RamistThomist
Puritanboard Assessor
McDermott, Gerald R. God’s Rivals: Insights from the Bible and the Early Church. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsityPress, 2007.
Although it is somewhat of a fad in secular departments, there is little from an evangelical perspective on the existence and plurality of world religions. For one, where did they come from? Evangelicals would probably say “The Fall” or “Sin.” There is truth to that, but the latter is too abstract and the former, while ultimately responsible for false religions, has nothing to say about the actual emergence of them. More astute thinkers will say “Demons control the false religions.” That is a better answer and one that is probably intuitively right, but it isn’t quite right.
Gerald McDermott, a scholar on Jonathan Edwards, among other things, draws upon the typology of “The Lord of Hosts” and the complex Old and New Testament usage of “powers,” along with the early church fathers’ evaluation of such concepts, to give us a stunning and forceful argument. In short, he argues that angelical powers (the good or evil of which we will leave aside for the moment) work(ed?) through ancient religions. But that isn’t the whole story. God used some ancient modes of thinking, so the Fathers reasoned, such as Greek philosophy, to prepare for the gospel.
A word about “religion.” In the ancient world, religion was not neatly isolated from “politics” or “philosophy,” so to speak of a Hindu religion or a “Greek” religion, is somewhat misleading. Nonetheless, it is probably impossible to find a better category for the moment, so it will have to do.
One other issue for clearing the ground: did the biblical writers believe other gods existed? Not really. To use a New Testament term, they believed “powers” existed. To say “other gods existed” opens a can of worms concerning the nature of a god, classical theism, and post-Enlightenment constructs. We want to avoid both Deism and polytheism.
The Lord of Hosts
Mention the “Divine Council” and your feed will be flooded by both adherents and critics of Michael Heiser. Few of the comments on either side will be intellectually competent. The more astute will observe that scholars were talking about this decades (if not a century) before Heiser. So it is with McDermott. It sounds like Heiser, but he is simply restating what is common knowledge.
Whether an omniscient God needs to consult with lesser beings (in one sense, being omniscient, he doesn’t), he seems to do something like that in 1Kings 22. Relevant to our concerns is the connection between “the hosts of heaven” and superhuman, even angelic, entities that do God’s will (McDermott 45).
That is fascinating but it does not quite answer the question of where other religions come from. McDermott now turns to Deuteronomy 4 and 32, suggesting that “Yahweh had assigned other [powers] to the nations” (47; cf Deut. 4:19 and 32:8-9). The LXX makes this explicit: the nations were allotted to different angels.
Principalities and Powers
Paul read his Torah and saw something similar. He didn’t call them “gods.” For him, they were “principalities and powers.” As McDermott summarizes the context of eating food to idols: “The gods do not exist. But the powers do” (68)! Of course, Deut. 32:17 had already made this distinction: the pagans sacrificed to what were not gods but demons. (The Hebrew term is shedim, which has its own interesting history).
But these powers aren’t quite demons, at least not the way the word is normally used. A daimon, if not being a human “genie” at the moment, is “restricted to the ‘air,’ the lowest region of the earth and sky” (72). Not so the archontes and exousiai. “They are given authority of entire nations,” along with thronoi and kyriotetes (here McDermott references Werner Foerster, , in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [TDNT], ed. Gerhard Kittel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 2:573).
To be sure, these powers are defeated but active.
Seeds of the Word: Justin Martyr
Paul read his Torah and saw the lesser elohim as principalities and powers. Justin continues that line of thinking but also begins to address the Why? Of other religions. His argument, while bold and shocking to Enlightenment readers, is straightforward: “At the creation God committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them” (Second Apology 5). Some of these angels left their station and mated with human women, fathering demons. To oversimplify the story, the demons corrupted the religion, thus creating false religions.
Yet that is not the whole story. These false religions, while under demonic principalities, do contain “seeds” of truth,” although much of Greek truth, Justin thinks, was borrowed from Moses (McDermott 91). In any case, “Christ the Logos was speaking in the philosophical religions of the Hellenistic world” (93).
Evaluation
McDermott also analyzes Irenaeus and Origen, but that would make this review rather long. For Irenaeus, not all of pagan religions were equally wrong. For example, while worshipping the stars will send you to hell, it is still better than crude fetishism as is found in the jungles. Origen, despite his heretical teachings, actually had the harshest words for pagan religions, seeing them, like Justin, as demonic in origin but unlike Justin, denying that the Logos spoke in them.
