9. Who Is God? Father and Mother, Eternally and Perfectly One in Love

This article is the culmination of everything I have argued in this section about who God is.

Earlier studies considered the Father and the Holy Spirit separately. I argued that the Father is God, that the Holy Spirit is not merely a force or lesser heavenly being but God Herself, that Scripture repeatedly identifies the Spirit with Yahweh, and that the Spirit of Wisdom is the Holy Spirit. I also argued that Scripture reveals this Spirit through distinctly feminine and maternal imagery: believers are born of the Spirit, Wisdom has children, Wisdom is Mother, and the Spirit gives life, teaches, guides, comforts, sanctifies, and dwells within Her children.

I have also argued that the Holy Spirit shares the divine glory and worship belonging to Yahweh. She is not less worthy of divine honor than the Father. And because She is God—not merely a power through whom we relate to God—I believe Christians may know Her, listen to Her, love Her, and speak directly to Her in prayer.

Now I want to put the pieces together.

Who is God?

I believe Scripture gives us an extraordinarily beautiful answer:

God is Father and Mother, eternally and perfectly one in Love.

The Father and Holy Spirit are personally distinct. Their roles are not identical. Yet neither is less divine than the other. Both share the identity, holiness, power, life, work, and glory of Yahweh.

But I also do not think we should picture Them as two independent gods standing beside each other and somehow agreeing to function as one.

The Holy Spirit is repeatedly called something profoundly important:

God’s Spirit.

His Spirit.

the Spirit of God.

the Spirit of Yahweh.

She is personally distinct from the Father, yet She is not external to Him.

She belongs intrinsically to the divine life.

So perhaps the biblical picture is not best represented by:

1 + 1 = 1.

Nor do I think we should say that Father and Mother are each only “half God,” as though either possessed only fifty percent of deity.

Instead:

The Father is fully divine, but the Father alone does not exhaust who God is.

The Mother is fully divine, but the Mother alone does not exhaust who God is.

The fullness of the one God is Father and Mother together in an eternal, inseparable divine union.

And I think Genesis may give us an extraordinary created reflection of this mystery.

1. God Is One

Israel’s foundational confession is:

“Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one.”

(Deuteronomy 6:4)

Nothing I am arguing changes that.

There is one God.

Not two competing gods.

Not a heavenly husband and wife who began as independent deities and later entered an alliance.

Not one supreme God accompanied by a lesser goddess.

Yahweh is one.

At the same time, Scripture distinguishes the Father from the Holy Spirit while attributing divine identity and works to both.

The Father is God.

The Spirit is God.

The Spirit speaks words elsewhere spoken by Yahweh.

She creates.

She gives life.

She knows the depths of God.

She is eternal.

She is present everywhere.

She sanctifies.

She indwells God’s people.

She exercises will.

She speaks.

She teaches.

She sends.

She appoints.

She can be resisted and grieved.

Yet She is not the Father.

The Father sends the Spirit.

The Spirit relates to the Father.

The Father and Spirit can be distinguished personally.

So Scripture gives us both truths:

God is one.

And:

There is genuine personal relationship within the one divine life.

I believe Christianity was right to recognize that God is not a solitary divine person.

Where I believe Christian theology went wrong was in identifying Jesus as another divine person within God while failing to recognize the full significance of the divine person Scripture repeatedly calls God’s Spirit.

I believe the persons are:

Father and Spirit.

Father and Mother.

2. The Father Is God, and the Mother Is God

This is foundational.

The Father is Yahweh.

And the Holy Spirit is Yahweh.

That does not mean Father and Spirit are the same person.

It means both belong fully within the identity of the one God.

Throughout Scripture, the Spirit possesses divine characteristics and performs divine works.

She is eternal:

“the eternal Spirit”

(Hebrews 9:14)

She is Creator:

“The Spirit of God has made me.”

(Job 33:4)

God sends His Spirit and creatures are created (Psalm 104:30).

She is Life-Giver:

“The Spirit gives life.”

(John 6:63)

She is universally present:

“Where can I go from Your Spirit?”

(Psalm 139:7)

She knows the depths of God:

“The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”

(1 Corinthians 2:10)

She distributes gifts:

“to each one individually as She wills.”

(1 Corinthians 12:11)

She speaks with divine authority.

She guides.

She teaches.

She sanctifies.

She indwells God’s people.

