Michael Heiser is one of the most influential Old Testament scholars over the past decade. In this video, Sean is joined by Talbot Old Testament professor Charlie Trimm to discuss Heiser’s best-selling book “The Unseen Realm.” They discuss these questions and more: Why has Heiser been so influential? Are his ideas orthodox? Should Christians read his works? What does it mean to biblically embrace the supernatural realm?

Charlie Trimm received his Ph.D. from Wheaton College in 2012, writing his dissertation on God acting as a divine warrior in the exodus. His research interests include warfare in the ancient Near East, difficult topics relating to the ethics of God in the Old Testament, Exodus, and J.R.R. Tolkien. He is also a director of Every Voice: A Center for Kingdom Diversity in Christian Theological Education. When he is not teaching or writing, he can often be found spending time with family or watching Arsenal, his favorite football (soccer) team.



Episode Transcript

Sean: Michael Heiser is one of the most influential modern theologians. His book, Unseen Realm, has sold probably close to half a million copies. And his YouTube videos have generated tens of millions of views. In fact, my interview with Heiser about three years ago is the most widely viewed interview on YouTube I've ever done. What is the supernatural worldview that he teaches? Is it orthodox? And should Christians and non-Christians engage his writings? I've been asked these questions for years. And given that a 10-year expanded and updated version of his book, The Unseen Realm, releases this summer, it's time for a deep dive. So, to join us today is chair of the Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology, my colleague and friend, Charlie Trimm. Thanks for doing this.

Charlie: Thank you for having me on.

Sean: Well, I've been asked, like I said, for years my thoughts on Heiser. And I'm not an Old Testament scholar, so I felt a little bit out of my depth. And I've wanted to do this…the moment I saw this update, I was like, it's time. And you're the first person who came to mind. So, I asked you before I even knew if you agreed with him or disagreed with him. But the point of this is to just do a deep dive on what he taught and get a counter perspective of an Old Testament scholar, and then we'll let people decide for themselves where they land. With that said, let's just start with a question. For those wondering, who is Michael Heiser? Who is he?

Charlie: So, Michael Heiser is an Old Testament scholar. He got his PhD at University of Wisconsin-Madison at a premier Semitics program. He published several articles in the academic world, but he's most well known, as you said, for the book The Unseen Realm and similar books like Angels and Demons, and so on. And he was, interestingly, never a tenure track professor after getting his PhD. But he worked at Logos and then worked at a school for a few years. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago from pancreatic cancer. And so, he's not with us anymore.

Sean: Michael Heiser is brilliant. He's a creative, novel thinker. And he was so gracious and kind in my interactions with him. So, he's missed. In some sense, I wish he was here to say, Charlie, here's where I disagree, and here's how I see things. We can't have that conversation, obviously. But maybe tell us the story that he shares that originally motivated him to write The Unseen Realm, and what you think we can learn from his encounter with the unseen realm, so to speak.

Charlie: The story he tells is that he was sitting at church during his PhD program. And one of his buds, also in the program, was sitting next to him. And, as classic nerds do, he said, here, read this verse. And he passed his Hebrew Bible over and said, read this verse out of Psalm 82. And he read one verse. And this verse shook his mind. And he said he didn't hear anything else in that sermon. Here is the verse, Psalm 82:1. "God has taken his place in the divine council. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment." And he saw, in the second part—Elohim, as the Hebrew word there—gods is the same as the first part. So, God is sitting among gods. So, we believe in monotheism. What are these gods doing here? And so, this is what began his research track for the rest of his life.

Sean: That's such a fascinating encounter, that something so simple, reading a verse we've read probably hundreds, maybe thousands of times, you look at it differently, and it opens up this entire world of seeing things differently in his case. I actually heard about him because a friend of mine, Scott Lindsey—who I've had on my show before, talking about, kind of, artificial intelligence and Bible study—he contacted me and he goes, you've got to have this guy Michael Heiser on. I had not even heard of him. I started reading his stuff and was just blown away at how interesting he was. And the same kind of moments of like, wait a minute, why didn't I see that? Now, that raises, kind of, the next question I want to ask you. So, I'm curious, as a scholar, why do you think his books and maybe his YouTube videos are just so popular?

Charlie: I don't quite know how to answer that question. Because if we could put that magic in a bottle, that would be wonderful, if we could replicate that.

Sean: [laughs]

Charlie: Like, how can we get people excited about the Old Testament? Because routinely, as an Old Testament scholar, people say to me, I love the Bible because Michael Heiser got me interested in the Old Testament. Can we get more of that? So, other Old Testament scholars routinely tell me that as well. People are just interested in the Old Testament because of Michael Heiser. So, I think, partly, he was an early adapter online. So, the podcast and YouTube videos, he got in on that pretty early. He was a gifted speaker. And so, as he spoke, people listened and were engaged. But I think the primary thing was, he just talked about interesting stuff. And so, as you share in your testimony about him, when people read Heiser and hear Heiser, they're interested. They want to know more about what he's talking about. And so, I think that's one of the primary draws, is just the content is so interesting.

Sean: That's good. So, even though you're going to offer a different perspective than Heiser, you're, like, grateful and thankful as an Old Testament scholar that he's invited people to care and think about and wrestle with these texts. That's 80…maybe not 80% of it, but that's a huge piece of it. I think you're right. A few things about Heiser. I think, rather than leaning away from the difficult passages, he leans into them. He's like, this is weird in the Old Testament. If it's weird, it's important. A lot of pastors and scholars will read quickly, move on. I don't know what to do with this. He's like, let's talk about this. I think that's one reason why. Second is, he has a comprehensive way of looking at what's called this Deuteronomy 32 worldview we'll talk about, that, if he's right, makes sense of Paul's writings, Jesus' [teachings], the writings in Psalms. It's a holistic worldview. And I think we're looking for ways to connect dots. I think that's a piece of it. And I think the other piece that makes him popular is, agree with him or not on the particulars, he is absolutely right that there is an unseen realm. There is a supernatural worldview. And there's an embarrassment sometimes in the church to believe in demons, to believe in this divine counsel, whatever it is, to believe that miracles happen. And he's, like, unapologetic, saying, this happened. It's a part of our worldview. And so, I think some Christians are almost jarred by that, going, wow, I signed up for this. And then when he gets to the end of the book, he also has these things like baptism. He's like, this isn't just a physical exercise. This is, like, an exercise in spiritual warfare, describing to the heavens what side of the cosmic battle you're on. The Lord's Supper is that way. So, when you read his stuff, it just makes you feel like you're a part of something bigger and it matters. And I think he just captured that with so many people. Now, people who are watching this, if you have other reasons why you think Heiser has been so popular online, leave a comment there. I would love to know if I missed something, 'cause I wanna capture that magic, 'cause I wanna make people excited about the Bible. Okay, so some people might be thinking…and I thought this when I heard from my friend at Logos. He goes, there's a 10-year update coming out, and I thought, how does this work? Because Heiser passed away, sadly, two years ago. Did other scholars add to this? Did they take other writings, like a manuscript, that was not published? How is he updating a book from the grave? What's different in this 10-year update?

