Does Paul say that only men are made in the image of God?
2024-05-14 00:32:58
Do you have questions about theology, the Bible, or the church that you’re too afraid to ask? Tired of pastors and scholars using unfamiliar language or overly complicated explanations? Curiously, Kaitlyn is a weekly podcast hosted by author and theologian Kaitlyn Schiess that tries to make theology accessible, meaningful, and fun. Each week, you’ll hear a kid ask a theology question–sometimes serious, sometimes silly–and Kaitlyn will interview a scholar to help answer it (without all the academic jargon). Together, Kaitlyn and her guest discover that this one simple question opens up big theological ideas that can impact our lives, shape our view of God, and understand Scripture in a new way. Whether you're reminiscing about your own childhood curiosities or simply seeking a refreshing take on faith, tune in and rediscover the joy of learning with "Curiously Kaitlyn.”
Welcome to Curiously, Caitlyn, a podcast where we try to make theology make sense. I'm Caitlyn Schess, and every week on this show, you will hear a kid's question about God, theology, or the Bible, and then I'll talk with a scholar who will try to answer it.
I don't know.
That doesn't make any sense.
Today, we're talking to Dr. Amy Peeler. She is the Kenneth T. Wessner Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, an ordained priest and the author of many books, including Women and the Gender of God. She is also a Holy Post pundit.
Thank you, Dr. Peeler, for being with me today and hearing this kid question together.
Why does Paul say that men are made in the image of God and women are made in the image of men, when men and women are both made in the image of God, not just men?
I love that. She's a little biblical theologian, and that's such a good question. What is your initial response, Dr. Peeler, to this question?
I love this question because it is actually very common. It's clear that she is referring to 1 Corinthians 11, verse 7, because Paul is using this language of man and woman and image and glory. But, like many of us, she's actually not remembering the verse perfectly. So she's actually introducing a problem that isn't present in the New Testament text. And this is so easy for us to do, to kind of maybe bring what we think is going on or to read kind of quickly.
And actually, it's not as egregious as her question poses, because the particular words she uses aren't quite there. So what a great lesson for all of us to slow down when we're reading and make sure that we're not imagining words or cutting out words, but actually looking at what's on the page.
Yeah, and looking at what's on the page, when we hear someone cite a reference, because I can imagine, too, someone saying, oh, yeah, I've heard that. I've heard people cite that, oh, Paul says this about women, and not going and looking both for what specifically is there, for the context around what's there, for how it fits with other things. So let's start with the passage that you were just talking about. If you want to read what you think is most relevant in 1 Corinthians, and then we'll go to Genesis and see what she's talking about in Genesis.
Excellent. Okay. So 1 Corinthians 11, 7, and I'm just going to focus in on the section that she's quoted. Since man is the image and reflection of God, but woman is the reflection of man. That's one way of putting it, and other translations would say, since man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.
So the important thing to notice there is that, I think her question said, why is, does it say that woman is created in the image of man? And that's actually not present. So Paul doesn't say that. It's also the case that Paul does not say women are not created in the image of God. So it seems to me kind of underneath her question, and I love that she's aware of this, is that Genesis 1, 27 says that male and female are created in the image of God.
And this becomes really the foundation stone for human understanding. Like who are we? We are made in God's image, male and female. And so she knows that, but when she goes to Paul, he does not disagree with that. Like this text does not disagree.
The only distinctions here have to do with glory, not image. Now he doesn't explicitly say woman is in the image of God, but he's working with the creation text here. And Paul is very attentive to and always puts himself under the authority of Israel's scriptures.
What Dr. Peeler is saying here is really important. We can read the Bible like it just popped out of the sky one day as a fully furnished book. But the apostle Paul, when he was writing chunks of the New Testament, had the Old Testament to guide him. Just like Jesus, he knew the Old Testament, Israel's scriptures, really well.
In fact, he can help us read them too by paying attention to what he sees that we might not see. Just like the other New Testament authors, we can learn something about how to read the Old Testament from them.
