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Humanity is perhaps the most pressing doctrinal issue today. Katie McCoy, co-author of the new book , believes that a proper understanding of humanity has massive implications for science, sexuality, race, economics and more. She and Sean discuss why God originally made us male and female, if the Bible teaches corporate responsibility for sins our ancestors committed, the state of the debate over evolution, and much more.

Katie McCoy serves as director of Women’s Ministry at Texas Baptists (Baptist General Convention of Texas). She holds a Ph.D. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where she previously served on faculty. She is the author of To Be A Woman and the co-author of Humanity.

Episode Transcript

Sean: What is the most urgent doctrinal issue for Christians to wrestle with today? Our guest today, Katie McCoy, believes it is the doctrine of humanity, and I tend to agree. She has co-written a wonderful new book called Humanity, and she is here to discuss what it means to be made the image of God, to be male and female, and many more pivotal questions tied to human nature. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, and this is Think Biblically brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, ��ݮ��Ƶ. Katie, we had you on before to talk about your book on what is a woman, so it's wonderful to have you back to take a step back and take a 30,000 foot view on humanity as a whole.

Katie: Hey Sean, thank you so much for having me back. It's great to be here.

Sean: So you had me right in the introduction when you and your co-author said, "There is, perhaps…” And I love that you said perhaps. "...no doctrine more urgent for today's Christians to study than the doctrine of humanity." Tell us about that.

Katie: So it's important to remember first, there is no such thing as a disconnected doctrine. That's part of why we do systematic theology, is that they are all linked, inextricably so, and they are domino affected by the other ones. So we're not isolating the doctrine of humanity when we say that, but just as for the early church fathers, it was the doctrine of Christ, for the reformers, it was the doctrine of salvation. Here at this era in church history, the doctrine of humanity is the one where we are having the most pressing questions of applying biblical truth, not only to contemporary questions, but we're having to ask some very foundational issues. What does it mean to be human? And not only does that relate to what does it mean to be human in the context of our technological advancement, but also gender and sexuality, so many different aspects of our humanity, including our understanding of work and our responsibility to society. We're having renewed conversations in the church, especially here in 2024. What is our responsibility in terms of civic life? All of that works together to create this very pressing question related to what does it mean to be human and our doctrine of anthropology from a Christian, biblically-based worldview.

Sean: Well, you're speaking our language here on the Think Biblically podcast, so we will get into some of those particular transhumanism and work, et cetera. But I'm curious if you could just tell us—and you have a whole chapter on this in depth—but kind of a 30,000-foot view if I said, give me your elevator pitch for what is a Christian view of what it means to be a human being.

Katie: A human being is someone who has a unique capacity to know and reflect the creator God. That's the nutshell version. And that concept of connection and reflection comes from Kilner, I think it's John Kilner, his book, Dignity and Destiny, a wonderful book on the doctrine of humanity. And I find that I go back to his definition of humanity so often because we are…whether we're talking about our relational capacity, our responsibility to reign over and steward creation as almost, like, God's vice regents here on earth, all of that is a part of our reflection of who God is. And even the complexity of our human nature itself—we are not just body, we are not just mind, we are not just emotion. We are a complex, composite whole with each aspect of our beings affecting the other ones. That in itself is a reflection of the triune God in whose image we are made, that we are one, and yet you cannot isolate one aspect of our being without forgetting the others. In the same way, I think that is part of how we reflect the complexity of the Godhead.

Sean: Super helpful. So let's apply this to a specific issue. You have sections in your book where you talk about prominent influential views of human nature, existentialism, humanism, evolutionary psychology. But one of the most talked about ones today is transhumanism. Can you explain what's meant by that and maybe how Christians ought to think about transhumanism?

Katie: Yes, in fact, so just the nature of publishing—by the time we were writing about this, it was still very much a fringe issue. There were a few people talking about it.

Sean: Oh, wow.

