4. Is the Holy Spirit God the Mother? Biblical Evidence: the Protestant Canon

If the Holy Spirit Is God the Mother, Why…

1. Why isn’t the Holy Spirit as Mother explicitly in Scripture?

I would actually argue that, upon studying Scripture carefully, God’s femininity and motherhood are explicitly present in Scripture, and that the Holy Spirit’s femininity is strongly revealed there as well.

It is true that the Protestant Bible never contains the exact sentence, “The Holy Spirit is God the Mother.” But the absence of that exact phrase does not mean the idea is absent from Scripture. The Protestant Bible never uses many later theological formulas Christians consider important. The real question is whether the biblical evidence itself reveals that femininity and motherhood belong to God and whether that evidence points specifically toward the Holy Spirit.

I believe it does.

From the beginning, God declares that humanity is made in His image as male and female (Genesis 1:26–27). The image of God is therefore not exhausted by masculinity. Whatever else the image of God means, femininity cannot be foreign to God if women truly and equally image Him.

The Protestant Bible also repeatedly describes God with explicitly maternal imagery: God gives birth, is compared to a mother, comforts like a mother, cries out like a woman in labor, and is described through imagery involving a womb. Then, in the New Testament, Jesus says that believers are “born of the Spirit” (John 3:6). The Spirit is the divine person uniquely associated with our new birth.

Isaiah 11:2 then identifies the Spirit of the Lord as “the Spirit of wisdom.” Proverbs portrays Wisdom repeatedly and unmistakably as feminine—she speaks, teaches, calls, reproves, gives, delights, and is present with God in the creation imagery of Proverbs 8. I will argue below that the biblical relationship between the Spirit of the Lord and divine Wisdom is much more significant than Christians often recognize.

No single one of these observations, standing alone, proves every part of my conclusion. But together they form a coherent biblical pattern.

Perhaps it is not that God has failed to reveal His femininity. Perhaps we have had difficulty seeing something Scripture has placed in front of us from Genesis onward because Christian tradition has trained us to conceptualize every divine person in masculine terms.

God is not only reflected by men. Women equally bear His image. Masculinity and femininity both have their ultimate source in God.

Perhaps you think this does not matter practically. You may think, “I already believe men and women are equal and equally made in God’s image, and I also believe in the Trinity. I do not see a problem.”

I think it matters profoundly, for reasons I discuss more fully in my "Implications" posts in this section of my blog. But even before those other implications, knowing God truthfully matters because, according to Jesus, knowing God is part of eternal life (John 17:3).

If the Holy Spirit truly is the feminine, maternal person of God, I do not think She would want the Church to insist on describing Her only through masculine language. Christians would rightly object if the Church suddenly began referring to God the Father as “Mother” and consistently used feminine pronouns for Him while dismissing His self-revelation as Father. We should at least be willing to ask whether we have created a similar double standard concerning the Holy Spirit.

2. Doesn’t God transcend biological sex and gender?

Yes. God is Spirit, not flesh. God is not biologically male or female in the way human beings are. God does not possess human chromosomes, reproductive organs, or a human body by nature. In that sense, God necessarily transcends biological sex.

God also transcends the limited social categories human cultures attach to masculinity and femininity. We should not take every cultural stereotype about men or women and project it onto God.

But that does not mean masculinity and femininity tell us nothing true about God.

If God did not intend human sex and relational identity to reveal anything about Himself, why does He reveal Himself so prominently as Father? Why does Genesis tell us immediately that humanity in God’s image is male and female? God does not say that only males image Him. Nor does Scripture treat femininity as something outside or beneath the divine image.

God transcends biological sex, but God chose fatherhood, motherhood, male, and female imagery as part of the language through which God reveals the divine nature to human beings.

So if God can truly reveal Himself as Father while remaining Spirit, it is not unreasonable to ask whether God can also truly reveal God as Mother while remaining Spirit.

God said that male and female are created in His image. We should take that revelation seriously.

3. Isn’t this unbiblical? Doesn’t Scripture contradict the Holy Spirit being Mother?

Where? Nowhere in Scripture does it say that the Holy Spirit is not Mother or feminine.

Of course, absence of a contradiction does not prove my conclusion. The positive biblical case is what matters, and that case follows below.

I would argue there is a much greater case, even from Genesis 1-2 alone, that God should not be defined only as masculine.

4. Even if this is true, why does it matter?

A. Isn’t anything true about God worth knowing?

Again, Jesus says that knowing God is eternal life (John 17:3). If God has revealed something true about Himself, Christians should want to know it simply because we love God.

B. Wouldn’t this have profound implications for the Church, and for women in particular?

Women make up more than half of the Church (Zurlo, Johnson, and Crossing 11), yet in many churches they are still prevented from teaching, preaching, pastoring, or exercising leadership over men (John Paul II; Southern Baptist Convention). Meanwhile, one of the Holy Spirit’s central ministries is precisely to teach. The Spirit inspired Scripture itself and teaches the people of God.

The Holy Spirit’s femininity would not, by itself, settle every exegetical debate about church leadership. Those passages still deserve careful study in context. But it would seriously challenge any theological assumption that maleness is uniquely suited to represent divine authority, teaching, leadership, or spiritual oversight.

If the divine Teacher is feminine, then femininity clearly cannot be inherently incompatible with teaching men.

What if God’s best for the Church is men and women co-laboring together in equal partnership, equally able to receive and exercise the spiritual gifts God gives—including leadership, pastoring, and teaching?

I think much of the Church has gone far too far in limiting women from leading, pastoring, and teaching, and that this has handicapped the Church as a whole. I discuss this more in the "Implications" posts in this section of my blog.

C. Wouldn’t this also remove an unnecessary obstacle for people outside the Church?

The gospel itself can be a rock of offense. But Christians should be careful not to add unnecessary offenses created by tradition rather than Scripture.

Many non-believers struggle to understand why women can lead, teach, study, govern, and contribute fully in nearly every other part of society, while some churches still insist that spiritual authority is uniquely male. Perhaps the critique should not simply be dismissed as worldly. Perhaps it should cause us to ask whether the Church has accurately understood the image of God and the Holy Spirit.

What if the Church displayed from the beginning what Genesis itself displays: men and women together, equally bearing God’s image, equally sharing dominion, and equally co-laboring in the work God gave them to do (Genesis 1:28–29)?

I am not arguing that men and women have no distinct roles or differences. I am challenging the structure of many churches that categorically prohibits women from teaching, leading, or pastoring men. I believe that the presence of femininity within the Godhead, combined with a proper understanding of the passages sometimes used to restrict women from these ministries, strongly supports the conclusion that women should be free to teach, lead, and pastor according to the gifts the Holy Spirit has given them.

D. Wouldn’t this increase intimacy with the Holy Spirit and joy in the Holy Spirit?

Learning something true about a person increases our ability to know that person. If the Holy Spirit truly is the feminine and maternal person of God, then knowing Her that way would deepen our relationship with Her rather than diminish it.

And what a gift if the family language Christians already use for God is bigger and more beautiful than we have realized: a heavenly Father and a heavenly Mother.

Biblical Evidence for the Holy Spirit as Mother

A. Could the pronouns for the Holy Spirit be feminine?

One objection to this is that English Bibles repeatedly refer to the Holy Spirit as “he.” Many Christians therefore understandably assume that the original Bible explicitly identifies the Holy Spirit as male.

But that is not actually how grammatical gender works in the biblical languages. This distinction is extremely important: Grammatical gender is not the same thing as the actual sex or personal gender of the person or thing being described.

Greek nouns are classified as masculine, feminine, or neuter. That classification frequently has nothing to do with whether the actual person or object is male, female, or neither. A standard New Testament Greek grammar notes that grammatical gender does not necessarily mean “male” or “female”; for many nouns, the classification is simply grammatical (Wallace 331–32).

A very simple example is the Greek word teknon, meaning “child.”

Teknon is grammatically neuter.

Does that mean Greek-speaking children were neither male nor female?

Of course not.

The same neuter word can refer to a son or a daughter, a boy or a girl. Its grammatical gender tells you something about how the word behaves in a Greek sentence; it does not tell you the actual gender of the child.

