Is God the Father an he/she and God the Holy Spirit an it?

Thanks for your question. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are spirit and therefore have no personal gender. Even God the Son didn’t have a personal gender before his incarnation. God the Son has no gender, but Jesus is and forever will be male.

God the Father

Though certain words such as “he”, “Father”, “mother”, and “women” are used to describe God the Father (Isa. 63:16; 64:8; Jer. 3:19; Mal. 2:10; 1 Cor. 8:6; Deut. 32:18; Isa. 42:14; 49:15) this doesn’t mean he has a personal gender.

God is spirit (John 4:24) and has invisible attributes (Rom. 1:20; cf. Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17) therefore as it concerns personal gender he is neither male nor female. And the Old Testament is firm in the fact that no material thing (including human forms) was ever to be used to represent God (Exod. 20:4).

Grammatical gender used to describe God is not the same as personal gender. Male and female pronouns used to identify God the Father are used simply to help describe God’s character to us in certain contexts. For instance, males are the head of the covenant in all of Scripture and God is the covenant head of his people (cf. Deut. 14:1–2). Therefore seeing God as a “he” is important to keep our theology consistent. However, God also cares for his kingdom subjects “as” a loving mother cares for her children (Isa. 66:13). As a loving wife cares for her child, God cares for us. Neither description of God is attempting to describe his personal gender, but rather to clarify his divine workings as the Creator of all things.

Though grammatical gender is used to describe God the Father, he has no personal gender. He is not a he/she.

God the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is not an “it”, he is rather the third “Person” of the Trinity.

The Holy Spirit has the attributes of person-hood, he has actions like a person, and even engages in personal relationships. While he is fully God, he has perfect insight (1 Cor. 2:10-11) and knows all things which require an intellect (Rom. 8:27). He also has a will (1 Cor. 12:11), he convicts of sin (John 16:8), and performs miracles (Acts 8:39). He guides (John 16:13), intercedes (Rom. 8:26) and is to be obeyed (Acts 10:19-20). He can be lied to (Acts 5:3), resisted (Acts 7:51), grieved (Eph. 4:30), blasphemed (Matt. 12:31), and even insulted (Heb. 10:29). He relates to the apostles (Acts 15:28) and to each member of the Trinity (John 16:14; Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14).

The Holy Spirit is a Person and not an “it.” He is gender neutral, as he, as God the Father, is spirit. So the Holy Spirit is neither male nor female. Again, grammatical gender is not the same as personal gender. In Hebrew the term for Spirit (ruach) is in the feminine gender, but is neuter in Greek (pneuma). Obviously these uses are not trying to teach us about the personal gender of Holy Spirit, especially since Hebrew does not have a neuter gender for God.