A Multipersonal God In Genesis

Than Christopoulos recently posted a good video about the Angel of the Lord in Genesis. And here's another video he recently did with Caleb Jackson about a healing of stomach paralysis with medical documentation.

The role of Lucifer

In the cosmology of Lewis's Space Trilogy, as I understand it, each inhabited planet has a guardian angel. Mars is an explicit example. And Lucifer was the guardian angel for earth. 

Mind you, that schema raises the question of where the guardian angel was for Venus. Why did he not repel Weston, especially after Satan took possession of Weston? Seems inconsistent. What's the point of Venus having a guardian angel if he doesn't protect it from Satanic invasion and assault? 

But perhaps in Lewis's mind, the guardian angel couldn't interfere with the temptation. That had to run its course. 

Be that as it may, an additional point of interest is that Lewis's fictional cosmology may have an albeit very slender basis in Scripture. On one reading of Ezk 28, Lucifer is the guardian of the garden. 

That identification turns on a crucial ambiguity in the Hebrew syntax of v14. There are two ways to render it:

You were an anointed covering cherub

You were with an anointed covering cherub

Does it describe the fall of Adam or the fall of Lucifer? Is Adam the guardian of the garden? Is Adam depicted in exalted angelic terms–as if he's a cherub? Or is Lucifer the guardian? 

Does the narrative describe one character or two? Is Adam the guardian or is he with the guardian? 

Scholars are divided on how to render the syntax. And that in turn affects the identification of the figure(s) in the narrative

Suppose we go with the view that Lucifer is the guardian. That answers some questions or solves some problems. It explains why the Tempter was in the garden in the first place. It might explain why Eve wasn't surprised or taken aback by the Tempter–if he was a visible sentinel. It explains the reference to other cherubic sentinels in Gen 3:24–who replace him. And it explains why NT identifies the Tempter with Satan. 

What's the implied chronology? Presumably, Lucifer had to be created before Adam. And either created before God made the garden or around the same time God made the garden. So Lucifer was guarding it before Adam was created and put there. At that point he coexisted with them in the garden. He fell before or after Adam (and Eve?) were created. 

It's difficult to squeeze the fall of Lucifer (and other angels) into a six-day timetable. But if Gen 2 is separate from Gen 1, as a localized creation of the garden, that frees up more time (even assuming we regard Gen 1 as strictly chronological). 

That said, it's precarious to lay too much weight on an ambiguous passage of Scripture. But it does have the explanatory power to fill some gaps or tie up some loose ends. 

Angel choir

1. In folk theology, heaven has an angel choir. When you die and go to heaven, you hear the angels sing. You might even join the angel choir. Heaven has a mixed choir consisting of saints and angels. There's a vacant seat with your name on it, awaiting your arrival. 

I don't know the history of this belief. Perhaps it was popularized by Handel's Messiah, which turns Lk 2:13-14 into choral music. But to my knowledge there's no clear passage of Scripture which says angels sing. Lk 2:13-14 doesn't say they sang, although praise is consistent with song. So that's evolved into a bit of Christmas folklore, embellished by seasonal anthems, carols, and hymnody. 

There's the passage in Job 38:7, but that's poetic and metaphorical. The Book of Revelation has scenes of heavenly singing, but the choristers seem to be saints rather than angels. 

2. It's often said that choirboys have angelic voices. What's meant by that, I think, is that choirboys have "sexless" voices, in the sense that their voices lack the virile or sensual timbre of opera singers. Even so, choirboys don't have genderless voices: their voices are recognizably male. But they do have an ethereal quality to them. 

3. Assuming for argument's sake that angels sing, how could they sing? 

i) It might be telepathic singing. That still doesn't indicate what it sounds like, but it's a mode of vocalism consistent with discarnate spirits.

ii) They might have human or humanoid voices if they assume corporeal form. Whether that would be a male or female timbre, adult or prepubescent, would depend on the anatomy. 

Still, there's no clear biblical evidence that angels sing. In principle, if you heard or saw angels sing in a near-death experience, that would be prima facie evidence, but that also depends on how near-death experiences map onto reality. 

4. Another question is whether Christians actually sing in heaven. How literally should we take the depictions in Revelation? 

That may be more than a purely hermeneutical question. If Christians sing on earth, it would be natural for them to sing in heaven. They will carry their memories of Christian music with them into the afterlife. 

Admittedly, they can't physically vocalize in heaven. However, I sometimes dream that I'm singing in church, so the saints might sing in that simulated sense. Indeed, heaven is so inspiring that it's hard to see how the saints could resist breaking in song. 

5. This also raises the question of what the saints will sing. Presumably, sainted composers will continue to write music in heaven. Music even better than what they composed on earth.

There are also composers who wrote some great Christian music even though they weren't Christian (e.g. Brahms, Fauré, Ralph Vaughan Williams). Will their particular talent be lost, or will that be transferred to some of the saints? 

