Compassionate Mother: part 7

I have been exploring the mother imagery in referring to the different members of the Godhead. Doug has posted on Jesus our Mother,

Jesus, like a mother you gather your people to you; •


you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride, •
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds, •
in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness; •
through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead, •
your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us; •
in your love and tenderness remake us.

In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness, •
for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.

A Song of Julian of Norwich

God chose to be our mother in all things •
and so made the foundation of his work,
most humble and most pure,
in the Virgin’s womb.

God, the perfect wisdom of all, •
arrayed himself in this humble place.

Christ came in our poor flesh •
to share a mother’s care.

Our mothers bear us for pain and for death; •
our true mother, Jesus, bears us for joy and endless life.

Christ carried us within him in love and travail, •
until the full time of his passion.

And when all was completed and he had carried us so for joy, •
still all this could not satisfy the power of his wonderful love.

All that we owe is redeemed in truly loving God, •
for the love of Christ works in us; Christ is the one whom we love.

Damien hopes to collect these references in one place. I will post Rachel's poem next. It deserves a post of its own.

Compassionate Mother: part 6

I have been exploring the use of gendered pronouns for the word, the spirit, the exemplary Christian, and so on. In spite of the fact that the spirit is grammatically feminine in Hebrew, Aramaic and early Syriac, I am not suggesting that the spirit is essentially feminine, but rather that the spirit is not essentially masculine.

God, the creator, and God, the spirit are without sex; but in a gendered language they must be referred to as either masculine, feminine or neuter. The spirit is all three in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. As Doug writes,

I think we need to address the tendency that creeps into some prayer forms (especially) to make the Spirit the feminine side of God. Doing so seems to me to not only introduce the concept of gender into the Godhead (which is beyond gender), but to have the unfortunate side effect of reinforcing Father and Son as essentially masculine terms. I think that a careful use of feminine language about God has its place, who like a mother feeds us with the milk of the word. I just think that we should not confine such language to the Spirit.

Here is the very next segment from Fire from Heaven by Sebastien Brock, page 255,

As was observed earlier, female imagery is by no means restricted to the Holy Spirit, and on occasion the term 'Mother' is applied to the Godhead, without further specification, as in the following beautiful passage from Jacob of Serugh.


(God) created creation, and like a compassionate mother (yaledta)
he carries it, his hidden power acting with strength;
just as a mother does not grow weary of her son, so God never gets weary,
for a mother's compassion is bound up in love for her child.
The Godhead is indeed a compassionate mother (emma),
and he carries the world like a child, in great love.

Update: Damien contributes to the discussion here linking to Rachel Barenblat on this topic.

Compassionate Mother: part 5

More from Fire from Heaven, on the grammatical feminine usage for the Holy Spirit, and its subsequent alteration to the masculine,

What is the situation with authors writing in Syriac? It has already been mentioned that the grammatical masculine in connection with the Holy Spirit is extremely rare in Syriac writers prior to c. AD 400. After that approximate date we meet quite a variety of different practices. Narsai, the great fifth-century poet of the Church of the East, regularly prefers to use masculine grammatical forms where the Holy Spirit is concerned, where as the equally famous Syrian Orthodox poet Jacob of Serugh (died 521) will at some points use feminine forms, and at others masculine; what governs his choice would seem to be entirely metrical, rather than theological, considerations.

A similar inconsistency can be found in many writers up to and including the early Arab period, and clearly the question was jnot of particular interest to them. Surprisingly enough, we even occasionally encounter a feminine form in the East Syrian theologian Babai, who, as we have already seen, altered the grammatical gender of certain biblical quotations. Although most writers, especially from the seventh century onwards, opt to treat the Holy Spirit as grammatically masculine, this is by no means a universal phenomenon for the early centuries of Arab rule.

This also applies to the texts, originating from many of different periods, to be found in the vast liturgical compilations of the Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox and Maronite Churches, known as the Hudra or Fenqiho: here many examples of feminine grammatical forms can be found alongside the more frequent masculine. As a single example, out of many, of the feminine usage, a verse text which features during the season of Epiphany in the ritual of the Church of the East may be cited:


The Holy Spirit was sent,
she overshadowed the baptismal font
and in the womb of water, in the 'Jordan',
she fashioned infants who will not die,
and they became spiritual bridegrooms
in whom there dwells Christ the King

Interesting to remember that the KJV treated the Holy Spirit as a grammatical neuter, reflecting the underlying Greek,

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: Romans 8:16

but I don't think it would be possible to do that today.

Compassionate Mother: part 4

I am not all that hopeful that the new NIV will retain enough gender accuracy for me. But I don't have any inside track on this at all. I will continue to post about the loss of the feminine in reference to the Holy Spirit instead. It serves as a parallel discussion and somewhat less well known.

