Judaism wished to preserve "strict monotheism," so as Sophia gains in stature (becoming "transcendent and preexistent") she poses something of a threat
the Jews restrict Sophia "by describing her as the firstborn of creation," not a true "co-equal" (140)
Origen, the early Christian, is one of the figures who aligns Sophia and Christ [along with, say, John], but this causes problems for trinitarianism
Origen "is accused of being a subordinationist" because his parallel of Christ with Sophia/Wisdom means that he is claiming Christ, like Sophia, is "the first born of creation" (145)
146: "Indirectly and perhaps unconsciously, Origen has the Son appear subordinate to the Father"--a form of "Arian heresy"
"The fundamental basis of all Arianims is the belief that Christ is a creature and as such has a beginning. In other words, there was a time when the Son was not" -- a denial of the Son's "full divinity"
"It is possible to characterize the Arian controversies as Sophia's revenge. The theft of her attributes, powers, and functions now contaminated Christology by casting Jesus in the same relationship with God the fatehr that she had been confined to by the scrupulous montotheism of the Jews" (147)
To solve this problem, theologians like Athanasius "continue to call Christ Wisdom [but] never mentions The Wisdom of Solomon or any other text related to Sophia"
a "second repression" (147) which "brings to an end the effort to see Wisdom as God beside God"
she is "re-repressed in orthodox circles" (141) and subsequently "disappeared from the Western theological tradition" (141)
post-Arian controversy, the identification of Sophia with Christ is rejected, the "hypostatic status" of Sophia is rejected, and her "powers and attributes" are relocated to God, and Christ is successfully identified with God the Father (148)
"What was lost in this process was direct access to the feminine dimension of God" ... it becomes "an elusive, haunting factor" (148)