And so I do not think he's going to disagree with Genesis 1 here, and his words explicitly do not do this. There's only this distinction in glory, and it is a hard text. So I also want to affirm all the time when my students come to 1 Corinthians 11, they're like, wait, what? What's going on here? So it's a hard text, but it's not hard in the way that maybe her question might've led us to assume.
Yeah. So we can come to this with this foundational belief that Paul would have held, and that, as Christians, who have this whole canon that we hold, that men and women are made in the image of God. So we have that kind of assumption, which is more clear than what's happening here, which is sort of confusing. So then I feel like there's two questions. If this girl had this text in front of her, I imagine a couple of the questions she would ask is both, what does it mean for a woman to be the glory of man?
Because my initial reaction to that, got to be honest, is negative. And then it says, man did not come from woman, but woman from man, neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. So I have two concerns here. One, I don't really want to be the glory of man, and I don't really want to feel like, oh, I come from man. And there seems to be, if you're just reading this, some sense that that means something for importance or authority, and we're kind of dealing with questions of authority around this.
So let's start with the glory of man part. What does that mean?
Yes. Okay. So for man being the image and glory of God, let's focus on the glory part, right? Because we've kind of established the shared image. What does it mean to be glory?
And you, Caitlin, having done the very good biblical work that you've done, many of our listeners will know that glory is a very complicated topic in the scriptures. So I also really want to acknowledge that this is a hard passage. And I consider that a gift, that I think the Lord has given us some parts of scripture that we can reason about and come to more clarity. But I think we always have to say, we don't know in full. This is hard.
It keeps us humble and listening and learning. So I want to establish that first. But glory of God here seems to be the sense that when God created, and of course, Genesis 1, male and female, once we move into Genesis 2, there is the creation of this male being, it seems. So this gets very complicated, but that's how Paul's reading it. Let's say that for sure.
And then from the male being, you have the creation of the women. So all this is saying is it's going back to how Genesis 2 tells the beginning of humanity. So the man glorifies God by reflecting back to the one who created the first human being. You look at man and you say, oh, God is creator. You think of Adam.
I think what Paul is saying here is that you look at woman, and then, if you're thinking about creation, you think about, oh, she reflects back to the being out of whom she was drawn, the man.
This is a story a lot of us are pretty familiar with, but let's remember it together. Adam is made from the dust and given the breath of life and put in the garden of Eden to work and take care of it. And God says in chapter two of Genesis that it is not good for the man to be alone. And so he will make a suitable helper. Now, what that phrase means is a whole other podcast episode.
But for now, we'll just say it means something more like a coworker than an assistant.
And so it's not a diminishment of her glory. And I'll wait. I can even tell on your face, you're like, yeah, really? So hear me out. That makes really good sense for a man, human being, to glorify God as creator.
But notice that the comparisons here are not the same. because does man create woman? Absolutely not. You go back and read Genesis two, and he is asleep. when this happens, he has absolutely no agency or power.
And so, though, there is this reflection of glory, man reflects back to God as creator. Woman cannot reflect back to man as her creator, right? That is totally not the case. So how is her glory reflecting? I think the glory that she's reflecting back in the Genesis narrative is she shows the glory of man as one who is dependent.
What God says about the man when he is created and he is alone is that this is not good. It is not good. The call that God has given to humanity in Genesis one to steward the whole world is a call to the male and the female. The man cannot do it alone. And so if the woman reflects back a glory to the man, it's a glory of dependence.
And that automatically reflects back to God, who is the creator of all. So it is this cycle back of, yes, God created man. God is glorious as creator. And then out of man, God created woman. And she shows that beauty of human interdependence, which reflects back to our need and our dependence upon God.
That's one way of reading really robustly, keeping Genesis and 1 Corinthians 11 together.
I love that. People who heard a few episodes back, Krista McKerlin talking about human dependence and finitude, and that being beautiful and important, and not less than, you know, we have this image of, because we read into this, our ideas about gender that come from our culture. So we think, even based on what you just said, someone could think, oh, right, men represent God and being creative and powerful and dominating over things. And women represent the dependence of humanity. And instead of saying like, no, that's what it means to be human, men and women.
