bunny-butch:

bunny-butch:

Thinking about how I could make the argument that Christ was a trans woman named Sophia whose deadname was Josh and now I’m like, fuck I would want to date here, which I guess is big John the Apostle feels

Ok so Sophia, or divine wisdom, is essentially the Eastern Orthodox version of what the Western Rite calls the Logos, the Word made flesh in Christ. Kinda. Its complicated, bc some would say divine wisdom is simply one of the gifts of God and not equivalent to the Logos, while others say they are equal but are distinct, locating Sophia not in Christ but in the Holy Spirit or even in Mary, Christ’s mother. From my own studies of early Christian history though I am of the opinion that the Logos and Sophia are two words for the same phenomenon, for the aspect of God we also call God the Son who was incarnate in Christ.

Sophia has appeared to female saints and mystics throughout history as a woman, a feminine aspect of God. This might also explain why some believe the Holy Spirit is Sophia, bc the Holy Spirit is also often understood as feminine. But if Sophia is the Logos, the Word made flesh, then Christ’s true name is Sophia, that is to say, Wisdom, and Christ’s maleness and given name (Yeshua, which in ancient Greek is Jesus but in our English is more appropriately rendered as Josh) were assigned by humanity and not inherent to Christ’s nature.

Add in Christ’s statements on gender. In Paul’s letter to the Galations, one of the oldest Christian documents we still have, he says that there is neither male nor female in the eyes of God. This would have been a radical statement, and indeed our patriarchal society has been doing everything it can to suppress this tenet since that time, so this cannot simply be an inference Paul made “from custom,” as he often does in his letters, but rather was part of the divine wisdom shared with him by Christ on the road to Damascus.

Furthermore, in the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of the Egyptians, two ancient scriptures that are not part of canon but are accepted by many modern theologians as genuine witness to Christ’s ministry, Christ speaks directly on the necessity of what we might today call gender abolition.

Interestingly, Thomas and Egyptians, the latter often attributed to Christ’s disciple the woman Salome and the community of believers in Egypt she founded, frame the issue in different ways. Thomas, as a man might be expected to do, frames it as ‘through Christ, women can become like men, and thus improve themselves bc men are of course the superior sex and a perfected humanity would be all men.’ Salome, a woman, instead says that perfected humanity will have neither male nor female! As we might expect, Thomas’ gospel was less controversial and thus more well preserved.

Also I should explain the John the Apostle bit. John has been understood for millenia to be feminine, the Beloved Disciple who is the lover of Christ (there was a substantial tradition in the early church that described Christ’s intimate relations with men) in the Gospel of John, and is often believed to have been intersex.