In a multiverse scenario, Brahms or Fauré might be Christian in a parallel universe, yet all Christians wind to the same heaven–regardless of where they originate. 

6. Does heaven have its own history of music, that parallels OT history and church history? Does music in heaven mirror the chronological development of music?

For instance, we don't know how the Psalter was sung. We don't know what kind of music it was originally set to. Maybe it was chanted, or maybe it was set to folk tunes. 

When OT saints passed on, was the music they heard and sang in heaven the same kind of music they heard and sang on earth? When medieval Christians died, was the music they heard and sang in heaven the same kind of music they heard and sang on earth? Likewise, Renaissance church music, Baroque church music, Black Gospel, and so on and so forth? 

7. Since God knows the future, it's possible that heavenly music retroactively represents later periods of music. OT saints and medieval saints get to hear Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Fauré , Black Gospel, &c. centuries or millennia ahead of time! 

I haven't said anything about rock music because that's what's played in hell, on jukeboxes. I have that on good authority, from an anonymous source–a high-placed informant in the heavenly hierarchy who shared it with me on condition of confidentiality. 

Admittedly, this post is an exercise in theological speculation. Up to a point, I think that's a way to cultivate heavenly-mindedness. 

Randy angels

1. Gen 6:1-4 is enigmatic, in part because it's so compressed, and in part because it uses a designation ("sons of God") that has no parallel elsewhere in the Pentateuch.

A popular interpretation is that it describes fallen angels mating with women, thereby spawning a race of hybrids. 

2. There are problems with that interpretation. For one thing, even if the "sons of God" are angels, they are never identified as fallen angels. The passage contains no background information concerning a primordial angelic fall. So on the angelic interpretation, there's no narrative assumption that angels mating with women was illicit. That requires a backstory regarding rebellious angels. But that context is missing. 

3. Scholars fall into two basic camps. Some scholars think the text is mythological. They have no problem with mythological interpretations of Scripture because they think Scripture frequently reflects a mythological outlook. They don't think this incident ever happened–or could happen.

4. Moreover, the interpretation offered by critical scholarship isn't angelic but polytheistic. They think the text describes gods siring demigods by mating with women. 

5. Yet other Christians think the angelic interpretation is realistic. But in that event, the angelic identification is equivocal. In order for angels to sire offspring by mating with women, the angels would have to transform into men, with male sexual anatomy and seminal fluid. At least temporally, the angels would cease to be angels, becoming human males at an anatomical, genetic, and chromosomal level. 

But even assuming that angels have that ability, the offspring wouldn't be hybrids or half-breeds but purebred humans. So that fails to explain what made the Nephilim superior to normal human males.  

Craig's backwoods exegesis

William Lane Craig recently expanded on a defense of a position he took regarding the depiction of God in Gen 2-3:

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/genesis-2-3-anthropomorphism-or-theophany

I've already discussed his original presentation: 

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-genesis-mytho-history.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/gods-audible-voice.html

I will reproduce his entire answer at the bottom of my post. By way of comment:

i) One of the revealing things about Craig's interpretation of Gen 2-3 is the contrast between his philosophical prowess and his exegetical prowess. How that exposes the difference between his philosophical sophistication and his hermeneutical naivete. Over the decades, Craig's philosophy and philosophical theology have undergone great development. By contrast, it's like he still reads the Bible the same way he did as a teenager. His grasp of biblical hermeneutics never developed in tandem with his grasp of philosophy. His hermeneutic is in a state of arrested development. Intellectually, part of Craig never grew up. His philosophical toolkit matured while his hermeneutical toolkit remains immature, stuck in Sunday school. 

It reminds me of some apostates who become proficient philosophers and scientists, but when they attack Christian theism, they never brought their understanding of the Bible up to the same level of their mastery of science or philosophy. In the age of specialization, that's understandable, but it lays bare a big hole in Craig's skill set. 

ii) The way Craig frames the alternatives is an understatement. As he explained in his original presentation, what he means by "anthropomorphic" is "palpably false if taken literally".

iii) A basic flaw in Craig's analysis is assumption that in order for something to count as a theophany, the criterion is not the nature of the event but whether the account is introduced by a verbal formula: "God appeared to…" Likewise, that a figure must be explicitly called the "Angel of the Lord". 

iv) Another flaw in his analysis is his failure to appreciate that Gen 2-3 isn't told from the viewpoint of Adam and Eve. It's not a first-person, indexical description of how God looked to them. Rather, it's told from the third-person, external viewpoint of the narrator. 

v) Yet another flaw in Craig's analysis is the equivocal notion of an "appearance". It doesn't even seem to occur to Craig that that word or concept has multiple meanings, and so it's necessary to identify which one or ones may be germane to the issue at hand. Among other things, "appear/appearance" can mean the following:

• Materialize

• Be present or show up

• Come into view; become visible or noticeable

• Perform (e.g. Franco Corelli appeared in Il Travatore)

