Thinking about the Image of God: A Conversation with Carmen Joy Imes

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I am excited to introduce you all to Carmen Joy Iams. She is associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University out in California, and she's also the author of a book, Bearing God's Name, Why Sinai Still Matters. She edited Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends, and the book we're going to be talking about today, she also authored Being God's Image, Why Creation Still Mattered, and it's published by InterVarsity Press. And, Dr. Iams, very nice to have you on the show. So thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, James. Yeah, it's good to be here. Absolutely. Hey, I kind of like to start out the show just asking people to tell a little bit about their story, give folks a little bit of context about your faith background and sort of how you came into theological studies at all. So if you wouldn't mind just sharing that. Well, I grew up in the church and I was always really interested in what was happening on a Sunday in Sunday school and sermons. I was pretty dialed in as a kid. I never went through a real period of backsliding or rebellion or even a deep doubt and questioning. I would say my faith has deepened and been enriched over the years. And I have, you know, set things aside that I realized, okay, that wasn't a good understanding of it, but I haven't gone through a crisis of faith where I came to doubt the scriptures. And so that just propelled me. I felt called to missions when I was quite young. And when I met my husband in Bible college, we began the journey of trying to follow God obediently into serving him wherever he would place us. So we lived in the Philippines for two and a half years with SIM. And then God took us back to North Carolina where we served in our missions headquarters and I started working on my master's degree. And then we moved to Wheaton for me to do my PhD and then back to Oregon to be near family while I finished. And then I got my first teaching job in Canada at Prairie College and I've been here at Biola for three years. So we've moved a lot. It's been an adventure. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. My wife and I, we've moved nine times in our 20 some year marriage. And so we get that. We're up to 15 in 26 years. Oh man, that's impressive. Yeah. We're hoping to stick around Biola for a while. Maybe I should put you on the spot. That is the plan. That is the plan. This was the first place we arrived where we actually both had the sense that we didn't have any intention of moving again. Like this is it. You know, everywhere else felt like it might be temporary. So, yeah, it's a good feeling. And what did you do your PhD on at Wheaton? Just out of curiosity. I did my focus on Old Testament biblical theology and my project was on the command not to take the Lord's name in vain. So you mentioned my book Bearing God's Name, why Sinai still matters. And that was, that grew out of my dissertation. It isn't the dissertation, but I took what I learned in the dissertation and tried to re-communicate it for a broader audience. So it's in a nutshell, I argue that we've been misunderstanding the command not to take the Lord's name in vain and that it's not about policing the way we say God's name. It's not about speech or taking oaths as people often think. It's not using God's name as a swear word, but actually that at Sinai, God chose Israel as his people and he in effect placed his name on them to claim them as his own. And so the command is telling them not to misrepresent him, not to bear his name or carry his name in vain. It was a really fun project and I've been talking about it ever since and I'm not tired of it yet. Why I noticed it, you talk about the, and I'll kind of jump into being God's image a little bit with that background of not misrepresenting God as being that sort of meaning of the command, don't take the Lord's name in vain. Because I noticed in the book, when I was reading through being God's image, when you hit Genesis 11 and 12, which for the folks who aren't familiar is the Tower of Babel story in chapter 11, and then in chapter 12, that's going to transition over into the call of Abram. And you reference sort of Abraham having or bearing God's name in that context and this sort of shift and maybe solution, if I'm saying that right. Can you just talk a little bit about the movement from that primordial history where we have the Tower of Babel problem and then into Abram? Sure. Yeah, this kind of happened right away when the book came out in 2019, end of 2019. People were excited about this idea that God's people represent him among the nations. It's a representative role. And many people asked, hey, isn't that like being God's image or being made in God's image? Isn't that also a representative role? And aren't they kind of the same thing? And I realized that I needed to do the work to kind of disentangle the two ideas from each other because although they are similar in some ways, they're different in scope. I would argue that every human being is the image of God and that being the image of God is our human identity and that it expresses itself or is meant to express itself in a kind of representative role over creation where we're stewarding creation, ruling creation on God's behalf. But that doesn't go so well in the first 11 chapters of the Bible. There's a downward spiral of violence and rebellion until we get to chapter 11 where the Tower of Babel is being built. And I don't know, maybe James, you know, I don't know why it's translated Babel instead of Babylon because it's the same word translated elsewhere Babylon. So Babylon is being built and it has a tower that reaches the heavens. And this is not so that the people can get up to heaven, but I would argue so that they can facilitate the gods coming down and dwelling among them. And then Yahweh comes down and says, this is not the project I had in mind and he scatters everybody to the ends of the earth. And it's out of that scattering that he calls Abram from that general vicinity and says, I want to take you to a new place and I want to start over