Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel and I am once again bringing back Joshua Sherman to talk about our theme of the image of God. Hey Joshua, thanks for joining me again.
Joshua Sherman: I am glad to be here and it's, it's fun to think of it as our theme.
It's of course much bigger than that, but, but, uh, this is something that, that has become, , a fast partnership as we've, , started to really look at this and talk about it. And I say this a lot, but I really love dialogue on things like this cuz it brings out things that you just don't find by yourself.
So I always enjoy this.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. And I think this in particular is a topic that is really suited for discussion with other people. Mm-hmm. Which I mean makes sense because we are all the image of God. And this is part of what I think, , you know, being the image of God is, [00:01:00] when you're doing things, you're being the image of God because that's who we are. , today we're going to get into a couple of different things. We're going to continue our discussion on the theme of embodiment regarding the image of God. And we're going to, uh, get into the biblical theology discussion as well. We're gonna expand it back into the Old Testament because we've kind of been doing a lot with the New Testament lately. So we're gonna get into the ancient Near Eastern context of what the image of God is, and we're going to dip into some philosophical and ethical. , discussions that arise from all of that.
, because I think that, , a lot of people have already heard about the ancient Near Eastern context of the image of God. If you haven't, don't worry, we're gonna be getting into that. , but if you have, I hope that this discussion will kind of further the conversation in ways that it's starting to already drip in certain directions of what does this [00:02:00] mean and how do we look at it, especially for our modern day for application. , because a lot of people are getting a little bit more used to biblical theology, but we're still not quite sure how to take that context of the Bible and apply it directly to our lives like. You kind of do that in a different way than you do it with systematic theology sometimes. And in some ways, or maybe that's not the case, but you don't know that that's not the case.
It takes a little bit of practice, it takes, , discussion with other people. So we're kind of gonna get into all of that kind of thing today.
Joshua Sherman: Yeah. And, and I think it's, it's really like one of the things that I love about bringing in both the New Testament context and the ancient Near Eastern context is it helps to really kind of ground us on either side.
So if you think about us kind of wandering in the middle, like a suspension bridge, yeah. We need some really good anchor points, or, or we're gonna be like, it's gonna be really hard to even [00:03:00] walk on that bridge without falling, uh mm-hmm. And. I think the ancient Near Eastern context and, , and the New Testament context, uh, especially with the incarnation, , really help to tether this particular topic so that we're less likely to just bring ideas that are in our heads as modern people to the biblical text and Genesis and say, we know what the image of God is, we know what it means, and then walk away without actually exploring it in enough depth for it to impact our lives.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, definitely. I think that is so true because especially since we only think of the image of God as being mentioned a couple of times in Genesis. So then that hot potato has dropped and we're just gonna move on with our lives as we continue our Bible reading plans or, or however we're going through the Bible.
Joshua Sherman: It gets really easy to just move on very quickly to let's talk about giants, right? And then Babel and then [00:04:00] Abraham and, and then yeah. You know, all of a sudden you're, and, and you, you'll forget that like there, there are so many things and, and this is what the thing that we'll talk about more next time I think is we'll really kind of get into like, here are all the different places that we see connectivity in scripture into this theme.
So that will be the show me the money episode, uh, on, on the connectivity of all this, these things so that you see, it's not just about the end points, but it's literally like through the story, there are ways that, that things that tie into the image are talked about in ways that are meant to illustrate to people, whether people in the story, whether the nation of Israel in the story is, is basically prepared to function properly as, the image of God or whether they're taking steps away from that preparation. So we'll get into that. We're gonna set it aside for now. But, , that one, I'm super excited cuz I mean, it's, you want to talk about grounding this in, in, in [00:05:00] scripture, like it's, it's just pretty much impossible to deny, I think, once you see it.
Uh, and yeah. And so yeah, I'm, I'm excited for that, for sure.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, yeah, definitely. .
we've been talking about embodiment and how that applies to the image and how the image in creation is an ontological thing, right? Mm-hmm. So that's kind of more of a noun kind of a thing. If we're thinking in terms of grammar.
And the, the question then is how does a verb fit into that? Or how do verbs fit into that? How do our actions fit into that? Or do they, do they matter? How does that impact the image of God? Like, because Dr. Dr. Heiser would talk about imaging as a verb, as something that we do, and I don't think at all that he was taking away from the ontological aspect of the image.
Joshua Sherman: Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't think so either. Um, it just, it can [00:06:00] come across that way. Mm-hmm. If what you're listening to is verb language. Mm-hmm. And you're used to this, this very clean divide between the verb and the noun. Um, and, and, and so sometimes I think people can get a little bit, , , confused there.
That's one of the things that I appreciate about some of the pushback that Dr. Carmen Imes has had in her book , and, some of the discussions we've been a part of with the launch for that. Um, that, you know, she's really looking at it more in terms of, of the noun almost exclusively, at least when talking about what the image is, like the core of it, right.
That I mm-hmm. Uh, there did come a point in, in the Q&A when, , when someone was able to, to kind of get, , get kind of connected in, you know, they got it to the point where, where it was like, okay, like, yeah, Dr. Imes is okay with talking about the verbs as long as they really are secondary to the noun, they're, they really are secondary to the thing that can't go away.
Right. , yeah, and, and I [00:07:00] totally agree with, with that. I think that what we're talking about primarily is a state of. Being. Mm-hmm. And it's a state of being, we can't lose. But then there are also things tied into that that are, are doing oriented and there are even different concepts of embodiment that are more about being as a sense of existence and being, as a sense of doing the things that, something that exists that, that we call this, this kind of existence actually does.