Katie: Now, of course, just in the last two, three years, this has come to the foreground of so many different ethical questions. Some of them are—it's just magnificent. The man who had an implant in his brain and he is able now to play chess. I mean, that's spectacular. What you see with that is human beings using their creativity, really imaging God in using that creativity and ingenuity to do something to alleviate the suffering of other human beings. When we talk about transhumanism, the best of it would be, how do we leverage that creativity and innovation to use technology in a way that aids human beings. But once we talk about that, we've immediately stumbled upon some presuppositions, such as that we would know what is to the benefit of human beings. Well, even that, sort of implicit in it, is that there is some type of objective good to which we should be aiming all of our technological advancements and our medical practice. Well, now we have major ethical questions that immediately come into the public square about technology and human nature. All of these questions that we're hearing in the news about AI or Chat GPT, the latest iteration of it. You have people warning us saying, "Look, it's not out of a sci-fi movie that these things really could get so out of control that they are no longer serving humanity but causing a threat to humanity." When I hear that, I'm like, "Are we in some kind of movie?"

Sean: [laughs]

Katie: But it's that implicit question of, what is the purpose of technology in terms of aiding the human common good? With that, how do we determine what is good? What should be the aim of our technology? What should be the limits that we put on our own innovation so that we, fallen, corrupt human beings, are not leveraging that to become something that is for the detriment of human beings? So all of that, this transhumanist question of the combination of technology and humanity to somehow advance our human experience, within it are implicit ethical questions. And it's a little concerning, Sean, because to be honest, you look around at a lot of the ethical questions with humanity right now, and we're not doing so hot in our culture today. I mean, there are a lot of issues in the news, in different subcultures of America, where some of it just seems to lack total common sense. So, combine that with major technological advancement, and it's a little concerning.

Sean: I appreciate that you say it's good to use technology and to go beyond some of our limits. And yet built within this technology are certain worldview implications that are not neutral. And so you ask this question, you say, perhaps transhumanists can make life longer, but will that make it better? That's a great question we often don't ask. And then you point out that transhumanism identifies the human problem as a need for greater technological development and human enhancement. That's the core problem rather than sin. So let's approach this, but through a biblical lens, not naively, and then be prepared to process it through scripture. So I think you bring a great balance to that. Let me ask you one more question here. So we're kind of taking a 30,000 foot view. You have sections that go into detail on each of these topics, much more than we're covering. But of course, in a book on humanity, we've got to talk about where human beings come from. Creation, evolution is a huge topic of debate. In your chapter, you have, kind of, young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, and theistic evolution. Is that a viable option for Christians today? Because sometimes it feels like we've moved towards the church coming to peace with evolutionary creationism. My point is not whether we should or shouldn't, but it seems like the church is moving in that direction. What's your take on it, and what do you cover in the chapter?

Katie: Yeah, so we include this in the book. My co-author, John Hammett, and I include this in the book as one of the theories that orthodox believers say harmonizes with the Christian faith. To my understanding, the difference between theistic evolution and old-earth creationism is the idea that God kind of was the impetus of creation and then used the mechanism of evolution to allow the world to develop in creation over a very long time span. Now, I will tell you, Sean, I am a young-earth creation person. I've never really had a problem with a six-day literal creation. That has never been a hang-up for my faith. There are other people for whom it is, and I respect that, and as does my co-author, and so we're presenting these views. Really, the core issue is, can you say in the beginning, God, and that God is the ultimate cause of all of creation? And that's the primary debate at issue. Whether God could have used evolution as a means by which we have all in creation today…there are some who are trying to marry what they see as scientific inquiry with the Bible. This is my personal take, that there's two problems with that. First, when you enter into that theistic evolution conversation, the question of humanity becomes, at what point did Adam and Eve come into existence? Even those who would say they don't believe that Adam and Eve were mythical figures or representative, that they were actual historical figures—and that for which we have sound biblical evidence, that Adam and Eve were historical figures—but those who would ascribe to theistic evolution would say that there were humans running around, there were homo sapiens in existence, and then God created Adam and Eve. I think there's a big problem with that for those who ascribe to theistic evolution in that it wrongly separates the physical body from human personhood. So, in other words, that a person can be physically human without being in the image of God. Well, we don't have a precedent for that in the Bible. We don't have a category for that. In fact, I think that leads us to many of the problems that we have today of wrongly bifurcating our material from our immaterial selves. I think that's a problem for the person who wants to ascribe to theistic evolution and use that as a way that could be a cogent and valid explanation for what we see in creation. The second problem is simply this: why the hang up? Because if you're going to believe in a virgin birth, in the resurrection, why can't you just believe that God created the world out of nothing using whatever means and time that He wanted to? And so we do present it. We present it because we're trying to give all of the views that are out there for our readers to think through. But I think you'd find, too, we do have our own slants. We try to be as neutral as possible, wherever possible, but we've got our own slants with them.

