Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel and in this episode we are going to be getting into monotheism the definition of the English word "god," the Divine Council, believing loyalty, and the book White Fang.
What does that have to do with the biblical theology, you ask? Well keep listening and you will find out. Now, I have gotten into the Divine Council before in previous episodes, specifically in some of my earlier episodes I mentioned it, and also I get into it in episode number six, where I kind of parallel it with some of the ancient literature that was around at the time of the writing of the Hebrew Bible.
This is a topic that really deserves quite a bit of discussion. I think primarily [00:01:00] because a lot of people believe that this impugnes God's character in some way, they see the existence of the Divine Council as something that impacts God's sovereignty. It is simply of prime importance to me personally, to make sure that this is not what we are doing, that we are not impugning God's character in any way.
That we are not taking away from his sovereignty. But at the same time, I firmly believe that God's truth can stand on its own, that we don't need to protect people from the Bible, and we don't need to protect the Bible from people. I believe God has communicated his truth to us in the words of Scripture, and we can have faith in that because it is God's faithfulness that matters to us humans.
However, it is the case that we tend to have some problems with interpretation. We tend to insert our own ideas into the text rather than let the text speak for itself, rather than getting [00:02:00] into the context and meaning that the original authors, the original human authors had for their readers. There's a couple of fancy words I'm going to use here, and those words are hermeneutics and exegesis.
Hermeneutics is the set of rules that you use to interpret the Bible, so that is our method of interpretation. Exegesis is the type of interpretation we should be doing where we are drawing meaning out of the text rather than inserting meaning into the text, which is called eisegesis. You can think of hermeneutics as being kind of like the science of interpretation. So Hermanutics is the rules and the practices and the methodology that you are using. Now, you may think, I don't need any methods of interpretation. I just read the Bible and know what it means. Well, we use hermeneutics for literally everything we read.
You do not read a [00:03:00] novel the same way that you read a biography, the same way that you read a textbook, the same way that you read a letter.
So every type of literature has a different set of hermeneutics that you're going to apply to that type of literature. So this is going to involve the nature of the literature itself. It's going to involve the source of it. It's going to involve the genre and the meaning and the intent, and how you're parsing that and fitting all of that into the way you're interpreting the text itself.
It's hard when you're dealing with an ancient text from a different culture and they had different mental structures than us and understandings of the world and all these things that become quite difficult for us to grasp. One of these things is our use of the English word "god." And it's interesting because to me, I think we use this word in different contexts, meaning different things, and we're okay with that as long as we keep those contexts separate.
Let me explain that a little bit. [00:04:00] When we pick up our Bibles and we see the word "god," g o d, we're thinking of the God of the universe. We're thinking of the creator. We're thinking of the one who incarnated himself as Jesus Christ. That's the idea of God that we have in our minds when we see the word God in the Bible. If however, we're watching a cartoon or we're reading some Greek mythology and we see the word "god," we don't think that means the same thing.
And we're still kind of okay with using that word there because that's a different context than using it in the Bible. We actually are able to assign a different meaning to that word, assuming it's, it's not connected to the Bible.
And for us Christians, of course, we think, oh, those other gods, they're not real right? They're not really God; people just call them gods. So we kind of mentally make these compartments of when the word "god" is used in the Bible, it means one thing. It means the supreme creator who has [00:05:00] a particular set of attributes that nobody else shares.
When see the word "god" somewhere else, we're okay with assigning a different meaning to that word. But here's the thing, the Bible doesn't have that distinction. It just doesn't. So let's talk about that for a second. In the Hebrew Bible, meaning in the Old Testament, which is using Hebrew, the most common way to refer to God is the word Elohim.
This is the word we see when we open our English Bibles to Genesis one, and we see the word God there. That Hebrew word is Elohim. If you keep reading past Genesis one into Genesis two, you'll suddenly see it referring to God, but not just by the term God, but by the term Lord God.
Now the word Lord there is actually Yahweh. so, there's an ancient idea that the Jews shouldn't say the word Yahweh. Because it was an Unsayable name, they would replace the word Yahweh when they were reading with the word , [00:06:00] which is Lord.
And so when you see in your English Bibles, a lot of times it'll have the word Lord in these little capital letters, L o r d, that's actually the word Yahweh. So Lord God would be Yahweh Elohim in Hebrew. And of course, the question we might ask after that is, what's the difference? Why does it change from Elohim to Yahweh Elohim? I do think there's a reason for it. And I think the reason is that in Genesis one, God is being referred to in, relation to creation as a whole. So it's kind of a general relationship of God and creation itself. In Genesis two, we're getting into Adam and Eve as individual humans. And so God is being referred to using his covenantal name because he is a covenantal God, because he is interacting with Adam and Eve in in a covenantal relationship. So that's what I think the difference is from Genesis one and Genesis two.
So Elohim, that [00:07:00] just means God, right? Not so fast, I'm afraid.
Here's where getting into a word study can help us. But even with that, I'm afraid, I have to warn you. Without the ancient context in our head, we're still going to not quite understand what the term Elohim might mean if we don't have that context in our head. It's still very tempting to structure this word in the way that we want to structure it.
This is a good example of how difficult translation can be. And interpretation is actually a kind of translation. It's a translation of ideas. But anyway, let's just look into Scripture at where we see this word. Obviously, it is used of God and it's used of God very commonly, but jumping to probably one of the, if not the most shocking outliers of the uses of this word to us is that it is used for the spirit of the deceased Samuel in one Kings 28 in the incident with Saul and the witch of [00:08:00] Endor.
