Review: Principalities and Powers (Montgomery)

Montgomery, John Warwick.

This is the best mature Evangelical treatment on the subject. Conservative evangelicalism faces a schizophrenia on this topic. On one hand, they know that the demonic and occultic exist because the Bible says so and modern experience is becoming almost overwhelming. On the other hand, they tend to write this off as charismatic kookiness and with the view that spiritual gifts have ceased today, they really don’t know what to make of this indisputable phenomenon.

Montgomery approaches with a relatively open mind. He resists the urge to write off all of the paranormal as demonic. He introduces a key distinction: we must separate the fact from the interpretation of that fact. He also points out where individuals find themselves with ESP-like abilities in situations that are neither angelic nor demonic.

He does move his analysis into the occult, however. He gives a brilliant summary of the history of occultism and Cabalism. He has a fascinating analysis of how to interpret “ghosts” (for lack of a better word). All the while he remains faithful to biblical revelation on the afterlife.

He ends with a humorous, if quite interesting, fictional short story of a liberal minister who becomes convinced of the demonic.

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Angel taxonomy

Saw this on a FB page.  It’s actually not that bad. I would fine tune it in some areas.

Notes on Heiser’s Supernatural

This is a cliffs-notes version of his longer Unseen Realm.

Key argument: “In at least some cases, God decrees what he wants done but gives his supernatural agents freedom to decide what it means” (23).

Image of God

Genesis says God says “Create in our image” and it says God created in his image.”  Since God is speaking to the Divine council and not the Trinity, this means that the Council and God (and presumably we) have something in common (29). We are to image God’s rule on earth.

Divine Rebellions

The Old Testament never says there was an angelic rebellion (37).  Revelation 12:7-12 is talking about the birth of Christ.  There was another corporate transgression, but it was the beings in Genesis 6. Peter and Jude say that these angels are placed in eternal darkness under chains. If we take 1 Enoch seriously (and Peter and Jude) did, then from these beings came the Nephilim, and when the Nephilim died, their spirits became demons.

The physical descendants of the Nephilim are called the Anakim and the Rephaim (Numb. 13:32-33; Deut. 2:10-11; some of these Rephaim show up in the underworld realm of the dead (Isai. 14:9-11).

Cosmic Geography

Deuteronomy 32 Worldview:  Geography in the Bible is cosmic (52).

• Daniel 9-10: foreign nations are ruled by divine princes.
• 1 Sam. 26:19: David fears being in a land of foreign gods.
• 2 Kgs 5: Namaan takes Israelite dirt back
• Paul uses a range of terms for divine, hostile beings–thrones, principalities, powers

Nota Bene:

1. Angels don’t have wings.  Cherubim do, but they are never called angels (Heiser 19).
2. Any disembodied spirit is an elohim (Gen. 1:1; Deut. 32:17; 1 Samuel 28:13; Heiser 20).
3. God has a supernatural task force (1 Kgs 22:19-23; Ps. 82:1).

Review: Unseen Realm (Michael Heiser)

Writing a book on worldview is so passe.  What really gets people uncomfortable is writing on the supernatural.  We believe in it on paper–as long as it stays on paper. Michael Heiser, by contrast, gives a mini-systematic theology around the Supernatural.  

A brief summary: God’s Household has a layered authority: high king → elite administrators → low-level personnel.  Psalm 82 is the clearest example in the OT (25). The first Elohim in 82:1 is singular, since it has a singular verbal form (stands).  The second is plural, “since the preposition in front of it (“in the midst of”) requires more than one.”

Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14:

Verse 10: why does God tell him he will die the death of uncircumcised strangers?  He is (presumably) a Phoenician and would be uncircumcised anyway (77). The answer: he is sent to the underworld where there were uncircumcised warrior-kings (Ezek. 32.21; 24-30; 32; Isa. 14.9). This is the place of the Rephaim.

Most people can probably take the argument so far.  Yeah, the Hebrew says that. We might not like it, but it says it.  The next part is the real struggle for belief, though it makes sense to me.  

Argument:  The serpent (Nachash) is a substantival adjective.  He is a serpentine being. This bothers people for some reason.  He reminds you of a snake, but he’s not really a snake.  Although Heiser doesn’t make this next point, this isn’t all that far removed from a lot of UFO occult phenomena.  

I can go further out on the limb here: could the Nachash, or something like it, be what David Icke fantasizes about?  I don’t buy into the Reptilian thesis, at least not how Icke or Sitchin take it, but if those guys are demon possessed/demonized, then they really could be seeing something reptilian.  It’s not logically impossible.

