I think you said it very well, but I would probably substitute 'cavalier' for sloppy. Hahn is not sloppy, but calculating in supporting his pet theory(ies).
I think the 'cavalier' is a reflection of his success - too far, too fast. And, IMO, his choice of hills to die on a reflection of his own history (protestant) and his liberalism. Too much to overcome.
He will die on this hill.
I am amazed that Scott Hahn is considered a "liberal". While questioning my own opinion of him as a theolgian whose language reflects his pre-catholic Presbyterian theology---(in agreement with what I found on this forum)
I had considered him more conservative in keeping with the traditional Catholic party line. I was looking for support for my thinking that he presents Catholicism from Presbyterian genetics and found this forum. As you say, he is definitely not sloppy, but extremely painstaking in his research....almost to a fault (in my estimation.) However, with his following, I do not think he will "die on this hill" with the idea of a feminine component to the Trinity. Wisdom literature (chapter 7) supports the feminine --as LadyDoc posts, especially in Chapter 10 of the book of Wisdom, where Sophia/she is the spirit that guides Israel through history. Catholicism, even in the pre Vatican II era, has always considered God above gender; neither male nor female. It is only logical for humans to try to find themselves--who are created male and female and are created in the image and likeness of God--in the nature of God. Why would the feminine be excluded? I don't think this makes God a "wimp"...there are extremes of thinking on both sides. Back to Hahn, I am suprised that he is getting so much support....my thinking is that his Presbyterian roots color his Roman Catholic theology and the language he uses to express it......maybe we are saying the same thing....for different reasons.
Here is a (long) quote from John Paul II's MULIERIS DIGNITATEM that helps me to understand the state of God ...
"This observation on the limits of the analogy - the limits of man's likeness to God in biblical language - must also be kept in mind when, in different passages of Sacred Scripture (especially in the Old Testament), we find comparisons that attribute to God "masculine" or "feminine" qualities. We find in these passages an indirect confirmation of the truth that both man and woman were created in the image and likeness of God. If there is a likeness between Creator and creatures, it is understandable that the Bible would refer to God using expressions that attribute to him both "masculine" and "feminine" qualities.
We may quote here some characteristic passages from the prophet Isaiah: "But Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me'.'Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you'". (49:14-15). And elsewhere: "As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem" (66: 13). In the Psalms too God is compared to a caring mother: "Like a child quieted at its mother's breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul. O Israel, hope in the Lord". (Ps 131:2-3). In various passages the love of God who cares for his people is shown to be like that of a mother: thus, like a mother God "has carried" humanity, and in particular, his Chosen People, within his own womb; he has given birth to it in travail, has nourished and comforted it (cf. Is 42:14; 46: 3-4). In many passages God's love is presented as the "masculine" love of the bridegroom and father (cf. Hosea 11:1-4; Jer 3:4-19), but also sometimes as the "feminine" love of a mother.
This characteristic of biblical language - its anthropomorphic way of speaking about God - points indirectly to the mystery of the eternal "generating" which belongs to the inner life of God. Nevertheless, in itself this "generating" has neither "masculine" nor "feminine" qualities. It is by nature totally divine. It is spiritual in the most perfect way, since "God is spirit" (Jn 4:24) and possesses no property typical of the body, neither "feminine" nor "masculine". Thus even "fatherhood" in God is completely divine and free of the "masculine" bodily characteristics proper to human fatherhood. In this sense the Old Testament spoke of God as a Father and turned to him as a Father. Jesus Christ - who called God "Abba Father" (Mk 14: 36), and who as the only-begotten and consubstantial Son placed this truth at the very centre of his Gospel, thus establishing the norm of Christian prayer - referred to fatherhood in this ultra-corporeal, superhuman and completely divine sense. He spoke as the Son, joined to the Father by the eternal mystery of divine generation, and he did so while being at the same time the truly human Son of his Virgin Mother.
Although it is not possible to attribute human qualities to the eternal generation of the Word of God, and although the divine fatherhood does not possess "masculine" characteristics in a physical sense, we must nevertheless seek in God the absolute model of all "generation" among human beings. This would seem to be the sense of the Letter to the Ephesians: "I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (3:14-15). All "generating" among creatures finds its primary model in that generating which in God is completely divine, that is, spiritual. All "generating" in the created world is to be likened to this absolute and uncreated model. Thus every element of human generation which is proper to man, and every element which is proper to woman, namely human "fatherhood" and "motherhood", bears within itself a likeness to, or analogy with the divine "generating" and with that "fatherhood" which in God is "totally different", that is, completely spiritual and divine in essence; whereas in the human order, generation is proper to the "unity of the two": both are "parents", the man and the woman alike.