That distinction is crucial when we come to the Holy Spirit.

The Hebrew word ruach (“spirit”) is grammatically feminine. The corresponding Aramaic word is also feminine (Takeda 59–60), and Aramaic was the spoken language of Jesus and his disciples (Black 305–13). The Greek word pneuma (“spirit”) is grammatically neuter. Meanwhile, John also calls the Spirit the paraklētos—the “Helper” or “Advocate”—and paraklētos is grammatically masculine (Wallace 331–32).

So within the biblical languages themselves, language associated with the Holy Spirit appears in feminine, neuter, and masculine grammatical forms.

That should immediately tell us something: We cannot discover the Holy Spirit’s personal gender merely by looking at the grammatical gender of a noun.

Pronouns in Greek ordinarily follow the grammatical structure of the nouns to which they refer. Therefore, when John uses the masculine noun paraklētos, masculine grammatical forms naturally accompany it. That does not mean that John has thereby told us, “The Holy Spirit is male.” In the same way, the neuter grammar surrounding pneuma does not mean that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal “it,” and the feminine Hebrew ruach does not, by itself, prove that the Spirit is female (Wallace 331–32).

Grammar tells us how words function. Context tells us who the person is.

English creates an additional issue because English does not normally assign arbitrary grammatical gender to nouns in the same way Greek, Hebrew, and many other languages do. When translating a divine person into English, translators eventually have to choose whether to write “he,” “she,” or “it.”

That choice is not always dictated directly by the grammatical gender of the original word.

It necessarily involves interpretation.

Because Christian theology has traditionally understood the Holy Spirit within an overwhelmingly masculine conception of the Godhead, English Christian translations have traditionally used “he.” That does not mean the translators were acting dishonestly. It means they translated the text through the theological understanding of the Spirit they already held (Paroschi 19; Takeda 59–60).

But another theological assumption should not be mistaken for something the Greek grammar itself proves.

Think again about teknon.

If the context told us that a particular teknon was a girl, we would translate the appropriate English reference as “she,” even though the Greek noun itself is neuter. We would not say, “The Greek noun is neuter, therefore the child cannot be female.”

Why, then, would we reason differently with the Holy Spirit?

The correct question is not: “What grammatical gender does one particular word for the Spirit have?”

The correct question is: “When everything Scripture reveals about the Holy Spirit is considered together, does the context point toward masculinity, femininity, or neither?”

That is the question this study is attempting to answer.

And when we look beyond English pronouns to the larger biblical picture—the male and female image of God in Genesis, God’s maternal imagery, believers being born of the Spirit, the Spirit’s identification as the Spirit of Wisdom Who is feminine Wisdom throughout Proverbs, Wisdom and the Spirit together in the creation imagery, and the other evidence considered below—I believe the context points strongly toward understanding the Holy Spirit as feminine and maternal.

So the English word “he” cannot settle this debate before we even examine the evidence. The grammar does not tell us that the Holy Spirit is male. The larger biblical context must tell us how to understand Her. And when the wider context is considered—Genesis, divine maternal imagery, birth from the Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom, and feminine Wisdom language—I think feminine pronouns are not only permissible but make better theological sense of the cumulative biblical evidence.

B. Does Genesis point to the Holy Spirit as Mother?

Genesis 1:1–2

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

Genesis 1:26–27

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness....’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Who is present in the opening scene of Genesis? God is there, and the Spirit of God is there.

Then God says, “Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness.” Genesis does not explicitly stop and identify the other party in the plural language, so I do not want to claim more than the text says. But within the immediate narrative, the Spirit of God is the other divine presence explicitly introduced before God says “us” and “our.” That makes the Spirit highly relevant to the question.

Then God creates humanity in His image as male and female.

This does not, by itself, prove that God consists of exactly one masculine person and one feminine person. But it establishes something enormously important: the divine image is expressed in both male and female humanity.

If women truly image God just as men do, then femininity must ultimately have its source in God and must reveal something true about God. Femininity cannot simply be an accidental human feature with no correspondence to the God whose image women bear.

The very next verse commands the man and woman to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). The first human pair, together bearing God’s image, are immediately called into fatherhood and motherhood.

I do not think Genesis 1:28 alone proves that God is literally Father and Mother. But the sequence is striking: God makes male and female in His image, and the first vocation given to that image-bearing pair is to become father and mother.

This makes the Church’s overwhelmingly masculine picture of God worth questioning.

A child looking at loving parents can see something real about God: fatherhood and motherhood together reflect the God who created both.

Michael Reeves, while arguing for the Trinity, makes a related observation in Delighting in the Trinity: the relationship and distinction between Adam and Eve somehow images the being of God. He argues that their personal distinction and unity offer a better analogy for God than impersonal examples such as shamrocks, eggs, or states of water (Reeves 36–37).

I agree with the importance of that observation, but I think it raises a question Reeves does not answer in the way I would: if Adam and Eve together are the image God gives us, why should that image point to three divine persons represented almost entirely through masculine language rather than to a divine reality in which both masculinity and femininity are personally and equally represented?

Genesis does not finish the entire argument. But it gives us the foundation from the first page of Scripture.

God’s image is male and female.

And in context, only two persons, God and the Spirit of God, are mentioned as present at creation.

C. Does the fact that “God is Love” point toward the Holy Spirit as God the Mother?

Deuteronomy 6:4

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

1 John 4:8, 16

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”

Deuteronomy says God is one. First John says God is love.

The Hebrew word echad (“one”) in Deuteronomy 6:4 is also used in Genesis 2:24 when Adam and Eve become “one flesh.” This does not mean that echad itself means “compound unity”. The word simply means “one,” and context determines the kind of oneness in view.

But Genesis 2:24 does show that something described as “one” can, in context, involve more than one person united in profound, unified relationship.

The fact that God is love also raises an interesting question. Love is relational. If God’s very nature is eternally love, how can God be love if God is not multi-personal? Does not love necessitate more than one person? How can someone love if they are alone?

Trinitarian theologians have often used this argument to support a multi-personal God. Michael Reeves, for example, argues that a solitary God could not eternally be love if there were no one to love before creation (Reeves 40). Gerald Bray similarly argues that God’s love must exist within God Himself rather than depending upon creation (Bray 176).

I think the basic insight is powerful: God strongly appears to be multi-personal; otherwise, divine love would seem to depend upon creation for an object to love outside God.

But that argument does not establish that God must be three persons. A God of two persons could also be eternally relational and eternally loving.

That is why Genesis becomes so interesting. The original human image of God is not three people. It is a man and a woman who become one.

Could the Father and the Holy Spirit be eternally one in a divine relationship reflected, imperfectly but intentionally, in the one-flesh relationship of man and woman?

I do not think the philosophical argument from love proves that conclusion by itself. But it fits remarkably well with the larger biblical pattern I am presenting.

There can be truth within Trinitarian theology even if the Trinity itself is mistaken. I think the insight that God is inherently relational may be one of those truths.

The question is whether Scripture identifies those divine persons as Father, Son, and a Spirit conventionally described as “He”—or whether Scripture instead points toward Father and Spirit, masculinity and femininity, God as Father and Mother.

D. Does the Holy Spirit have distinctly maternal or feminine characteristics?

John 3:6

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

Luke 7:35

“Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”

Jesus says that Christians are born of the Spirit. Birth is unmistakably maternal imagery. Scripture does not say that believers are born of the Father; Jesus specifically says they are born of the Spirit.

A metaphor does not mechanically prove the personal gender of the one being described. Scripture can use masculine and feminine metaphors for God without implying biological sex. But this imagery matters within the larger pattern.

The Spirit is the divine person associated with giving believers new birth.

Jesus also speaks of Wisdom as feminine and describes Wisdom as having children. Again, feminine personification by itself does not prove that Wisdom is the Holy Spirit. But Isaiah’s identification of the Spirit of the Lord as “the Spirit of wisdom” makes the relationship worth examining much more closely.

E. Are the “Spirit of Wisdom” and the Holy Spirit the same Spirit?

Isaiah 11:1–3

“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse.... The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.”