Sean: Well, it's a totally helpful chapter, because you walk through the three different perspectives. You get strengths, you give weaknesses, you talk about essential theology. You're not writing a book arguing for and against intelligent design or creationism, but it's trying to help Christians think more deeply about that in terms of what it means to be human. I think we've definitely seen a shift. I mean, I've written a book on intelligent design a few years ago, but we had a conference at Biola maybe 12 years ago, something to that effect. And the theistic evolutionists at the time were arguing that this means we’ve got to rethink the Fall. We have to rethink the historical Adam. I mean, it was clearly out of bounds. Now theistic evolutionists and evolutionary creationists are making, I think, more sophisticated arguments trying to stay within the fold of orthodoxy. But you guys do a great job kind of laying out where the debate is at in the chapter. So good job. Let's move on to this next one I'm curious about. There's all these different theories about what it means to be made in the image of God. And this might be the single best chapter I've read that really walked through strengths and weaknesses and compared and contrasted perspectives. But maybe just tell us how you land on what it means and why that's so vital for today.

Katie: The actual concept of the Imago Dei is the foundational issue for how we understand not only human beings and the rest of creation, but who we are as image bearers who are created to know God. One of the challenges with this comes into conversations that are kind of the stuff of systematic classes like, are we trichotomous, dichotomous? Are we body and spirit? Or are we body, soul and spirit? We get into that as well, talking through the different theories of that. But what we try to do with this chapter is demonstrate that when we say being created in the image of God, we're talking about not only who we are in terms of our function in creation, but then also our capacity. And with those conversations talking about function and capacity, that also means that every human being, regardless of the stage of development, regardless of cognitive abilities, possesses the image of God. That it includes our physical selves, but there is something that is directly given from our creator that makes us different from the rest of His creation.

Sean: Amen.

Katie: I keep going back to that reflection and connection. I think everything spawns from that.

Sean: That's good stuff. Now, I know this is really in your lane specifically, and this is some of the unique contribution you made to the book, but walk us through what you think that means, that God has made us male and female, and why did he do so since the beginning?

