04 September 2023
One of my readers mentioned a book, Principalities and Powers, by G.B. Caird. I am unable to access a copy of the book online, nor even a good review, because it's all locked up behind the JSTOR paywall. Still, the question isn't that hard to answer.
By now, you could guess that the title of Caird's book refers to the elohim council. Apparently, he says that Colossians 1:16-20 and Ephesian 3:10 suggest that the elohim would be redeemed at some point. I'm going to say that he overstates the case.
In Ephesians 3, Paul refers to a "divine secret" or "mystery" that was revealed to him. This is broadly a reference to the gospel message itself. It's referred to as mysterious and secret simply because it requires a totally different set of mental assumptions to make sense of it. It's not actively hidden from the world; the world simply cannot see it there in front of them. Without the Holy Spirit, the moral truth woven into reality remains unseen.
But of course, it's not really that simple. It's still a burden on us to shift our thinking over from the human perspective to the divine. And it's a major chore, because it means not just a simple shift of perspective, because the fleshly nature is hardly passive in all of this. It arrogantly asserts its own superiority over the Spirit, and fights to keep inserting its false assumptions into every little thing we think about. It even denies the possibility of holding a conscious awareness apart from itself. Thus, we have to force that separation and then nail the fleshly nature to the Cross, and keep nailing it back up there every moment of every day.
The opposition members of the divine council in Heaven have generally free access to influence those humans whose spiritual nature remains quiescent (those without spiritual birth). The mechanics are invisible to us, but the elohim council manipulate humans at will, to the point most humans have no clue about the nature and extent of their free will. Your intellectual notions about free will have no power to set you free from that domination. And it's very easy for them, because all they have to do is suggest anything and everything except God's truth. They know what's real, but they want to make sure you don't.
The only way out of this slavery is spiritual birth. Unfortunately, none of us is in a position to choose this free offer of Christ because of that moral blindness. As long as we are in the fleshly nature, we cannot comprehend nor even want redemption. It requires the initiative of God to inject the light of truth into our being.
This is what Paul refers to in Ephesians 3. He refers to the stripping of elohim dominion discussed in yesterday's post. Instead of redemption coming via the Hebrew national identity under Moses/Noah, everyone can abandon their human national identity and simply join themselves to Christ's invisible spiritual nation. This is such a radical concept that, even when God mentions it in the Old Testament prophecies as something He promised to institute, no one seems to have understood. They could not step outside the old regime of human national identity.
Thus, as Paul notes this was not fully revealed until Christ commissioned apostles to share this new Covenant truth. All of the apostles could see it. Indeed, without God's gift of vision to see a dramatic strategic shift in the spiritual realm, affecting everything in the whole cosmos, the underlying structure of the gospel message remains opaque. It's a critical part of the apostolic calling to understand the strategy. It's not reserved for them alone, but without it they could hardly serve in that role.
Thus, Paul points out that now Gentiles could enter into the Covenant, not by changing their human national identity, but by renouncing it altogether, to become partakers in the eternal heavenly identity. This is an intrusion of spiritual reality into fallen space. It remains incomprehensible without the Holy Spirit.
But that's just the human side of things. God kept this plan secret from the elohim council. Thus, the point he's making in verse 10 is that He revealed this plan to the elohim via the way His Kingdom formed. Instead of taking up a human political identity, they simply began clinging to each other on a wholly spiritual basis. Elsewhere in this letter, Paul mentions how the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in us draws us together far more firmly than any cohesion that human nature could generate. Flesh has no power to overcome all of those barriers, but the Spirit passes right through them.
He goes on to plead with them not to let fleshly fallen nature get in the way. Stop falling back into those old pathways in your soul. Push the flesh down and let your spirit reign. There's nothing here about redeeming the elohim opposition, just that they were allowed to see God's plan when it was too late for them to do anything about it.