with you. He doesn't choose Abraham because Abraham is so much better than everybody else or he only cares about Abraham and his family, but because his plan is to bless all nations through Abraham's family. And so there is this new phase of, you could call it a new level maybe of election where God first chooses all humans to represent him to creation. And then he chooses Abraham's family to represent him to all the rest of the human population because there's been this disconnect and people need to be reconciled to God and Abraham's family is going to be the tool or the means by which God does that. So if I, maybe if I try to summarize this just so I have a clear, God's image is on everybody. That seems pretty clear. Like from creation, we're all created in God's image and we can talk a little bit about more about that and what happens after the fall and what happens to that image and all that kind of good stuff. But then this idea of bearing the name is almost like a special claim that God puts on the people that is a subset really of humanity that is very much determined by God, not intrinsic to humanity. Would that be fair to, fair to say? That's very fair. Yep. Yeah. So God chooses Abraham and his family. They become the nation of Israel. And the point of being Israel, you know, and this gets back to bearing God's name, Israel bears God's name and that's why they're given the law. The law is not the means by which they get saved. God selects them first and then he gives them the law as a means of living out their mission as his representatives. This is the means by which they're going to show the world what God is like and put his character on display. And so that eventual project brings us to, if we fast forward, brings us to the New Testament where Jesus bears God's name really well and does it the way it was intended. And he also models for us what it means and what it should look like to live as God's image. And so he ties those two threads back together again. And would you say that Israel was also supposed to tie those together? I mean, I noticed that when you get into the New Testament, I know we're kind of jumping around in the book, but it's just the way my mind works. So so when you mentioned that Jesus sort of ties those two things together, you also talk about Jesus as sort of the fulfillment of what it's supposed to be, what it's supposed to look like to be human, that we shouldn't just tie the image of God or Jesus being the image of God to his deity, but we need to really root that in his humanity. And so is there a sense in which you see Israel was supposed to sort of fulfill this role and with the law there to there to sort of exercise that wisdom and living before the Lord and obeying him. And it's just it's impossible. And so in that way, they're supposed to demonstrate to the.

Images may be what it looks like to be the image of God because they've been claimed and bear that name. Am I putting those things together somewhat right? Yeah, the only thing I quibble with is your statement that it's impossible. I think were you saying it was impossible to keep the law? It was, yeah, or they didn't at least. Maybe that's the best way to say it. Okay, they didn't. For sure, we got that. We got that. That would be the fair way to do it, yeah. I think there are faithful Israelites, and I don't think the law is unkeepable, and I'm in the minority here, I'm sure, but I actually don't think the point of the law was to show them all what miserable failures they were. I think the law was God's gracious invitation to a people redeemed from slavery, and it was actually spelling out very clearly how to please God and how to demonstrate his character to a watching world, and it's not asking them to do things that are, you know, way out of reach. Deuteronomy talks about it not being way up in the heavens that we can't get to it. So I think it's actually keepable. They don't, as a whole, keep the law, and so there's judgment, there's eventually exile. Then Jesus comes and models what it looks like to keep the law. And I would look at, since we're talking about this, I would say Jeremiah 31, which introduces the idea of the new covenant, I would translate that the renewed covenant. I don't think we've scrapped what happened at Sinai and started over, but rather, if you read Jeremiah 31 carefully, he's saying that what's new about it is, well, they broke that one, and now God is going to write the Torah on your hearts, and he even uses the word Torah. So it doesn't seem to me like we're getting rid of Torah and trying a plan B, but that it's an internalization of the Torah. By the power of the Spirit, they'll be enabled to live faithfully. Yeah, and I think we see some, I agree with that. I think you see something very similar in Ezekiel 36, you know, where the problem, or the problem that God is going to solve is the stone hearts of the people. Yes, they have profaned his name among the nations. They're the ones who bear his name, and so then by not obeying the law, it profanes God's name. So their behavior diminishes his reputation. God's reputation is at stake. It's tied to the way his people live. Yeah. Yeah. And he's going to, you know, I mean, writing that law on their hearts, giving them hearts of flesh, you know, putting his Spirit within them. The problem he's really solving, and I think it says it in this context, I'm doing it from memory, but so that you will keep my laws and my commandments and my statutes. So there's this ongoing sense in which the law is very much something that God still wants people to keep. