Yahweh and Lesser “Gods”

In explicit opposition to the cultures around them, the Israelites believed that there was only one true God. Unlike everything these surrounding cultures believed, the Old Testament unanimously portrays Yahweh as being the sole Creator of all that is, and thus as being alone eternal and sovereign. What is more, the Old Testament everywhere assumes that Yahweh has this sovereignty by nature. Unlike the powerful gods of Near Eastern pantheons, Yahweh did not have to seize his power by force.

This is not to suggest, however, that the Israelites denied the existence of angelic or spiritual beings. In fact, they often referred to these beings as “gods.” What is more, while many today understand angels to be rather innocuous creatures, mere extensions of God’s will, lacking a mind and volition of their own, the Old Testament authors everywhere assume that these gods have a good deal of autonomous power. Appreciating this autonomy is crucial for an understanding of the Old Testament’s view of evil, and for an adequate understanding of how Old Testament thought evolved into what we find in the New Testament.

For this reason, as well as out of simple fidelity to Scripture, it seems advisable to retain the word “god,” over the word “angel,” when discussing the views of authors who use that term. While the term “gods” may sit uncomfortably with some contemporary evangelical readers, it has a strong biblical foundation, even in the New Testament (1 Cor 8:6; 2 Cor 4:4), and is free from much of the unbiblical cultural baggage associated with the term “angels.” But neither I nor any Old Testament author means by the term “god” a being who is in any sense coeternal, cocreator or coruler with the one true God. The gods are very powerful beings, but they all have their power on loan from the Creator God.

Old Testament authors do not deny the existence of lesser gods alongside Yahweh, though several passages are sometimes taken to imply this. For example, speaking to God’s people at a time when they were being led astray by idols, Isaiah emphatically repeated the refrain that Yahweh alone is God and there is no other: “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior” (Is 43:10-11).1

A similar refrain is used by Jeremiah, writing in the midst of a similarly idolatrous situation. Through him the Lord says to Israel, “How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me, and have sworn by those who are no gods” (Jer 5:7; cf. 10:2-16).

Do such passages imply that these authors believe that there are literally no gods besides Yahweh? I think not. Elsewhere both Jeremiah and Isaiah depict a heavenly council of gods who surround Yahweh (Jer 23:18, 22; Is 6:2-8).2 Moreover, as Ulrich Mauser has argued, Isaiah speaks in this same hyperbolic fashion about nations, princes and armies being nothing before God (Is 40:17, 23; 41:12).3 Yet Isaiah was clearly not literally denying the existence of these realities.

The existence of other gods seems to have been an assumption shared by all Hebrews before as well as after these two prophets. If Isaiah and Jeremiah were categorically denying the existence of other gods, they would be unique in the history of Israel. A better approach is to understand Isaiah and Jeremiah as expressing an exaggerated form of mockery in denying the reality of pagan gods, as Adrio König, among others, has argued.4 These gods and idols, they are sarcastically saying, are so puny in comparison with Yahweh that they do not even warrant the title “god.” In so arguing, Isaiah and Jeremiah are expressing the radical uniqueness of Yahweh as the sole true God, the radical subordination of all other spiritual beings to him, and the radical sinfulness of worshiping idols as God. But they cannot be taken as categorical denials of the existence of other spiritual beings.

In any case, the remainder of the Old Testament exhibits no reservation in acknowledging the existence of gods outside Yahweh and of the gods who form his heavenly council. But even here Yahweh’s supremacy is always at the forefront of their thoughts. Hence the first commandment reads, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:3). The existence of other gods is presupposed, but they are subordinate to the one who alone is the Lord God Almighty.

A refrain occurs throughout the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms: “There is none like you among the gods, O Lord” (Ps 86:8); “great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be revered above all gods” (96:4); “our Lord is above all gods” (135:5). Similarly, all the gods are commanded to worship Yahweh (29:1; 97:7), for he is “exalted far above all gods” (97:9) and is, in fact, their King (95:3). Similarly, Moses pleads for God’s mercy to let him go over to the Promised Land: “What god in heaven or on earth can perform deeds and mighty acts like yours! Let me cross over to see the good land” (Deut 3:24-25). The divine realm is envisaged as a veritable society of gods, though Yahweh is clearly understood to be incomparably greater than all others, for he alone is Creator.6

While later Jewish-Christian tradition will back off somewhat from the term “god,” it never backs away from this conception of spiritual beings populating the cosmos. Thus, to cite one remarkable example, against the Corinthian’s misuse of the Shema, the teaching that “there is no God but one” (1 Cor 8:4), Paul argues that there are, in fact, “many gods and many lords” (8:5). But, he adds, “for us there is one God, the Father . . . and one Lord, Jesus Christ” (8:6). As Mauser again notes, his admission of “many gods” and “many lords,” as well as this clear distinction between God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, is “most uncomfortable for a clean monotheism.”7

As mentioned earlier, while the Old Testament never questions the ultimate sovereignty of the Creator, this sovereignty is nowhere taken to imply that the other gods of heaven possess no autonomous power. To the contrary, the Old Testament assumes that they have power to think and act on their own.

For example, it is difficult to escape the clear import of Jephthah’s question to the Ammonite king: “Should you not possess what your god Chemosh gives you to possess? And should we not be the ones to possess everything that the LORD our God has conquered for our benefit?” (Judg 11:24). Like all people of his time, Jephthah believed that spiritual forces—the gods of various nations—were deeply involved in human battles and played a crucial role in whether they won or lost a battle.8 Thus if Yahweh defeats the god Chemosh and gives “Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel” (v. 21), then Israel wins the battle and the land of the Amorites is rightfully theirs.

It can, however, apparently also work the other way, as when the king of Moab inspired the wrath of Chemosh to burn against Israel by sacrificing his son to him. Though Israel had been routing the Moabites up to this point, they then had to retreat quickly (2 Kings 3:26-27). If we allow the text to stand on its own terms, if we do not demythologize it according to our modern Western assumptions, this text certainly seems to assume the reality of the god Chemosh. Indeed, the text also seems to assume the ability of the Moabite king to influence, and perhaps even empower, this demonic being through sacrificing his child; the text also seems to assume the ability of Chemosh in this case to rout Israel in battle.9

The power of gods to assist or resist Yahweh in war, to hinder his answers to prayers, to influence “natural” disasters, to inflict diseases on people, to deceive people and the like is assumed throughout the Bible. Yahweh is unquestionably understood to reign supreme over the whole cosmic society of spiritual and earthly beings, but this sovereignty is never—even in Isaiah and Jeremiah—taken to imply either that he is the only divine being or that the other divine beings are mere extensions of his will.