Why wasn’t Eve afraid of a talking snake, if we take the story literally?  Eve was in the garden, which was the meeting place between the heavenly realm and earth.  She knew she was talking to an elohim. Ancient man knew that animals really couldn’t talk. Another common sense observation: if the enemy in the garden was a supernatural being, then he wasn’t a mere snake.

Heiser then connects the nachash to events in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28: the prince of Tyre considers himself an el, who sits in the moshab elohim.

Divine Allotment

God scattered the nations in Gen. 11; Deut. 32:8-9 describes it as disinheriting.

Key idea: God gave ownership of the Table of Nations to the divine council (113). Deut. 4:19-20 makes this clear. Psalm 82 judges these elohim for doing a bad job, and then urges God to rise up for he shall inherit the nations.

The Nephilim

This is where the fun begins. Are the entities in Genesis 6 the line of Seth or the Watchers?

However the Israelites would have interpreted Gen. 6, it is certain they wouldn’t have demythologized the text. The real problem for most is how can an incorporeal being physically interact with a corporeal world?  This is a big problem in analytic philosophy. It is related to the problem of divine action. On a supernatural worldview, it is no problem. But if you are a conservative Christian and hold to the other line of thinking, then you need to explain the following?

Does Matt. 22:23-33 rule out the supernatural view? The Bible tells of angels physically interacting with humans. Some considerations:

1. This text never says angels can’t have sexual relations. It just says they don’t.

2 Nevertheless, Genesis 6 isn’t the spiritual realm, so the situation doesn’t apply.

3.This event is far less radical in what is required of a belief than the Incarnation.

4.The actions in Genesis 18-19 are physical actions (eating food, taking hold of Lot, etc.).

5. In Genesis 32:22-31 Jacob wrestles with an elohim and the elohim can be touched and in return physically harm Jacob.
6. Everyone believes angels can speak, yet on this objection how can an incorporeal being produce sound waves?
7.  Angels open doors (Acts 5:19)
8.  They hit the disciples (Acts 12.7).

Space prevents me from developing all of Heiser’s points.  The book is fantastic and I am glad to see it getting a wide readership.  I do think it could have been shorter. While I understand his point about free will and divine foreknowledge, the study of counterfactuals has come a long way and there are answers and alternatives to what he has given.

Appendix: Some neat insights

1. Bashan was the mount of fallen Watchers.
2. Og was king of Bashan, and he was of the Rephaim.

Developing an Enochian Worldview

Some of these are inspired by Dr Michael Heiser’s writings, though much of it came from my own working through both the Scriptures and tradition.  Our problem is that we are all students of Dante, whether we admit it or not.  An Enochian worldview, by contrast, sees how “angels” (more on that term later) function within the Divine Realm.

We say things like “we need a biblical worldview” (I used to say “supernatural,” but after talking with some guys on a Reformed online forum, I can’t take that for granted anymore), and we piously nod at the Bible when it says “angels are ministering servants,” but we really don’t let the Bible correct our understanding of Dante.

What Did Dante Say?

You already know this.  If I say “hell,” you think of a fiery underworld.  More to the point, you think there is a class of beings known as demons/devils/fallen angels.  They are either being tortured by fire or torturing others by fire (pop culture tradition isn’t too clear).

But there are some problems with this picture (though it did inspire good music).  The Bible contradicts it in various places.  If you hold that there is one class of beings called angels, which are subdivided into good and bad, with all of the latter in a subterranean realm (or if you are a bit more sophisticated, another dimension), then the following problems occur:

1. Why is Satan called the prince of the powers of the air (Eph. 2:2) if he is locked underground?
2. If all the demons are in hell, then why do we wrestle against principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Eph. 6)?
3. If Ha Shatan is locked underground, then how did he appear before God in Job?
4. If all the demons are in hell, then how did they possess people in the NT?
5.  Yet Peter says some were thrust into Tartarus (2 Peter 2:4).
6. Why does Peter use the word Tartarus when he could have simply said hell or hades?
7.  Was the spirit in 1 Kings 22:19-23 good or bad?  If he was good, then was God commanding him to lie? If he was bad, then why was he in heaven?
8. Is God the only kind of Elohim?  You have to say no, because God (singular Elohim) is often speaking to plural Elohim, and even if the latter are just men, they aren’t the kind of Elohim that Yahweh is.

That’s enough for now.  These questions show that the pop worldview about demons is wrong.  Now for my own theses, drawn from Michael Heiser and Derek Gilbert.

1. Sons of God in Genesis 6/Psalm 82:Dt.32:8 refer to elohimic beings, not men.  I won’t argue that thesis at this point. I also think these are what Enoch called the Watchers (alluded to in Peter and Jude; mentioned in Daniel, though those Watchers are good).

2. Their offspring were the Nephilim.

3. Some church fathers and Philo said that the departed souls of the Nephilim were what we call “demons” today.  Maybe.  That might not be provable, but it does remove certain problems.

