Are Angels Males?

Most Christian influencers (not just social media but also pastors, authors, professors, etc.) have asserted that among people, male rules over female as the command of God from the beginning, which of course is not what the Bible teaches. The leap is then made that angels are depicted as male for that reason, though there are also women of authority in scripture. But when it comes to the spiritual realm, including human spirits, we must be very careful to avoid the same error as the non-Biblical religions: assuming that how spirits appear to us in this life is how they are in essence.

I call as a "hostile witness" the male supremacy-promoting website CARM. In an article on this topic, the owners states,

God does not tell us why angels appear as male in the Bible and not female. Angels do not have gender since gender is a biological function, and angels are not biological.

For someone with pro-male bias to make this point is significant. He also says this:

One of the possible reasons angels could be referred to only in the masculine is that of the issue of authority and strength. Generally, the male gender is associated with authority and strength more than the female gender.

So we can see that rejection of the belief in gendered spirits is not a "feminist" or even egalitarian teaching, but an acknowledgement that we simply aren't told why, in the Bible, angels always appear as males.

But consider that God does indeed make concessions to human society. Jesus himself said in Mat. 19:8, "Moses permitted it because of your stubbornness, but it was not originally that way. " In Numbers 23:19 it says,

God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a human being, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it happen?

Lest the scripture be twisted, the meaning is not that God doesn't lie like a man, but that he doesn't lie because he's not a man. A clearer statement of God's lack of gender couldn't be made.

But the objection will come, "In every possible way in every passage, God and angels are all depicted in male terms". Of course, we could point out in response that the Hebrew grammatical gender for the Holy Spirit is feminine, and in Greek, neuter. But it's the reason for the depiction that's in question, not anything to do with the grammatical gender of nouns and pronouns.

We must admit when scripture is silent, and on this question of why, we simply aren't told. Yet there is danger in imposing biological attributes to the spiritual. When we claim that a group of beings are this or that, we're talking about their nature or essence, not their appearance in our mortal realm.

The consequences of this issue can lead to false teachings, such as that male rule over female is the ideal eternal state, even if it's admitted that Jesus said in Mat. 22:29-30 ,

You are misled, because you understand neither that scripture nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, people don’t marry but are like the angels in heaven.

As I've said many times, nobody fights for the lowest position or the last place in line. So if someone teaches that masculine is superior to feminine, they're being prideful. Yet pride leads to downfall (Prov. 16:18), so this cannot exist in heaven. Then why is there such a desire to insist that God and the angels are males, or people's spirits are male or female?

As the referenced article pointed out, there is only biological (mortal, physical) gender. The next time you hear someone claim that (non-biological) angels are males in essence, please present these scriptural references and counter-arguments.