Isaiah 11 is extremely important.

The passage does not describe several unrelated spirits resting on the Messiah. It describes the Spirit of the Lord and then characterizes that Spirit as the Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and fear of the Lord.

Therefore, Scripture itself explicitly connects the Spirit of the Lord with wisdom.

This does not mean that every occurrence of the word “wisdom” anywhere in Scripture automatically refers personally to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes wisdom simply means the quality of being wise.

But when Scripture speaks of a divine Spirit of wisdom, we should not treat that spirit as though it is something separate from the Holy Spirit—especially when the New Testament repeatedly says there is one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 2:18; Ephesians 4:4).

Consider the wider pattern.

Deuteronomy 34:9: Joshua is “full of the spirit of wisdom” after Moses lays his hands on him.

Isaiah 11:2: the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of wisdom.

1 Corinthians 2: spiritual wisdom and understanding come through the Spirit of God.

John 14:26: the Holy Spirit teaches believers all things.

Ephesians 1:17: Paul prays that believers may receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.

1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 4:4; Ephesians 2:18: there is one Spirit.

The cumulative picture is difficult to ignore: wisdom is one of the defining ministries and descriptions of the Holy Spirit.

Then we come to Proverbs.

Proverbs repeatedly depicts Wisdom as feminine.

Is that merely a literary choice with no theological significance?

The Word of God is written with intentionality. Wisdom being described as feminine is purposeful. Isaiah has already connected the Spirit of the Lord with the Spirit of wisdom, and the rest of Scripture consistently connects divine wisdom, revelation, teaching, and spiritual discernment with the one Holy Spirit.

I think the feminine portrayal of Wisdom deserves much more theological weight than it is usually given.

F. Wisdom and the Holy Spirit Compared

This chart does not depend on a single proof-text saying, “Wisdom is the Holy Spirit.” Rather, it shows how Scripture explicitly describes Wisdom and the Holy Spirit in strikingly overlapping ways and repeatedly connects the Holy Spirit with wisdom.

Biblical feature	Wisdom	Holy Spirit	Why it matters
Explicitly connected with wisdom	Proverbs repeatedly presents Wisdom as a living, speaking figure.	Isaiah 11:2 explicitly calls the Spirit of the Lord “the Spirit of wisdom.” Ephesians 1:17 speaks of the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation.”	Scripture itself directly joins the Holy Spirit to wisdom.
Teaches and makes truth known	Wisdom calls, reproves, and says, “I will make my words known to you” (Proverbs 1:23).	The Holy Spirit teaches believers and guides them into truth (John 14:26; John 16:13; 1 Corinthians 2:10–13).	Both are described as divine teachers who reveal truth.
Spirit language	Wisdom says, “I will pour out my spirit to you” (Proverbs 1:23).	God pours out the Holy Spirit (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17, 33).	The language is very close. Scripture says there is one Spirit (Ephesians 4:4).
Present with God in creation	Wisdom says, “When he established the heavens, I was there” (Proverbs 8:27). She existed before the earth and was present while God ordered creation (Proverbs 8:22–31).	The Spirit of God is explicitly present in the opening creation scene (Genesis 1:2).	Both Wisdom and the Spirit are explicitly placed with God at creation.
Creates / works beside God in creation	“The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens” (Proverbs 3:19). Most strikingly, Wisdom says, “I was beside him, like a master workman” (Proverbs 8:30). Wisdom is not portrayed merely watching creation—She is beside God as the master workman while the world is being formed.	“When you send forth your Spirit, they are created” (Psalm 104:30). Job says, “The Spirit of God has made me” (Job 33:4). The Spirit is therefore not merely present at creation but explicitly creates and makes.	This is one of the strongest parallels. God creates by Wisdom; Wisdom stands beside Him as master workman; God sends His Spirit and creatures are created; the Spirit of God makes. Scripture attributes creative work to both Wisdom and the Spirit. Creating the world is the work of God.
Associated with life / children	Jesus says, “Wisdom is justified by all her children” (Luke 7:35). Wisdom also says, “Whoever finds me finds life” (Proverbs 8:35).	Jesus says believers are “born of the Spirit” (John 3:6), and Scripture says “the Spirit gives life” (John 6:63; 2 Corinthians 3:6).	Both are associated with children and life, strengthening the maternal connection between Wisdom and the Spirit.
Given through a “spirit of wisdom”	Joshua is filled with the “spirit of wisdom” after Moses lays his hands on him (Deuteronomy 34:9).	Believers receive the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands (Acts 8:14–17).	The pattern strengthens the connection between the Spirit of wisdom and the Holy Spirit. Again, there is one Spirit (Ephesians 4:4).
One Spirit	If Wisdom is truly a divine Spirit, Scripture does not present Her as a rival spirit alongside God’s Spirit.	Paul says there is “one Spirit” (Ephesians 4:4; see also 1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 2:18).	The Bible’s own framework pushes us toward identifying the Spirit of Wisdom with the one Holy Spirit.

No single line in the chart has to carry the whole argument by itself. Taken together, however, the evidence is sufficient: the feminine Wisdom of Scripture and the Holy Spirit are one and the same Spirit. Isaiah explicitly identifies the Spirit of the Lord as “the Spirit of wisdom,” while Paul repeatedly states that there is “one Spirit.” Wisdom and the Holy Spirit teach, reveal truth, give life, participate in creating the world, are poured out, and impart wisdom. Scripture does not present two divine Spirits—one called Wisdom and another called the Holy Spirit. There is one Spirit. Therefore, the Spirit of Wisdom is the Holy Spirit Herself. And Scripture portrays this Spirit of Wisdom as feminine.

The creation evidence makes this identification especially powerful. Genesis places the Spirit of God with God at the beginning. Psalm 104 says that when God sends forth His Spirit, “they are created,” and Job says, “The Spirit of God has made me.” Proverbs says that “the LORD by wisdom founded the earth,” and Wisdom Herself says, “I was beside him, like a master workman” (Proverbs 8:30). Wisdom is therefore not merely present while God creates. She is portrayed beside Him as master workman in the work of creation, while the Spirit is explicitly said to create and make. These are not weak or incidental similarities. Scripture attributes the work of creation to both Wisdom and the Spirit.

And that matters for divinity. Creation belongs to God. If the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of wisdom, if Scripture says there is one Spirit, if Wisdom is the master workman beside God in creation, and if the Spirit creates and makes, the cumulative evidence points toward one divine identity: Wisdom is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is God. The feminine Wisdom standing beside God in Proverbs is not a second created spirit competing with God’s Spirit. She is God’s own Spirit—the eternal, divine Spirit of Wisdom Herself.

G. The Seven Spirits of God in Revelation

Isaiah 11 may also illuminate Revelation’s language about the seven Spirits of God.

Scripture elsewhere says that there is one Spirit, so I do not think Revelation is teaching that God literally has seven separate Holy Spirits. Seven frequently symbolizes fullness or completion in Revelation.

Isaiah 11 describes the Spirit in a sevenfold way: the Spirit of the Lord; wisdom; understanding; counsel; might; knowledge; and fear of the Lord.

I would not make the entire argument depend on this correspondence, because Revelation itself does not explicitly quote Isaiah 11 at these points. But the parallel is striking and fits the idea that Revelation’s “seven Spirits” refers to the fullness or completeness of the one Spirit of God.

Revelation 1:4–5 places the seven Spirits before God’s throne. Revelation 3:1 says Jesus has the seven Spirits of God. Revelation 4:5 portrays them as seven lamps before the throne, and Revelation 5:6 connects them with the Lamb’s seven eyes sent throughout the earth.

Whatever all of the symbolism means in detail, the imagery presents the Spirit as fully active in God’s presence and throughout the earth.

One Spirit—the full, complete Spirit of God.

Who Is the Spirit of Wisdom?

Proverbs 1:20

“Wisdom cries aloud in the street; in the markets she raises her voice.”

Proverbs 1:23

Wisdom says, “If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.”

Proverbs 3:14

“For the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold.”

Wisdom in Proverbs is unmistakably feminine. She speaks, calls, reproves, teaches, gives, knows, judges, delights, and invites human beings to follow her.