Now, because of the use of this word in that incident, there's a lot of question as to, was this really Samuel? How could a human be referred to as Elohim? That's a big question, but the text never indicates that it's not Samuel. There is zero indication anywhere in the text that this is a wicked spirit or that it's God himself posing as Samuel or anything of the sort. It's really presented as if this is truly Samuel. So I think we are reading into the text if we just wanna see it as something other than Samuel, simply because he is referred to as an Elohim. And this seems like a really strange outlier to us, but it's an outlier to us, not to the ancient person if we understood this term as not an ontological term, that means a term that is defining a creature and what it is specifically with attributes and characteristics. If it's not an ontological term, but rather something else, the [00:09:00] difficulties in the text disappear. And we can kind of understand what the use of the term Elohim is when we understand it, as rather a place of residence term. By that I mean that Elohim is anything whose natural place of residence is in the spiritual realm rather than the mortal realm, then that's helpful. There's something also in addition to that, that we need to understand as well.
We need to further understand that there is a legitimate mirroring of heaven and earth that goes on where earthly representatives are supposed to be representing God in his interests here on earth. If we understood both of those things, then we can understand what the text means everywhere it says the word Elohim.
I have seen some pushback on the idea of Elohim being a term suggesting a place of residence because in some places in Scripture, the text looks to us like it's talking about humans, but every time it seems to be talking [00:10:00] about a human, there's actually the sense of that mirroring that's going on where, for instance, the Israelite judges or the Israelite king, they're supposed to be mirroring God's throne or court, and as such, they're a legitimate part of that throne or court.
When people were to approach the Israelite judges, they were in fact, actually approaching God in this act. This is a bit of a detour for my topic, but let's have a look at this here for a second. One of the most common ways to see non deceased humans as Elohim is in the context of the judges in Exodus. Moses was judging all of the people, and he was getting very exhausted by this. So his father-in-law gave him an idea of appointing judges to help him in this job. So I'm going to read a quote from chapter 18 of Exodus starting in verse 19. This is Moses's father-in-law talking. Now, obey my voice. [00:11:00] I will give you advice and God be with you. You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws and make them know the way in which they must walk in what they must do.
Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens. And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter, they shall decide themselves, so it will be easier for you and they will bear the burden with you.
End quote.
So you see here Moses is representing the people before God and bringing their cases to God, and this is what the judges were to do as well. It's not that the judges were literally Elohim.
Similarly, in Exodus 21, there's a situation where a slave chooses to remain with his master rather than being set [00:12:00] free, and the master is supposed to bring the slave before God, before Elohim and performs some sort of ritual to show that the slave belongs to the master.
Some people say, well, that means that he was supposed to bring them before Elohim, the human judges, but it's not that the judges had power themselves. This was literally supposed to be before God, just because it was before the human judges as well doesn't negate the fact that the primary purpose of this was to bring the matter before God.
And that's exactly what the text is saying. That's the meaning of the text. So the word Elohim is appropriate because it is referring to God himself. I feel like that still makes us uncomfortable because the fact that Elohim does refer to other spiritual beings other than God makes us question these more vague uses of the term in the text as well.
It's like, well, why wouldn't God have a unique term that is used for him always? Well, he, he has a lot of unique terms. There's [00:13:00] Yahweh, there's El, and there's all the designations that include the word El, like El Shaddai. So there's a lot of ways that God is referred to. We don't like that he's referred to by a word that is used to refer to so many other beings as well.
But guess what? You know, God doesn't seem threatened by all that. It is in the Scriptures after all, so I guess it's up to us to deal with this fact. So, like it or not, in the Bible, angels and other false gods of the nations are also referred to with the term Elohim. And in most English translations we do see the word God capitalized, g o d, when it's referring to the supreme creator, Yahweh, and we see the term god, lowercase, or usually gods, plural, lowercase, when it's referring to the gods of the nations. The capitalization and the lowercase are supposed to help us distinguish these as being legitimately different, even if the same word is being used.
What we need to realize is that this term is not [00:14:00] conflating the gods of the nations with God as if they are the same ontology. No one is saying that the gods of the nations are uncreated, that they're the ultimate creator, that they are supreme, that they are sovereign, that they are a legitimate threat to God even, and his sovereignty and his authority and power.
However, they do rebel against God, just like we rebel against God. But my point is we don't need to attribute the set of attributes to the term Elohim that we have for God beyond saying that an Elohim is a being who is supposed to be living in the spiritual realm and will be suited for that. I suppose that has to imply some sort of ontology, but it's not a specific set of attributes and characteristics other than the fact that they don't have a physical body which will die from corruption and all of that kind of thing. This word just does not have the attributes that Yahweh God has.
I know that a lot of people would like to see this word translated with something other than the [00:15:00] word "gods" when it's referring to the gods of the nations. However, I think that our English word "god" is still very suitable for this application because words have meaning and they have specific meaning in language.
I think that the word gods as used in English is actually a very suitable term, and I'm going to give you an example as to why I think this in particular, and I'm going to use the book White Fang. For those of you who are not familiar with this book, warning, there are going to be spoilers. I'm going to share the story of White Fang with you, and I'm going to give you some details. So if you've not read the book or if it's been a while or if you wanna go see the movie or whatever, there's a couple movies, I guess. Here's your alert for spoilers.
So the book White Fang, it is written by Jack London. It is set in the Yukon territory of the Klondike Gold Rush days. Don't get it confused with the book, the Call of the Wild, which is about a domestic [00:16:00] dog that was kidnapped. White Fang, on the other hand, is not domestic. He is a wild born part dog, part wolf, kind of like Gilgamesh or the Apkallu from , Mesopotamia, who were both supposed to be part human and part divine. But anyway, his mother was half dog and half wolf. I believe she had run away from her native tribe during a famine, and they weren't feeding the dogs. So the dogs left the tribe to fend for themselves in the wild.
