Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 36:2 (Spring 2022)
Article: Elizabeth Johnson’s God-Talk Thirty Years Later: A Critique
Author: Kimberly Dickson

PP 36:2 (Spring 2022) p. 16

Elizabeth Johnson’s God-Talk Thirty Years Later: A Critique

Kimberly Dickson

Kimberly Dickson holds a Masters in International Public Health and is finishing a Masters in Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. She has studied and worked in the Middle East, East Africa, India, and California. Kim co-hosts CBE International’s Mutuality Matters podcast segment, “Global Impact: Egalitarian Activism and Human Flourishing,” with Dr. Mimi Haddad.

Elizabeth Johnson embarked on bringing feminine language into God-talk through her book She Who Is thirty years ago. As she explained, though theologically all agree God is Spirit and beyond gender, the language of God is male in preaching and instruction, which supports “an imaginative and structural world that excludes or subordinates women” (5).1 Through both classical tradition and theology, Johnson uncovered the ancient use of wisdom/Sophia as a feminine description of God, which she appropriated toward a new naming of God, Sophia. Her book unpacks the significance and orthodoxy of naming the one God-Sophia, in three persons Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia, and Father-Sophia, with surprising life-giving results.

Since the publication of Johnson’s book, her thoughts have shaped and guided the conversation on God-talk. This article will critique her position on each of the three divine persons. Following her order, it will first consider the avoidance of Pentecostalism in Johnson’s writing, and how its inclusion in her understanding of the Spirit-Sophia can greatly empower those for whom Sophia is preferentially interested, poor and marginalized women. Second, it will consider Jesus-Sophia and the evangelical critique, specifically from Kathryn Greene-McCreight, that Johnson lost sight of the biblical narrative, which itself has the power to overturn the oppressive pattern in favor of freedom and equality. Third, it will consider Johnson’s use of Mother-Sophia which not only essentialized gender, but by rejecting Jürgen Moltmann’s suffering father who determined his Son’s sacrifice, also undermined traditional atonement theology.

Spirit-Sophia

Johnson finds that in the Hebrew Scriptures and early Syriac Christianity the Spirit was construed as female and named in OT wisdom writings as Sophia (51, 89–91). Among the diverse attributes of the Spirit, the Council of Nicaea recognized the Spirit as the giver of life (141). Like the life-giving Spirit, women uniquely “know the power and pain of bearing and birthing new life, and caring for it even to the point of exhaustion or death” (128). Thus, women uniquely experience the Spirit-Sophia in recognizing that wherever life exists, there too is the Spirit of God. Jo...