What does it actually mean to be human?

00:00:01
Speaker 1: 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 doctor James Spencer, and 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 onto today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer my co host, doctor Ashish Varma, are joined today by doctor Mark Cartez. He is the dean of the Litfenn School of Divinity at Wheaton College, and so we're excited to have Mark here to talk through some really interesting topics and I'm gonna let Ashish introduce.

00:00:51
Speaker 2: So Ashish, the floor is yours.

00:00:54
Speaker 3: Thanks James. First, it's great to have you here, Mark, looking forward to Its just by way by way of introducing the kind of guy Mark is. I think our first real meeting was when I was defending my dissertation and you were the chair, and I was a little bit terrified because I was a foots out of the program, and you were fairly new to the college, and I didn't know what to expect, and my brief reading on it, I had my expectations, Okay, Mark's gonna ask him about this, and he asked me nothing I expected and everything I didn't expect, and I was humbled. But it went all right. And what I gained in the process was the graciousness the way that you interacted in that setting with someone you didn't know, with issues that I couldn't actually honestly tell if you agree or disagreed with me. I was just I was blown away by Okay, we eat and got a good one here. So it was a really easy decision to say, hey, let's get Mark on this podcast, at least for me, and I take that as a sign.

00:02:00
Speaker 4: It was kind of a jerk during that whole process.

00:02:02
Speaker 3: So I guess my expectations were where Dan Tryer level of intensity, and you know, the late Dan Tryer, who we love, brilliant man, very pastoral, but man, he could dig into a wound, right, He could stick his thumb in and just press. And you weren't doing that. So to me, you were the you were the nice one.

00:02:24
Speaker 4: There all right.

00:02:27
Speaker 3: But to me that sets up this because I think that that same sort of tone comes out in me. Mark sent us a piece from one of his books he's written on theological anthropology quite a bit, which is just basically talking about what are what are we? Who are we as human beings? With a specific care to think about before God? Right, And in reading the piece that you wanted us to most hint owne in on, I got that same sense from you that this is someone who wants to get the nuances of the positions and not caricature them, and it is generous, right even as you took a position, by the end there was no sense of, well, the people who discrew with me or dumb And to me, that's that's important theological steps forward. And so with that said, we're looking forward to diving into this.

00:03:18
Speaker 4: Topic with you.

00:03:20
Speaker 3: And maybe maybe the first way to begin this is you've spent a lot of time writing on theological anthropology. Why that's a.

00:03:32
Speaker 4: Great question, you think you're much a generous introduction, and it's great to do with both of you. I mean, it's kind of probably two different ways I can come at that question. One would be like why, as in how did I get into this, what kind of got me interested in this in this topic in the first place, And then maybe kind of why in the sense of why have I kept going and continued to press into these issues. The first one I actually have to guess at a little bit. I've been asked that a number of times over the years, and I can't quite figure out exactly how I stumbled on theological anthropology as an area of interest. I'm not sure about your experience in theological education, but most of the schools that I'm familiar with it kind of touched lightly on the doctrine of humanity. In your like theology survey class, you'll do some image of God stuff, some sin stuff. Depending on your school, you may get into like women in ministry questions, and that's about it, and then you kind of move on from there. And that's really all I got in my survey things. Somewhere along the way, I was exposed to the fact that theological anthropology is an actual area of Christian doctrine that people have been thinking about for a long time, and what immediately grabbed my attention. My first career was actually a youth ministry. I did middle school in high school ministry for about ten years before I went in an academic direction, and I guarantee it was the connection between what I was doing with teenagers and the issues that you're dealing with in anthropology that got my attention. Is the doctrine's all about things like identity and race and your body and sex. And I'm like, okay, so you're telling me there's a doctrine that really is just about youth ministry and the kinds of things I wrestle with, Like, Okay, sure, I can do this all day long. This sounds outstanding. That's the thing that kind of grabbed my attention and pulled me in this direction initially. From there, I think it's just a simple matter of the fact that humans are fascinating and you can I'm really not a specialist by nature. I actually do tend to move around in topics a fair bit, so I think it's funny that most of my writing has been on one particular doctrine. But I do think it's because of how fascinatingly complex humans are, and you can stay in the area of kind of thinking about what it means to be human and constantly be bumping into new issues and new questions, and a number of the discipline kind of subtopics with an anthropology are constantly moving, particularly in this cultural moment we find ourselves in. So just trying to keep up with everything that's happening keeps you from getting board. So it was that it was the youth ministry connection early on, and then it's the fascinating and constantly shifting nature of the conversation that I think has kept me engaged.

00:06:11
Speaker 1: It's interesting like when I think about, well, I've not done a ton in theological anthropology necessarily, but my experience was the same as yours.

00:06:20
Speaker 2: Whenever it was addressed, it was a light touch.

00:06:22
Speaker 1: It was sort of like, here's theological anthropology and angelology all in one lesson, and we're done now, right. So, but I think where I've kind of come back around to it is through the work on faith and the intersection with technology and especially today, how does theological anthropology inform the way that we should also think about technology? How is it that we're losing humanity? And how we ever know that if we don't really understand who we were in the first place. That kind of idea, and so I'm wondering how much of your work is sort of being informed by that discussioner influenced by that discussion nowadays, or is that at all an emphasis that you're exploring It is.