While in the wild, she mated it with a wolf and had a litter of puppies. White Fang was the only one of her puppies that survived the next famine. So he was a, a wild wolf dog, but he looked like a wolf. He had gotten most of his father's characteristics. So personality-wise, he, he had got a lot from his mom, but he had also got a lot from his dad.
So he was very tough, very wild, very violent. So there they are in the wild, he and his mom, surviving as wolves do when they come across some of the native people from the tribe, [00:17:00] and one of them, Gray Beaver recognizes his mom. Her name is Kiche. So Gray Beaver calls her, and this triggers her loyalty response and she returns to the humans. Because Kiche, his mom, returns to the humans, so does White Fang because he's still a puppy dependent upon his mother. So the native tribe, they're fairly utilitarian, right? They don't treat their dogs as if they're pets. They're not particularly kind to them. They feed them. They meet their needs as much as they need to in order to get the use of the dogs out of them for protection or for hunting or for sledding. But they're not kind to the dogs and they kind of let them fend for themselves for the most part.
And White Fang in particular, is not accepted in the group of puppies that is in the tribe. He is particularly persecuted by the leader of the puppy pack, who is named Lip Lip. Because neither the humans nor the other dogs are kind to White Fang, he becomes even [00:18:00] more aggressive and he has to learn how to fend for himself even more. And besides all of that, before he was properly weaned, his mother was sold off to somebody else because Gray Beaver owed a debt. . And as such, this also factored into White Fang's personality. And of course, because the dogs were used and not loved, They were beaten in order to learn their place in the tribe. And White Fang in particular got several very cruel beatings from his master.
For instance, when his mother was sold off, he didn't understand what was going on. And of course, White Fang was prone to go with his mom, so he tried to follow her, but he was brought back by Gray Beaver and beaten so cruelly. This really instigated a lot of hate in White Fang, of course, and he became cruel in response. All these experiences were molding him into a particular kind of dog. Of course, not understanding greater morality, White Fang took this in stride, and he got a lot from the humans, and so he followed the humans.
[00:19:00] Sometime after his mother was taken away, there was another famine and the humans weren't able to feed the dogs once again. And because of this, White Fang was ignored enough to leave the camp to be able to fend for himself, and he actually did quite well considering the circumstances. At this point, he might have just returned to the wild and become, in essence, full wolf. . However, once again, he came across the humans that he knew, and once again, just like Kiche, his loyalty instinct was triggered. They had fish. They had food. They would provide for him, and he would no longer have to hunt for himself, so he returned to the humans.
Now, here's an interesting thing in the story. We're all familiar with the fact that dogs have packs, and packs have a leader. Well, sled dogs also have to have a pack of sorts, and they have to have a leader. The leader is the dog who is running at the front of the pack. The problem with sled dogs in the situation is that it's an artificial pack. The human [00:20:00] artificially determines the leader. There's no self selection of this and the way a leader is in the sled traces, well, that's not how a pack leader is supposed to act.
Rather than being a true leader, the lead dog is always being chased by the others, which is in fact a situation of submission to them. The other dogs are frustrated because they can't catch up, and they're continually seeing the lead dog running away from them as if he's scared. That's an unnatural situation for dogs, and this creates a very psychologically messed up situation for the lead dog.
So being the lead dog in the sled traces is actually not an envied position. And when White Fang was given this position, this actually caused an even worse situation for him in the pack. There was no way he was ever going to get any kind of solidarity with the other dogs when he was always the leader.
This was however, already the direction of White Fang's history and White Fang's personality. So he kind of just took it in stride again and allowed [00:21:00] it to strengthen him rather than to be any kind of a problem or hindrance for him. He just embraced his role as the enemy of the other dogs. Okay, cool. But why am I even talking about White Fang? What does this have to do with biblical theology?
Well, the humans in the book are described as gods. They are White Fang's gods.
They weren't his gods because they created him. They weren't his gods because they were kind to him, particularly. They were his gods because they had power that they could bestow over him.
But it wasn't just the fact that they had greater power than him. That is one thing that people might use to define the word "god," a being that has greater power that seems God-like. But that's not what all is going on here. And because White Fang was submissive to his gods, because he offered them his loyalty, that is what truly made them his gods.
Now I'm going to read a quote [00:22:00] from the book. This is after his mom left, and I'm not going to read anything from his beating from when his mom left, because that's pretty hard to hear about, but I'll read about the aftermath of that. This is in chapter two of part three, which is called the Gods of the Wild.
Quote. It was during this period that he might have harkened to the memories of the lair and the stream and run back into the wild, but the memory of his mother held him. As the hunting man animals went out and came back, so she would come back to the village sometime. So he remained in his bondage waiting for her, but it was not altogether an unhappy bondage.
There was much to interest him. Something was always happening. There was no end to the strange things these gods did. And he was always curious to see. Besides he was learning how to get along with Gray Beaver. Obedience. Rigid and deviating obedience was what was expected of [00:23:00] him. And in return, he escaped beatings and his existence was tolerated.
Nay Gray Beaver himself sometimes tossed him a piece of meat and defended him against the other dogs in the eating of it. And such a piece of meat was a value. It was worth more in some strange way than a dozen pieces of meat from the hand of a squaw. Gray Beaver never petted nor caressed. Perhaps it was the weight of his hand, perhaps his justice. Perhaps the sheer power of him, and perhaps it was all these things that influenced White Fang for a certain tie of attachment was forming between him and his surly Lord insidiously and by remote ways, as well as by the power of stick and stone and clout of hand were the shackles of White Fang's bondage being riveted upon him.
The qualities in his kind that in the beginning made it possible for them to come into the fires of men were qualities capable of development. They were developing in him and the camp life, replete with misery as it was, was [00:24:00] secretly endearing itself to him all the time, but White Fang was unaware of it.
He knew only grief for the loss of Kitche, hope for her return, and a hungry yearning for the free life that had been his
end quote.