Charlie: So, what I believe happened is, when he published the original book, he had a lot of extra material. So, The Unseen Realm is somewhere around 400 pages. It's a hefty read.

Sean: [laughs]

Charlie: But he had a lot more material than this. So, what he did is he took all the extra material and put it online on a website. And so, that's been accessible for the past decade. So, as far as I can tell—it's not entirely clear in the introduction to this new edition—I believe what has happened is they have taken the material from the website, put it in sidebars, and then added it to the book. And so, the book is much larger now, but it's material from when he did the original research, rather than things being added more recently.

Sean: That makes sense. Now, I suppose I could have reached out and just asked them what the difference was, since they sent us a PDF months ahead of time. So, if somebody knows specifically, put it in the comments, let us know. But that makes sense. What's cool about it though is sometimes he wrote blogs online responding to issues in the book. So, you could spend hours tracking down his stuff—or his team placed it there—it comes up and says, what about this? He responds. So, really what this is doing…I think the book has incredible value within itself, but it's a big time saver of more of his thoughts related to this he didn't formally publish. So, that's what people might expect in the 10-year expanded edition coming out this summer. Okay, let's start diving into some of the specifics of what he taught. So, maybe give us kind of a 30,000 foot view of the, quote, “supernatural world of the unseen realm” that he taught.

Charlie: So, his main idea is that God has a divine counsel. And this is where people immediately start asking questions, because, wait, we're monotheists. Like, what are these gods? Like, what's going on here? And we'll talk about some specific verses later on. But basically, the idea is, God has these beings around Him, spirit beings, and they give Him advice, and they work together. They help God do a variety of things in the world. And so, for him, he sees evidence of this in a variety of places in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and a variety of implications on life today and understanding other texts and so on. But the core idea is God has this divine counsel, and there's some good guys and some bad guys, and that influences large parts of the biblical story.

Sean: That's really helpful. In one of the updated pieces of the book, somebody asked him, well, why do you have a divine counsel? Do you need it? And does God need it? And his answer is like, no, God doesn't need a divine counsel. God doesn't need us. But He chooses, for reasons of his own. Now, just so people are listening, we're gonna walk through some of the details of this. But the divine counsel would include beings like angels and demons, but even many other beings beyond that, correct?

Charlie: It gets a bit technical, because he would most likely differentiate the divine counsel from other spirit beings. So, just 'cause you're a spirit being doesn't necessarily mean you're in a divine counsel. And so, there's different, say, rebellions of different bad guys against God, and there's different roles, and so on. And so, he's nervous, for example, about using angels, the word angel, to describe the spirit beings, 'cause that's a functional term, and not all the spirit beings might necessarily be messengers, which is what the word angel means. And so, it's not quite that simple, but it's beginning to describe it at a broad level.

Sean: We're getting there. Actually, when I first read his book on demons, that was game-changing for me, 'cause I think of angels as certain particular beings, and yet he talks about the angel of the Lord as a messenger. That is the pre-incarnate Christ who's a messenger. Doesn't mean he was an actual angel in the way, say, Jehovah's Witnesses might argue, where we depict angels. So, you're right, it's a little more complex than that. All right, so, there's a lot of passages. He makes his case all across the Old Testament, through the New Testament. We won't look at all of them. I tried to pull out about five passages that kind of best explained where he's coming from and why. And one of the first ones you read a moment ago, he actually said—Heiser said—when he read this, it hit him like a bolt of lightning, which is an awesome metaphor. So, maybe read the passage again or explain what is it in this passage, and how does he use it to advance the idea of the divine counsel?

Charlie: So, Psalm 82:1, once again, God, which is Elohim in Hebrew, has taken his place in the divine counsel. In the midst of the elohim, He holds judgment. And that's the contrast, because clearly, the second part can't be Yahweh. That can't be the supreme God. So, then, who is going on here? What's happening? And so, one of the traditional readings of this is that these are human judges, and Heiser is quick to discount that, I think rightly. I think these are spirit beings of some kind. And so, what we see here is this image of divine counsel. God is ruling over it. And then in the rest of the chapter, we have God judging members of the divine counsel, which is interesting of itself too. So, like, what are they doing wrong, and so on. So, Psalm 82 talks about them committing injustice of various kinds, and then God saying, you will die like humans. And so, God is judging these other members of the divine counsel. And then, to explain that, [Heiser] appeals to several other texts, which we'll get to in a moment. But this is one of the clearest places of these spirit beings surrounding God, and then especially them being called elohim. And so, elohim, Heiser argues—and I think he's correct in this—it's a broad term. It doesn't mean the one supreme deity. It basically means a member of the spirit realm. And so, for example, when the deceased Samuel rises from the ground, he's called an elohim. So, we're not equating Samuel with Yahweh, but we're saying, oh, there's someone from the spirit realm that's rising. And so, the elohim here—and in Hebrew, I think, in general—has a broader meaning than just the one supreme deity. It's one who is a member of the spirit realm.

