Who is God speaking to in Genesis 1 when he says "let us make man in our image"? In this episode of Between Two Realms, Pastor Andre walks through the divine council: the picture, running right through scripture, of God meeting with his heavenly host, and what it means that he rules through means rather than alone.

From Elohim as an umbrella term broad enough to cover the one true God and created spiritual beings alike, through Psalm 82 and the sons of God, to the hierarchy the ancient world took for granted and we find strange, this is an argument that the beings scripture describes are not pretend. It ends where it matters: humanity as the hybrid creature belonging to both realms at once, placed in God's temple not as a carving but as a living image, so that Adam and Eve bear God's image on earth while the council bears it in heaven, two realms sharing one common commission.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open: the image wasn't a carving

00:31 Title sequence

00:41 What the divine council is

04:43 El, Elohim and the ancient Near East

09:56 Psalm 82 and the sons of God

16:08 Why hierarchy makes us nervous

18:08 The nine choirs, and Calvin's dismissal

22:20 Ranks and tiers: how the council is ordered

27:41 Where the two realms meet in man

31:01 One commission, shared

REFERENCED ALONG THE WAY

- Michael Heiser on Elohim, the sons of God and the three-tier structure

- Meredith Kline, and the ancient Near Eastern dynastic household

- Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite on the nine choirs of angels, and John Calvin's dismissal of him as speculative

- Millard Erickson on the titles scripture gives these beings

- Scripture: Genesis 1, Job 38, Psalm 2, Psalm 82, Hosea 11, Jude 9, Daniel 10, Revelation 4 to 6, Luke's genealogy

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