In the fall of the year that his mother had been sold, the tribe was moving, and White Fang saw what was happening and he decided to stay behind. So White Fang hid himself in the woods while everyone packed up and left. At first, he thought himself quite clever. However, night came and it was cold, and there was no food, and so he decided to go back and find the camp again.
But of course, when he returned, they were all gone. They had moved on and he did not know where they had gone. I'm going to read another quote from here. It says, quote,
his bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him. His senses, accustomed to the hum and [00:25:00] bustle of the camp, used to the continuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left idle. There was nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear.
They strained to catch some interruption of the silence and immobility of nature. They were appalled by inaction and by the feel of something terrible impending. He gave a great start of fright, a colossal and formless something was rushing across the field of his vision. It was a tree shadow flung by the moon from whose face the clouds had been brushed away.
Reassured he whimpered softly. Then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it might attract the attention of the lurking dangers. A tree contracting in the cool of the night made a loud noise. It was directly above him. He yelped in his fright. A panic seized him, and he ran madly toward the village.
He knew an overpowering desire for the protection and companionship of man. In his nostrils was the smell of the camp smoke. [00:26:00] In his ears, the camp sounds and cries were ringing loud. He passed out of the forest and into the moon lit open where there were no shadows nor darkness, but no village greeted his eyes.
He had forgotten the village had gone away. His wild flight ceased abruptly. There was no place to which to flee. He slunk forelornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish heaps and the discarded rags and tags of the gods. He would've been glad for the rattle of the stones about him flung by an angry squaw, glad for the hand of Gray Beaver descending upon him in wrath. While he would've welcomed with delight Lip Lip, and the whole snarling cowardly pack. He came to where Gray Beaver's tepee had stood. In the center of the space it had occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose at the moon. His throat was afflicted with rigid spasms.
His mouth opened and in a heartbroken cry bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all his past sorrows and miseries, as well as his [00:27:00] apprehension of sufferings and dangers to come. It was the long wolf howl, full throated and mournful, the first howl he had ever uttered. The coming of daylight dispelled his fears, but increased his loneliness.
The naked Earth, which so shortly before had been so populous thrust his loneliness more forcefully upon him. It did not take him long to make up his mind. He plunged into the forest and followed the riverbank down the stream. All day he ran. He did not rest. He seemed made to run on forever. His iron like body ignored fatigue, and even after fatigue came, his heritage of endurance braced him to it, endless endeavor, and enabled him to drive his complaining body onward.
Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the high mountains behind. rivers and streams that entered the main river, he forwarded or swam. Often he took to the rim ice that was beginning to form, and more than once he crashed through and struggled for life on the icy current.
Always he was on the lookout for the [00:28:00] trail of the gods where it might leave the river and proceed inland. White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind, yet his mental vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie. What if the trail of the gods led out on that side?
It never entered his head. Later on when he had traveled more and grown older and wiser and come to know more of trails and rivers, it might be that he could grasp and apprehend such a possibility, but that mental power was yet in the future. Just now, he ran blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone entering into his calculations.
All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and obstacles that delayed but did not daunt. By the middle of the second day, he had been running continuously for 30 hours and the iron of his flesh was giving out. It was the endurance of his mind that kept him going. He had not eaten in 40 hours, and he was weak with hunger.
The repeated drenchings in the icy water [00:29:00] had likewise had their effect on him. His handsome coat was draggled. The broad pads of his feet were bruised and bleeding. He had begun to limp, and this limp increased with the hours. To make it worse, the light of the day was obscured and snow began to fall. A raw, moist, melting, clinging, snow slippery underfoot that hid him from the landscape he traversed, and that covered over the inequalities of the ground, so that the way of his feet was more difficult and painful.
Gray Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the Mackenzie, for it was in that direction that the hunting lay, but on the near bank, shortly before dark, a moose coming down to drink had been aspired by Kloo-kooch, who is Gray Beaver's squaw. Now had not the moose come down to drink, had not Mit-sah, been steering out of the course because of the snow, had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose and had not Gray Beaver killed it with a lucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent things would've happened differently. Gray Beaver would not have camped on the [00:30:00] near side of the Mackenzie and White Fang would've passed by and gone on either to die or find his way to his wild brothers and become one of them, a wolf to the end of his days.
Night had fallen, the snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang, whimpering softly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon a fresh trail in the snow. So fresh was it that he knew it immediately for what it was. Whining with eagerness, he followed back from the riverbank and in among the trees.
The camp sounds came to his ears. He saw the blaze of the fire, Kloo-kooch cooking, and Gray Beaver squatting on his hams and mumbling a chunk of raw tallow. There was fresh meat in camp. White Fang expected a beating. He crouched and bristled a little at the thought of it. Then he went forward again. He feared and disliked the beating he knew to be waiting for him, but he knew further that the comfort of the fire would be his, the protection of the gods, the companionship of the dogs. The last, a companionship of [00:31:00] enmity, but nonetheless a companionship and satisfying to his gregarious needs. He came cringing and crawling into the firelight. Gray Beaver saw him and stopped munching his tallow. White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and groveling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission. He crawled straight toward Gray Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower and more painful. At last, he lay at his master's feet into whose possession he now surrendered himself voluntarily, body and soul. Of his own choice he came in to sit by man's fire and to be ruled by him.
White Fang trembled, waiting for the punishment to fall upon him. There was a movement of the hand above him. He cringed involuntarily under the expected blow.
It did not fall. He stole a glance upward. Gray Beaver was breaking the lump of tallow in half. Gray Beaver was offering him one piece of the tallow. Very gently and somewhat suspiciously, he first smelled the tallow and then proceeded to eat it. [00:32:00] Gray Beaver ordered meat to be brought to him and guarded him from the other dogs while he ate.