• How something is perceived by one or more senses (e.g. an indirect realist says appearances are all we have to go by–we can't peel back the veil of perception. Or a Catholic says that in transubstantiation, the Host retains the appearance of bread and wine) 

vi) Apropos (v), does a "theophany" mean God "appears" in the sense that he's present or localized at a particular time and place? Does it mean God "appears" in the sense that he can be seen? These are distinct ideas. For instance, an angel might be present but invisible. Take the Balaam account where the Angel of the Lord was present, but initially invisible to Balaam. 

vii) Although the default connotation of "appear" may signify to a visual appearance or apparition, theophanies often include auditions as well as visions. God's audible voice. Or preternatural thunder. So "appearance" can be shorthand for something that's perceptible to one or more of the senses. In principle, it could be tactile as well. 

viii) Some incidents in Scripture indicate that angels are able to materialize and dematerialize. So that's another sense of "appearance" which is applicable to theophanies and angelophanies. In the case of the Angel of the Lord, the two categories overlap. He's the theophanic angel.  

ix) Then there's Craig's frankly silly objection that Adam and Eve didn't exist at the time of the theophanies. But once God brought them into existence, they were in a position to see their Maker, if he took the form of the Angel of the Lord to create them. Likewise, Adam regained consciousness after the operation. So even on his own grounds, Craig's objection is hairsplitting. 

x) Craig reads biblical narratives atomistically, as if similar incidents in the Pentateuch can't shed light on one another. To take a comparison, consider movies, novels,, or a miniseries where earlier scenes raise questions that are answered as the plot unfolds. You don't understand it all at once. Rather, as you go deeper into it, later plot developments retroactively illuminate earlier scenes. 

Likewise, it isn't necessary to pedantically use the same clues each time same kind of event is narrated. That's woodenly repetitious. Readers are expected to analogize from explicit examples to comparable examples. 

The fall of Lucifer

Two traditional prooftexts for the fall of Lucifer are Isa 14 and Ezk 28. Although Isa 14 isn't directly about the fall of Lucifer, it employs civil war in heaven imagery. The losers are expelled. The interpretation of Ezk 28 is complicated by ambiguous syntax. A neglected passage is Isa 24:21-22, which suggests disobedient angels. 

The clearest OT passage might be Dan 10. It has four figures, three of whom seem to be angelic. There's Daniel. Then there's a good angel, who might be Gabriel or a cherub (see Iain Duguid's commentary, 180-81). The good angel is blocked by "the Prince of Persia," who appears to be an evil territorial spirit. The Prince of Persia is then overpowered by the Archangel Michael. The fact that the Prince of Persia has the ability to obstruct the good angel suggests that some fallen angels are more powerful than some heavenly angels. 

Although this doesn't narrate the fall of angels, it seems to presume their downfall. There are only two logical options: either they were originally evil or else they became evil. 

This also raises the intriguing question of where the Prince of Persian ranks in the infernal chain-of-command. As a territorial spirit, we might consider him to be a Satanic subordinate–if we think Satan has a wider sphere of influence than a territorial spirit. 

On the other hand, Satan is a finite agent. He must concentrate his efforts. At the time, Israel was in exile. And ancient Israel was the locus of God's earthly kingdom. So perhaps the Prince of Persia is Satan himself. At that time and place, Israel was the primary thing for Satan to oppose. And the base of operations temporarily shifted to the exilic community. In terms of diabolical strategy and allocation of resources, it makes sense for Satan to direct his efforts at the exilic community. 

Admittedly, this is somewhat speculative. There's not a lot to go on. At a minimum, the passage is an indirect witness to the angelic fall. But the angelic villain in this passage may well be Satan himself. That would dovetail with other altercations between Satan and the Archangel Michael (Jude 9; Rev 12:7-9).

Fallen angels

It's striking how little the Bible explicitly has to say about the fall of angels. Just a few scattered, sometimes ambiguous passages. 

Liberals say the theology of fallen angels is a Second Temple development (e.g. 1 Enoch). And because it's a later development, this is legendary embellishment or pious fiction. Tacked on at a later date. But there are basic problems with that characterization: 

i) Even in the NT, reference to the fall of angels is scant. Even in the Gospels, Satan isn't classified as a fallen angel. Yet the theological narrative of fallen angels was already in place by then.

ii) Even if we grant liberal dating for the sake of argument, they also tend to date the Pentateuch to the Exilic period, so on their own dating scheme, the fall of angels isn't an especially late development in relation to the OT narrative.

iii) Although Scripture doesn't say much about the fallen of angels, the OT has a lot to say about angels generally, as well as moral evil generally. This goes all the way back to the Pentateuch, including Genesis in particular. So angels and moral evil already figure in the earliest stages of the OT plot. 

It is, however, a short step from the existence of angels in general to evil angels in particular. Likewise, the origin of moral evil is a natural question to ask. Is that confined to the human realm? Or does it have a parallel in the angelic realm? And given the interaction between men and angels in Scripture, it's a short step to the idea that evil angels as well as good angels intersect with human history. So there's no overriding reason to assume this is a late theological development.

