I was interviewed in December 2020 on the topic of violence and the image of God for a podcast called “God and Guns,” sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence in the UK. This podcast addresses issues of religion and violence for the public beyond the church.

Helen Paynter, one of the interviewers, had recently read my book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005). The other interviewer, Matthew Feldman, read a shorter version of chapter 6 of the book that was published as a journal article, “Created in the Image of a Violent God? The Ethical Problem of the Conquest of Chaos in Biblical Creation Texts,” Interpretation 58 (2004): 341–355.

This was one of the more interesting interviews I did and it was focused on how we should think about our creation in God’s image (and the God in whose image we are created) in relation to violence, whether in the Bible or in our world.

The questions were fantastic and drew me into addressing the violence of the gods in ancient Near Eastern creation stories and the role of humans in these stories as subservient to those in power. I got to talk about the very different vision of creation in the Bible, where a generous God shares power with both humans and the non-human world.

I also got to address how this view of power was modeled by Jesus (which is why the Bible regards Jesus as the image of God par excellence).

The interview, called “The Image of God and the Problem of Violence,” can be accessed here. 

Near the end Helen asked me if there was a particular passage in the Bible that I thought was important to bring to the attention of the listeners. I chose Genesis 22 (the Aqedah or the “binding” of Isaac). This got me to outline the core argument of my forthcoming book, Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, The Suffering of God, and How to Talk Back to God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021).

Based on my account of Genesis 22, I was invited to give a keynote lecture on this passage for the third annual symposium of the Centre for the Study of the Bible and Violence. The conference was held on May 24–28, 2021.

If you are interested, the video of my presentation can be found here.