00:07:07
Speaker 4: Some of the writing I've done in technology was before generative AI really took off and began to dominate conversations about anthropology and technology. So my work earlier on was more around the posthumanism transhumanism conversation, where some of the theological resources are similar, but as in the case in these different subtopics in anthropology, they have their own subtopics that all require discrete answers in there. But I like the way you framed it in that with a lot of these conversations, I find myself that my role often is to get people to slow down a little bit and to realize that there are deeper and prior theological questions that we haven't actually answered yet, at least not explicitly, and in a way that requires kind of careful nuance and thought that we actually need in order to rest these things. So, like, I just hear people routinely making really confident claims in the technology space about like we can't do X because X will make us less human, and then I'm wrestling with you, well, how do you know that, like, what is your kind of theological way of answering the question of what does it mean to be human? That is actually informing this claim that you have that this thing is going to make us somehow less than the human thing that you have after and so I'm wanting to pull us back to that prior question. So I used to kind of summarize the doctrine of humanity around what does it mean to be human? And how do we flourish as human persons? Is those kind of the two framing questions that I don't think you can have, at least not as a Christian, really deep, meaningful conversations about these issues unless you have a theologically a biblically theologically informed to answer to those two questions.

00:08:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'd say it's interesting just your comment about getting people to slow down and ask the prior question.

00:08:53
Speaker 4: I find it's almost.

00:08:54
Speaker 2: Like you have to do that in two stages.

00:08:56
Speaker 1: You have to get them to slow down recognize that there's a necessity of slow going down. On the first place, that this notion of progress reference transhumanism, which has like that big progress myth sort of evolutionary push towards the posthuman that I think is informally sort of saturating a lot of our discourse. Anyway, I don't think we're all transhumanists necessarily, Like if everything is transhumanist, nothing is kind of feel but there is this notion that the more we progress, we view that as real advancement. And it's interesting to think about, No, maybe we should just slow down and just like take a check here for a moment, really explore back into some of these theological resources that might inform what we're doing right now, and then make a decision on what progress really is and what progress really isn't. So, yeah, those two steps seem to me to be really intuitive within the technology space, but also I would assume that theological anthropology space absolutely.

00:09:55
Speaker 4: So, Like one of the things that I will sometimes do in getting people to slow down is I'll point out, so, let's think in technology and kind of transhumanist terms, that they're actually Christian theological resources that would push against the instincts that many of us have, at least in the starting point in this conversation. So I hear people routinely referring to the goodness of human embodiment and therefore we shouldn't and then fill in the blank here transformed or change bodies in various kinds of ways. And yet you think about the kind of the history of Christian reflection on the nature of the resurrection and the transformation of human existence scatologically, where a lot of it has to do with the fact that, sure, we're resurrected into embodied forms, but we anticipate having transformed bodies in some significant way that transcend our current experience of the limitations of these bodies that we inhabit and experience now. And then I just kind of ask like, why wouldn't that actually lend support to a transforminist agenda where we're just seeking to transform bodies, not in a way of trying to like bring about the resurrection, but with imaginations that are shaped by the fact that we have eschatological bodies that are going to transcend current limitations. So let's seek to live in ways that are informed by that. Now I'm not saying that's a good way to think, but it's a Christian theological resource that actually pushes against an intuition that we too quickly put on the table. And I find that if we can do that, then people can go, oh, hold on, now I actually have two different sets of intuitions, and I'm relying on one of them and not the other one, And is that the right way to do that. That's the kind of move that I find gets people to kind of pull back and realize that these questions are more complicated than they realize they are. I'll admit I often think they actually I want them to land where they started, Yeah, but with a much deeper and firmer theological foundation that gives them a more nuanced way of engaging the conversation.

00:11:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting.

00:11:50
Speaker 1: I just wrote a piece for Doug Estus is doing a project on forty Bible passages related to AI, and so I just did a piece on David's RW for Samuel seventeen and kind of talked about this notion of David's setting aside Saul's armor, which was the technology of the moment, but saying that that passage is not intended to say Israelite should never ever wear armor, and so we've got to have a more nuanced understanding of what's going on here. Why is it that setting the armor aside in this moment is important. What does it say theologically? How is the narrative trying to frame it up and then thinking through how that idea might then extend beyond that narrative and help us discern when to pick up technology and when to set it aside. But it's a more nuanced It is difficult to think that way, right, because your criteria get real fuzzy and your boundaries are not set anywhere right, and so it's sort of like, how do you know, how do you really explain that to people in a way that they are going to be helped as opposed to as going So I can pretty much just set my own boundary and do whatever the heck I want.

00:13:01
Speaker 2: That'd be fantastic.

00:13:04
Speaker 4: Anyway, in one sense, chaotic and confusing in another sense.

