The Redemption of Sophia
“Using their very criticisms, he absolves Wisdom of sin, releases her from the mental prisons in which she still lies enchained, and beautifully connects her story with the human condition.”
For eighteen hundred years Sophia has been the one who made the mistake. Handbooks call it her error and paperbacks her fall, and one phrase recurs in book after book: the sin of Sophia.
There was no sin, and the proof has been sitting in the prosecution’s own file.
Almost everything known about the Valentinian myth comes from Irenaeus of Lyons, a bishop who wrote it down around the year 180 in order to destroy it. The Redemption of Sophia reads his account as a defense attorney would, trusting him on the facts and arguing with him about the verdict. Every claim is sourced to a passage readers can check for free.
Between the chapters, the story moves to a hospice in a small California town, where the people below read the same texts and live alongside them.
The Places
The book moves between the fullness above and a hospice off a two-lane road.
The Pleroma
The fullness, home of the Aeons. Sophia is the youngest of them, and the first to act on the wish to know the Father. Past its edge lies the dark.
Turneyville, California
A small town in the dry hills, with a water tower and a hospice. The intermissions take place here, at lunch tables, in kitchens and in patients’ rooms.
The People
Three people in Turneyville, and one who comes from the fullness.
Sofia
Her name is one letter from the Aeon’s. Before work she reads the ancient texts at her kitchen table, and over five years she reaches the book’s conclusion on her own.
Theo Andreou
He comes from the Fresno office to audit the hospice and finds a variance in the Turneyville books that will not close. He has lunch with Sofia on Thursdays, for five years.
Darla
Sofia’s colleague runs the linen room and the hospice’s volunteers, the Potato Stripers. She has opinions about sheets, and she tells one intermission herself.
Soter
He comes to Sophia in her exile with his angels around him. In Irenaeus’s own report, what she feels at the sight of him is joy.
“She gazed with rapture on the dazzling vision of the angels that were with him.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.4.5
Pre-order opens October 31
Miguel Conner reviews the book on Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio on November 5.
Ebook and paperback.