The Gender of God

Perhaps this is a trivial theological question, but it is one that I wish to address: what, if any, is the true gender of God? Wiccans worship the God and Goddess. Christians worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are male. Jews, Yahweh, and Muslims, Allah, both male.

In order to grapple with this question we must start at the beginning. What is God? Perhaps one should make a list of all the properties that are normally attributed to God and then try to analyze them to see if a gender is apparent. For example, most primary Deities are said to be the Creator or the ultimate source from which all life springs. Likewise, Christianity popularized the notion that God is a loving God. He is also characterized by being perfectly just, omniscient, and omnipotent. Those round out the most common monotheistic properties attributed to the Divine.

The notion that God is omnipotent and perfectly just, if looked at through the prism of a patriarchal society (which Christian, Judaic, and Islamic societies tend to be) seems to suggest God is something of a patriarch and hence, male. However, at the same time the emphasis on love and being the source of life seems to indicate a certain degree of femininity. Of course, this analysis does not work if one comes from a matriarchal society.

Wiccans, for example, posit both a male and a female Deity, although the female Deity seems to be the focus. In such a case, the list of Divine properties are simply sorted and placed under their respective title. If one is satisfied with a split Deity (I am not), then Wicca or something close to it, may provide the best solution. However, it is worth noting that even in ancient times, some thinkers recognized the inherent difficulty of identifying too closely with the divine. One early Greek thinker remarked that the god of horses is most assuredly a horse, while that of lions, is again a lion. The thinker in question was making the point that God, if He exists, should not be thought of as a human being... such was too simple-minded a notion.