And what they're going to defend the other side with are these arguments.
These are all traditional, you can find them all in commentaries.
It's just the problem is they don't really work.
What I want to get across is that you will see this sort of argumentation made
to explain the plurality of Genesis 1:26.
And people will resist the idea that I present in Unseen Realm,
and I'm going to present here, that God is... the answer is actually really simple;
God is speaking to the heavenly host. It's as simple as that.
It's the plural of exhortation. God (singular God) is speaking to a group.
He's including them in the conversation for some reason.
But when he actually gets down to doing what he said he was going to do,
he's the one who does.
It's actually really simple. But when you start,
and some of you have had the experience, I hope it wasn't real bad,
of trying to tell somebody in your church or a friend about,
"Oh, this is so neat, you know, like, wow, look, look what's going on here."
And they look at you like you got two heads,
or like, like they need to discipline you out of the church. Okay?
So I mean, I get that.
And what they're going to defend the other side with are these arguments.
These are all traditional, you can find them all in commentaries.
It's just the problem is they don't really work.
You know, they're there, but they don't really work
when you actually look at the primary source data.
So again, we have a problem, or at least that's a problem.
So what about a different view?
Okay, again, I've already telegraphed this. This is the plural of exhortation.
And the reason that the members of the heavenly host are looped in is because
God is making imagers on Earth.
He's already made imagers in the supernatural world.
They existed before the creation of humanity according to Job 38.
So when the plural language is used here, somehow,
"let us create humankind in our image." If you stop there, it sounds like,
"oh, humanity is a group project."
But you don't stop there, and neither does the text.
When you go on to verse 27, it's not a group project. It's very clear.
So why the plurality? Well, somehow in God's creation of humankind,
that somehow involves them (the members of the heavenly host),
and somehow our imaging relates to their imaging.
We have the same creator.
We're all God's children
(they're his heavenly children, we are his earthly children),
And somehow, there's this relationship between us and them, and God,
going on here.
And we have to figure out from other passages, what that might be, what that is.
So, by the way, is this a liberal idea? I've referenced Bruce Waltke.
I'm not going to click out to Waltke.
But Waltke is a very famous evangelical Old Testament scholar.
Taught at Dallas Seminary for years.
He taught at Westminster Seminary for years.
He taught at Regent, up in Vancouver for years.
I think he's still alive. I know he was in failing health. He's elderly now.
But everybody knows who Bruce Waltke is in the evangelical world.
Okay, He is not a newbie.
So, again, we have this plural and singular thing going on here.
I would say this; the plurals make the point that as God governs the spiritual world
with the participation of his heavenly host, they are his agents.
So humans are God's agents on Earth.
The language of 1:26 and 1:27 that connect us and them and God.
The fallout of that, the result of that is that we are like them, they are like us.
We have the same creator.
How are we like each other? And how are we like God?
Well, the reason, let's take the easy one first, the way that we're both like God
is God made them and us to be his representatives.
This is what we talked about last week. We are God's representatives on Earth.
They are God's representatives in heaven, in the spiritual realm.
What does that mean? It means we do stuff as God's proxy.
We represent Him, we are His agents. And so are they, in their realm.
Sometimes they're tasked to come up here.
Sometimes humans are dragged up there.
Okay, we get that. But typically, they serve God there. We serve God here.
How are we like each other? Well, we're two sets of imagers, and in both cases,
to be like God, God shares his attributes with them and with us,
so that we can mimic him.
So that they can mimic him.
They can be like him, we can be like him.
Believe it or not, that is really important.
It's not only important for us, it's important for the spiritual world.
Because as you again read on, if you're new to Unseen Realm,
you're going to keep reading in the book.
We're going to talk about, well, how could the fall happened?
Okay, what's up with that?
And, short version of my view; my view is that all evil, not just the fall,
all evil is the result of God's decision to make agents like himself
and share His attributes with them to do that task.
One of his attributes is freedom. Now, we are not as free as God is.
We don't have any attribute like God has it.
God has all of his attributes to the nth degree, there is no limitation. He is perfection.
He has a perfect nature. All of his attributes, again, are, you know, consummate.
They can't be improved on. They are the nth degree.
But he shares those with us and with them, and one of those is freedom.
So God might be totally free. But we at least have the ability to exercise freedom.
To make an uncoerced decision.
Just defining it really simply.
And so God knows that he's shared this ability,
this attribute with us and with them,
and he knows that somewhere along the line,
we and they are going to fail.
We either are going to fail through rebellion,
or we're going to fail because we're just not perfect (incompetence).
God knows that is inevitable because he is really smart.
And he knows that we are not him.
And they are not him either.
God knows that.
And he knows what, pardon the pun, what the fallout is going to be.
It's going to introduce chaos into both realms.
You know, why is there rebellion in the heavenly realm?
Well, they're so close to God, how could they mess up?
Again, it's because they can make an uncoerced decision.
And one of them initially does, and as time goes on more of them do.
They rebel. They want autonomy.
We do the same thing.