16 December 2023
I saw stories about the recent tornadoes in the southeastern states. In one case, a family survived through the destruction of their mobile home. Their four-month-old infant was found lying on a downed tree out in the yard uninjured. The mother insists it was by the grace of God.
A common element in our American mythology is the concept of Guardian Angels. Dr. Heiser addresses this in his book Angels. (Side note: The copies of his books on the Internet Archive site are gone now. I got Angels somewhere else.)
Heiser points out how Scripture paints a far more complex image of spiritual entities working in the Unseen Realm. There are angels and other creatures operating in ways we cannot comprehend in a feudal system that beggars the imagination. While our human capabilities see the universe as mostly random, the truth is that almost nothing would work on any level without the constant attention of angels everywhere guiding things.
Granted, Heiser's explanation rests at times heavily on the broad Jewish perception as revealed in literature outside of the Scripture canon, but he's careful to differentiate between their speculative writings and what we can make of the Bible. However, he sees the New Testament writers echoing the popular Jewish notions more often than I do, while I see things he seems to miss. Let's look at the question of Guardian Angels.
We all know that Revelation 1-3 indicates there were angels assigned to each church. But there is more to it than that. I quote from Heiser's Angels:
Angels are also described in an advocacy role, popularly referred to as "guardian angels." Earlier we saw that the Old Testament referred to holy ones as "mediators," a role that involved explaining divine decisions and functioning as witness on behalf of the innocent in their suffering. The New Testament contains hints of this same idea, though it is clear that believers no longer need an advocate mediator, because Jesus himself now intercedes for us before God (1 Tim 2:5).
Matthew 18:10 reads, "See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven." This statement of course precedes the high priestly work of Christ and draws on Old Testament concepts of angelic mediation. Barrett notes, "Judaism believed in protecting and guiding angels." Pseudo-Philo (Liber antiquitatum biblicarum 59.4) and the Testament of Jacob (1:10) draw on Psalm 91:11–12 (cf. Luke 4:10) to express the guardianship of angels.
And regarding Acts 12: "The believers gathered that night believed that Peter had a personal angel."
Against this, we see precious little discussion in Paul's letters of such things. Rather, Paul gives direct credit to the Creator Himself. But this is not a distinction; it's a matter of how Paul expresses things. I'm convinced he took all of this for granted.
Keep in mind that Jesus set a pattern of restoring the ancient Hebrew outlook, setting aside a great deal of innovation starting from the time of Solomon. He kept hearkening back to the more primitive times in Hebrew history when they still lived in tents. The Sermon on the Mount is loaded with such references.
Paul seems to have picked up on this in his own way. A critical element in the ancient Hebrew feudalism is that servants are never mentioned in a narrative except where they become a part of the story. When you read the Old Testament, you should picture the major actors only rarely doing things with their own hands. That would have been quite rare. Rather, they did things as masters over servants who execute their will. The narrative mentions such things only when it's pertinent to the story. The rest of the time, they took for granted that you would know.
For example, when Elijah encounters Elisha, it's not that the latter was working by himself. He didn't have those twelve pair of oxen all pulling on a single plow. Rather, he was overseeing his household servants and perhaps some hired employees on twelve teams of oxen, each with a plow. All of their actions were credited to the decisions of Elisha. Thus, we are told he was standing near the last of the dozen teams while his servants did the actual sweaty work. And when it came time to light a fire and cook the meat, he had servants doing most of it.
Get into the habit of carefully noting that, unless the narrative says something specific about the action and who was involved, almost nobody of importance did things with their own hands, acting alone. It is wholly unlikely that Jacob fled to Laban as a lone individual; he would have been attacked by robbers. He had armed servants; the minimum would be two. Almost everyone had servants of some sort. This is the image of how God does business in His Creation. He gives the orders and He gets the credit, but Paul saw no need to point out the obvious because it wasn't just the Hebrews who told stories this way. It was universal across the known world.
It's unlikely that four-month-old baby survived, gently laid on that downed tree, without an angel being involved in the midst of the storm. What was saved and what was lost is wholly inexplicable on our terms, but wise minds give credit to God either way for doing what He knows is best.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
Things "feel" more sensible in scripture when you have that background information: that most of the time there were multiple people doing one thing "in the name of" one person. If you think about it, there's no way one person would be able to safely travel in a desert environment without a team of folks with you just to survive, much less do things like build altars of wild, uncut stone or trade and make agreements with peers.
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