A. But Is Wisdom Merely a Personification?

Some interpreters understand Woman Wisdom in Proverbs as personification: a literary device in which a thing or abstract quality is represented as though it were a person (Merriam-Webster). On this interpretation, “Wisdom” is simply the abstract quality of wisdom poetically portrayed as a woman who speaks and acts (Ahn 131–65; Lenzi 687–714).

Certainly, Proverbs uses poetic language. But calling Wisdom a “personification” does not actually settle the more important question: Is the person being portrayed merely an imaginary literary representation of an abstract quality, or is the poetry describing a real divine person?

That distinction matters. Personification means taking something that is not actually a person and giving it personal characteristics. If Scripture gives us independent reasons to believe that the Spirit of Wisdom really is a divine person, however, then “personification” is no longer an adequate explanation of who Wisdom is. The poetry may portray Her vividly and symbolically, but it would be portraying someone who actually exists.

And Proverbs gives us considerably more than an isolated poetic sentence in which “wisdom” happens to speak.

Wisdom appears repeatedly as a sustained personal figure. She speaks. She calls. She reproves. She teaches. She loves. She hates. She possesses counsel, understanding, and strength. Kings reign through Her. She gives riches and honor. Human beings are commanded to listen to Her, watch at Her doors, walk in Her ways, love Her, and seek Her. Finding Her means finding life; rejecting Her means loving death (Proverbs 1:20–33; 8:1–36; 9:1–6).

Then Proverbs 1:23 says something especially striking:

“I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.”

The Hebrew is literally “my spirit”—ruach. Wisdom says that She possesses a ruach that She can pour out upon human beings, immediately alongside Her promise to make Her words known to them.

That is remarkably close to what the rest of Scripture says about the Spirit of God.

And Proverbs goes much further. “The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.” (Proverbs 3:19) Wisdom is associated directly with the creation of the world. Then Wisdom Herself speaks in Proverbs 8. She says that She existed before the earth, before the depths, before the mountains and hills. When God established the heavens, “I was there” (Proverbs 8:27). And then comes the extraordinary statement: “I was beside him, like a master workman.” (Proverbs 8:30) That is far more significant than simply saying that Wisdom is “wise.” Wisdom is portrayed as personally beside God during creation—as master workman while the world is being formed.

And this becomes even more important when we compare Proverbs with the rest of Scripture. Genesis says the Spirit of God was there at creation (Genesis 1:2). Proverbs says Wisdom was there at creation (Proverbs 8:27). Proverbs says God founded the earth by Wisdom (Proverbs 3:19). Psalm 104 says that when God sends forth His Spirit, creatures “are created” (Psalm 104:30). Job says, “The Spirit of God has made me” (Job 33:4). And Isaiah makes the connection explicit: the Spirit of the LORD is “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding” (Isaiah 11:2). Then Paul tells us there is “one Spirit” (Ephesians 4:4).

That cumulative pattern changes the question considerably. We are no longer asking whether an abstract quality can be poetically personified. We are asking why Scripture portrays a feminine Wisdom who is with God at creation, works beside God as master workman, is the means by which God founds the earth, possesses a spirit that She pours out, teaches and reveals words, gives life, and is sought as the way to life—while elsewhere Scripture identifies God’s actual Spirit as the Spirit of Wisdom, says that this Spirit creates, makes, teaches, reveals, is poured out, and gives life. At that point, “Wisdom is merely an abstract quality being personified” is not a defensible explanation.

There is also an important historical point here. Major early Christian theologians did not simply assume that Proverbs 8 was describing an imaginary woman representing an abstraction. Justin Martyr read the Wisdom speaking in Proverbs 8 as an actual preexistent divine person whom he identified with the Son and Logos (Dialogue with Trypho 61). Tertullian likewise identified Wisdom with the Word and explicitly described Wisdom in Proverbs as a “Second Person”; he then defended this figure against being reduced to a mere divine attribute (Against Praxeas 6–7). Origen likewise understood the Wisdom of Proverbs as an actual preexistent divine reality and identified Her with Christ (Commentary on John 1.22, 39).

I disagree with whom those writers identified as Wisdom. But their testimony is still important. They demonstrate that reading Proverbs' Wisdom as a real divine person rather than merely an imaginary literary woman is hardly foreign to historic Christianity. And remarkably, one extremely early Christian theologian made the identification I am making. Irenaeus wrote that God always had with Him “the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit.” He then explicitly states that “Wisdom also, which is the Spirit,” was present with God before creation, and to demonstrate that claim he quotes both Proverbs 3:19 and Proverbs 8:22–31 (Against Heresies 4.20.1, 3). So, Irenaeus read the same creation passages we are examining and concluded: Wisdom is the Spirit. Other Christians made the same connection, as I explain in my history article regarding who the Spirit is: 8. The Witness of the Early Church: Is the Spirit Our Mother?

I am therefore not persuaded that we can simply label Woman Wisdom “personification” and consider the question resolved. Proverbs is certainly poetry, and its portrayal of Wisdom is richly literary. But “personification” describes the literary form; it does not establish that the person portrayed is unreal. The biblical question is whether Scripture gives us reason to identify Her with an actual divine person.

I believe it does.

The Spirit of the LORD is the Spirit of Wisdom. There is one Spirit. Wisdom is with God in creation as master workman. God creates by Wisdom. The Spirit creates. Wisdom pours out Her spirit. God pours out His Spirit. Wisdom teaches and reveals Her words. The Spirit teaches and reveals truth. Wisdom gives life. The Spirit gives life.

These are not disconnected similarities.

They describe the same divine person.

The feminine Wisdom of Proverbs is not merely an inanimate abstraction being made to act alive.

She is the Spirit of Wisdom—the Holy Spirit Herself.

Isaiah explicitly calls the Spirit of the Lord the Spirit of wisdom. Deuteronomy speaks of the spirit of wisdom being given through the laying on of hands. Paul says there is one Spirit and connects the Spirit with wisdom and revelation. Jesus identifies the Holy Spirit as Teacher. And Proverbs portrays divine Wisdom as a living feminine speaker who can pour out her spirit and make her words known.

Read cumulatively, I think the connection is much stronger than simply saying, “Wisdom happens to be grammatically feminine.”

Scripture gives us a coherent biblical basis for seeing divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit as deeply connected—and, I believe, as the same divine Spirit.

Deuteronomy 34:9

“Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him.”

Acts 8:14–17

The apostles pray for believers in Samaria to receive the Holy Spirit and then lay their hands on them, after which they receive the Spirit.

The parallel is striking. Joshua receives the spirit of wisdom in connection with Moses laying hands on him; in Acts, believers receive the Holy Spirit through the apostles laying hands on them.

That does not mean the physical act of laying on hands proves the identity of the two expressions by itself. But combined with Isaiah 11:2 and the New Testament’s teaching that there is one Spirit, it contributes to the same cumulative pattern.

The Spirit of wisdom is not presented as a rival spirit alongside the Holy Spirit. Scripture gives us one Spirit of God, and wisdom belongs intrinsically to Her.

B. Was Wisdom present with God in creation—and does Proverbs 8 suggest a divine partnership?

Proverbs 8:22–31

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work.... Ages ago I was established, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.... When he established the heavens, I was there.... then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.”

Proverbs 8 is one of the most important passages in this discussion.

Wisdom is not merely mentioned as an abstract quality. Wisdom speaks as a feminine “I.” She was there before the earth was formed. She was there when God established the heavens. She is beside Him as the world is ordered. She is His delight, rejoicing before Him and delighting in humanity.

Genesis 1 places the Spirit of God with God at creation. Proverbs 3:19 says that “the Lord by wisdom founded the earth.” Isaiah 11:2 explicitly calls the Spirit of the Lord “the Spirit of wisdom.” Paul says there is one Spirit. Proverbs 8 then places feminine Wisdom beside God when He establishes the heavens.

How many separate divine realities are we supposed to introduce into the creation scene?

Was God with one Spirit in Genesis 1, a different “Wisdom” in Proverbs 8, and later another divine reality called the Word in John 1? Or are these passages giving us different biblical descriptions of the same divine person alongside God?

