A 5-Part Series on Michael Heiser’s Book, “The Unseen Realm” (Part 5: The Spiritual World in the Letters of Paul)

In this last installment of my brief overview of some of Michael Heiser’s arguments in his book, The Unseen Realm, I am going to focus on what he says about the apostle Paul’s supernatural worldview in regard to the Gospel. First, though, there is the matter of the transition from Jesus in the Gospels to Paul in his letters.

Back to Bashan
In Post 4, I discussed the significance of Mount Hermon and the region of Bashan in regard to Peter’s confession at Caesarea-Philippi and the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Hermon. The long and short of what Heiser argues is that those two episodes are illustrating the nature of Jesus’ ministry: He’s making an assault on the stronghold of Satan, of which Bashan and Mount Hermon represented at that time. Heiser points out that this perception of Bashan/Mount Hermon, and God’s plan to eventually reclaim them, can also be seen in the Old Testament.

First, we have Amos 4:1-2. In one of his prophecies against the injustice in the 8^th century BC northern kingdom of Israel, Amos says: Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’ The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks.

Without going into a full exegetical explanation here, Amos is calling out the rich women of Samaria (the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel) by calling them cows of Bashan who are on the mountain of Samaria. The injustice that the leaders of Israel were doing (at the instigation of their wives, Amos says) was representative of the evil of the forces of evil in Bashan, particularly Mount Hermon (which, as we’ve noted, was long associated with the region of King Og, who was characterized as a descendent of the Nephilim, who were the offspring of those rebellious divine beings of Genesis 6:1-4).

I would add that this connection with the mythological evil beings is further emphasized by the prophecy that YHWH would drag them away with fishhooks. This is a reference to Leviathan, the mythological Sea Serpent of chaos, whom YHWH defeats in various passages like Psalm 74, Isaiah 27, and Job 41. The point in Amos is clear: YHWH will deal with the evil in Samaria, and He’ll eventually deal with the ultimate evil, of which Bashan represents.

Second, we have Psalm 68:15-23, which describes YHWH’s eventual assault on the mountain of Bashan. In this passage, the mountain of Bashan hates the mountain of God, and there is a promise that YHWH will assault the mountain of Bashan and then lead a host of captives, receive gifts among men, and eventually dwell there (68:18). It goes on to say that God will strike the heads of his enemies and will bring them back, obviously as captives, from Bashan, from the depths of the sea (68:21-23).

All this has echoes, not only of the mythological depiction of Leviathan, but also of God’s promise in Genesis 3:15 that the offspring of the woman would eventually crush the head of the serpent and his offspring. The point of all this is that here in passages like Psalm 68, there is the belief that God will ultimately defeat evil (as he promised in Genesis 3:15), and that is sometimes depicted in the imagery of making an assault on the mountain of Bashan (i.e. Mount Hermon). All of that serves as the backdrop to what Jesus says and does in both episodes of Peter’s confession and the transfiguration.

Paul’s Quoting of Psalm 68 in Ephesians 4
…and it helps us understand a bit more of what Paul talks about in his letters, specifically Ephesians 4:8-10, where he quotes from Psalm 68: Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)

In the larger section of Ephesians 4, Paul is actually talking about spiritual gifts within the Church that are to be used to build up the body of Christ. He quotes Psalm 68:18 to do this, but he changes a little bit of it. Obviously, he is equating YHWH’s promise to assault the mountain of Bashan with Christ’s victory (i.e. ascent) over the forces of evil. But instead of saying “he received gifts to men,” Paul has “he gave gifts to men.” And then there is that odd talk about the one who ascended is the one who descended into the lower regions, the earth.

Here’s what that means. Paul is saying that after Christ achieved victory over the forces of evil, he then took the gifts due to God as the victor and he gave and distributed them to the Church, and that is the basis for understanding the gifts of the Spirit. As for Paul’s comment about “descending into the lower regions,” he’s not talking about Jesus “going into the underworld” (i.e. the lower regions of the earth), but rather about the Holy Spirit’s descent at Pentecost to distribute the gifts, so that, through the Church, Christ rule could eventually fill all creation.

