Five Page Discussion

 

Todd: After briefly touching on the coining of such terms as monotheism, inclusive monotheism, tolerant monolatry, incipient monotheism, and henotheism, Heiser urges the unusual language for evangelicals to describe Israel’s religion,

The proposal offered here is that scholars should stop trying to define Israel’s religion with singular, imprecise modern terms and instead stick to describing what Israel believed. Monotheism as it is currently understood means that no other gods exist. This term is inadequate for describing Israelite religion, but suggesting it be done away with would no doubt cause considerable consternation among certain parts of the academic community, not to mention the interested laity. Henotheism and monolatry, while perhaps better, are inadequate because they do not say enough about what the canonical writer believed. Israel was certainly monolatrous, but that term comments only on what Israel believed about the proper object of worship, not what it believed about Yahweh’s nature and attributes with respect to the other gods (239).

Undergirding this would be the persuasion of Heiser calling for greater exactness on the use of elohim in Scripture.

We have fortunately become accustomed to talking and writing about the word elohim with imprecision. Since the word is often used as proper noun in the Hebrew Bible, and since we have used a modern term like monotheism to define what Israelites believed, letting the text say what it plainly says—that there are multiple elohim—has become a painful, fearful experience for evangelicals. This phobia can be (and should be) cured by letting the text of the Hebrew Bible hold sway over our theology (240).

Within the spiritual plane of elohim, Heiser includes (Israelite) YHWH-EL (Deut. 4:35), sons of God (Ps. 82:1, 6), demons (Deut. 32:17), and human disembodied dead (I Sam. 28:13). Of course, Heiser distinguishes the unbridgeable, ontological chasm between YHWH and other elohim. “Yahweh is an elohim, but no other elohim are Yahweh. Yahweh is haelohim.”

In looking at what Heiser is suggesting, should we consider this as a radically new outlook? I don’t particularly see this as painful or fearful, especially with our current church family book studies and what we have been learning in John’s Gospel on Sunday morning, Genesis on Sunday evening, and Isaiah on Wednesday evening.

Dennis: When one does not want to accept God’s reality as he has made it, one creates rationalizations for what one wants to believe and works hard to make them as believable as possible. One has no alternative when one is faced with nothing else but accepting the truth.

Todd: Sober words, Dennis. There are doctrinal beliefs in America that I hunger most fiercely to be confined to the fires of Gehenna. I do know that all pseudo American elohim, jesus beings, and spirits operating contrary to biblical revelation will be damned for not glorifying Yahweh alone.

Heiser tries to summarize in seven propositions what he has gathered about the particular LDS doctrine of God:

1. There is one God (the Father). 2. There is one Godhead. 3. Any being called a god in scripture is rightly a member of the one Godhead. 4. All gods in the Godhead are in total unity. 5. This unity does not refer to “essence,” and so gods in the unified Godhead may be different in “glory” and “rank” from each other and from the Father. 6. The Father is not ontologically unique; ontology, in fact, is a misguided focus when it comes to the Godhead since the issue is unity of the Godhead. 7. As such, Jesus and the Spirit can be seen as truly God and part of one Godhead, but they could both have been created by the Father (245-246).

Heiser writes, “I will also try to go to the heart of these issues . . .

Yes, these are major heart issues.

But also, Dennis and others, do you think there needs to be any sharpening to evangelical Heiser’s terminology scheme?

Scott B.: Thanks to Todd and all involved in this discussion. I admit some theological precision going over my head as I’m in/out of the office seeing Soldiers today, but that’s not new. So I only interject a simple question I’m sure we can agree to an answer for: Can one actively reject the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and be born again of God? Restated this way, can one profess faith in Christ Jesus alone for one’s justification before God, yet still deny that this very Jesus, as God the Son, is coequal and coeternal with God the Father?