I think the second explanation deserves serious consideration.

Proverbs 8:22 is also interesting linguistically. The Hebrew verb translated “possessed” can also mean “acquired.” The same Hebrew verb is used in Ruth 4:10 when Boaz says that he has “acquired” Ruth to be his wife (NET Bible, Prov. 8:22 n. 1).

I do not think this means that the Hebrew verb itself means “married,” or that Proverbs 8:22 by itself proves a divine marriage. The word has a much broader range: acquire, possess, obtain, and in some contexts create or bring forth.

But the relational picture is nevertheless fascinating.

Here is a feminine figure who belongs with God before creation, stands beside Him while the world is formed, is His daily delight, rejoices before Him, and shares His delight in humanity.

Could this be part of the biblical foundation for something analogous to a divine marriage—a perfect eternal union between God the Father and God the Mother that human marriage reflects?

I would not build that conclusion on the word “acquired.” I would build it on the whole biblical pattern: male and female together image God; Adam and Eve become one; God is Love; the feminine Spirit of Wisdom is beside God in creation; and Proverbs describes a relationship of presence, delight, and shared creative activity between God and Wisdom.

I think that is at least worthy of serious reflection.

Proverbs 8:23 contains another intriguing detail. The Hebrew verb commonly translated “established” or “set up” comes from a root that can also carry the idea of pouring out. Most lexicons understand the form used in Proverbs 8:23 in the sense of being installed or established, so I do not think we should insist that “I was poured out” is the only or even necessarily the best translation here (NET Bible, Prov. 8:23 n. 4).

But the association is interesting because Proverbs has already had Wisdom say, “I will pour out my spirit to you” (Proverbs 1:23), while the rest of Scripture repeatedly speaks of God pouring out His Spirit.

Proverbs 8:24–25 also uses birth-like language when Wisdom says that she was “brought forth” before the depths, mountains, and hills. I do not think this should be pressed into a literal metaphysical claim that the Holy Spirit was created. Proverbs is using poetic language to emphasize Wisdom’s existence before the created order.

More importantly, the rest of Scripture controls how we understand the poetry. If, as argued above, the Spirit of Wisdom is the Holy Spirit, Scripture explicitly calls Her “the eternal Spirit” (Hebrews 9:14). Genesis 1:2 already places the Spirit of God present at the beginning of creation, and other passages describe God creating through His Spirit (Psalm 104:30; Job 33:4). The Holy Spirit therefore cannot simultaneously be an eternal divine Spirit and a creature brought into existence as part of creation.

Proverbs 8 itself also distinguishes Wisdom from the world being formed around Her: before the depths, before the mountains, before the earth, and when God established the heavens, “I was there.” The emphasis is not, “God created Wisdom as one of His creatures,” but that Wisdom precedes the entire created order and is beside God as He establishes it.

Therefore, I understand “brought forth” here as poetic language describing Wisdom’s eternal relationship with God and Her existence before creation—not as a statement that the Holy Spirit was created.

And then comes perhaps the most striking line:

“When he established the heavens, I was there.” (Proverbs 8:27)

Who else does Genesis explicitly tell us was there?

The Spirit of God.

Genesis 1:1–2 says:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.... and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

Proverbs 3:19 says:

“The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.”

Isaiah 11:2 says the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding.

Those connections are difficult for me to regard as accidental.

Proverbs 8 also says that Wisdom was “beside him” and His “daily delight.” This is not how an impersonal tool is normally described. The poetry depicts relationship: two who are together, delighting in one another as creation unfolds.

And Wisdom ends by saying:

“Whoever finds me finds life.” (Proverbs 8:35)

The Holy Spirit is likewise repeatedly associated with life. Jesus says we are born of the Spirit (John 3:6) and that “the Spirit gives life” (John 6:63). Paul likewise says, “the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6).

So the strongest argument is not that one disputed Hebrew word secretly proves Wisdom is the Holy Spirit.

The strongest argument is the entire portrait:

Wisdom is feminine. Wisdom is associated with Spirit. Wisdom was with God before and during creation. God creates by Wisdom. The Spirit of the Lord is explicitly the Spirit of Wisdom. The Spirit is present at creation. There is one Spirit. Wisdom gives life; the Spirit gives life.

I believe Proverbs is showing us much more than an abstract literary personification. I believe Proverbs is giving us a window into the feminine Spirit of God—the Spirit of Wisdom Herself, consistently expressed and described using feminine pronouns and imagery.

C. Could the Word in John 1 Be the Holy Spirit?

John 1:1–4 may be the most frequently mentioned passage in the Bible to argue that Jesus is God:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... All things were made through him.... In him was life.”

Most Christians read this and immediately make one identification:

The Word is Jesus.

But does John actually identify the pre-creation Word as Jesus in verses 1–4? Or could the Word be the Holy Spirit?

I think this question becomes especially important after reading Genesis, Isaiah, Psalms, and Proverbs together.

John deliberately begins with the words “In the beginning.” This unmistakably recalls Genesis:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

And who is explicitly present with God in the Genesis creation scene?

“The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2)

So when John takes us back to “the beginning” and introduces a divine person who is with God and involved in creating all things, the Holy Spirit should at least be considered.

The rest of the Protestant Old Testament strengthens that possibility.

Psalm 33:6 says:

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.”

The Hebrew word translated “breath” here is ruach—the same word translated Spirit.

So one creation text places the Word of the Lord and His Spirit/breath together in the making of the heavens.

Psalm 104:30 says:

“When you send forth your Spirit, they are created.”

Job 33:4 says:

“The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

Again: Spirit, creation, breath, and life.

Then Proverbs adds another layer.

“The Lord by wisdom founded the earth.” (Proverbs 3:19)

Wisdom says, “When he established the heavens, I was there” and describes herself as “beside him” (Proverbs 8:27, 30).

And Isaiah tells us explicitly that the Spirit of the Lord is “the Spirit of wisdom.” (Isaiah 11:2)

Put those passages beside John 1:

Description	Wisdom	Holy Spirit	Word in John 1
Present “in the beginning” / before creation	Wisdom is present before the earth and when God establishes the heavens (Proverbs 8:22–31).	The Spirit of God is present in the opening creation scene (Genesis 1:2).	“In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1).
With God	Wisdom is “beside him” and God’s delight (Proverbs 8:30).	The Spirit is distinguished from God while present and active with Him (Genesis 1:2; compare Revelation 1:4–5).	“The Word was with God” (John 1:1).
Creates	“The Lord by wisdom founded the earth” (Proverbs 3:19). Most strikingly, as God establishes the heavens and orders creation, Wisdom says, “I was beside him, like a master workman” (Proverbs 8:30). Wisdom is not merely present in the creation scene—She is portrayed beside God as master workman in creation.	“When you send forth your Spirit, they are created” (Psalm 104:30); “The Spirit of God has made me” (Job 33:4).	“All things were made through” the Word (John 1:3).
Gives / contains life	“Whoever finds me finds life” (Proverbs 8:35).	“The Spirit gives life” (John 6:63; 2 Corinthians 3:6); believers are born of the Spirit (John 3:6).	“In him was life” (John 1:4).
Reveals words / truth	Wisdom says, “I will make my words known to you” (Proverbs 1:23).	The Spirit teaches, reveals, and inspired God’s message (John 14:26; 1 Corinthians 2:10–13; 2 Peter 1:20–21).	John calls this divine reality the “Word” (Logos).

Is this all coincidence?

I do not think so.

The creation correspondence is especially strong. Genesis places the Spirit of God with God at the beginning. Psalm 104:30 says that when God sends forth His Spirit, “they are created,” and Job 33:4 says, “The Spirit of God has made me.” Proverbs says, “The LORD by wisdom founded the earth,” and then gives Wisdom an active place beside God in the creation scene: “I was beside him, like a master workman” (Proverbs 8:30). John then says that all things were made through the Word. Wisdom, Spirit, and Word are therefore not merely associated with creation in a vague way: Wisdom is beside God as master workman; the Spirit creates and makes; the Word makes all things.