Is the Archangel Michael the Son of Man?

Some commentators think the Son of Man in Dan 7 is the Archangel Michael. Here are some problems with that identification: 

i) Dan 7 depicts the Son of Man as the cloud-rider. That has its background in Baal, who was the cloud-rider. That was appropriated by OT writers, who reapply it to Yahweh. Yahweh is the true cloud-rider. In OT usage, that's a divine prerogative. 

Therefore, it can't apply to an angel like Michael. For the Son of Man to be the cloud-rider is a divine insignia. 

ii) There's the question of what Daniel saw. What did the Son of Man look like? Supposed he looked like Jesus at the Transfiguration or the Christophany in Rev 1. That might have an angelomorphic appearance in the sense of a radiant being. But that doesn't mean the Son of Man is an angel. Just that, like angels, he looks, in that setting, like a celestial being.

iii) Also, the context of Dan 7 is not about an angel appearing before Yahweh. Rather, it's an enthronement scene. The ancient of days represents the old king, while the son of man represents the crown prince who's now entering into the kingship as the royal successor or coregent.

iv) Angels might be in the pictorial background of Dan 7 as courtiers in God's throne room. That, however, doesn't make the Son of Man an angel, for the relationship between the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man is a royal father/royal son dynamic.

For another perspective:

https://frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/PoythressVern1976HolyOnes.pdf

Fiery angel

On this occasion [Exod 3:2-3] however, the "angel/messenger" does not appear in human form, but as a flame of fire...The "Angel of YHWH" appears in the form of "self-sustaining fire"...The use of fire to represent the presence of God in accounts of theophanies may be due to its nonmaterial, formless, mysterious and luminous characteristics. Later in Exodus the "Angel of God" is identified with the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites during the day. T. D. Alexander, Exodus (IVP 2017), 82-83. 

Which confirms my own view that the traditional interpretation is mistaken. It wasn't a burning bush. Seen from a distance, it looked like a burning bush. But that was an optical illusion, caused by the luminous angel standing behind it or inside it. The bush was never on fire. Still a supernatural event, though. 

Did the angel take the form of fire, or did the angel have a humanoid but incandescent appearance? 

The angel seems to be metamorphic. It can take the form of a dust devil or fire devil–as well as humanoid form. And this isn't just an angelophany but a theophany. 

And this may presage the Transfiguration. Which would also explain the presence of Moses and Elijah, since both men were associated with supernatural fire. 

Flaming ministers

“He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire” (Heb 1:7).

1. Angels are common agents in Scripture, but is there any empirical evidence for angels? To my knowledge, this is a neglected topic. Is there anything more reliable than New Age or RadTrad Catholic sites? 

One potential source of information is a book by Emma Heathcote-James, Seeing Angels: True Contemporary Accounts of Hundreds of Angelic Experiences (London: John Blake, 2001). That's based on her doctoral dissertation at the University of Birmingham, which drew on 800 firsthand accounts. Given the academic background, it's a more reputable source than a lot of stuff on the subject. She's not obviously flakey. 

2. The book quotes and summarizes scores of reported angelic apparitions and related phenomena. I assess it the same way I assess reported miracles generally. I make allowance for flimflam, coincidence, wishful thinking. There is, though, a degree of cumulative credibility based on multiple independent reports of similar phenomena. One has to be a knee-jerk skeptic to dismiss all of it out of hand. What may be implausible in isolation becomes plausible if repeated by different observers at different times and place. 

If it's a question of establishing whether something exists or ever happens, the bar is quite low. How much does it take to disprove a universal negative? Not much.  

i) Atheists trap themselves in circular reasoning. They discount reported angelic apparitions (and other supernatural phenomena) because there's no evidence that angels exist. And what's the evidence that angels don't exist? It can't very well be absence of reported angelic apparitions. 

Only if we know in advance that angels don't exist are we entitled to automatically disregard eyewitness accounts of their existence. We have to know what the world is like, a world where angels don't exist. But how do we know what the world is like? That's something we discover, and reported phenomena contribute to our knowledge of the world. It's viciously circular to discount reported angelic apparitions on the grounds that such reports can never count as evidence for the claim in question. 

It's not as if there's evidence against the existence of angels which must be overcome by sufficient counterevidence. At best one might attempt to claim that there's insufficient evidence. But one can't justifiably claim there's no evidence, then use that to dismiss ostensible evidence to the contrary. The claim that there's no evidence for something is highly vulnerable to disconfirmation. The threshold for disproof is extremely low. All you need is some positive evidence.  

One doesn't have to believe every anecdote in her book. If even a handful are true, that's enough. 