Sean: That was eye-opening for me as well. I always thought elohim was a name, like Yahweh is a name distinctly for the God of Israel, but he makes some other careful distinctions where he'll say, there are other elohims, but there's no other elohim like Yahweh. That's a distinction that he makes. Even if we don't agree with him on the divine counsel, that's what I think keeps him within orthodoxy. Now, I know other people right now are going, okay, wait a minute, is this polytheism? Is this orthodox? Dr. Charlie Trimm, what do you think? I would say, hold on, we're trying to understand his worldview first, and then we'll get your take, which, by the way, I haven't even heard yet. I'm really interested in hearing it. So, Psalm 82:1 is helpful. This was a passage that I picked that jumped out to me. I don't know if it's the most central, but I thought it was fascinating. And there's this story in 1 Kings chapter 22, verses 16 through 23. Verse 19 jumped out to me, and then when I was reading this book, I'm like, how did I miss this? Where it says, "I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne with all the hosts of heaven, standing beside him from his right hand and from his left hand." What is going on at 1 Kings 22, at least in terms of how Heiser understands it?

Charlie: Yeah, so I would say this is a clear example of the divine counsel. And so, in this case, we don't have the word elohim. We have the host of heaven. Host is a military term, so we get this image of military forces surrounding Him. So, maybe it's not exactly the Psalm 82…we're not sure, but it seems to be the same kind of picture, where we have God with those spirit beings around Him. And what we have in Kings is we see them in action. Like, the various members of divine counsel offer ideas, and then one offers an idea that Yahweh decides to go with. And so, we see them working together with Yahweh to create a plan for what to do in this particular situation. And it's all in favor or in service of this broader story. It's not designed to tell you about the divine counsel or anything like that. It's just kind of a passing remark, a passing part of the story about something else. And so this, I think, gives us a pretty good hint, a glimpse of what the divine counsel looks like in action.

Sean: One of the things I appreciate about Heiser is he talks a lot about saying, let's understand the Bible on its own terms, given its language, given its culture of the time. That's, I think, another reason why he's popular, is he really emphasizes that. And Bible-believing Christians and even Jews and beyond are like, yes, what does the text say? Now, the other point I'll draw out is, our first passage was from Psalm 82, wisdom literature, and then 1 Kings, which is probably more of a historical book. And then we go to Genesis chapter one. And we don't have to settle the question of genre, but clearly, something else besides just a straightforward historical narrative additionally is taking place in the first chapter of the book. I'm not saying it's not history. Don't call me a heretic. Not my point. But there's endless debate about those first 11 chapters. So, I'm trying to show—the next one will be Deuteronomy—that there's a range of passages, now the law, that he pulls from the divine counsel. If this was all in Psalms, I might say, okay, this is all metaphorical, it's music, but he draws from more other passages. So, Genesis 1. God says, “Let us make mankind in our image.” Genesis 1:26. There's a lot of debate about this. How does Heiser understand that famous passage?

Charlie: So, the traditional Christian understanding of this is, this must be Trinity, because how else can God say, “let us?” And so, from a New Testament perspective, God is Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So, clearly, it must be that. Old Testament scholars, for years, have been a little bit nervous about doing that, because the Trinity is not as clear in the Old Testament, and so Heiser is part of that. So, for him, he says the “us” is not Trinity. It's divine counsel. Who's with God in the Old Testament? Well, it's the host of heaven, it's the elohim, it's these what we would call angel spirit beings. And so, what Heiser sees in this creation account is God saying to the divine counsel, “let us,” together, make them. Now, Heiser's quick to say, in the following verse, when it says “and God created,” that is a singular verb. So, we don't have multiple creators here. It's not like God is working with the angels directly to create humans. It's almost, in a sense, the angels are his sounding board, or almost like his audience, where He says, like, let's do this great thing, and then Yahweh's the one who does it. Like, that is very clear in the following verse, that Yahweh is the one who created. Singular verb. And so, the divine counsel plays a role, and you can fill in the gaps imaginatively. Did they have some ideas? Like, was the platypus the idea of this angel over here or something?

[laughter]

Charlie: I don't know, but maybe they had some advisory role. Maybe they just said, Yahweh, that is amazing, do it. But whatever it is, they were there with Yahweh when He created. But Yahweh, singularly, He is the one who did the creation.

Sean: So, I remember reading or listening to a commentary on Genesis by Dennis Prager, who's Jewish. And it's the first time I heard somebody take this passage, and he said, “let us” like He's announcing to the angels, that's what the “us” is. Now, when I read Heiser, I was like, oh, you could take that not just the angels, but the divine counsel, whatever those other spirit beings are, seems to me. I don't want to jump too far ahead to critique, but if the divine counsel can be established elsewhere, this seems to be consistent with it. Just like I would say, if God is Trinitarian, this is consistent with it, but I don't know that you can draw the Trinity out of this, 'cause it doesn't say three, it doesn't define it in the way we would want to. This is where some of the debate and discussion is going that we'll come back to. But two more passages, and this next one is perhaps the most important, because he describes his views sometimes as a Deuteronomy 32 worldview. So, Psalm 82 got his attention, but Deuteronomy 32 spells this out. I think if you asked Heiser, give me one text that lays out the divine counsel, he'd point towards this. So, what is going on there, and how does it make his case?

Charlie: Deuteronomy 32, and this is where we have to get technical in order to explain it. So, apologize in advance for some Greek and Hebrew.

Sean: Some people are excited. They're not apologizing, they're like, let's go.

[laughter]

Charlie: So, Deuteronomy 32:8. “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.” Now, if you read that in the NIV, there's one major difference at the end. So, my ESV here says “the number of the sons of God.” The NIV says “the number of the sons of Israel,” which is considerably different. So, the difference here is the Masoretic text, which is the standard received text for the Old Testament in Hebrew, the one that we usually go with when we read Old Testament, that's the one that says “number of the sons of Israel.” However, the Greek translation and one of the Dead Sea Scrolls agree against the Masoretic text. So, Greek translation, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they say “the sons of God.” And so, I think given the external evidence—the Greek translation, Dead Sea Scroll, as well as that power of explanation—I could see a Hebrew scribe getting a bit nervous about “sons of God.” So, just like some people in modern days are a bit nervous about connecting God with spirit beings and so on, I could see a Hebrew scribe saying, let's change this to “sons of Israel” instead. And so, that's my guess about how things have shifted over the years.

