Does God Have Gender?

“The first person of the Godhead chooses to name himself ‘Father’ (and not ‘Mother’) to indicate the respect and honor that is due him, as he anticipates in the created order the role that he will give to earthly fathers as the leaders or the heads of their homes.”[1]

Here is one person’s take on God’s gender and the implications of it for gender authority and submission. It raises several questions: (1) Does mother not engender the same respect father does? (2) Does leadership in the home translate to leadership elsewhere for men? (3) Does God have gender?

Genesis 1:27 tells us

So God created the man in His own image. In God’s image He created him. He created them male and female.

Does the image of God include gender? The passage doesn’t say so directly. It is possible that gender is not part of the image of God specifically (not every aspect of who God is has been replicated in humans).[2] The image of God may only consist of the relational, intellectual, and affective aspects of God’s person. But if gender is not part of the image of God in humans, where does this aspect of Adam and Eve’s makeup come from? Has God simply constructed the gender concept from nothing? He, of course, can do so. Separate genders is a requirement for reproduction.

But gender could reflect something in God. God is a generator of life, and it would seem He is also a gestator of life. The generating God seems most prominent in Scripture, creating Adam and then breathing the breath of life into him (Genesis 2:7), indeed giving everyone life and breath (Acts 17:25; 1 Timothy 6:13), and, some believe, generating the subsistence of the Son eternally (John 1:18[3]). But Scripture also represents the God who gestates life, as in Psalm 139:16, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb,” and in Deuteronomy 32:18, where both ideas are present, “You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.” God acts like both genders, male generators and female gestators.

This suggests that God encompasses both genders. That is not the same as saying He has no gender (like, for example, Islam does, thinking gender necessitates physical being[4]). He is the nexus, the amalgam, and wellspring of gender. He doesn’t transcend gender, that is, He doesn’t go beyond it to something entirely different.[5] He is the source of it. Human beings as separately gendered are still like God.

In the trinitarian relationship, the Father is the eternal generator of the Son, and the Son and the Father generate the Spirit eternally,[6] but each member of the trinity must be “fully” gendered, that is, not only generators but also gestators, both seeding life and nurturing life. Jesus’ incarnation as a male human does not make him, in his deity, only male. Incarnation as a male had practical ramifications for his ministry in a male oriented culture.[7] It is interesting that he did not choose to procreate, though we must suppose he would have been entirely capable of that.

We may suppose, then, that angels are as fully gendered as God is, not separated into male and female (because they are not given in marriage, Matthew 22:30, and presumably don’t procreate, but are each individual creations[8]), though the only angels named are given male names. But having a male name does not make one singularly male, even as addressing God as “He” does not make Him singularly male. Even if the correct interpretation of Genesis 6 is that the “sons of God” are fallen angels who procreate with human women, this, in and of itself, does not mean angels are male, but that taking a male body and somehow inseminating human women and generating offspring was a way to have an impact on the human race.

In the same way, though God is always referred to with a masculine pronoun, and most normally called the Father, it does not follow that God is therefore a male. They Holy Spirit is referred to in the Greek New Testament as “it” (with a neuter pronoun) but this does not mean He is neuter or non-gendered.[9]

Given that God is “fully” gendered, it must follow that gender is not strictly physical, but is a construct or abstract idea to describe characteristics of God embodied in human beings. Because God has separated these characteristics between males and females (not just in humans but in most of God’s creatures), the characteristics of generation and gestation, they have become recognized by us as distinguishable. We tend to distinguish genders by the sexual traits that make generation and gestation possible, the male and female genitalia and maybe the accompanying hormones,[10] but the functioning gamete production is the additional important characteristic.

Numerous characteristic differences between males and females (stereo)typically become attached to our perception of gender. Because of the physiological and hormonal and social differences between males and females they tend to perceive and interact with the world differently from one another. They are living out the differences between generators and gestators, differences that live together in God and, we suppose, in angels. To live righteously in our world, humans need to bring both perspectives, male and female, together.

For those with differences of sexual development, the identification of themselves as male or female may not be supported by working gametes (sperm and ova) and delivery systems (penis and fallopian tubes). They may identify themselves as “male” or “female” based on how they are designed (they have male or female gonads that perhaps don’t function but were designed for generation or gestation), or how they appear (they may have a preponderance of male or female genitalia), or how they feel, or perhaps simply how they were told. Some may think of themselves one way early on but change how they think of themselves later. Ironically, those with mixed gender may actually be able to address the world more like God by themselves than those with unmixed gender. Perhaps this is why in some cultures intersex people held special status as healers, shamans, artists, matchmakers, or mediators.[11]

If gender finds its origin in God and is therefore not entirely a function of bodily “plumbing”[12] (though, indeed, it is expressed in humans through bodily plumbing), is it a part of our souls?

[1] Bruce A. Ware, “Could Our Savior Have Been a Woman? The Relevance of Jesus’ Gender for His Incarnational Mission,” 4, Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, http://www.cbmw.org/index2 (accessed May 7, 2009).

[2] God in the Gap: Rethinking Divine Gender and Moving Toward Reconciliation, Hamid Nourbakhshi, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion · May 2025 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388485329_God_in_the_Gap_Rethinking_Divine_Gender_and_Moving_Toward_Reconciliation)

[3] New English Translation note on John 1:18, which can be translated
“only begotten God” (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%201%3A18&version=NASB1995), though the concept is not dependent on this verse.

[4] https://www.islamiqate.com/5409/does-allah-have-a-gender#

[5] https://uscatholic.org/articles/202303/does-god-have-a-gender/#:~:text=The%20short%20answer%20to%20this%20question%20is%20no.,help%20but%20envision%20God%20as%20having%20a%20gender.

[6] https://thimblefulloftheology.com/is-jesus-god-or-the-son-of-god/ and https://thimblefulloftheology.com/4-the-holy-spirit-in-relation-to-the-trinity/

[7] For this same reason, though perhaps not only for this reason, it would not have been helpful for Jesus to have been a true hermaphrodite, nor, for that matter, an XX male. If we see hermaphroditism and other intersex conditions as “disorders,” then for this reason also Jesus would not have been a disordered incarnation.

[8] For representative views see https://www.gotquestions.org/can-angels-reproduce.html and https://bibleask.org/can-angels-procreate/

[9] For a helpful review of the Biblical evidence for God’s gender see Does God Have Gender, Aída Besançon, Priscilla Papers Volume: PP 24:2 (Spring 2010)

[10] Recall Jackie Blankenship’s “that’s the only body I know.”

[11] https://brewminate.com/weaving-the-sacred-a-history-of-two-spirit-identity-in-native-american-and-lgbtq-contexts/. For a good survey of the native American “two-spirit” terminology see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit

[12] Contra Alllison, Four Theses Concerning Human Embodiment, SBJT 23:2 (Summer 2019), p. 166.