This dimension of significant self-determination and power, shared by the angelic and human society, opens up the possibility of conflict in the spiritual and earthly realms. This quasi-democratic view of the cosmos, this freedom to influence others for better or for worse, is the sine qua non of a warfare worldview. For just this reason, when Augustine and the later church undermine the genuine self-determination of angels and people by identifying divine sovereignty with meticulous control, the warfare worldview itself is logically compromised. Again, for just this reason, the intellectual problem of evil is necessarily placed center stage in Christian theology. If the cosmos is not something of a free democracy (under the ultimate rulership of God), it has to be something of a tyrannical monarchy. Either some power is shared or it is not. If not, all the blame for all the evil in the cosmos has ultimately to rest squarely on the lap of the monarch whose will is (purportedly) never thwarted.

The Nature and Origin of Ancient Jewish Monotheism

In the minds of many scholars and laypeople alike, this affirmation of the reality and influence of other gods next to Yahweh seems incompatible with “true monotheism.” Rooted in the misreading of Isaiah and Jeremiah is the common assumption that monotheism means denying that other gods exist alongside the one true God, at least gods who could exercise any sort of autonomous power (such as Chemosh). To the extent that we admit the existence of other gods, it has often been assumed, we compromise true monotheism and degenerate to some form of “henotheism” or “monolatry.”10 It is because of this arbitrary but pervasive assumption about the exclusive nature of true monotheism that so many have difficulty accepting the warfare worldview of Scripture at face value.11

Biblical scholarship is increasingly recognizing that the assumption that monotheism is necessarily exclusive is false, at least if we are operating with a phenomenological definition of monotheism, not an idealistic philosophical one. Hence N. T. Wright argues that “the postulation of supernatural beings other than the one God has nothing to do with a declining away from ‘pure’ monotheism.” He adds, “if it does, we must say that we have very few examples of ‘pure’ monotheism anywhere, including in the Hebrew Bible.”12

Peter Hayman agrees and goes so far as to contend that if monotheism is defined as a belief that denies the existence of all gods save one, then one is hard-pressed to find any true monotheist in the history of Israel up to the Middle Ages, and even then it is doubtful.13 Given this exclusivistic definition, he argues, “it is hardly ever appropriate to use the term monotheism to describe the Jewish idea of God.”14 For, in a wide variety of ways, people in both biblical and postbiblical times assumed that Yahweh must work with or confront other friendly or hostile divine powers (whether called “angels” or “gods”). Presumably to capture this notion of shared power, Hayman offers the unusual label “cooperative dualism” to replace “monotheism” as a descriptive phrase for the Jewish perspective on Yahweh and his relationship with the world.15

While I agree with Hayman’s thesis that the general scholarly definition of monotheism as exclusive is arbitrary and inaccurate for the phenomena it is supposed to describe, he seems to overstate his case. Most importantly, Hayman gives insufficient weight to the nearly universal Jewish and Christian affirmations that among all the gods, angels or spiritual forces, Yahweh alone is the Creator of all that is, and therefore Yahweh alone is to be worshiped.

To be more specific, while the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is perhaps not explicit in Genesis 1:1, it is (pace Hayman) implicit in many other passages of Scripture (see, e.g., Neh 9:6; Ps 90:2; 102:45; 148:5-6; Rom 11:36; 1 Cor 8:6; 2 Cor 5:5; Eph 3:9; Heb 2:10; 5:4; 11:3; Rev 4:11). It is also explicit and implicit throughout most of the Judeo-Christian traditions. Jews and Christians have rarely endorsed the pagan idea that some eternal beings or impersonal cosmic realities exist alongside the one true God. They have generally resisted any suggestion that the Creator is limited by anything outside himself.16

For just this reason, never have believers within the parameters of the orthodox Judeo-Christian tradition endorsed the worship of spiritual beings other than the Creator. Reverence and requests for assistance have on occasion been admitted; indeed, at times they are even encouraged. But never has worship in the sense of ultimate adoration been permitted.17 The biblical teaching that the Lord is a “jealous” God has generally been understood to apply to just this point (e.g., Ex 20:5; 34:14; Deut 4:24). It is the defining characteristic of monotheistic praxis.

For these reasons, while I concede Hayman’s and Wright’s observation that the Jewish conception of one God has almost always included a conception of a number of other spiritual powers surrounding God, some of which are outside his direct control, Hayman’s proposal to replace the term “monotheism” with “cooperative dualism” to describe traditional Jewish faith seems overreactive and ill advised. In orthodox Judeo-Christian terms, whatever general state of affairs exists—for example, whether there is a multiplicity of gods and whether this multiplicity embodies the possibility of warfare—it is a state of affairs the Creator, in his wisdom, has himself chosen.

In this light, Wright’s term “creational monotheism” seems more appropriate. Unlike philosophical monotheism with its speculative conjecture about what “pure” monotheism entails, creational monotheism does not rule out the acknowledgment of the existence of lesser gods. But neither does it say that one among all the gods happens to be above the rest, or that one among all the gods happens to be preferred by us (henotheism, monolatry). Arising out of the biblical revelation, creational monotheism affirms that there are indeed a multiplicity of gods, but only one is eternal, only one is Creator, only one is Lord, and only one is omnipotent, while all others have their being and their power only by virtue of being given it by their Creator. Hence the Creator is in a class all by himself, and for this reason he and he alone is to be worshiped.

Creational monotheism maintains that while Yahweh must genuinely battle with spiritual cosmic rivals, this “must” is itself something Yahweh himself has brought into being. It need not imply that Yahweh secretly controls his rivals, only that the very power of his rivals to resist him is given by him.18

Nevertheless, Hayman’s polemic against the standard philosophical exclusivistic definition of monotheism is both insightful and necessary. With the proviso that Yahweh is the primordial Creator of all (hence, by implication, the sole eternal being) and the one appropriate object of worship, Hayman is correct in noting the significance of the fact that the Bible and later Jewish tradition are largely free from the standard exclusive view of “pure monotheism.” By both biblical and traditional standards, so long as Yahweh is confessed to be Creator and is alone worshiped as the Creator, there is simply no incompatibility between affirming that Yahweh is the one true God and affirming that a multiplicity of other gods exists.