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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And as I was growing up, that seemed like a funny thing to say. Like, isn't God's name already holy? Why are we praying for it to be holy? And I think Jesus is reflecting on Ezekiel 36, recognizing that the sanctity of God's name is compromised when his people do not live obediently. And by praying, hallowed be thy name, he is actually committing himself to covenant faithfulness because he understands that God's name will be made holy by the way that he lives. Yeah, that's great. No, I think that's amazing. Let me kind of pivot us back a little bit. I want to start with beginning in God's image. You know, we're going to talk about God's image. It seems like creation is fairly important to all this, and I think it will sort of draw all the strands together. One of the things you start with is, and I think this is something that's been sort of growing in popularity, but there's still a lot of people who don't fully see it all the time, which is the connections between the creation and the temple and then how that informs the language of the image, the Salem, in that context. So can you talk through that just a little bit? Yeah, I think we don't see it. You're right, because we don't live in a context in which we are thinking about sacred space or thinking about temples. But in the ancient world, every temple was styled as a garden. I just went to Egypt in January. I visited lots of temples, and I was so struck by how the pillars in every temple are papyrus plants or lotus plants. Like, they're styled as plants, and the ceilings of every temple are decorated, if the ceiling is surviving, it's decorated with stars like a night sky. And there's all kinds of other garden imagery around in the temples. And similarly in Israel's temple, there's garden imagery. We have a lampstand shaped like a tree. We have the curtains are like blue with gold thread in it sparkling in the light of the lampstand. There are cherubim guarding the way to the holy place, which is what we have in Genesis 3 when God puts cherubim to guard the way to the tree of life. So these are expectations. If we were ancient Israelites and we heard Genesis 1 and 2 being recounted to us, we would have understood it to mean that God was setting up his sacred space, that the cosmos was his temple, and that he was bringing order to it. And then when he rests on the seventh day, that's him resting on his throne, presiding over that sacred space. And so when we think about, it's interesting to me, because we haven't fully grasped this issue of sacred space. So whenever I've taught Old Testament theology in the past and I get to this issue of sacred space, students are kind of like, what? Why would we ever even think about space and sin? Like that conception, that notion of it. But I think as we draw into the New Testament, we see a lot of this too. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Our lives would be living sacrifices. We've got cultic imagery within the New Testament that is very much informed by this sort of sacred space understanding. So maybe just give people a little bit of a sense of what this sacred space is, how you would describe it to somebody who maybe is just introducing, you're introducing this to them the first time. And we even have in the New Testament Jesus, John telling us that Jesus came and tabernacled among us, which is using that imagery of sacred space for the incarnation. So yeah, I would say that from an ancient Near Eastern perspective, the most lofty goal that a society could have would be for the gods to come and dwell in their midst. Like we talked about the Tower of Babel already. For a divine being to descend from the heavens and take up residence in the temple that we have built is a way of indicating the sort of divine stamp of approval on our empire and a protective presence so that we're inviolable to our enemies. And so in Genesis 1, when God is creating the world, he's bringing order to the cosmos and he's setting up things and putting them where they go. And then in Genesis 2, when he's walking with the first humans in this garden, there is a sense in which God has come down and he's overseeing the place where the humans live. They have the privilege of living in proximity to the divine presence and therefore they have his protection. And it is just a really powerful image once we see it. One example where we can see this in chapter 1 is in verse 14, And God said, Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years. From the very beginning, even the lights in the sky exist in order to let us know when the cultic festivals are supposed to be observed. So there's already temple-centered, worship-centered language going on in chapter 1 before there are people, which I think is really striking. And so when we think about the image, I think you mentioned in the book, you know, that when people thought about images or idols in the ancient Near East, and I want to be careful not to just collapse those two, and I'll let you clarify that. But when we think about images, we're usually thinking about something that was fairly physical, right? They're normally, you know, when you made an idol, a physical idol, you'd hammer out some sort of metal on top of it.

All of them, so they were reflective. And you'd place them in some sort of a sacred spot, not all of them necessarily, there were some in homes and those kind of things. But the ones in the temple would be placed in there to sort of reflect the light of the gods. Am I getting that generally correct? Yes. Yeah, I mean, this is what's so interesting about the creation of humanity and how the text tells us that God makes humans as his image. Because we think of an image maybe of what we see when we look in the mirror, a sort of reflection that looks like us. Or we think of our public image that we curate, and that's the sort of intangible thing. What comes to people's mind when they hear Carmen Imes or James Spencer? Like, what is our image? But as you said, in the ancient world, an image or tzelem was a very concrete three-dimensional object, and it was used for worship. The idol was what was put in the most holy place of the temple in order to represent the presence of the deity. So it would give this sort of authorized representation of the deity in the holy place. And so that's probably the strongest indication we have in Genesis 1 that what we're looking at is a temple text. Because it ends with the creation of an image, and images go in temples. So we need to think three-dimensionally and then recognize that in the ancient world, when they made an image, the craftsman who made it would then put it through a special ceremony to animate it and to make it basically come alive. And in Egypt, they have ceremonies