The Shekinah: Image of the Divine Feminine
"The Kabbalistic tradition describes the feminine image of the godhead as Mother, Daughter, Sister, and Holy Spirit, giving woman what she has lacked throughout the last two and a half thousand years in Judeo-Christian culture - an image of the Divine Feminine in the godhead that is reflected at the human level in herself. The Shekinah is Divine Motherhood, Mother of All Living.”
The Divine Feminine:
“The Shekinah is the image of the Divine Feminine or the feminine face
of God as it was conceived in the mystical tradition of Judaism,
originating perhaps in the rabbinic schools of Babylon and transmitted orally
for a thousand years until it flowered in the writings of the Jewish Kabbalists
of medieval Spain and southwestern France. In Kabbalah, religion ceases to be a
matter of worship and collective belief. It becomes a direct path of communion
between the individual and the Divine. In the imagery of the Shekinah, Kabbalah
gives us the cosmology of the soul and the relationship between the two aspects
of the godhead that has been lost or hidden for millennia. The mythology of the
Kabbalah is so gloriously rich, so broad in its imaginative and revelatory
reach, and so intensely nourishing to a world that lacks any awareness of the
Divine Feminine, that to discover this tradition is immensely exciting. The
Shekinah reveals the missing imagery of God-as-Mother that has been lost or
obscured in both Judaism and Christianity.
Whereas the Old Testament is the written tradition of Judaism, Kabbalah offers
the hidden oral tradition, wonderfully named as"The Voice of the Turtle"
(turtledove). This mystic knowledge or mystic tradition of the direct path to
God was described as the Jewels of the Heavenly Bride. The Bronze Age imagery of
the Great Goddess returns to life in the extraordinary beauty of the Kabbalistic
description of the Shekinah and in the gender endings of nouns that describe the
feminine dimension of the godhead. But the Divine Feminine is now understood as
cosmic soul, the intermediary between the godhead and life in this dimension
who, as the Shekinah brings together heaven and earth, the divine and the human
in a resplendent vision of their essential relationship.
The mythology of this tradition restores the image of the sacred marriage in the
union of the Divine Father-Mother in the ground of being. There is not a Mother
and a Father but a Mother-Father who are one in their eternal embrace: one in
their ground, one in their emanation, one in their ecstatic and continuous act
of creation through all the invisible dimensions they bring into being and
sustain. No other tradition offers the same breathtaking vision, in such
exquisite poetic imagery, of the union of male and female energies in the One
that is both. The Song of Songs was the text most used by Kabbalists for their
contemplation of the mystery of this divine union. Yet one has the feeling that
this way to union with the Divine may descend from some unknown source that
nourished Egypt, Sumer, and India.
The Kabbalistic tradition describes the feminine image of the godhead as Mother,
Daughter, Sister, and Holy Spirit, giving woman what she has lacked throughout
the last two and a half thousand years in Judeo-Christian culture - an image of
the Divine Feminine in the godhead that is reflected at the human level in
herself. The Shekinah is Divine Motherhood, Mother of All Living. Women can know
themselves, in their role as mothers, in their care and concern for the
well-being of their loved ones, as the instinctive custodians of her creation.
The thirteenth-century"Zohar, The Book of Radiance or Splendor"that was the
principal text of Kabbalah, contemplates the mystery of the relationship between
the female and male aspects of the godhead expressed as Mother and Father, and
their emanation through all levels of creation as Daughter and Son. The
essential conception of this mystical tradition expresses itself as an image of
worlds within worlds. Divine Spirit (Ain Soph or Ein Sof) beyond form or
conception is the light at the center, the heart, and moves outward as creative
sound (word), thought and energy, bringing into being successive spheres,
realms, veils, or dimensions imagined as veils or robes that clothe and hide the
hidden source yet at the same time transmit its radiant light.
The transmission of light from source to the outer, manifest level is also
imagined as an inverted tree, the Tree of Life, whose branches grow from its
root in the divine ground and extend through the worlds of emanation. The primal
center or root is the innermost light, of an unimaginable luminosity and
translucence. The inner point expands or is sown as a ray of light into a
dimension described in some texts as a sea of glory, in others as a palace that
acts as an enclosure for the light; from this womb it emanates as a radiant
cascade, a fountain of living water, pouring forth light to sustain and permeate
all the worlds or dimensions it brings into being. All life on earth, all
consciousness, is that light and is therefore utterly sacred. The Zohar
[principal text of Kabbalah] describes nature as the garment of God.”
Andrew Harvey & Anne Baring, The Divine Feminine
Conari Press Berkeley, CA
Apokalypsis: The fulfillment of eschatological instruction by the Paraclete in the Age to Come promised by Jesus at the Last Supper
An apocalypse (Greek: apokalypsis meaning “an uncovering”) is in religious contexts knowledge or revelation, a disclosure of something hidden, “a vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of earthly realities.” (Ehrman 2014, 59)
“An apocalypse (Ancient Greek: apokalypsis ... literally meaning "an uncovering") is a disclosure or revelation of great knowledge. In religious and occult concepts, an apocalypse usually discloses something very important that was hidden or provides what Bart Ehrman has termed, "A vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of earthly realities". Historically, the term has a heavy religious connotation as commonly seen in the prophetic revelations of eschatology obtained through dreams or spiritual visions.” Wikipedia 2021-01-09
Total number of recorded talks 3058: Public Programs 1178, Pujas 651, and other (private conversations) 1249
“The Paraclete will come (15:26; 16:7, 8, 13) as Jesus has come into the world (5:43; 16:28; 18:37)... The Paraclete will take the things of Christ (the things that are mine, ek tou emou) and declare them (16:14-15). Bishop Fison describes the humility of the Spirit, 'The true Holy Spirit of God does not advertise Herself: She effaces Herself and advertises Jesus.' ...