Right? Mm-hmm. Those are deeply related. So, um, it, it is very interesting to take even different and I ideas of embodiment into this conversation because I think maybe if we start to flesh out some of that, we can find some of the common ground that is like so close.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I, again, I also really appreciate Carmen Imes pushback in her book, , Being the Image , and, and some of the things she said in interviews connected [00:08:00] to that, how the image really needs to be an ontological thing and not connected to verbs, because the instant that you connect it to verbs, it's similar to how you, , if you connect it to having attributes, then you're gonna have humans that don't currently mm-hmm. Manifest those attributes. Yes. Yeah. And that's a real problem.
Joshua Sherman: It is. And it isn't. Uh, so right When we get into the way that I think it unfolds in scripture talking about function next time, I think we'll start to see that there are places where you really can't read that as a problematic thing. Mm-hmm. Because scripture doesn't see it as problematic and doesn't see it as nullifying.
The, the status of being an image of God and doesn't, um, doesn't see. Yeah. It's, we'll get there too. Um, but yeah. There are also just ways that I think we think about functionality different. So, [00:09:00] um, we're primarily thinking about it in terms of the kind of functionality we have in our lives. Like, I can run up the stairs, maybe that person can't, I can see far that person can't, like that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about the functionality that we see in scripture.
Uh mm-hmm. So, again, we'll kind of get into that as we, as we get into the next episode. Mm-hmm.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Joshua Sherman: Not to make this whole episode a teaser for the next one, but it's gonna be a good one.
Carey Griffel: Well, I think this whole conversation has been great. So if anybody is listening and they haven't listened to the whole thing, feel free to go and do that. Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to build up this case of looking at what the image of God is in an extremely comprehensive way.
Mm-hmm. Because it's something that people just kind of, they check the box and they move on with their lives and. And I think that the image of God is way more than that and, and deserves way more of [00:10:00] our mental bandwidth.
Joshua Sherman: Yeah. I mean, it should be obvious when you have this being one of the things that defines the relationship between God and humanity, that it's probably a big deal, but, but like the amount of emphasis that this gets. Um, and, and, and I think part of the reason for that is, is that you really do have some schools of thought, uh, and some theological circles where the image is kind of seen as lost in the fall. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's kind of a lights out kind of way of looking at things. Mm-hmm. And like, I just don't see that in scripture at all.
I, I don't see a lights out. I see a slide into depravity in Genesis one through 11. I think that Paul mirrors that in, in Romans one, uh, when he's basically talking about the slide of, of the, you know, of, , the Gentiles and then the, the rise of, you know, of Abraham and the people of Israel. And they're all, they're failing it on things too in Roman Sue.
Um, so like, I, I don't see [00:11:00] that lights out and I don't see that drop with the image because you get into, you know, Genesis nine, six, and, and there are things about the, , the mandates. That we have after the flood and, uh, what Noah is told about ethics there ties into the image of God.
So it's like, it's not irrelevant. It's still relevant. What is going on? Anyway, that's, that's a rabbit trail. I always go down whenever I have a chance, but now I'm gonna step back from it.
Carey Griffel: Well, one thing I've been trying to bring forward is in my first episode about the image.
I went through a whole bunch of different systematic ways of looking at it. People wanna try to compartmentalize it into this kind of thing and that kind of thing. And part of what I'm saying is that it's, it's none of those, and it's all of those like, and one of the big things that, people think about when they think about the image of God is, well, does that mean that God has a body?
Joshua Sherman: Oh boy. That's a long conversation. Um, and, [00:12:00] you know, let's think about the conversation partners we can bring into this, right? Because you have LDS theology from your past, , and kind of understanding that and then walking away from it, you have, , the way that Dr.
Heiser talks about this. You have some of the conversation partners he has with Benjamin Summer and the bodies of God. Uh, you also have, um, you know, the understanding of, of, um, looking at the way that, that the ancient Near East understood embodiments of god's and tie bringing that into the conversation.
So you have Catherine McDowell there as well. Like, there's just so many layers to that question that we, I think we have to explore a little bit about what we mean when we even talk about embodiment before we can fully get down that road, before we start finding our shoelaces tied together. Mm-hmm.
Carey Griffel: Right. Uh, yeah. Right. Well, and, and that's the thing is that when we think of embodiment, we tend to think of it as a very simplistic kind of thing. Like, like the way that a kindergartner would think about it, right? Having a body [00:13:00] means that you have a body and you were born and, and , you didn't exist and you do exist.
Mm-hmm. Um, so that's problematic when we talk about God and we, we don't think that God at all began to exist. and God is described as a spirit, you know? So, so part of this conversation about embodiment is genuinely about that physical body aspect mm-hmm. And also the functional aspect of being embodied.
Yes. And how those two things kind of have to be married together first. Yes.
Joshua Sherman: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and so I, I think if we want to talk about the physical side of things, , you know, one of the interesting questions to raise on the ethical side is looking at things like, what do we do with AI, And you start going like, is there a point when AI could be smart enough to be in the image of God, right? Mm-hmm. If your idea of the image is intelligence, if it's [00:14:00] rationality, , we might hit a threshold where the answer would be yes, right? Mm-hmm. If your idea of the image is that God made humanity with a specific identity, value, and purpose to be his children and to represent him in the world, Like, I don't ever see technology being able to supplant that in a meaningful way because it's not what God designed it for.
And it's not like the status that God has given to technology. Right. So, um, I think that's really important. And the other side of that that gets really helpful I think is, is recognizing that there's something about actual biological human embodiment that matters. And it's not just arbitrary, but it matters partly because like Jesus didn't take on a computer body, he didn't take on an angelic body, he didn't become a dog, he became human.
Right? You have the eternal logos, the eternal son of God who took on [00:15:00] flesh, right? This, this idea of the incarnation of God, I think makes embodiment. In, in a physical, some kind of sense, whatever we understand that to be because Jesus' body after the resurrection is a little bit different. Uh, and so that goes beyond even the boundaries of our understanding of physical bodies in some way.
