The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

My conscience wouldn’t let me ignore my own Bible in order to retain the theology with which I was comfortable. Was my loyalty to the text or to Christian tradition?

Conversations didn’t always end well. That sort of thing happens when you demand that creeds and traditions get in line behind the biblical text.

Our context is not their context.

They processed life in supernatural terms. Today’s Christian processes it by a mixture of creedal statements and modern rationalism.

Our traditions, however honorable, are not intrinsic to the Bible. They are systems we invent to organize the Bible. They are artificial. They are filters.

We talk a lot about interpreting the Bible in context, but Christian history is not the context of the biblical writers. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is not Augustine or any other church father. It is not the Catholic Church. It is not the rabbinic movements of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is not the Reformation or the Puritans. It is not evangelicalism in any of its flavors. It is not the modern world at all, or any period of its history.

The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers—the context that produced the Bible.1 Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.

•Gen 1:26 •Gen 3:5, 22 •Gen 6:1–4

ARE THE ELOHIM REAL? Those who want to avoid the clarity of Psalm 82 argue that the gods are only idols. As such, they aren’t real. This argument is flatly contradicted by Scripture. It’s also illogical and shows a misunderstanding of the rationale of idolatry. With respect to Scripture, one need look no further than Deuteronomy 32:17. They [the Israelites] sacrificed to demons [shedim], not God [eloah], to gods [elohim] whom they had not known. The verse explicitly calls the elohim that the Israelites perversely worshiped demons (shedim). This rarely used term (Deut 32:17; Psa 106:37) comes from the Akkadian shedu.6 In the ancient Near East, the term shedu was neutral; it could speak of a good or malevolent spirit being. These Akkadian figures were often cast as guardians or protective entities, though the term was also used to describe the life force of a person.7 In the context of Deuteronomy 32:17, shedim were elohim—spirit beings guarding foreign territory—who must not be worshiped.8 Israel was supposed to worship her own God (here, eloah; cf. Deut 29:25).9 One cannot deny the reality of the elohim/shedim in Deuteronomy 32:17 without denying the reality of demons.

Scholars of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians know that, in the apostle’s warning to not fellowship with demons (1 Cor 10:20), Paul’s comments follow the history of the Israelites described in Deuteronomy 32.11 He warns believers against fellowship with demons on the basis of Israel’s failure in worshiping other gods. Paul uses the word daimonion, one of the words used frequently in the New Testament for evil spiritual beings, to translate shedim in Deuteronomy 32:17. Paul knew his Hebrew Bible and didn’t deny the reality of the shedim, who are elohim.

The Greek word translated by this phrase is monogenes. It doesn’t mean “only begotten” in some sort of “birthing” sense. The confusion extends from an old misunderstanding of the root of the Greek word. For years monogenes was thought to have derived from two Greek terms, monos (“only”) and gennao (“to beget, bear”). Greek scholars later discovered that the second part of the word monogenes does not come from the Greek verb gennao, but rather from the noun genos (“class, kind”). The term literally means “one of a kind” or “unique” without connotation of created origin.

In Hebrews 11:17, Isaac is called Abraham’s monogenes. If you know your Old Testament you know that Isaac was not the “only begotten” son of Abraham. Abraham had earlier fathered Ishmael (cf. Gen 16:15; 21:3).

The story of the Bible is about God’s will for, and rule of, the realms he has created, visible and invisible, through the imagers he has created, human and nonhuman. This divine agenda is played out in both realms, in deliberate tandem.

inspiration and the initiative

Humankind was created as God’s image. If we think of imaging as a verb or function, that translation makes sense. We are created to image God, to be his imagers. It is what we are by definition. The image is not an ability we have, but a status. We are God’s representatives on earth. To be human is to image God.

Mountain peaks were the domain of gods because no humans lived there. Ancient times were not like modern times. People didn’t recreationally climb mountains. They had no equipment with which to get very far if they tried. Mountains were remote and forbidding—the perfect places for gods to get away from pesky humans. Mountain peaks touched the heavens, which was obviously the domain of the gods. This sort of thinking in part explains why Egypt’s temples are carved and painted with the imagery of luscious gardens, or why pyramids and ziggurats were built. These structures were mountains made by human hands which served as gateways to the spiritual world, the realm of the gods, in life or in death. They were metaphors in stone.

YAHWEH’S ABODE

Read this section again. Compares Sinai , Zion, Eden, and Jerusalem.

Most of the twenty-seven occurrences of saṭan in the Hebrew Bible, however, do indeed have the definite article—including all the places English readers presume the devil is present (Job 1:6–9, 12; 2:1–4, 6–7; Zech 3:1–2). The satan described in these passages is not the devil. Rather, he’s an anonymous prosecutor, as it were, fulfilling a role in Yahweh’s council—bringing an accusatory report. The instances of saṭan in the Old Testament that lack the definite article also don’t refer to the devil or the serpent figure. Those occurrences describe either humans or the Angel of Yahweh, who is occasionally sent by God to “oppose” someone or execute judgment (e.g., Num 22:22–23).

Without genuine free will, imagers cannot truly represent God. We saw earlier that the image of God is not an attribute or ability. Rather, it is a status conferred by God on all humans, that of representing God.

Free will is a gift, despite the risk.

Neither of these events that God foresaw ever actually happened. Once David hears God’s answers, he and his men leave the city. When Saul discovers this fact (v. 13), he abandons his trip to Keilah. Saul never made it to the city. The men of Keilah never turned David over to Saul.

This passage clearly establishes that divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination.

Predestination and foreknowledge are separable.

That which never happens can be foreknown by God, but it is not predestined, since it never happened.

Since foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination, foreknown events that happen may or may not have been predestined.

These ideas are unnecessary in light of 1 Samuel 23 and other passages that echo the same fundamental idea: foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination.

Rather, evil is the perversion of God’s good gift of free will.