Abandoning the exclusive philosophical definition of monotheism has important implications for several other issues that surround Judaism’s and Christianity’s views of God and other gods. For one thing, the birth and rapid growth of Christianity on Jewish soil become intelligible only when we free ourselves from the standard caricature of “pure monotheism” as entailing the belief that no other gods exist. That Jesus could from the start be portrayed in terms of deity and worshiped in some sense alongside God the Father demonstrates how flexible the Jewish monotheism of the time was. It was hardly a monotheism that was stuck on a mathematical understanding of God’s “oneness.”19

Nor was this Jesus devotion the result of excessive Hellenization through which “pure monotheism” was supposedly compromised, as Wilhelm Bousset and others have argued.20 So far as can be determined, the Jewish concept of the “oneness” of God was never primarily a numerical concept; rather, the confession that “the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut 6:4; Mk 12:29, 32) was intended to refer to the uniqueness of Yahweh (among all gods) and Israel’s singular devotion to him. The early Jewish Christians’ acceptance of Jesus as the divine Son of God, while still remarkable, is far more intelligible in this light than if they had previously been holding to anything like the philosophical exclusivistic definition of monotheism discussed above.

Evolution or devolution? The adaptation of a more flexible definition of monotheism also contributes to the long-standing but important debate over whether monotheism or polytheism is the primordial faith. Stated most generally, the issue is this: Does monotheism represent an evolution out of polytheism (as most critical scholars over the last century have argued),21 or does polytheism represent a devolution from original monotheism (as a minority of scholars, but a majority of conservatives, have argued)?

Among the number of things that hang upon this question is the integrity of the biblical account of prehistory that clearly implies that the earliest humans were monotheists (creational, not exclusive, monotheists). Equally important, however, is that our understanding of the relation between monotheism and polytheism is at stake here. If, for example, one evolved or devolved out of the other, then it seems we must view the Old Testament’s tendency to affirm the supremacy of the one true God while also conceding the existence of many other influential gods as either an imperfectly evolved or a partially devolved form of monotheism.

I contend, however, that both schools of thought have tended to skew the available evidence because of an a priori assumption about the mutually exclusive nature of “pure” monotheism and “pure” polytheism. One school has generally tried to locate the first occurrence of pure (viz., exclusive) monotheism at some point in Israel’s history (Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Ezra and Hosea are proposed candidates) and has then conjectured a long line of evolution leading up to this point. In contrast, the other school has generally postulated the existence of a pure form of monotheism at the beginning of human history and has then conjectured a long line of devolution leading to full-blown polytheism.

But what if these pure forms of monotheism and polytheism are simply theoretical constructs that do not actually describe what monotheists, and perhaps what polytheists, have generally believed, as Hayman suggested? What if we did not decide a priori that monotheism and polytheism were necessarily exclusive? We might find that the supposed evidence to argue that one evolved or devolved from the other simply does not exist.

Rather, the primordial faith (if we can speak of the primordial faith) was constituted by a devotion to one true God and a belief that a multitude of other powerful gods either serve him or oppose him. In short, we might find evidence suggesting that neither monotheism nor polytheism is, as such, more ancient than the other, and hence that neither necessarily evolved or devolved out of the other.

I would argue in just this direction. It is my conviction that these two schools both read the available evidence as signifying either an evolution or a devolution only because they start with an arbitrary philosophical definition of “true monotheism” as exclusive. They then postulate this “true monotheism” either at the beginning of history, from which polytheism devolves, or late in history, to which polytheism evolves.

All the evidence used to support each position, however, can be adequately accounted for, with none of the concomitant pitfalls, simply by allowing for the possibility that a devotion to one supreme Creator God and a belief in many lesser gods can fruitfully exist side by side. Indeed, if we simply look at what most monotheists and most polytheists actually believe instead of theorizing on the basis of what we suppose they ought to believe, we quickly see that this possibility has in fact usually characterized both belief systems.

The case for a primal creational monotheism. Those who hold that monotheism evolved out of polytheism have justifiably observed that no concrete evidence suggests there ever was a time when people did not believe in a multiplicity of gods. There simply is no conclusive evidence of a primordial faith in one God to the exclusion of the existence of other gods. As far back as we can go (and this is still reflected in primitive cultures today), believing in a multiplicity of gods, and living in the tension that sometimes exists among these gods and between these gods and humans (viz., the warfare worldview), seems to have been a staple of human culture throughout history.

Thus far the evolutionist camp seems on solid ground. This does not, however, come close to proving that monotheism evolved out of polytheism. For one thing, the evidence suggesting that deities tend to be conflated over time is sparse. Indeed, some archaeological evidence suggests the opposite (as the devolution camp is quick to point out).22 For another thing, no one has yet succeeded in providing a convincing account of when, why and how Israel went from a (supposed) primordial polytheism to a Yahweh-centered monotheism. The sheer multitude of contradictory theories offered over the last century is enough to demonstrate how conjectural each position is.23

Although a “pure” form of primordial monotheism hasn’t been discovered, a far stronger case than is usually conceded can be made for the view that prehistoric humanity tended to be monotheistic in the sense of believing in one supreme God who was qualitatively above all others.24 A number of reputable scholars have argued in this direction on the basis of archeological evidence.

For example, the famous Assyriologist and Sumerologist Stephen Langdon has argued that, generally speaking, the older an inscription is, the more monotheistic it tends to be.25 Concerning the Sumerians, Langdon maintains that the evidence suggests that the Sumerians originally had a belief in a supreme “personal god with the name An Heaven, Sky.”26 Similarly, Leopold von Schroeder and others have claimed that archeology suggests that behind all forms of Indo-Germanic polytheism is a faith in the supremacy of one unique Sky-God.27 Others have argued the same for ancient Egyptian polytheism, as well as for the polytheism of ancient Greece, India and even China.28

More compelling than this, however, is the strong evidence of a type of monotheistic faith among primitive peoples today, peoples whose cultures by all accounts provide us with some of the clearest windows into what prehistoric humanity was like. Evidence along these lines is forthcoming from a wide variety of sources (only a few of which can be mentioned here).29

The Halakwulups of Tierra del Fuego have a belief in a single, spiritual, all-good God who, though he is too remote to be prayed to, still rewards and punishes people on the basis of their behavior.30 Similarly, though the aborigines of southeast Australia believe that the world is populated with various grades of spirits, they nevertheless believe in a single, morally superior, omniscient deity named Darmulun.31 Significantly enough, while these tribes believe that all spirits are to be reverenced, only the high god is to be worshiped.