There's a funny story about Laplace, the famous mathematician and scientist of the French Enlightenment. He didn't believe in meteorites. Farmers told him they saw rocks fall from the sky, but he waved that aside as backward superstition. He closed his mind to the evidence.  

ii) You also have cessationists who are impervious to testimonial evidence. But that's a dangerous place to be in. If extraordinary and miraculous things only happen in Scripture, while nothing like that happens outside the pages of Scripture, that creates a troublesome hiatus between what Scripture says is real and reality as you and others experience it. I'm not suggesting that every Christian, or even most Christians, need to experience something extraordinary or miraculous. But it's a problem to drive a wedge between the world of Scripture and the world outside of Scripture.

3. One superficial problem with the book is the classification system. She puts all reports in one angelic basket. That's in part because her informants have limited categories, so they describe an experience in angelic terms even if it's not specifically angelic. The book records a number of phenomena which are not necessarily or even probably angelic, although they are (if true) supernatural:

i) Audible voice

That could be God speaking directly to someone.

ii) Christophany

A few cases appear to be Christophanies rather than angelophanies. 

iii) Shekinah

Many of her informants describe supernatural light. Although angels can be luminous, many of these reports don't envision or depict an angelic figure, but just supernatural light. So that could be a luminous theophany, like the Shekinah. 

iv) Many cases aren't angelic apparitions, but apparitions of the dead. Grief apparitions and crisis apparitions. At least one case suggests bilocation. 

v) Some cases involve near-death or out-of-body experiences. 

vi) Generic miraculous intervention. Could be direct divine action. 

4. Some of the reputed angels look human. Their angelic identity is implied, not by their appearance, but by their supernatural abilities. 

Other reputed apparitions correspond to traditional Christian iconography. That could mean the apparition is imaginary–unless angels accommodate expectations, based on Western religious art, to be recognizable. 

5. She doesn't always identify the religious affiliation, if any, of the informant, but in many cases her informants profess to be Christian. In a few cases they were unbelievers for whom the encounter is a spiritual catalyst. 

6. The nature of the angelic apparitions and other phenomena vary, although they revolve around common situations. 

i) Miraculous intervention to protect people in danger

ii) Guidance for people who are (physically) lost

iii) Encouragement during a time of crisis. A deathbed experience. Angelic visitations to the sick or dying. Or luminous theophanies rather than angelophanies.  

iv) Supernatural warnings and premonitory dreams.

7. One intriguing case involved a visual apparition to someone congenitally blind. 

It's an interesting book. I wouldn't stake my life on it, but I find much of it credible. 

Why did Lucifer fall?

Why did Lucifer fall? Short answer: beats me!

It's a perennial theological question. Ultimately unanswerable. God knows. Some heavenly angels and fallen angels may know. Satan knows, unless he's in denial.

Because Milton wrote an epic poem on the fall of man, he had to have a theory, a backstory, to pad out one chapter of the Bible. 

The question goes to the origin of evil. How is the first sin possible? Sinners sin, but how does one become a sinner in the first place? What's the first step?

And it's wider than the fall of Lucifer. While Scripture is rather elliptical on the subject, there's an indication of a large-scale prehistoric revolt in heaven. So how do we explain the fall of so many angels? Indeed, the virtually simultaneous fall of so many angels? Why did Lucifer have so many followers? 

There are different ways of approaching the answer. It's like asking, what makes Harry Lime a villain? At one level, Lime is a villain because that's how Graham Greene wrote the character. But in principle there could be a backstory to explain why he's so amoral. 

By the same token, we can say Lucifer fell because God predestined him to fall. But there's still the question of motivation.

The problem or paradox depends in part on what assumptions lie behind the question. One way of posing the question is to ask, How can one fall from perfection to imperfection? 

But was Lucifer perfect? What does that mean? We might distinguish between three different things:

i) To be nice

ii) To be happy

iii) To be good

We're apt to think that if you're not good, then you're evil. But is it possible, at least initially, to be on a knife-edge between good and evil? An agent that has the unrealized potential to be good or evil?

We might also distinguish between a perfect agent and a perfect world. If an agent originates in a perfect world, does that ipso facto make him a perfect agent?

It's easy to be nice if you have it easy. It's easy to be happy if you have it easy. It's easy to be generous if you're rich, because it doesn't really cost you anything. 

Consider horror flicks about spoiled rich kids who take a trip. They're classmates. The smart set. They like each other. They're nice so long as the situation is nice.

But if they suddenly find themselves in a survival situation, then the veneer of amiability peels away. Classic fair-weather friends. If they're in competition for survival, they turn on each other.

Because all their wants and needs were provided for, they have no inner resources to tap into when that's removed. It's a cliche that a crisis brings out the best in some folks and the worst in others.

To take another example, suppose you have a teenage boy or girl who's self-absorbed. But then there's a crisis in the family. A parent or sibling becomes disabled or deathly ill. The teenager must take up the slack. There are three possible outcomes:

i) The crisis may reveal that the teenager had hidden reserves. That was there all along, but it took a crisis to bring it to the surface. The teenager was self-absorbed because there was no pressing need, and not because he was uncaring or inconsiderate. But when the crisis arises, he pivots. He adapts. He takes up the slack.  

ii) The crisis may reveal that the teenager is unprepared to face the challenge. It's a struggle. The crisis forces him to cultivate the necessary virtues. The need to meet the challenge is the process by which he develops what he needs to meet the challenge.

iii) He may walk away. He may abandon the ailing family member. Initially, he may make a token effort, but it's too demanding. It crimps his style. It's no fun. 