related to this, and in Mesopotamia, they have similar ceremonies. And there are a lot of connections between those ceremonies and what we see in Genesis 2, where God breathes life into Adam's nostrils and he becomes a living being. This is the animation of the image so that Adam can now take up residence in the garden where God has brought order, and so he's able to rule on God's behalf. Now, Adam doesn't receive worship. An idol doesn't receive worship as much as it reflects worship or deflects it to the deity that it represents. And so this is not saying that really what's true is that every one of us is a little God and we can worship each other. And sometimes people go there with it. They're like, oh, look, this is an idol, so now we worship each other. No, no, no. An idol is meant to point to the true deity, and in this case, Yahweh made all things. He appointed humans as his representatives. And so every human being, whether they realize it or not, has the potential or the job of pointing to the creator God. Well, that's one of the things that when I was reading through your book and as I've kind of thought through this issue in the past, we often talk about it in terms of the image of God instilling within a person a dignity, right? We see that. I mean, Genesis 9 talks a little bit about that, where these people are made in God's image and so you shouldn't kill them, all those kind of ideas. And so there is a dignity associated with the image of God. But I think oftentimes what we miss in sort of our common conversations about this, particularly in non-Christian realms, perhaps, is the responsibility that comes along with being made in the image of God. And I think just adding that little wrinkle in, it sort of changes then how we interact with other people. So that respecting dignity doesn't mean that I allow you to continue being a distorted image or offer a distorted image of God. We're constantly trying to conform you back to an image, really now into the image of Christ, is what we want people to do. Yeah, I think there is a sense of elevation with humans, that we are set above creation as God's image, though there is an enhancement of our dignity. But I think what we often fail to realize is this is also a cap on us. Like, we are not God, we are God's image, which means we are not the center of the universe. It doesn't revolve around us. We do not define good and evil. We are on assignment. We are God's ambassadors. And if a king sends an ambassador or a president sends an ambassador to another country, that ambassador does not have the freedom to just do whatever they want to do. They have to represent the interests of the king. Yeah, they're interacting on the king's terms. Yes, and on the king's behalf. And it might be different than how they would like to do it if they were doing it their own way. And of course, chapter 3 of Genesis takes us down that path of humans deciding to do things their own way. I thought of a new illustration for this this morning. I was listening to another podcast in which someone used the example of Lego to talk about what humans are for. And they said, it's like someone took a blowtorch to the factory and melted the Lego pieces so they don't fit together rightly anymore. And I said, no, I don't like that illustration. Here's what I want to say. We are like a box of Lego that has on the front of the box or the pamphlet that comes in, it tells you what these bricks are supposed to build. And so we're born or designed with this map of like, here's how it's supposed to be put together so that you can carry out what you were made for. But it's like in chapter 3, it's like the serpent slithers up and hands Eve a different set of instructions. And like, how about you make this out of that Lego instead? I don't think the Lego itself has been melted. I think it's being put together in ways that it wasn't designed for. It's taking shape in a way that is not following instructions. And it's got a new goal in mind. You know, Eve has this idea like, oh, this looks good for me. Seems like God must be holding out on me and he doesn't want what's good for me. And so I think I'm going to pursue this vision of flourishing rather than the one God gave me. And so it's like we are, we've swapped out the instruction manual and we're building the wrong thing. And I think what happens when Jesus comes along is that he is all put together the right way. He's living into that, like the factory model of what the image is supposed to look like and do. And we all look at him and go, I've got all my pieces stuck in the wrong places. I need to do some deconstruction and reconstruction so that I look more like Jesus. Well, I think that's actually a really great analogy because you mentioned a lot in the book, and I think this is absolutely, it's a great way to talk about it. The notion of order, you know, order versus disorder. And when you talked about sort of that cap that is put on us because we are the image of God, but we're not actually God, it sort of speaks to this idea that we're limited. And it seems like whenever we try to transcend those limitations, we bring disorder into the world simply because we weren't created to transcend them. We weren't created to be more than we are. We were supposed to be dependent on God and serving him as opposed to trying to make ourselves more than we were actually created to be. And we always do that at the expense of other people and at the expense of the environment, don't we? Like we're exploiting in order to transcend. You have to exploit and sort of amass power unto yourself. And we weren't designed for that. Yeah, and I think you illustrated this really well when you talked through Genesis 6 and the idea of boundary crossing. You know, there's so many of these little narratives in the Old Testament where you see this idea of boundary crossing. Let me try to gain a little bit more security, a little bit more prosperity, a little bit more comfort, a little bit more whatever. Let me gain just a little bit more. And if I have to cross a boundary to do that, it's in service of the more. And so that's okay. And I think the Bible across the entire scriptures really speaks against that. But I