Katie: Yes. So this is a question of particular relevance in our time and setting today, not only with so much gender confusion among millennials, Gen Z—that we have yet to see how this is going to affect Gen Alpha coming after them. So the best explanation that I could give of why did God make us male and female is this is once again, not only that connection aspect of who we are as human beings, but the reflection aspect as well. Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about an analogy of relation, and in the male-female relationship that we see in Genesis, he contends that this is part of how we image the God who is both one and within His oneness has community, has fellowship, and it is the oneness of the male and the female in marriage, in the covenant and commitment, and sexual union as a consequence of that is itself a reflection of the unity of the Godhead, of being both one and then also within that oneness having personhood or diversity. Essentially, it's a didactic. It's teaching us about this God in whose image we are made. With that too, just like the Father and the Son and the Spirit, both male and female equally image God. They both contain all of the humanness that is essential to be human. In fact, I think we see this in the mode of creation and the differences between how the male and female are made. The man is formed out of the dust of the ground and into his nostrils, God breathes the breath of life. We have that spiritual animating of the man, but why didn't He do the same when He created the woman? He absolutely could have. Why didn't He? Well, He was teaching us as well through the mode of creation of the female, who she was. By taking her out of the man's side, she is of the same stuff as the man. That's essence. That's ontology. That's being. In fact, the only way that you could say that one human being is somehow less than another would be if you're going to dismiss or disparage the capacity of Adam. If we all come not only from Adam and Eve, but Adam, that means the essential equality and ontology is absolute. It is fixed and unchanged. I believe the Lord is teaching us not only the comprehensive ontology of every human being, but along with that between the male and the female—that she is of him. She's of the same stuff as him. She is in every way like him, but not identical to him. Then of course, as we talk about gender, this has a direct correlation because between Genesis one and two, we have two different narratives of the same creation event, the same retelling of the creation event of humanity. Where we have male and female in Genesis one, we have man and woman in Genesis two. We have the correlation between relational identity, man and woman, that's our gender, and then our biological sex, our maleness, or our femaleness. That we could spend the rest of the show talking about.

Sean: Of course.

Katie: I unpacked that in my book To Be a Woman, but that's kind of the flyover version.

Sean: Hey, give me your quick thoughts on this. So marriage is, there's similarity and difference, there's unity and diversity, but some who argue for same-sex marriage will say, yeah, there still can be diversity—diversity of race, diversity of personality, diversity where somebody's from. That's sufficient to ground same-sex marriage, which would be denying that there's a required diversity of male and female. Biblically speaking, why is male and female required for marriage?

Katie: Well, that's where as well, you ground it in the biological facts of our respective sexed natures. And so really, this is another example of this, the simplicity of how creation teaches us and proclaims the designer, as Romans one tells us. So it would be, even though you have two different people in a same-sex union, it would be impossible for the sexual union to be a coming together in a way that is complete and creating oneness according to design. The sexual union itself is a display, is a proclamation, is a reflection of what the marriage itself is supposed to be. And then we also have within it, capacity. So it is absolutely biologically impossible for two people of the same sex to reproduce. And so you have not only the impossibility of reproduction, but with that, that means that it is impossible for life to come from that union. And it's important to remember that as we're talking about who we are as image bearers of God, not only do we image God when we are creating—albeit we don't create ex nihilo like God did—when we are stewarding creation, when we are ruling over creation, but then also when we are reproducing. Now, human beings are sexually reproducing species, but unlike the rest of the animal creation, human beings produce fellow image bearers of God. And that is something that no other union except a human man and a human woman can possibly do.

Sean: That's a great answer. I really appreciate that you pointed back towards the fact that Eve is of the same flesh as Adam, just like a child is of the same flesh as the parents, but Adam and Eve are also uniquely one flesh. There's a distinct bodily union between them that is oriented towards procreation that makes that kind of unity distinct. All right, I'm going to shift to another question. You're going to have to humor me with this one a little bit, but it's a question I've had, and I think your chapter really probes in and helps it. So obedience to the Sabbath, the fourth commandment, is grounded in God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh and making it holy. Yet you argue that this commandment no longer applies in the new covenant. So my question is if it's rooted in God's creation, like the commandment against the murder in Genesis 9:6 and for marriage, like we're just talking about in Matthew chapter 19, why doesn't Sabbath observance still apply today?