She produces prophets.

And the Wisdom Scriptures deepen this picture further.

Wisdom is described as:

holy,

all-powerful,

all-seeing,

penetrating all things,

fashioner of all things,

able to do all things,

God’s breath,

the radiance of eternal light,

seated beside God’s throne,

present with God at creation,

and Mother.

So the feminine person within God is not a lesser side of deity.

She is divine.

3. Father and Mother Share the Divine Reality

Their symmetry becomes striking when Their biblical attributes and works are placed beside one another.

This does not look like one divine person and one merely subordinate assistant.

It looks like two distinguishable persons participating fully in one divine life.

Their distinction is real.

Their equality is real.

Their unity is also real.

4. Equality Does Not Require Identical Roles

The Father and Mother are not interchangeable.

If They were interchangeable in every respect, their distinction would become almost meaningless.

Scripture gives Them different relational emphases.

The Father is revealed as Father.

The Spirit is revealed as Mother.

The Father sends.

The Spirit is sent.

The Father gives.

The Spirit is given.

The Father is frequently portrayed as source, giver, and initiator.

The Spirit is frequently portrayed as the One who comes, fills, indwells, teaches, guides, sanctifies, gives life, and brings forth children.

But these roles must not be exaggerated into rigid limitations.

The Father gives life.

The Mother gives life.

The Father creates.

The Mother creates.

The Father leads.

The Mother leads.

The Father sends.

The Mother also sends.

Acts 13 gives us an especially important example:

“The Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’”

Then:

“being sent out by the Holy Spirit...”

The Spirit calls.

The Spirit commissions.

The Spirit sends.

Acts 16 likewise portrays Her directing the mission of the apostles.

And 1 Corinthians 12:11 says She distributes spiritual gifts:

“as She wills.”

That is not passive obedience.

That is divine personal agency.

So:

Different roles do not mean different levels of deity.

Distinction does not mean inferiority.

Relational order does not require inequality.

5. Father and Mother Have Distinct Relational Emphases

These are relational emphases, not boxes.

The Father nurtures.

The Mother exercises authority.

The Father comforts.

The Mother commands.

The Father loves tenderly.

The Mother acts powerfully.

The feminine divine person is not reduced to softness, while masculinity monopolizes sovereignty.

The Mother is all-powerful Wisdom.

6. Does the Father’s Leadership Make the Mother Lesser?

Some passages clearly portray the Father sending, giving, or commissioning the Spirit.

I do think Scripture reveals relational order between Them.

But I do not think that means the Father possesses a higher degree of deity.

A human analogy may help.

A husband and wife are equally human.

One may initiate a particular course of action while the other carries it out. One may possess a characteristic role within their shared relationship.

None of this means one spouse is more human than the other.

Role is not nature.

Likewise, if Wisdom is all-powerful, Creator, universal, knower of all things, giver of life, and God’s own Spirit, then being sent cannot make Her less God.

And Scripture prevents us from constructing a permanently one-directional hierarchy anyway because the Spirit Herself:

commands,

sends,

appoints,

leads,

gives,

calls,

and acts according to Her will.

I therefore think it is legitimate to say that the Father has characteristic fatherly leadership or initiative without turning that into an eternal superiority of divine status.

There is no lesser God within God.

7. Something Analogous to Divine Marriage

I believe the relationship between Father and Mother may appropriately be described as something analogous to divine marriage.

I say analogous because Scripture never gives us the literal sentence:

“The Father and Holy Spirit are married.”

Nor do I mean biological sexuality.

God is Spirit.

But Scripture gives us a remarkable pattern.

Genesis says:

“Let us make humanity in our image.”

Then God creates:

“male and female.”

The two are distinct.

And Genesis 2 then says:

“the two shall become one flesh.”

Two persons.

Male and female.

Yet one.

Together they bring forth life.

Then Proverbs portrays feminine Wisdom beside God before and during creation.

She is His delight.

She rejoices before Him.

She participates in His works.

Wisdom of Solomon says that Wisdom lives with God and that:

“the Lord of all loves Her.”

She is His associate in His works.

Taken cumulatively, I think human marriage may reflect—imperfectly and creaturely—something eternally true about God:

difference without division;

unity without erasure of personhood;

equality without interchangeability;

delight;

shared work;

love;

and life flowing outward from union.