What if antelapsarian heaven was like a tropical paradise for angels. That's the only world they ever knew, from the moment of their inception. What if God then did an angelic trial by ordeal like he did to test Job or Abraham? What would be the reaction? Would that have a clarifying effect? 

Admittedly, this is mere conjecture, but it extrapolates from God's dealings with humans. And it transposes some insights from the soul-making theodicy to an angelic key.  

Clustered miracles

Accounts of the virgin birth occur in two of the four Gospels. That's not surprising, considering the fact that only two of the four Gospels even have nativity accounts. 

The virgin birth has a litmus test of orthodoxy. Unbelievers regard the virgin birth has a transparent cover story for a prenuptial scandal. 

I presume most of Mary's relatives and neighbors were initially skeptical. But the credibility of the virgin birth doesn't occur in isolation. Suppose you were one of Mary's skeptical in-laws. You think she had premarital sex. Indeed, that's what Joseph thought. He intended to divorce her.

But then Joseph abruptly changes his mind. He tells you about a revelatory dream he had. 

Then Elizabeth becomes pregnant, even though she's well past childbearing years. After Zechariah recovers his speech, he talks about an angelic apparition. 

Then shepherds say angels appeared to them, heralding the birth of Jesus. 

Later, the Magi arrive. 

Maybe you notice the odd behavior of a "star". 

Then Joseph claims to have another revelatory dream, warning him of danger, so he skips town with Mary and the Christchild. Shortly thereafter, soldiers sent by Herod massacre all the young boys. 

Maybe you near rumors about Anna and Simeon in the Temple.

Finally, Jesus grows up to be a renown exorcist and miracle-worker.

Mary's explanation, which struck you as initially highly implausible, becomes highly plausible in light of so many other miracles clustering around the person of Jesus. 

Angels at the tomb

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed (Mk 16:1-5).

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified (Mt 28:1-5).

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel (Lk 24:1-4).

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet (Jn 20:11-12).

1. The number of angels at the tomb is a familiar crux. Some readers chalk it up to legendary embellishment and/or divergent sources. Some readers don't think there were any angels at the tomb. Many inerrantists harmonize the accounts by saying that if there were two angels, then there was at least one angel, and so it's an issue of selective emphasis. 

However, this isn't just about inerrancy. If the Gospels get details wrong in the Resurrection accounts, that lowers confidence in the reliability of the reports. 

2. I'd like to approach this from a different angle: 

i) One potential problem is that readers all along the theological spectrum are bringing an unexamined assumption to the text. Ask yourself, from the viewpoint of Scripture, if you were at the tomb that morning, what you'd see. If angels were there, would you see them? Would everybody who went to the tomb see the same thing vis-a-vis angels? 

ii) Not necessarily, or even probably. In Scripture, angelic apparitions take different forms. Sometimes angels appear to be indistinguishable from humans. What gives them away is if they appear or disappear out of thin air, or reveal supernatural powers. Take the angels in Gen 19 who blind the Sodomites. 

ii) Sometimes angels have a radiant appearance. In that case, their luminescence divulges their supernatural identity.

iii) Sometimes angels assume corporeal form. These are physical apparitions. They are present as external objects to the observer. In that event, everyone would see the same thing. In that modality, if two angels were present, everyone would see two angels. The phenomenon involves an external sensory stimulus.

iv) Sometimes angels appear to people in dreams and visions. These are telepathic apparitions. Angels can access the minds of the human recipient. 

These aren't figments of the imagination. The cause originates outside the mind of the recipient, but it's still a psychological phenomenon. A telepathic projection. 

v) In the case of (iv), angels control the perception of the recipient. They are only seen by those to whom they reveal themselves telepathically. In that modality, if a group of people went to the tomb, they might simultaneously see different things. One observer might see no angels at all while another observer might see what appears to be an ordinary man, while another observer might see a radiant angel, while another observer might see two angels. 

As a result, they'd give different accounts of what they saw, or didn't see. Yet their reports would all be consistent in principle. Two observers can be present at the same place at the same time, yet angels might be detectable to one but indetectable to another. 

vi) That angels were seen by some witnesses in the cemetery doesn't imply that they were continuously present there. If one or two angels were seen by some witnesses inside the tomb, that doesn't entail that they sat in the tomb for hours. They might appear just to be seen by a particular witness, then disappear.

The fall of angels

The OT doesn't have much explicitly to say about the fall of angels. Whether Isa 14 & Ezk 28 allude to that primordial event is contested. Scholars commonly claim that the fall of angels represents an Intertestamental development. Indeed, that Satan evolved in Second Temple Judaism. However, I'd like to consider a neglected text:

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’... (Deut 13:1-2).