Katie: It's such a great question. And that makes me have to stop and go, why isn't it compulsory today? It's not expected because well, let's just start with what we know from the New Testament. So what Paul says is that how you observe the Sabbath, which day you observe it on, is a matter of Christian liberty, and that other believers are not to judge their fellow Christians for how they practice or observe the Sabbath. You don't see the same type of reiteration of the command of Sabbath in the New Testament like you do the other commands such as, you know, don't lie to one another in Colossians, marriage that holy. So there's that. You also do not have in the other commandments, an explanation or teaching on them in the New Testament, as though they are pertaining to a matter of conscience or Christian liberty. For instance, nowhere in the Bible will you find something to the effect of, well, as long as you have two consenting adults, a polyamorous relationship is okay. As long as you are not judging the conscience of another person. That you don't see in any of these other commands. You know, idolatry is never okay. Theft is still condemned in the New Testament. So we have a difference between the Sabbath in the New and Old Testaments in how they're conveyed. And I think the best explanation is what Jesus Himself said about the Sabbath, is that it is a gift. It is something that God gave us again, part of how we connect with and reflect Him as God rested on the Sabbath day as well. But as Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for us, not us for the Sabbath. And so we're seeing though, Sean, a kind of a, a renaissance of people talking in the church about the need to practice Sabbath. Not in the sense that if they don't, they have sinned or if they have failed to live up to the standards of rest, that they need to beat themselves up or confess it, but a renewal of understanding, this is how we were made to live best. This is how we were designed to function. And especially in our smartphone age, technological, social media streaming culture, people are beginning to renew this importance of Sabbath in a way that is really not only necessary, but beautiful to see.

Sean: That's a great answer. Well, well said. So I've got two more questions for you. And there's, there's a lot of discussion today, as you know, about corporate repentance. Are we required to do it? What does it look like? And you wrestle with this in the book. And so my questions are, are we to repent for the sins of previous generations? What is our responsibility considering the failure of earlier generations of Christians who are no longer here? We didn't commit those sins, and yet they were done in the name of Christ. And some of the pain and hurt from those sins still resonate today.

Katie: Gosh, this is such an important question, in part because there are whole social theories that we are very influenced by, in a sense, trying to ask this question. So the short answer is no, we can't repent from the sins of something that was done in a previous generation any more than we could take pride in the morality that was done in a previous generation. So in my family, I have a great, great grandfather, however many greats back, who moved his family to Illinois from Kentucky so that they would fight for the North against slavery. Now that is a wonderful family story. Does that mean I can somehow take pride in that and say that I am immune to any type of racial discrimination? Oh, well, you don't know who my great, great grandfather was. No, we wouldn't say that. So the short answer is no. And we have strong biblical evidence to demonstrate that we cannot repent for somebody else's sin. In Ezekiel, it talks about how the Lord is not going to hold guilty a child for the sins of the father. Now, when we see evidence of corporate repentance, specifically in Ezra and Nehemiah, it's important to note they are acting not only as representatives of the people of God, but the people of God were not blameless. You know, don't forget when the people of God came back from exile, they had intermarried with pagans. There were several things for them actually to repent of. And so if we have a, as we keep going back to, a 30,000 foot view of this, I would provide this as a guideline that I hope would be very helpful. Our society today tries to determine guilt or innocence by, essentially, that horizontal relationship that you have to other human beings. And it reduces our guilt or innocence to a matter of what categories we inhabit: your race, your gender, how able-bodied you are, your religion, et cetera. Scripture always anchors our guilt or innocence according to the standard that we meet or fail according to God. God alone is the one who sets that standard. And so it's not about categories that we inhabit. It's the degree to which we have fallen short of living up to His ways and His law. Now with that, that means we could be very liable for sins, specifically sins of omission. There may very well be things that happen in our communities that we're aware of and we turn a blind eye to. There may be things where we have the opportunity to do good and we choose not to. Those things are far more heavy as well, because you can't just repent from something that your grandfather did, but it gets far more sobering to realize that perhaps we need to repent of neglecting to ensure justice for the vulnerable in our own communities. That's a far more important conversation, and it's far more something that we need to be talking about here and now.