After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Gray Beaver's feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing, secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him not wandering forlorn through the bleak forest stretches, but in the camp of the man animals, with the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.
End quote.
As I said, I think that a lot of people would read this and think that the humans are only being referred to as gods because they are of a higher level than White Fang and the other dogs. The gods have guns and they have the ability to hunt and fish in ways that White Fang and the other dogs do not have.
So therefore, they're just powerful. They're powerful beings. Therefore, they're gods. I think we're missing the point here if we don't realize that they're called gods because White Fang is offering up his loyalty to them. [00:33:00] He is submitting to them in a way that we submit ourselves to gods or, hopefully, to the Most High God.
You see, this is fundamentally what makes a god a god. Of course, the Most High God, Yahweh God, has a particular set of attributes that no one else has, and he's the only one worthy of worship. But he's certainly not the only being that we give our loyalty to.
There are different ways that we see the idea of faith. Many people, of course, look at faith and they say It's a mental agreement that you have, that God exists, possibly that he saved you, and boom, you're done, you have faith. We have faith because we say those words or we prayed prayer or whatever it is, but there's a better way to look at the term. There's a better way of looking at faith, and this is actually the way the word faith is used in the New Testament. It might be better to think of faith [00:34:00] as faithfulness. That's one way of thinking about it. Dr. Heiser's way of expressing this was to call it believing loyalty. There's two parts to that. The believing part is kind of that mental idea you have. The loyalty part, however, is how you are living out your faith in an embodied way, and you can't really separate those two from the entire concept as a whole. I believe this is extremely similar to the concept of allegiance that Matthew Bates brings up in his work about the gospel. I'm going to put a plug in for his new book called Why the Gospel, Living the Good News of King Jesus With Purpose.
If you want to understand the idea of faith as allegiance or believing loyalty, Bates has a really good way of presenting all of that in a very clear and meaningful way.
The idea of our posture towards God, or whatever god we're believing in, as being an aspect of how we live out our lives, this is a crucial [00:35:00] distinction.
So how we see White Fang interacting with his gods is, he submits himself to their will. He obeys them. He has loyalty to them. This is fundamentally what we're talking about when we're talking about faith and when we're talking about faith and the gods. What we see with White Fang is that he is submitting himself to his authorities, even though they're not treating him well. There's no expectation of kindness, of love behind the action. It's just this exchange. The human gods need something from the dogs, and the dogs need something from the humans. And so there's this symbiotic relationship.
The idea of symbiosis is what we commonly see in many religions that are not Christianity, right? There's an exchange. The gods need something. We need something. Let's make a deal. Of course our relationship with the Most High God is not like that. It's not that we are filling a need that God has within himself. [00:36:00] This is part of why the idea of grace is so necessary to Christianity because even though we are responding to God after we are given grace, so it is a two-way street because of that, it's not a two-way street because of a lack within God in himself. It's a two-way street because our interaction with God is relational.
There are other categories of things that we can bring out when we're looking at this story of White Fang, as well. One thing that really strikes me is that White Fang gains a certain personality type because of his interaction with his gods. He's already a very tough little cookie when he's a puppy, even before he meets his gods. However, when he does meet the gods and he's put in all of these situations that are not designed for his thriving, but rather he's just there out of convenience, he gains aggression.
He gains a level of hatred he would not have had in the wild. For White Fang it becomes a kind of superpower, in fact. [00:37:00] He uses his hatred to become stronger, and we see the negative results of that as he continues to live his life. He gains this really antagonistic outlook towards the world and everyone else in it. He's given his loyalty to his gods, but he's very much doing it because he sees that this is the best thing for him, not because he loves the gods. It's not that he loves the gods. And of course it's really not the best thing for him, but he doesn't know any better and he just takes the cruelty and the hatred and the negativity as part of, well, this is how the world is. This is the way things are. That's all there is to it.
And I mean, don't we live our lives a lot of times like that? We're not living our lives as if we have a God who is interested in our thriving. And by thriving, I don't mean prosperity gospel. I don't mean that God is going to bless us with all the blessings that we feel like we want and need.
I'm talking about legitimate thriving, becoming the people that God wants us to [00:38:00] be, doing the things that God wants us to be doing, and all that time, having our best interests in mind and creation's best interest in mind as well. That's the kind of thriving I'm talking about. That doesn't mean an easy life. That doesn't mean things are going to always go well. Sometimes thriving means difficulty and struggle and conflict that we can overcome and in order to become our best selves. That's what I'm talking about. We are the pinnacle of God's good creation. White Fang was only in the tribe because he had a use to them. That's the only reason the gods cared about him. Likewise, that's how the ancient Near East saw the spiritual realm and saw their gods. There was a symbiotic relationship of god and man. And hopefully you got some good out of it. But the gods were not there to promote human flourishing.
Now, are the gods of the nations worthy of worship? Of course they're not. They're not worthy of worship at all. [00:39:00] And that's the point. That's the point of studying the Divine Council worldview and understanding that there's a reality behind the gods of the nations. Because understanding that can help us to look at our world not in the sense of we need to figure out what this god is doing over there and who is Allah and what about these gods over here that are not spoken about in the Bible? How do we fit all of this together? It's not some puzzle we need to figure out. it's not that we need to know who Allah is and is there a spiritual reality behind him and where is he on this hierarchy? Like that's not the point. The point is in studying this not to get sucked into those kinds of details. In fact, that's the opposite direction we should be going.
It's not that we should be studying the gods of the nations and learning their names and figuring out their dominions and trying to track all of this through history. That's not the point. The point is these are all lower beings who are rebellious against God, who are drawing people away from him rather than to him, like they are meant to do originally.[00:40:00]
And taking that seriously means that we understand just what a big deal it is that we should be worshiping the true God rather than anything else. Full stop. It is our believing loyalty that should be directed to the Most High and no one and nothing else. That's the point of understanding the Divine Council worldview.