I am closely following Heiser’s analysis on issues like the Rephaim.

4.  Rephaim: Heiser–”When the term is translated, it is rendered “giants” (1 Chr 20:4 ESV), “shades” (i.e., spirits of the dead; Isa 26:14 ESV), or simply “the dead” (Job 26:5 ESV)”.  Specifically, they are the spirits of dead warrior-kings in the underworld. They are also giants whom the Ammonites called Zamzummim (Deut 2:19–20 ESV).

4a. Og was a Rephaim (Josh. 13:12).

5.  Demons aren’t the same as fallen angels, rephaim, or nephilim.  

1. They aren’t the celestial ones of 2 Peter 2 and Jude.  Angels are very cautious in the celestial ones’ presence.
2. With Heiser, I highly recommend questions 72-75 of Doug Van Dorn’s primer on the supernatural.
3. At this point we see several levels of differentiation:
4. The corrupt sons of God put over the nations are called shedim, a term of geographical guardianship (van Dorn).
5. The fallen angels, or Watchers, are imprisoned in Tartarus until the Final Judgment (2 Peter 2 and Jude).
6. Whatever demons are, they aren’t those above.
7. A demon, at least in the Gospel exorcism passages, is an unclean spirit.
8. If Jewish intertestamental literature is to be trusted, demons are the departed spirits of dead Nephilim.  Granted, this isn’t inspired literature, but it was the worldview/social imaginary of those who lived in the apostles’ time.  Jude quoted 1 Enoch, and while 1 Enoch isn’t inspired, Jude acted like it had a lot of truth.

Opening notes on Heiser’s Unseen Realm

This study outline is kind of like a middle east targum.  It is combination paraphrase/outline. For a general idea of this type of thinking, see the following

Satan’s Psy Ops.

God’s Entourage

Job 38.4-7 identifies the heavenly host, the morning stars, with the sons of God (Heiser 23). He isn’t saying that the stars are little gods.  He is simply noting that there are moving entities “up there” in the heavenly realm.

Angels aren’t exactly the same thing as the beney elohim, as the former are lower-level messengers.

God’s Household

Layered authority: high king → elite administrators → low-level personnel.  Psalm 82 is the clearest example in the OT (25). The first Elohim in 82:1 is singular, since it has a singular verbal form (stands).  The second is plural, “since the preposition in front of it (“in the midst of”) requires more than one.”

Chapter 4: God Alone

Divine Beings are not human

The divine beings in 82:1 can’t be the Trinity, since God says they are corrupt.  It can’t be human, since Jewish elders weren’t given authority over the nations (28). Further, God’s divine council is in the heavens, not on earth.

Other biblical passages:

• Job 1.6: the beney elohim came to present themselves before God.
• Judges 11:24; 1 Kgs 11:33.  Gods of other nations
• Dt. 32.17; demons (shedim)
• 1 Sam. 28.13; the deceased Samuel
• Gen. 35.17; angels or Angel of Yahweh.

Plural Elohim Does Not mean Polytheism

Would any Israelite believe that these Elohim were on the same ontological level as Yahweh?  The term elohim is not a set of attributes–that would be polytheism. It means an inhabitant of the spiritual world.

Are They Real?

Dt 32 seems to imply they are. If you believe in the reality of demons, then these elohim/shedim (v. 17) are real.

The “denial statements” (no God besides me) don’t mean that they don’t exist.  Similar language is used of human cities (Is. 47.8 and Zeph. 2.15), yet Nineveh and Babylon aren’t the only cities that exist (34).

What’s the point of even saying God is greater than these elohim if they don’t exist?  It’s like saying, “Among the beings we all know don’t exist, there is none like Yahweh.”

Idols: the ancient world didn’t seriously believe the idol was real, but that demons inhabited them (1 Cor. 10:18-22).

What About Jesus?

Does this mean Jesus wasn’t the only divine Son?  Monogenes doesn’t come from mono + gennao, but from mono + genos (class kind).

As in Heaven, So on Earth

Image/imager: If Gen. 1:26ff doesn’t refer to the Trinity but to the divine council, this doesn’t mean we are created by other Elohim. The following entail:

• Both men and women are equally included
• Divine image bearing is what makes us distinct from animals.
• We either have the image, or we don’t.  It isn’t incremental.

We normally define image of God in the following ways:

• Intelligence
• Reasoning
• Emotions
• Communication
• Sentience
• Language
• soul/spirit
• Conscience
• Free will.

The problem with the above class is that animals have some of these, too (41). The problem with “soul” (nephesh) is that animals also have a nephesh (Gen. 1.20).