Among the Bambuti pygmies of Central Africa and Andaman Islanders in the Gulf of Bengal—two tribes that had not yet learned how to make fire when first discovered—there is, in the midst of their animistic polytheism, a belief in a single god who is above the rest, alone immortal, creator and omniscient.32 Such a perspective is almost universal among African tribes. As Ninian Smart argues, studies done on virtually thousands of African tribes reveal that “in most, if not all . . . there is belief in a supreme Spirit ruling over or informing the lesser spirits and gods.”33 And again: “ruling over the world which teems with divinities and sacred forces, there is—high above in the sky, but not of the sky—some kind of supreme Being. . . . He governs natural forces, dwells on high, is inexplicable, creates souls, men, and all things.”34 We see that, among those peoples who we would most suspect to preserve echoes of humanity’s prehistoric past, we find that a form of monotheism is present, and that it seems to go hand in hand with a form of polytheism.

This phenomenon is not limited to African tribes. It is found in various forms around the globe in other primordial traditions. For example, the Lenape-Delaware Indians, an ancient eastern branch of the Algonquin tribe, express a strong faith in a single creator god, despite their otherwise vibrant polytheism. Indeed, their view of the creator and even many of the details of their creation account closely parallel the view and details of Genesis 1. Respect and invocations are given to a variety of lesser deities, but worship is reserved for the one supreme Creator.35

The list of primal tribes who combine a clear form of monotheism with a form of polytheism could be expanded greatly. The Selknam have from time immemorial offered up their first fruits to a high God who they know does not need nourishment.36 The Yamana tribe believe in Watauinaiwa, who is “the Ancient One,” ever watchful, rewarding good and punishing evil.37 The Bhils of central India profess a faith in a personal creator Bhagwan, who created humans after all the gods he had earlier created rebelled against him because of “the Evil Spirit.”38

How are we to account for this global phenomenon? If the possibilities of sheer coincidence and of “Christian contamination” are ruled out39—as they assuredly must be—we need to wonder along with David Rooney whether the common conceptions and stories serve “as eloquent reminders of an original common store of knowledge before the human diaspora over the face of the earth.” Rooney continues: “Most anthropologists tend to accept diffusion of technology rather than simultaneous invention, as a likely explanation for the appearance of similar objects in different locations. Presumably the same should hold for myths as well.”40 In other words, the simplest explanation for this global presence of monotheism among primitive peoples is to trace it back to a shared tradition and a shared stock of knowledge.41

Even more forceful in arguing in this direction, however, is the widespread phenomenon in primitive tribes around the globe of a belief in a highest god who now plays no role in the spirituality of the people, a deus otiosus as it has been labeled. As N. A. Snaith observes,

The “high God” in each of these instances is conceptualized as being too far removed to be of practical value. He or she (Koevasi is female) is thought to be too exalted to be concerned with human affairs and to care about human worship.43 If ever there was a time when the high God interacted with the people (and, curiously, often such a time before a “fall” is vaguely recalled) this time is now long past. Now, the high God is “gone away,” as many of their myths say, and the only gods with whom the people have to do are the “low gods”: the gods in charge of rain, vegetation, health, war and the like.44

What is most intriguing about this, as Snaith himself elsewhere points out, is that there is no way to account for how these singular hypertranscendent deities evolved, since they are altogether irrelevant to the everyday faith of the people. They make sense only as echoes of a once vibrant belief in a relevant supreme God.45

Primal monotheism and polytheism. Thus the evidence for a primal monotheism that acknowledged and worshiped a single Creator while nevertheless also acknowledging the existence of other lesser gods is quite compelling. Attempts to discredit this evidence have not been successful. Indeed, as a number of commentators have noted, the attempts have been largely circular and frequently ad hominem. They are often based primarily on the presupposition that monotheism reflects a sophisticated form of abstract reasoning that primordial peoples simply were not capable of. Hence the evidence must somehow be skewed. It has been suggested that since many of these tribes were initially investigated by Catholic missionaries and scholars, perhaps the documentation on each tribe’s beliefs was prejudiced.46 Subsequent research, however, has largely substantiated the original Catholic assessment and has shown the detractors to be the ones involved in circular reasoning.47

The case for a primal creational monotheism is quite strong, although largely ignored. Against most of the defenders of the primal monotheism theory, however, the evidence for some form of a primal polytheism is quite strong as well. While there is, as some archaeologists have argued, in some instances a discernible trend toward the multiplication of gods, the postulation of a time in which these gods were altogether absent carries us far beyond the available evidence.

The conclusion that seems most warranted by the available data is well expressed by Snaith:

We have no reason to suspect that there was ever a time when people did not believe in one supreme God and in a multiplicity of lesser gods. This view is found throughout the Old and New Testaments. There is one true God and a multiplicity of lesser gods.49

However, what is also found in both the Old and New Testaments is the strong belief that the supreme God, Yahweh, is the Creator of all other gods and of the whole world. Further, we find here the uncompromising conviction that only Yahweh, the Creator, is to be worshiped. These twin convictions phenomenologically define the creational monotheism of the Bible.50

It is not the acknowledgment of the existence of other gods that is the problem from a scriptural perspective. This much is assumed. Problems with other gods arise only when people begin to forget that these gods were themselves made, and hence that these gods are not to be worshiped. If a degeneration of religious views can be traced from the primordial faith, it is not a degeneration from a supposedly pure belief in one God to a corrupted belief in many gods. It is, rather, a degeneration from a pure worship of one supreme Creator God to the corrupt worship of many lesser gods. In other words, monotheism conflicts with polytheism only when monotheistic worship and living (monotheopraxis) degenerates into polytheistic worship and living (polytheopraxis).

How might this degeneration have occurred? While we can only conjecture an answer, the process is not hard to envisage if one accepts the biblical account of a historical Fall. If one accepts the reality of a primordial spiritual catastrophe at the fountainhead of the human race, then it becomes easy to understand how the various traditions about the high God “going away” originated.

Put simply, sin separates people from their Creator (Gen 3:8). We are all born in a sin-infected environment, hence we all experience this separation. Experiencing this distancing from God, we have no difficulty understanding how primordial humanity could begin to seek assistance on various matters from the “lower gods,” who were deemed to be nearer, perhaps less holy and thus less threatening.

The suggestion becomes more plausible when we consider that throughout the biblical tradition, as throughout almost all primordial cultures, we find the understanding that lesser gods were put in charge of various aspects of creation. As we shall see below and throughout the following chapters, much of the biblical tradition as well as church history has assumed that everything in creation is directly or indirectly under the authority of some angel.51 The soil, wind, rain, sun, animals, vegetation and so on each has its own guardian angel.