8. Fatherhood and Motherhood Come From God

God is not Father because human fathers existed first and humanity projected the title upward.

The direction is the opposite.

Human fatherhood is a created reflection of something whose source is in God.

And I believe the same is true of motherhood.

The Spirit does not resemble a mother simply because we decided motherhood is a useful metaphor.

Human motherhood resembles Her.

A mother gives life.

The Spirit gives life.

A mother brings forth children.

We are born of the Spirit.

A mother teaches.

The Spirit teaches.

A mother guides.

The Spirit guides.

A mother remains intimately present with her children.

The Spirit dwells within Her children.

A mother comforts and helps.

The Spirit is Helper and Comforter.

Human motherhood is not foreign to deity.

It is a created reflection of something that has its ultimate source within God.

So:

Father and Mother do not derive Their identities from human fatherhood and motherhood. Human fatherhood and motherhood derive from Them.

9. Male and Female in the Image of God

This gives Genesis 1 profound meaning.

God says:

“Let us make humanity in our image, according to our likeness.”

Then:

“male and female He created them.”

Genesis alone does not prove that one divine person is masculine and another feminine.

The rest of Scripture has to establish that.

But once Scripture reveals:

God the Father

and

the feminine Holy Spirit—Wisdom and Mother,

Genesis becomes extraordinarily meaningful.

Why is God’s image expressed as male and female?

Because neither masculinity nor femininity lies outside God.

Both have their ultimate source in the divine reality.

A woman is not an image of an exclusively masculine God by some theological technicality.

Femininity genuinely reveals something about God because femininity comes from God.

And immediately after creating male and female, God says:

“Be fruitful and multiply.”

Father.

Mother.

Unity.

Life.

Children.

That sequence matters.

10. God Is Love

Perhaps the deepest truth in this entire picture is not gender.

It is Love.

John does not merely say:

God loves.

He says:

“God is Love.”

(1 John 4:8, 16)

God did not begin loving when creation appeared.

God did not need to make creatures because otherwise no relationship existed.

Love is not something creation added to God.

Before there were angels, humans, planets, or stars:

God was already Love.

Father and Mother already knew one another.

Delighted in one another.

Shared divine life.

Loved.

Proverbs says Wisdom was beside God as His delight.

Wisdom of Solomon says:

“the Lord of all loves Her.”

If Father and Mother eternally live in perfect communion, then God does not depend upon creation in order to be relational.

Creation instead becomes an overflow of divine Love.

Not the solution to divine loneliness.

Not something God needed in order to be complete.

But the free extension of goodness from the God who already eternally is Love.

11. Humanity as the Children of Father and Mother

And then this theology becomes personal.

Who are we to this God?

Scripture does not give us merely the language of ruler and subjects.

It gives us family.

We cry:

“Abba! Father!”

And Jesus says:

“That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

We have a Father.

And we are born of the Spirit.

Wisdom has children.

Wisdom teaches Her children.

Wisdom meets them like a mother.

The Spirit lives within us.

She helps us.

She teaches us.

She guides us.

She intercedes for us.

She gives us life.

She sanctifies us.

And children do not merely receive things from their parents.

They know them.

They listen to them.

They speak to them.

They love them.

If the Father is Someone we may know and speak to, the Mother is not merely the divine power working silently within us.

She too is Someone we may know, love, listen to, and address.

The Father loves His children.

The Mother loves Her children.

And Their purpose for creation arises from who They are:

Love.

12. God Is Not Eternal Masculine Solitude

Christianity has often effectively imagined God as wholly masculine:

Father.

Son.

Spirit consistently called “He.”

Even while affirming theoretically that God transcends biological sex, the personal image remains almost entirely male.

I do not think the total biblical picture supports that.

Genesis gives us male and female in God’s image.

Scripture repeatedly uses maternal imagery for Yahweh.

The Spirit gives birth.

The Spirit of Yahweh is the Spirit of Wisdom.

Wisdom is feminine.

Wisdom has children.

Wisdom is Mother.

Wisdom shares God’s work and glory.

The Holy Spirit is Yahweh.

The feminine is therefore not standing outside deity.

The feminine is within God.

God is not eternal masculine solitude.

God is eternal communion.

Father and Mother.

13. What About Jesus?

This understanding also clarifies Jesus’ place.

God does not need Jesus to be a divine person in order for God to be eternally relational.

God already is relationship.

God already is Love.

