The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

theology of the unseen world that derives exclusively from the text understood through the lens of the ancient, premodern worldview of the authors informs every Bible doctrine in significant ways.

Seeing the Bible through the eyes of an ancient reader requires shedding the filters of our traditions and presumptions. They processed life in supernatural terms. Today’s Christian processes it by a mixture of creedal statements and modern rationalism.

We need to see the mosaic created by the pieces. The Bible is really a theological and literary mosaic. The pattern in a mosaic often isn’t clear up close. It may appear to be just a random assemblage of pieces. Only when you step back can you see the wondrous whole.

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.

Modern Christianity suffers from two serious shortcomings when it comes to the supernatural world. First, many Christians claim to believe in the supernatural but think (and live) like skeptics. We

The other reason is less self-congratulatory. The believing church is bending under the weight of its own rationalism, a modern worldview that would be foreign to the biblical writers. Traditional Christian teaching has for centuries kept the unseen world at arm’s length. We believe in the Godhead because there’s no point to Christianity without it.

This strategy is ironic to say the least. Why is it that Christians who would strenuously defend a belief in God or the virgin birth against charges that they are unscientific or irrational don’t hesitate to call out academic SWAT teams to explain away “weird” biblical passages? The core doctrines of the faith are themselves neither ordinary nor a comfortable fit with empirical rationalism.

There are many other passages whose content is curious or “doesn’t make sense” and so are abandoned or glossed over. Here’s a sampling of them: •Gen 1:26 •Gen 3:5, 22 •Gen 6:1–4 •Gen 10–11 •Gen 15:1 •Gen 48:15–16 •Exod 3:1–14 •Exod 23:20–23 •Num 13:32–33 •Deut 32:8–92 •Deut 32:17 •Judg 6 •1 Sam 3 •1 Sam 23:1–14 •1 Kgs 22:1–23 •2 Kgs 5:17–19 •Job 1–2 •Pss 82, 68, 89 •Isa 14:12–15 •Ezek 28:11–19 •Dan 7 •Matt 16:13–23 •John 1:1–14 •John 10:34–35 •Rom 8:18–24 •Rom 15:24, 28 •1 Cor 2:6–13 •1 Cor 5:4–5 •1 Cor 6:3 •1 Cor 10:18–22 •Gal 3:19 •Eph 6:10–12 •Heb 1–2 •1 Pet 3:18–22 •2 Pet 1:3–4 •2 Pet 2:4–5 •Jude 5–7 •Rev 2:26–28 •Rev 3:21 Don’t consider that a mere catalog. The list is deliberate, and all of those passages will be examined in this book. All are conceptually interconnected, and all help illuminate the more commonly studied passages—those that do “make sense.” Look them up for a glimpse of what we’ll be talking about.

my contention in this book is that if it’s weird, it’s important.

While the word elohim is plural in form, its meaning can be either plural or singular. Most often (over 2,000 times) in the Hebrew Bible it is singular, referring to the God of Israel. We have words like this in English. For example, the word sheep can be either singular or plural.

For now, it’s sufficient that you see clearly that the sons of God are divine beings under the authority of the God of Israel.5

See footnote 5

The end of the psalm makes it evident that the elohim being chastised were given some sort of authority over the nations of the earth, a task at which they failed. This doesn’t fit the Trinity.

a God feared greatly in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all surrounding him?

God’s divine council is an assembly in the heavens, not on earth. The language is unmistakable. This is precisely what we’d expect if we understand the elohim to be divine beings. It is utter nonsense if we think of them as humans.

The importance of this list can be summarized with one question: Would any Israelite, especially a biblical writer, really believe that the deceased human dead and demons are on the same level as Yahweh? No. The usage of the term elohim by biblical writers tells us very clearly that the term is not about a set of attributes. Even though when we see “G-o-d” we think of a unique set of attributes, when a biblical writer wrote elohim, he wasn’t thinking that way. If he were, he’d never have used the term elohim to describe anything but Yahweh.