That raises an interesting question: what's the source of a false prophet's supernatural knowledge (foresight) and supernatural power (miracle)? In theory, he might be empowered by God. However, that runs counter to the companion passage:

But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die (Deut 18:20).

Yet if God is not the source, then by process of elimination, doesn't that leave evil spirits as the source of the false prophet's superhuman abilities? 

But in that case, were they always evil, or did they become evil. If so, that entails a declension from their original condition. 

Demythologizing angels and demons

1. Here's a cautionary tale of what happens when inerrancy is denied, then taken to a logical conclusion:

https://randalrauser.com/2018/01/angels-demons-part-obsolete-biblical-worldview/

It's like tugging on a loose thread of a knitted garment. The entire garment begins to unravel. 

2. I've critiqued the claim that Scripture operates with a three-story cosmography on numerous occasions, so I won't repeat myself here.

3. But beyond the general claim is the specific contention regarding angels and demons. Oddly enough, Rauser doesn't get around to explaining how biblical angels and demons are enmeshed in a three-story cosmography. 

I suspect many professing Christians visualize angels coming down from heaven or going up to heaven, like Mercury flying down from Mt. Olympus. Yet the Bible rarely uses that imagery. 

i) There are some examples in Revelation, but that's visionary material, and surreal things happen in visions. 

ii) Jn 1:51 is suggestive, but poetic.

iii) There's "Jacob's ladder" (Gen 28), but that's a dream. 

iii) Judges 13:20 has the angel merging with fire and rising with the flames. However, flames don't ordinarily rise all the way to the sky. Moreover, the depiction seems to suggest the angel transmuting into flame. 

iv) In Scripture, angels come from more than one direction (e.g. Judges 2:1; Rev 7:2).

v) In general, Scripture simply describes angels "appearing", "coming", or being "sent". 

vi) Perhaps the most explicit example in historical narrative is Mt 28:2. However, that's not a direct, eyewitness description, since the narrator wasn't present to see it happen. He may have gotten his information from one of the sentinels. So it may well be a stock idiom to paraphrase what he was told. 

vii) Finally, Rauser trots out the case of the demoniac, yet that has nothing to do with a three-story cosmography. Moreover, Rauser assumes that possession can't mimic symptoms of epilepsy. Yet cases of possession are hardly confined to ancient literary texts. There are well-documented examples by medical professionals. 

In retrospect

To understand the Spirit of the Lord in the OT it is first necessary to recognize that the Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit (as a distinct person of the Trinity) is due to progressive revelation and is not exactly how the Israelites would have viewed the Spirit of the Lord, in the Old Testament, and especially in the book of Judges, the Spirit of the Lord is portrayed as an extension of the presence, power, and authority of Yahweh. 

While some scholars have identified the appearances of the angel of the Lord as theophanies or Christophanies in which God (or the Second Person of the Trinity) himself is revealed, there are a number of problems with such a view. First, the Christophany view forces NT theology onto earlier OT texts, which violates the concept of progressive revelation and makes exegesis secondary to theology. Second, the Christophany view dilutes the uniqueness of of the incarnation event and undercuts the teaching of Heb 1, which reveals Christ's superiority over the angels (cf. 1 Pet 3:22). Third, both views ignore what is now widely known from ancient Near Eastern practices that envoys, who were sent by kings or deities, functioned as authoritative mouthpieces for their superior. Like a prophet, who occasionally shares the same title (malak, see Hab 1:13; cf. 2 Chron 36:15-16; Isa 42:19; 44:26; Mal 1:1; 3:1), the messenger would often speak the words of his sender in the first person, and the recipients would respond to it as though they were dealing directly with the sender. Thus is it preferable to understand the angel of the Lord not as an ontological equivalent to God himself (e.g. note how the Lord is distinguished from the angel in Judg 6:21-23 and 13:16) but rather as a function that is filled by a human or angelic intermediary who is sent by God to speak and act on his behalf. K. Way, Judges and Ruth (Baker 2016), 30,79.

This raises some perennial issues in hermeneutics. I've discussed the general issue on many occasions, but now I'd like to approach it from different angles:

1. The first time you see a movie or read a novel, or read a history book (assuming you don't know the plot), you're in the same situation as the characters or participants. Like theirs, your viewpoint is prospective. You don't know what to expect. You don't know how things will turn out.

When, however, you see a movie or read a novel for a second time, your viewpoint is retrospective. Because you now know how the story ends, you bring that later insight into how you interpret the earlier action. The first-time perspective is unique and unrepeatable. 

There are, in fact, some people who only see a move once or read a novel once because, having lost the element of surprise, they lose interest. But that's pretty shallow. 

2. Take some concrete examples. If you're reading Gen 2-3 for the first time, you share the blinkered viewpoint of Eve. You don't know what the serpent is up to. 

