I will be speaking on the introductory chapter, and more in the future, of Exile of Sophia by Dr. Michael Martin. (You can watch here in the 2nd hour of my live stream link). This is more of a reflection and doesn’t necessarily promote his thought. In my public work, however, his thinking is clearly sensed, as he has been a great influence on the way I think. His book, Sophia in Exile, represents the final chapter of a trilogy on Sophiology, which, in terms of what that is, is more like a philosophy on how to experience what he would call “the Real.” Dr. Martin wrote this book around the time of the fires at Notre Dame and the emergence of COVID-19. To him, they were symptoms of a much greater problem within the Church that was manifesting. Sometimes things come to the surface or are exposed by God, as it says in Corinthians, “all things are tried by fire.” COVID-19 was the biggest for him. It showed the real cowardice and fakeness of the Church. He makes a valid point on how thousands died without access to the sacraments because of cowardly clergy and makes the point that Jesus would not have waited for the lepers to be COVID-free before he healed them. We are a religion of beating death. There is no doubt in my mind that Saint Damien of Molokai would not have been canonized in a pontificate of the pope calling for safety. He was the one who went fearlessly to lepers to give them Christ. That is what we have signed up for if you are clergy. Unfortunately, Dr. Martin, as well as thousands of others, fled the church of cowards. I personally pleaded with him to stay, not for the sake of his salvation but for the salvation of others. I don’t think I would have ever been introduced to him had not a subdeacon in my tradition done an interview with him. Going back to the problem of why he left, the Church in its cowardice is really a manifestation of great evil that is within. It’s not based in truth, more of an illusion, not really by design, but by a takeover from the archons of this world that have their hands in everything. The Church as an institution lacks the connection to the Real. That is what is going to be obviously the thought of Dr. Martin’s book, and the Real for him has a face; it’s living, and she is called Sophia.
When we hear
the word Sophia, it is often conflated with the Gnostic Sophia, which really is
of a different nature but in one way is saying the same thing. In the Gnostic
myths, Sophia lives in exile or imprisonment. There is a great deal of
Gnosticism, and they all have their story of her troubles. Like her, we too
seem to live in exile or imprisonment. For us, it’s not just from God but from
Creation. Like the Gnostic, we are seeking to return from our fall. This is
ever so present in modern Christianity. Like Gnosticism, the world has no value
and must be escaped. The escape comes from the knowledge of what Christ has
done on the cross. Sometimes there is even the insistence that all you have to
do is verbally acknowledge it, and one day you will escape to be with God in
the new world of heaven.
Like modern
Christianity, Gnosticism provided a formula through gnosis. The secret
knowledge or remembering where we come from, as depicted in the Hymn of the
Pearl, is the pathway back. In modern Christianity and in Gnosticism, the world
we live in is bad or even an illusion. For the Gnostic, it’s the creation of
Yaldabaoth, a false god who thinks it is God who has entrapped us. For modern
Christians, it’s the domain of the god of this world, the devil. In both cases,
it’s a world that is in opposition to what we are, and as such, we either seek
to escape it or participate in the captivity.
In the
absence of being where we should be, we try to fill the void. Religion works
well for this. I often mockingly share the song that some modern Christians
sing, “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be.” This
song is filling the void of what should be now. It’s a replacement of the now,
the Real, as Dr. Martin would say, and I know in saying that people will be
scratching their heads. Are we not supposed to be going to heaven is probably
what you are thinking. To that, I would say no, the gospel doesn’t teach you
about going anywhere; it teaches about having what you need now. It rescues you
from the captivity of a fallen world and gives you the power to take it back and
to enter into the Real.
The Gnostics
were not the enemies that many Church fathers made them out to be. In fact, if
anything, they had an upper hand in understanding reality, but like the modern
Christian, they were escapists. The instance of Jesus’ bodily resurrection
contradicted their understanding of the material world, the idea that it is all
bad. Likewise, the bodily resurrection contradicts the modern Christian’s
understanding of escaping this world and going to be with God. The world is not
the problem; it’s rather our perception of it that needs to be resolved.
As Dr.
Martin points out, our estrangement with the “Real” is twofold. It’s with God
and Creation. To understand this better, we have to revisit the mythology of
the Garden of Eden. The garden was not just a floral arrangement; it was the
very way God was present to Adam and Eve. When they were exiled, they were
exiled from this experience of God that came through the garden. As a result,
salvation would be a return not to God but back to this Garden so that God
could once again be experienced. An example of this could be found in the
Temple worship of the Hebrew people. The temple was a reproduction of Eden, and
when it was filled with the Shekinah, Sons of God were born into the world
(Psalm 2:7).
The Shekinah
was God’s presence manifest through creation. It’s what makes Eden, Eden.
Without it, the temple is just a building, and Eden is just a floral
arrangement. It might come as a shock that in the Hebrew tradition, this
experience is referred to in feminine terms. I say it’s a shock because to
speak of God in terms of femininity has become heretical. God cannot be a
woman, we are taught. God has no gender, the theologians teach us. On the other
hand, just about everything we know of God comes from gendered terminology. The
very fact the Bible says that we are created both male and female in the image
of God is something that is continually theologically erased.
Like the
Gnostic myth, Sophia is exiled. The woman is forced to flee. This is very much
present in the scripture. You have in Proverbs 8, Sophia (wisdom) being a
central figure at the foundation of creation. In the book of Enoch, she is
recorded as being exiled from the temple and being the reason for the temple’s
destruction. Dr. Margaret Barker, another important scholar, has done a great
deal of research on what was considered the original religion of the Hebrews
and how it was forced to various parts of the world, including Egypt, a place
that remains a central hub for much of the wisdom literature of the Old
Testament.
You could
even say the Woman in Revelation 12 is the figure of Sophia, who, with her
children, is forced into the wilderness. What is all this forcefulness, and why
is it happening, or why are we doing it? It is because we have something else
in her place. A false Sophia, one that does not want us to consume the red
pill. One who wants us to keep up our religious fantasy of another world. One
which makes us an enemy to what is right before us.
In the
Garden of Eden, our ancestors were given a special vocation. They were called
to leave the garden and perfect the Earth by increasing the boundaries of the
garden. The garden was their Sophia; it is what gave them God. It even in the
narrative made them children of God; it was maternal. They were, in a way,
called to find this Sophia in the Earth. Obviously, they failed to do this and
found themselves estranged from what could be considered their Mother and God.
They were estranged from the Real.
Do you think
that it’s a coincidence that in every ancient culture, they sought to
spiritualize the world they lived in? This is what we do by nature, but at the
same time, we are doing this in a fallen way. We can never do it perfectly. We
see this in many of the myths of the Old Testament. The Tower of Babel comes to
mind. It was not wrong to build the tower. It was how they built it that was
wrong. They did not build with Wisdom, in Sophia. The tower was an abomination
because the unity of the people was false. This was the reason why they were
divided and their tongues confused. Not as punishment, but so that they could
see that their unity was false, that it was not Real.
It would not
be until the coming of the Spirit that the curse of Babel was healed and
languages were unconfused. This new unity that was given was one in Sophia. One
that was returned to us by Christ. In this unity, God is experienced once again
in creation in the form of fire. An element that is not given to destroy but to
purify. This, to me, is Sophiology—a way to purify how we understand the world,
not for purity’s sake but as a way to return God into this world by how we find
the Sophia of God in what is created.
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