Sean: Can I pause for a second before we go any further? There's also debate about, say, the height of Goliath, and the Masoretic text has him the equivalent of nine feet tall. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint are closer to, like, six foot nine. So, this isn't the only case in which there's some textual questions at play, not just interpretive exegesis questions. But then we have to ask, what's the most reasonable? And what you're saying is, typically, there's a move from more controversial to less. You wouldn't intentionally interpret something in a way that would bring on controversy for the most part, as far as we can guess. That's helpful. Now, keep going with what this means and how you take it.

Charlie: Let me have a side note, too, for those of you getting nervous about changing Bibles. So, I'm writing a commentary on Exodus, and part of what I've done is I've read every single scrap of Exodus in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And there's a variety of other readings, and so on. It's less than ten places, I think, where the Masoretic texts I have changed to something that's in a Dead Sea Scroll. So, it's very minimal. This is not a common thing. It's not like every verse that the Dead Sea Scroll has changed something. So, this is not very common. So, just to calm people who are—

Sean: We need to do a show on that, but I digress. Let's come back to that. That's really helpful.

Charlie: So, in this case, Deuteronomy 32:8, what we have is then the division of the world according to the number of the sons of God. So, I think what's going on is the peoples of the world are being divided into various groups, and then each group gets its patron son of God. So, think guardian angel, but at a corporate level. So, this group over here, you get this spirit being, this group over here, you get this spirit being, and so on. And so, God is dividing up the nations, and each nation would then get a patron deity, if you wanna say elohim, or spirit being, or something along those lines. Now, what's a little bit less clear is, is this judgment? Is it blessing? Like, did God give the patron deity as a gift to the nations? And the goal was, okay, patron deity, your job is to help these people serve Yahweh better? Or is it judgment? You guys messed up; I'm gonna give you this terrible spirit being, and your life is gonna be miserable. And so, putting this verse together with Psalm 82, what you could say is, maybe it was a good spirit being at the beginning, and then he went rogue. And then Psalm 82 is God judging that spirit being or a variety of them for basically following what is the traditional Satan narrative. Instead of helping people follow God better, they are wanting people to serve me instead, and so, becoming idolatrous. That's a little bit unclear. But at least what's clear is, we have these spirit beings connected to various groups of humans, which then could explain the origin of, say, foreign deities in the Old Testament like Baal and Chemosh. So, Chemosh is the God of Moab. Maybe it's not just a figment of their imagination. Maybe this is an actual spirit being who was appointed by God over Moab. And once again, did he start out good and go bad? Was it judgment? That part's not as clear.

Sean: Okay, so this is where it gets really controversial and interesting to me. So, maybe just explain to make sure our viewers are tracking with this. I think most Christian tradition would say Baal does not exist. Murdoch, whoever these gods are, don't exist. They're like idols. They're false gods. They're not real. On Heiser's worldview, at least some of them do. God's lowercase g, these sons of gods described in Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32 that were set to be in charge of, maybe, protecting in some fashion these people groups, fell. So, they actually exist as lowercase gods. They're real, not just idols?

Charlie: Correct.

Sean: Okay, that is super interesting. Now, I don't wanna get ahead of ourselves, because we could start just talking about this and unpacking it. Our goal so far…and there's one more passage I want you to explain, 'cause I think it relates to this. Genesis 6:1-4. And this is a passage, oh my goodness, if there's any passage that there's more debate and confusion and is weird in the Bible, Genesis has to be on the top five list, maybe number one. I have no idea. So, what's going on in this passage? What's Heiser's take on it? And how does it fit within his larger worldview?

Charlie: So, to step back for a moment, Heiser sees three major rebellions in the first few chapters of Genesis. So, Genesis 3, the snake episode, that's the first rebellion. Kind of traditional Christian theology there. And then Heiser connects what we were just talking about, Deuteronomy 32, with the Tower of Babel. So then, as the people go out from the Tower of Babel, you get this division of the peoples among all the various spirit beings. So, that's the third one. So, one is Genesis 3, third one is Tower of Babel, Deuteronomy 32, and spirit beings, patron deities, and so on. The second one is Genesis 6, and this is where it starts getting weird. So, let me read Genesis 6 for us, just to start out. “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. Then Yahweh said, ‘My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be 120 years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” And then the story just moves on.

Sean: [laughs]

Charlie: So many questions.

Sean: Agreed. Okay, so Heiser has this unique take on this passage. As far as I can tell, it's unique, maybe some others have—

Charlie: Well, it's not quite unique.

Sean: Okay.

Charlie: So, he's actually going with a significant stream of reception history, as far as what this passage is talking about. So, there's been a variety of interpretations over the years that read these “sons of God” as human in some way. So, maybe it's kings who are abusing their authority, or maybe it's the line of Seth intermarrying with the line of Cain, and they're not supposed to be doing that or something like that. But a significant line of interpretation has been, when it says “sons of God,” you read what “sons of God” means elsewhere in the Old Testament, which is spirit beings. And so, if you just read the text, that seems like it's a pretty straightforward argument. You have spirit beings coming down and having children with human women. And the main problem with that is just, it's really weird.

Sean: [laughs]

Charlie: Like, you have spirit beings having kids with human women? Like, what? But that has been an important interpretive viewpoint through the years, especially in Second Temple Judaism. So, later Jewish texts, kind of in between Old Testament and New Testament—and we see this most likely in 2 Peter and Jude in the New Testament, so both of those books—most likely refer to the story and take the angelic interpretation here. So, Heiser is not unique in that. He's drawing on a specific interpretive stream of that.

Sean: And it fits in his worldview, 'cause it's the second fall that he has in his larger scheme of things.

Charlie: Correct. And then where he takes it somewhat further is these Nephilim. So, who are the Nephilim? Heiser would say the Nephilim are the product of that union between the spirit beings and the humans. So, kind of half angel, half human, something like that. And so, the Nephilim are the results, and then they cause all these problems and so on along the way. And then, where it starts getting really weird—if you didn't think it was weird already—he says that when the Nephilim die, the spirit of the Nephilim become what we know as demons. So, this is the origin of demons, is the dead Nephilim. Their spirit becomes demons.

Sean: Okay, is that unique to him, or there are other scholars that hold that kind of view of the Nephilim?