It is by the outgoing activity of the Spirit that the divine life communicates itself in and to the creation. The Spirit is God-in-relations. The Paraclete is the divine self-expression which will be and abide with you, and be in you (14:16-17). The Spirit's work is described in terms of utterance: teach you, didasko (14:26), remind you, hypomimnesko (14:26), testify, martyro (15:26), prove wrong, elencho (16:8), guide into truth, hodego (16:13), speak, laleo (16:13, twice), declare, anangello (16:13, 14, 15). The johannine terms describe verbal actions which intend a response in others who will receive (lambano), see (theoreo), or know (ginosko) the Spirit. Such speech-terms link the Spirit with the divine Word. The Spirit's initiatives imply God's personal engagement with humanity. The Spirit comes to be with others; the teaching Spirit implies a community of learners; forgetful persons need a prompter to remind them; one testifies expecting heed to be paid; one speaks and declares in order to be heard. The articulate Spirit is the correlative of the listening, Spirit-informed community.
The final Paraclete passage closes with a threefold repetition of the verb she will declare (anangello), 16:13-15. The Spirit will declare the things that are to come (v.13), and she will declare what is Christ's (vv. 14, 15). The things of Christ are a message that must be heralded...
The intention of the Spirit of truth is the restoration of an alienated, deceived humanity... The teaching role of the Paraclete tends to be remembered as a major emphasis of the Farewell Discourses, yet only 14:26 says She will teach you all things. (Teaching is, however, implied when 16:13-15 says that the Spirit will guide you into all truth, and will speak and declare.) Franz Mussner remarks that the word used in 14:26, didaskein, "means literally 'teach, instruct,' but in John it nearly always means to reveal.” (Stevick 2011, 292-7)
The Holy Spirit as feminine: Early Christian testimonies and their interpretation,
Johannes van Oort, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Department of Church History and Church Polity, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa
“The teaching of the Paraclete, as the continuation of Jesus' teaching, must also be understood as the fulfillment of the promise of eschatological divine instruction.”Stephen E. Witmer, Divine instruction in Early Christianity
“Jesus therefore predicts that God will later send a human being to Earth to take up the role defined by John .i.e. to be a prophet who hears God's words and repeats his message to man.”
M. Bucaille, The Bible, the Qur'n, and Science
“And when Jesus foreannounced another Comforter, He must have intended a Person as distinct and helpful as He had been.”
F. B. Meyer, Love to the Utmost
“The Paraclete has a twofold function: to communicate Christ to believers and, to put the world on trial.”
Robert Kysar, John The Meverick Gospel
“But She—the Spirit, the Paraclete...—will teach you everything.”
Danny Mahar, Aramaic Made EZ)
“Grammatical nonsense but evidence of the theological desire to defeminize the Divine.”
Lucy Reid, She Changes Everything
“The functions of the Paraclete spelled out in verses 13-15... are all acts of open and bold speaking in the highest degree.”
David Fleer, Preaching John's Gospel
“The reaction of the world to the Paraclete will be much the same as the world's reaction was to Jesus.”
Berard L. Marthaler, The Creed: The Apostolic Faith in Contemporary Theology
Bultmann calls the “coming of the Redeemer an 'eschatological event,' 'the turning-point of the ages.”
G. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament
“The Paraclete equated with the Holy Spirit, is the only mediator of the word of the exalted Christ.”
Benny Thettayil, In Spirit and Truth
“The divine Paraclete, and no lessor agency, must show the world how wrong it was about him who was in the right.”
Daniel B. Stevick , Jesus and His Own: A Commentary on John 13-17
Stephen Smalley asserts that “The Spirit-Paraclete ... in John's Gospel is understood as personal, indeed, as a person.”
Marianne Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John
“The Messiah will come and the great age of salvation will dawn (for the pious).”
Eric Eve, The Jewish context of Jesus' Miracles
“The remembrance is to relive and re-enact the Christ event, to bring about new eschatological decision in time and space.”
Daniel Rathnakara Sadananda, The Johannine Exegesis of God
“The Spirit acts in such an international situation as the revealer of 'judgment' on the powers that rule the world.”
Michael Welker, God the Spirit
The Paraclete's “Appearance means that sin, righteousness, and judgment will be revealed.”
Georg Strecker, Theology of the New Testament
“While the Spirit-Paraclete is the true broker, the brokers they rely on are impostors.”
T. G. Brown, Spirit in the writings of John
“The pneumatological activity ... of the Paraclete ... may most helpfully be considered in terms of the salvific working of the hidden Spirit.”
Michael Welker, The work of the Spirit
“The pneuma is the peculiar power by which the word becomes the words of eternal life.”
Robert Kysar, Voyages with John
“The gift of peace, therefore, is intimately associated with the gift of the Spirit-Paraclete.”
Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John
“This utopian hope, even when modestly expressed, links Jesus and the prophets to a much wider history of human longing.”
Harvey Cox, The Future of Faith
“Because of the presence of the Paraclete in the life of the believer, the blessings of the end-times—the eschaton—are already present.”
Robert Kysar, John
“They are going, by the Holy Spirit's power, to be part of the greatest miracle of all, bringing men to salvation.”
R. Picirilli, The Randall House Bible Commentary
“The Kingdom of God stands as a comprehensive term for all that the messianic salvation included... is something to be sought here and now (Mt. 6:33) and to be received as children receive a gift (Mk. 10:15 = Lk. 18:16-17).”
G. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament
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