Christopher Kou has rendered a tremendous service to readers by bringing the “Theopolitan” hermeneutic of James Jordan into dialogue with the unique biblical theology of Michael Heiser. Here, I want to suggest that both Heiser’s critics and his defenders- and the late Dr. Heiser himself- tend to presume- mistakenly- that there is something fundamentally novel about his idea of the “divine council.” The phrase “divine council” tends to reinforce this, as one will search old systematic theologies in vain for extended treatments of the divine council. In the foregoing contributions to this conversation, this sense of novelty has been the subject of intense (and in my view, largely unfounded) criticism by Heath Henning, measured words of caution by Alastair Roberts, and creative appropriation by Christopher Kou. What I want to do is raise the question of whether invoking this terminology artificially separates the idea of the heavenly council from the broader matrix of biblical imagery and therefore undermines our ability to fully appreciate it.
Consider one of the most famous and obvious visions of the heavenly council: the prophet Isaiah enters sees the God of Israel surrounded by His heavenly hosts and receiving the praises of the seraphim. But note both the temporal and spatial setting of the scene. The scene occurs “in the year King Uzziah died” and is set in the temple (Isaiah 6.1). We are poorly served by Biblical theologies which treat the temple and the royal house as two separate realities. The temple is the palace of the Divine King: the palace is the temple of the human king. The God of Israel sits upon a throne in His Temple. This is the biblical setting for the heavenly council. Consider what else we learn in this vision. The prophet is here taken up into the council of God. First, the seraphim (i.e. the burning-ones) take a burning coal and touch Isaiah’s lip with the burning coal. Isaiah has been set on fire- it is not a coincidence that “Holy One of Israel” becomes a distinctly Isaianic title for God: Isaiah, having been burned by the burning-ones whose hymn is “Holy, Holy, Holy”, joins in that hymn himself.
It is after he has been incorporated into that heavenly liturgy that he is enabled to hear the voice of the Lord speaking to His counselors and respond. We might compare this to Abram’s encounter with God in Genesis 15. Isaiah’s incorporation into the council is seen in his capacity to engage God in a reciprocal dialogue: he not only hears the commandments of God, but is enabled- by the fire on his lip- to respond to God. Likewise, from Genesis 11-15, divine communication with Abram seems to occur in one direction: Abram is given instructions by God, but Abram’s response to God is limited to sacrifice and offering. In Genesis 15, the tone shifts. For the first time, we read that the “word of the LORD came to Abram”- a line which will later define divine communication with the prophets (Jeremiah 1.2, 1 Chronicles 17.4, Isaiah 38.4, to choose just three examples) and Abram engages God in dialogue. Yet like Isaiah, Abram, too, must pass through the fire. He is placed into a “deep sleep”, beholds a “dreadful and great darkness” (Genesis 15.12), and beholds the Torch-Fire of God passing through the divided animals he offers to God.[1]
After this experience, we find that Abraham stands “before the LORD” and makes intercession on behalf of others, as he famously performs for the cities of the plain in Genesis 18. Genesis 20.7 explicitly connects Abraham’s capacity to make effective intercession with his prophetic mission. Notably, Isaiah’s prophetic calling involves the food of divine fire- Abraham’s act of prophetic intercession before God in Genesis 18 is also preceded by his setting a table for God with two angels. Abraham is made capable of contributing by his prayers to the shaping of cosmic history precisely because the Word of the LORD came to him. This is the very Word through which God has created and still upholds the world. This dynamic is rooted in Genesis 1, which richly elaborates a complex theology of God’s creative operation in and through the Word. In the opening stages of creation week, God simply speaks things into being. Yet by the third day, God is elevating the world to partnership in His creative work: He speaks concerning the earth, and is the earth which responds in producing fruit trees and grains (Genesis 1.11-13) It is worth observing that this- the biblical root of the idea of created partnership in God’s activity- is the first biblical reference to food, the very setting in which divine-council scenes are often found.
By the fifth creation day, God not only speaks concerning His creatures. He addresses them: “and God blessed them, saying…” (Genesis 1.22) On the sixth day, there is a subtle shift: God speaks to man (Genesis 1.28) and commissions them to exercise dominion over all things. The Word through which God has created the world and brought it into partnership with Himself is the Word by which God directly addresses Man- expecting, by implication, a response. This dialogical relation through the Divine Logos is the source of the idea of the heavenly council. Angels are members of God’s council because angels are messengers: they carry God’s words. The intimate bond between the notion of the Divine “Word” and the Divine “Angel of the LORD” can be seen by reading Genesis 15 and Genesis 16 in parallel: these texts, concerning Abram and Hagar, concern many of the same promises: offspring, protection, and so forth. Yet in Genesis 15 the text describes the “Word of the LORD” and in Genesis 16 we read of the “Angel of the LORD.”
We are therefore returned to the scene described in Isaiah 6. The divine council is the palace of the Divine King. It is the temple in which we draw near to the divine King. It is the court from which that King renders sentences (there is, after all, no such thing as an “independent judiciary” in ancient Israel). And it is the family home of the heavenly Father. All of these realities are of a piece: this is why our justification (pertaining to the divine sentence), our adoption (pertaining to the family home), our being anointed as high priests (pertaining to the temple), and our being made co-rulers of the world with Christ (pertaining to the palace) all fold into each other. This is the same reality, expressed in a closely related fabric of imagery and supremely revealed in the Holy Eucharist, by which we are joined to God and God to us, by which we are made princes of the world to come, by which we are declared “righteous”, and by which our liturgical service to God is confirmed.[2] In the Orthodox tradition, we speak of our worshiping together with the angels and saints when we participate in the Divine Liturgy. This is simply a way of speaking of what Heiser and others refer to as the divine council.