Charlie: There are fewer with that. So, he gets his view in large part from Second Temple Judaism, in particular a book called 1 Enoch. And so, 1 Enoch is very clear about what it presents as the view. So, this idea of demons coming from the dead Nephilim is straight from 1 Enoch. And so, in Second Temple Judaism, there's all kinds of stories like this that Heiser is drawing on.

Sean: The question Heiser wrestles with…and what I appreciate about this is these are questions I've had, and I don't always know how to make sense of these Old Testament questions. But there seem to be these Nephilim, there are these Nephilim before the flood, and then they show up afterwards. So, he's like, how does this happen? Was it through the seed of Noah? That seems unlikely.

Charlie: There is one Jewish tradition that says that's the case.

Sean: Oh, that explains it that way? Okay, so that's one account that tries to explain it. That's possible. The other one is he says whatever fall created the Nephilim at the beginning happened again post-flood, just not described. That's plausible and would fit within his narrative. And then he talks about how these Nephilim and, is it, the Anakim, like, these large in the land and even Goliath, are tied to these fallen demons, really. So, on that sense, when he talks about—I know you've written on this, I don't wanna take the conversation too far aside—destroying the land and cleansing it, he says the genocide in the Old Testament, some of this is tied towards the demonic roots of the Nephilim going back to this fall.

Charlie: Yeah, so he would say it's not just some, it is the reason for the destruction of the Canaanites. It's all back to Genesis 6. So, we are, in a sense, cleaning up the Genesis 6 mess by this Canaanite conquest because of the Nephilim who are still present in the land.

Sean: Oh, I have so many questions about that. Maybe we'll do an entire show on that, 'cause you've written a separate book on the genocide in Canaan. And that…oh, I have so many questions here, but I'm trying to help people see how we piece some of this together. Okay, that's the specific passages. Now, he has a chapter where he talks about what's called cosmic geography. And when I read this, I started to go, oh, now I see how he ties this to the ministry of Jesus, the ministry of Paul and the apostles, and even our modern day, kind of, spiritual life today. So, what does he mean by cosmic geography?

Charlie: He goes a variety of directions with this, but one particular idea is sacred space. So, if Israel is the sacred space of God…because Deuteronomy 32 talks about how Israel is kind of Yahweh's portion. So, if the other people groups are given to other gods, Israel is for Yahweh. That's the sacred space, tabernacle, temple, and so on. Well, in the New Testament, where is sacred space? Well, first it's Jesus, who is very mobile. So, sacred space goes where Jesus is, in that sense. And then in the New Testament, further on, where is temple? Well, it's the church. And so, as the church expands, we have sacred space going into all of these places that were previously designated for these other spirit beings. And so, that's kind of drawing on this warfare idea again, where the ministry of Jesus is spreading out sacred space. So, as we are in Jesus, we as the church are sacred space, we are the temple. And so, God's presence is going out to the land that used to belong to all these other spirit beings. Yahweh is, in a sense, spreading out sacred space all over the world to retake it for himself.

Sean: And what's interesting about that is then you think about advancing the kingdom not like military kingdom and advancement, very clear that's not the case, but it's not just in the spiritual realm. There are gods, so to speak, of different physical realms. That changes how you might think about space itself in a very, very interesting fashion. I think for the West, another reason that he is really…I think people read it is, we tend to spiritualize things in a Gnostic sense, downplay the body. And he's like, no, this spiritual advancement of the kingdom [is] believers going out and reclaiming territory, so to speak, through the blood of Jesus. That shapes the way you travel somewhere else and see the world. So, that's a powerful insight. All right, if people have stayed with us so far…Some people are going, what is happening? How do I make sense of this? You've got other gods and other elohim. This is a question I've been asked actually quite a bit just through emails and online. Are these views within the fold of orthodox Christianity, or are they heretical? What's your take on this?

Charlie: Short answer, I think they are definitely within the views of orthodox Christianity.

Sean: Okay, now tell us more about why that might be the case.

Charlie: So, he is kind of speculating at the edges of Christian theology. But the core of salvation, deity of Christ and so on, that part is still the same. And I think, in many ways, what he's talking about bears a lot of resemblance to traditional Christian theology. It's not like the church over the years has denied spirit beings. Clearly, the church has believed in angels and demons and so on. So, he's giving a different version of that, different details, but still very much within the grounds of orthodoxy as far as the nature of Jesus and salvation and the traditional core doctrines.

Sean: Would you use the term henotheism to describe it, or would you hesitate to put that label on it? 'Cause henotheism is kind of like, there's one supreme God, but there's other gods that are around that primary God. Or would you say, no, this is still monotheism, and we're just using the term gods as something that's supernatural, like an angel over a realm, but not in a larger God sense that henotheism is typically used for?

Charlie: Yeah, I'm not sure that word would help us. You have to define it just as much as monotheism. So, for me, it's more a semantic issue. You just have to define your words. So, Heiser is not saying that we have multiple, equal gods. He's saying, just like in Christian theology, there is one, overarching God, and then there are spirit beings under Him. He's saying exactly the same thing. He's just using different words to describe that.

Sean: Okay, that's helpful. So, kind of the targets we would say of, like, the Nicene Creed Christianity—the Scriptures are authoritative, Jesus is God, there's one God, salvation by faith, all of those things—he clearly checks all the boxes. No reason to have that concern.

Charlie: Correct.

Sean: I think the reason people ask that is, just, the way he sees stuff feels so jarring. And even though I read his stuff after, I think, I finished with my PhD, it was jarring, and I was rethinking some stuff and had that question. But that's really helpful. So, maybe give us a sense of, is he unique in his views amongst Old Testament scholars, either today or in the past?

Charlie: So, mainstream Old Testament scholars who are not evangelical, they often take an evolutionary view of religion in the Old Testament. So, Israel begins polytheistic, many gods, and then they shift towards monotheism. And so, Heiser rejects that, and some of his academic work is really helpful in combating that and showing how it's not some kind of evolution from one to the other. As far as evangelical Old Testament scholars, as I talk to my friends in the guild about Heiser, basically the first thing they always say is, my students always ask me about Heiser.

Sean: [laughs] I love that.