00:13:07
Speaker 3: You're right, right, Yeah, I find it fascinating to listen to the way you guys are talking about the technological piece as it relates to humanity, because I think what subtly comes through is why it's actually really important to think about theological anthropology. It can be an easy thing to just say, well, what matters is the conclusion? Do you have the right doctrinal claim? Do you have the right sort of conclusion about what it is that we're supposed to say about image bearers and so on and so forth. But what you both are sort of teasing out here is that the process is important, but that actually says something about who we are, right, that we're not ultimately just defined by the conclusion, but how do we get where we're going? And sometimes having the same conclusion that maybe we should take a step back and slow down with regard to how optimistic we are about AI doesn't mean that there isn't an important work of evaluation to do there about our assumptions of what it means to even be a person in the first place. Right, I mean I think here of the great the legendary coach of the Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson, used to always tell his players that were our goal is obviously to win the championship, but every moment of the regular season matters because it's a thousand step journey, and every one of those steps is going to get you somewhere that actually makes it more likely that you're going to win the championship. At the endor at least put yourself in a better position. Well, in this case, this slowing down the thinking through the questioning of our assumptions, the interrogating of why maybe thinking about it in a different way might ultimately lead us to a similar conclusion, but that conclusion is different just from the process, right, Yeah.

00:14:56
Speaker 4: I mean, I'll admit I'm a Blazer's fan that analogy hurts just a little bit back in the day.

00:15:01
Speaker 3: I'm sorry about that, But.

00:15:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, I try to be a little bit care like there's a way of doing the process versus the product move where if we're not carefully make it all about the process, then you almost the impression that, like, where you end up doesn't matter as long as you're kind of going about it in certain kinds of ways. And I know that's not where you're going. Like, I will admit I tend to think more in terms of process and direction than I do product. I don't like because it makes sound like there's a point at which you're done And I'm just not sure that in theology, in any doctrine, but particularly not when we're just saying something as complicated as the human person, that you ever actually end up at a product in the sense of like and arrived at conclusion that you're just done with. But I absolutely think You're right that the way we go about answering these questions is something that we are sometimes insufficiently attentive to, and so we have a confidence in our direction or our answer that I actually think is misplaced because we haven't gotten through the process in the way that isn't needed for this kind of an issue.

00:16:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking as for a theological analogy, one of my professors in grad school, Steve Spencer, he used to to throw out that often criticism of academic theology that all we do is we sit around and we debate how many angels stand on the head of a needle? And he'd say, you know, as far as I know, no one has ever actually asked that in the scholastic setting, but I think we actually should ask it, and then he would go into this large discussion of think about what's entailed by that question. The question here is if we tend to think in these material and material terms, we tend to think that humans embody the material realm and angels or some sort of immaterial spirit beings. Theoretically, that means that they're not limited by the reality of two objects occupying one space at the same time. Right, So, how many of them could dance on the head of a needle. And I think what that's getting at here is that what might have sounded like a silly question that's often caricatures for academic theologies actually saying yeah, in the moment, certain questions might seem very academic, right did Jesus take on follow human flesh or did he not? But there is something going on in terms of implications, something going on in terms of questioning our assumptions that guides us to begin to think about that process as oh, maybe I'm bringing more to this conversation than I realized. And I think that's precisely where we begin to think, hopefully, maybe this isn't too fine of a question, maybe this isn't too academic of a question.

00:17:55
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I often encourage my students to think through what they mean when they say that theology ought to be practiced, which there's an important times in which I want to agree with that, But that's another one that I want to think through a little bit longer before we affirm that too confidently. And usually there are two things that I want them to reflect on. One of them I use the angels dancing on the head of pen analogy precisely, so I didn't realize this that Steve had done that before me. That's great, And I do kind of think like, if we actually thought that we shared this universe with really powerful supernatural beings, we should probably spend some time thinking about, like what are they like and how do they inhabit the world and interact with the material world that I interact with. I find it interesting that doctrines of creation in like the medieval period were often about half on angels and demons and the heavens. And I laughed at myself be such a modernist, as I'm working on a book in the Doctrine of Creation, and I had been the book for months before I even thought to ask the question of whether angels should be in my book on the doctrine grade. So yeah, our understanding of what's practical and what's worth thinking about is shaped by a very modernist agenda that we're often not even aware of. And of course I also want them to think about the fact that some things are worth knowing just because they're valuable and worth knowing. And I don't have to have a practical end for wanting to get to know my wife better, just because my wife is amazing, and I ought to want to know her better because I love her, and knowing her better will lead me to love her more, which will lead me to knowing her better. And there's a lot of theology that ought to work that way. But I really do want to shortcut kind of the hubris of thinking that we know in advance of asking a question whether the answer is going to be practical or not, because I think you often don't know that until you've had an opportunity to wrestle through the question. And I do think there's a lot in feelos kntopology that works that way. Some of the body soul debate issues can sound really speculative, particularly if you're wired toward analytic philosophy and the resources that get used there. You end up reading about thought experiments on Star Trek teleportation things, and I'll admit I find some of that kind of fun. But Hey, what you're trying to do is you're trying to understand what it means to have a body, and why God bodies and raised us to have bodies, and how does it relate to identity and why does any of that matter? And I think those are eminently practical, even though on the front end some of the questions can seem overly speculative.

00:20:29
Speaker 1: That sort of leans me into a question that I wanted to get to before we kind of dig into the chapters you sent us. But one of the things I've always been interested in is sort of the intersection of these doctrines. And so even when we when we learn them in like systematic theology courses or something like that, you know, theological anthropology, seteriology, hamartiology, those are all sort of separated out. The one I'm I've become most interested in is sort of the bridging between theological anthropology and ecclesiology. And I'm wondering how you've sort of balanced some of those intersections. So you're obviously doing work on theological anthropology and it's not the same as ecclesiology, but surely that has to inform right.