The key to the image of God is in the Hebrew preposition in. In English “in” can mean location or result of action.  In Hebrew we are created as God’s image. It is not a capacity we have but a status (42). Klaas Schilder said the same thing.

God’s Two Family Household Councils

We are created to function as God’s imagers on earth.  But God also created administrators for the unseen realm.

Gardens and Mountains

That the image of God is a status, not a set of attributes, is evident from the fact that we are to take dominion over creation, making earth an Eden.  

Key idea: God decrees his will and leaves it to his administrative household to carry out those decrees (1 Kgs 22; Daniel 4:13, 17; 23).

Only God is Perfect

Key idea: The worldview of the biblical writers was ‘Where Yahweh is, so is his divine council” (54ff).

Who is the Satan in Job?  Heiser suggests he is the prosecutor within the divine council (56).

Peril and Providence

Key idea: divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination (64).

PART 3: DIVINE TRANSGRESSIONS

Trouble in Paradise

Argument:  The serpent (Nachash) is a substantival adjective.  He is a serpentine being. This bothers people for some reason.

Why wasn’t Eve afraid of a talking snake, if we take the story literally?  Eve was in the garden, which was the meeting place between the heavenly realm and earth.  She knew she was talking to an elohim. Ancient man knew that animals really couldn’t talk.

Another common sense observation: if the enemy in the garden was a supernatural being, then he wasn’t a mere snake.

Ezekiel 28: the prince of Tyre considers himself an el, who sits in the moshab elohim.

Verse 10: why does God tell him he will die the death of uncircumcised strangers?  He is (presumably) a Phoenician and would be uncircumcised anyway (77). The answer: he is sent to the underworld where there were uncircumcised warrior-kings (Ezek. 32.21; 24-30; 32; Isa. 14.9). This is the place of the Rephaim.

He leaves the garden of God and goes to the underworld. Is the prince a serpent?  He is “shining” and “radiant.”

Even the claim that God said the snake will “eat dirt” doesn’t mean Nachash was a real serpent.  Heiser writes, “The nachash was cursed to crawl on its belly, imagery that conveyed being cast down (Ezek. 28.8; 17; Isa. 14.11-12, 15) to the ground.  In Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, we saw the villain cast down to the ‘erets, a term that refers literally to dirt and metaphorically to the underworld” (91).  Anyway, snakes don’t actually eat dirt.

The Nephilim

The Sethite thesis doesn’t make sense out of the language of Jude and 2 Peter 2.  

Daniel 4 describes one of the holy ones of Yahweh’s council as a “Watcher.”

Divine Allotment

God scattered the nations in Gen. 11; Deut. 32:8-9 describes it as disinheriting.

Key idea: God gave ownership of the Table of Nations to the divine council (113). Deut. 4:19-20 makes this clear. Psalm 82 judges these elohim for doing a bad job, and then urges God to rise up for he shall inherit the nations.

Cosmic Geography

David’s dilemma: 1 Sam. 26:17-19; David thinks if he is forced to leave Israel, he will leave Yahweh’s inheritance (117).

Naaman asks for dirt (2 Kgs 5): Naaman views the holy land as holy ground.

Daniel and Paul: Dan. 10. In acts 17:26-27 Paul says that God determined not only the boundaries of the old world, where they could blindly search after God.

The LXX in Daniel 10 refers to the “prince” (sar) as an archonton.  Other Greek translations even older describe both Michael and the enemy as archons, which matches Paul’s language of the rulers of this age (1 Cor 2:6, 8) in the heavenly places (Eph. 3.10).

Heiser then draws the following conclusion: Paul’s terms–principalities/arche, powers/exousia, dominions/kyrios, thrones/thronos–are terms that are used of geographical domain rulership (121).

 

 

 

Review: The Great Inception (Satan’s Psyops)

This book surprised me.  I wondered how sophisticated it would be.  It impressed.  I do feel like some arguments could have been expanded, but overall Gilbert made a reasonably strong case, one that I find convincing.  Please check out his website here.

and here: http://www.derekpgilbert.com/the-great-inception/

The reader is encourage to consult Serro’s work as well.

The argument: Yahweh’s war against the Watchers takes place on a set of mountains, beginning in Eden.

Following Heiser he suggests that the serpent in Genesis 3 was actually a serpentine being (following the fluidity of nachash) rather than Sneaky Snake.

• He says Nachash can also mean “one who practices divination” (Gilbert 9).  I don’t disagree, but he doesn’t cite any lexical sources.
• But if Lucifer is an angel, and angels do have a shining appearance, then it might work.