And in this particular interpretation of Genesis from Paul, we're seeing that as glory, as goodness, like Krista talked about, is a really good thing. So that kind of ties in both the glory part and man created for woman. And I want to give you a chance to talk too about, you know, it's only a few verses down after it says, you know, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman, which is kind of, again, brushes up against, actually, some of our assumptions about self-made, you know, individualistic men. And then this last verse, I went back to this passage this morning and I thought, oh, I'm so glad Dr. Peeler is talking about this.
This is such a good verse for her. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman, but everything comes from God. So talk about that part of it. Because again, I think we isolate these verses and go, oh, this one's problematic. I don't know how this, you know, jives with this other part.
We don't read around it. And if you read around it, it's like, whoa, that's a striking ending for self-sufficient men of the past. and now to say, yes, also men come from women and also everything comes from God.
Absolutely. So there's a beautiful picture of dependence here as well. And I just want to build upon what you said a moment ago. If someone assumes culturally that men are independent, actually the statement here is like men are the dependent ones. They are the ones that needed this strong helper.
And so, and then that shows human dependence upon God. Krista is one of my dearest friends. And so I absolutely am drawing from her wisdom in my reading here. Many people think that in 1 Corinthians 11, 12, this dependence upon one another, that Paul is rhetorically moving here, that this is a watershed moment in the passage. So if you read and are troubled by verse 7 or 8, 9, keep going, keep going to 12..
So what a beautiful picture, right? In creation, we are told, and Paul believes man. And then from the side of man, woman is drawn. And then this pair is given stewardship of the world. And then henceforth, it is reversed.
Every other instance thereafter, men, sons come from their mothers. So there's a bit of a balance there, right? The first example, and then every other example. And so there's a dependence upon one another. Now, I think, and you won't be surprised to know that I think this, and this is what I'm writing on currently, is that I think this is not only speaking about the human condition.
We are all born of women. But of course, the man, the one who is the image of God, Jesus himself, this is how God decided for him to come into the world. So, and early interpreters read it this way. Adam, and from him, Eve, and then Mary, and from her, Jesus. I think verse 12 is talking about the beautiful picture of completion in the incarnation itself.
And that actually causes me to reflect back to verse seven, not only in this creational way, but also in a new creational way.
This has come up already, and it's going to keep coming up. So it's something important for us to talk about. When we ask theological questions, especially questions about what it means to be human, we have to look both backwards and forwards. And that's what Dr. Peeler is getting at here.
Back to creation, and also forward to new creation. We have to look to the creation account in Genesis and ask, what is said here about who God is, and what kind of creatures humans are, and how we should live? And ask, how is new creation described in places like the biblical books of Isaiah and Revelation? And how does that tell us what it means to be human? After all, we aren't going to end up back in a garden, starting over again as humans.
No, we will one day live in new creation, redeemed and restored by the grace of God.
Readers will recognize that what Paul is talking about is what you look like in the church service, how you do your hair, and if you're veiled or not. It's very complicated historically. But he does make this statement that men should not have their heads veiled. And he says then, because they are the image and glory of God. I wonder if what he's saying is this.
When you look at a man in this Christian community, you celebrate God as creator. You also celebrate that God, the Son, became human, and in fact, became a man. You look at a male brother in Christ, and you think, yeah, Jesus was a man who walked in the world. But then Paul says women need to be veiled. They need to have something over their heads.
And of course, that has many cultural connotations.
Dr. Peeler is referencing here the reality that we don't totally know what Paul was up to with this whole veiling business. And many scholars try and figure out what exactly veils meant in the first century world. he was writing in, in order to understand the connotations that he and his original audience would have had about veils, where they wouldn't have needed to write it down or say it explicitly. The idea is that if we understood how they thought about veils, or anything else mentioned in the Bible, we would better understand what the New Testament says, since it was written in that context.