00:21:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, I mean you're picking up one of my favorite things is the intersection of doctrines. So actually most of my published work has been on the intersection between theological anthropology and Christology. And one of the kind of questions that threw me into this originally going back to the why theologic anthropology issue is as I started to explore theological anthropology, I felt like I would routinely run into in the introduction to an anthropology book some claim along the lines of Jesus reveals what it means to be human, not just what it means to be God, and that would feel like I would read the rest of the book and Jesus wouldn't show up very much, and it kind of left me wondering, like I thought Jesus was going to matter somehow for our understanding of what it means to be human. So a lot of it with me trying to tease out how that works. I think ecclesiology absolutely can work that way, and it can work that way in two different directions. I think there's a sense in which our understanding of what it means to be human and how he flourish as human persons informs are ecclesiology. So there are things that I think we do in church, or ways in which we construct our ecclesial lives together that are shaped by a vision of human flourishing. But it absolutely works the other way around. Our ecclesiologies and the ways in which we do church together shape are understandable it means to flourish as humans, because even if we're not kind of aware of it, we have an intuition that church is a place in which we are seeking to become more human and to flourish as humans together. And so church life shapes visions of human flourishing. Visions of human flourishing shape church life. I absolutely think ecclesiology and anthropology are intertwined. Daniel Hill, who's student who did his PhD here at Wheaton, did his dissertation on the ecclesiology anthropology relationship that went on to be published by a book with a title that was along those lines that I'm desperately trying to think of. But he did. He did a great job and kind of articulating that doctrinal intersection.

00:23:07
Speaker 2: Very cool.

00:23:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, how do you think, I mean, this will be the loaded question, I suppose, But when we think about theological anthropology, we think about being human. There's obviously a lot entailed in that. I mean, you know, there have been tons of essays written on the image of God. We've talked about that on the program. You know, all these different areas. But if you had to sort of synthesize it, what would you say, are some of the constellation of factors that really are essential for thinking about what it means to be human?

00:23:39
Speaker 4: Well, I mean the two go tos historically are just the image of God and sin. Yeah, the dominant categories. A lot of books on theological anthropology just use those two as they're framing motifs to the extent that I often when I'm teaching less on theological anthropology, I do kind of a whiteboard exercise or I ask people what the doctrine of humanity or theogs client is about, and that's unquestionably the starting point, giving the war first and then set. There's usually kind of a pause after that, as if we think that just is the doctrine of humanity is image? Understand we're kind of a little bit stuck as to what goes on beyond that. I will say, by the time we're done, the whiteboard is full. We have traced connections to all kinds of different things, and I use that as a way of trying to expand people's horizons about what it means to think about what it means to be human. So image of God's sand, for me, I think the body, I mean, historically a body soul has been a dominant way of framing things with those two in there. Given the sets of issues that we're dealing with today, I tend to I don't want to neglect what the tradition has wanted to do with soul language and spirit language. I do think we need to think really deeply and carefully about what it means to have a body, What is embodiment about, why was it good? What happened to bodies in the fall, what's going on with the resurrection? And how should that and shouldn't that shape the way that we think about the bodies that we inhabit now. So I think that's a primary consideration. Free will as it released to scheiology, do we have it, don't we have it? All those kind of moral agency and responsibility, There's a whole set of issues that has been significant historically. I'm not sure that I would say that it's a dominating kind of a driving set of factors as much today, at least not in the material sense of it. I think largely those are just kind of settled conversations, and I don't know that there are new avenues, at least if there are, I'm not aware of them. Where I see a lot of the free will agency conversation coming to play now is around technology and kind of to what extent are we determined by various technological cultural artifacts? What does it mean to be to have free agency? Like this does an ai? Uh? Does it now? Or will it ever have what we call agency and free will and moral responsibility and those kinds of issues. Yeah, I mean, obviously you've got all of the stuff around sex, sexuality, gender, and race, ethnicity, cultural identity. I see those as importantly connected to the body and why I talk a lot about the body of my theolosical entropology today. Those seem to me like kind of the constellations that would be difficult to avoid, Like if I were going to sit down and write a one volume survey of theological anthropology, it be hard to do that without getting into those kinds of issues.

00:26:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's helpful.

00:26:47
Speaker 1: And do you do you see so when you connect like race, gender, all those different ones, they would be sort of part of that body embodiment sort of, they'd almost be subcategories within it, So you could subdivide that number of different pieces, is what I'm hearing you say?

00:27:02
Speaker 4: Is that right? Yeah, I'm not quite sure that I'd be willing to say that they're all like subcategories of a theology of the body. But there are things that you need to think well about with respect to the body that provide the theological resources that are necessary thinking about those things. Right, So, to have a body is to be finite, it's to be shaped a particular way. It's to be identified through relationships to other material realities. It's to be both good but affected by the fall. So in all of those theological issues that I need to think through really carefully, because you need all of those resources. When I go to think about these other things, I fail to mention theology of disability would be a major category that's important pologies today. It would also be just directly tied to all of these things and thinking well about what it means to have a body.

00:27:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Yeah, that's really helpful because I know a lot of that. You know, when I read things on the Image of God, they'll fall into some of those things and it tends to get I don't want to say muddled in there, but they do tend to sort of creep in at different areas, and so certain categorizations of the image of God, for instance, that focus on human capabilities ultimately then have to deal with human disabilities on some level.

00:28:19
Speaker 2: If they're going to defend that kind of a position.