don't know that I've ever explicitly tied it into being made in God's image in the way that I am now that I've read through your work. Yeah, we are limited. And so we have this really amazing God-given dignity and potential. And we have a vocation that's picked out for us. That's all really wonderful. But we also have limits. And that's what I explore in the part of the book that explores wisdom literature. I'm kind of leaning into that. What are our limits? Because we experience suffering. We don't always understand why the world is the way it is. We have limitations in the areas of relationships. And so, and we die. And so all of these limits are something we need to learn to live within. This time of the semester, you know, we're recording this in April. This is the time in the semester when my college students discover they have limits that they actually can't do all the things. They can't sign up for 18 credits and participate in mock rock and be in all of the other extracurricular things and still expect to sleep at night. And it turns out, if you don't sleep every night, you actually don't function very well. And so we often have a heart-to-heart talk around this time of the year about how we're limited and we need to learn to live within those limits. You know, when you mentioned the wisdom literature, I think it'd be important to go there. There's one section in the book where you talked about how different is biblical wisdom, right? And so there, there's obviously parallels with ancient Near Eastern Proverbs. And we even see in the New Testament quotes, some secular Proverbs or

Proverbs that are outside whatever. But what would you say? I mean, you know, in my mind, I automatically go to the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom as sort of the differentiator for most Hebrew wisdom. Is that where you go as well? Yeah, one illustration I've used before is if you look at some archaeological sites, you can see the evidence of reuse of stones or objects. Like, so I'm thinking of there's this building, Crusader period building in Sepphoris that has a, what's it called, a burial stone, a coffin, like made out of stone, that's become the cornerstone of the new building. And so it's not a coffin anymore. Like, they're just like, oh, here's a nice stone that's like angled and in all the right ways. So let's use this as a cornerstone. Or if you're in Jerusalem and you're looking at the walls, you can see, you know, partway up the walls, there's there's stones with upside down writing on them. So clearly they were part of another building, and now they've been made part of this wall. They've been reused. And that's how I like to think about the Proverbs. Solomon is engaging with all kinds of different nations. People are coming to visit him and test his wisdom. And he, there's this kind of trading of ideas going on. But if Solomon takes, say, an Egyptian text that he finds to be full of wisdom and adapts it, and then it gets put in this collection of Proverbs that's in the Bible, it's not a coffin anymore. It's a cornerstone, or it's not a part of this like milk shed anymore. It's part of the city wall. Like, it's been reused. And as you said, the project that is the book of Proverbs insists that the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom. Now, the Egyptians don't fear Yahweh, and they don't know Yahweh. So whatever wisdom they have is then being co-opted and put as a part of this new project. So sure, all truth is God's truth, but we should say that in the more specific sense, all truth is Yahweh's truth. It's not, it doesn't work with just any God. It's being recombined in the Bible. And I don't know how, like, I don't know what percentage of the book of Proverbs could be demonstrated to be borrowing from other places. The text people usually turn to is, I think, in chapter 22, which is the 30 sayings of Augur, which seems to parallel the wisdom of Amenemope from Egypt. And there are some, like, really striking parallels between them, but it's not exact word for word. And so there seems to have been some adaptation. And that doesn't threaten me because I know Solomon had visitors from all these other countries, and they were swapping proverbs and songs. So I would expect it. Well, and even if we, yeah, I mean, even if we think through, you know, the way we think and sort of consider morally what to do in today's world, much of what we need to be doing is adapting some of the good insights that are just abstracted from a, you know, a biblical and theological context and pulling those back in and adapting them with, you know, the triune God in view. And so I think it makes perfect sense the way you're describing it. Would you, like, I know we started this off with, like, 10 commandments and, you know, bearing the name of vain. I would almost make a very similar case for the 10 commandments. You know, that's been one of those where people have often said, well, if we just institute the 10 commandments, we'd be a more just society. And I always kind of sit back and I'm like, I really think you're talking about the back four, you know, it's not like, it's not all 10. And that's hard to get around those first couple, like, you know, first three or four. Only seven of the 10, sorry, seven of the 10 commandments are unconstitutional in the United States. So if we actually made them, if we actually said, no, you have to rest on the Sabbath, that's unconstitutional, or you cannot worship other gods. That's unconstitutional. So there are only three that actually work constitutionally. And what people often want to do is take them and put them on display because they think it will help us get back to morality. But I don't know that we're doing anyone a big favor to take the 10 commandments and clip it out of its redemptive context because then it becomes a kind of legalism. Like if you just do these things, it'll all work out. And I want to say, wouldn't we want them to see the beginning of the story? How about instead of putting up the 10 commandments, how about if we put up the Red Sea crossing or something, you know, like, like, let's show the redemption that qualified and authorized Yahweh to give these commands rather than