In my previous posting I wrote that I intended to proceed from my rebuttal of the notion that the spiritual realm lacks gender to addressing several Scriptural passages that suggest that Scripture indeed supports the fullness of gender in that realm.
I begin by returning to Matthew 22:29 quoted in the previous posting, part of that passage that supposedly proved that gender doesn’t exist in heaven. Why, if the spiritual realm lacks gender, would Jesus have chided them for not knowing the power of God in almost the same breath as He told them they don’t marry in heaven? A spiritual realm void of gender certainly wouldn’t speak of God’s power. But the application of gender to a human entity larger than the individual would do exactly that.
I’ll go next to the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 1:1-3:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
In this passage God the Holy Spirit responds to God the Divine Will by creating the First Light, Jesus Christ. Here there is a differentiation by gender of Father and Spirit, wherein the Holy Spirit acts in the preeminently female role of responder.
Genesis 1:26 and 27 amplifies the suggestion of God’s gender differentiation. The passage deliberately includes gender in God’s association of His design of man in His image:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
Note also the deliberate use of the plural form of God in this passage, adding to the emphasis of gender differentiation. The usual Christian interpretation of this passage ignores the part of man’s creation as male and female, as if it isn’t relevant to the rest of the passage. How they can justify that exclusion is beyond my understanding, as it is an integral part of the description of man’s creation and as such is apparently important to God.
Continuing on into Genesis 2:18 and 21-24, God forms the feminine Eve out of Adam
“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help fit for him. . . And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.”
Does it not seem rather odd, in the context of a genderless God, that God Himself would say that it would not be good for Adam to remain in a state where gender wasn’t exercised? Would it not be more logical to assume that God said this because He Himself was fully gendered and didn’t want Adam left out of something beautiful that He possessed?
In Ephesians 5:31 and 32, Paul applied that last statement of Adam’s to Christ and the Church, asserting two things: first, that Jesus, being both God and sufficiently gendered for marriage, placed gender directly within the Godhead; and second, that the process of two and then three becoming one in love explains intuitively through the notion of Family how God can be both one and a Trinity as stated in Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5 and Matthew 28:19.
The specific emphasis in Genesis 2 on the details of Eve’s creation out of Adam leads me to the conclusion that God intended that passage to be understood beyond the plain text. I personally suspect, with support from the Church’s formation out of the pierced side of Jesus, that the account of Eve’s formation out of Adam’s side was a reenactment of the formation of the Holy Spirit out of the side of the Father, rent voluntarily for that purpose.
If God was indeed genderless, it is doubtful that the Song of Solomon, with its open intimacy and erotic theme, would have had a place in the Bible, let alone have had its canonization affirmed within the Church, and particularly by a Church that was so bent on denying any association of itself with sexuality. In their discussions of this Book, many respected Bible commentators have openly applied the Song of Solomon to the relationship between Jesus and His Church.
Elements of Jesus’ ministry on Earth point to His gender. His first miracle, recorded in John 2, applied to His adding of joy to an already-joyous occasion, that of a marriage in Cana. His words to Mary during that event suggest that He, too, was anticipating His being personally involved in a future marriage.
In John 3, the very next chapter of John’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit is associated with birth, which is not only gendered but feminine:
“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound of it, but canst not tell from where it cometh, and where it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
This passage echoes Job 33:4, which attributes to the Holy Spirit the breath of life, or spiritual birth:
“And the Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.”
If anybody sees a male represented by a dove in Scripture, I’d like to know about it. In every instance except one that I’ve seen in Scripture where a dove is mentioned, it applies to a female. That exception is in John 1:32, where gender is not specified in its reference to the Holy Spirit:
“And John bore witness, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon [Jesus].”
More commonly, Scriptural references to a dove are feminine, such as in Genesis 8:9, Song of Solomon 1:15, and Nahum 2:7:
“But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.
“Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes.”
“And it is decreed, she shall be led away captive, she shall be brought up, and her maids shall lead her as with the voice of doves, beating upon their breasts.”
Finally, I appeal to Revelation 19:7 and 21:9-11, which again speaks of the feminine Church in the consummation of her marriage to the fully-gendered Jesus:
“Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.”
“And there came unto me one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come here, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God; and her light was like a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;”
friendofthefamily 