But there is some sense of, of embodiment in that way, has a higher order or higher purpose or higher value than not being embodied in that way. Otherwise God wouldn't have become incarnate like, right. You know, it's, it's not like he was lacking anything, but, but God having purposes and desiring to do things, I think it's part of why he created was because he was like, you know, I, I'm, I'm here.
Yeah. I'm eternally here. I'm, you know, in relationship in the, in the, in, in the Trinitarian relations here. But, but there's something else I want to do because I want to do it, not because I'm lacking, but because I want to do it. Right. And so I'm going to create, and I'm [00:16:00] going to embody myself in creation and that is going to be important and it's going to matter and it's going to be good, right?
Mm-hmm. That is part of that is ultimately I think why this idea of some kind of physical, whatever that means, embodiment matters. if you can't, you can't see it on the recording, but my hands are going crazy as I'm gesturing about this, cuz I'm clearly passionate about it.
Carey Griffel: , in the middle of what you, what you were saying, what occurred to me, is that when people think about embodiment, especially in the context of something like an AI mm-hmm.
The question usually is, well, does AI have a soul? And usually the idea is the soul is the spirit that inhabits our physical bodies. Right. But it seems like that's not how the Bible ever talks about any of this. I I mean, it gives these lists sometimes where, you know, we are body, soul, and spirit. And people take that as [00:17:00] some kind of a, a grocery list of this is what you need to buy in order to make a human.
You need, yeah. Yeah. You need the spirit and you need the soul, and you need the body. And you, you combine all of these things magically and boom. There you have the human
Joshua Sherman: well and Okay. So that, that's almost a very materialistic way of looking at things. Yeah. Even though it's, even though we don't have materialistic ideas about some of them, it's.
These things, these three things are in the same kind of category of thing, and you need all of them to make a human. And I would even just question that presupposition in and of itself because mm-hmm. When you talk about a spirit, you're usually talking more about an ordering principle of something.
When you're talking about a soul, about nefesh, you're talking about life, the relationship between an ordering principle and life isn't the same kind of linear relationship you can just instantly have when you think about the difference between a body and [00:18:00] something that's not a body, like they're not in the same category.
And I don't even really fully understand how to put those two together in a comprehensive way. But, um, I think we just jump into that conversation so quickly we forget a lot of this is talking about stuff that we're, we're still probing in the dark at. Mm-hmm.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. Especially from the perspective of trying to get at it from the ancient perspective.
Mm-hmm. , because I think, I feel like there's probably a massive disconnect between how we are looking at things and how they are looking at things.
Joshua Sherman: Oh, yeah. I mean, an easy example of this, right? Is it the soul that makes us immortal? Is it the soul that makes us, you know, gives us the image of God?
Great. We're not the only creatures with souls according to Genesis, right? They have different kinds of souls, but nephesh is still used to talk about animals. Having [00:19:00] nephesh. So again, it's just not so clean as, as we like to make it where we, we, we can separate out the spiritual and the physical or the soul and the body and, and say, we have these two categories and we understand them fully and we now know all the relationships.
And like, it's just, it doesn't work that way. It is complicated. It is murky. There are mysteries involved in this. Um mm-hmm. And we only really in this life have experienced what it's like to have soul and body together. To have spirit and body together. Like what does that mean? Mm-hmm. What, what happens when those are separated?
We don't, we don't have a direct way of saying, oh, I, I experienced that last Tuesday. I mean, you know, some people do have NDEs and those get interesting, but, but for, for most of us, we don't really have any way to, to, to directly kind of even touch on that. And so it is a lot of just looking at Revelation in scripture and then trying to understand concepts, but [00:20:00] you know, it's probing around in the dark.
Mm-hmm.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. And I, I mean, this is something we can get into a little bit more as we're talking about the ancient Near Eastern context, because I feel like that has a lot to say to this idea of spirit and body being combined, perhaps, perhaps not. Uh, like what does that mean? ,
So we've been talking about being embodied as, as physical bodies, but there's also a sense that you can ha be embodied in a functional sense, right? Mm-hmm. Like what we're doing and how we're doing it and what we're supposed to be doing.
And, uh, so this kind of idea of the noun and the verb, and what does that kind of mean?
Joshua Sherman: Yeah. , , and you know, hat tip to, to Lord of Spirits here for really going through a lot of this in, in depth and completely rewiring the way I understand this. Uh, and then doing it again like just last week.
So now I'm trying to synthesize those two together and going, oh man, this is crazy. But, but yeah, I mean, if you really think about[00:21:00] a more functional understanding of embodiment, this is, this is really kind of how ancient people understood the world. So, , same kind of thing with creation, right? So we think of creation and we generally think, well, that's when God took nothing and made it into something in a physical sense.
Mm-hmm. Right? With matter and atoms and stuff, right? That may be part of what happens at Creation, but it's not really what's talked about in Genesis. It's not in the language there, it's not in the concepts there. , and it's not the way the ancient Near East would've understood it. Uh, so. That kind of idea is that that creation is a sense of taking what's there and ordering it, right?
Putting it into proper function, putting it into proper relationship. There's a sense of justice in that. , the concept of shalom is, is like that the concept of Maat in Egypt is, is like that, right? It's, it's ordering things in the proper relationships. It's, , having them [00:22:00] function in the way that they're supposed to.
And, and that ties into embodiment because embodiment is, is like I, my body is what enables me to do things in the world, right? Mm-hmm. So if I don't have a body, how do I do things in the world? Well, we don't understand that. Maybe either are ways I can, um, but we don't have a window into that. What we understand is that having a body enables me to do things.
And so, , in some way you can look at things and you can say like, I. Yeah, when I'm talking, when I, when I have a, a, a session with ChatGPT and I'm asking questions like Google, like my iPhone, these are all forms, like our cars, are forms of embodiment because they enable us to do things in the world that we couldn't do otherwise.