Charlie: And, secondly, there's generally some kind of embarrassed, “I've read a few pages, haven't read a lot, I'm not entirely sure what he says.” So, that has been a common response. And then when I press in, my impression is, for the most part, the basic level, divine counsel, all of that, most evangelical Old Testament scholars would be just fine with kind of the broad overview of Heiser's view of a divine counsel without necessarily being indebted to Heiser directly. But the broad outlines of an unseen realm, supernatural, most Old Testament scholars who are evangelical I think would not have a problem with that. When you get to Genesis 6, there's a little bit more diversity, although there's been some work recently on a Mesopotamian parallel called the Apkallu. And the Apkallu are these creative geniuses who are divine, but then kind of mixed with humans and are sometimes judged. And there's some…So, you can kind of already hear some parallels with Genesis 6. So, there's beginning to be a shift in Old Testament scholarship to connecting the Apkallu with Genesis 6. So, seeing Genesis 6 as angelic is probably relatively common among evangelical Old Testament scholars. But when you start getting further beyond that, then you get fewer people agreeing with Heiser. So, I think his ideas would find acceptance generally among evangelical Old Testament scholars, with definite exceptions along the way.

Sean: So, is it fair to say his YouTube channel blew up, his book blew up on a more popular level, but in the scholarly world itself, the number of sessions and discussions and books on his works are probably a lot less than you might suspect, given his influence on a popular level. Is that fair?

Charlie: Correct, yeah.

Sean: Okay, so how novel is he in terms of being a thinker? And I know being a church historian of Old Testament is different than being an Old Testament scholar. So, feel free to just say, I don't know, I haven't looked into it. Is it that he's piecing together, like, Genesis 6? Other people thought about that divine council, other people thought about that, kind of bringing it holistically, as far as you know, in a unique way? Or have other people been advancing this to the church, but for some reason at this cultural moment, he just took off, and more people are paying attention to it?

Charlie: Well, perhaps one example might be Frank Peretti, This Present Darkness. So, there's a lot of parallels in Peretti's work to, say, the Nephilim and all the spirit realm and so on. And that, obviously, people were really excited about that. There's lots of interest and so on. The difference is, Heiser has this academic heft behind him, where it's not just a novel that's interesting, but you read Heiser and he cites all this research and he's reading the text closely. And so, you read it differently, but you're still interested in it along the way. And so, I think it's not so much that he's unique. Some of what he's doing is he's bringing research, especially from Mesopotamia—like, places that even Old Testament scholars don't read as much about, the Apkallu, or whatever else—he's bringing that in an easily accessible way to people. And then there's this interest already, like we've seen it for many decades now, interest in demons and angels and so on. But now we have some academic heft behind it, and people can kind of grab onto it and see, oh, like, these things are actually in the Bible. And so, that's what I think helps to draw people in also.

Sean: I think you're absolutely right on the renewed interest in the supernatural and demons. And that's a separate conversation. But he's come around at a certain time where YouTube has grown, there's talk about this. So, he's well-placed. He's also just a good writer. He's not writing a novel like Frank Peretti, but he's a good storyteller. He writes an academic or intermediate level book as interesting, about, as one could on a subject like this. All right, now we could probably do, I don't know, we could do a six hour deep dive on this if we wanted to take each passage word by word, but maybe just talk about areas where you differ with Heiser and maybe a critique that you would offer.

Charlie: So, I have three thoughts here. So, I speak largely as someone indebted to Heiser. I like what he does. And so, when I read him, I appreciate what he writes. My three critiques, one, he's too confident for my taste.

Sean: [laughs]

Charlie: And so he, as he writes, and especially the little bit I heard him speak…So, I've mostly only interacted with him through the written word. I've not watched hardly any of his YouTube channel or listened to podcasts, but he is much more confident in his interpretation. So, when I read Heiser, my general response is not to say, oh, that's clearly wrong. My general response is to say, that's an interesting possibility. Like, maybe, maybe not. I don't…maybe. But Heiser's like, no, this is the way it is. And so, I just think he's too confident. We don't have enough data, I think, to match his level of confidence when it comes to many of these things. And I think this is partially why he's so popular as well…

Sean: I think you're right.

Charlie: He has this confidence that draws people in. And so, that is well, good, but also potentially problematic. So, that's one critique I have.

Sean: Okay, so let's take these one at a time. When I was being interviewed for my job here, like 12, 13 years ago at Talbot, one of the things I was told by the dean at that time was, they said, don't state things too confidently in academia. And she was kind of pointing out that apologists have a tendency to do this. And I always remember that, 'cause I'm an apologist, and I thought—and I'm not saying I do this perfectly—I wanna match how confidently I say something with how much I think the evidence supports it. That's a principle that I want to follow, not saying I perfectly do so. So, your critique—and we'll let people read it and make up their own minds—is kind of an academic looking at this. The way academic discussions and papers often take place are a little more nuanced, less confident. That's fair. A little bit more style, obviously, than substance, but I agree with you in the sense that I read a lot of things, and I have moments I go, I haven't thought of that. That's an interesting possibility. But I don't know that the evidence is there to always back it up in the way that he states it. So, I resonate with that a little bit. Again, people are gonna have to read it and make up their own sense, but wisely reading anything is…I would invite people to, if they're gonna read it, read it carefully, and just say, all right, set aside how confidently this is asserted, and look at the evidence itself. That's one piece of advice that would follow from your first, and that should be true for reading anything. All right, second one, go.

Charlie: The second one is, I think he's too totalizing. So, he takes things that I think are definitely true. So, I'm on board with, say, Psalm 82, divine council. Deuteronomy 32, I'm on board with that. Sons of God, I'm not quite sure there. But when he starts taking some of these things and applying it to other contexts, I think he, as a result of his confidence, he then applies it in places where he perhaps shouldn't. So, you mentioned one already, the Canaanite Conquest, where he says, this is the reason for the Canaanite Conquest, is the Nephilim. And as I read it, I'm like, well, that's part of it. But as I look at Deuteronomy and Joshua and other texts, that's only a part of it. And so, I think he has taken his worldview and used that as the primary lens for reading text, where it could be helpful to read parts of it, but not necessarily all of it. Another example is what he does with this geographical place of Bashan. So, Bashan is just northeast of the Sea of Galilee, and it has some interesting connection with Nephilim and Og and giants and so on. And I think he…Some interesting possibilities that maybe even something like, say, the Transfiguration, is that on Mount Hermon, which is next to Bashan and so on? Possibly, maybe. But then he takes every single reference to Bashan, it seems like, as a reference to the Nephilim. And so that, I think, is that totalizing, where he wants to take his worldview and apply it everywhere, even in places where it might be a small part of it, but it's not something that explains the whole text.

