conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled Sister of Wisdom about English-language, Hildegard, Bingen with the genre: History, World?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: "At long last there has appeared an English-language book worthy of the person it studies.... Hildegard of Bingen was an exuberantly complex visualist and thinker; Dr. the author's book is an excellent way of being introduced to Hildegard's sapiential visuals and thought."--"Adris Newsletter
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Sister of Wisdom
  A historian of sapiential theology might turn next to the Christian Cabalists of the Renaissance, who combined an androgynous understanding of the Trinity (adapted from medieval Jewish theosophy) with a keen interest in the cosmo—logical process and complex speculations on the original Adam.25 But the seminal figure for subsequent developments is Jakob Boehme (1575–1624), a Lutheran mystic whose mercurial, immensely influential system of theosophy gives a large place to the "noble Virgin Sophia." She is conceived as (among other things) the mirror of the Godhead, the eternal Idea, the uncreated Heaven or Glory of God, the bride of un—fallen Adam, the celestial Virgin who united herself with Mary, and the seer's personal guide and Muse.26 In the Prot estant world generally, where the divine Father and Son were no longer counterbalanced by the figures of Mary the Mother and Ecclesia the Bride, sapiential theology took on more esoteric and heterodox forms, becoming bolder in its statements of divine androgyny. As its connection with the age—old liturgical tradition was severed, it also tended to express itself in highly imaginative, idiosyncratic, and often ecstatic modes. Boehme's writings inspired theosophists of every sort, notably the English Philadelphians of the late seventeenth century—a circle of visionaries led by John Pordage and the prophetess Jane Leade, who concerned themselves with the mysteries of the divine Sophia and proclaimed that "Eve will now come forth as a mighty, strong, terrible Eagle."27
  In the eighteenth century the tradition manifested itself in figures as diverse as William Blake, the visionary poet who prophesied of Albion and Jerusalem (and was himself deeply influenced by Boehme), and the blacksmith's daughter Ann Lee, founder of the sect of Shakers. These unorthodox Christian communists, transplanted from England to America, continued to flourish throughout the nineteenth century During one phase of their history, they venerated their Mother Ann as the Second Coming of Christ in glory, that is, in the form of a woman (I Cor. 11:7). They aimed at a full equality between women and men in the angelic life of celibacy, where there is "neither male nor female," and in their worship they danced the praise of an androgynous God.
  In the Catholic West, sapiential theology experienced an independent revival, sparked by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's long philosophical poem "The Eternal Feminine" (1918). This epic of ideas charts the evolution of the feminine from the status of a vague, inchoate force of attraction, through the vitality of instinctual life, to the hallowed lure of virginity and ideal beauty. The personified Feminine speaks finally of her role as mediatrix between God and the world.
  Lying between God and the earth, as a zone of mutual attraction, I draw them both together in a passionate union —until the meeting takes place in me, in which the generation and plenitude of Christ are consummated throughout the centuries.
  As the foregoing pages suggest, Hildegard of Bingen is centrally located not only within the crosscurrents of twelfth-century culture but also within a theological tradition that stretches from Solomon's days to our own. Sapiential theology is not easily defined: its course through the ages is filled with apparent gaps, dead ends, and discontinuities, and the variety of its formulations is bewildering. Its systematic history has yet to be written.37 One of the most interesting continuities in that history, however, is the flexible but persistent bond between certain ideas about God and related ideas about gender. There is, of course, no simple or direct correlation between the sex of a writer, the perception of feminine qualities in the divine, and particular beliefs about maleness and femaleness. Yet sapiential theology, precisely because of its concern with the feminine divine, has been linked so closely with such beliefs that its vicissitudes provide a sensitive barometer for the psychology and sociology of gender.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is four more paragraphs? Start with the sentence 'As the foregoing pages suggest, Hildegard of Bingen is centrally located not only within the crosscurrents of twelfth-century culture but also within a theological tradition that stretches from Solomon's days to our own'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: As the foregoing pages suggest, Hildegard of Bingen is centrally located not only within the crosscurrents of twelfth-century culture but also within a theological tradition that stretches from Solomon's days to our own. Sapiential theology is not easily defined: its course through the ages is filled with apparent gaps, dead ends, and discontinuities, and the variety of its formulations is bewildering. Its systematic history has yet to be written.37 One of the most interesting continuities in that history, however, is the flexible but persistent bond between certain ideas about God and related ideas about gender. There is, of course, no simple or direct correlation between the sex of a writer, the perception of feminine qualities in the divine, and particular beliefs about maleness and femaleness. Yet sapiential theology, precisely because of its concern with the feminine divine, has been linked so closely with such beliefs that its vicissitudes provide a sensitive barometer for the psychology and sociology of gender.