And it's one of the reasons I think we get so completely discombobulated when these things that we're so used to using in these very useful ways suddenly stop working. It's, it's [00:23:00] psychologically, it's on the same level as like, my arm isn't working anymore, right? Mm-hmm. There are other physiological aspects to my arm not working that are more important.
Um, but like in terms of kind of how we process things and how it resets, how we have to engage with the world, it's, it's very much on the same level. We suddenly find ourselves unable to do the thing and we have to figure it out. And it's so, it's so frustrating. Uh, and, and that is another way of looking at embodiment.
And I think if we bring that into the conversation and we tie that together with a sense of physical embodiment, there's something in the combination of those things that helps us to see things that only having one concept or the other leaves us blind to,
Carey Griffel: yeah. So our cars don't have souls then.
Joshua Sherman: No.
That's awesome. Oh man. Um, Yeah. this idea of [00:24:00] functional embodiment, right. where the physical embodiment is really interesting when we talk about some of these questions, like AI, the functional embodiment gets really interesting when we start talking about the embodiment of gods, because that is where we see some things in scripture pointing to supposed bodies of imposter.
Gods saying they can't do anything, right? Right. You don't see like as much of a denial of, like, that wooden stone doesn't exist. Right in the sense that we phy think of physical existence. No, it's more about like, it can't function properly, it can't walk. You know, the guy that made the idol has to carry it with him, it doesn't walk. Like he literally takes a piece of wood and he cuts it into two pieces and he makes an idol with it in one and he burns a fire with the other one and he is like, this is my God. Like, that's the kind of stuff that we see in scripture that's, that's just completely aiming, you know, both barrels at [00:25:00] idolatry and saying, this doesn't make any sense.
And a lot of that comes in this functional language. Mm-hmm.
Carey Griffel: Which of course, yeah. So fun. So functional being either existing or not existing is it's, that's maybe the wrong category of, of how to think about being functional. Mm-hmm. It's like a, a either you are or you're not. Uh, there are other ways of, of looking at it that are maybe a little bit more holistic.
Mm-hmm. A little more sensible when you're talking about function rather than ontology. Mm-hmm. ,
Joshua Sherman: I think this is actually one of the, so the, uh, about a year and a half ago, um, I did an episode on, um, on the Complete Sinner's Guide talking about communion about the Eucharist and, and kind of how to approach that.
And one of the things I did in pre preparing for that was just, was reading through what Calvin, John Calvin had to say on, , on the Eucharist because he was very much pushing back against, , some of the ideas that Rome [00:26:00] had about this. And one of the arguments that he made. You can see these two different concepts of embodiment.
Like he saw one, he didn't see the other. Right. So his, his argument basically was something like, we know where the, the body of Jesus is. It's at the right hand of God in the throne of heaven, therefore it can't be over here. Mm-hmm. Right. It's a very like, physical, tangible way of understanding embodiment.
And, and I, I looked at that and I was like, you know, whatever anybody thinks about the Eucharist, whatever anybody thinks about Calvin's understanding of it, that's a dumb argument. Right. And it's a dumb argument because you can say the same thing and you can basically say like, we know where the body of Christ is.
It's in the right, the right hand of throne of God in heaven. And therefore there is no reality at all to any idea outside of just metaphor that we are the body of Christ. Right. Like what? Yeah. [00:27:00] Ah, you know, so, um, again, setting aside all the things people disagree about, like that just, it, it's not an argument that holds a lot of water for me.
And part of the reason for that is he was coming at it with a very more, I wanna say modern, but that's a, like who modern is after him, kind of, um, you know, a, a more modernized sense of things than an ancient one. And mm-hmm. Yeah. That's why I think we need to have both of these together, because if we just have a functional idea, then we start getting into some really strange things, talking about questions of AI and embodiment and what, what, when do they become human and all of that.
Um, and if we, if we leave aside, uh, the functional and we only go with the physical, then we get into this kind of weird other way of looking at things. So, um, I really think both is the answer
as I am wont to do
Carey Griffel: Ah, ah, yes. Dichotomies,
Joshua Sherman: of course. What [00:28:00] that raises then is that we're starting to talk about embodiments of gods, right? We're starting to talk about the way that scripture talks about idolatry. And you start having a asked the question, does the image of God connect into this? Mm-hmm. And the answer is yes.
and the reason that we can see that is very direct in the ancient or eastern context. you you even have linguistic connections with this? So when you have, , you know, humanity being created, uh, be tselem elohim that is using a term in Hebrew, that's a cognate to a term in Acadian, uh, tsalmu, which is a word for idol.
And in, uh, in Greek, if you carry this forward, you have , the use of eikon or eikon, , that that is used for both. And so you very much have a sense of there is something about humanity being created in the image of God that has connectivity into idolatry. Somehow that gets really uncomfortable very [00:29:00] quickly.
Mm-hmm. Um, and it's why we've been backing our way into this moment because we want this to make sense and have all of the things we've talked about with people as they come into this part of the conversation to understand what we are saying and what we're not saying, and how all of this fits together.
Carey Griffel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because when people hear the word idol, they go idol. That's bad. Mm-hmm. That's non-functional. That doesn't do anything. Yeah. It's non-functional. And yet it was such a bad thing in the ancient Near East and in the context of the Old Testament, that we have passage after passage after passage of mm-hmm.
God telling the people to stop bowing down to idols.
So why would that be a bad thing if they are literally nothing?
Joshua Sherman: I mean, well, and why would it be a bad thing if there is no, no spiritual reality at all, ever connected to idolatry?
Carey Griffel: Yeah. I mean, it, it, I could see [00:30:00] it being a bad thing in the sense of, Hey, you know what? God's like, come pay attention to me.