Who was “Satan?”  He never appears by that name early on.  But if we take Isaiah 14 and Ezek. 28 as referring to the garden, then we can infer:

• He was an anointed cherub
• He walked on stones of fire

Hermon

Nephilim

It means giants (33). We need to get clear on something: the Nephilim are the descendants (or some of them, anyway) from the intermarriages.  They are not the sires.  Gilbert argues, and I think he is correct, that the Watchers, or other ביני ילוהימ, mated with humans and produced Nephilim.

1. How likely is it that all the Sethite men were good and all the Cainanite women were bad?
2. Does this mean that Caininite women never married Sethite men?
3. Why would this union produce Nephilim, understood by Jews and Christians to be giants?
4. Why would this union lead to wickedness so great that God destroys the planet?
5. Every other use of bene elohim means divine beings (34).

Objection: But angels can’t reproduce!

But I answer: That was not the presumption of the men of Sodom. I suppose we can advance the argument.  Who said the Watchers or the ביני ילוהימ were angels in the sense you are thinking of?  I simply deny that premise.

Babel

Gilbert advances the argument that Babel wasn’t Babylon (as Babylon wouldn’t have existed then). Nor was God freaked out that somebody would have built a really big Ziggurat.  What is neat is comparing this with other ANE legends (Satan’s psyops).  Nimrod  was lord of the abzu, the abyss.  The tower of Bab-el would have been built on the abzu (59).  And Bab-el meant gate of the god(s).  So the gate of the gods would have been built on the abyss.

Gilbert asks the question that bourgeois commentators do not:  could Nimrod have succeeded?  It was serious enough that Yahweh personally intervened.

The gods of the nations

This is where it gets neat.  We are familiar with the story that the people spread out.  Part of the punishment was that the people (70 nations) were given to the lordship of the bene elohim-ביני ילוהימ (also 70).

God writes (Dt. 32),

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,

   when he divided mankind,

he fixed the borders[a] of the peoples

   according to the number of the sons of God (bene elohim; ביני ילוהימ).

It makes no sense whatsoever to say that God fixed the numbers according to the nation of Israel, which didn’t yet exist.  Yet, if we read this as “sons of God,” assuming they are beings which have some kind of hypostatic existence, then other passages in Deuteronomy start to make sense:

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. 20 But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace (Dt. 4)

Why would God alot other nations to do idolatry?  It’s not so much that he wanted them to do that, but that he gave them over to the gods of those nations.

But would Yahweh allot nations to evil beings?  Well, yes.  Think of it as the Romans 1 moment of the Old Testament.  And it is no more “mean” of God to do this than to give people up to sinful passions.

It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26 and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them (Dt 29).

In short, these are territorial spirits.  And this makes sense of obscure passages in Daniel, where Daniel learns of the war between the princes of Persia, Greece, and Michael.

Sinai

Who was Ba’al Zephon (Ex. 14:3)? Zaphon was the name of Ba’al’s mountain in Egypt.

At Mt. Sinai Yahweh demands that 70 elders approach with Moses and Aaron.  Gilbert concludes, noting the parallels between the 70 elders and the 70 bene elohim, “A day is coming when my (Yahweh’s) people will again take their place in the divine council” (96).

The Typhon Connection

Set was often equated with Ba’al, but he was also identified with Typhon (99).  And when you transpose this onto the Crowley-Lovecraft mythos, you see that the Great Old Ones are prominent, and they could be the bene elohim.

Zaphon

Tie-in with other gods

Gilbert connects the dots between pagan mythologies and biblical demonology, and the list is quite startling:

“Reseph” in the bible is mentioned as plague, and for the Amorites he was a god who spread both healing and disease with his arrows (115). In Babylon he was called Nergal, and by the time Greece emerged as a power, he was depicted as an archer and god of medicine and healing.  His name, obviously, was Apollo.  And he has a role to play in Eschatology (Rev. 9:1-11).  He is Lord of the Abyss.

And when we tie all this together, we see Reseph (similar root structure to seraph, burning one) = Nergal, Lord of the Underworld = Apollo, demon of the Abyss.

Other patterns:

Zeus = Ba’al (lightning, storm connection)

Venus = Aphrodite = Astarte = Ishtar

Who are the Rephaim (Dt. 2:2-5; 8b-12; 18-23).

They are connected with Og and Sihon, giants whom Moses deliberately targeted (they weren’t on the planned invasion route). Hesiod and Enoch (1 Enoch 15:8-12) connect the meropes anthropoi with the Nephilim, children of the Fallen Watchers (157).  Upon their death they would have become spirits/demons, the Council of the Didanu.

Carmel

Angels fought against Jabin (Judg. 5:19-22).

Onto Mt. Carmel:

If our earlier reading is correct, and Yahweh did indeed divide the people into 70 nations (with 70 gods; Dt 32:8-9, using the ESV).  If this reading is wrong, then Paul was wrong to warn against elemental spirits, thrones, demons, principalities.