Sean: This is a fascinating point, 'cause I read his take on the Canaanites, and he said there's a couple passages that don't fit his narrative. And I don't remember where they were in Joshua or Deuteronomy. And I remember thinking, well, if this is the essential, primary one, I'm not sure you can have the kind of exceptions that he points out. So, that gave me a little bit of pause there. But on one hand—I'm gonna have to think about this some more, Charlie—there's strength in having a totalizing worldview, because if he's right, it should connect some pieces that are there that hadn't been connected before, but they also need to connect smoothly and not jerry-rig there. And your critique would be that it's too totalizing. You're getting kind of a mountain out of a molehill, and it doesn't fit as smoothly as it should. Again, people are gonna have to read it, make up their own mind, but that's a very fair caution you'd give. And by the way, I have to point out to my viewers, this is why I appreciate how carefully you teach your classes. Like, we're not just gonna read this. We're looking at the language, and the context and the evidence. We're not gonna overstate our case. That's how you learn to really read the Scriptures. Okay, you had a third one I wanna hear as well.

Charlie: So, the third one relates, a bit ironically, to one of his main claims. So, he says, let's not look at church tradition. Let's not look at creeds. Let's just read the Bible. And he calls people to read the text, which is why I'm happy when people read Heiser, because it helps them read the Bible. It gets people reading the Bible at a deep level, and so on. But what he ends up doing is he has his own reading lens, his own filter, basically of Second Temple Judaism and 1 Enoch. And so, 1 Enoch becomes for him the way to read the Bible. And so, much of what he says about, say, the Nephilim, spirits becoming demons, say, that is straight from 1 Enoch. And so, his argument is not that it's a lens, but since New Testament authors know 1 Enoch and refer to it, then most likely, they would have known all of it and would have been sympathetic to all of it. And so, that gives him the encouragement to say, well, let's read 1 Enoch as a guide to help us understand Genesis 6 and other texts and so on. But I look at it and it seems like he's got a filter just as much as other people have their filters. And so, I think he's trying too hard to remove other filters, but then not realizing he's got his own filter, in a sense. And so, that, for me, is a bit problematic. If you just read Genesis 6, one potential interpretive strand is to get to what 1 Enoch says, but there's a variety of other things without saying the sons of God are human. And so, that…I think there's an overly high dependence on 1 Enoch and some of the Second Temple Judaism. And if you don't have that, you can't get to some of the detailed places that he goes.

Sean: Very, very interesting. Now, you mentioned earlier that Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32. You're on board with the idea of divine counsel. Can we go back to that passage, and then maybe just walk us through how you interpret this and how you make sense of it? I think it would be helpful. What do you think we should look at? Psalm 82, or should we look at Deuteronomy 32? Which one do you think would be more helpful?

Charlie: Deuteronomy 32 might be a good place to start. So, I think Heiser is correct there. This is the division of the human groups between various spirit beings. So, I would say Baal, Chemosh, Marduk and so on are actual spirit beings that still theoretically, then, exist somewhere. And so, that raises all kinds of questions, of course. Like, what are they doing, and is there spirit beings today and so on? I don't know. But that seems clear enough. I'm relatively confident, like, that is the correct interpretation. Psalm 82, then, is some kind of judgment of some of these deities. And looking at how these deities act, according to other Old Testament texts, like, that seems to fit. Once again, I have lots of questions about details. Like, what does it mean for a spirit being to die and so on? So, I have lots of details questions, but the overarching idea, I think I am confident enough to say this is most likely the case. I'm not entirely sure how Deuteronomy 32 connects with Babel. That part, like maybe, maybe not. And then when you get to Genesis 6—

Sean: Okay, hold on Genesis 6. So, when you say the connection to Babel, that would be when these gods are sent out around the world and have certain gods for language groups or locales, that's where you're saying at least some of the gods, like Baal, might be real spirit, demon-type beings that exist in some realm. Maybe they still interact with the world, maybe they don't. So, you think he's right there. But when it comes to every region in the world having these kinds of gods that reign over them, that's where you say it's a little bit more fuzzy, that it plays out like that. Is that fair?

Charlie: Yeah, we just don't know details. So, Heiser is a systematizer. He likes to take what he knows and then apply that to various other contexts. And I'm just not sure how often we can do that when it comes to the world of angels and demons and spirit beings. We just have so little data that to extrapolate very far, the margin of error increases considerably. And so, I guess we have to be cautious in trying to extrapolate to other contexts.

Sean: So, I think it's in Isaiah where it talks about the seraphim and the cherubim. People often say, well, these are just angels, but they don't seem to be the same role—again, depending on the functioning role of what an angel might be. Could that be an example, potentially, of the divine counsel? That there are these spirit beings, some in favor of God, some against? Is that an example that you would adopt?

Charlie: Yes. The seraphim, the burning ones, seem like kind of bodyguards, almost, in a Mesopotamian context. The Daniel 10 prince of Persia, prince of Greece is probably the clearest reference to a distinct spirit being that's connected to a people group in some way. So that, I think, is a great example of what Deuteronomy 32 looks like in action. So, here's a spirit being for Persia, one for Greece. Maybe Michael is one for Israel as well. And so, that seems pretty good evidence for it.

Sean: Okay, so you gave an example, just referenced before, about a guardian angel. And I think the biblical evidence for this is somewhat thin. I mean, you have the chapter in Acts 12 where someone comes to the door. Peter's out of prison. They're like, ah, it's his angel, which could be a guardian angel. Now, the mere fact that Peter might have one doesn't mean that all the rest of us necessarily have one. But that's…So, it could be when you look at, say, the prince of Persia, it could be that there is a god or god or kind of elohim for this realm, but then it doesn't follow that every realm necessarily has…like, that's where it just—

Charlie: We just don't know.

