25 July 2023
Let's tie some things together.
God built the Hebrew nation from scratch. He placed them in a cultural and linguistic context that was most advantageous to His agenda. Hebrew thinking, for all intents and purposes, is as close as we can possibly get to how God wants humans to think. Every other cultural orientation introduces obscurants to revelation and obedience.
A fundamental difference between Hebrew thinking and western thinking is that God's people never would have dared to ask questions of ontology -- the nature or being of things. All questions were centered on the effects people, things and actions had. Thus, judgments such as calling something "good" or "evil" was more a matter of how it affects you than what it is intrinsically. As part of that picture, it was on you to understand God's priorities so you could more accurately define things.
Pharisaism was obsessed with ontology. Thus, when Jesus argued with the Pharisees about plucking raw grain on the Sabbath, they were trying to apply an ontological analysis to a Law from God that was based on priorities and contextual effects. The Pharisees were wrong before they even opened their mouths, because they were approaching everything from the wrong direction. To them, sin was inherent in the actions themselves regardless of context.
The same goes with how we should think about things in the spiritual realm. We could properly say that almost nothing is inherently evil. Everything is a matter of whether it matches God's agenda in the context. It's about the net effects. The specific identity of individuals involved is not always pertinent. It would be inappropriate to label any being wholly "evil" in our western sense of the term, simply because we cannot possibly know. All we can know is whether a particular person or thing hinders our service to God.
The simplistic notion of there being only angels and demons is a pagan approach to spiritual reality. There are whole classes of beings we cannot possibly comprehend, and apparently there is nothing we can do about them. Our best guess is to build a functional grasp of those beings for which our moral choices can make a difference in things. That includes a proper estimation of how those various forces tend to act.
Yesterday, I noted that most of the "demons" chased off in the New Testament setting were likely best understood as the surviving spirits of those who had once been giants in primordial times, who had mostly disappeared by the time of David. They had a human mortal form, but not a human spirit within. We get the impression he took down the last few. Their spirits were placed in "prison" and it's quite likely that means confined to very limited activities in this world, as opposed to having full access to the spiritual realm. About the only thing they can do is hijack ordinary humans who put themselves too much in reach of these beings.
My impression is that Serpent in the Garden is not necessarily the same individual person as the Devil who tempted Jesus in the Wilderness of Judea. There's no doubt they are allies in some ongoing feud with Jehovah. In the Judean setting in particular, and to some degree wherever they can be found, Jews are very much under the power of that Wilderness Tempter. He was trying to maintain his claim on the Jewish people by coopting Jesus' mission. Jesus outranks him, but He was rather respectful. The phrase "get behind me" roughly approximates "You are out of line."
Dr. Heiser notes that "Satan" isn't actually a name, but more of an epithet, rather like calling someone "troublemaker". However, it has become a matter of English usage to make it a proper noun. It's in the same class of conventions as calling our God "Jehovah" rather than insisting on the Hebrew word Yahweh (which is quite likely mispronounced by just about everyone). By the same token, the name "Lucifer" is likely a nickname for some being who was the elohim over a foreign nation, some nation other than Israel. It's likely a functional label referring to the kind of mistake they made.
But that Jehovah is no longer their God is not in doubt; a lesser being has become the god of the Jews. I've taught that for years, long before I came across Michael Heiser's name. Among orthodox rabbis, if you can get them to be honest with you, they'll admit that one of the names for whom they worship is "Satan". The Father of Jesus never wore that label.
I still believe Jehovah has a left-hand power near His throne who parcels out his captives to the elohim of other nations. Scripture refers to him as our Enemy -- the Accuser -- not God's enemy. Calling that being "Satan" or "the Devil" will serve the purpose, but thinking of him as inherently dark and nasty would be a big mistake. We cannot really know enough to say that about him, and it will surely keep you from working effectively against his power. You don't claim authority over him but remind him that he stands under the Lord's rebuke. That's how he got his current job. In some ways, he joined the opposition party in Heaven.
His job is to prosecute the spiritually elect and keep them from their full Covenant privileges. That includes tempting us to give the flesh priority in our decisions. He is an influencer, a propagandist. His actions are highly limited, and bear no resemblance to the horror films and other art in Western Civilization. Our mortal lives here are a training environment, not actual life. Calling him our Enemy is a characterization. He will certainly devour your life if you let him, but his divine purpose is to sharpen your obedience to the Lord.
You can't blame every sorrow or inconvenience on our Devil or his troops. Most sorrows are simply built into our mortal existence. If anything, our Enemy takes advantage of the situation to keep us confused about what to expect from our Creator. Our Enemy has no power to harm anything that really matters unless you give him that power. Thus, our duty is to avoid playing along with his opposition agenda.
This is my best effort at characterizing the situation. The implications for how we live are tremendous, particularly in contrast to the common mainstream perception of spiritual realities. Someday, I sincerely hope someone will produce a corpus of literature and imagery that more closely matches the truth versus the crap in which we are swimming these days in America.
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