Scott Hahn, the Holy Spirit and Rob Sungenis

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I have had problems with some of Scott’s writing before, and I think this is probably another example that he’s leaving mainline Catholics and heading for the liberal fringe. The Holy Spirit is never described in feminine terms within Scripture…
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I am not sure I agree with you. The Scripture refers to Wisdom as “she”.

God is neither female or male. God is pure spirit. It is possible for God to have both a male and a female side, and it is possible for that “female” side emerge from time to time. There are times in the Scripture where those maternal instincts of God come through.

I am not a feminist and I do not believe in feminist theology. One must remember that theology is open to discussion, leaving the door open for a deeper understanding of God.

Maggie
 
long thread debating what Hahn actually wrote, and yet none of your links quotes any debatable material. Until and unless you quote the so-called objectionable passage, this commentary is futile.
 
We all might do well to remember that there is more that the Church hasn’t defined about Sacred Scripture than it has defined.

A second point is that while the Church has always turned to theologians for answers to understanding Scripture more deeply, theologians do not define Church teachings; the Church does.

Theologians study Scripture, or the structure of the Church, or some other field of theology, and they try to advance the understanding of God as revealed by Christ and through the teaching of the Church. In that, there is always an element of speculation; it becomes less speculative as more theologians work on an issue, and come to some understanding and explanation of it. Many theologiand are true to the Church, and defer to its authority (Dr. Hahn is one who does), and some do not. But just because a theologian has expounded an idea doesn’t mean the Church is going to take a position on the correctness of his conclusions. In other words, within theological research, there is generally a good amount of leeway as to what is acceptable and what is not. Some of what is acceptable (i.e. not heresy) is very good, some of it (still not heretical) doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

One other thought to keep in mind: God is neither male nor female. Revelation has shown us God as “He”, and there ismore than a bit to be learned there. Having said that, Genesis says that God created us in God’s image. If there are no aspects of the feminine in God, then woman is not created in God’s image, and that would be a direct contradiction of revealed truth. To speak of feminine aspects of God is not to commit heresy, but to struggle with what we mean when we say “God”. For example, the OT refers to God in nurturing terms of feeding, clothing, sheltering, etc.
 
Some here have been critical of the comparison of the Spirit to feminine traits because scripture does not describe the
Spirit this way.
Well…where does scripture describe the Spirit as being masculine either?

Why is it wrong to point out that attributes that we humans attribute to femininity (nurturing, warmth, soothing, supportive) - why is it wrong to say the Spirit can hold these attributes as well?

I don’t believe in the “feminist” moment in our church - but I also think some folks have a bit of femininephobia.
 
First of all, otm said basically what I was to say, but I will expound a bit with a quote from Dr. Hahn. As has been made known he (Dr. Hahn) most readily puts forth the idea of the Holy Spirit as “mother” in his book *First Comes Love. *In the EWTN series by the same name (ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/selectseries.asp), hosted by Mike Aqualina, Dr. Hahn said, “If the Church was to ever come out and deny this idea I would be the first to leave it.” To say that Dr. Hahn is headed towards a liberal fringe is a drastic over-exageration. Read Dr. Hahn’s works maybe then you’ll see where he’s coming from.
 
peace be with you!

i have read the arguments tons of times about whether or not Hahn crossed the line on this issue. i read his book First Comes Love and re-read the chapter 4 times after finishing the whole book. i have come to the conclusion…that people who criticize that chapter may not have read the Chapter in question too carefully. but as has already been said…it appears other people have refuted the claims against him. if someone provides the quotes against him here…i will defend them to the best of my ability using Hahn’s works and the context of the book and the whole chapter. Scott Hahn NEVER claims OR implies that the Holy Spirit is a she, not a he. He does not buy into that brand of theology…and is teaching is in union with the Churchs’ teaching.

i would post some of the comments people have questioned but i really see no need to. others have already cleared him in giving a defense in the links provided here and there is no basis to saying he isn’t an orthodox Catholic theologian. people may not like him or his style of teaching, his ideas…but he never goes against Church teaching. to say that would be to “cross the line”.
 
here are hahn’s words in First Comes Love, which seem to be what the fuss is all about:By divine actions that are bridal and maternal, we may come to discern a divine
bridal-maternity in the Holy Spirit! It is in the relations of the human family that the life of the Trinity is reflected more truly and fully than anywhere else in the natural order. In other words, the analogy of bridal-motherhood is relational and familial, not physical or sexual (much less political).

note that it is an analogy that speaks to the relational and familial aspects of the Holy Spirit, not His physical or sexual identity. the holy spirit births new life in the creature just as women give birth. the holy spirit is also nurtures, strengthens, and inspires–which are motherly attributes.