  Since both men and women have historically been attracted to theologies of the feminine, these systems of thought cannot be explained solely by women's alleged need to identify with powerful feminine symbols, or by men's purported need to project these symbols as images of desire. Such motives may indeed be operative in the cases of individual writers, St. Hildegard included. But whether the symbolism is addressing the psychological needs of women or of men, two factors remain constant. One is the perception of radical, even metaphysical difference between the sexes. In a theology of the feminine, "male" and "female" are understood as not merely biological categories, even if these categories are correlated with strongly marked psychological traits and seemingly changeless socioeconomic roles. A residual Platonism, whether overt or attenuated, must define the genders as ontological categories that are first distinguished within the divine realm and only then embodied in the physical, psychological, and cultural polarity of male and female. In the second place, the feminine rather than the masculine is to be singled out for special attention, as if the meaning of maleness were self—evident whereas the meaning of femaleness were in continual need of discovery. This "meaning," it should be stressed, does not remain constant; the divine femininity for Hildegard may have been pure, virginal and radiant, whereas for C. G. Jung it implied materiality and evil.38 Nor is the feminine necessarily singled out to prove the inferiority of women; it may just as well be stressed to argue their superiority, as I will demonstrate with some contemporary examples. The common denominator is a sense that the feminine is somehow problematic; being neglected, undervalued, or wrongly understood within a patriarchal culture, it needs to be perpetually redefined, revalued, and relocated in the general worldview.
  In recent decades both of these philosophical premises have come under fierce attack. As Rosemary Ruether has pointed out, the spectrum of contemporary feminism still reflects the nineteenth-century split between liberals and romantics.39 The liberals, who represent the overwhelming majority of American and European feminists, have resoundingly vetoed the notion that gender is a metaphysical category, which they see as a more refined version of the claim that anatomy is destiny A flood of psychological, sociological, and anthropological writing by feminist scholars has attempted to prove that gender—related differences are culturally conditioned rather than innate.40 At the same time, the direction of critical scrutiny toward "women" rather than "gender" is denounced as a way of perpetuating patriarchal bias. It is argued that reifying the feminine as such merely reinforces constricting stereotypes; that idealizing the feminine supports male dominance by "sheltering" women from political power; and that ascribing "special" functions to the female implies that the male is still the normative human— or divine—being. The liberal critique further charges that theologies of the feminine define women according to their biological status—virgin, wife, mother—leaving no room for self—determination, and moreover that such doctrines victimize women by teaching them to see their socially conditioned "weakness" as part of some divine scheme of things. The critique is a telling one.41
  Yet the romantics are still with us, and among them are numbered not only conservatives and antifeminists but also many women who strongly endorse the political agenda of feminism. At the conservative end of the spectrum we find one wing of the evangelical movement, which has lately spawned a wave of literature commending "total womanhood is essentially the human—by which is meant by and large a repudiation of feminism, together with a reaffirmation of the Pauline and medieval analogies. Woman is to man as man is to God: complementary, well—beloved, and subservient. In this version of womanhood, there is no room for the feminine in heaven; it is essentially the human vis-a-vis the divine.42 This understanding is shared, within a different theological context, by most of the Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox writers who oppose the ordination of women.43 Much of their writing argues that it is not human law but feminine nature, as ordained by God, which renders women incapable of the priesthood.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Czarski, Charles. "The Prophecies of St. Hildegard of Bingen." Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1983.
  Kraft, Kent. "The Eye Sees More Than the Heart Knows: The Visionary Cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen." Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1977.
  The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
  Ecclesia (personified): as bride of Christ, iconography of, and Mary, as new Eve, predestination of, and Syna-goga
  Paul, Saint: Colossians, I Corinthians; II Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Romans, I Thessa-lonians, I Timothy, II Timothy