And Isaiah gives us the crucial identification: the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of wisdom. Paul then says there is one Spirit. If Scripture presents one divine Spirit, identifies that Spirit with Wisdom, and attributes creation to both Wisdom and the Spirit, then I think the evidence points strongly toward the same conclusion: Wisdom and the Holy Spirit are the same divine person—and this Creator Spirit is God. John’s Word, who is with God, is God, creates, and gives life, therefore fits the Holy Spirit—the feminine Spirit of Wisdom—remarkably well.

In fact, Christians have long recognized that John’s Logos should be interpreted in light of biblical Wisdom. Early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen explicitly connected Proverbs’ Wisdom with the divine Word (Justin Martyr 61; Tertullian 6; Origen 1.42). Tertullian even wrote that “the Word of God is also the Wisdom of God” and used Proverbs 8 together with John 1 (Tertullian 6).

So using Proverbs to help identify the Word is not a strange new interpretive move. Christians have been doing that for many centuries.

My disagreement is over whom Wisdom should be identified with.

The traditional answer became Jesus.

But Isaiah gives us an explicit biblical identification that identifies the Spirit of Wisdom with the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Spirit:

The Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of Wisdom.

Proverbs portrays Wisdom as feminine. Genesis places the Spirit with God at creation. Psalms attribute creation to God’s Spirit. Proverbs attributes creation to Wisdom. John attributes creation to the Word.

Why, then, should we immediately assume that the Word is Jesus rather than the Holy Spirit?

John 1:1 says that the Word “was God.” In my understanding, as already shown, the Holy Spirit truly is God. So if the Word is the Holy Spirit, John means exactly what he says:

The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

God the Father and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons, yet both are God.

John 1:3 says that all things were made through the Word. Again, this fits the Holy Spirit remarkably well because Scripture explicitly associates the Spirit with creation.

John 1:4 says, “In him was life.” Again, the Spirit gives life.

The masculine grammar of Logos does not settle the personal gender of the Word. Logos is a grammatically masculine Greek noun, so masculine grammatical forms naturally accompany it. As with pneuma being neuter and ruach being feminine, grammatical gender does not by itself establish personal gender. "The Word" could be translated with feminine pronouns if from a theological perspective there was a reason to do so. I believe there is.

What about John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”?

This is the most difficult verse for my interpretation, as John 1:14 in particular seems to identify the Word directly with Jesus: especially the way it is translated in most English Bibles. I address John 1:14 more fully in my John 1 commentary, but because this verse is so important to the argument of whether the Word in John 1 could be the Spirit, I think it is worth reproducing much of that fuller explanation here.

One way this verse can be faithfully translated is: “And the Word entered the state of flesh and dwelt [tabernacled] in us” (John 1:14). This indwelling started with Jesus. The Holy Spirit dwelt in Jesus fully, filling him with God and enabling him to do all that he did. The above translation of John 1:14 is possible, and is actually a more literal translation of the Greek than the typical Trinitarian translation, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. The Greek word translated “among” literally means “in” (Brown 6; Chan, ch. 8). John could have used other Greek words for “among”, but he did not, he chose to use “in”. I believe this verse is pointing to the new kingdom reality of the Holy Spirit dwelling literally in flesh, which only is possible because of Jesus and his sacrifice. Starting with Jesus, the Holy Spirit dwelt in humanity in a new way, and this continued on to every member of the Church. Notably, if John 1:14 is translated as "in us" instead of "among us" (which is the more literal translation from the Greek), making Jesus the Word is awkward with the language. Did Jesus enter flesh and dwell in us at the beginning of his ministry described in John 1? No. He was physical man walking around. But the Spirit dwelt in Jesus and soon after, dwelt in the Church.

The above potential translation of John 1:14 in the original Greek describes exactly what happened with the Holy Spirit, the Word, with the coming of Jesus. The Holy Spirit entered the state of flesh (in Jesus), beginning to dwell in humanity. Eventually, all Christians become the temple of living God. This is part of the amazing promise of the gospel, that the Word, the Holy Spirit, would dwell in us. No more need for a physical temple where the Spirit dwells. This type of Holy Spirit dwelling is unique and did not happen in its fullness before Christ. What is more, as shown in the translation, the word “dwelt” in the phrase “dwelt in us” can also be translated “tabernacle”. Who dwelt in the tabernacle in the Old Testament? The Holy Spirit. And now, with the new kingdom Christ is bringing, all people will be God’s tabernacle by being indwelt with the Holy Spirit, the Word. The Holy Spirit started by dwelling in Jesus, entering a “state of flesh”, and then all believers.

A last note: “And the Word came to be flesh and dwelt in us” is an even more literal translation of John 1:14, and the above potential translation I suggest is more interpretive than this one. However, in English, this literal translation makes it seem like the Word literally became flesh, which is not a necessary interpretation of the Greek word “egeneto”, "came to be". One meaning indicated by the Greek word “egeneto” is the type of change described in the more literal translation above. “Egeneto” is very difficult to translate as there are so many meanings, and one must use the context to determine what the word means. The potential translation suggested above fits with the context and stays true to one meaning of “egeneto”. Nothing in the Greek forces the traditional interpretation of “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Again, it is not as literal of a translation because the Greek word translated “among” is literally “in”, as already mentioned.

An even better understanding of the Greek word for “came to be” may be helpful. “Egeneto”, the Greek word for “came to be” in John 1:14, often describes a transition into a new state, condition, or circumstance (BDAG, s.v. “γίνομαι”; Chan, ch. 9). This is exactly what happens with the Holy Spirit when Jesus brings the kingdom. Humanity experiences the Holy Spirit in a new state, condition, and circumstance: the Spirit dwells within every Christian, not just in the temple. It does not mean the Spirit literally became flesh (that which it was not before), but it does mean that the Word entered the reality or condition of flesh by dwelling “in us”. The Greek word “egeneto” does not mean the Word was changed into something else and no longer remained what it was before. “Egeneto” has a variety of meanings that must be understood in context. “Came to be” (egeneto) can mean entering a new condition or status while retaining identity (i.e., the Spirit filling believers in a new way), without “egeneto” indicating a transformation into something else, like a caterpillar into a butterfly. So, the whole passage must be considered to determine the correct meaning of “egeneto”.

I think this interpretation of John 1, that the Word is the Spirit, is by far the best one. Again, John 1 alludes to Genesis 1 by writing “in the beginning”. The 2 persons in Genesis 1 who created were God the Father and the Holy Spirit, who is God and Mother. John 1 says the “Word was God.” While some Christians, namely biblical unitarians, have explained this as the Word was “god” in a descriptive way, in my discussions with Trinitarians, I agree with them on the following: the text and the original Greek seem to point to the Word literally being “theos” or God, big “G”. John uses theos, not merely theios. Theos is the noun God/god, not the adjective “divine.” Even scholars who describe the predicate as qualitative understand John to be attributing the nature of theos to the Word (Harner 85, 87). So, considering “the Word” as Almighty God has strong evidence in Scripture (see the full meaning of “theos” here: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g2316/kjv/tr/0-1/). And the Spirit, along with the Father, is also Almighty God.

The Spirit is fully divine as the Father is and the Old Testament demonstrates the Spirit, which is identified as the Word, was integrally involved with God the Father in creation. Further, this interpretation fits much better in context with the rest of John, where, by my reading, John emphasizes that Jesus is a man sent by God, the human Messiah, not God. I realize John is very complex and has many passages that appear to support Jesus' divinity. I address this in context in my commentary on John: John .

Specifically, the Word “entered the state of flesh” at Jesus’ baptism. The Spirit filled Jesus. All of the gospels describe this event. A “dove” is mentioned as what the Spirit is like: this is a notable detail, as “doves” often represent the divine feminine (de Sousa 31–40; Willette). This is no coincidence, as again, the Spirit is our heavenly Mother who gives us spiritual birth, just as She gave Jesus spiritual birth at his baptism.

So: John 1:1–4 fits the Holy Spirit extraordinarily well when read against the Bible's own creation, Wisdom, Word, Spirit, and life passages.

And there is another reason this matters for the subject of this article.

If the Word is the Spirit of Wisdom, then the creation scene is not Father and an eternal divine Son creating together.