There is a lot of debate about what veils meant and didn't mean, and what that means for interpreting this text, if we even need to know that. But this is what's so fun about theology. We keep learning. We keep trying new answers to hard questions, seeing if they work, hearing arguments against them, and trying again.
But I have wondered, and this is actually true in Greco-Roman literature, that women's hair and veils are a way of speaking symbolically about the womb,
about their ability to produce children. So what if it is the case that men should be unveiled? You look at them and you think, oh, Jesus, the male savior who came into the world. Women are veiled, which signifies a womb. And you are to look at the veiledness of women in the congregation and say, oh, yes, Jesus, this is how he came into the world.
That we both point to the glory of the image of God, Jesus Christ, but in distinct ways, through our embodiment and through how we clothe ourselves in the worship service.
I love that too, because it's a good picture or example of how we often go wrong, not just in how we read scripture, but some of our theological mistakes can be, we're trying so hard to make this about us and things distinctly about us that are very often about God and us learning more about God and being oriented towards worship of God. And then we get caught up in some details that might really matter. I mean, how we worship together and how we think about gender, all of that matters, but are we missing? sometimes? This is really about us understanding the gospel better and who Jesus is.
So I love that. Before we move into a couple of other questions I have about this kid's question, any other things you think are really important for us to know about this passage, or things that we might get wrong about this passage?
Yeah, I think two things. One, this passage features in gender role debates. And I always find that curious because at the beginning, Paul says very clearly that both men and women are praying and prophesying. So there is no distinction of practice in this passage. Everyone is moved by the spirit in these powerful ways.
And yet there is an honoring of embodiment in distinct ways. And so I think there's much to celebrate in this passage, but it doesn't really help us decide who gets to do what on Sunday morning. It's not best for that. It's much more about our relation with one another and with God. And if that is the case, then I would, as I stated earlier, urge readers to read to this place of where Paul talks, in the Lord, you cannot do it on your own.
I think that's such a good message for our current culture. I was just reading this morning about a growing divide in Gen Z between men and women. politically. You know this much better than I do, but it was so striking that I believe the Christian faith can step in and say, it is not a zero-sum game. It's not, hey, women have lost and now men need to lose.
It is that we beautifully are designed to see the glory in one another and partner together in the stewardship of the new creation. I think we have very good news that many of our neighbors who are outside of faith are hungry to hear. And shockingly, First Corinthians, as complicated and weird as it might sound, is a fruitful place for that good news.
That's great. That's wonderful.
You know, part of this girl's question when she first asked it, and this is how people will often ask questions about gender in scripture, is, well, Paul says this. And sometimes we'll say, oh, this is in First Corinthians or this is in Ephesians, but sometimes that's how the conversation in the church goes amongst people who know something about how scripture talks about women or gender. And that's how the question is sort of phrased. It's like there's other places, Jesus, for example, sometimes it's pitted this way, like Jesus was very honoring of women. Paul hates women.
But this girl is recognizing something that is true, which is a lot of troubling passages about women, troubling from our perspective, come from epistles, letters that we attribute to Paul or have historically attributed to Paul. So who is Paul? Why do we care what Paul thinks? And is that a helpful way of describing the question or the debate?
Such a good question. I'm recalling a book from another New Testament friend, Jesus I have loved, but Paul, question mark, Daniel Kirk. This is a common, yes, and it has good base, right? The kind of, especially in Protestant circles, the texts that get the most attention and that have been wielded in the most oppressive ways against women are in letters attributed to Paul. So we have good reason to be unsure.
I was at a gathering yesterday with esteemed friends and colleagues and several were saying, I still hold Paul at a bit of an arm's length. And I totally understand that. Thankfully, I was trained by one of my professors. I mean, all of them were amazing, but on this question in particular, Beverly Gaventa, who taught us that Paul has so much to offer all people, women included, about finding our identities in Christ.
Dr. Peeler here is describing how many women feel uncomfortable with the writings of Paul because of how some of our most contentious passages about women come from his writings. Paul was an apostle, meaning someone who knew Jesus and spread his teachings around the world. Paul was a bit of a strange apostle because he did not meet Jesus until after Jesus had died and risen from the dead. You can read that story in Acts 9..