leaving off that redemptive context and just saying, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, it's close. The way I phrased it before, and I think this kind of ties in what you were saying about the Lord's Prayer. I think we often settle for wholesomeness when only holiness will do. And so what we're trying to get to is we're trying to gesture towards sort of this order that God has established. And when we get, quote unquote, close enough, right, we seem to be pretty happy about that. But the reality is that we're not helping anyone recognize what it means to be God's image by helping them to be more moral. Like there has to be some sort of real turn back to the image of God who is Christ. And that's got to now inform all of that. Yes. The only way that we can experience true flourishing is in personal relationship with the God who made us, which is possible through Jesus Christ. And so, yes, it's better if we have a society in which people are not murdering each other. And I would say it's better if we have a society in which we're taking one day a week to rest instead of working ourselves to the bone. These are good things. But outside of an actual relationship with God, they're not enough. They're never going to be sufficient. Very good. Well, let me kind of pivot topics real quick here, because I thought there were a couple of other areas that I wanted to explore. Number one was you talk about the male-female being made in God's image and so male-female being image together. Now in context of Genesis, the way I've normally thought about that was just in the context, I guess, of the marital relationship. How do you go beyond that? You know, because we have these New Testament texts where it's like singleness is a good thing and, you know, all that kind of stuff. One way to go beyond that is by doing a podcast in which you have a male and a female on the podcast and we're working together to do theology and we're not married. Like, I really think our vision of collaboration has been so shrunken that we think only married couples can do this, but no. Male and female are both God's image. They're both told to rule over creation and they're told to do so side by side. And there's a word in chapter 2 that people get hung up on, and I think it gets us off on the wrong track. And that is in chapter 2, verse 18, where God says, it's not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. And the word helper in Hebrew is Ezer. And it's just such an unfortunate translation because our English connotation of the word helper is somebody who comes along who's less than or subservient to. But the word Ezer never appears in the Old Testament to describe what a servant does for their master or what an employee does for an employer. It's always used in a context in which the person in need of help needs someone equal to or greater than in strength. So if you're in battle and you need an Ezer, you're not asking for someone to run to the front lines and bring you sandwiches. You want another set of troops to come fight along beside you. So what God is saying that Adam needs is a fellow warrior. And the word is actually most often used to describe Yahweh as Israel's helper. So I think that gets us off on the wrong foot. And then we think, OK, men mainly have to do this work and women can come along and sort of help in a subservient sense. And that's not what I see. And as you said, the New Testament especially makes clear that, you know, Jesus is single. Paul is single and they are flourishing and they're collaborating. Paul names so many coworkers in gospel ministry in Romans 16. So many females who he calls coworkers and they are doing essential kingdom work together. And I think that's great. It's really interesting because, you know, image of God, as central as the concept is, right within. And I think as much as it informs our humanity, it's almost as if it tends to get lost in the overall biblical narrative. Right. And so, yeah, yeah. And it comes back when we talk about Christ in the New Testament. But even then, not like, you know, a mountain of, you know, hey, Jesus is the image of God and we are seeing it every other pages. And so I think part of the reason that it's sort of difficult to get our head around, I agree with you on the translation of Ezra. I really think fellow warrior is a much stronger way of looking at that, especially in the context of what they're being asked to do. Right. Which is to exercise this dominion and subdue. Yeah. Fill the earth and subdue it. Right. I mean, that's not a gentle term at all. No.

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In the New Testament, it shifts almost completely the other direction, you know, and you sort of flip-flop them, so you never lose either emphasis. But I think the way you're describing it is the importance is just that male and female are working together as the image that God created them to be in whatever context they happen to be in. That it's not confined within any sort of social arrangement, necessarily. No, I mean, I hope that a husband and wife can collaborate in the ways that God designed us to, but collaboration is not limited to that. I have lots of male co-workers and we collaborate on various projects. I have students who are men and we, you know, I teach them, they teach me, and we do things together. And so I think it's important for us to recognize our shared responsibility, that women can't just hang back and expect men, this is a man's job, because Genesis makes clear that ruling the earth is our job to do together. And you have this really interesting section that sort of goes a corollary with this about Jesus's gender, which I have found fascinating. I suppose I've thought about that a few times and, you know, a lot of the work that Phyllis Tribble's done on, you know, drawing out the way that God is portrayed in feminine terms at various points in the Old Testament has been really interesting. But I don't know that I've really concentrated on, hey, what about Jesus? And so introduce that concept to our listeners and just help us understand why you think that's important, why you put it in the book, and how it relates to this idea of God's image. I