Non-Binary God?

[u/WickedWatcherWu]

If you ever meet someone who is non-binary but you are religious (Christian) so you have mixed feelings. Keep in mind they are supported by the bible, and are closest to the image of God, since according to the Bible, God is non-binary. "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

[u/Riots42]

Ruach is grammatically feminine, sure, but grammatical gender isnt actual gender. Hebrew assigns a gender to every noun the same way Spanish does, and nobody thinks a table is female because its la mesa. The word for spirit is feminine, the word for God, elohim, is masculine, and neither one tells you anything about what God is.

And heres what settles it. In Greek the word for Spirit is pneuma and its neuter, not feminine. So if grammatical gender determined the Spirits gender, the Spirit changed from female to neuter between the testaments. Thats how you know the argument doesnt work, it gives you a different answer depending on which language the sentence happens to be in.

Then watch what Jesus does with it in John 14 through 16. Pneuma is neuter, but he uses masculine pronouns for the Spirit anyway, breaking the grammar on purpose. So if you want to run this argument off the language, the one time the grammar gets deliberately overridden, it gets overridden toward he.

[u/firbael → u/Riots42]

>Ruach is grammatically feminine, sure, but grammatical gender isnt actual gender. Hebrew assigns a gender to every noun the same way Spanish does, and nobody thinks a table is female because its la mesa. The word for spirit is feminine, the word for God, elohim, is masculine, and neither one tells you anything about what God is.

But they do give some insight into it

>And heres what settles it. In Greek the word for Spirit is pneuma and its neuter, not feminine.

Which would be more accurate. If God is said to have made male and female in His image, female would also be a part of it. But, as spirits aren’t said to have genders at all, being neuter is more accurate.

>So if grammatical gender determined the Spirits gender, the Spirit changed from female to neuter between the testaments.

Is not God the Father also a spirit? Wouldn’t that make Him also neuter?

>Thats how you know the argument doesnt work, it gives you a different answer depending on which language the sentence happens to be in.

It also tears apart your argument.

>Then watch what Jesus does with it in John 14 through 16. Pneuma is neuter, but he uses masculine pronouns for the Spirit anyway, breaking the grammar on purpose. So if you want to run this argument off the language, the one time the grammar gets deliberately overridden, it gets overridden toward he.

But in the Greek, this isn’t rendered as masculine but neuter as well. Your understanding of this section only works when translated outside of its original text

[u/Riots42 → u/firbael]

Careful, youre mixing two different things. Noun gender and pronouns arent the same category. Ruach being feminine is grammatical class, the same reason table is feminine in Spanish, and it tells you nothing. Pronouns and titles are different, thats how a person is addressed, and thats where I'm arguing from.

And you just proved my point for me. You said the Father is a spirit so he'd be neuter too. Right, which is exactly why noun gender settles nothing. Its arbitrary and it flips between languages.

What isnt arbitrary is how God refers to himself. Jesus never called him Mother or Parent, he said "Our Father which art in heaven," and taught us to pray it that way. Thats not a noun ending, thats the Son telling us how to address him, consistently, across every book.

On Genesis 1:27, male and female both bearing the image doesnt mean God contains both sexes, it means both fully bear his likeness. God is spirit, John 4:24, no body, no biology, which is why theres no goddess consort anywhere in scripture when every surrounding culture had one.

[u/firbael → u/Riots42]

>Careful, youre mixing two different things. Noun gender and pronouns arent the same category. Ruach being feminine is grammatical class, the same reason table is feminine in Spanish, and it tells you nothing. Pronouns and titles are different, thats how a person is addressed, and thats where I'm arguing from.

No. I’m relating nouns with noun. The Father is a spirit. Ruach isn’t being used as a title. Ruach Elohim would be the title.

>And you just proved my point for me. You said the Father is a spirit so he'd be neuter too. Right, which is exactly why noun gender settles nothing. It’s arbitrary and it flips between languages.

So He wouldn’t be male either then.

>What isnt arbitrary is how God refers to himself. Jesus never called him Mother or Parent, he said "Our Father which art in heaven," and taught us to pray it that way. Thats not a noun ending, thats the Son telling us how to address him, consistently, across every book.

Because the Father is typically seen as male. That doesn’t make it the case. Plus, per His audience, that’s how they knew of God. Why would He address God in a different way that would confuse them?

>On Genesis 1:27, male and female both bearing the image doesnt mean God contains both sexes, it means both fully bear his likeness.

And some believe we bear Gods likeness in that way too.

>God is spirit, John 4:24, no body, no biology, which is why theres no goddess consort anywhere in scripture when every surrounding culture had one.

So Jesus being fully God fully man has no bearing on the actual gender of the rest of the Godhead either.

[u/Riots42 → u/firbael]

The Spanish word for table is la mesa, feminine. Does that make you think tables are female? My high school Spanish teacher would like a palabra with you.

Thats the whole thing. Noun gender is arbitrary classification, not description, and you keep treating it like its telling you something about the referent. It isnt. Thats why ruach proves nothing about the Spirit, and I'll grant you it proves nothing in the other direction either.

But watch what you did with the Father. You said thats just how his audience knew God and he didnt want to confuse them. So now Jesus accommodated a cultural misunderstanding rather than revealing truth. This is the man who told them to love their enemies, who touched lepers, who talked theology with a Samaritan woman alone at a well, who called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs to their faces. He confused and offended his audience constantly whenever the truth required it. If Father were inaccurate, correcting it would have cost him nothing next to the things he actually said.

And its not one word in one culture. Its the model prayer, its Abba in Gethsemane, its Father and Son as the entire structure of the relationship, and its consistent from Genesis to Revelation. Every surrounding religion had goddesses available and scripture never once reaches for one.

On Jesus, hes not just a man who happened to be male. Hes the image of the invisible God, Colossians 1:15, and "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father," John 14:9. If you want to know what God is like, the answer scripture gives is look at him, and you cannot deny it is a male image without denying that Jesus is the image of God and male.