00:28:22
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, I think any view of the image of God ought to be able to think well about all of these kinds of issues. Yeah. So, going back to what she said earlier that when I rune in the image of God, I try not to spend a lot of time arguing against other views of the image. And I have written at times on all, Right, if you're going to have this view of the image that I actually don't think is the best way to think about the image. But if you're going to go there, then let's think together about how are you going to handle issues around disability and whatnot. If you're going to do that, at least do that as theologically aware as possible. And I think anybody who's thinking here about the image ought to challenge themselves to make sure that they're understanding of the image can handle some of these difficult issues in theology.

00:29:12
Speaker 3: If I'm understanding you correctly. The way that you're sort of parsing out the importance of thinking about embodiment is trying to move beyond just simply speaking of image of God? Is that right?

00:29:27
Speaker 4: Correct? Right?

00:29:29
Speaker 3: So, when you're thinking about these dynamics where I think, I think that your intuition is a good one, because we do often tend to try to force things like the image of God to do more service than maybe it can. And that's where you run into some of the problems that James was just mentioning. I'm wondering how you have that same conversation though, with some of these historical figures. So you mentioned the way that this body soul or body soul spirit dichotomy or trichotomy historically has such great weight, even in the ways that we tend to talk about the significance of Jesus taking on flesh, arguably to the degree that we've historically had the situation where embodiment has been diminished. So, now as you think about it today and you're trying to recover the significance of embodiment, how do you deal with some of those elements historically that just get placed within the soulishness of humanity to the degree that we might say that that's still a thing or the spirit of a human person without falling back into the same trap of kind of essentializing humanity in these non material ways.

00:30:38
Speaker 4: That makes sense, it does. Let me see, I have any have to pull on about three different threads at the same time. I think to answer that right, So I'll try not to do that and too complicated along of fashion, I mean one, I do want to pick up one thing you said toward the beginning that I do worry that with the image of God we make it do too much work. There's a move, it's a pretty common move in theology to go from the image of God is central for a Biblical Christian understanding what it means to be human, which try I would agree with, to the image of God is basically coextensive with what it means to be human. So anything that I want to say about the human person I have to somehow say through the image. And I think at that point you've expanded the image beyond not just its usefulness but its biblical location. The image was the Amago Day was never trying to tell us everything we need to know about what it means to be human. It was trying to tell us something that's centrally important for what it means to be human. So the other things I say about what it means to be human ought to be connected to what I think about the image. But that's different than saying that the image ought to be the whole of what it means to be human. I think when we make that ladder move, we just expand the image in two ways. They make it just unwieldy, very difficult to address, and I actually think we end up missing what I think we ought to say about the image, but into kind of my own view on the image that might get to hear in a moment. So that's kind of the first thing that I want to go to. Second one. I mean, I was trying to be a little bit careful with earlier thinkers on body soul image dynamics is I think if we understand them at their best and the kind of most nuanced for them, there are very few of them that would disconnect the body from the imago day entirely. The dominant within the tradition that I'm familiar with, at least the dominant approach is to associate the image primarily with the soul, so the soul is the image of God. There is a minority report that helps the body be a part of the image of God as well, But the majority of you has been that the soul is the image of God. The body for many theologians, is the image of the image. It's the material means by which the soul does its imaging work in the world. So it has a secondary relationship to the image, but that's still an important relationship to the image, Like the soul can do the imaging thing that it ought to do apart from the body. That is the image of the image, and therefore the way in which the soul manifests God in whatever way that view understands the image to function, that's a fairly significant role for the body in the image. The body is instrumental in that sense. It's some of the soul uses to accomplish its imaging purposes, but it's a really important instrument. And so I wouldn't want to say that view devalues the body. It just locates the value of the body in relationship to the value of the soul. So there is a hierarchy at work there in that particular kind of dualism, not the only kind of dualism at work in the Western world. But maybe I want to say this way, not all hierarchies necessarily devalue the thing that's lower in the hierarchy. My analogy is typically I really like coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. I probably drink coffee than I should. So there's no question that I place a high value on coffee. But there's also no question that I value my wife more than I value coffee. Right, there's a definite hierarchy at work there, and it's a hierarchy that's not even close. But that doesn't mean that I'm devaluing coffee, right, I have a high value for coffee, it's just value that's located in relation to something that has a significantly higher value. So that's kind of the way that I would want to think about at least certain ways of how the body is related to the soul in that. The challenge, of course, is that that's a difficult Historically, that has been a difficult position to maintain without slipping toward a devaluing of the body in the process. So like, there's nothing necessary to that in the theoltical system. I get what they're after in there, but at the very least, like if you're going to go there, just be aware that your position has a historical I don't want to go so far as to say inevitable, but really strong tendency to slide towards some unfortunate ways of thinking about the body and embodiment. I'm inclined to think that. Well, I think I have good biblical reasons for this, but also for kind of practical let's avoid that slippage move. It's just better to think that the body is fundamentally a part of the image itself. I think image language in the Bible is inherently embodied language. I don't think the ancient world envisions the possibility that you can have some of that is an image, a selim or demut or an icon or whatever language we want to use. All of those were fundamentally embodied things in the ancient world. And so I think by calling us images of God, they're actually talking about us as embodied material images and an embodied material world. So I actually don't think the body is merely an instrument of the soul in the image of God process. I think the body is fundamental to what it means to be made in the image of God.