Don't pay attention to nonsense over there. Well, okay, yeah, that makes some sort of sense, but it's a very serious claim. Um mm-hmm. Today, in, in, in the Divine Council worldview Facebook group, somebody was like, you guys need to stop idolizing Dr. Heiser. And I'm like, Look, do you know what that means? Like when, when, when people are claiming that you're idolizing something?
Just because you are enjoying it? Just because you're excited about it? Just because you appreciate something or someone that's not the same as what we're talking about. For idolization in the Old Testament, it was a very serious claim. It was this thing that you didn't want to be even remotely associated with and why would that be? [00:31:00] Is it because God doesn't have idols? It's because God just hates idols. He doesn't like pictures, he doesn't like art. That's not why.
Joshua Sherman: Well, and, and you can see this pretty clearly even carrying into the New Testament because of the way that Paul interprets, uh, Deuteronomy 32.
Yeah. And, and first Corinthians 10, and he's, he's saying, you know, like, you don't want to eat at the table, you don't want to eat of, of meat. That's been sacrificed to idols because that is communion with demons. Right. So he's not taking the passages that say, you know, these idols don't do anything in saying, therefore they're irrelevant.
Uh, therefore there's no spiritual reality connected to this at all. Quite the opposite, right? He's saying, you know, the, the spiritual reality that's, that's connected to these things, when that's when that's happening is not good. Don't do it.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. Yeah. And if it's that important that [00:32:00] participating with idols is participating with the evil spirits mm-hmm.
How much more could we say that being the image of God, being the idols of God, ourselves as humanity? Mm-hmm. How much better of a thing that is and how that really makes an impact in the world.
Joshua Sherman: Yeah, for sure. , now of course, one of the things we probably want head off at the pass here , is the question then of if humanity is made in the image of God , and , imaging and idols are connected, does that mean it's okay to worship people, right?
Hmm mm-hmm. No. No, it's not. , and that gets into a longer conversation about what constitutes worship and where, where you might have respect or veneration or honoring and all of that. That's a whole long conversation. I think we'll probably table for now because that is a whole rabbit trail and, uh, We would not finish the episode before we, we even began to scratch the surface there.[00:33:00]
Um, but you know, we're not talking about, you know, we, we need to be offering sacrifices to people in order to honor God. Like, that's just not where we're taking this at all. So if that's where, where you're kind of, uh, starting to worry and wonder, don't, we're not crazy. Um, all of this stuff is, is grounded in scripture.
And, and again, we'll have a show you show you the money episode next time.
Carey Griffel: Yeah,
yeah, for sure. And, and I think that, so what we need to look at is what is an idol and how do they work and what is the point of them? Mm-hmm. , because if we have a solid understanding of all of that, then we'll have a solid understanding of realization that we cannot worship each other. We cannot worship another human being.
Mm-hmm. But it also at the same time, feeds directly into how much we need to honor each other. Yes. And how important it is that we take care of one another.
Joshua Sherman: Mm-hmm. [00:34:00] Yeah. I mean, whatever you think about the idols of other nations, the idea of, of taking someone that God has said, I have made this person to represent me, and then being really disrespectful and terrible to them, kind of seems like a dumb idea.
You know? It just, it's like, yeah, that, you know, the. It feels like that disrespect probably passes on to God on some level, and maybe that's a bad thing. Uh, yeah. So I mean, that's, that's definitely part of it. The other thing that I think is interesting to do is to explore a little bit the, the way that these two are connected and the directionality of that connection.
Um, because I think that can help to answer some questions people might have in their minds too when they say, okay, so what are you saying? ? , so there are kind of two main ways that people tend to look at the connectivity between Israel and the nations around them, , the way that they look at the development of religion [00:35:00] over history. One of them is very much an evolutionary view that basically you could take God out of the equation. Um, and that's not to say that, that you necessarily have to see God and the theory of evolution as opposed to each other in other ways, but, but this particular view really is kind of built around almost more of a, a naturalistic anthropology and saying essentially what happened is people got some crazy ideas and then other people said, that's a fun, crazy idea.
Let me change it up a little bit and call it mine, right? Mm-hmm. That's really kind of the way that a lot of people look at, at the origin of religion. And so if you have that in your head and you say, okay, so there are connection points between Genesis and the Mesopotamian opening of the mouth ceremony.
There are connection points with the ceremonies that Egypt had, um, connected with, with the, the dead. Um, that they actually kind of like have a way of kind of trying to [00:36:00] vivify the, the dead. So be images of God in, in, of the gods, in, in their minds, right? Um, you have these connection points in there. What does that mean?
Right. Well, following this, this evolutionary view, it's basically just find the oldest archeological evidence you can find. That's the oldest society, and so they must have started things and other people that have any similarities must have kind of pulled them from there, or potentially from some kind of common ground if there's some way we can prove that.
Mm-hmm. That's not how I look at this at all. Right. And I'm guessing it's probably not how you look at it all either,
Carey Griffel: right? Yeah, I, I mean, I have had several episodes before where I talk about the different ways that people can see these points of connection, and we tend to prefer the ones that are a little more simplistic and direct answers.
Mm-hmm. They had an idea. Later people had an idea, the later people stole the earlier people's [00:37:00] idea. Right. Um, I mean, and sure, I'm sure that happens, that that happens all the time in humanity and in history. Yeah. But these are really big ideas that, that you don't just find in one place. Mm-hmm. And making those connection points is really dubious in a lot of ways.
Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you look at the differences.
Joshua Sherman: Oh, yes. Which are huge. Yeah. And, and, and that's where I think there, there is a, a better way to look at this and to understand this. And if you start to connect into the, the directionality we see in scripture, then it becomes pretty clear that at the very least this is how the biblical authors understood it.
