Scott Hahn, the Feminist

In our New Oxford Note “Burn, Baby, Burn!” (Sept. 2002), we took on the highly esteemed Dr. Scott Hahn for saying outrageous and scandalous things. We noted: “Feminist theologians and their Queer cheerleaders have been campaigning for a feminine Holy Spirit for decades. How odd — how depressing, actually — to see Dr. Hahn jump on the bandwagon.”

You see, Dr. Hahn regards the Holy Spirit as feminine or female. We commented: “Now, Mary was female, and if the Holy Spirit is female or feminine, then Jesus had two mommies, and presto, ‘gay’ is good and so is ‘gay marriage.’ Dr. Hahn goes so far as to say the Holy Spirit is ‘bridal’ and that ‘Mary’s maternity is mystically one with that of…the Spirit.’ The imagery here is blatantly and scandalously lesbian.”

This stirred up a hornet’s nest in our pages, both pro and con, and not only in our letters section. In December 2002 we printed an article defending Hahn by Abraham Heck (with a reply from the Editor). Monica Miller took on Hahn in an article in our May 2003 issue. Then Edward O’Neill weighed in against Hahn in an article in our June 2004 issue. Abraham Heck responded to O’Neill in our November 2004 issue (with a reply from O’Neilb~ And we know that certain of Hahn’s personal friends have warned him that he’s in danger of going off the deep end.

And the controversy just doesn’t want to go away. Christopher Ferrara joined the fray against Hahn in August 2004 at RemnantNewspaper.com. An enlarged version appeared in The Remnant (Sept. 30, 2004) along with commentary by Robert Sungenis.

Ferrara covers Hahn’s female Holy Spirit, but he also discusses Hahn’s weird view of Original Sin (something lightly touched upon in O’Neill’s June 2004 NOR article). Says Ferrara: “Hahn speculates that the serpent in the Garden was actually a dragon or other monster with which Adam should have engaged in mortal combat to protect himself and his bride…. Hahn thus suggests that the original sin was not disobedience to a divine command under temptation, but rather a refusal to sacrifice his life under a death threat: [Says Hahn] ‘Knowing the serpent’s power, Adam was unwilling to lay down his own life — for the sake of his love of God, or to save the life of his beloved. That refusal to sacrifice was Adam’s original sin.'” The internal quote is from Hahn’s First Comes Love, page 70. Hahn’s next line is this: “He [Adam] committed it [the original sin] even before he had tasted the fruit, even before Eve had tasted the fruit.”