Now you might say, can't you understand that otherwise? Yes, sure you can. Obviously many people have and do and will. I'm not saying that this is a point of salvation here by any means, but what I'm saying is that this can help us understand our position, understand how we might be in bondage in some ways, and how people in the world can be in bondage and deceived. And the point of the great commission of going everywhere and retaking the territory away from the gods, that's the concept of cosmic geography. This is part of going into the nations and reclaiming them. It's part of the core of being a follower of God in these days where there is disputed territory. [00:41:00]
So then you see the fact that White Fang is being conformed to the image of his gods. We start to understand just how insidiously dangerous it is to follow a false god who is only there for transactional purposes, who is only using humanity for something that is not good. What the Divine Council worldview does for us in understanding this properly in a biblical context, is that we see there are reasons for the fact that humanity can follow someone other than the Most High God. And also it's important to see that God is not, in fact, threatened by these other gods, but humanity is threatened by them because humanity has a choice. We can be followers of the Most High, or we can follow the lower created beings who are themselves in rebellion to the Most High. It is ultimately our choice. It is our choice where we place our believing loyalty and where we place our believing loyalty is going to affect our character, just like it did with White [00:42:00] Fang.
Now, I don't want to leave you hanging because up till this point in the book, it's kind of a sad story. It's very tragic. But the story doesn't continue like that. Eventually Gray Beaver takes White Fang to a White man's settlement to do some trading. And White Fang mops the floor with the other dogs, basically. And Gray Beaver doesn't care that he's fighting the other dogs. When White men come off the steamer ships who are brand new to the area and they have their domestic dogs, White Fang will just thrash those dogs.
The next sad part of White Fang's life happens when a White man named Beauty Smith, who's ironically named because he is a very cruel and wicked human being, he tricks Gray Beaver into selling him White Fang and White Fang officially enters the dog fighting world. Because of his character and his nature and how he has been developed by his gods, White Fang is an insanely good fighter and he wins all of his matches to the point that they have to bring in multiple dogs to fight White Fang.
Of course his new god, who is known in [00:43:00] the book as the Mad God, Beauty Smith is greedy and he just keeps the dogfights going and going to the point where White Fang is almost killed. However, what happens then is that a White man named Weedon Scott steps in and rescues White Fang. White Fang doesn't know what to do about this new situation because he doesn't understand what to do with kindness.
And of course it takes quite a while for Weedon Scott to get through to White Fang so that he can even understand what love and kindness is. But eventually, Scott is able to bring White Fang not only from the situation of chaos and death and hunger and evil, and harm and hate into a situation with true love, true companionship, true kindness.
We certainly can't take Weedon Scott to be the same as the Most High God, because Scott is still a creature and did not have anything to do with creation, all of that. But we can still take the analogy of the story to see the difference in White Fang from when he has given his loyalty [00:44:00] to false gods, evil gods versus giving his loyalty to a god who deserves the loyalty from White Fang.
Well, White Fang was a perfectly good dog to his old master, Gray Beaver, to the point that he would even protect his possessions. But the situation that White Fang was in under Weedon Scott was drastically different, and you can tell that in the character of the dog.
All right, I'm not gonna tell you the exact ending of the book because you really ought to read it if you're interested in, in all of this. It's a great book. My kids have enjoyed it, although don't read it to your kids if they're sensitive because there is a lot of cruelty in it. But we can really see what character building does when you're in the right situation and when you have the right focus for your loyalty.
Now, I'm going to take the opportunity now to touch on an important aspect of how we view God and creation.
We tend to, as Christians, affirm the doctrine of monotheism, which means that only one God exists, right? We're pretty familiar with that [00:45:00] idea. We contrast that with polytheism, which we see as the religion of pagans, basically, particularly pagans of the ancient Near East. However, monotheism and polytheism, those are fairly new terms, in fact. The biblical authors wouldn't have called themselves these things.
Polytheism is of course the idea that there are multiple gods, but often when we talk about polytheism, we're talking about the type of gods who have a pantheon. But there's two other terms that we are less familiar with because they're a little more academic, and these terms are henotheism and monolatry.
Both Henotheism and monolatry acknowledge the existence of other gods, but in henotheism, you're allowed to worship other deities. The gods aren't really jealous of your worship. This is a more specific term than polytheism.
So henotheism, you're allowed to worship other deities. Monolatry also acknowledges [00:46:00] the existence of other gods, but you're not allowed to worship other gods in this framework. You're supposed to have the consistent worship of one. Julius Wellhausen of the documentary Hypothesis or J E D P is credited to have made up the term m onolatry. I don't know if he really did, but he's credited for coining the term. So a lot of scholars think that the ancient near East practiced henotheism, but the nation of Israel was specifically to practice monolatry because they weren't allowed to worship the other gods, whereas the other nations were.
Now these terms tend to go in line with the thinking that there was an evolution of religion , from polytheism to monotheism, and Henotheism and monolatry play their parts in this evolution of ideas. The problem with all of these terms, all of them, is that they don't really acknowledge the precise situation that the Bible is presenting to us.
We like the term monotheism because we do [00:47:00] acknowledge that there is one true God. There is one God who created everything, but the term monotheism doesn't give credence to the fact that other gods can also hold power. Monotheism doesn't tell us about other, created spiritual beings and doesn't acknowledge that those beings can have power.
Of course, we don't wanna call ourselves polytheists, even though we can rightly acknowledge that God does have a heavenly council, and so he has some sort of a pantheon, but it's not a pantheon that threatens him or that is like the other pantheons of the gods of the nations. It's more like a council, which is why we call it the Divine Council worldview.