Thus, I submit that the notion of the divine council is not only a traditional Christian idea, but is much more pervasive in Scripture than even Heiser recognized. It is a specific perspective on the many-sided jewel which is God’s revelation to us in Christ through the Bible.
What, then, has Heiser contributed of value? His most significant contribution, in my mind, has been his powerful capacity to see the role of satan and his demons in the Old Testament. Even conservative scholars have often ignored or minimalized the role that our real enemy plays in the Old Testament.
Heiser has made a thoroughgoing and powerful case that the diabolic power who is the principal enemy of the New Testament is not a Second Temple era invention derived by syncretism with Zoroastrian ideas concerning an evil deity- this is the conventional scholarly construct. Rather, the idea of satan and his demons as the great enemy is deeply woven into the Old Testament. Crucially, the “supernatural” interpretation of the nephilim- that they are, in some way, the result of diabolic intervention in human history- is a key to unraveling this mystery. Consider that in each of the “three falls” of Genesis 3-6, we find both a human and a diabolic aspect. In Genesis 3, we find the serpent. Heiser has observed that the language of nachash has connotations of brightness as well as serpentine appearance. In this, it is not so different from the word seraph, which can also be understood to refer to serpents, as it does in Numbers 21. In Genesis 4, we read that “Sin” crouches at the doorway of Cain’s mind- in language which alludes to the serpent of Genesis 3 and anticipates Paul’s references to “Sin” in Romans 7. In Genesis 6, the “sons of God” are those heavenly powers which, following the primordial serpent, preyed on humanity.
This is underscored by the literary pattern of the Book of Samuel. In 1 Samuel 11, Saul, after his anointing by Samuel, faces a king whose name is literally Serpent– Nachash. When David is anointed in 1 Samuel 16, he too faces a serpentine power- Goliath, who wears[3] scaled armor. Goliath is a giant who hails from Gath, a place in which, according to Joshua 11.22, there was a remnant of the Anakim. This is textually linked within Samuel itself to demonic powers. David’s battle with Goliath is placed in the immediate context of Saul’s being tormented by an “evil spirit” who replaces the Spirit of God upon his departure from Saul (1 Samuel 16.14). David’s first battle is with the evil spirit on Saul- and the hand by which he selects the stones which crush the head of Goliath is the very hand which plays the harp and thereby overcomes the evil spirit (1 Samuel 16.23, 17.37). It is crucial to note, moreover, that Job 1-2 identifies satan within the context of a divine-council scene. Likewise, another “evil spirit” is sent from the divine council in 1 Kings 22.
Despite his assertion that he reads the Bible without an ecclesiastical hermeneutic- Heiser’s work powerfully corroborates the “great tradition.” The divine council finds its prototype in the Trinity, wherein there is an eternal conversation among the persons of the Trinity. For this reason, both angelic and human participation in the divine council occurs through the descent of the divine Word, by whom God reigns over, judges, sanctifies, and adopts the world. At the center of the Sanctuary, therefore, we find the Word of God textually embedded in the Ark of the Covenant and ranked by cherubim. At the center of Isaiah’s temple vision, we find the throne from which God speaks and meet choirs of seraphim. The divine council is not a minor idea which exists in parallel to other biblical images: it is rather a specific and useful way of expressing God’s identity and relation as King, Judge, Indwelling Glory, and Father. Within this frame of reference, we are in a position to identify the major continuity between the Testaments as to the identity of our real enemy. As God is the Divine King, satan is the rebellious prince (Isa. 14). As God is the Supreme Judge, satan is our accuser (Job 1-2, Zechariah 3, Revelation 12). As God is the Indwelling Glory, satan is the spirit who haunts the home (Revelation 18.1). And as God is our Heavenly Father, satan is the slavemaster who sees the household as a tool to be used for self-will rather than a bride to be loved (Romans 6.23).
Despite significant shortcomings, Heiser’s work has alerted countless readers to the oneness of the Biblical canon and the centrality of Christ’s victory over the diabolic foe throughout both Testaments.
Seraphim Hamilton is an Eastern Orthodox biblical commentator who seeks to understand Scripture as a unified work of God written for the good of the Church, in harmony with precritical interpretation. He has a MA in Early Christian Studies from the University of Notre Dame and a ThM from Duke University. He is presently a seminarian of the Orthodox Church. His writings can be found at http://seraphimhamilton.substack.com
NOTES
[1] I agree with James B. Jordan that it is a mistake to read this only as a self-maledictory oath on God’s part. Rather, the allusion runs back to Genesis 2, the only other instance where the word for “deep sleep” is used. There, like here, there is a subject who is divided in two- there it is Adam who is separated from his side, here it is the animals who stand as representatives of Abram. This confirms Jordan’s suggestion that there is a play between “ish” (man- used for the first time in Genesis 2:24) and “esh” (fire- which is found in Genesis 15:17), revealing both Adam’s being gifted a bride and Abram’s experience with God as a death-and-resurrection experience.
[2] In this context, it is worth noting that Exodus 29.24 describes bread being placed in the palm of the priests at the moment of their ordination.
[3] This observation was made in Peter Leithart’s commentary on Samuel.