Um, yeah. I, I think that is a solid point in the favor of this is how we should understand it. Um, you know, so we take it seriously. So, um, and, and that's essentially saying, you know, The reason that there are similarities, uh, when you look at ancient Egyptian, ancient Israel, when you look at [00:38:00] ancient, you know, Canaan in Israel and Mesopotamia in Israel is because they are all connecting into spiritual reality of some kind.
And in, in our understanding of things based on scripture, what they're doing is they're connecting into the heavenly Council of God. Mm-hmm. And there are members of that council that were loyal, and there are members of that council that weren't loyal. Mm-hmm. Funny enough, the ones that weren't loyal still know things about how God operated his heavenly court.
Still know things about spiritual reality, still know things about the nature of, of reality and, and even humanity, um, that we may not understand. We don't have, have a clear way to, to, to, um, to have that same kind of knowledge in our heads. If they have that in their minds, what do you think they're gonna do?
When they start to rebel, when they want to have worship, when they, when they wanna pull people away from loyalty to Yahweh, like the kinds of things you're going to see happen are [00:39:00] imitative. Mm-hmm. And that's exactly what idolatry is. You have literally, well, I want to be embodied too, so I'm gonna have somebody build me a body and then I'm gonna try to have a ceremony that, that actually mimics some of the way the things that we see happening in the genesis narrative.
And if, if we go through the right steps, maybe we can possibly have this, this body vivified, it can become a child of the gods. And now I can walk among the mortals too, in this way. Like that's the kind of thing that we see. Yeah.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. Um, describing that in a different way. Uh, what you're saying I think is that when.
When the heavens and the earth can connect in a certain way, and you have rebellious gods who know how the heavens and the earth can connect in a certain way, yes. They will use that information. Right. [00:40:00]
Joshua Sherman: It's not rocket science.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. Yeah. So if, if this is a real reality that's going on that can happen between heaven and earth mm-hmm.
Then when you have Gods who are rebellious against Yahweh, they're going to take that information and they're going to use it.
Joshua Sherman: Mm-hmm. And, and that's where I think when you start to see the similarities. So you read something like, uh, Catherine McDowell's, um, uh, the Image of God in the Garden of Eden, like mm-hmm.
There's a lot of similarities between Genesis. Yeah. And, and the opening of the mouth ceremony and the, the, the Egyptian ceremony for the, for vivifying, the dead. There's a lot. Yeah. And you look at that and you can go either like, well, did Genesis just steal? Or do you look at that and say, well, If I believe what the Bible is saying here, I have an alternative way to look at that, that I actually think is more compelling.
And that alternative way to look at it is, is basically just saying like [00:41:00] they're tapping into what God was doing and trying to use it in some kind of mechanistic magical sense and, and hoping to, to maybe, possibly achieve through this, this technique, uh, what only the God of the universe could actually do.
Mm-hmm.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. When, when you're starting with the Bible as your true source of reality, that's the explanation that makes the most sense. And it, it's the, it's the explanation that makes the most sense out of everything anyway. Because when you look at the Bible and you look at how the Bible uses this very theme mm-hmm.
From Genesis, through the incarnation of Christ, through the entire narrative of the Bible to Revelation and to our modern age, all of it. Mm-hmm. That's the thing that makes sense.
Joshua Sherman: Yes. Yeah. Well, and, and, and even if we just want to backstop it to the very minimum of the implications you can draw from [00:42:00] this, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, so maybe, maybe we can't get to the point where we can say, well, I know the Bible is true because X, right? Mm-hmm. The very least what you get to is that if you understand scripture this way, you are understanding scripture in a way that's native to scripture. It's going to make a lot more consistent sense with itself that way than if you're bringing your ideas and your modern concepts to it, and then totally misunderstanding it and then going, this doesn't make any sense. There are contradictions everywhere. Like yes, there are contradictions because it's contradictions between your understanding of a lot of these things and what scripture is saying. Mm-hmm. And it's because you're not understanding scripture.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, that's, it's funny when if you, if you take any kind of text or any kind of conversation with another human being and you start telling them what they mean and that's not what they mean, then suddenly you're gonna have all kinds of problems with how that seems like. Yeah. Well, gee, I wonder why that would [00:43:00] be.
Joshua Sherman: Yeah. It's, it's not that they're logically incoherent, it's that you have a logically incoherent understanding of them. Uh, so I mean, it could be both, but, um, for the sake of, of, of analogy here and looking at, at, you know, understanding Confessionally that scripture is true, uh, obviously we're not stretching that part of the analogy into this, but, um, but yeah, I mean, that's the kind of thing we're talking about.
And when you do that, uh, then, then there are a lot of things that just become so, so interesting. In the way that scripture unfolds things. And uh, the way that you see details that pop out at you that say like, hello, like this is a moment when you should be thinking about the image of God. Because it's actually in view here.
It's not lost in Genesis. It's not something that doesn't come around until the New Testament. It's literally through the whole thing, pay attention and you'll start to see these things and, and then you start to have these moments of like, wow, that's, that's crazy. Uh, so, um, I don't know if we [00:44:00] wanna read a couple, like one or two of the passages that we have, uh, that, uh, look at idolatry in, um, and, and the ineffectiveness as though this is critiquing the functionality of them, if you will.
Mm-hmm. Let's, let's, let's do that. Um, and then maybe what we can also do is, is, uh, use one that ties in and I'll have to find it, but, um, you also have this idea that people that worship idols become like them. Mm-hmm. Right. So if you want to be a functioning, a properly functioning image, don't do these things because you'll become like a non-functioning image.
Like, oh, that makes so much sense. So, , so yeah. So you have, , Isaiah 44, 6, uh, this is what Yahweh says, Israel's king and redeemer of the Lord Almighty. I am the first and I'm the last. Apart from me, there is no God. All right. So is this a question about whether there's [00:45:00] any other spiritual reality that might claim to be a God and might exercise some limited sense of power in, in creation, subservient ultimately to the creator?
