Is God a man?

Judaism

“Can a woman forget her sucking child, That she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, these may forget, Yet will not I forget thee.”

Isaiah 49:15 · JPS 1917

Jewish teaching is clear that God has no body. Maimonides made it one of his thirteen principles of faith, and argued that every physical word used of God in the Bible, such as hand, eye or voice, is a figure of speech. That includes being male. The very first chapter of the Torah says that God created humans in His image, “male and female created He them” (Genesis 1:27). Both reflect God.

The Hebrew Bible calls God “the Rock that begot thee” and “God that bore thee” (Deuteronomy 32:18), using the verb for giving birth. Hosea pictures God teaching a toddler to walk. Many modern Jewish prayer books in English now avoid “He” where they can, while keeping the Hebrew as it is.

Christianity

“God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 239 · Libreria Editrice Vaticana; short quotation

Christians pray to God as Father, as Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer, and believe that God became human as a man in Jesus. Yet mainstream Christian teaching says plainly that God is not male. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that God’s tenderness “can also be expressed by the image of motherhood”, and that “He is neither man nor woman: he is God”.

Jesus himself used a mother’s image: he longed to gather Jerusalem’s children “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Matthew 23:37). In the fourteenth century, Julian of Norwich wrote about “Jesus our Mother”. Christians still disagree about whether to change traditional language, and some feel strongly that “Father” must stay, because Jesus used it.

Islam

“God is more merciful to His servants than this woman is to her child.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 5999 · our rendering

In Islam, God is never called Father, and the Qur’an firmly rejects the idea that God has children of either sex. It criticises the old Arabian belief that certain goddesses were God’s daughters (53:19–23). God is beyond every likeness: “The Creator of the heavens and the earth. He hath made for you pairs of yourselves, and of the cattle also pairs, whereby He multiplieth you. Naught is as His likeness; and He is the Hearer, the Seer.” (42:11, Pickthall), and al-Ikhlas says He “He begetteth not nor was begotten. And there is none comparable unto Him.” (112:3–4, Pickthall). Arabic uses huwa, “He”, but Muslim scholars teach that this is grammar, not gender.

God is known through His Names, and the two most repeated, ar-Rahman and ar-Rahim, come from the root of the word for womb. A hadith says the womb, rahim, takes its name from ar-Rahman (Bukhari 5988). In another, the Prophet Muhammad pointed to a mother who had found her lost baby and held him close, and said God is more merciful to His servants than she is to her child.

Without religion

Many non-religious people, and many religious feminists, argue that male language for God has shaped how men and women are treated. The American theologian Mary Daly put it sharply in Beyond God the Father (1973): if God is male, then the male is God. Some people left religion over this. Others stayed and pushed for change from inside.

Sikhi

“You are my Father, and You are my Mother.”

Guru Granth Sahib, ang 103 (Guru Arjan) · our rendering

The Guru Granth Sahib opens with Ik Onkar, “One Creator”, beyond birth and beyond form. God is spoken of as both Father and Mother, and as husband and beloved, and the Gurus taught that women and men are equal before God. Guru Nanak asked why anyone would speak badly of women, since kings and everyone else are born from them (ang 473).

Hindu traditions

Hindus worship the divine in female as well as male forms. Devi, the Goddess, is honoured as Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati and many more. In the Shakta tradition, the supreme reality itself is the Divine Mother. One well-known image, Ardhanarishvara, shows Shiva and Parvati as a single figure, half male and half female. Brahman, the ultimate reality, is a grammatically neuter word in Sanskrit: beyond he or she.

Beyond the Abrahamic faiths

Buddhism does not teach a Creator, but in East Asia the bodhisattva of compassion, Guanyin, is usually shown as a woman. The ancient Chinese Tao Te Ching calls the Way, the source of all things, their “mother”. The Bahá’í writings, like the Abrahamic scriptures, describe God as beyond any human description.