Now, henotheism doesn't really work because of course the Bible doesn't say that people are allowed to worship other deities. Yes, God did assign other spiritual beings to be an authority of over the nations, but the story of the Bible tells us that they were to direct proper worship to God and not take worship to themselves.
[00:48:00] Monolatry likewise doesn't acknowledge the fact that there was a single God who created all the other gods, and that there is only one being who's worthy of worship.
it's really strange to me that there is no single term that really encompasses what the Bible says, but at the same time, it kind of makes sense because scholars tend to do what scholars tend to do, and they're not really structuring their ideas around the Bible as a main source.
It is the case that each of these terms can help us understand the Bible, however. We can compare them with the Bible and see where they fit, where they don't fit, and that's helpful.
I should also mention monarchic Monotheism. Monarchic, that's related to the word monarchy. So monarchic monotheism kind of gets close to what we're talking about in the Bible. The idea is that there is a high God who forces all of the other gods under him. But this idea is born out of a cosmic conflict kind of an idea where one god rises to the top [00:49:00] because of a fight amongst the gods.
That's also not what we see in the Bible. What we actually see is that God created those beings, dispersed them under his authority. They rebelled and, and they're trying to create conflict, and God's like, yeah, no, you guys are not really worth my attention, but I'm defeating you anyway. That's what we see in the Bible.
If we could redefine monarchic monotheism to be a God who does that, then cool. But it already has a context in which it is used, so that makes it not so useful to us.
Of course there's a sense that language can be molded to our needs, right? And so sometimes we want to take a term and redefine it for our purposes. That's great, except that makes it hard for people to understand us because we need to define it every time, it's not just understood to begin with. So that's why we need a new term.
I could kind of propose monarchic monolatry if we could get away from the idea of the cosmic conflict, because God isn't really threatened by [00:50:00] these gods in the heavenly realm. Of course, I also want the indication in the term that the monarch is also the sovereign creator. So maybe sovereign monarchic monolatry.
But you see now we're getting into really complex phrases. It's probably just better to do a Bible study instead of inventing terms. I don't know.
So in the end, I understand why monotheism is the preferred term in general because it is God we are focused on, and the lower deities should not be our focus. It would just be nice to have a term that actually fit everything into it like these other terms are trying to do.
Before we quite wrap up, I want to address an interesting question that Dr. William Lan answered on his website, Reasonable Faith. This question was posed by Dr. S Joshua Swamidass, and it's a really well worded question.
his question says,
Michael S. Heiser recently passed away from pancreatic cancer https://www.youtube.com/live/ZDxU7PV1tKI. He was known for his work explicating a Divine Council in Scripture. He also argued that ancient Isrealites were not precisely monotheists in a modern sense. He writes in "Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism? Toward an Assessment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible,"
"the statements in the canonical text (poetic or other- wise) inform the reader that, for the biblical writer, Yahweh was an elohim, but no other elohim was Yahweh—and never was nor could be. This notion allows for the existence of other elohim and is more precise than the terms “polytheism” and “henotheism.” It is also more accurate than “monotheism,” though it preserves the element of that conception that is most important to traditional Judaism and Christianity: Yahweh’s solitary “otherness” with respect to all that is, in heaven and in earth...Rather than socio-political factors, the canonical writer believed the God of Israel alone was sovereign and deserving of worship because his nature was unique (pre-existence) and his power was unquestionably superior (creator of all that is)."
Here, Heiser is arguing that that Scripture does not teach polytheism or henotheism, but neither was it depicting modern monotheism. What is your take on Heiser's position? And does monotheism (or Christianity) require us to reject the existence of other gods? Or, is it sufficient to declare Yaweh as the only god who is worthy of worship, exists before all things, and created all things?
At question is this: If a Hindu (or a Greek) is to follow Jesus, must they deny the existence of other gods? Is that what monotheism demands? Or is it sufficient to acknowledge the God of the BIble, Yawheh, as the only god who created all things and is the only one worthy of worship? This seems to be a practical question in missions and apologetics.
S. Josh Swamidass
End quote.
Dr. Craig responds saying that this is really a matter of semantics, indicating that the term Elohim is vague, which is true, and he acknowledges that Dr. Heiser is correct in acknowledging God's supremacy as creator and worthy of worship. Dr. Craig brings in the work of several other scholars to talk about this, but mostly they are talking about the idea of God as being supreme creator, which nobody is denying here. What Dr. Craig brings up next is first Corinthians eight versus four through six, which says, quote as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God, but one. For, although there may be so-called gods in heaven and on earth, as indeed there are many gods and [00:54:00] many lords, yet for us, there is one God, the Father from whom all things are and from whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
End quote
Dr. Craig says, quote, the so-called gods did not really exist. Insofar as any reality lay behind these pagan practices, it was demonic end quote from Dr. Craig for a second. Okay, so first of all, the problem is here, the term so-called gods, that's a bad translation. The Greek doesn't say so-called gods. The Greek says that these are actually called gods. So trying to take First Corinthians eight to indicate that the gods don't exist at all, is not Paul's point.
Further, Dr. Craig gives an a non-sequitur in saying that the gods don't exist, but even if they exist, they're demonic. Well, that's [00:55:00] not an either or situation. He's not presenting two opposite propositions that cannot exist at the same time. When Dr. Craig uses the word demonic, I'm sure he's referring to evil spirits, and that's exactly what Dr. Heiser is saying is that these are rebellious spirits who are antagonistic towards God. So I think Dr. Craig is kind of missing the boat here.
We also can't just stay in First Corinthians eight. We need to go on to first Corinthians 10 where Paul says, quote, what do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No. I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. End quote.