Many primordial peoples seem to have preserved this insight, by either spiritual intuition or oral tradition.52 Hence if the Creator himself is judged to have withdrawn (because of the experience of sin), it is easy to understand how more focus, hope and religious reverence began to be placed on the mediating spiritual beings who were put in charge of various aspects of creation. Instead of praying to the Creator God for rain, one prayed to the closer god who was supposed to be in charge of rain. In this fashion, perhaps, monotheopraxis gradually degenerated into polytheopraxis.53 Israel’s ongoing tendency toward idolatry can perhaps be seen as a microcosm of an ongoing tendency among humans in general.

We may conclude that the monotheism of the Bible is not about conflating various gods into a new monotheistic view of the cosmos, as the evolutionists have argued. Rather, it is about reestablishing the supremacy of the Creator, who alone is deserving of worship amid the gods. What lies behind the Bible’s ongoing polemic against other gods, then, is not the issue of whether these other gods exist. It is the issue of who is the Creator, and thus the issue of who is the appropriate object of worship. If we are to recapture the biblical warfare perspective of the cosmos, it is imperative that we give full credit to the Bible’s robust affirmation of a divine society that exists between humans and the supreme God.

So long as we see monotheism as threatened by the acknowledgment of other relatively autonomous and powerful gods, we simply cannot accept the central scriptural and primordial understanding that our world is caught in the crossfire of a tremendous spiritual cosmic struggle. Thus our ability to make headway in understanding evil is correspondingly impoverished. For it is precisely in the acknowledgment of the society of free spiritual beings in between humans and the Creator that the primary explanation for evil on a cosmic scale is to be found. When one possesses a vital awareness that in between God and humanity there exists a vast society of spiritual beings who are quite like humans in possessing intelligence and free will, there is simply no difficulty in reconciling the reality of evil with the goodness of the supreme God.

For example, it has been noted that African people routinely blame various gods, nature spirits or ancestors for ills that befall them and for prayers that go unanswered. But they never blame the Supreme Being, who is envisaged as being all-good.54 This position is quite congruent with the scriptural position (minus, of course, the inclusion of ancestors in the divine society), and it virtually sidesteps the problem of evil. One is inclined to blame the Supreme Being for the ills that befall us only when we do not accept the existence of lesser gods or do not accept that these gods are, like human beings, free moral agents.

We now turn to the robust affirmation of the significance of gods in between the Supreme God and humanity within the Old Testament.

The Council of Yahweh

While the supremacy of Yahweh among the gods is never qualified in the Old Testament, this supremacy is not generally interpreted in a strictly autocratic fashion. That is, the gods are never portrayed as mere puppets of Yahweh. Rather, they appear to be personal beings who not only take orders but also are invited to give input to their Sovereign (1 Kings 22:20; Is 6:8). They collectively constitute a “heavenly council” that, in the Old Testament, is similar to many portraits of a heavenly council in prebiblical Near Eastern texts. In the Old Testament, as elsewhere, the heavenly hosts surround the captain to discuss the issues and affairs at hand and help make decisions on important matters.

These gods never rival the Creator’s authority. Thus they are never construed as major competing deities. Herein lies the central difference between the Old Testament and pagan conceptions of the heavenly council. But it is important to note that the Old Testament certainly accepts that some such council exists, and that the members of this council have some say in how things are done.55 In sharp contrast to the later Augustinian monopolizing view of divine sovereignty, the sovereign One in this concept invites and responds to input from both his divine and human subjects. The supplications and decisions of his creatures genuinely affect him, to the point where he may even alter previous plans in response to his creatures’ requests and behavior (e.g., Ex 32:14-15; Jon 3:4-10; Is 38:1-5; Jer 18:6-11).

The classical-philosophical theistic tradition has judged all of this scriptural talk to be anthropomorphic. It has had to, not because anything in Scripture suggests this but because of a nonbiblical philosophical presupposition. At the heart of this concept of God is the Hellenistic philosophical assumption that divine perfection means changelessness, impassibility, immutability, pure actuality and so on. Such a concept rules out the idea that God could ever be affected by, let alone receive advice from, angelic or human beings.

Omnipotence, in this view, means omnicontrol, which further entails divine impassibility and immutability. But if God exercises total control, what power does anyone outside God have to affect, influence or move God in any way? If then some passages of Scripture portray a different view (are there passages that do not?), we must understand them to be anthropomorphic.

This hermeneutic amounts to an illegitimate exaltation of what is taken to be general revelation over special revelation. In essence it says: since we know (from Hellenistic philosophy!) that God is immutable, timeless, impassible, purely actual, devoid of contingency and so on, these passages cannot mean what they seem to mean. In contrast, if we stick with the text, we cannot avoid the conclusion that biblical authors understood God to be genuinely open to and affected by the input of his creatures, both angelic and human. Nothing in the texts suggests that Scripture is in these instances speaking nonliterally.56

The centrality of this concept of the Lord as being surrounded by a council of gods is seen in the fact that one of the most frequent ascriptions of Yahweh is “the LORD of hosts.”57 He is described as being revered by the multitudes of “holy ones” who “are around him” in his heavenly council (Ps 89:7), for it is he who “has taken his place in the divine council” and “in the midst of the gods . . . holds judgment” (82:1). While these hosts are themselves “mighty ones,” their primary job is to “do his bidding, obedient to his spoken word,” as well as give him praise (103:20-21; 148:2). Paralleling other Near Eastern conceptions, this heavenly council is also seen as including the sun, moon and stars (Deut 4:19-20; 17:13; Job 38:7; Judg 5:20; Ps 148:1-6; Is 14:13; Hab 3:11), as well as the winds and thunder (Ps 104:4; cf. Heb 1:7).58

This conception of a heavenly council lies behind the prologue to the book of Job. All the b^enê ha’^elohîm (sons of God) present themselves before the Lord (Job 1:6; 2:1), probably to give a report on their various duties such as Satan gives (1:7-8; 2:2-3).59 These are the “holy ones” to whom Job’s “friend” Eliphaz later chides him to turn (5:1; cf. 15:5).

This conception also lies behind Micaiah’s vision in 1 Kings 22: “I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. And the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’” (vv. 19-20). Micaiah is allowed to be privy to the otherwise concealed “great assembly” where crucial decisions “among the gods” are made (Ps 82:1). Interestingly enough, one possible qualification of a legitimate prophet, Jeremiah tells us, is that they have “stood in the council of the LORD so as to see and to hear his word” (Jer 23:18; see Is 6:1). The prophet is one who has been granted access into the inner chambers of the Lord’s assembly. This is precisely what Micaiah did.60

This understanding of the divine council also perhaps explains the first-person plural used by God when crucial decisions are being made in Old Testament history. The most famous of these is Genesis 1:26. In creating or fashioning every previous feature of the cosmos and all that is in it, the Lord had simply used his word (1:3, 6, 9, 14, 20). But in creating humankind, the pinnacle of his creation, the Lord says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (v. 26).