one of his positions in support of this hypothesis (and he goes out of his way to say it is a hypothesis and he would submit to the Magisterium on this issue) is that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of the Church, which is the bride of Christ. And since the spirit is the form of the body and the body is feminine, that would give the Holy Spirit feminine qualities.

we also have this from the Book of Wisdom:

**7 ** Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
**8 ** I preferred her to scepters and thrones, and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her.
**9 ** Neither did I liken to her any priceless gem, because all gold is but a little sand in her sight, and silver will be accounted as clay before her.
**10 ** I loved her more than health and beauty, and I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases.
**11 ** All good things came to me along with her, and in her hands uncounted wealth.
**12 ** I rejoiced in them all, because wisdom leads them; but I did not know that she was their mother.

Hahn is only claiming that God has feminine qualities. who would deny this? i think sungenis and friends are getting carried away over nothing

pax christi,
phatcatholic
 
Someone else said it somewhere. It bears repeating. God the Son is most definitely described as a “he” in Scripture. In fact, he became incarnate as a man. Nevertheless, he describes himself, at least on one occasion, in maternal terms (when lamenting over Jerusalem). This is not to say God is a woman (!), of course, nor to say that “he” doesn’t convey something about who Christ is. But it doesn’t exclude some maternal characteristics. The Hahn quote given above doesn’t seem to go much further than asserting something similar about the “he” known as the Holy Spirit.
 
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philipmarus:
The New Oxford Review ran an article in June 2004 by Edward O’Neil
called “Scott Hahn’s Novelties” which provoked much comment in the magazine for months. In fact, Scott Hahn himself wrote a response which has printed in the Letters section of the New Oxford Review. The above article references quotations from First Comes Love (especially P. 138) regarding the feminity of the Holy Spirit.

I continue respect Mr. Hahn for all the good he has done and look forward to reading his book on the sacraments.
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Wow. I must have been sleeping. I read both articles and didn’t see the specific objections. I’ll read them again.
 
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philipmarus:
The New Oxford Review ran an article in June 2004 by Edward O’Neil
called “Scott Hahn’s Novelties” which provoked much comment in the magazine for months. In fact, Scott Hahn himself wrote a response which has printed in the Letters section of the New Oxford Review. The above article references quotations from First Comes Love (especially P. 138) regarding the feminity of the Holy Spirit.

I continue respect Mr. Hahn for all the good he has done and look forward to reading his book on the sacraments.
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Actually, on second thought, I don’t know if I saw the original June article. Is it online anywhere or would someone mind quoting the objections?
 
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Writer:
You could be right, but I have been hearing more and more about Hahn’s comments lately, and some of them (like the reference here) seem pretty disturbing. In the one book I have read of his, his arguments seem unnecessarily complex, and I noticed he seems to have a pattern of name-dropping for unclear reasons. Makes for distracting reading and gives me reason to suspect this guy may not be operating on all cylinders, but yes I hope I am wrong, too…
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I thought The Lamb’s Supper was extraordinarily valuable for a better understanding of what goes on at Mass - for what it is worth.
 
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puzzleannie:
long thread debating what Hahn actually wrote, and yet none of your links quotes any debatable material. Until and unless you quote the so-called objectionable passage, this commentary is futile.
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This is also my frustration with all of this. It almost seems that people want to object to Scott Hahn more than they have a beef with a particular quote.
 
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Brad:
I thought The Lamb’s Supper was extraordinarily valuable for a better understanding of what goes on at Mass - for what it is worth.
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I second that and plan to re-read the Lamb Supper so I can get even more out of it.
 
The Church is the Bride of Christ - talk about your feminine imagery!! The Church is also the Body of Christ - does this mean that Jesus’s body has turned feminine?

This is why I don’t like apologetics. Look at the link given above catholicintl.com/catholicissues/triple1.htm where the apologist is likened to the grunt in the foxhole with his trusty Browning at his side. I don’t like that kind of imagery when we’re discussing Jesus and what He taught us. Not that I have anything against Rob Sungenis - I have a few of his books, as well as all of Scott Hahn’s books.

I like the point that God made us in His image - male and female He made us. Male and female are human characteristics. If you understand the Eucharist, you understand that God is not restricted by our understanding of time; nor is He restricted by our understanding of gender.

Jesus was a man, and He referred to the Father and never to the Mother, and He referred to the Holy Spirit as He, but I can still see the point of all of us, male and female, being made in God’s image and thus female/motherly characteristics being part of God.
 
I am glad you brought these up. I was looking at Hahn and sungenis in understanding more of the catholic faith. I could not afford all of them and settled on two that were written by sungenis, ‘not by bread alone’ and ‘not by scripture alone’, and was going to read ‘not by faith alone’ next, but did have some of hahns saved in my amazon wish list and wondered which were best.