Dr. Craig then says, quote, those who converted to Christianity out of paganism were therefore to turn to God from idols. In First [00:56:00] Thessalonians one, nine, not to retain these beings or practices in their newfound Christian faith, end quote from Dr. Craig.
Well, yes, but Paul pretty clearly says that they're actually participating with demons when they're involving themselves in pagan sacrifice. So trying to suggest that there is no existence to these beings is not really a legitimate claim when we look into First Corinthians eight. And the fact that people could have legitimate participation with demons suggests there's a real reality that we should be looking at here rather than, oh, they don't exist, so what's even the point?
Let's end the conversation by talking a bit about worship and what worship is and what worship means. I mentioned faith and how faith is believing loyalty, or from the work of Matthew Bates, it is allegiance. There's only one who deserves our [00:57:00] allegiance, only one who deserves our loyalty.
And so we wonder how people could serve cruel masters or demons or those who don't truly provide, et cetera. It seems obvious that people should want to serve the God who cares for and loves them, right? This is the kind of God we want to serve. This is the kind of God we want to be loyal to. So why is that so hard to do then?
I think we forget that there is a level of desperation in all of us where we want the best that we think we should have, and sometimes we settle on something in order to try to get that. We kind of want the best of both worlds where we have freedom, but we're also giving ourselves over to loyalty to things which will give us what we want.
Another uncomfortable thing is that there's also something in us where cruelty and indifference seem to draw us in and appeal to us in some way. Maybe because it justifies our own cruelty. I don't know.
[00:58:00] It is also very hard to give up loyalties to something that is familiar to us as well. This can be how we were raised, or circumstances we found ourselves in. We tend to stay with that which is familiar to us and which seems to fit our existing paradigm. The problem is we are short-sighted and cannot see past our immediate survival needs. And of course, we are quite selfish and self-centered, so it makes sense to follow someone who's also self-centered, following a God who is like us, who is cruel and tough and aggressive because that's what we want to see as well.
That's what we see in ourselves, and we want those to be better qualities than they really are. It seems like we're serving a God in our own image. A God who isn't loving doesn't require so much from us, and they ignore us most of the time. That means we can still do whatever we wanna do while maintaining some level of loyalty to our God, whoever that is.
Of course, there's problems with gods like that. They don't truly take care of you, [00:59:00] nor are they capable of taking care of you. Just because they are in a position to take advantage of people doesn't mean that they are truly taking care or love or are worthy of worship.
And what is worship, anyway?
I'm tempted to get into the definition of worship compared to veneration. Especially in the evangelical world, we confuse worship and veneration. This isn't something I've really gotten too deeply into myself, I'll admit, but I have found the distinction helpful and important.
Some of my studies into the Eastern Orthodoxy side of Christianity have brought this forward to my attention.
The idea is that worship requires a level of sacrifice towards a deity, whereas veneration is more centered on the idea of honor, with the posture of affection thrown in as well. So we can venerate our family, we can venerate those we love. We can venerate a whole lot of things that are not God without worshiping those [01:00:00] things.
Giving honor to something is not the same as worshiping it. Now, of course, we do also give honor to God. He is the ultimate one we are to venerate, but other things and other people are worthy of being venerated because of the fact that they are created by God.
Now to be honest, I have seen some people go a bit too far in this distinction and suggest that worship in Protestant churches is a form of veneration rather than true worship. The idea goes if sacrifice is a part of worship, then it can feel to some that worship music and worshiping in that kind of setting is really just veneration rather than worship.
However, the fact that we are to give ourselves to God as living the sacrifices, if we are actively positioning ourselves to do that while we're in the practice of singing a worship song, then that truly is worship.
So , we could ask, which one was White Fang doing? He would sacrifice himself [01:01:00] for the gods, but he eventually learned those gods who were loving, deserved and got his true heart and being. The trouble is he didn't even understand that those gods existed. And so I think this is what we need to take into our understanding of the Divine Council worldview as it applies to our walk, as we evangelize and disciple people. When others are under the thumb of authorities and dictators who do not truly love, who are not truly worthy of worship, we can bring forward these people to an understanding of the true God, the Almighty, the Most High, who is alone, worthy of worship. And the reason He's worthy of worship is not because he told us he's worthy, or that we have been commanded to worship him. He is worthy of worship, not because he's all powerful, not because he's so much better than us, but because he's truly and actually worth it.
He truly is worthy. He created us not to have somebody to have transactional interaction with, not because [01:02:00] he needed us for something that was lacking in himself. But because he has our best interest in mind always because he is interested in our thriving and because he is all good. In other words, we have every good reason to worship a being like that, to sacrifice ourselves and all that we have to him and his purposes because of who he is.
I hope that this conversation has been helpful to people who have not been quite sure how to see and understand the word "god" in its kind of native context of the Bible. I think there are many ways that we can see this play out culturally, historically, and in many other ways. It's important to understand loyalty, to understand that there are powers and principalities, as Paul that we don't want to be partakers in worship with evil powers, and that our focus should always be on the Most High.
If you're available, please come join me on Facebook in my discussion group. It's just called Genesis Marks the Spot Discussion Group, and come talk about this some more if you want.[01:03:00] I'd love to hear if you've read White Fang before and what you thought of the story and if you ever find yourself reading books or watching movies and seeing connections with the Bible and what it teaches.
You can also message me privately there on Facebook, or you can email me at
[email protected]. Thank you for listening, and I'd like to put out a reminder that if you have any questions, you can feel free to email me or message me or mention them in my Facebook group for any q and a episodes or if you'd like me to tackle a particular topic that is involved with Biblical theology, which is rooted in the book of Genesis in particular for the moment.
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By the time I have this episode out, I will also have a Patreon page for those of you who would like to donate to the podcast. Thanks for listening and thanks to Wintergatan for the [01:04:00] music, and I hope you all have a blessed week.
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