In Colossians 1, Paul offers his usual greeting by celebrating the miraculous blessings of being a part of Christ's sheikhdom. This is a critical element in the Ancient Near Eastern approach to life; we have nothing better to do than strike up the band and dance around at the thrill of being on His team, singing and chanting His greatness. Every moment of every day, it's the default to rev up the pep rally (AKA worship), and Paul does it so well in his letters.
As a part of that celebration, Paul mentions how our Lord is "the invisible God, firstborn over all Creation". Paul avoids making any distinction between the Father and Son here. He goes on to describe how our God created all things that exist, including the elohim council. His point is that, for all their power and majesty, they are creatures made by God, not at all in His class. Without His active effort to keep Creation running, it would all evaporate as just a figment of His imagination, to include the elohim.
Thus, He is also the Lord of the "church" -- using a Greek word that can be translated as any congregation of people drawn together by a common interest. We are His flock. And as the firstborn from human death, Christ holds primacy over all of us, for sure, just as He does over the divine council. This is the way the Creator wanted things (finally making some distinction between the Father and Son).
Then, in verse 20, Paul notes how this primacy of His Son over all Creation put Him in a position to "redeem" all of Creation. For the word often translated into English as "redeem", Paul uses the Greek term eirenopoieo, perhaps better translated as one who reconciles and makes peace between discordant elements in the whole. In other words, He's making shalom. That's the kind of peace where everything God made is compelled to act according to His design.
God will assert His authority in some final, definitive way to bring this shalom. This is a clear departure from the exercise of power and authority typical of western thinking. God doesn't compel by force in this image, but rather exposes and removes all the false options. The emphasis in Hebrew thinking here is that He so powerfully reveals things that the sheer moral force humbles every shred of dissent.
That's how redemption works. God touches everyone in some place that no lesser power could reach. Once He does that, all debate ceases, every dissent is vanquished. It's all too obvious to everyone present. This is how God wins.
Yes, the terminology of "redemption" includes this. In that sense, the elohim council will be "redeemed" -- no longer in opposition to His design and plan. That's why we have in John's Revelation an image of elders celebrating the Lord in Heaven. Inasmuch as we can possibly understand from our feeble human condition, we are allowed to glimpse eternal truth in these limited terms. At some point down the road, the elohim will stop their opposition, because they will have been definitively proven wrong.
I didn't make this stuff up; this is how the Hebrew people viewed the cosmos. It's right there in all of Paul's letters and in the rest of the New Testament. If you want to grasp the full understanding available to us before dying or His return, you'll have to build on this foundation of the elohim council in the courts of a divine nomad sheikh.
You'll have to understand that the whole human race is natively designed to congregate in ethnic nations. That we do not testifies to the depth of opposition Jehovah faces among His councilors. Our modern human efforts to ignore those ethnic boundaries have failed miserably, and will continue to fail, because the elohim are trying very hard to create chaos. They are trying to force God's hand on some issues we cannot comprehend.
We can speculate; we are given a glimpse here and there that at least part of this opposition arises from God's decree to punish someone by demoting them and making them play the role of His Left Hand. While complying with the conditions of that demotion, this character rejects the reasoning behind it. So, instead of suffering in silence, he has protested every step of the way, and has gained allies on the council.
We get the picture of a council that generally feels it is in their interest to resist God's plans, though they are hardly walking in lockstep with the Left Hand. It's much more subtle than that, with lots of conniving and self-dealing, and some genuine nobility thrown into the mix. And some day out there in our future, there will be a Day of Reckoning and all of them are going to see how wrong they were. The Left Hand will be sentenced to something even more severe, which John calls "the Lake of Fire", but which we cannot possibly comprehend.
And it would appear that some humans will be there, as well. Given what Scripture says, it would be the majority of the human race. There are hints that others among God's creatures will go there, as well, referring to those higher than us.
You notice how this is threaded throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. You cannot hope to understand Scripture without this background image.
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