The Feminine Nature

Tim Doppel
11 hours ago
3 min read

A serene figure in robes holds a flowing chalice. Surroundings feature a snake, trees, and an open book, all in soft, earthy tones.

Pentecost Sunday; Acts 2:1-11

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit

Because the date of Pentecost is connected to the date of Easter, and Easter is a “moveable feast,” Pentecost occurs in May less than half the time. Which is a shame, because the church has declared the month of May, the Month of Mary, when we honor Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as our own mothers on Mother’s Day. It is a shame because celebrating Pentecost could well be a feast celebrating the feminine divine.

One of the things that was lost when the universal church chose to side with the patriarchal Empire, or at least forgotten, was the identity of the feminine divine. Throughout Jewish history, a balance had existed between God the Father and God the Mother. Jesus understood this and lived this. He invited and included women in his inner circle, even though women were not valued in First Century culture. Mary Magdalene is considered the “Apostle to the Apostles” because it was she who witnessed the resurrection before anyone else. Coincidence? I’m thinking not.

In Hebrew, the word for "spirit" is "Ruach". And Ruach is grammatically feminine. When ancient Hebrew speakers talked about God's spirit moving over the waters in Genesis,

they used feminine verb forms. When they described the spirit of wisdom, prophecy, or divine presence, the grammar was always feminine.

To the ancient Hebrews, language wasn't arbitrary. Words carried power, specific meaning, and divine truth. The fact that God's breath, God's animating presence in the world, was feminine wasn't a coincidence. Ancient Hebrews understood something profound: the Spirit was the creative, life-giving, nurturing aspect of the divine. She was the one who hovered over chaos and brought forth order. She was the one who breathed life into Adam's nostrils. She was the one who filled the prophets with divine utterance. The feminine nature wasn't a weakness or a subordinate position it was the very essence of creation itself.

This is what the earliest Christians actually believed, what they wrote down, and what they practiced. And then something happened. The divine feminine was erased, rewritten, and masculinized. The texts that preserved her were buried, burned, and condemned as heresy. And for the last 2,000 years, we have been taught that God is a male; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all a bunch of guys.

Modern psychology and modern scripture scholars are now in agreement that without a balance between male and female, a society, much less a person, is not whole. Fortunately for the church, in 1945, in a town in Egypt called Nag Hammadi, a set of fifty texts were found that date to the first century. In these “lost” texts were revealed many teachings that the early Christian church believed. Among these are the understanding of the feminine nature of the Holy Spirit.

On the Feast of Pentecost, it is critical to our faith, and to our wellbeing, to acknowledge the feminine nature of the Holy Spirit. Without a balance of our right brains and our left brains, we are not a whole person. Without a balance of the male and female nature of God, we cannot be a whole person of faith.

Rev. Steven Marshall writes, “The recognition of the feminine aspect of God is not a political fancy but a spiritual necessity; our own wholeness as spiritual beings, even the wholeness of God, depends on it. May the voice of the Holy Spirit guide us on our quest to the Light of the Divine Soul within, [as she] comforts us in our travails in the world, and restores within us the Kingdom of [Heaven] within which we ‘live and move and have our being.’”

Every Day.