Amorite spiritual context: the Rephaim/Nephilim, children of Titans, represented forbidden knowledge (sorcery, necromancy, etc. 197).

Zion

Jesus’s transfiguration took place near Mt Hermon.  There were other watchers besides the disciples.  He was sending a message (208-209).  This was the realm of Pan (Paneas = Caesarea Phillipi).  Pan is a goat demon alluded to in the Old Testament (Lev. 17:1-7, which is the same word used in Isaiah 13:19-21).  Azazel in Leviticus 16:6-12 is also connected with goats.

Pan is also related to Aegipan, sometimes connected with the Constellation Capricorn

In his response to the Pharisees Christ links Satan with Ba’al, the storm God.  This means Satan is also linked with Zeus, Thor, and Perrun.

Satan = Ba’al = Zeus = Thor = Perrun.

I’m not quite ready to make that connection, but it is worth considering.

Recap

200 supernatural beings (Watchers, from the book of Enoch) established a rebellion on Mt Hermon.  Their breeding with women in Genesis 6 produced the Nephilim.  They also taught forbidden knowledge.  In response God chained them in darkness (Jude, 2 Peter).

Gilbert brings home Dr Heiser’s arguments and they are strongly worth considering.  If we don’t take the supernatural seriously, we have a flattened ontology and are incapable of dealing with both the bible and the hard facts of reality.

Key resources:

Annus, Amar. 1999. “Are there Greek Rephaim? On the Etymology of Greek Meropes and Titanes.” Ugarit-Forschungen 31:13-30.

–. 2010. “On the Origin of Watchers: A comparative study of the antediluvian wisdom in Mesopotamian and Jewish Traditions.” Journal for the Study of Pseudipigrapha 19 (4): 277-320.

Toon, K. van der. “Nimrod Before and After the bible.” Harvard Theological Review 83: 1-29.

Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians

This work is a step up from Athanasius’s smaller treaty on the Incarnation.  Here we begin to see a fully worked-out theological ontology.  This review, however, will not deal with the controversies concerning Proverbs 8 in the Nicene world.  That would take up too much space.

One needs to see Arius’s thought in context before one can appreciate how Athanasius fundamentally destroyed the Hellenistic mindset.  It’s not simply that Arius thought Jesus was created.  He did, but Arius also thought he was being faithful to the conservative philosophical tradition in Alexandria.  That tradition is best seen as the shadow of Neo-Platonism.  It’s not a pure Neo-Platonism (if such a monster even exists), but it’s close enough on issues like simplicity.

Disclosure: I relied heavily on Joseph Farrell’s (D.Phil Oxford, Patristic Theology)  analysis of the Athanasian crisis, as well as conversations with several of his students.  Any faults are entirely my own.

Establishing the Dialectic

Short answer: Arius defined the deity in terms of a specific property of the Father (unbegottenness), but behind this definition was embedded a philosophical dialectic, which, if left unchecked, would control orthodox categoreis. The Arians saw divine simplicity unicity of a nontransferable monadic state, to use John McGuckin’s fine phrase. If the Father is simple essence, and the Son is not the Father, then the Son is of a different essence.  The problem is that the Hellenistic/Arian mind identified God’s essence with a particular property (unbegottenness). It was Athanasius’s genius to break the back of this system by noting that essence isn’t the same as person or property.

Arius shows what Origenism looks like if taken to its Neo-Platonic conclusion.  The One is utterly simple and beyond.  It is beyond subject and object, yet if the One “thinks” (or makes any kind of distinction, be it the idea to create the world or the decision to beget the Son), and given that person-will-essence are identical, and that ideas/operations are now simply effluences of the essence, Arius is forced to one of several conclusions:

1. a) The ideas produced by the one are also identical to the one
2. b) It is completely separate from the one by means of duplication and distance.
3. c) If the Son is eternal, then Creation, being an object of willing, is also eternal, since the act of will is equal to the eternal essence per Arian simplicity.  Simply put, for this tradition, there can’t be distinctions between operation and essence, because the essence itself does not allow for any distinctions!

Why does (c) follow? If God has the property of being-Creator as well as the property of being-Father, and the essence is eternal, and the essence is identical to the act of will/property, then he must be eternally creator, which draws out another inference

cc) Creation is eternal

Smashing the Dialectic

d) The generation of the Son is according to the essence, since the being is from the Father, while the creation of the world is according to the divine will.  

As James Kelley notes, for “Arius the category of what God is (nature) is the same as what God does (operation).”

Now for the actual text….

Discourse I

* The Father and Son were not generated from some pre-existing origin….but the Father is the Origin of the Son and begat him (I.5).