What irritates me is listening to liberal protestant chaplains pontificate an affirmative reply to that question(s). I hear the nonsense that it doesn’t really matter what you believe about the person of Christ so long as your hope rests in the cross-work of Christ. Usually, they can’t even state it that well. I admit a hidden agenda that underlies this is an effort to justify Mormon Chaplains having an equal worship footing with all other Protestant chaplains in all branches.

This is often a standard ordination council question. Todd, Aaron, Thomas, or anyone else get asked this at your ordination? But that was probably back in the mid-90’s for you guys. I can barely remember what happened several months ago let alone several years. 🙂

Todd: No, to your first question. And I believe this is a clear delineation in all the “American Christianities”. Liberal thought might propose, “I can accept the Jesus of the synoptic gospels but reject the coequal, coeternal God of the Johannine text.” This is incoherent.

Scott W: Dennis . . . Heiser (the person Todd quoted) is an evangelical.

Dennis: I gather that. He needs to stop playing with bizarre LDS friendly theological formulations. If he is not playing with evil then he needs to stop sounding like it.

Scott W: Honestly, Dennis, I’m not sure that his basic thesis is wrong—and it’s certainly not heretical. I’m undecided at the moment, but I don’t see any major reason for NOT recognizing that there is indeed a “Council of the gods” in so far aw we recognize that YHWH is the “Most High God” and the “God of gods” and that He is “species unique” with respect to the gods.

Dennis: Smells fishy, Scott. Is he attempting to lay common ground with the LDS formulations? “Once was, will be” kind of stuff? What is the point of it? Is the language that exists in the creeds insufficient? Are his opinions that current descriptions of theological reality are wrong? Or is he simply trying to use different language to describe the same old thing? If the former, then heresy must be considered. If the latter, then I question his motives. Am I wrong that this is all in the context of exploring LDS common ground?

The other alternative is that I am theologically unaware of what is and is not broaching heresy within orthodox theological formulations. Am I just not up on the latest theological fad? Have I been out of the loop that long? Have I not yet graduated to these meatier things? Am I losing the advantage in my religion by not recognizing “God” and “gods?” What are the ‘gods” among which he is species unique? Angels? Humans? Does this do anything to His unpredicatedness? Is YHWH still the originator of all reality and all other ‘gods?’ What/who are these ‘gods?’ Explain why my religion has been insufficient and errorful ’til Heiser. Help me out here. I have other things to read, so put it in simple language so I don’t have to waste time on entire books and articles. How does this relate to Mormonism? Are his writings simply stolen by the Mormons to support their cause? Or is he attempting to find common ground with them intentionally? I can be happier with the former, but please help me change my disposition against him by either clarifying his words or his intentions.

Scott W.: It’s great to see you passionate for truth! Actually, I think that if you read Heiser’s articles about the Divine Council, you wouldn’t be so alarmed. His articles may be accessed here: http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/.

I haven’t read enough of Heiser to be confident that I’m fully representing him, but the gist of the Divine Council is that YHWH is a God among gods. YHWH is the Most High and the God of gods. The gods other than YHWH include super-powerful beings, angels, demons, and deceased people. In other words, “god” is not so much a title signifying an ontologically perfect being worthy of worship, but rather a “mode of spiritual existence”. In this sense, there are many legitimate gods and the OT seems to use elohim in this way and this is parallel to ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian literature of the time. Another way of referring to these other gods is “sons of God” as in the book of Job or in Genesis six procreating with the daughters of men.

YHWH is the creator of the gods and is ontologically superior to them and unique with respect to them. This being true, some of the gods are involved in decisions along with YHWH and may even be involved with YHWH in creation as secondary instruments. Even Meredith Kline at Westminster taught that the “let us make man in our own image” is a reference to the Divine Council.

Heiser has been writing on the Divine Council long before the Mormons contacted him for dialog. In fact, the only stuff I’ve personally seen by Heiser in which he references Mormons who are quoting him is to criticize their formulations of the Divine Council.

