A Little Bit of Gnosticism
We received the paperback version of First Comes Love by Dr. Scott Hahn, unsolicited from the publisher, in August 2006. Then we received the paperback version from Scott Hahn himself in September 2006, saying, “Check out the changes: the controversial chapter is re-written and placed in the back as an appendix.” We appreciate Scott sending it to us. The controversial chapter in the hardback version was Chapter 10: “The Family Spirit.”
We critiqued First Comes Love (hardback) in our New Oxford Note “Burn, Baby, Burn!” (Sept. 2002), and Monica Miller’s “The Gender of the Holy Trinity: Shall We Feminize the Holy Spirit?” (May 2003), and Edward O’Neill’s “Scott Hahn’s Novelties” (June 2004). And there were many letters and two articles replying to those three critiques.
In the hardback version, Hahn said: “Indeed, if the Magisterium should find any of them [his ‘findings’ in favor of a feminine Holy Spirit] to be unsatisfactory I will be the first to renounce them, and rip the following pages out of the book and gratefully consign them to the flames — and then invite you to do the same.” That’s where our New Oxford Note “Burn, Baby, Burn!” came from. But in the paperback version, he omits this sentence; so he will not renounce them. Indeed, Hahn digs himself in deeper.
So, what is at issue? Hahn calls the Holy Spirit “mother,” “motherly,” “maternal,” “feminine,” “womanhood,” and “bridal,” in both the hardback and paperback versions.
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