#836 Michael Heiser on Monotheism

Dr. craig’s response

While I am no expert on Heiser, Josh, it seems to me that this is all a matter of mere semantics. The word elohim is neither “more precise” nor “more accurate” than the terms “monotheism” and “polytheism.” On the contrary, elohim is vague, meaning something like “divine being.” In Judaism, all sorts of things can be called elohim, including the Jewish king, the patriarchs, angels, and aspects of the divine nature. But these things are all creatures or personifications of divine attributes. As Heiser recognizes, God alone is the Creator of all and therefore he alone is to be worshiped. None of these other things were to be worshiped. There is only one God, i.e., monotheism is true.

Especially important in this regard is the work of Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham. Hurtado characterizes the chief characteristic of Second Temple Judaism as “its defiantly monotheistic stance.”[1] Failure to maintain such a stance was “perhaps the greatest sin possible for a Jew.”[2] Indeed, the polytheism of non-Jewish religion was portrayed by devout Jews as “utter stupidity and the worst of many corrupt features of Gentiles.”[3] Although Jewish monotheism of the Second Temple period accommodated very honorific rhetoric about various intermediate figures between God and the world, such intermediate figures fall into one of two categories: (i) supernatural but nonetheless created beings like the angels Michael and Yahoel or exalted patriarchs like Moses and Enoch and (ii) personifications of aspects of God Himself which had no independent existence, such as His Word and His Wisdom.[4] 

In his influential work on the character of ancient Jewish monotheism, Bauckham identifies two characteristics that uniquely mark off Israel’s God from all others, namely that “he is Creator of all things and sovereign Ruler of all things.”[5] There is a bright dividing line which separates God ontologically from everything else, a bifurcation which Bauckham attempts to capture by the term “transcendent uniqueness.” God’s status as the sole ultimate reality comes to practical expression in Jewish monolatry, the restriction of worship as properly directed toward God alone. [6]  According to Bauckham this restriction “most clearly signaled the distinction between God and all other reality.”[7] On the basis of his lengthy examination of Jewish sources, Hurtado concurs: “In the exclusive monotheism of the Jewish religious tradition, . . . it was worship which was the real test of monotheistic faith in religious practice.”[8] Hurtado cautions that “It is possible to misinterpret the honorific descriptions of principal angels and other exalted figures in ancient Jewish texts. . . , particularly if we treat those references out of the context of the religious practice of those who wrote the texts.”[9] It is in this “outward and tangible sphere of worship practices” that we have “more obvious and crucial indications” of Jews’ monotheistic commitment.[10]

Heiser, of course, realized and affirmed this. But for some reason or other, he seemed to enjoy presenting his view as something more radical and revolutionary than it was.

As for your practical question, it’s very interesting to look at the apostle Paul’s attitude toward the Greco-Roman gods of his day. Paul was no inclusivist! Paul did not believe that Jupiter and Diana and Venus and the rest of the pantheon actually existed, much less that they were divine. Instead, he said,

“As to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one.’ For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (I Corinthians 8.4-6).

The so-called gods did not really exist. In so far as any reality lay behind these pagan practices, it was demonic. “What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons” (I Corinthians 10.19-20). Those who converted to Christianity out of paganism were therefore to “turn to God from idols” (I Thessalonians 1.9), not to retain these beings or practices in their newfound Christian faith.