Gospels of Thomas and Philip and Truth - Syriac Christian Church

This allusion strongly conveys a maternal concept of the Paraclete.
Now of course ΠΝΕΥΜΑ in Greek is neuter and ΠΑΡΑΚΛΗΤΟΣ masculine,
while SPIRITUS and ADVOCATUS in Latin are both masculine in gender. Hence starting
from the earliest versions of both the Old and New Testaments in non-Semitic
tongues, the very idea was lost which Thomas is conveying and Philip emphasizing
in the foregoing quotations. Thus from having the neuter form ΤΟ ΠΝΕΥΜΑ instead
of a feminine form Η ΠΝΕΥΜΗ in Greek, we pass to e.g. ‘el Espíritu’ instead of ‘la
Espíritu’ in Spanish, ‘der Geist’ instead of ‘die Geist’ in German, and in English ‘he/
him’ in place of ‘she/her’ referring to the Helpmate (Heb, Mxn-m: participle, and thus
without gender) in Jn 16:7 ff.
We need hardly remind ourselves of the confusions, schisms and even religious
machismo to which this gender-shift has given rise across the centuries, as
theologians struggled to make sense of a presumably all-male Trinity. Thus, as is
well known, the Orthodox/Catholic rupture of 1054 AD resulted from the vexed
‘filioque’ controversy, over the procession of the third member of the Trinity. 1 With the
Sacred Spirit as a maternal figure, however, the underlying idea is clarified: Father
God and Mother Spirit and Incarnate Son as the basic mystery of three-in-one, the
threefold Godhead. Here the concept is evidently that of a transcendental holy
family, in which the Divine Child— and indeed each child 2 (Mt 18:10, Jn 11:52)— is
eternally born, not of the physical union between human parents, but rather of the
mystical union between the paternal and maternal aspects of the Divinity:
Thus, as to the filioque controversy, it is precisely a third possibility— and neither
the Oriental nor the Occidental doctrine— that resolves the issue: the Sacred Spirit
does not proceed from the Father either with or without the Son, but rather the Son
proceeds (is born) from the Father joined with the Sacred Spirit. This logically
1 Filioque: combination of Latin words meaning ‘and of the Son’, added to the Nicene Creed of 325 AD by the Visigothic III
Council of Toledo in 589 AD: CREDO IN SPIRITUM SANCTUM QUI EX PATRE {FILIOQUE} PROCEDIT: ‘I believe in the Sacred Spirit, who
proceeds from the Father {and the Son}’; the Orthodox Church did not accept the inclusion, leading to the final rupture of 1054
AD between the Eastern and Western Churches.
2 I assume that ΜΟΝΟΓΕΝΗΣ (‘uniquely born’) in Jn 1:14 refers to the singularity of the Virgin Birth, and not to Christ's being
the only Son; see Jn 1:12-13 20:17.
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