*The Difference between Work and Begetting: “The work is external to the nature, but a son is the proper offspring of the essence” (I.8.29).

Discourse II

* The Word must be the living Will of the Father, and an essential energy (enousion energia), and a real Word” (II.14.2). Athanasius’s point is that the Word can’t be a product of the Father’s will since he is the Father’s will.  

That blunts Arius on one point but it raises another problem: isn’t making the Word the Father’s will confusing person with nature, which is what Arius did?  One could say that Athanasius isn’t defining the Deity of the Son in terms of a specific divine property.  

Elsewhere Athanasius notes that the Son is in the Father and the Son’s being is proper to the Father.  And given that Athanasius follows the Patristic ordo in reasoning from Person to Operation to Essence, then the Son’s being the living will points to a unity of operation.  Hence, we now see that the Son reveals the common operation and energy, and so reveals the common essence.

Discourse III

* The Son doesn’t “participate” in God.  This is a break with Platonism (III.23.1).

* The Son is in the Father….because the whole Being of the Son is proper to the Father’s essence….For whereas the Form and Godhead of the Father is the Being of the Son, it follows that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son” (III.23.4).

Christ’s being in the flesh deifies the flesh, and only God can properly deify (III.27.38).

Nota Bene:

Athanasius has a robust angelology

1. Angels are not the same as the Thrones, nor the Thrones the same as the Authorities (II.16.19).

 

We Believe in One God (Ancient Christian Doctrines)

Bray, Gerald. ed. We Believe in One God (Ancient Christian Doctrines). Intervarsity Press, 2009.

I think I have found the best primary source intro to the Fathers. The only drawback is the somewhat steep price. Gerald Bray (in this volume) gives a running commentary on the Nicene Creed using only the writings of the Fathers. He examines each clause of the Creed up to “things visible and invisible.” He alerts us to the hermeneutical sensitivities of the Fathers while pointing to areas where they were either lacking or refused to pursue the logical development. For example, the Fathers, unlike moderns today, be they conservative or liberal, were very interested in the role of Angels and demons. Their cosmology, untainted by post-Kantian gnosticism, allowed for such a role. Further, the fathers did not develop the doctrine of God’s foreknowledge and predestination in any real sense. Augustine did the most.

My main problem with the book is the lack of Maximus the Confessor. In this review I will post an extended outline. I am doing that because the reader needs to see the logical and narratival development of the Fathers’ use of the Creed (or pre-creedal formulae). Finally, the reader should note that the Fathers had values that we do not necessarily pursue today, such as apostolic succession. But it should also be noted that the situation then is different than now.

Bray begins each section with a brief contextual introduction, then summarizes roughly each Father, and then gives a litany of Patristic quotations. It is truly grand.

Movement of the Creed

We believe (which covers the gamut from knowledge of God, Scripture as the basis of knowledge [Clement Strom. 7.16], to the canon of Scripture, to the interpretation of Scripture.

Apostolic Tradition:

• “found in the Scriptures” (Irenaeus Adv. Haer. 3.5.1) and passed down by bishops.
• “Unwritten traditions.” Some were passed down, like the sign of the cross (Basil, On The Holy Spirit, 27.66).

In One God.

1. Who God Is.
   1. God’s unbegottenness is not the same as his essence (Basil 39).
   2. God is one in nature, not in number. My guess is that Basil says this because number implies distinction (Letter 8.2).
   3. Basil distinguishes between God’s energies and his essence (Letter 234).
   4. Yet Augustine says God’s being and his attributes are the same (“In God to be is the same as to be strong/just/wise; Trinity 6.4.6).
   5. God is not a substance but an essence. Substances subsist. This would mean God subsists in Goodness, rather than is goodness itself (7.5.10).
2. The Unity of God’s Being
   1. God’s unity is beyond essence (Ps. Dionys. Divine Names 2.4).
3. The Freedom of God
   1. God knows future events (Iren. Adv. Haer. 4.21.2).
4. The Divine Will
5. God’s Attributes
   1. God is above both space and time (Clement. Strom. 2.2

1. Father-Son relationship
   1. Athanasius: the Son is in the Father because his whole being is proper to the Father’s essence (Contra Ar. 3.23.3).
   2. Cyril of Alexandria: Christ is eternal because the Father is not mind-less.
2. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
   1. Ephrem: affirms the Filioque (Hymn on the Dead and the Trinity). Father = Mind; Son = Word; Spirit = voice.
   2. Basil: Community of essence (Letter 38.4). Identity of operation proves they have the same nature (Letter 189.7).
   3. Basil: ousia = general; hypostasis = particular. The Godhead is common, the hypostatic characteristics are particular (Letter 236.6).
   4. Basil: True knowledge of God moves from the Spirit through the Son to the Father (Holy Spirit 18.47).
   5. Hilary: Difference between beginning and birth. A thing that begins to exist comes from nothing. A thing that is begotten comes from the same nature (De Trin. 7.14).
   6. Augustine: the substance of God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (De Trin. 3.11.21).
   7. Augustine: Person is a convenient description. We use the term “person” because we have no other way of describing them (De Trin.7.4.8).
      8. Cyril of Alexandria: the nature is modulated through the properties of the hypostases. In each person the entire nature is understood along with its hypostatic property (Dialogue on the Trinity 7).