Attempts have been made to explain this as a “plural of majesty” or as a reference to the Trinity.61 While these are possibilities, the standard interpretation among the Jews has been to understand this plural as a reference to the heavenly council. In light of subsequent revelation, this plurality within the divine council can be understood in terms of the triune divine society. But in fidelity to the original meaning of the text, we must also admit that the original author or his audience would not have understood the text in this way, and thus it should not be taken as the primary meaning of the text.

The heavenly-council interpretation also seems to make the most sense of the Lord’s statement made just prior to casting Adam and Eve out of the garden: “The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:22).62 There is obviously a connection between the first-person plurals of these verses, but in this later verse a plural of neither majesty nor the Trinity is possible. The author (or redactor) is certainly aware of other divine beings (6:1-4), and it is most likely that these references in the first-person plural in both passages are to these beings.

So too in Genesis 11, when the Lord makes the monumental decision to scatter the people throughout the world in response to their attempt to build a tower to heaven, he says, “Let us go down, and confuse their language” (Gen 11:7).63 In Isaiah 6, which is explicitly a scene of the heavenly council, the Lord seeks to turn Israel around from its wayward ways by asking his heavenly court (which Isaiah, being a prophet, is privy to), “Who will go for us?” (v. 8).

If we interpret all this in the way it was originally intended and do not simply dismiss it as anthropomorphic because our theology does not allow for it, a picture begins to emerge in which the Lord shares power and decisions both with his council and with human beings. This conception is as pervasive in the Bible as it is absent in the Western Christian philosophical tradition, which in part accounts for the fact that the academic problem of evil is intractable for us but nonexistent in Scripture.

The army of the Lord. Closely related to the conception of the gods as Yahweh’s council is the frequent Old Testament portrayal of these gods as Yahweh’s warriors. As Elijah’s servant was allowed to see, the Lord possesses a vast army of mighty angelic warriors who fight on his behalf (2 Kings 2:11). These warriors surround Elijah and his servant, as they protectively surround all who fear the Lord (Ps 34:7). The vastness of this army is beyond imagination. “With mighty chariotry, twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands,” the psalmist writes (68:17).64 Daniel prophetically sees “the Ancient of Days” going into battle with “a thousand thousands” attending him and “ten thousand times ten thousand” standing before him (Dan 7:10).

It is these “heavenly beings” (Ps 29:1) or “mighty ones” (103:20) to whom Joel refers when he prays, “Bring down your warriors, O LORD” (Joel 3:11), and Deborah when she proclaims, “The stars fought from heaven, from their courses they fought against Sisera” (Judg 5:20). According to some scholars, these same warriors, again depicted as the “starry host,” are called into military file “one by one” in Isaiah 40:26 (cf. Is 45:12).65 This spiritual army is also referred to in an otherwise cryptic piece of military instruction the Lord gives to David as he is about to attack the Philistines:

The battle between the Israelites and the Philistines was more than a physical battle. “Marching in the tops of the balsam trees” was “an army of God” (1 Chron 12:22), his legions of “mighty ones,” fighting on David’s behalf. The passage also suggests that evil spiritual warriors were fighting on the side of the Philistines. As Wink notes, “What occurs on earth has its corollary in the heavens.”66 The earthly battle, involving God’s people against a people who were opposing God’s will, corresponds to a heavenly, and perhaps far more important, battle being carried out by God’s army, a view also suggested by Judges 5:20 and 2 Kings 3:26-27.

Just as biblical authors could see Israel’s battles, or their own personal battles, as partaking in God’s battle against cosmic forces of chaos (e.g., Rahab), so too they could envisage their earthly battles as participating in God’s battle against evil armies. Indeed, these two conceptions are based on the same conviction.

As we shall see more fully in the next chapter, this conception of the Lord and his army engaging in battles that parallel on a spiritual level the battles of the righteous on earth became more developed and explicit in later Jewish thought. And in this developed form it exercised a significant influence on the New Testament authors, though in distinctly modified form. This motif is clearly seen, for example, in the Qumran War Scroll (1 QM), which describes a final battle in which God’s angels and human servants (“sons of light”) will wage war against Belial, his evil angels and human forces of wickedness (“sons of darkness”). One illustrative passage reads as follows:

Like 2 Samuel 5:24 (in a less developed form), this passage clearly assumes that physical and spiritual realities interpenetrate. It assumes that battles on earth can reflect battles in the heavenlies, and that armies align themselves with one side or the other in these earthly/cosmic battles. Passages such as these assume that humans are part of a much more vast, invisible, cosmic society, and that this society, on both a spiritual and a physical plane, is in a state of war.

A note on Israel’s “Holy War” tradition. It is, I maintain, in the light of this intimate connection between the spiritual and physical planes of warfare that the Old Testament’s “holy war” tradition must be understood.68 That is, Yahweh’s various commands that the Israelites go to war against other nations must be understood against the backdrop of Yahweh’s own cosmic warfare. What is at stake in such wars is not simply earthly territories or the dominion of earthly governments: from the perspective of the Old Testament, what is at stake is the kingly rule of the one true God. The struggle of nations to dominate, or at least to resist, Israel is also, and even more fundamentally, a struggle of other gods, with whom these nations are in league, to resist Yahweh.

Nowhere is this inextricable connection between earthly and spiritual battles more evident in the Old Testament than in the paradigmatic military deliverance of Israel by the power of God—the exodus. Here, in describing the purpose of the plagues, Yahweh proclaims, “On all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD” (Ex 12:12, cf. 2 Sam 7:23). And so each of the ten plagues affects some aspect of the Egyptians’ false religious system.

