Gender of God in Christianity

Christians have a variety of beliefs about the gender of God.

Most Christians conceive of God as the Trinity.The three persons of the Trinity are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.The names "God the Father" and "God the Son" clearly imply masculinity.In the case of the Son, masculinity is reinforced by the belief in his incarnation as the man, Jesus of Nazareth.

New Testament

God is referred to as "Father" in the New Testament.

The incarnation of God in the man Jesus of Nazareth is the subject of most of the New Testament.

The New Testament also refers to the Holy Spirit as masculine in number of places, most clearly in the Gospel of John 14-16. [Nestle and others, "Novum Testamentum Graece", 27th ed.,(Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgeselschaft, 1993).] John reports Jesus referring to the Holy Spirit as "Comforter" (masculine in Greek),and uses grammatically necessary masculine forms of the Greek pronoun "autos".William D Mounce, "The Morphology of Biblical Greek",(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), pp. 241-242]
Grammatical gender, on its own, says nothing about natural gender.However, when John reports Jesus speaking of the Holy Spirit as "Spirit",grammatically neuter in Greek, [John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13-14.] he uses the masculine form of the demonstrative pronoun "ekeinos" ("that male one").This breaking of the grammatical agreement, expected by native language readers,is an indication of the authorial intentionto convey the personhood of the Holy Spirit,and also the Spirit's masculinity. [).

Foremost among these groups, and the most vocal on the subject are the Branch Davidian, Seventh-day Adventists. In 1977, one of their leaders, Lois Roden, began to formally teach that a feminine Holy Spirit is the heavenly pattern of women. In her many studies and talks she cited numerous scholars and researchers from Jewish, Christian, and other sources.

They see in the creation of Adam and Eve a literal image and likeness of the invisible Godhead, male and female, who is "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made" (). They take the Oneness of God to mean the "familial" unity which exists between them, which unity is not seen in any other depiction of the Godhead by the various non-Hebrew peoples.

Thus, having a Father and Mother in heaven, they see that the Bible shows that those Parents had a Son born unto them before the creation of the world, by Whom all things were created. [ [http://www.the-branch.org/Spirit_Feminine_Mother_Hebrew_Greek_Jesus_Born_Doug_Mitchell It's all Greek to Them The Holy Spirit He, She, or It?] ] [ [http://www.the-branch.org/Holy_Ghost_Daughter_Holy_Spirit_Mother_Eloah_Doug_Mitchell] ] [ [http://www.the-branch.org/She_A_Tree_of_Life_Proverbs_3-18_New_Moons_Doug_Mitchell She is a Tree of Life] ] [ [http://www.the-branch.org/Shelter_From_Storm_HolyGhost_She_Bob_Dylan_Doug_Mitchell Shelter from the Storm] ] .

These concepts are also taught among other groups, to one degree or another.

Notes

References