No. Um, is this a talking about the fact that there's no uncomfortable to the creator? Yes. Right. Who then is like me, let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people and what is yet to come. Yes. Let them foretell what will come. Do not trumble.
Do not be afraid. Did I not pro proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No. There is no other rock. I know not one. And then it goes on. And this is where you get again, that kind of connectivity into that functional and non-functional, all who make idols are nothing.
And the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind. They are ignorant to their own shame, who shapes a God and cast an idol which can profit nothing. [00:46:00] People who do that will be put to shame. Such craftsmen are only human beings. Let them all come together and take their stand. They will be brought down to terror and to shame. Uh, and it keeps going, right? Uh, so that idea about , someone making a fire and then using another part of the wood to make a God, that's also an Isaiah. 44 people praying to it and nothing happening, right? So you have all of this kind of polemic aimed at idolatry here, and also just aimed at the fact that they can't accomplish what they're designed for and you start to go, oh, like.
In a way, what that's saying is that these imitating gods have bodies that don't function properly.
If we then carry that forward into the New Testament, into the incarnation, into the body of Christ, right. [00:47:00] I think we see a very direct contrast there. Mm-hmm. That gets very interesting because it's pretty hard to argue that Jesus was a somehow suboptimally functioning or non-functioning body in the incarnation.
Like, no, he did it perfectly. Mm-hmm. He did it exactly the way that, that the humanity was designed to image God, to represent God, to embody God in the world, right? Mm-hmm. Because he was God. So, I mean, that helps,
Carey Griffel: right? Yeah. And the fact that, I mean, this is what fundamentally has changed the world.
Suddenly because we have Christ in us, we are the body of Christ, suddenly we are now able to actually exercise that function that we were supposed to exercise from the beginning.
Joshua Sherman: Mm-hmm. [00:48:00] And, and, and that's a contrast. Uh, we were drawing earlier in, in, in conversation, uh, between how the ancient Near East understood ethics and understood the value of people and how we understand that now, and why is that, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, so in the ancient Near East, you know who, who was an image of God? Who was a God? Well, it might be the king, it might be Pharaoh. There weren't very many people that fit that description, right. And yet Genesis is like, no, no, it's everybody. Like you wanna talk about establishing a contrast there, that, that has ethical implications.
Everybody is, is made in the image of God. What do you do with that? Like that's a bomb dropped in the middle of the ancient, near eastern concept of, of, of humanity and the value of humanity and the lack of value. Like it's, it's just, it's a completely different paradigm.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. [00:49:00] Completely different.
And , it's really easy to look at the parallels and, and criticize things and say, oh well we're just stealing or we're just, uh, whatever else. But it's the differences that are so glaringly obvious when you read the Bible and you read any other ancient Near Eastern text. Mm-hmm.
Which shows this kind of parallel.
Joshua Sherman: Yeah. And, and I think it's, it's not just the differences in the claims, but it's the difference in the implications and in the impact and what we see in history.
Carey Griffel: Right? Like what actually gets played out. Mm-hmm. some circles of Christianity do take this idea that they, they act like nothing has changed since Christ came. They act like we're just the same as we always have been. We're still in the fallen world, and we're still all, you know, they, they really emphasize these things and I mean, there's some truth to all of that, right?
That mm-hmm. [00:50:00] I'm not denying that we still die. I'm not denying that we still sin. I'm not denying any of those things at all. But there is a very distinctive change from before Christ to after Christ. Mm-hmm. And we ought to take that a little bit seriously, I think like, yeah. And, and acknowledge that that's the case.
And, and really, because if, if you can't acknowledge that, then how do you really live into that to the full extent that you are capable of doing, you know? Yeah.
Joshua Sherman: Uh, well, and, and that, that kind of realization I think is what really hit Tom Holland when, and he was looking at this stuff and, and he ended up basically, uh, being agnostic, going and looking at, at this and, and actually becoming a Christian because, and, and he wrote a book called Dominion where he talks about this, but it is basically looking at it and saying like, you know, he didn't go back as far the, as the ancient Near East, but that same kind of contrast we see with Israel and the ancient Near East is there, right?
And you bring it forward into the Roman Empire and [00:51:00] it's like, you know, are you a Caesar or a general, or a senator, or are you a slave? Uh, are you like, Your status is set by some kind of set, uh, hierarchy in society and how you're just arbitrarily defined either by, you know, who you were born to or by, by, um, what great deeds you did or, or, you know, whatever else it is.
You have no default status. Right? Uh, and so, I mean, outside of maybe okay, if you're born a Roman citizen, like there's some of that too, but like a lot of people weren't. And, and so they just, nobody cared about them. And, and, and so you see babies just, and even Roman babies, like, it's like, well, I don't, I don't want a girl.
I'm just gonna leave, leave her out in the woods and, and, uh, that's fine. You know? She'll be fine. Yeah. We'll just forget about her because I, I don't want a girl. It's too complicated. Whatever, you know, Christianity was famous for pushing back against that, that kind of a practice. They were famous for siding [00:52:00] with widows and orphans and slaves.
They were famous for this kind of operation of justice. Right? Mm-hmm. Which you, you want to start tying into idolatry? Go read Psalm 82 and, and, and look at it and, and see what, what God does when he stands up in the Divine council and says in a, you are our gods. You are sons of the most high. All of you. You will die like men. And why is that? Because they were not actually exercising justice, right? Mm-hmm. The, the, the paradigm, like there's a way in which it really hasn't changed because that kind of, of, of, of ethic, that kind of morality, that kind of thing that we're supposed to follow because God is constant and consistent, was there in the Old Testament Yeah. All, all along. But we also then see the way that these concepts and their exposure in society starts to just completely blow apart the way that people understood things [00:53:00] in a way where it can't maintain, it can't be the same anymore.