A Sprint Through Paul…and Hebrews
Paul’s supernatural view of the Gospel and the mission of the Church obviously isn’t limited to just Ephesians 4:8-10. For the sake of time, I’ll try to summarize what Heiser is arguing here:

• Jesus’ healings and exorcisms during his ministry marked the beginning of the assault of the Kingdom of God against the kingdom of Satan (and those other fallen angels/“sons of Elohim”)
• Jesus won the decisive victory over Satan (i.e. that seraph-serpent in Genesis 3) through his death and resurrection.
• He then gave the gifts of the Spirit to the Church so they could conduct the “mop up” operation and defeat the rest of Satan’s minions (i.e. those other rebellious divine beings in Genesis 6:1-4, whom Paul now calls “demons”)

We see this in passages like Ephesians 2:2, when Paul refers to the Ephesians believers’ former way of life, living according to the course of this age and following the prince of the power of the air. We see it in Ephesians 3:10, where Paul says that, through the Church, God’s wisdom is made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. We see it in the famous verse of Ephesians 6:12: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

We see it in I Corinthians 2:6-8, where Paul says that the wisdom the Gospel imparts isn’t like the wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age—all that will pass away. Furthermore, the rulers of this age didn’t understand God’s wisdom, and that’s why they crucified Christ. We see it in I Corinthians 6:3, where in the middle of chastising the Corinthian believers of not being wise enough to judge matters within the Church, and thus appealing to pagan judges to render judgment for them, Paul says, “Don’t you know that we are to judge the angels?”

And finally, we see this in Hebrews 2:5-15. First, the writer says that the world to come (i.e. the new creation) isn’t going to be subjected to the angels, but rather to Christ, the son of God. But not just him, for he is going to bring many sons to glory (i.e. the offspring of Abraham, the Church), and they will be his brothers, and they will rule with him. This “bringing many sons to glory” to be like and rule with Christ,

Heiser correctly points out, is what Orthodoxy calls theosis: Christ, the son of God, becoming a human being, so that through him, human beings could become like God. This goes all the way back to Genesis 1:26-27, where human beings are made in the image of God so that they can be according to His likeness. Thus, despite the sin of humanity and the temporary subjugation of this world to the powers of Satan and the demonic/fallen angels, God’s ultimate purpose to bring about a transformed and new creation in which Christ, the Son of God, will rule along with the redeemed and glorified humanity in Christ, the sons of God and the brothers of Christ.

Understanding the Supernatural Realm: The Language of Myth and Metaphor
There is much more in Michael Heiser’s book of which I am not necessarily convinced. In these posts, though, I’ve tried to summarize and outline the supernatural worldview argument he makes that basically serves as the overarching grid that holds the entire biblical narrative together and provides meaning and the interpretive key to understand the purpose of history. As I stated in an earlier post, I feel a basic flaw in Heiser’s presentation is rooted in his failure to clearly articulate between what the genre of myth in Genesis 1-11 that serves as that “big picture interpretive grid” and the historical accounts that take us through the rest of the Old and New Testaments. But if we make that distinction, we can see more clearly how Genesis 1-11 sets the stage and serves as the backdrop to the entire biblical story of God’s actions within history.

There is one more thing I want to say, though. All this talk of serpents and seraphs, divine beings and sons of Elohim, and angels and demons needs to be seen in their proper light. In our modern, Enlightenment-influenced world, we are tempted to think of the stereotypes of spirits in white robes and wing and evil-looking red devils with pointy tales and hooves and mock and ridicule “anyone who would believe such nonsense.” But to do so would be a mistake. Here’s why.

As Joseph Campbell, a scholar and expert in ancient mythology, as well as the likes of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, said, the language of myth and metaphor is not one of silly fairy tales and childish ignorance. Campbell put it this way: “Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.”

We as human beings are limited in our understanding of all of reality, and what we find in the Bible is the testimony of that supernatural, ultimate reality breaking into limited reality of the natural world, but it must do so in way that our limited minds can begin to grasp and understand. That is the power of the myth and metaphor we find in Genesis 1-11, for it provides us with the lenses to help discern God’s actions in history.

These stories of a serpent in a garden and divine beings having sex with women, and the stereotypes we often have of Satan and demons—we aren’t required to think of them in that literal sense. But they do act as those “penultimate truths” that point us beyond the rim of our natural understanding to the ultimate realities themselves. That’s the only way for us to even begin to grasp them.

When it all comes down to it, these penultimate truths dressed in myth and metaphor point to the ultimate reality that: (1) There is a God, (2) Our current world is not then end product, (3) There really are evil, malevolent forces at work in our world, (4) Humanity in its natural state is enslaved to them, (5) Christ came to defeat the ultimate evil one and to break the power of death, (6) Those who put their faith in Christ have a part to play in that Kingdom of God mission, and (7) When it is all said and done, this natural world of corruption will be transformed into a new creation, where a new kind of humanity will rule with Christ.

Or we can express those truths through the myth and metaphor expressed in the Bible, and we can allow that myth and metaphor to creatively express the significance of God’s work within the history of Israel and in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. I think it is simply much more fun that way, for we learn best through creative means. After all, we are the creative image-bearers of a truly creative Creator God.