got in big trouble for talking about this on Facebook because I think, so the reason I got in trouble for it is because I was reading Amy Peeler's book, Women and the Gender of God, and I just posted a picture of the cover and said, Hey, this is what I'm reading this week. What are you reading? And I had some people get really upset because they're like, What do you mean God's gender? Jesus is male. Case closed. Discussion finished. Like, What is there even to talk about? And we have masculine pronouns used for God throughout the Bible, and God is Father, and God is King, and so it seems like, well, duh, God's a man. But actually, the orthodox teaching of the church through the centuries is that God is beyond gender. He's not gendered. Now, Jesus is male. So one of the questions that Amy Peeler is addressing in her book is a question that most evangelical Christians, conservative Christians, are not asking, but that many feminist scholars are asking. And that is, how can a male savior save women? In what sense is he representative of me? In what sense can he die in my place if he's a man and I'm a woman? And so one of the beautiful things that she shows in the book is, yes, Jesus is a man. That doesn't make God male. What it means is that in his incarnation, he's a man, but he's not just any man. He's a man born of a woman. He didn't just show up. God could have, poof, like made the incarnation happen with Jesus as a full grown adult appearing on the scene, but he doesn't. He becomes incarnate in the womb of a woman, and that female participation in the incarnation event is part of what makes space for women's representation at the cross and in Jesus' resurrection. And of course, we have lots of women involved in Jesus' ministry. It isn't only Mary, but there's something special about Mary giving birth to Jesus that then kind of makes it possible for women to participate. I probably haven't done the book justice. Amy Peeler does a really fabulous job of exploring all the ins and outs in a way that I think is very biblically solid and carefully nuanced. Yeah. That's really... I mean, I think as I was reading, so as I read through and I got to that section, where I went was, this is sort of the perfect Ezer moment, right? It's like, we all needed help, and he is our perfect co-warrior. And Jesus could have come down as a man or a woman, and it wouldn't have mattered that much understanding Ezer as that sort of co-warrior, the assistance that is needed. And obviously, he came as a man, and so the hypothetical of what if he were a woman really doesn't matter a whole lot. I do think him coming as a man matters for the sake of typology with Adam. He comes as a new Adam. So since we had the man first in Genesis chapter 2, we have a man also to inaugurate new creation. So that's, I think that's important, but I find it so fascinating that all four Gospels recount women at the empty tomb as the first ones there and that we see Mary Magdalene being the first one commissioned to tell the news. And what's so powerful about it is that the scene is taking place in a garden. And we might imagine if we've read Genesis 3, well, Eve blew her chance at this participation thing. She can't be an Ezer anymore. God's going to move on and just use men because women can't be trusted. And actually, I see what Jesus is doing is reinstating women as the Ezer in that scene because he could have gone to tell his male disciples himself, but he meets a woman in a garden and commissions her to go tell the guys. And I'm like, this is such a beautiful redemptive moment. He's not just redeeming all things in the generic sense. He's redeeming this particular broken piece of human history and fulfilling what God had said to the serpent in chapter 3, Genesis 3.15, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. And we now finally have the seed of the woman who crushed the serpent and then says to the woman, go tell the disciples. So I love that. Yeah, it's very cool to think through. I will admit, like I said, outside of Phyllis Tribble and some of the other Old Testament things, I've stuck more on the Old Testament side. And so the New Testament stuff is fascinating to me. I just haven't really done a lot of work in that arena. So I appreciated that section of the book and thought it just added a completely different flavor to the idea of this, you know, the notion of image of God. So as we kind of, you know, we're coming up on maybe about 10 minutes left or so. And I was hoping we could kind of figure out or have you talk through what does it look like for us to be sort of the image of God post fall? What does that really mean for us? And then as we move toward sort of the new creation, you know, what does that mean for an image of God theology? So those two questions. I'll get really practical. On my walk to work this morning, I had to cross over a creek. We have a creek that runs through campus. And whenever it rains, California rain is weird and California water drainage is also weird. So whatever they have, instead of actual streams, they have these concrete channels that the water runs through. So we have one of these concrete channels that goes through campus. And every time it rains, it fills up much fuller. And when the water recedes, we have trash that just like flowed down river and then kind of stopped along the side. And so on my walk this morning, I have my hands full of trash that I picked up, you know. And I was just imagining myself, you know, if a student happened to be up at 7.30 this morning and saw me doing this, most of them were still asleep, I'm sure. But if one of them saw me like, that's not part of Dr. Imes's job description. What is she, why is she cleaning up trash? We have a grounds crew. We have facilities people. Like, why is she doing that? And I was just thinking about how, no, Biola didn't tell me I have to do this, but I'm the image of God. And so it is part of my job description. I am a caretaker of the earth. And so I can't clean up the whole earth, but I can help to reduce the negative human impact on the environment in the little sphere of the earth that I'm, that I occupy. So for me, that's the mile back and forth every day. And I tend to.

