In episode 60, Who Causes Sickness? - Episode 060. I explored the question: "Who/what causes sickness?" One perspective that has been prevalent throughout Christian history is the notion that Satan, as a biblical entity, may be involved in causing s…
The “divine council” refers to the biblical and ancient Near Eastern idea that God presides over a heavenly assembly of spiritual beings. Far from a fringe concept, this imagery appears throughout the Hebrew Bible and Second Templ…
Being in the space I’m in—biblical theology podcasting, moderating the DCW (Divine Council Worldview FB group), and spending time in the strange crossroads of hermeneutics, canon, and spiritual imagination—I see some patterns. One…
Here’s another common question centered on taking the divine council worldview into application for today. These are essential points for us, because I don’t think we should leave biblical context in the realm of intellectual engag…
What do the gods have to do with Social Justice? One of the most discussed—and debated—texts when it comes to the divine council worldview (DCW) is Psalm 82. A recent objection raised a familiar critique: how can the figures…
Michael Heiser’s recovery of the Divine Council Worldview (DCW) has reshaped the way many of us read difficult passages like Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 82, and Daniel 10. His basic claim--that God assigned divine beings to the nations after B…
TL;DR: Did Israel go from polytheism to monotheism? Do the prophets prove that the gods of the nations don’t exist? This post shares some of my reactions to Thomas A. Judge’s scholarly work Other Gods and Idols. The goal is…
You know the old saying: "You can't have your cake and eat it, too." It’s often said when someone wants to hold two mutually exclusive ideas at once. A similar kind of tension shows up in a particular type of critique of the Divine…
This is a topic I have had to think about more often than I'd care to consider. On the surface, it seems silly and ridiculous. But, also, I fully understand that there are reasons that this does come up on a regular basis. So, no, …
Back in my LDS days, there was a lot of talk about being a "child of God." I really thought that that was a biblical idea--that humans were the actual children of God. Of course I knew that traditional/historical Christians do no…
When people learn about the "divine council worldview" (aka "the Deuteronomy 32 worldview"), I see many people wonder: okay, so what about America? Is there a spiritual being that was assigned over this country, and if so...who?? &nbs…
So when someone talks about the satan (literally, in Hebrew, it says, "ha satan," which means "the satan" or "the accuser") in Job and how that is not necessarily Satan himself, I hear this common response: "But in Revelation, we see the dragon w…