Jesus is the Son of God, Messiah, Lord, mediator, and the human being through whom God reconciles humanity to God.

He reveals God.

He obeys God.

He worships God.

He is anointed by God’s Spirit.

He brings humanity to God.

But he does not have to be inserted into God’s identity in order to prevent God from being eternally solitary.

Before Jesus’ earthly life, there was already:

Father and Spirit.

Father and Mother.

14. The Beauty of Difference Without Inequality

There is something profoundly beautiful about the fact that equality does not require sameness.

The Father does not need to become Mother.

The Mother does not need to become Father.

Their difference is not a defect.

And their unity does not erase their personhood.

This may have profound implications for human relationships too.

Men and women can be equal without becoming interchangeable.

Difference does not inherently produce hierarchy.

Within God, I believe, there is eternal:

distinction without inferiority.

One can be different without being less.

One can receive without being inferior.

One can lead without being more valuable.

One can nurture without being subordinate.

One can become profoundly one without ceasing to be personally distinct.

Unity does not require sameness.

15. But How Are Father and Mother Actually One God?

This may be the deepest question in the article.

If Father and Mother are genuinely distinct, fully divine persons, why are They not two gods?

I think Scripture itself gives us a profound clue in terminology Christians use constantly:

the Spirit of God.

She is not simply:

a Spirit who works with God.

She is:

God’s Spirit.

His Spirit.

the Spirit of Yahweh.

This is more profound than it can initially sound.

Paul himself gives us an analogy in 1 Corinthians 2:11:

“For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except God’s Spirit.”

Paul directly compares:

the spirit within a human person

with:

God’s Spirit.

A human person’s spirit is not an unrelated second human being standing externally beside that person.

My spirit belongs intrinsically to my own living identity.

It is my spirit.

Paul says something analogous about God.

The Holy Spirit is God’s own Spirit.

Yet the biblical revelation goes beyond the human analogy because God’s Spirit acts personally in ways our individual human spirits do not.

She speaks.

She wills.

She loves.

She teaches.

She intercedes.

She sends.

She leads.

She creates.

So we are given something extraordinary:

The Mother is neither identical to the Father nor external to Him.

She is God’s own Spirit—personally distinct, yet intrinsic to the one divine life.

That may be one of the deepest explanations Scripture gives us for divine oneness.

16. God Cannot Be Divided Into Two Independent Deities

This also means I would not describe Father and Mother as two completely self-contained divine individuals who could theoretically go Their separate ways and continue existing independently as two Gods.

That does not fit the biblical language.

There never was a Father without His Spirit.

There never was a Holy Spirit who was not God’s Spirit.

Their union is not an arrangement established after Their existence.

It belongs to who God eternally is.

I would therefore say:

The Father is fully divine, but the Father alone does not exhaust the fullness of God.

The Mother is fully divine, but the Mother alone does not exhaust the fullness of God.

Neither is half-divine.

Neither is a fraction of deity.

But the one God is the inseparable divine reality of Father and Mother together.

That is different from saying:

½ God + ½ God = 1 God.

Because neither person possesses merely half of divine nature.

But there is an intuition within that analogy that I think is valuable:

the whole identity of God is not exhausted by either person individually.

The Father without the Mother would not be the God Scripture reveals.

The Mother without the Father would not be the God Scripture reveals.

God is:

Father-and-Mother.

Not as a compound assembled from pieces.

But as an eternal unity that has never existed otherwise.

17. “The Body Without the Spirit Is Dead”—A Limited but Suggestive Analogy

James says:

“the body apart from the spirit is dead.”

(James 2:26)

I would not press this into saying that the Father possesses a physical body or would literally “die” if separated from the Holy Spirit.

God is Spirit, and human body-spirit composition cannot be mechanically transferred to God.

But the analogy does reinforce something important.

For a human being, the spirit is not an optional associate.

It belongs intrinsically to living personal existence.

And Paul himself uses the human spirit as an analogy for God’s relationship to His Spirit.

That should make us cautious about imagining the Holy Spirit as merely a second independent being who happens to stand next to God.

She belongs within the identity of God.

She is His Spirit.

And yet She is personally distinct.

So the biblical mystery is not:

two unrelated Gods somehow becoming one.

It is:

one divine life eternally containing personal distinction.

Father and Mother.