00:35:51
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting, you know, if you read cog psych literature nowadays. A lot of times we used to make this similar distinction in more unless theological spaces, where it'd be like, the mind is different than the body, and now it's moving back to something that's a little bit more like, No, we can distinguish the mind from the body, but they're basically the same entity and organism. And that's almost what I hear you saying, is this hierarchy between soul and body can create some slippage, and no matter how essential you view the body being right, when it's underneath on that hierarchy, it's always going to tend toward or lend itself to sort of a gnostic sort of movement, right where the soul becomes that much more important, versus the way you're phrasing it, which is, no, it's just all the embodiment, all the stuff that we are, whether that stuff is soul, spirit, body, whatever we divide that into, that whole complex is image.

00:36:49
Speaker 2: Is that? Am I hearing that?

00:36:50
Speaker 4: Right? That's largely And I pause when you said the is because I still wouldn't want to say that the image is like everything that needs to be about what it means be human understood. Yeah, Yeah, it's the human person as the complex body soul creature that it is, that is image of God, that is yea. And I mean, at the end of the day, if you if you push me hard enough, I'm still a dualist of a kind. I still think we are body soul creatures. I'm just significantly less hierarchical in my understanding of how Yeah.

00:37:23
Speaker 1: So, how do you think about the image of God? Because oh sorry, I'll ask ahead, what do you think about the image of God? Because I mean I've addressed it more from I'm an Old Testament guy, so I've addressed it more from that sort of Old Testament exegesus sort of standpoint, and haven't thought quite as much systematically theologically about theological anthropology. So I'm kind of interested in the take image of God?

00:37:46
Speaker 2: What is it? How does it function? You know, what's your take on it?

00:37:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, so my shorthand, and we probably could do I don't know, if you'd be interested, we could do a whole different interview that's just on image of God. I think be great, I really do think. And I think it's particularly clear in the Old Testament that the image terms and conceptual framework in the Old Testament are using idle language to describe a human person gelemen to your image and likeness. Terms from Genesis one are either just straightforwardly idle terms or at least in close constellation with the sets of terms that the Biblical world used to refer to idols. And so we to understand Genesis one, well, you have to read it against the backdrop of what does it mean to be an idol in the ancient world? I actually think that's why theologians will often talk about the fact that those two terms are dropped into Genesis one without explanation or definition, and I sometimes get the impression that they think that means that we can do kind of almost whatever we want with them in that context. And my response is, well, no, that happened because those were well understood terms. Typically when used to describe a creature in relation to a divine being, there's virtually nothing else that language could be doing other than describing us as idol, like at the very least. And then if you dig into kind of what does it mean to be an idol in the ancient world, as you are the material means by which a divine being is quite literally manifesting divine presence in the world. And that is my shorthand. Now for what does it mean to say the humans are our images of God? Is where the material means by which God is seeking to manifest his divine presence in a unique way in the world.

00:39:35
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because that already steps you towards you know, you think about the blind deaf idols that are intended to represent you know, certain ancient or Eastern gods and machine that you would get off the metal that's sort of been hammered into that and the glow and all that symbology. But for humans there is automatically the next entailment is well, we have choices, you know, and so you can see how it already bleeds into some of these other areas you've talked about, I guess is my point, which is really fascinating.

00:40:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, very cool, And also I think why I emphasize the body so much in this Yeah, in that context sense, Yeah, you have to have materiality to be an idol. That's the concept wouldn't make any sense apart from being the material means by which I mean it's they tend to the definition that you've got the materiality of the human body.

00:40:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's nothing to shine the glory, then there really isn't an image. Yep, yeah see, I'm sorry I cut you off earlier.

00:40:31
Speaker 4: Go for it, man, No, all good.

00:40:34
Speaker 3: Actually, the way that you you drowed drew that back to the idol and the embodiment kind of leans into what my question is. So on one side we can see I think, within that way of framing it one of the fears that earlier versions of Christian theology might have had in creating a stronger hierarchy. As you put it right, there's there's a concern that we overly lean into then the embodied, and we create idols. I think often maybe the one that comes to my mind most immediately is Augustine. The way that he talks. On one side of his mouth, he's responding to the Manicheans, and so he wants to make it very clear creation as a physical reality is good and to take away from that as an awful thing. And yet when he starts to get constructive, at least in my reading of him, you start to get the sense that he's slipping back toward what he was criticizing. Right, He's very intent to say things like that the soul needs to bridle the horse, that is the body, and like a jockey, control it. Otherwise you get into a lot of troubles right that the body takes you as if the body is more prone to sinfulness. But I kind of wonder in the opposite direction, what do we lose when we start to slip into, let's say, stronger versions of that hierarchy, and what do we gain when we start to close that gap and give a greater on Are I supposed to the embodiment without necessarily having an without losing the fear of idolatry, but without having an oversized fear of idolatry.