For this reason, when the Israelites break covenant with Yahweh and align themselves with other gods, Yahweh goes to battle against them! There are apparently no boundaries of immunity: wherever and whenever a people turn from the Creator God to serve other gods, they and their gods become inextricably linked together as Yahweh enacts judgment against this type of concrete actualization of earthly/cosmic rebellion and chaos.69

This close connection between cosmic and earthly battles is also exhibited in the way the Israelites were to engage in holy war. As M. C. Lind has carefully argued, the earliest discernible Israelite war tradition emphasized the notion that Yahweh’s people “were not called to do battle in the usual sense of the word, but to respond to and trust in Yahweh as their sole warrior against the military might of Egypt.” In the celebration hymn of the exodus deliverance—the Son of the Sea (Ex 15)—victory is accomplished “not through human fighting, but through a nature miracle of Yahweh.”70 This vision serves as a unifying undercurrent for Israel’s theology of warfare. As a nation, they are constantly reminded, through events such as the exodus, the Jericho conquest (Josh 6), the timing of Gideon’s troops (Judg 7), David’s match with Goliath (1 Sam 17) and his eventual sin of counting Israel’s troops (2 Sam 24), that Yahweh alone—not their own military might—is the source of their deliverance and protection. In the end, their earthly battles were not really theirs at all: the battle, rather, belonged to the Lord.71

The gods of the nations. One aspect of the Old Testament’s teaching on Yahweh’s council that was to have a profound impact on subsequent Jewish and Christian thinking was the teaching that the Lord assigns a god to each nation upon the face of the earth. The principal text for this teaching is Deuteronomy 32:7-9, which in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament relied on by the New Testament and early church authors) reads:

As D. S. Russell argues, the point of the passage seems to be that the “nations of the earth are given over into the control of angelic powers,” though Yahweh keeps Israel as his own “portion.”73 The members of his heavenly council rule other nations, but it is ultimately Yahweh who rules the whole earth through them.74 Indeed, the passage teaches explicitly that it was with this delegated authority in view that the nations were divided (perhaps recalling Gen 11:7-8: “Let us go down. . . . So the LORD scattered them”).75

This understanding of the gods of other nations probably lies behind the Old Testament prohibition against the Israelites following other gods, “gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them” (Deut 29:26; cf. 6:13-17; 32:17). These gods were never intended to become objects of worship, and when they become such objects (perhaps through their own fallen initiative; see below), they are no longer regarded as legitimate “sons of God” but as “demons” (Deut 32:17; cf. Ps 106:37; also 95:5 LXX).76 Their role was to oversee the welfare of the nation assigned to them, not to become surrogate objects of devotion for the Lord himself. When they fail in this duty, they become evil and are judged.

In this light also we are to understand Psalm 82. Here the Lord passes judgment “in the divine council . . . in the midst of the gods” by saying to these gods:

We see here, as Russell notes, that “the Lord judges the members of his heavenly court and causes them to fall for their sin.”77 As Wink notes, “Those gods who obeyed their Sovereign’s will were members in good standing (Ps 103:21; 148:1-6). Those gods who failed to do justice among their people were judged and sentenced to die like mortals.”78 The gods here are clearly no mere puppets who are simply extensions of Yahweh himself. They apparently have a mind and will of their own (Gen 6:2-3 also implies this). Although they can never threaten Yahweh’s supremacy, they can fail to carry out his will to administer justice in their assigned land.

Rebellion Among the Gods

The understanding that Yahweh rules through the administration of lesser gods, and that these gods are capable of rebelling against Yahweh’s order, sheds light on another fascinating passage of Scripture. In Daniel 10 Daniel prays, fasts and mourns for three weeks on behalf of Israel’s state of captivity (v. 2). Finally, through a vision, he is visited by an angel who tells him:

Later he concludes:

The scholarly consensus is that the “prince of Persia” is a divine figure who in this instance is opposing God’s plan to work with Daniel.79 As with the Moabite god Chemosh (1 Kings 11:35; 2 Kings 23:13; cf. 2 Kings 3:26-27) this “prince” is probably to be understood as being the “god” assigned to this nation (if not, where was its guardian “god”?). But in the light of Psalm 82, this national prince seems to have grossly failed in his duties. He is, as Wink notes, still contending for the best interests of the Persian Empire, narrowly defined. For this reason he has a stake in censoring a message that foretells the destruction of the Persian Empire.80

But his national guardianship is now at odds with the One who ultimately “rules over the nations” (Ps 22:28; 47:8; Jer 10:7; cf. Ps 113:4). It has, in fact, become demonic. Hence Michael, who has been assigned special care over Israel (see Dan 10:21; 12:1), is dispatched by the Lord to assist this angel in fighting this “prince,” and all indications from the text are that the battle will continue and will now include the “prince of Greece” as well.81

It is clear that “the angels of the nations have a will of their own, and are capable of resisting the will of God.”82 In this regard they are similar to humans. They have a delegated moral and spiritual authority that is a gift from God. But, if they choose, this delegated authority can become demonic authority. When it becomes demonic, the passage shows, God must contend with it. The possibility of warfare seems to be a necessary concomitant to Yahweh’s plan to rule the cosmos through intermediary beings, human and divine, who are free to some extent.

Another important passage that has traditionally been taken to refer to the ungodly behavior of certain “gods” is Genesis 6. Here, as a prelude to the flood narrative, the author states that “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose” (v. 2 NIV), a situation that grieved the Lord greatly (v. 3). The progeny of such marriages were Nephilim (giants), who, the author notes, “were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown” (v. 4)—a likely reference to some of the widespread tales of giant beings who were great warriors in the past.83 The point of the passage is clearly to depict just how bad things had gotten on the earth so as to explain the Lord’s regret over ever having made humans (v. 6) and then his radical decision to destroy the world by a flood (vv. 11-13).

Later Jewish thought understood these “sons of God” to be divine beings. Indeed, during the intertestamental period, as we shall later see, this interbreeding of divine beings with human women was often identified as the first fall of the angels. According to this tradition, these “sons of God” were angels who were charged with caring for humans (they were sometimes called “the Watchers”). But, like the god of Persia in Daniel 10, they forsook their duties and abused their divine authority.84 Their progeny were thus giant, hybrid, evil beings who furthered the corruption of the earth.

