Ecclesia Sophiana

Our principles

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The following principles are our basis of unity:

  1. The Ecclesia Sophiana affirms that there is one Great, Unknown and Unknowable God that brought the Universe into being.

  2. Throughout mainstream Church history the role of the divine feminine aspect of the Godhead has been ignored. We recognise this feminine aspect firstly in the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), and we also accept the divine feminine in such expressions as Lady Sophia, Charis-Sige, Shekhinah, Barbelo, the Maiden of Light, and others.

  3. We look upon the Christ figure, or Mashiakh, as an enlightened being who shows us the way to seek that experiential knowledge of God which is referred to as Gnosis. Manifested in the human life of Jesus, we call him by his original Aramaic name of Yeshua. We understand that salvation came through His teachings leading us to enlightenment, rather than His death being a necessary sacrifice.

  4. We follow a mystical approach to spirituality, that is, we believe in a direct personal relationship with the Divine. We do not hold that we all attain our experiences and interpretations of the spiritual world in the same manner. We thus encourage liberty for all to make their own inward journey to the Divine.

  5. We affirm the use of sacred writings that reveal the sparks of the Divine within. We acknowledge the value of the Tanakh and the New Testament, and we also revere other ancient texts (such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Odes of Solomon, the Didache, the Nag Hammadi Corpus, and the Corpus Hermeticum, among others). We do not regard scriptures as authoritative but as myth, allegory and metaphor. We understand the scriptures to hold hidden meanings (esoteric) beyond those overtly stated (exoteric).

  6. We are an Esoteric Christian Church in the Gnostic tradition, which includes ideas predating and present within other esoteric forms of Christianity. These ideas include our origin in and ultimate return to Heaven (the Pleroma), and our Church affirms that all beings bear within them the sparks of the Divine. Liberation, or “salvation”, comes through awareness of our divinity. This awareness comes not from faith or right beliefs, but from the experiential knowledge called Gnosis.

  7. The Ecclesia Sophiana holds the sacramental orders of ministry within the historical Apostolic Succession and celebrates other historical sacraments. We affirm the value of both liturgical worship and creative freedom in spiritual cultivation, as well as the value of both individual and communal practices.

  8. We uphold progressive views, principles, and positions on social and ethical matters. We believe that the healing ministry of the followers of Yeshua includes mending the world.

It is a short formulation, but we believe it is sufficient to point out the real core of what unites us, to delimit the boundaries of what would be unacceptable, and to provide for a great amount of latitude and liberty. In a sense, it's simply a way of saying that these ideas have a firm place in our Church and are not to be excluded.