It is God the Father and the feminine Spirit of Wisdom together in the beginning. That fits Genesis 1 in a striking way. The God who creates humanity male and female in His image is Himself revealed through a masculine Father and a feminine Spirit. Could creation itself therefore reflect something like a divine Father-and-Mother relationship—the heavenly reality from which human fatherhood, motherhood, male, female, and one-flesh union ultimately derive? I think that possibility should be taken seriously.

Finally, what makes more sense, given creation reveals who God is: that the world was created by a Father and Son? Or a Father and Mother? How can God be a Father without a Mother to help him, if humanity really does reflect God’s image (Genesis 1-2)? Given creation reveals who God is, I believe a Father and Mother creating the world together is more likely than a Father and a Son. I believe that the Spirit, who is our Mother, is the true Word, not Jesus.

Genesis, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Isaiah, John, and Paul already provide the framework. In the next article, I will return to John 1 after considering the additional Wisdom books preserved in Catholic Bibles. I think those books make the Wisdom–Spirit–Word connection even more explicit.

But they are not needed to show that the Word in John 1 is the Holy Spirit.

D. Other Biblical References to God as Mother

The Protestant Bible contains many other passages in which God is described through maternal or explicitly feminine imagery. Together they establish something that should no longer be controversial:

Scripture itself does not reveal God only through masculine imagery. Motherhood and femininity are genuinely part of the Bible’s revelation of God.

1. Deuteronomy 32:11 — God like a mother eagle

God is compared to an eagle hovering over its young, spreading its wings, catching them, and carrying them.

The image presents God through the fierce, protective care of a mother bird over her young.

2. Deuteronomy 32:18 — God gives birth

“You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.”

This is some of the strongest maternal imagery in the Protestant Bible.

God does not merely love like a mother here. God is described as the One who bore His people and gave them birth.

Birth is maternal imagery. And this becomes especially significant when Jesus later says that believers are born of the Spirit (John 3:6).

Given that Scripture later assigns spiritual birth specifically to the Spirit, the connection is striking.

3. Psalm 123:2 — Master and Mistress

“As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God.”

The psalm uses both masculine and feminine authority imagery in parallel to describe dependence upon Yahweh: master and mistress.

This does not mean Yahweh is biologically male and female. It does show that Scripture itself uses both masculine and feminine human relationships to illuminate who God is to His people.

4. Psalm 131:2 — resting in God like a child with its mother

“I have calmed and quieted myself; I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.”

The psalmist is describing what it feels like to rest quietly and trustfully in God’s presence. And the image he chooses for that relationship with God is unmistakably maternal: a child resting contentedly with its mother.

This is more than a random illustration. The entire psalm is directed toward the Lord and culminates in the call, “O Israel, hope in the Lord.” The mother-child image explains what that hope and rest in God are like.

A weaned child resting against its mother is secure, calm, dependent, and at peace because of who the mother is to the child. That is the relationship the psalmist uses to describe his own rest in God.

So while the verse does not literally say, “God is my mother,” it deliberately uses motherhood as the image for what it means to rest in God.

God is experienced here through maternal security, nurture, closeness, and peace.

That is significant. Scripture does not reserve fatherhood as the only parental image through which believers are meant to understand their relationship with God. Here, the psalmist reaches for the image of a mother and child to describe precisely what trusting God feels like.

5. Job 38:28–29 — God revealed through both fatherhood and motherhood

God asks Job: “Has the rain a father?... From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens?”

This is one of the clearest places in Scripture where God places masculine and feminine parental imagery side by side to describe His own creative activity.

Verse 28 speaks of the father of the rain. Verse 29 immediately speaks of the womb from which the ice comes and asks who gives birth to the frost.

The answer throughout Job 38 is God.

God is the One who fathers the rain, and God is also the One whose creative work is described through a womb and through giving birth.

That parallel matters. Scripture is not presenting motherhood as something foreign to God while fatherhood properly belongs to Him. In the same breath, God uses both fatherhood and motherhood to reveal what His relationship to creation is like.

The maternal imagery is especially strong because it does not merely compare God to a nurturing woman. It uses specifically female bodily imagery: a womb and birth.

So Job 38:28–29 gives us a remarkably balanced picture of God’s self-revelation: God is described through both paternal and maternal imagery as the source from whom creation comes.

For the larger argument of this study, that is significant. Masculinity alone does not exhaust the biblical picture of God. Creation itself is described as coming from God through both paternal and maternal imagery.

6. Hosea 11:3–4 — tender parental care

God says that He taught Ephraim to walk, took them in His arms, drew them with cords of kindness, bent down to them, and fed them.

Fathers can certainly do these things too, so I would not argue that the passage is exclusively maternal. But the imagery is deeply nurturing and resembles the intimate care commonly associated with a mother tending a young child.

Again, God is not confined to masculine stereotypes.

7. Hosea 13:8 — God like a mother bear

God says:

“Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and tear them asunder.”

Here God uses the fierce protective passion of a mother bear as a description of Yahweh.

8. Isaiah 42:14 — God like a woman in labor

God says:

“For a long time I have held my peace.... now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant.”

God deliberately describes His own action through the experience of a laboring woman.

9. Isaiah 66:13 — God comforts like a mother

“As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”

God does not only reveal Himself through fatherly comfort. He explicitly tells His people that His comfort is like the comfort of a mother.

Taken together, these passages make one point unmistakable:

A masculine-only picture of God is not the picture the Bible itself gives us.

God is Spirit and transcends biological sex, but God's own Word repeatedly uses both masculine and feminine, paternal and maternal imagery to reveal Him.

This establishes further the larger theological foundation needed for the question of the Spirit’s femininity: motherhood is not foreign to God. Femininity is not foreign to God. Women do not image a merely masculine God.

Then, when we ask which divine person Scripture most directly associates with birth, wisdom, teaching, indwelling, life, and the feminine Wisdom tradition, I believe the Holy Spirit becomes the natural answer.

In the post following this one, I provide further evidence of these truths using the Deuterocanon: the seven additional books that Catholic Bibles have. However, a Protestant Christian does not need to accept Wisdom, Sirach, or any other deuterocanonical book in order to recognize that God’s femininity and motherhood are biblical.

The Protestant Bible already tells us that male and female are created in God’s image. It repeatedly describes God through maternal imagery: God bears children, gives birth, comforts like a mother, is compared to a mother protecting her young, and speaks of Himself like a woman in labor. It describes the Spirit as the One from whom believers are born. It calls the Spirit of the Lord the Spirit of wisdom. It portrays divine Wisdom as unmistakably feminine. It repeatedly connects the one Spirit of God with wisdom, teaching, revelation, life, and creation. And when John returns us to “the beginning” and describes the Word as with God, as God, involved in creation, and possessing life, the Protestant Old Testament already gives us a remarkably strong candidate for that Word: the Spirit of Wisdom who was with God in creation.

Together, these observations are more than enough to overturn the assumption that God should be understood only in masculine terms or that referring to the Holy Spirit as feminine is somehow unbiblical.

Genesis tells you that God’s image is male and female.

Deuteronomy tells you that God gives birth.

Job uses womb imagery for the Creator.

Isaiah compares God to a woman in labor and a comforting mother.

John tells you that believers are born of the Spirit.

Isaiah tells you that the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of wisdom.

Proverbs portrays Wisdom as she.

Paul tells you that there is one Spirit and repeatedly connects that Spirit with wisdom and revelation.

Psalm 33 places God’s Word and His Spirit/breath together in creation.

Psalm 104 says that when God sends His Spirit, creatures are created.

John takes us back to “the beginning” and describes the Word as with God, as God, creating, and giving life—the same cluster of themes already associated with God’s Spirit and Wisdom.

That is already an extraordinary amount of evidence.

The next post will examine the Wisdom books found in Catholic Bibles, especially Wisdom and Sirach, and will then return to the question of John 1. I believe those books add important evidence and make the Wisdom–Spirit–Word connection even more explicit. They do not create the case, however. They strengthen a case that is already present in the Protestant Bible.

