Is God male?

What the Bible says

The Bible calls God "he," "Father," and "King," so it is natural to ask whether God is male. But the first thing Scripture makes clear about God is that he is not a creature with a body. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman:

God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

John 4:24

One who is spirit has neither a man's body nor a woman's. The Old Testament says the same. Balaam declares:

God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind.

Num 23:19

The verse is not about sex; it says that God is not frail and unreliable as we are. He is not the largest of all men but a different kind of being, the Creator.

How, then, do human sexes relate to God? The first page of Scripture answers:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Gen 1:27

The image of God is given to men and women alike. Neither sex resembles God more than the other; each bears his image, and together they display it. Unlike the gods of the nations around Israel, the God of the Bible has no consort and does not beget the world by sexual union; he creates by his word.

Yet Jesus taught his disciples to call God "Father."

So then, this is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.

Matt 6:9

This name does not describe biology. God has no wife, and the Son is not "begotten" the way a human child is. "Father" names a relationship: the source of all things, who cares for his children and takes them in. Paul turns the direction around. Every family "in heaven and on earth derives its name" from the Father (Eph 3:14-15). Human fatherhood is not the model for God; God's fatherhood is the pattern from which all fathering takes its name.

Scripture also uses the image of a mother.

As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you, and you will be consoled over Jerusalem.

Isa 66:13

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you!

Isa 49:15

Moses charges Israel with forgetting "the God who gave you birth" (Deut 32:18). And Jesus laments over Jerusalem: "how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings" (Matt 23:37). All of these are comparisons. Scripture likens God to a father, a mother, a hen, an eagle and a rock, and none of them means that God is one of these things.

The church's witness

From the beginning the church confessed that God is spirit without a body. Chrysostom, on John 4:24, says the words signify "that God is incorporeal," and therefore he is to be worshipped not with the body but with a pure mind Chrysostom. The Westminster Shorter Catechism likewise confesses God as spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 4. In the fourth century Gregory of Nazianzus argued that calling God Father does not make him male, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church today says that God is neither man nor woman.

Why, then, has the church kept the name "Father"? Chrysostom, on the Lord's Prayer, answers that whoever "calls God Father, in that one title confesses at once the forgiveness of sins, the adoption, the heirship, the brotherhood, which he has with the Only-begotten, and the gift of the Spirit" Chrysostom. The whole gospel is held in that one word. The name is also bound up with the Trinity. "Father" and "Son" name the eternal relation between the first and second persons, and the church has judged that replacing the names would make it hard to speak of that relation at all.

The tradition also holds voices that treasured the mother images. Matthew Henry, on Isaiah 49:15, writes: "Some mothers do neglect their children; but God's compassions to his people, infinitely exceed those of the tenderest parents toward their children" Matthew Henry.

Churches today differ on the question of language. Most keep "Father" as the revealed name in worship and prayer, because Jesus taught it, because Scripture never addresses God as "Mother" in prayer, and because a comparison is not the same as a name. Some theologians and denominations, however, hold that centuries of exclusively male language have led people to imagine God as male, and they want to use the biblical feminine images more freely. Others reply that replacing "Father" with role titles such as "Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer" hides the relations within the Trinity. Both sides agree that God is not male.

In the original languages

The Hebrew word for spirit, ruach (רוּחַ), is usually grammatically feminine, while the Greek pneuma (πνεῦμα) is neuter. Grammatical gender is not God's sex, so it is unwise to argue about God from the gender of a noun.

The Hebrew for compassion, rachamim (רַחֲמִים), is related to the word for womb, rechem (רֶחֶם). A word rooted in a mother's feeling for the child within her is used for the heart of God.

In the New Testament the word for Father is patēr (πατήρ). Jesus prayed in Gethsemane with the Aramaic "Abba" (Mark 14:36), and Paul says the Spirit enables us too to cry "Abba! Father!" (Rom 8:15). "Abba" is a word from close family life. It does not fix God's sex; it says that through Jesus we have been taken into his own intimate relation with God.

Common objections

"Calling God Father and King is a projection of male-dominated societies. Patriarchal cultures made God male." There is truth in this. In church history this language has sometimes been used to justify male authority and to put women down, and language does shape imagination. But the God of Scripture is not modelled on male domination. He is "a father of the fatherless and a defender of widows" (Ps 68:5), a father who stands with those who have no power. What the name means is filled in by the story of Scripture, not by the fathers of any society.

"If both fatherly and motherly images are only comparisons, why not call God Mother?" This is a serious question, and churches answer it differently. Those who keep "Father" reply that Scripture distinguishes comparisons ("as a mother comforts her son") from the name by which Jesus taught us to address God, and that Father and Son are names of relations in the Trinity. They would use the mother images richly while keeping the address Jesus gave. Others reply that since Scripture itself pictures God as a mother, that language may rightly enter prayer and song.

"My father hurt me. That name is a wound to me, not a comfort." This pain should not be brushed aside; it is not strange to stop at that word. Scripture knows this wound. The psalmist sings, "Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me" (Ps 27:10). God is not like the earthly father who failed you; he is the one who meets that lack. While the name is painful, you may begin with other pictures Scripture gives: the comforting mother, the hen who gathers her chicks, the rock. If you are still being harmed, please contact the authorities or a local helpline.

Going further

God is not male, but neither is God impersonal: he knows us and loves us. Scripture shows that love in the closest forms we can understand, a father's love and a mother's love.

You might ask yourself: What picture of God have I been carrying? Did it come from Scripture, or from the father or authorities I have known?

To read further, see Who is God? and What is the Trinity?. For what Scripture says about women, see Does the Bible put women down?