But he went on to write a lot of the New Testament. So we have a lot we learned from God through him. He also went on many missionary journeys sharing the gospel and was eventually martyred, killed because of his faith.
And so I think. with that assurance, I was able to continue in these challenging passages, trusting that God is good and then pressing forward to. how can I understand this passage? And Caitlin, I love testifying of this every time I've done the deep dive. And this is really where I've spent my work in the last decade.
I find more and more good news. I love this passage. I love 1 Timothy 2.. I cannot wait. Like it is such good news, because you know why?
It points to Jesus. There is not a bifurcation between how Jesus treated women, which is awesome and perfect. And Paul is pointing in the same direction, much like the work that our Black brothers and sisters in the States have done to say, hey, it sounds like it's pro-slavery. Absolutely not. Lisa Bowen's work, Esau Macaulay.
Early readers of Paul saw the liberative element. And I think that female interpreters of Paul have done this forever. And we're in a particularly exciting era where we are saying Paul is on your side. He is not against you. Sister, he sees your value, your giftedness, and he wants you to use it for the kingdom.
Part of the question this kid is asking is not just specifically about this passage and how we understand this passage. She's so smart. She's doing a really good job of saying, OK, there's something over here in this part of scripture. And then there's something over here and they seem to be, you know, maybe intention, maybe fully contradictory. And we could come up with other examples of times where it seems like, you know, this is in total contradiction to this thing over here.
How do we approach those kinds of questions? How do we handle places in scripture that seem to conflict? What do we do when we're not just studying this as an ancient text that's interesting, but as Christians that want?
this to shape our lives? Yes, it wouldn't be a problem if we didn't believe in a divine author, if this was just a collection and we wouldn't care at all. And so we actually, by our faith, are given this challenge. And, as you said, when we have a challenge and we work through it, there's a much greater gift. If all the answers were simple, if we didn't have struggle, oh, that's nice.
But when you work through struggle to an answer, it's so powerful. I think, as we stated at the beginning, there is no exchange for a close and careful read. Yeah, someone has said this, and that's fine. We hear a lot of things, but go and look for yourself. Are the words really there?
How are they laid out? Context. And also, I think, the second kind of global admonition I would give is to have patience. It does take time. And God is big enough both to ask the honest questions.
I mean, there have been years that I have sat with particular text and said, God, why would you allow this in the scripture? I don't understand. It seems bad. That God is big enough to hold that, to hold that honest question and critique. And God is also big enough and good enough to lead to a place, maybe sometimes complete clarity, but maybe more often, a deeper trust in God's goodness, even if we don't have the clarity.
And there's so much good work, right? I love the books all behind you. There have been brothers and sisters that God has raised up to do deep dives on particular questions. And we live in an era in which we have pretty open access to that work. So don't also imagine that you have to solve it for yourself, either the hubris that you can figure it out or the kind of like burden that you have to figure it out.
Read widely and deeply. There's probably someone in church history, currently or previous, who has asked the same kind of question. That's the good thing about studying a document that's 2000 years old. is somebody else's ask already. And so be dependent and give yourself enough time.
I think that's where I've had to do just part for a while. And as my faith grows and matures, I can more assuredly say, God, I know you're good, even if this text doesn't sound good. And my final is that if you're kind of in a passage that's hard, don't neglect your time in the Word, particularly in the Gospels. Come back to the life of Jesus. We need to read all of scriptures and they are beautiful.
But if you're especially in a place where you're prone to doubt, go and encounter Jesus. In his life. And there's just something really important about meeting him in his story on a regular daily basis, even.
Oh, I love that. And I love how almost every one of these we've done so far. at some point, probably usually right after we hear the kid question, someone, the scholar that I'm interviewing will say, oh, do you know how many people have asked this before?
So many people.