Carey Griffel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and the absolute explosion, the growth of the body of Christ through the dissemination of the gospel message.
Mm-hmm. I mean, , that's something that, like, if you're not thinking about that and you're not thinking about the impact of that and how that plays into our lives today and your life, then what are you even doing as a Christian? And, and I don't mean that, you know, you have to go and stand out with a sign on the street corner and evangelize people.
I mean, this whole idea of being the embodied image means that as you're living your life as a Christian, this is what you're doing. If you're aware of that, you can kind of help that along consciously. Right.
Joshua Sherman: Oh, well, and, and, and this is where we also get into, into a lot of fun with the differences, because what you [00:54:00] have in. Idolatry in the ancient Near East with images of gods. You had wooden stone. They were usually covered in gold. They were meant to be massive. They were meant to be heroic. Right? Um, they were meant to be scary.
You know, these ideas of, you know, how many arms does that one have? You know, this one is a hybrid of a bull and whatever. Like all of this is meant to kind of portray to you something about mm-hmm. The God that's being worshiped there. And you kind of see some of the same things. And this was really cool.
And, uh, the last Naked Bible podcast, uh, Tim Mackie was talking about, uh, in whatever the next chapter was in, in First Samuel. Um, and he is talking about the contrast between Saul and David. Right. And Saul being tall like a giant, right? And this idea that like the Nephilim, the giants were, were kind of understood in a way to be like, this is what our gods are Like in the ancient world, our gods are powerful, they're big, they can [00:55:00] do mighty things, they can take what they want, right?
And then you contrast that with literally the creator of everything on a cross in self-giving love, then conquering death. And then all of a sudden you have these crazy people that talk about resurrection and believe it so much that they will go to their death for this. That they will go to their death for the sake of other people in self-giving love.
And like, what the heck changed? Because here you have the perfect image of God revealed to the world. And I, I think when you see that moment in history, that's when. Idolatry starts to fade away even when it takes a long time to happen, because the, that living sense of, of people that are willing to give of themselves because of what Jesus did is far more compelling than a statue.[00:56:00]
Mm-hmm. It's a living image of the living God instead of,
and I was silent there literally to mean nothing very, very intentionally.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. I mean, there's a reason that we still look to the martyrs as evidence of the reality of what happened with Christ. Mm-hmm. I mean, that's not a small thing. People think, oh, well, you know, maybe they were mistaken. Maybe they, whatever.
But you know what, what was their impact? What happened because they lived and they died.
Joshua Sherman: Yeah. You literally had like the toppling of a nation of an empire. Uh, yeah. And to the point where by the time you get around to Constantine, all of a sudden it's like, yeah, like all of this idol worship, just, you know, in a lot of ways that are already started to go by the wayside and [00:57:00] they were trying to figure out how to even finance temples to so many gods. Mm-hmm. Uh, but then, you know, of course you also have the strong encouragement to be like, no. Like this is, this is the direction we're going. And, and you know, Constantine was, um, pretty strong and not, um, providing further funding for, for certain religious activities and things like that.
And all of a sudden it's like in a society where you used to think your emperor was a god. Hmm. Now you have an emperor pointing to the one true god. Like what happened? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Carey Griffel: most of the time when something that big happens, it's because of a war or an invasion or a plague or all of these bad things that happen, but mm-hmm. I mean, not that this wasn't a bad thing, but you, you know what I mean? It's like this, there's some massive thing that people don't really have personal [00:58:00] control over, and yet here we have God incarnate who came and died, and this is the result of that.
After he has resurrected, after he has risen to reign over all creation and, and be our king that we can have allegiance to. Suddenly all of these other smaller things just start fading away. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah.
Joshua Sherman: And, and, and that becomes that real sense of what does it mean to be in the image of God, what does it mean to be the image of God?
Who is God? How do you represent him the most clearly that you can to humanity, that has run away from God, that has, has worshiped idols, that has done everything they can to bring injustice in the world. How do you show that? You show it on the cross and then you show it in the resurrection and you say like,[00:59:00] I was willing to give that and I gave it all.
and also, you can't keep me down. You know, like that's who God is, right? He's the God who can bring life out of death and, and, and yet he's also the God who's willing to face death for us. That combination of things like you want to talk about what it means to image God and who God is, that is the representation I think we're supposed to take to the bank.
Carey Griffel: That was amazing. I think we'll just stop right there for this episode. Um, there's a whole lot more that we need to be talking about, but there's, this is going to play right into what we're we want to do when we are going through the Bible, to actually look at where we see the image a little more closely, where we see idols and how all of those things kind of play out in the flow of scripture.
Um, so yeah. Thanks so much again for joining me with this conversation, Joshua. [01:00:00]
Joshua Sherman: Absolutely.
Carey Griffel: All right, wrapping this all up, I want to thank everyone for listening, I hope that you have been enjoying this imaging series. I know that I have, I know that I have learned a lot form it just in thinking about it and talking about it and having conversations and even in interacting with some of you in my facebook discussion group, so thank you guys for that, and if you want to join me there, please feel free. If anybody has any questions regarding the image of God series, I'd love to hear them. We do want to do a Q&A episode at the end, so if you want to message them to me on facebook or email them to me at
[email protected], I would love to hear those.
I will be putting into the show notes several resources, including some of the books mentioned. Super highly recommend Carmen Imes' new book coming out, which is Being God's Image. If you enjoyed this, I'd appreciate it if you shared it with others. I'd appreciate it, also, if you guys commented on my Youtube channel or rated my podcast wherever you listen. I hope to engage with a lot of you and thanks, also, to Wintergatan for the music. Until next time, I hope you guys have a blessed week.