But on a second reading, the scene has dramatic ironic because you now know something Eve doesn't. She's oblivious to her peril. This conversation will lead to expulsion from paradise. There's a particular suspense in seeing that someone is in danger when they themselves are oblivious to the danger they are in. Alfred Hitchcock used the example of having viewers see a man put a time bomb in a box, and put the box under a table. The audience knows when the bomb will go off. People sitting at the table have no idea.

Or take the scene of David viewing Bathsheba's bathe. On a second reading, you don't view that incident in isolation. Rather, you know that this will set in motion a disastrous chain reaction. You know far more about the consequences of David's fateful lust that he knew at the time. You know where it all leads, like falling dominoes. 

Consider the curse sanctions in Deuteronomy. Reading them in hindsight, which is, of necessity, what all of us do, is a different experience than hearing the warnings for the first time, in advance of the Babylonian exile and Assyrian deportation. We can't really forget what we know. What was future for them is past for us. We inevitably read those dire warnings with a sense of fatalism, not in the que sera sera sense, but because we know what happened and how it happened. 

Or take a thriller in which the behavior of one character is initially puzzling and intriguing. As the plot unfolds, it turns out that he is a spy. That explains his enigmatic behavior early on. It's not as if, upon each rereading, we should try to forget the plot. That's not something we can do, even if we tried.

3. In general, there's nothing exceptional about bringing later information to bear when we interpret a story. That isn't unique to how some Christians read the Bible. To the contrary, that's how we read stories generally. 

4. To be sure, we need to guard against anachronistic interpretations of a certain kind. This in part raises the question of whether the viewpoint of a particular audience supplies an interpretive frame of reference, and if so, what audience would that be? Is it the original audience? Or is it the canonical audience? Compare an OT Jew who only had the Pentateuch–with post-exilic Jews (e.g. Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah, Malachi, the Chronicler). They read the Pentateuch, not as a self-contained literary unit, but in light of Israel's evolving history as well as Israel's evolving canon. They are able to see a trajectory leading out of the Pentateuch. Is that a misguided perspective? How can they not read the Pentateuch in light of subsequent historical and canonical developments? That's well before we ever get to the NT. 

5. If the Spirit of God is same individual in the OT and the NT, if the OT successful refers to the same individual, if the Spirit of God is a distinct person of the Trinity, then he will have the same attributes across time (indeed, across possible worlds) even if our knowledge of the Spirit is progressively revealed. Like my example of the spy in the thriller. He was already a spy when the story began. His true identity only became apparent in the subsequent course of events, yet even though other characters were ignorant of his true identity, the reader is privy to something they don't know. 

Suppose oil reserves are discovered on a parcel of land in 1950. Although that's the first time the property was known to have oil reserves, the land had those reserves for thousands or millions of years. That was already true about the land, in the distant past. 

6. To take a different example, Abraham is the ancestor of David. Of course, you wouldn't know that if all you had to go by was Genesis or the Pentateuch. But suppose you're a Jew living at the time Samuel was written. So you have everything up to and including Samuel as your canonical frame of reference. That will shed a backward casting light on Abraham in Genesis. On God's plans for Abraham and his posterity. On the historical significance of his covenant with Abraham.

7. My maternal grandfather is one of my ancestors. He died before I was born. At what point did he become my ancestor? There are different ways to answer that question. You might say he became my ancestor when I was conceived. But given my existence, he was always going to be my ancestor.

Suppose you were alive when he was alive. Suppose you had foreknowledge of his progeny. You'd already view him in the larger context of his descendants. 

Or, to consider this from yet another angle, if my mother is my ancestor, and her father is her ancestor, then he became my ancestor when she was conceived. The ancestor of my ancestor is my ancestor. I can view his ancestorship retroactively. 

8. Over and above the general hermeneutical issue of progressive revelation in reference to the angel of the Lord:

i) What's the difference between a theophany and a Christophany? In my opinion, the OT usually refers to "God" or "Yahweh" without further Trinitarian specification. By the same token, the angel of the Lord doesn't necessarily represent out any particular person of the Godhead. It could just be generic. 

If so, there's a sense in which a theophany will include a Christophany, just as the Trinity includes the Son. Although a theophany doesn't single out the Son, the Son will be included in a theophany. In that respect, there's a false dichotomy between theophanies and Christophanies, for a Christophany is a subset of a theophany. 

ii) An OT Christophany wouldn't dilutes the uniqueness of of the incarnation event for the obvious reason that an OT Christophany isn't an OT incarnation. It's categorically distinct.

iii) An OT Christophany wouldn't undercut the teaching of Heb 1, which reveals Christ's superiority over the angels, for the obvious reason that, on a Christophanic identification, the Angel of the Lord isn't an "angel" in the sense of heavenly, discarnate creatures, but God manifesting himself by simulating an angel.

iv) Some apparitions of the angel of the Lord are neutral on whether that's a theophany or angelophany, but in other cases (e.g. Gen 18; Exod 3), it doesn't have the same status as a creaturely envoy, like a prophet of God.