Or Beth Felker-Jones a few weeks ago said, Augustine asked this question. I just love this idea that, you know, this little kid asks a question and sometimes we freeze up because it's like, oh gosh, they've identified something that I'm confused about or that I'm nervous about, or a passage I feel uncomfortable with. So I love your admonition to say like, read widely, because other Christians have asked this before. And they've come to a bunch of different answers, and they're good for us. Lastly, Dr.
Peeler, imagine that this little girl is in front of you and you're maybe at church together. And let's pretend that she asked just this passage. I'm confused about how man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. What is your kind of shortest, kind of kid answer that you would give?
Yeah, I think when someone asks a question like that, when a woman, a young woman, ask a question like that, there is probably a sense of, does God really love me or does God love me less? And so, discerning the movement of the Holy Spirit in that moment, I believe that I would say, and kind of maybe even take her shoulders if she's comfortable with that and say, darling, you are made in God's image. God delights in you. There is a beauty and an empowerment in how you are made. As a young woman, God loves girls.
And I would say then, I probably would absolutely then talk about Mary. It's not just a spiel, but it really, I can think of no better way. I would say, did you know how God decided to send Jesus? He was in the womb of a young girl. God could have just had Jesus kind of walk on the Sea of Galilee one day.
And God chose to use the body of a woman to bring the Savior to the world. What a beautiful picture of how God honors our distinction. And then I might say, this passage talks about glory. And there's a way that both your friends that are boys and you can glorify one another when you see the different strengths that you have in one another. In Sunday school, can you think of a friend who's a boy, who maybe has some different insights than you do?
That's a great picture of how you're both really important in your Sunday school class. Some answers you know, and some skills he can contribute. God has that vision for the whole church that you and he have something to contribute. And that's what God's glory means. God is glorified in the variety of people, in girls and boys.
to bring him honor. I think I would cover those three things with her.
Oh, I love that so much. I appreciate too, from a pastor, a pastoral answer too, which is important, because I do think it's inescapable. This is a little girl that asked this. And I think little girls in particular have these kinds of questions for good reasons. And we haven't always, as the church, been the kind of environment for them where they could just be intellectual questions.
It often has been, I'm picking up on some biases here. I'm picking up on some messages that aren't great. So I love the image. You got me teary eyed there. The image of you kind of telling this girl first, like God loves girls.
That is good news for all of us. Thank you, Dr. Peeler, for your time today and for taking this question really seriously.
I hope this precious young saint will receive from you or others this good answer. I would love for her not to spend several years thinking she's less than. If we could start her at this moment, trusting in her God-given worth, what amazing things she might achieve for the kingdom from this point on.
Amen. I love that. Dr. Peeler taught us something so important today that we should apply to all our theological questions. Two things can be true at once.
Understanding what a particular Bible passage means can be hard and challenging. And we sometimes have to say, I don't know. And we can still learn more about it. We can explore, we can find answers, even if they're not total answers. There's an image I keep coming back to when it comes to theology.
When our questions or the questions kids ask make us anxious or nervous, it's like we think we're in a sinking ship full of holes and we need to plug up all those holes as fast as we can. Any question is a threat to the integrity of the ship. So a kid asks a question or you think of a question in church, and our impulse is to say, ah, get an answer quick, plug that hole or the ship will sink. It makes us think our faith is precarious, fragile, maybe even that God is. But what I learned in my theological education was not a bunch of fancy ways to plug all the holes in the ship.
What I learned was that I could swim. I wasn't actually going to drown if the water got in, if I was surrounded by mystery. And then I found that there were actually better answers to the questions. once I wasn't anxious about keeping my ship afloat myself, because God was still with me. Even when I wasn't certain, even when I was asking big, scary questions, even when I had to say to God, this answer isn't good enough.
But I was still asking and I was still talking to God. And sometimes that is enough.
Curiously, Caitlyn is a production of Holy Post Media, produced by Mike Strelow, editing by Seth Corvette, theme song by Phil Vischer. Be sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review so more people can discover thoughtful Christian commentary, plus cute kids and never any butt news.
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