In the two surviving manuscripts of the Old Syriac Gospels the Holy Spirit is invariably treated as feminine. This version, which may go back to the early third century, was in due course revised and brought into closer line with the Greek text of the Gospels; the outcome of this revision (which was probably a long drawn out process) was the Peshitta, which remains the offical biblical version of the Syriac Churches.

In the Peshitta, which must have been first circulated in the early decades of the fifth century, we find a number of places where the grammatical gender of ruha has been altered from the feminine to masculine, where it refers to the Hole Spirit; curiously however, this revison is far from consistent, and in many passages the feminine was left unchanged. It is, in fact, only in later revisions, by Polycarp, undertaken at the behest of Philoxenos, Syrian Orthodox metropolitan of Mabbug at the beginning of the sixth century, and Thomas of Harkel, working in a monastery just outside Alexandria just over a century later, that we find the feminine consistently altered to masculine.

Polycarp's revison of the Syriac New Testament (better known as the Philoxenian) probably only survives in a few books (2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude and Revelation), apart from quotations, whereas Thomas's work, known as the Harklean version, is well known and was widely used in Syrian Orthodox tradition.

We can observe the same tendency at work in the manscript tradition of the Syriac Old Testament as well. No psalm receives more frequent liturgical use than Psalm 51, ' Have mercy on me, O God, according to your grace'. In the course of the psalm the phrase 'take not your Holy Spirit from me' occurs, and in several of the oldest manuscripts of the Syriac Psalms we find what must be the original reading, ruhak qaddishta, with the adjective 'Holy' grammatically feminine; in the famous sixth or seventh-century manuscript of the complete Syriac Old Testament preserved in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, however, we already encounter the alteration to ruhak qaddisha, with the feminine adjective changed to masculine.

In the vast majority of later manuscripts and printed editions it is the masculine that is found here - even though in the very next verse the feminine is preserved in ruha mshabbahta, 'your glorious Spirit'!

Fire from Heaven page 254

Compassionate Mother: part 3

part 1
part 2

A commenter recently mentioned that the Holy Spirit is not always feminine in Syriac. This is true, and it is quite unusual that a word would change gender over time while otherwise retaining the same form. In this segment of Fire from Heaven: Studies in Syriac theology and liturgy by Sebastian Brock, we read,

In the Acts of Thomas, belonging probably to the third century and one of the most important documents of early Syriac Christianity, we find a number of passages which describe the Baptism followed by Communion, of people who have been converted by the Apostle Thomas. In those passages the unknown author provides various liturgical invocations addressed to Christ and to the Holy Spirit, and it so happens that the original text of these is best preserved in the early Greek translation of the Syriac; thus in the Greek we read the following three passages:


(Section 27) Come, hole name of Christ, which is above every name; come, Power of the Most High (cp Luke 1:35), and perfect mercy; come exalted Gift (i.e. the Holy Spirit_; come, compassionate Mother, ...

(Section 50) Come, hidden Mother, ... come and make us share in this Eucharist which we perform in your name, and cause us to share in the love to which we are joined by invoking you, ...

(Section 133, in the course of a Trinitarian convocation over the newly baptized) We name over you the name of the Mother ...


In each of these passages the surviving Syriac manuscripts of the Acts of Thomas have slightly altered the wording, removing the word 'Mother". It is in fact clear from many different pieces of evidence, that towards the end of the fourth century Syriac writers began to become wary about addressing the Holy Spirit as Mother, no doubt due to abuse of this imagery by certain groups whom they regarded as heretical.

One consequence of this reaction was a tendency to change the grammatical gender of ruha from feminine to masculine whenever ruha referred to the Holy Spirit. It is a fact that in virtually all Syriac literature before about AD 400 ruha d-qudusha)or more rarely, ruha qaddishta) "the Holy Spirit', is treated grammaatically as feminine, but after that approximate date the feminine came to be increasingly avoided. It is not without interest to follow the course of this process, both in the Syriac translations of the Bible, and among Syriac writers.

I don't see the reference to the Spirit as Mother as a heresy to be corrected, but simply as a natural metaphorical use of the gender of the Aramiac word ruha. It is astonishing that this word could later take on the masculine gender in Syriac but only when referring to the Holy Spirit. One has to suppose that the word used by Jesus in talking about the Spirit would have been feminine in gender.

There are many different ways of interpreting this, of course. Some people may see grammatical gender as having no value at all. Others may believe that it is part of the overall revelation of God about the nature of the divine being. Jesus does not talk about the Spirit as his mother, but he does make a more oblique reference to the Spirit as the Comforter, arguably a reference to the "spouse" in Wisdom of Solomon chapter 8.