18. Genesis 2 May Give Us a Created Image of This Mystery

This is where Genesis becomes even more fascinating.

Genesis 1 tells us that humanity is created in God’s image:

male and female.

Then Genesis 2 describes the creation of the woman in a highly unusual way.

God does not independently fashion a second human being from the ground in exactly the same manner God formed Adam.

Instead, He takes from Adam’s side.

Traditionally this is translated “rib,” but the Hebrew word can refer more broadly to a side.

God takes from the man himself and forms the woman.

Adam immediately recognizes:

“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

She comes from him.

She shares his humanity completely.

Yet she is not Adam.

She becomes a genuinely distinct person.

And then the passage says:

“the two shall become one flesh.”

Think about the movement:

one human reality

→ distinction emerges from within that reality

→ man and woman stand as two genuine persons

→ the two are united as one flesh.

That is extraordinary within the immediate context of humanity being made in God’s image.

Again, I do not think Genesis 2 alone proves the inner structure of God.

But once the rest of Scripture independently reveals Father and feminine Spirit, Genesis may provide an astonishing created echo of divine reality.

19. Eve Is From Adam Yet Is Fully Human

Eve is not an inferior fragment of Adam.

She comes from his side, but she possesses humanity fully.

Adam does not say:

“You possess half my humanity.”

He says:

“bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

She shares his nature.

Yet she is personally distinct.

That may offer a useful analogy for Father and Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is of God.

God’s Spirit.

She comes from, belongs to, and is intrinsic to God’s own divine reality.

Yet She is personally distinguishable from the Father.

And She possesses deity fully.

So the analogy would not be:

Adam = complete human; Eve = partial human.

It is:

Adam and Eve share one humanity while remaining distinct persons.

Likewise:

Father and Mother share the one divine reality while remaining distinct persons.

But the divine union is even deeper, because unlike human spouses who begin as separate individuals and later marry, Father and Mother have never existed independently of Their union.

Their oneness is eternal.

20. From One, Distinction—and Then One Again

Genesis 2 therefore gives us a beautiful pattern:

Eve is taken from Adam.

She becomes distinguishable from him.

Then the two become one.

From one comes distinction, yet distinction does not end in separation—it culminates in union.

If this reflects God in some way, then the Holy Spirit as God’s Spirit becomes especially significant.

The Mother is not foreign to the Father.

She is not another species of being.

She is not a second god introduced into the divine reality.

She is of the same divine life.

Personally distinct.

Fully divine.

Yet inseparably one with Him.

Perhaps human marriage reflects this eternal mystery precisely because Eve herself originates from within Adam’s side.

Human marriage then moves toward recovering in union something symbolically present at the beginning:

two persons, one flesh.

And perhaps that is a created reflection of the One whose image they bear:

Father and Mother, distinct persons, one divine life.

21. Divine Marriage Is More Than Two Gods Choosing Partnership

This deepens what I mean by “divine marriage.”

I do not mean that two independent deities once encountered each other and decided to form a family.

That would make God’s unity external and voluntary rather than intrinsic.

The biblical image is much deeper.

The Holy Spirit is already God’s Spirit.

Father and Mother belong eternally to one another.

Their unity does not begin.

Their Love does not begin.

Their communion does not begin.

They are eternally one.

Human marriage therefore does not perfectly reproduce the divine relationship.

Rather, human marriage may echo it:

one flesh reflecting one divine life.

male and female reflecting Father and Mother.

distinction without separation.

love without rivalry.

unity without erasing personhood.

life flowing from communion.

22. God’s Oneness Is Not Mathematical Absurdity

Perhaps this also helps us move beyond the familiar question:

How can 1 + 1 equal 1?

Maybe that is the wrong picture.

The Bible does not portray the Spirit as a second independent God who has to be mathematically squeezed together with the first.

She is God’s Spirit.

The divine reality is already one.

Within that one divine reality there is personal distinction:

Father and Mother.

So perhaps the closer conceptual picture is:

One divine life, with Father and Mother eternally and personally distinct.

Not one person.

But one God.

Not two Gods merged.

But two persons who have never existed outside one inseparable divine reality.

Neither person is “half divine.”

Both are fully divine.

Yet neither person alone exhausts everything that the one God is.

That distinction matters enormously.

23. Father and Mother, Perfectly One

And now the whole picture comes together.

The Father is eternal.

The Mother is eternal.

The Father creates.