a Cross was placed at their graves to remind those passing by of the promise of Christ and the Resurrection. Later a church was built on that spot and the bodies of the four women were exhumed and re-entombed. In the 7th century, the four bodies were separated, with St. Sophia being taken to eastern France and laid to rest at the Women’s Convent of Eschau, Faith being taken to a church on the Aurulian Way that has since disappeared, and Hope and Love being interred at the Saint Pancratius Church in Rome, where a large shrine was built beneath the church to house them and to commemorate the family. 

St. Sophia and Her Three Daughters, Sts. Faith, Hope and Love, Wikipedia Commons

Many scholars now doubt the veracity of this story, and some point to the practice of Catacomb Christians to inscribe the words Faith, Hope and Love underneath the word “Sophia” to demarcate their chapels. These words were often accompanied by the painted figure of a “woman in orans,” and so later Christians took the inscriptions to mean that these holy women were buried there, rather than the fact that the gravesite was used as a Christian meeting-place during the persecution of Diocletian. While these theories attempt to de-mythologize the Martyrdom of Faith, Hope and Love, and attempt to disconnect the person of Holy Wisdom from the icon of the Praying Woman, it is interesting to see how accurately this story reflects the Christian theology of wisdom, and how it personifies the Church in a unique way. 

Women held a position of unique respect in the Ancient Church, unlike in the wider society, where they were primarily valued as sexual property. Women could, in their virginity, minister in the Church in a powerful way, reflecting Christ in His feminine attribute, Wisdom. While never functioning as priests, women had an especially powerful ministry of prayer, and this is what we see in the Early Christian icons of women with hands outstretched, in the Orans position that was usually associated with the Empress praying for her husband the Emperor’s victory on the battlefield. At a time when the only woman culturally featured with such dignity and spiritual potency was the Queen of the Empire, all Christian women dared to pray with hands outstretched to heaven, personifying the power of Christ in their lives, and their connection to Him through His Holy Sophia. 

Icon of a Woman in Orans from the Roman Catacombs, c.250 AD

A Theology of Sophia 

With the character of Divine Wisdom revealing a part of God’s plan for holy womanhood, we are faced with deep questions about how we understand the purpose and power of femininity today. Wisdom is always presented as a veiled woman, a woman of chastity, virginal while being a mother, and full of industry, invention, an infinite attraction to the men who seek her. She is a companion, a counterpart, a nourisher, a teacher, and exhibits primordial self-restraint and control. Children flourish in her presence. Men beg to see her and admire her. Her beauty is hidden, even as her ideas are declared from the housetops. She choses to have compassion on those who acknowledge their poverty, on those who seek God with a pure heart and noble intentions, and she bestows the wealth of her mind upon those who understand her laws. The perverse, the self-aggrandizing, the uncontrolled and lustful fail to see her at all, and she hides from those who would force her or misuse her; those who would use her power for themselves instead of to help and protect others. 

The Most Holy Theotokos in Orans, Bearing Christ in Her Body, Prefigured by the Burning Bush, Which Was Not Destroyed by the Indwelling Fire of God's Uncreated Glory

While Holy Wisdom is found in God, as a part of His character and attributes, as a companion of the Logos, the ever-creative and life-imbuing Word of God, Christian theology has discerned an icon of her in the person of the Holy Theotokos. While we reject the Gnostic view that the Virgin Mary was a goddess, or that she “incarnated” Holy Wisdom in a particular way, she is the best vision that we have of what it looks like when a woman is so full of God and submitted to His Will that she manifests Sophia in a general way, as feminine “Christlikeness.” In this fullness of holiness and wisdom, this blessed state of “living unto the Lord,” the unique beauty and power of the Christian life is on full display, hidden beneath the cloak of Christ’s own divinity. While Christ is always depicted as wearing a red robe of divinity, beneath a blue cloak of humanity, the Theotokos is the reverse, wearing a blue robe of humanity and putting on the red cloak of imparted divinity. The red and starry veil that is traditionally depicted being worn by the Holy Virgin Mary is the Divine Wisdom of the Holy Trinity being imparted by God’s grace, the work of her Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord. In this, it is a picture of the lost glory of Mankind’s Fall being restored by a woman, and presenting to us a metaphor for our salvation in the shared life of God. For, as St. Ireneaus said, “God became what we are, so that we might become what He is through grace.” 

Questions for Consideration 

1) Have you ever heard about or considered the origin of femininity in a world created by God? How does womanhood reflect God’s grace and glory? What divine pattern was used to create womanhood, motherhood, and virginal purity? Do you think these Scriptures illustrate the connection between God and a personified, female character? 

2) Have you ever considered what Christlikeness looks like in a women? 

3) Do you know any “Female Little Christs”, women who think and act like Jesus, personifying Christian virtue? 

4) If you were to describe women of faith and virtue who live up to this ideal, what do you think it would look like?