I pick up trash when I'm walking so that it doesn't blow into the water because from our campus, it goes straight out to the ocean and Nemo is the next one to get it. And so I feel like that's one really practical way that we can think about fulfilling our vocation as God's image is caring for creation, thinking about recycling, trying to use fewer single-use plastics, fewer fossil fuels. Like I'm walking, not driving. I walk every day of the month to work, not only for exercise, but also because I think it's better for me and for the environment if I walk. So I'm in a position where I can do that. Not everybody's in that position, but you could carpool perhaps or a ride share. My daughter is getting rid of her car. She's decided not to use a car anymore and just take public everywhere. And I think that's really cool because she could afford a car, but she's choosing not to. So I think that there are lots of practical ways that we can contribute to the flourishing of the earth. And I think a previous generation would have said, none of that matters. You're wasting your time. This is all going to burn. And one of the cases I'm trying to make in the book is that creation still matters and that God is not going to burn this all to a crisp, but it's actually what we see in Scripture is a renewal of creation. I would describe the fire that Peter talks about as not a fire that consumes the earth, but a fire that refines it. And so I believe that our destiny is not somewhere on the clouds, but that our destination, ultimate destination is here on earth, on a renewed and recreated earth. And I think that's the more biblical view. It's the more historic Christian view. And it's been kind of eclipsed in the past hundred years or so with dispensational theology. And I think we need to get back this idea that the earth is not something that God is setting aside, just like Sinai is not something he's setting aside. If we and if we understand our essential identity as the image of God and the image of God is a three-dimensional representative, then it is. I feel like that helps set us up for the future that we have as God's representatives on earth. If all we are is a shell, like if our bodies are just a shell that house our spirit, which is the essential part of who we are, then sure, take me up to the clouds. Leave my body in the ground. But the Bible doesn't describe things that way. It says that we are going to be physically bodily raised and participate in Jesus reign on earth. Well, and I think two questions kind of come out of that. Number one, I'd just say I appreciate the idea of Jesus' scars post-resurrection really demonstrating the continuity between his earthly life as we might say, I don't know, fallen human or whatever we want to call it, you know, pre-resurrection Christ versus post-resurrecting Christ. And that continuity. I think that he comes, the fact that he comes back bodily should disabuse us completely of the notion that our bodies don't matter. He comes back not as a ghost, but as a physical form. And so he eats, he drinks, he, yeah. But he can walk through walls. So there's something new about him. Yeah, which is cool. I mean, we'll be able to walk through walls. Very cool. Yeah. Hopefully that's not just limited to Jesus because we want to be able to walk through walls. Okay, so I just want to say, let's wait on the walking through walls until we're all redeemed because otherwise that's a little scary. Otherwise it could get weird. Yeah. We're all of a sudden in a comic book somehow. So I appreciate the way you described, you know, sort of enacting our image of God and small steps within our, you know, more of our local moment community. I mean, I think that's a really good practical way for people to work this out. I guess my bigger question, I've done a lot of work in the technology space, just thinking through theology and technology altogether. And what I see there is sort of an odd notion that, you know, whenever we quote unquote have technology advancements. We're going to transcend our bodies. Right. We are accomplishing something of our original mandate to subdue the earth. And I just, you know, there's, there's part of it where I'm kind of like, yeah, it's sort of a double-edged sword, right? Because I can basically do untold harm to myself, others and creation under that rubric. Or I could do some really cool stuff that may actually be subduing. Right. And so any thoughts on that as we, as we think about this idea of what it means to be God's image, are there guardrails there that you would sort of be able to suggest for folks as they think about technology? Character matters. That's my first thought. The system, any system is more or less neutral. It's how we use it. Any tool is neutral. It's how we use it. And so that's where, that's where the second book comes in, in to play that we need to actually bear God's name in the way that we live this out. You know, people are really worried about AI these days because they wonder if it's going to replace human beings. Like we just need to stay in the driver's seat. We need to, we need to have dominion over the algorithms that are going to serve up different versions of reality and, and make sure that they're not used to exploit or to what's the word? Like ruin people's reputation by creating things that are fake about them. Right. Like these are, these are things that we need to be, we need. Christians need to be right there in the rooms where decisions are being made and companies are deciding what are ethical uses of AI. I think it's a powerful tool that can be used for good. And like anything else, I mean, you can use a hammer to hit a nail to build a house or you can use a hammer to bash someone in the head. So let's find out ethical ways of using these tools. You know, if social media has been engineered, as they say it has to be addictive. Yeah. Where are Christians in that conversation and how can we contribute to human flourishing? So I wouldn't want to be an anti-technology person. I would want to be a, where are the Christians in the room where those decisions are being made? Because I believe that that when we approach these tools with good character and an ethical formation, we really can help lead to flourishing. Well, I think within the framework of being the image of God and accomplishing the mission that he's given us, understanding what it means to truly be human and which, you know, as we've talked about now, you know, that entails the image of God, but it also pushes us over to Jesus and an imitation of him and a deep imitation of him, recognizing that oftentimes, you know, the technologies and the way we use them can be hindering us from conforming more closely to Christ versus helping us conform more closely to Christ. And so it's a, that's helpful. Well, I don't want to take up too, too much of your time. I have really enjoyed this conversation. I don't usually get to sit down with another Old Testament person. So this is fantastic. I really enjoyed it. And I would just encourage everybody, go to IVP or Amazon, I'm sure. Right. And wherever small town Christian bookstore you want to support where there's real people who are employed. If you have one near you, that would be fantastic. Um, but being God's image, why creation still matters by Carmen Joy. I'm really appreciated talking through this with you. Thank you so much for writing it. And thanks for being on the show. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. All right. We'll catch everybody on the next episode of thinking Christian. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hello. Hello. Puneet Patway here, co-host of the Your Daily Bible Verse podcast. Are you someone who loves to take a deep dive into God's word one verse at a time to explore his will for your life and desire to draw closer to him? If that sounds like you, I'd love to invite you to head over to lifeaudio.com and search Your Daily Bible Verse to tune in and subscribe for daily inspiration, life application, and spiritual transformation through the in-depth exploration of God's word.