I do think that Heiser has eccentric tendencies, however, and that he’s too enamored with this motif. He is also involved in identifying the gods as involved in UFO conspiracy stuff and abductions.

Dennis: It is interesting to see that he appears to have some conservative goals in some places. For instance, his work appears to be an effort to reconcile what he believes are clear statements about a plurality of ‘gods’ with conservative monotheism of post-exile to now. The approach of others, he notes, is to affirm an evolutionary and redactive process that assumes the Israelites believed at one time in a plurality of god’s among whom YHWH was not the greatest (his father for instance was El). He is attempting to show that there was no overt redactive process that culpably admits to an evolution away from this early hierarchy toward a deuteroisaiah post-exilic monotheism. As such there appears to be a conservative method and purpose in his ‘council of gods’ work.

Still fishy though.

Scott W.: I noticed that too. His point seems to be that “the consensus” view of modern critical scholars is mostly correct in that pre-exilic Israel believed in the existence of multiple gods but that it goes wrong to assert that post exilic Israel became monotheistic. Instead, he argues, both pre and post exilic Israel believed in the existence of many gods but the faithful (as reflected in divine revelation) recognized and worshiped only YHWH, the Most High, as totally unique from the other created gods.

Dennis: I emailed my pastor a couple of questions about the divine council concept. He just completed his comps for the OT PhD at Westminster Philly. He said he had never heard of it. So, either the Westminster OT program is out of sorts with important biblical-theological concepts or the divine council concept is so academically peripheral that it does not deserve an OT PhD student’s attention.

Bob: Dennis, it may be that your pastor hasn’t heard about it because it’s old news. Old Testament scholarship has long known about “the council of the gods”concept. It is a very common concept in Ugaritic (Canaanite) theology. The bn il (i.e., ‘sons of El’) made up the divine counsel (which included gods like Baal [the storm-god] and Yam [the sea-god] of whom “El,” the chief deity was “the big dog.” Some OT scholars believe that the Hebrews borrowed from this henotheistic theology, and developed their own “divine council” theology, the divine council consisting of the bene-Ha’elohim, i.e., ‘sons of Elohim.’ When referring to the supreme God, `Elohim is the honorific plural of `Elohe and means something like “the epitome of deity” or “the God of gods.” In traditional Jewish and Christian theology, the “sons of God” are either understood as “angelic beings,” therefore possessing what might be called semi-divine powers but yet created and a distinctly different kind of being from `Elohim. Or, as in the case of Genesis 6:1-2, the “sons of God” are thought to be royal human despots (like Nimrud) who wield great power and authority accumulate “daughters of men” according to their choice in order to build large harems (this is the view advanced by Meredith Kline in “Divine Kingship and Genesis 6:1-4,” WTJ 24 [1962]: 187-204). Hence, they perpetrate the same polytheistic and violent tendencies of their forerunner Lamech who descended from Cain (Gen. 4:19-24).

My present hypothesis is that fantastic stories of the deeds and exploits of either angelic beings (like the cherubim at the entrance to the garden) or the terrible antediluvian human lords (who possessed great longevity, wisdom, physical strength, and political power) were passed down through Noah and family and overtime the stories were distorted to make these angels or antediluvian men of fame (I would even be willing in a qualified sense to speak of the great antediluvian lords as “semi-divine” men, in some respects, since they functioned as absolute despots and probably even took upon themselves divine epithets) into a pantheon of “gods” or `elohim (with the plural sense).

In any event, the “divine council” idea has been around for awhile. Modernists like to use it to argue that Israel borrowed their theology from a polytheistic and henotheistic source, then later it morphed into monotheism. Mormons are no doubt interested in OT studies that treat the “divine council” theology because it gives them some mileage for their own views. But I do not believe either the traditional Jewish or the traditional Christian view of the divine council would come close to the Mormon view. I am not certain about Heiser’s ideas. Perhaps when I finish my dissertation, I will be able to read his book.