Any other good writers?

Laura
 
Hahn is good, esp “The Lamb’s Supper”, and “A Father Who Keeps His Promises”. Others might include Mark Shea, Stephen Ray, Jimmy Akin, George Weigel, F. J. Sheed’s (Theology For Beginners). For Church History, Croker’s “Triumph” is very good, and everyone should read Hillaire Belloc’s “How the Reformation Happened” and His Holiness’, Pope John Paul II, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope”.
For periodic reading, “This Rock” from Catholic Answers is very good. Plus, the reading done right here is pretty good, too. 👍
 
Comparing the Trinity to a family is just an analogy to put it into human terms.
 
I have a stack of Hahn’s books here and read some of the “offending” passages. I did not think they were offensive the first time I read the books, and they are not now. He even throws in caveats like:

“I must raise a caution here. This does not mean that we call God “Mother”; divine revelation does not call God by that name. Nor is it found anywhere in the Church’s living Tradition. Ironically, to do so, on account of the Spirit, would be to undermine the very work of that same Spirit, Who is intent upon teaching us to address – and come to know – God as ‘Abba, Father.’ … Thus, there is no more justification for goddess worship today that there was when the prophets condemned it in ancient Israel.” (p.138)

Dr. Scott Hahn may well be on his way to sainthood. My only objection to this would be that his life has been far too plagued with success and recognition. Now finally, he is being tested by God. Of course I am saying this tongue-in-cheek.

The man is marvelous. I do not think any other human has been more responsible for the recent spate of Protestants converting to the One True Church, myself included. In a sense, I owe my eternal well-being to his living “intercession.” So I can see how this would make him the subject of bitter rivalries and enemies, even within the Church.

When the curtain closes on Protestantism in the coming century, his will be the primary name on everyone’s lips. Not to mention the fact that he has “Patron Saint of Bad Puns” totally clinched.

People who get worked up over stuff like this (taken out of context) might want to read some other stuff by spiritual writers like St. Louis Marie DeMontefort (who the pope loves). His work could easily be taken out of context to mean that Mary is superior to God. If you want to take it out of context, that is…

It may also be Germane Jackson to point out that, as a Universal Church, we accommodate both UNITY and DIVERSITY. Otherwise, it would not be catholic. Just compare the spiritual charisms of Carmelites with those of the Dominicans. In other words, there is more variety WITHIN the Church than there is outside of her.

I wonder if that helps…
 
Taking about the Trinity and gender, I have always known that the pronoun for all three members of the Trinity is ‘He’ till I was reflecting on the Annunciation for a paper recently and got the insight that in the new creation as in the old the Trinity is distinctly involved. The Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, to enable the conception of Jesus by the Power of the Most High (the Father) Lk 1:35. It struck me that the conception of Jesus is by the power of the Father through the Holy Spirit and Mary (Also Creed 200ce by Tertullian). The Holy Spirit gave Mary the possibility to conceive the Divine and contribute her humanity. So the Word became flesh in Mary; a male child who is inseperably human and divine by the power of the Father.Theotokos thus Mary is rightly called. I felt strongly that the Holy Spirit is feminine. First thought heresy. Looking around, I found that Wisdom is ‘associated’ to the Spirit of God (Irenaeus says The Holy Ghost is the Father’s Wisdom) and ‘she’ is used in the Book of Wisdom, secondly the Hebrew for Spirit is ‘Ruach’ which is feminine and the Greek ‘pneuma’ is neuter. I begin to ask who and how the translation into English became ‘he’. I also asked

How much did the culture of masculine hegemony-the prioritizing of the male gender- in thought and language patterns affect the redaction/editing/translation of the New Testament text? Would it have been possible to use ‘she’ for God the Holy Spirit if it were so in such a culture or would it have been ‘left out’ as an error?

Ireanaeus says the Son and the Holy Ghost are the ‘two hands’ with which God created humanity. Why did man (English text) need the breath of the Spirit and woman need flesh (The Word became flesh) to become alive? Was it given to the one what the other’s form was? Was the unity between them from the fashioning of a body proper to each by the Father using the same bone?

When Jesus says one must be born of water and the Holy Spirit, is to give birth not an exclusively feminine trait? is it coincidence that at the start of creation we read the Holy Spirit and water and when a woman is in labour first is water and then the new birth?

For the Holy Spirit be feminine I feel more for **sister **and friend as Jesus is brother and friend and daughter in relation to the Father

In searching for answers I found this forum, can someone suggest Church writings which I can read that explains why the Holy Spirit is ‘He’?
 
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