00:42:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great way framing it, because I think to some extent what Augustine is doing and what a lot of the Patristic theologians were doing, is they were operating out of, as you pointed out, actually a very high doctrine of creation and the goodness of the created order, and you know, pushing back on any sense that this could be anything other than what the good God of the universe created and wanted us to have. But then you have to make sense out of these kind of strongly worded cautionary and kind of consistently worrisome approaches to material realities, which I actually take to be their sense that it's almost that like kind of creation created things, including bodies, are so amazingly good that fallen creatures like us will always be tempted to use them badly. It's almost the very goodness and beauty of creation that makes them fundamentally problematic for fallen creatures, because we're going to be enticed by their beauty, not because there's anything wrong with them, but because there's something fundamentally wrong with us, and we're constantly going to use this thing badly. The challenge, of course, is that your rhetoric can get complicated here. So the parallel that have often drawn if you've grown up in certain kinds of churches like I did, that have theologies of sexuality that were always around, Like the explicit theology was sex is good. It's a gift of God. God gave it to us. Experiencing marriage is amazing. It's the kind of the highest possible view of the goodness of sexuality. And that would get said like once or twice a year, and then like the other three hundred and sixty three days out of the year were especially if you're a teenager, right, it's dangerous as tempting, stay away from it, don't touch it, don't think about it. Like it was all of these that were actually being driven to a fairly signif degree by this high theology of sexuality, but the operationalizing of it was this kind of constant warning it's tempting that allowed us on the receiving end to actually walk away with a relatively low view of sexuality, even though that was the exact opposite, Right, So we walked away with it's dangerous, it's maybe bad, it's it's at least kind of conflicted. And I think that some of what you see with Augustine on the with the body here is I think, actually a very high view of the body, but it gets operationalized in complicated ways when all of your language around the body is warning in danger and temptation oriented kinds of language. I spent so long answering the first part of that that I forgot we went in the second half of that.

00:44:50
Speaker 3: No, So how do we not dismiss someone like Augustin, I guess is the way to put it and the warning that he wants to put there, that is a legitimate warning without being sucked into a kind of theology that ends up strengthening the hierarchy, minimizing the embodiment, lose a sight of who we are as embodied creatures, right, Yeah, that's right, because.

00:45:13
Speaker 4: You also asked about, like, what do we lose if we're not paying enough theological attention to the body, and what do we gain in this? Well, I think a good chunk of what we lose is most of human life, at least human life as it has actually lived and experienced in I don't know most of the Bible and history like it. Just we are embodied beings and there is nothing that we experience in the world that we don't experience in a way that is at least related to our bodies. I would say, tectually experience through our bodies. And I don't know how you think well and theologically about any aspect of human existence apart from thinking well and theologically about what it means to be embodied. So I just think we have fundamentally impoverished theilos anthropologies apart from a robust theology of embody meant and if theological anthropology also involves really important issues like gender and sexuality, and race and racism and identity, and I would say just things like parenting and teaching and any way time that we're trying to shape another person, we're doing so according to some concept of what it means to be human and how to flourish human persons. If those are all part of the doctrine of humanity, and if they're all really important, and if you can't think it well about any of them, apart from thinking well about what it means to have a body, then we've got problems. And we've just impoverished ourselves in relation to just a wealth of issues that we ought to be thinking about. What do we gain First, we're going to gain a what's the obvious impoferment wealth of theological resources for engaging those kinds of things. I think we reconnect some stuff. So something that I have I've done in class before is I'll students to brainstorm for me a list of things that you have to do in order to be spiritually healthy. And you know, you'll get your usual list of suspects, right, Pray, read your Bible, go to church, those sorts of things, and then no, it's not spiritually healthy. In order for spiritual maturity, and they'll list those kinds of things, and then I'll ask them to brainstorm for me a list of things that you have to do in order to be healthy as a human person, and they'll list all of the health related things, right, exercise and sleep and nutrition and whatnot. And then I'll step back and we'll have what is often a really good conversation about two things. I mean, why is it that the first list, the spiritual maturity list, is inevitably shorter than the health list, that they have a much easier time coming up with things that contribute to being healthy than they can kind of to be spiritually mature. And then I also want to know why did the two lists not overlap at all? No one thinks about those two as the same sort of thing. They are in fundamentally different categories. And we can reflect on that. Now. I will freely admit that I cheat a bit by using the language of spiritual maturity and the question, because I know it's going to skew their attention in a certain direction. But then we can have a conversation out why is that the case? Why does the language of spiritual maturity take you to one set of issues and not the other set of issues. I like to focus most of it on the language of health and why do we not think that spiritual maturity and health are related to each other in any significant way? And I think kind of thinking more robustly about embodiment will help us reconnect those things. And it may be that there are still distinctions that ought to be drawn in there, but they should not be as bifurcated as they are in the theological imaginations of most Christians.

00:48:49
Speaker 1: It's pretty fascinating because I came out of a health background, fitness background, So my bachelor's degree is an exercise fiz and I was a personal trainer for a while. And you know, as I've gone through life and done theology and looked at discipleship and spiritual maturity and all these different things, what you find is that that bifurcation is available almost everywhere. You know, if you if you were to ask a student, you know, what do you really need to do to study? They're not going to tell you I need to get a good night's sleep, Like those are almost always ancillary too.

00:49:20
Speaker 2: What's going on?

00:49:20
Speaker 1: But the reality is, I think people are starting to come around to this idea that the body affects the mind, The body affects the spirit. Like if you're not getting enough sleep, if you're spending all your time in front of your screen, if you're you know, all these different sort of things that have a diminishing effect on you and aren't good for you in high doses, right, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, you know, eating twinkies all day, whatever, it is like, these things are going to have that detrimental impact. I think we're starting to get our heads around maybe these things are more integrated than we've thought.