Compassionate Mother: part 2

In this section of Fire from Heaven, we can see that the spirit is metaphorically feminine because of the gender of the word in Aramaic and Syriac. The spirit is not refered to as masculine in the Greek NT so this does not go against the scripture as it has come down to us in the original language.

In our modern context it is of some interest to recover that awareness - today all too often lost - of the feminine aspect of the Godhead, and it is here that the early Syriac tradition is of particular interest; here we find an openness to the use of female imagery in connection with the Godhead which is rare at other times and in other traditions. It is important to realise that this imagery is equally used of the Father and the Son, even though in the following pages our attention will be focused solely on the Holy Spirit, in whose case the feminine grammtical gender of ruha, "spirit"no doubt encouraged the use of such imagery.

In a certain number of writings from the general area of north Mesopotamia, in both Greek and Syriac, we have specific references to the Holy Spirit as a 'mother. Two such passages, one from the mid fourth century Syriac writer Aphrahat, 'the Persian Sage". and the other from the unknown Greek author of the 'Macarian Homilies' (on the spiritual life), take as their basis the interpretation of Genesis 2:24, 'a man shall leave his father and his mother'. Thus Aphrahat writes:


Who is it who leaves father and mother to take a wife? The meaning is as follows: as long as a man has not taken a wife, he loves and reveres God his Father and the Holy Spirit his Mother, and he has no other love. But when a man takes a wife then he leaves his (true) Father and Mother.


Aphrahat is here addressing people who have chosen for themselves teh ascetic life of singleness in imitation of the Single, or Only-Begotten, Christ. The same passage is given a rather wider interpretation, to include all who seek to follow God, by the unknown author of the Macarian Homilies:


It is right and fitting, my children, for you to have left behind all that is temporal, and to have set off for God: instead of an earhtly father, you are seeking the hevenly Father, and instead of a mother who is subject to decay, you have a Mother, the excellent Spirit of God, and the heavenly Jerusalem. Instead of the brothers whom you have left, you now have the Lord who has allowed himself to be called 'brother' of the faithful.

Not only is the trinity of mixed metaphorical gender, but there is a pair of Father and Mother, parallel terms, although one could argue that the Father is supreme. However, the Son is mentioned in a seemingly subordinate position to Father and Mother. If there is hierarchy, or perhaps one should say order, in the trinity, clearly this tradition views this order in quite different terms than the Greek tradition.

It seems that if there is hierarchy in the trinity it is related to the values of the metaphorical components of the imagery used to relate to God, and it does not necessarily communicate anything about actual relations in the Godhead.

That is, the Godhead is in reality neither gendered nor hierarchical, but we use these images to communicate something about God. The trinity can be talked about both as an all masculine cohort of Father, Son and Spirit; and as Father, Mother and Son. The image is not the reality.



Fire from Heaven, page 251

Compassionate Mother: part 1

I have been intending for some time to continue my discussion of grammatical gender and pronouns. So far, I have noticed that there seems to have been an historical movement in the direction of using masculine pronouns in many places which formerly did not have a masculine grammatical reference of any kind.

The most notable of these places is in associaton with the "spirit" which is neuter in Greek, and feminine in Aramaic and Hebrew. We don't have any original Aramaic material from the NT, but we do have the Syriac translations of the Greek New Testament books and the literature of the Eastern church, written in Syriac. Syriac is an Aramaic language, written in the Syriac alphabet.

For the next little while, I am going to cite from Fire from Heaven: Studies in Syriac theology and liturgy by Sebastian Brock, page 250, from the chapter called "Come, compassionate Mother.

In the Semitic languages the word for 'spirit' (ruha in Syriac) is grammatically feminine, and this grammatical detail has given rise, in the over-literalistic mind, to the inference that the role of the Holy Spirit (ruha d-qudsha) was solely a female one.

Grammatical gender, of course, varies considerably from one language to another, and need have no bearing at all on ontological gender; thus the term for (Holy) Spirit is neuter in Greek and masculine in Latin. And in any cse, as Jerome pointed out long ago, 'there is no gender in the divinity.'

Even though the Godhead is totally beyond gender, nevertheless metaphors and similes associated with either male or female characteristics have readily been used of God by religious writers of all times and all faiths. Thus in early Christian tradition we find, alongside the more familiar male imagery, references, to the Father's breasts being milked and to the Godhead as a wetnurse.

Such images, which may strike the modern reader as surprising, or even bizarre, are in fact no less appropriate than the male imagery which we have (sadly) grown accustomed to expect, for any description of the Godhead which confines itself to solely male (or solely female) imagery is both inadequate and misdleading, seeing that the Godhead transcends all gender.

As the great poet Ephrem, writing in the fourth century, pointed out,


If someone concentrates his attention
solely on the metaphors used of God's Majesty.
he abuses and misrepresents that Majesty
by means of these very metaphors with which God has clothed himself.

For footnotes, please refer to google books.