McDermott is to be praised for a readable yet erudite analysis of biblical and patristic material on world religions.
Although it is somewhat of a fad in secular departments, there is little from an evangelical perspective on the existence and plurality of world religions. For one, where did they come from? Evangelicals would probably say “The Fall” or “Sin.” There is truth to that, but the latter is too abstract and the former, while ultimately responsible for false religions, has nothing to say about the actual emergence of them. More astute thinkers will say “Demons control the false religions.” That is a better answer and one that is probably intuitively right, but it isn’t quite right.
Gerald McDermott, a scholar on Jonathan Edwards, among other things, draws upon the typology of “The Lord of Hosts” and the complex Old and New Testament usage of “powers,” along with the early church fathers’ evaluation of such concepts, to give us a stunning and forceful argument. In short, he argues that angelical powers (the good or evil of which we will leave aside for the moment) work(ed?) through ancient religions. But that isn’t the whole story. God used some ancient modes of thinking, so the Fathers reasoned, such as Greek philosophy, to prepare for the gospel.
A word about “religion.” In the ancient world, religion was not neatly isolated from “politics” or “philosophy,” so to speak of a Hindu religion or a “Greek” religion, is somewhat misleading. Nonetheless, it is probably impossible to find a better category for the moment, so it will have to do.
One other issue for clearing the ground: did the biblical writers believe other gods existed? Not really. To use a New Testament term, they believed “powers” existed. To say “other gods existed” opens a can of worms concerning the nature of a god, classical theism, and post-Enlightenment constructs. We want to avoid both Deism and polytheism.
The Lord of Hosts
Mention the “Divine Council” and your feed will be flooded by both adherents and critics of Michael Heiser. Few of the comments on either side will be intellectually competent. The more astute will observe that scholars were talking about this decades (if not a century) before Heiser. So it is with McDermott. It sounds like Heiser, but he is simply restating what is common knowledge.
Whether an omniscient God needs to consult with lesser beings (in one sense, being omniscient, he doesn’t), he seems to do something like that in 1Kings 22. Relevant to our concerns is the connection between “the hosts of heaven” and superhuman, even angelic, entities that do God’s will (McDermott 45).
That is fascinating but it does not quite answer the question of where other religions come from. McDermott now turns to Deuteronomy 4 and 32, suggesting that “Yahweh had assigned other [powers] to the nations” (47; cf Deut. 4:19 and 32:8-9). The LXX makes this explicit: the nations were allotted to different angels.
Principalities and Powers
Paul read his Torah and saw something similar. He didn’t call them “gods.” For him, they were “principalities and powers.” As McDermott summarizes the context of eating food to idols: “The gods do not exist. But the powers do” (68)! Of course, Deut. 32:17 had already made this distinction: the pagans sacrificed to what were not gods but demons. (The Hebrew term is shedim, which has its own interesting history).
But these powers aren’t quite demons, at least not the way the word is normally used. A daimon, if not being a human “genie” at the moment, is “restricted to the ‘air,’ the lowest region of the earth and sky” (72). Not so the archontes and exousiai. “They are given authority of entire nations,” along with thronoi and kyriotetes (here McDermott references Werner Foerster, , in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [TDNT], ed. Gerhard Kittel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 2:573).
To be sure, these powers are defeated but active.
Seeds of the Word: Justin Martyr
Paul read his Torah and saw the lesser elohim as principalities and powers. Justin continues that line of thinking but also begins to address the Why? Of other religions. His argument, while bold and shocking to Enlightenment readers, is straightforward: “At the creation God committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them” (Second Apology 5). Some of these angels left their station and mated with human women, fathering demons. To oversimplify the story, the demons corrupted the religion, thus creating false religions.
Yet that is not the whole story. These false religions, while under demonic principalities, do contain “seeds” of truth,” although much of Greek truth, Justin thinks, was borrowed from Moses (McDermott 91). In any case, “Christ the Logos was speaking in the philosophical religions of the Hellenistic world” (93).
Evaluation
McDermott also analyzes Irenaeus and Origen, but that would make this review rather long. For Irenaeus, not all of pagan religions were equally wrong. For example, while worshipping the stars will send you to hell, it is still better than crude fetishism as is found in the jungles. Origen, despite his heretical teachings, actually had the harshest words for pagan religions, seeing them, like Justin, as demonic in origin but unlike Justin, denying that the Logos spoke in them.
McDermott is to be praised for a readable yet erudite analysis of biblical and patristic material on world religions.