00:49:55
Speaker 4: Yes, And what I would like students to lean into a little bit more as well, is that I think think there's a goodness to caring for I hate to say my body here because it makes sound like it's not me caring for myself in embodied sorts of ways. I'm not sure why we can't think of that as a good in itself. Oftentimes, when we have this conversation, the first place that my students want to go in is Okay, well, it makes sense that I need to attend to these embodied realities because otherwise I won't be able to do the spiritual maturity stuff. Right, they don't get enough sleep, I won't be able to pray, or I'll fall asleep and I try to read my Bible, or if I'm not healthy enough, i won't be able to.

00:50:35
Speaker 2: Go to church.

00:50:36
Speaker 4: It's all instrumentalized on the body side of things, because the only goods at stake are the spiritual goods. It's the only thing the body stuff can be doing is help me achieve the only goods that are in view. And I want to say, no, there are goods on both sides of this equation. I don't want to downplay the reality of taking care of my body for the sake of doing the many things that God has called me to do in the world, but I have to instrumentalize all of them. And why it's not possible to think that God gave me a body and He probably thinks that it's a good thing that I take care of the I guess I don't want to say take care of the bodies, take care of myself in embodied sorts of ways. That sounds to me like something just ought to be good. And it's kind of funny that as Christians will often use that reasoning when thinking about creation itself. It's I don't have to think that I don't know, taking care of the forest preserved next to me is only good if it lends itself toward I don't know, the humans being healthier, and like we kind of think God made trees. He seems to like them, and so it's okay to want to take care of them and then rejoice in their beauty. For some reason, it's weird if we think that we ought to think about ourselves in the same sorts of ways.

00:51:52
Speaker 2: Oh, it's great.

00:51:54
Speaker 3: Well, I think James is laughing right there because the tree dynamic, right that that's gonna pulled me into something more. But I have to ask this in light of that. I know we're running out of time here. So there are actual studies done that have indicated that a significant component of mental health is related to our connection to trees, of all things. So the studies have shown that if you send someone through an old growth forest and they're struggling the way that the tree chatter, that's very real that we don't pick up with our ears, but we pick up sort of chemically with what they're doing interacts with us. Actually reduces anxiety and stress and increases development of hormones in our own body that calm us down, and it seems like a small thing related to health. But then you know, knowing those sorts of things, then you go to scripture and you realize the frequency within which Jesus is appealing to these sorts of dynamics just to talk about the Kingdom of God or even the ways in which he himself is going to interact with the Father. Before he's arrested. He goes to Guessemone, which seems to be, if I'm reading it correctly, a tree grove right, olive tree grove, and something that becomes less of a throwaway line, and it's more of an intuition of the work. The work that Jesus was doing wasn't disconnected from him actually walking and being in places right and ministering accordingly, and that's God and therefore means something right. The work is still to be done in terms of how closely and intimately we interweave the two, But there's got to be something related at that point to now thinking about the place of jesus work and the words that Jesus said, and the fact that they so deeply intertwine, and then his actions being so deeply moving in and out of these places to now think him on our own identity as human beings and that maturity health interwoven reality as well. Right, do you have any kind of a convoluted question but kind of drawful what you're saying.

00:54:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it relates to what I was saying earlier about the importance of thinking about our bodies and what it means to be embodied creatures living in a material world. That I think it causes us to think about our finitude and our particularity with our particular identities. But one of the key things is it that is is I mean, no material thing exists in this universe apart from being related to the other material things that exist in this universe. It's just how material things work. They are unavoidably connected to the other aspects of the material world. So it actually shouldn't surprise us that we are shaped and affected by other material things in creation in ways that we probably haven't even begun to comprehend and appreciate. And so I'm sure there is a logic for taking care of the rest of creation because it's going to contribute to our own flourishing. I wouldn't want that to be the only logic in view, I think it's okay to attend to the flourishing of other creatures just because God created them and seems to like them. But absolutely I think that in doing so we are probably attending to our own flourishing in ways we don't yet understand. Now. I also always want to acknowledge we live in a broken material world, and so none of this always lends itself the easy answers to questions about when it isn't it okay to chop down that tree that is actually helping with my mental health? But I also don't know that we can rustle with that question well without thinking and attending carefully to what is that tree is a part of the creative order that God has given us and has called us to inhabit faithfully well.

00:55:48
Speaker 3: Arguably, wrestling with that is an element of maturity, right even beyond the health benefits that might have to my mental state. It is an element of maturity to begin to think about ourselves as creatures, given in places, embodied, but also interwoven in these deep and meaningful ways, so that what's good for them, them being the trees and the other creatures, is also good for me, but not just good for me, right that there's that give and take.

00:56:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, well, guys, it seems clear that we probably need to have another conversation. This was great, but we are absolutely out of time. And Mark really appreciate you being here. This was fabulous. I really enjoyed the conversation and would love to have you back if your willing. I think a more robust understanding or discussion of the image of God would certainly help. And so if you're willing, we'd love to have you back. And I really appreciate you being here for the hour.

00:56:45
Speaker 4: This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate the invitation and the opportunity. Thank you.

00:56:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, everybody, Well, thanks for being here. Thanks Ashijh, Thanks Mark, and we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian Take care of Everybody. I just want to take a second to thank that team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.