In some traditions, demons in the world were not identified as fallen angels but as spiritually mutated beings that resulted from the interbreeding of these Nephilim.85 This identification of the “sons of God” with divine beings (without its attendant explanation of demons) is perhaps present in the New Testament and is certainly the dominant view of the early church.86

Other interpretations of this passage, however, have been offered both in ancient and in modern times. One alternative interpretation is to identify the “sons of God” with the righteous lineage of Seth who married sinful women who descended from Cain.87 Another possibility is to identify the “sons of God” with mighty rulers who married commoners and perhaps acquired large harems of women as a sign of their power.88

Both of these interpretations have the advantage of not requiring us to accept the rather difficult idea that divine beings copulated with human beings. This “advantage,” however, renders them suspect. And both interpretations are beset with other significant difficulties. Perhaps most significant, neither interpretation explains the Nephilim. The passage assumes that these giants were unnatural, and it explains this by referring to the unnatural union that brought them about—the union of the “sons of God” with the “daughters of men.” Interpreting the “sons of God” as either righteous men or mighty rulers does not explain why their offspring were unnaturally huge and identified with the giants of various mythological traditions.89

Further, while there is clear evidence that gods or angels were called “sons of God” (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Ps 82:6), there is no clear precedent for calling a lineage of male descendants, or a class of mighty rulers, “sons of God.” In a few instances rulers are called “gods” (Ex 21:6; 22:8; 1 Sam 2:25), and David, as an anointed king, was referred to as “God’s son” (Ps 2:7), but these are not solid precedents for understanding this passage. Nor do we have any biblical or extrabiblical precedent for speculating that certain mighty rulers were acquiring large harems for themselves, and that this is what lies behind this passage. Hence all presuppositions about what angels can and cannot do aside, the most probable interpretation of “sons of God” is in reference to divine beings.

What strengthens this interpretation even more is that the “sons of God” are explicitly contrasted with the “daughters of men.” It is precisely this contrast that expresses the unnaturalness of their union, and hence the unnaturalness of their progeny. This contrast is not between the righteous and unrighteous, or between the mighty and the lowly. Rather, it is explicitly a contrast between sons associated with God and the females born from humans. The starkness of this contrast explains why their unnatural union produces mutant progeny.

While conceding that this is the most natural interpretation of this passage, some Christian exegetes nevertheless reject it on the basis of Jesus’ teaching that in the resurrection there will be no marriage, for we will be “like angels in heaven” (Mt 22:30). The implication, it is argued, is that angels are sexless and thus could not copulate with human women as the divine beings interpretation of Genesis 6 requires.90

Two considerations quickly dismiss this objection, however. First, Jesus is clearly speaking about unfallen angels in their natural state (“heaven”), whereas Genesis 6 (if this interpretation is correct) is speaking about angels “who did not keep their positions” (Jude 6). The point of Genesis 6 seems to be that what the “sons of God” did was rebellious and unnatural for them, so it can hardly be argued that these “sons of God” could not be angels because sexual activity is unnatural for them.

Second, the point of Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 22 is not about the sexuality or asexuality of people or angels in heaven at all; it is about the social institution of marriage (see vv. 23-32). Jesus’ point in this passage is to say that marriage covenants do not carry over into the next life. It may be that angels in their natural state of heaven (and people in heaven?) are asexual, but we cannot arrive at this conclusion from this passage.

It seems that the traditional Jewish and Christian understanding of Genesis 6 is best, however difficult it is for modern Western people to accept.91 This being the case, this passage can justifiably be seen as yet another Old Testament example of gods who did not carry out their God-given duties within the council of heaven (Ps 82:2-4). Rather, they rebelled and thereby contributed to the moral decay of the antediluvian human society.

Modern Westerners and the free beings of the “society in between.” This notion that there exists a council, or a society, of divine beings between humans and God who, like us, have free wills and can therefore influence the flow of history for better or for worse is obviously jarring to a number of Western worldview assumptions. Indeed, for many believers it is foreign to their Western Christian assumptions as well. For a variety of reasons, Westerners have trouble taking seriously the “world in between” us and God, what one missiologist appropriately called “the flaw of the excluded middle.”92 Even when Westerners do theoretically acknowledge the existence of “angels,” we tend to view them as mindless, volitionless, wholly innocuous winged marionettes completely controlled by the will of their Creator.

If we take the Old Testament teaching on the gods seriously, however, we must confess that our Western assumptions about “the world in between” are erroneous. For these writers—and it shall prove even more obvious and pervasive for New Testament authors—the “heavenly” world was not much different or distant from our “earthly” world. Indeed, the two worlds largely overlap and can hardly be said to form two worlds at all. The “world in between” is, from a scriptural perspective, simply part of the cosmos.

We are light-years removed from the Greek metaphysical assumption that the “heavenly” is composed of timeless “forms” that lack all contingency, a notion that would exercise a profound influence on later Christian theology and contribute to the church’s eventual abandonment of the warfare worldview.93 For the biblical authors, the freedom and moral authority of created divine beings were just as commonsensible as the freedom and moral authority of created nondivine (viz., human) beings were. The cosmos was constituted by a vast society of free, intelligent, morally responsible agents governed by (but not dictated by) God at the top, with humans at the bottom. In this view, contingency characterized the whole domain.

In Scripture, therefore, as opposed to the dominant Hellenistic philosophical tradition that so influenced the apologists and especially Augustine, there was nothing “heavenly” about being timeless, immutable, purely actual and devoid of contingency. There was nothing “perfect” about being an “Unmoved Mover” (Aristotle), and no sense could be made of saying that “time is the moving image of eternity” (Plato).94 Though it forms the cornerstone of the classical-philosophical tradition of the Western church, no biblical author ever dreamed of such a notion. The “heavenly” world paralleled the earthly world, but for this reason it was not conceptualized as a radically otherworldly blueprint of this world. Rather, for biblical authors, the reality of human freedom and contingency in this world had its counterparts in the reality of divine freedom and contingency in the council of heaven. These “two” worlds overlapped and therefore influenced one another.

Because of our indebtedness to Greek thought through the classical-philosophical theistic tradition as well as our indebtedness to Enlightenment naturalism, modern Westerners have difficulty affirming the existence of—let alone the significant freedom and power of—this “world in between.” For these reasons many conservative theologians have difficulty positing genuine contingency in God himself. But it is precisely this unbiblical philosophical tradition more than anything else that creates the intractable intellectual problem of evil.

In biblical terms, then, the cause of Zosia’s torment might be the result of evil human intentions. Or it might be due to a malicious “prince” of Germany, or even a cosmic Leviathan. But on biblical terms it could not be an ordained feature of a secret blueprint Yahweh has for the whole of world history, and for Zosia and her mother in particular.

In the end, the character of God can remain untarnished in the face of the terrifying dimensions of our experience only to the degree that our view of the free, contingent world in between us and God is robust. Only to the extent that we unambiguously affirm that angels and humans have significant power to thwart God’s will and inflict suffering on others can we unambiguously affirm the goodness of God in the face of Zosia’s torture. The Bible, I maintain, provides just such a conception. The Western philosophical-theological tradition, however, does not. This is why it has an intellectual problem with evil that the Bible does not have, while biblical authors have a revolting activism and power in the face of evil that the church has lacked.