The Almighty

1. Augustine: “Almighty” means God can do what he wills (City of God, 5.10.1).

Maker

Heaven and earth

1. Cyril of Alexandria: No Limits to God. “There is no place that holds divinity, yet it is absent from nothing at all, for it fills all things, goes through all things, is beyond all things and yet within all things” (Commentary on John 11.9).
2. John of Damascus: God is the Cause of all, the essence of all that have essence (Orthodox Faith 1.12)./
3. Space and Time:
   1. God’s works are external, unlike the begetting of His Son, which is internal to his being (Athanasius Contra Ar. 1.29).

Of all that is, Seen

1. Ephrem the Syrian: Threefold nature of Adam’s creation.
   1. Eve took Adam’s body, but not his soul (Comm. on Genesis 1-2).
2. Augustine’s trichotomism: body, soul, and spirit (On Faith and the Creed 10.23).
3. Cyril of Alexandria: The soul did not exist before the body (Comm. on John 1.9).

And Unseen

1. Angels
   1. Shepherd of Hermas: Angel of punishment belongs in the class of righteous angels.
   2. Clement of Alexandria: Spiritual people pray with angels (Strom. 7.12).
   3. Hilary of Poitiers: Angels intercede for us (Homily on the Psalms 129 (130)).
   4. Gregory the Great: Nine different orders of angels: angels, archangels, rulers, powers, principalities, dominions, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim (Forty Gospel Homilies 2.34.7).
2. Nephilim:
   1. Athenagoras–some angels fell into sexual lust. Their offspring were the Giants (Plea Regarding Christians 24).
   2. Tertullian: sometimes angels assume corporeal form, as when the men of Sodom sought them (On the Flesh of Christ 3).
   3. Yet Chrysostom says the angels cannot have sexual relations (Homilies on Genesis 22.2).
   4. On the other hand, John Cassian says some angels have their own type of body (Conferences 7.13).
3. Guardian Angels
   1. Shepherd of Hermas: each person has two angels, one evil and one good (Mandate 2.6.2).
   2. Origen: churches, apostles, and individuals each have angels (On First Principles 1.8.1). Nations also have their own angels (cf. Greece and Persia in Daniel; Tyre in Ezekiel; On First Principles 3.3.2).
   3. Jerome: each person has a guardian angel from the moment of birth (Commentary on Matthew 3.18.10).
   4. Theodoret of Cyr: Individuals have angels; nations have archangels (Comm. Daniel 10.13).
4. Demons
   1. Exorcism still takes place today–Theophilus of Antioch (To Autoclys 2.8).
   2. Fallen angels invented magic and astrology (Tertullian).
   3. Demons only harm those who fear them: Lactantius, Institutes 2.16.

Prima Facie reservations on Thomism

Reasons why I won’t commit to Thomism.  And why a “Reformed Thomism” is an uneasy alliance.

1. Does Thomas hold to Aristotle’s view that two contrary principles can’t coexist?  Would this rule out the Incarnation?
2. Thomas’s view of habitus is incompatible with the Reformed view of imputation.
3. Thomas’s view of punishment and mortal sin demands Purgatory.
4. If the soul is the form of the human body and a subsistent thing (aliquid subsistens), then Aquinas is hard-pressed to maintain the immortality of the soul.  (I know that sounds “Greek,” but all Christian positions must affirm that the soul survives the death of the body).
   1. I know Aquinas says a “subsistent thing” exists in its own right (ST I, q. 75, a.2).
   2. But if this is his argument, then what precisely has he advanced that the Augustinian-Platonic tradition had not yet advanced?
5. I’m uneasy with his take on individuation.  Initially, matter is the principle of individuation.  But this is problematic for angels, since they are immaterial.  So he says each angel is its own species. So we have a tension.  Angels can’t be form + matter, yet the nature of divine simplicity seems to suggest that an angel can’t be identical with its existence.  So an angel is rather an admixture of act and potency.  What is immaterial potency?
6. Much better to stay with the Augustinian-Platonic tradition on this one.  Or even the Greek fathers for that matter.
7. Does Thomism demand transubstantiation?  How do Reformed guys square with that?