Sean: Katie, I want to make sure people listen and realize that this doctrine of humanity affects how we view science. We've talked about that. It affects how we view issues like you mentioned—race, issues like sexuality. So much of that is tied back to what does it mean to be human? What are we here for? What are our responsibilities to one another and to fellow human beings? Now your book is 400 pages in length. I always want to make sure our audience understands what kind of book they're potentially weighing into. This isn't a popular book you can read through, like a More Than a Carpenter, in two hours. It's also not an academic book. It's an intermediate—like we would use this in maybe an upper level Bible class for undergrads or maybe in a graduate class, but of its kind, I've not read a better, more relevant, timely book on humanity than this one. So I think it's really, really well done. Last question if I may, and you won't have near the time to unpack this as much as I know you'd want to, but you have an appendix at the end on gender identity. This could be a whole show or a whole course, but maybe just give one or two takeaways that you would want to say to folks on that topic in terms of what it means to be human and how we approach it.

Katie: Yes, so our gender is grounded in our biology and we see that anchored in Genesis 1 and 2. But not only that, our gender is so much deeper than cultural stereotypes or personal feelings. In fact, when you take away the body from determining whether someone is a man or a woman, all you're left with is cultural stereotypes and personal feelings. Our gender is how we relate to other people, how we relate to the world around us, how we relate to our most intimate of human relationships. And I'll leave you with this. My favorite thing to do when I talk about this topic to high school and college students is, I'll bring a couple of them up and I give them a little post-it note with a smiley face on it and I say, "Hey I want to buy this post-it note with a smiley face off of you. How much do you think it's worth?" And some will correctly guess, "Oh, a fraction of a penny." And I say, "Okay, well, I'm going to give you a dollar in exchange for this post-it note with a smiley face." And, "Oh, hey, great, I'll take it." Well, the second one, I offer the same thing, but I say, "You know, before you take it I need to tell you where I got it." And I just so happen to be sitting in a coffee shop and I was having a tough day and this nice girl came up to me and said, "Hey, you look like you need a smile." And she handed me this post-it note with a smiley face on it, and that person was Taylor Swift. Now obviously this is all made up.

Sean: Of course. [laughs]

Katie: You can just see that there's this rumble of, "Oh wow, that's so cool." And I say, "Okay, so would you like your dollar now?" And inevitably the person goes, "No way." I said, "Well it's made out of the same material as the other one that was worth a fraction of the penny." And they refuse, "No, I'm not going to give this up for a dollar." Well, why? And eventually it gets to the point that this has more value because of who it came from. And that's when I can look at them and say, "This is the significance of your sexuality and your gender. The greatness of the person who created it determines the worth and value of what is created. That is why it matters so much. Despite everything that our culture tells us, that we can dissect it, run away from it—no. The greatness of the one who created it determines the value of what is created. And that is why our gender matters to God.”

Sean: That's so well said. I've said for a long time that in many issues, we can sum it up to kind of one core issue. Like an abortion, what is the unborn? What is it? When it comes to issues of sexuality, is there a maker who has built the world and built our bodies to function in a certain way? If so, then there is a design and a value built into the world and built into our bodies. And we're only free when we understand that design and live accordingly. You and your co-author John Hammett lay this out in the book Humanity. Again, it's an intermediate level book. It's 400 pages. But for people who want to do a deep dive on one of the most pressing doctrinal issues of our day, there's not a book I could recommend more highly. Katie McCoy, thanks for coming on.

Katie: Thank you.

Sean: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture. The Think Biblically Podcast is brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at ��ݮ��Ƶ. Think about joining me in the Masters of Christian Apologetics program, which we have distance, but also fully online. If you have questions or comments, please send them to us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. That's thinkbiblically@biola.edu. And don't forget to join us Friday for our cultural update in which we take issues of the day and try to help you think biblically about them, and also tackle some of your questions. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please give us a rating on your podcast app. Every rating helps. And consider sharing with a friend. We appreciate you listening. And remember, think biblically about everything.