At minimum, the Protestant canon itself should be enough for Christians to stop claiming that masculine language for the Spirit is the only biblical option. It should be enough for us to acknowledge that God reveals Himself through both fatherhood and motherhood, masculinity and femininity. And I believe, when the evidence concerning the Spirit is considered cumulatively, it is enough to seriously—and joyfully—recognize the Holy Spirit as the feminine, maternal person of God.

The Catholic wisdom books add more light. But the foundation is already here.

The Holy Spirit is both God and Mother.

A Final Objection: the Protestant Bible Never Explicitly Calls the Holy Spirit “Mother”

A Protestant reader may reasonably object: “Even if the Holy Spirit is feminine, where does the Protestant Bible actually call Her ‘Mother’?”

This is a fair question.

In the 66-book Protestant canon, Scripture does not directly give the Holy Spirit the title “Mother” in the same explicit way that God is repeatedly called “Father.” God is called Father many times throughout Scripture, while the Protestant Bible never simply says, “The Holy Spirit is our Mother.”

But frequency of a title and the reality of a relationship are not the same thing. The fact that Scripture calls God Father does not mean that the Spirit does not have a genuinely maternal relationship with God’s people. The question is:

What relationship does Scripture actually describe between the Holy Spirit and believers?

And here the evidence becomes striking. Jesus says: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into God’s Kingdom. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:5–6)

This is not merely vague feminine imagery.

Jesus says Christians are actually born of the Spirit.

Think about what that means.

Our first, physical birth comes from our human mother. Jesus then describes another birth—a spiritual birth—and says that this birth comes from the Spirit.

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

Who gives birth to a child?

A mother.

Whatever terminology we ultimately use, the function described here is unmistakably maternal. The Holy Spirit brings forth spiritual children. She gives new life.

In some ways, I think this is even more significant than merely finding the title “Mother.” Scripture does not simply give us a label and leave us to guess what it means. It describes the relationship itself.

We are born of the Spirit.

Paul gives us another piece of this family relationship: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God.... You received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:14–15)

Notice the relational pattern.

The Spirit is intimately involved in our becoming and living as God’s children, and through the Spirit we cry out to God: “Abba! Father!”

The Father and the Spirit are therefore not portrayed as performing identical roles.

The Spirit gives spiritual life, dwells within us, leads us, and enables our relationship with the Father. Through Her work, we live as children who know God as Father.

This does not by itself prove that “Mother” is the only possible title for the Holy Spirit. That is not my argument.

My argument is that the relationship Scripture describes is profoundly maternal. And the pattern extends far beyond spiritual birth.

The Holy Spirit: gives birth (John 3:5–6), gives life (John 6:63; Romans 8:11), dwells within believers (Romans 8:9–11), teaches them (John 14:26), guides them (John 16:13; Romans 8:14), helps them in weakness (Romans 8:26), intercedes for them (Romans 8:26–27), remains with them (John 14:16–17), and participates intimately in their transformation and sanctification.

Taken together, this looks remarkably like the work of a divine parent who gives birth, gives life, lives with Her children, teaches them, guides them, helps them, and intercedes for them.

A person does not need to be repeatedly given the title “mother” for us to recognize motherhood when children are born of her, receive life through her, are taught and guided by her, and are continually cared for by her.

The main question is what relationship Scripture actually describes.

This distinction is important because I do not want to make an argument the Protestant Bible does not make.

My argument is not: “The Protestant Bible explicitly calls the Holy Spirit ‘Mother.’”

It does not.

My argument is: “The Protestant Bible describes the Holy Spirit in profoundly maternal terms, most strikingly by saying that believers are born of Her.”

Therefore, understanding the Holy Spirit as our divine Mother is not simply an idea being imposed upon Scripture from outside. It is a theological description of a relationship Scripture itself gives Her.

And this becomes even more significant when we return to the very beginning of the Bible.

Genesis 1:26–27 says: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.... So God created mankind in his own image.... male and female he created them.”

Humanity images God as male and female.

I have already argued that the Holy Spirit is not a created force but God Herself—a divine person who shares the identity, attributes, works, glory, and worship of Yahweh. Now Scripture also tells us that this divine person gives spiritual birth.

So my argument is not merely: “The Spirit is feminine, therefore She must be Mother.”

The argument is cumulative: The Spirit is God. The Spirit gives birth. The Spirit gives life. The Spirit indwells Her children. The Spirit teaches them. The Spirit guides them. The Spirit helps them. The Spirit intercedes for them. And male and female together image God.

Therefore, I believe there is substantial biblical reason to understand the Holy Spirit as the feminine, maternal person within God.

Different persons can be revealed with different emphases and different roles. Equality does not require identical terminology or an identical number of references.

If the Spirit is truly God—as I believe has already been established—Her equality with the Father does not depend upon Scripture calling Her “Mother” exactly as many times as it calls Him “Father.” Her divinity is established by who She is: Creator, life-giver, eternal Spirit, divine speaker, the One who knows the depths of God, the One identified with Yahweh, and the One included in Yahweh’s worship.

The question of Motherhood is then a different question:

What kind of relationship does this divine person have with us?

And Scripture’s answer includes something extraordinarily important: We are born of Her. That is maternal.

And Then the Deuterocanonical Scriptures Become Remarkable

This is where the additional books preserved in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles become especially significant.

The Protestant canon gives us a Holy Spirit who is described maternally, but does not explicitly give Her the title Mother.

The deuterocanonical Wisdom tradition goes further.

There, the feminine divine Wisdom—the Spirit of Wisdom—is not merely associated with maternal activity.

Wisdom is called Mother. (Wisdom 7:12, NABRE)

Wisdom has Her children. Wisdom teaches Her children. Wisdom comes to them “like a mother.” And in an ancient textual tradition of Sirach, Wisdom herself declares: “I am the Mother....”

This does not create an entirely new doctrine absent from the Protestant Scriptures.

Rather, I believe it makes explicit something the Protestant canon has already revealed.

The deuterocanonical Scriptures tell us: Wisdom is Mother.

And I think there is a strong case to be made that these deuterocanonical books are inspired Scripture. Although I grew up Protestant, I now believe they are.

There is even evidence that early Jewish Christians understood Jesus himself to speak of the Holy Spirit as Mother. The ancient Gospel according to the Hebrews, a Jewish-Christian gospel known to Origen and Jerome, preserved a saying attributed to Jesus: “My Mother, the Holy Spirit…” (van Oort). Because this gospel is not part of the Protestant canon and survives only in quotations, I do not use this saying to prove my case or claim with certainty that the historical Jesus spoke these exact words. But its significance should not be minimized. Very early Jewish Christians—Christians much closer linguistically and culturally to Jesus than we are—explicitly called the Holy Spirit Mother and preserved a tradition in which Jesus did so himself (van Oort). This fits remarkably well with Jesus’ canonical teaching that we are “born of the Spirit” (John 3:6) and that feminine Wisdom has “children” (Luke 7:35). If, as Scripture indicates, the Spirit of Wisdom is the one Holy Spirit, these sayings fit together naturally: the Spirit is Wisdom, Wisdom has children, and we are born of the Spirit.

Even without the Gospel according to the Hebrews, Jesus’ canonical teaching already contains striking maternal language surrounding the Spirit and Wisdom. The ancient Jewish-Christian saying—“My Mother, the Holy Spirit”—does not create this picture. It provides remarkable historical confirmation that some of the earliest Christians understood the same picture and explicitly expressed what I believe the canonical Scriptures themselves reveal:

The Holy Spirit is our Mother.

Conclusion

Taken cumulatively, I believe the Protestant Bible gives more than enough evidence to identify the Holy Spirit as the maternal, feminine person of God—our heavenly Mother. Scripture does not contain the exact sentence “The Holy Spirit is our Mother,” but neither is the conclusion dependent upon speculation. The Spirit gives us birth; the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of Wisdom; Wisdom is consistently feminine and has children; the Spirit gives life; Wisdom gives life; both are present in creation; and Scripture tells us there is one Spirit. Alongside the Bible’s repeated revelation of God through motherhood, I think these strands converge naturally and powerfully on the same conclusion: the Holy Spirit is both our God and our Mother.