Shownotes
Welcome to Day 1486 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Being An Imager Of God – Worldview Wednesday
Wisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1486 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. This week, on our Worldview Wednesday episode, we will continue our study based on a course I recently completed taught by Dr. Michael Heiser. Our study is titled “Sons and Daughters of God: The Believer’s Identity, Calling, and Destiny” Throughout this multi-week course, we will demonstrate that, in the Old Testament, “sons of God” and “holy ones” refers to supernatural beings whose Father is God and who work with God to carry out His will and that this divine family was present before humanity. By fully engaging with biblical texts such as Psalm 82; Psalm 89, and Deuteronomy 32:8–9, our study will show that this divine family functions as a template for God’s human family. God desires of humans, as His imagers, to participate in His council. This study addresses issues such as polytheism, the nature of the (little ‘g’) “gods,” and the uniqueness of Yahweh. Within this study, we will apply insights to the New Testament texts and shows how the metaphor of being in God’s family informs our sense of identity and mission as believers.
Being An Imager Of God
· Segment 22: Plurality Language
Introduction
The question before us is: How does the plural language of Genesis 1:26 link God and humankind and the members of the heavenly host, the members of God’s council, as it were, together? Let me read that verse again as we begin today. Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” This is going to take a bit of abstract thinking for us. The plurality is important. To understand why it’s important, though, we need to understand specifically the concept of the image of God, or as you’ll hear me say, “the concept of imaging God.”
Representation
I will front-load a little bit of the perspective that we’ll be getting into here. It’s going to have something to do with representing God. We represent God in a specific way in our realm, the earthly realm, and spiritual beings represent God in their realm in whatever way God wants them to as well.
So upfront, let’s try to keep the idea of representation in mind, and that’s going to be integral to this whole concept of the image of God. When we think about this and, typically, when people are taught about the image of God, several things are overlooked or assumed, and we’re going to be careful not to do that.
Characteristics of the Image of God
The image of God in and of itself has certain characteristics in biblical thinking, biblical texts, biblical theology. That is that men and women possess it equally. It is the thing (whatever it is) that distinguishes humankind from all other earthly creatures. It is somehow linked to God in some way—the person, the character, the nature of God in some way. It’s also, and this is a little less easy to spot, the image of God is also either possessed or not. That is, there is no hint in the text that you get this thing called “made in the image of God”—if that’s even the right way to talk about it—there is no indication that the image of God is incrementally bestowed on humans or partially bestowed. You either have it, or you don’t. It’s also passed on generationally. We learn this from Genesis 5, where the same language of Genesis 1 is used when Adam and Eve have offspring. The same language there is used intentionally, again, to connect those two passages.
So something is going on here that even when the original people that Genesis has in view (Adam and Eve), that even people who come in after them are sort of in the train; they are on the bus; they are attached to this image idea, whatever it is. So equal possession, distinct from all earthly creatures, some link to God, it’s not incremental or partial, and again, we have this generational thing going on.
Now, there have been a lot of candidates for explaining the image of God. There have been lots of proposals for what it is. I will begin our discussion on this concept by going over some explanations that refer to humans being “made in the image of God.” What are some of the proposals that fail this set of characteristics that we’ve just gone through? What doesn’t work?
· Segment 23: What the Image Is Not
Introduction
We just discussed some of the necessary characteristics of the image of God, at least according to the way the Bible describes it. Let me ask the question, “Well, what proposals for understanding where the image concept fails (at least a couple of those characteristics)?” Here is a listing; these are things that you would see in theology books or commentaries: proposals to understand what the image is. I’m going to suggest to you that all of them fail.
Failed Suggestions
For instance, consciousness, just the existence of human consciousness, is somehow proposed as being this thing we call the “image of God.” There is self-awareness or sentience. There is intelligence or rationality, emotions, the idea of possessing an inner soul/spirit. There is conscience, the sense of right and wrong.
There is the ability to communicate. All of these things are very common in literature that you would read in biblical study and theology for understanding the image of God. Here I am saying none of this work, which, of course, begs the question: Well, why? Why would you reach that conclusion?
Reasons for Failure
There are fundamentally several reasons why I would say that. First, none of those things can be said to be present equally among all human beings. In other words, there is something on that list that’s going to fail that test. It’s not going to be an airtight way of looking at the image because, again, some of the essential characteristics are just going to fail.
If something can’t be present equally among all human beings, we can cross that one off the list. There is also the problem that a number of these things cannot be said to be present actually among all human beings. Again, that is a point, a criterion, for the image. You either have it, or you don’t.
Third, some items on that list are not unique to humankind; you can find them in the animal kingdom. Again, we said one of the tests, one of the characteristics of what the image is, is that it has to distinguish humanity from the rest of the created, earthly world.
Image Not Gained Incrementally
So again, if we look at the list—consciousness, sentience, intelligence, emotions, the soul/spirit, sense of right and wrong in the conscience, and communication—we have a fundamental problem with them, with all of them, except maybe the soul if you want to isolate that. We’ll look at that more in a few moments. All of these other things extend from brain function; they are dependent on a bodily element: the brain.
In other words, some quality is connected to the brain in some way. So, why is that a problem? Well, if we want to affirm the sanctity of human life from its very beginning, the moment of conception, the thing that occupies space in a woman’s womb, after conception, if it doesn’t have a brain, then it can’t be in the image of God. Because if the answer to what the image of God is has something to do with brain function, we’ve just defined it out of existence.
This is a problem because there is no sense that humans either get or become the image incrementally; they are just created that way. The life form we know as human life has this thing called “the image of God.”
In Scripture, there is no sense that you get the image of God in stages. If you’re going to define it as anything that links itself to the bodily organ we know as the brain, we have a real problem. What you have is: before you have brain function, and even full brain function, you have a partial human or something that isn’t quite human, isn’t quite in the image yet. That’s a profound ethical problem, theological problem, which Dr. Heiser wrote about in the Unseen Realm.
Image Not the Soul
For our purposes here, we don’t need to dwell on the ethical ramifications of that issue. We’re talking about: How might we define this a little bit better? The one outlier here is the soul, the soul/spirit, the inner part, if you will, of a human being. Maybe that is what makes humanity unique; perhaps that is the thing called “the image.” If we go with biblical terminology, if we go with biblical language, we can’t even say that either.[1] I don’t want to leave you hanging on the subject matter of what it means to be made in the image of God, but we will continue with this subject next Worldview Wednesday. Be sure to join us as we learn important concepts of being God’s image-bearers.
That will finish our study for this week’s Worldview Wednesday. Next week we will continue covering “Human Family As Imagers.” Tomorrow we will enjoy our 3-minute Humor nugget that will provide you with a bit of cheer, which will help you to lighten up and live a rich and satisfying life. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along with us tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’
If you would like to listen to any of our past 1485 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.
Thank you so much for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most of all, your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.
As we take this Trek together, let us always:
- Live Abundantly (Fully)
- Love Unconditionally
- Listen Intentionally
- Learn Continuously
- Lend to others Generously
- Lead with Integrity
- Leave a Living Legacy Each Day
I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you Tomorrow!
[1] Heiser, M. S. (2019). Sons and Daughters of God: The Believer’s Identity, Calling, and Destiny. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.