The Nature and Image of God, Male and Female

Who and what is God? What does it mean to be created in the image of God? 

When we speak of God, we are speaking of an eternal Godhead consisting of three individual persons.  Exalted beings, holy individuals.  They consist of God, the Father who is an exalted, glorious individual, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost.  

We also speak of the pattern of female glory and intelligence, a Heavenly Mother, the completeness of heavenly parents, perfect joining of male and female. The general understanding of God has been of a single incorporeal god force as taught in mainstream theological institutions.

Jesus is the firstborn of the Father in the spirit and the only begotten in the flesh. His perfections and attributes have been part of his character forever. Only he was capable of performing the atonement required to meet the penalty for the sins of mankind and overcome the physical death associated with mortality in the Father's plan. Jesus is Jehovah, the creator of this earth. The Holy Ghost is a spirit and a son of God as well, and has the calling to bear witness of the Father and the Son.

The Godhead acts with unity described by Jesus in his prayer that his followers might be one with him and the Father. He was and is in the likeness and image of the father.  An image is something that we see something with our eyes. While trinitarian theology teaches of an incorporeal deity, our Father in Heaven and Savior are exalted beings of a glorious nature and they are actual individual physical beings.

Because of their perfect unity, each member of the Godhead can speak independently or for the other. They never deviate from the eternal principles by which they operate. We can call the Father God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God. They can speak for each other and say that "I God" or "I am God".

Godhood is not a single male deity but also includes the glorious nature of womanhood. Together they constitute the eternal center of creation. Mankind is created in the image of God both in the spirit and in the flesh. Our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother are the head of an eternal family formed by their power to cause spiritual creation.  Eternal life in infinite cosmos and heavens among exalted beings never ends. 

When we speak of being created in the image of God, male and female we see that our Heavenly Parents are the pattern for all creation of human souls.  It is the complete oneness of perfect love of eternal spiritual beings.  They are two persons and represent the oneness spoken of in the scriptures. This principle has been given to mankind wherein we can become one flesh as two persons in holy matrimony. Because of their exalted state they live in a state enjoying a fullness of joy, which they in turn are seeking to share with us.

God the Father is a person. What else would he be? He is our Heavenly Father. He is a holy person, a holy man and glorious and perfect in every attribute and aspect. So is our Heavenly Mother.  We are created in their image male and female.

Womanhood was not a new idea at the creation of Eve.  The likeness spoken of is literal and not figurative. The image of God is not a single incorporeal male represented as metaphorical father. We are not created in the image of an incorporeal triune deity.

God is perfect because he lives perfectly by all eternal laws. He and all beings capable of exaltation are natural beings and exist according to eternal principle and truth. Otherwise, there is no measure of perfection and any statements concerning him are idle speculation that leads to mythical capacities and proportions of powers that do not exist.    

We are created in the image of our Eternal Father which is also the image of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who walked the earth as we do.  He lived, died and was resurrected.

Christ does all things under the authority of the Father. Jesus as a pre-mortal being organized the world from eternally existing matter.  Its purpose was and is to be inhabited by the Father's children.  Earth is a place of learning, choosing and growing from personal experience and freedom through opposition between good and evil.

This creation of man and woman is an eternal pattern of which God the Father is our supreme head.  He is the Father of our spirits and we are his literal children, begotten spiritually in a pre-mortal time.

The Savior is the "father of our salvation".  This is one of the times where the term is metaphorical, as well as us being called his children or the "children of Christ".

Knowing the nature of God we can reason more profoundly of the purposes for his creations and our existence and the nature of eternal life. This knowledge like all spiritual knowledge comes as we study the scriptures, the world around us and ponder the endless nature of space and time. It is given to be understood by the power of the Holy Ghost and sacred eternal covenants that He grants to us.

For thousands of years, traditional theologians have taught that there is a single being, a god force, that represents the supreme divine nature. This single deity is described as a trinity of personalities existing in eternity with no other being of like capacity. This does in fact make it a being of limited capacity and trinitarian scholars have confirmed this.  There has only been one planet created by the Trinity because biblical scholars claim that the Bible is the only word of God and there can be no other world or creation.

This doctrines of classical theism are founded on creeds and fills the narrative of the three beings identified in the Bible. They are represented as a metaphorical Father, Son, and  in fact would all be considered something like the Holy Ghost.  The father, in this case, is described as a noncorporeal being, a spiritual essence with no actual masculinity. The Son is God incarnate, a male in mortality but with no gender in his pre-earth life or his post life resurrected state. The Holy Ghost is spiritual entity of a nondescript nature the most realistically represents the nature of the trinitarian template of God.  At least two are identified of the male gender and yet are defined as genderless by modern Christian scholars.

The scriptural exegesis used to determine the ideology of the Trinity is the result of philosophical reasoning and scholarly endeavors carried out in the councils of early religious and political leaders after apostolic authority was lost after the death of Christ and his apostles. 

The endeavors that set the foundational doctrines for all but a handful of modern Christian sects are found in various creeds including the Nicene Creed. The philosophical elements include the idea that a being cannot be perfect if it is corporeal or if there is more than one being of a perfect nature. There is no basis for this conclusion in the eternal cosmos of truth other than scholarly and philosophical opinion. 

Ancient religious thinkers fashioned God and Christ in their own image after their own imaginations. God was deemed a mysterious being with mythical powers.   A common answer to the incomprehensible nature of this being is that God's ways are higher than man's ways when priests or clerics can't explain something.

The nature of God is clearly described in the first chapters of Genesis. The reading is straightforward and plain.  We are created in the image and likeness of our God. The scripture describes Seth, the son of Adam as being created in Adam's image and likeness like Adam was in God's.  There is no mystery to it. We look like God and he looks like us.  Yet, plain as it is, the theologians in mainstream trinitarianism make God an incomprehensible being. 

Man and woman were created in God's image male and female. The pattern of the woman was not and is not an afterthought. It is an eternal truth and self-evident in the earth.

It is the philosophies and myths of men that made God a celibate being and incapable of creating after his own kind. We are his kind.  He loves us and created the world for us to progress and increase in joy not to limit us. Christ came into the world not to condemn the world but that through him all might have eternal life.  

We can see that the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost form an eternal Godhead, three beings with different roles. They are united in purpose according to eternal principles and a relationship that is real, not metaphorical.  Their actions are based on perfect love that allows for creation and salvation to us. Everything flows from their grace and it is our opportunity to follow them.

See the article on Grace and Moral agency and free will.