Sean: The details aren't given to us.

Charlie: Yeah, and especially over time. So, is there a spirit being over the British Empire? Is there a spirit being over the Roman Empire? Like, does the United States have one? These are questions we just don't know.

Sean: Interesting. That's so fascinating. So, one more question on this before we keep going. There’s a passage—I’m trying to remember—1 Corinthians 8 or 10 that talks about idols, and the idols are not real. Like, they're just fake. I often took that as saying, and he points out—this is a really good point—he's like, it's not that they thought the idol itself was the god, but the idol was kind of the medium through which the god would interact with the world. So, worshiping the idol was a mechanism for the god. So, you destroy the idol, you don't destroy the god, you just destroy its representation, so to speak. So, how would you take what Paul seems to be saying, that these idols are not real, with there being at least some of these divine beings like Baal? Like, how does that resonate together?

Charlie: Yeah, there's a tension both in Old Testament and New Testament of that. So, I think there is critique of idols as nothing, but people in, say, Mesopotamia and elsewhere, they knew that the god wasn't limited to this block of wood. So, if you destroy the block of wood, it doesn't mean you destroyed Marduk. So, there's rituals, in a sense, to bring the god into the idol. So, even for, say, a Babylonian, they would know the god is different than this block of wood. And so, part of the critique I think is, well, this idol actually isn't connected to the spirit being. The idol is nothing. But I think even Paul has some sense of, no, there's actual spirit beings out there. Like, these things are real. So, I think both those critiques can be true, as, like, Isaiah and his idol polemics and so on. I think Isaiah both says the idol is pointless and the other spirit beings actually exist. Like, there are powers out there.

Sean: So, who are some of the conversation partners that Heiser has interacted with, either just publicly or personally in his research that seem to be, as far as I can tell, outside of the fold of what normal—whatever normal means—what typical Old Testament scholars interact with?

Charlie: Yeah, so two main categories come to mind for me. One is Mormons. And the reason for that is because Heiser's view sounds attractive to Mormon theology at first, because the Mormons would say, well, look, there's all these deities. You just said there's lots of deities in the Old Testament. Isn't that our theology? And Heiser is quick to say, no, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Yahweh is still unique. He is not comparable to these other deities. There's still a difference between Yahweh and the other spirit beings. And so, he interacted some…He's actually published in a Mormon theological journal about this. That was fascinating, reading of him talking to Mormons on their turf about some of these things.

Sean: That's fascinating. Before you go to the second one, the other piece they seem to resonate with is he talks a lot about Yahweh having a physical body in the Old Testament. That would take us aside, but you see this, whether it's Joshua with the army that’s commanding, with the burning bush or Melchizedek, these kinds of stories. I think in Genesis 18, there's the three visitors that come up, and there seems to be a Yahweh that's present. So, I could see there being overlap with a physical belief that God has a body. But of course, there's differences there as well we don't have to flesh out, so to speak. So, I didn't know they published Heiser's writings in a Latter-day Saint journal. Was he critical in clarifying differences?

Charlie: Yeah.

Sean: And they published it. Well, good for them for having that conversation. I will have to track that down and read it. Who's the second group that he interacts with?

Charlie: Aliens. So, he's had this interest in aliens, apparently for a long time. And so, he had a separate YouTube channel about aliens, paranormal things, and so on. And so, it was a fascinating, hour-long documentary he did with, I think it was Logos. It’s on YouTube, all about aliens. And so, his take on aliens was, much of the data on aliens has been governments trying to hide something and then using aliens to distract people's attention from us, a kind of a human-centered thing. But then he also talked about how many of the alien stories, like interaction with aliens, are actually demonic. And so, he shows parallels between these alien abduction stories and some Old Testament, kind of, 1 Enoch kind of things to show, no, this is actual demonic activity portraying itself as whatever looks good to this culture at this time. So aliens, can aliens bring peace on earth? And so, for example, in these alien abduction stories, Jesus is just a human, and other heretical things. And so, he does some fascinating work. I know nothing about all of that.

Sean: [laughs]

Charlie: It was interesting to watch the documentary, but that's definitely unusual for an Old Testament scholar.

Sean: I don't have a big stake in that. I have not researched aliens. It just, for whatever reason, actually doesn't interest me enough to study it, as fascinating as it is on one level. But that's not new with him, at least going back decades, that if there are these unidentified flying objects, one possibility is the demonic realm for Christians and Jews and maybe, potentially, Muslims. So, I don't think we should shut that down by any means. That's a possibility we should entertain, as crazy as the world might say we are. Just gotta look at where the evidence goes. All right, so I do wanna ask you if you think people should read Heiser's work. But first off, you sent me this question. Some of these questions came from me. Some of them came from you. A few of these were completely spontaneous. But you sent me this one. I'm like, I have no idea where you're gonna go with this, Charlie. How does the work of J.R.R. Tolkien relate to all of this?

Charlie: So, I'm an Old Testament scholar, but one of the things I dabble in is Tolkien stuff, and I've published a few articles on Tolkien things. And one of them is on angels in Middle Earth. So, in Middle Earth, Tolkien has these spirit beings, and they're similar in many ways to classical mythology, Norse mythology. So, he loves his pagan gods, and he populates Middle Earth with these pagan gods. But he's also a Christian. So, he refers to these gods as gods, but he also calls them angels. And so, when you read that, it kinda seems like special pleading. This is just Tolkien. He wants his pagan deities, but he's a Christian, so he can't have them. Oh, I'll just make them angels. And so, my argument in one of the papers I published on Tolkien is, no, he's actually a good reader of the Old Testament. This is what the Old Testament does. The pagan deities are spirit beings. And so, when Tolkien is portraying these spirit beings this way, as both gods and angels, he is just following along with what the Old Testament's already doing.

Sean: That is a connection I did not expect when we were making this, thinking this through and reading The Unseen Realm. But that is fascinating on a lot of levels. So, my last question…I have my thoughts on this, but I'd love to know if you would advise people to read Heiser's work or works.

Charlie: Definitely. I would love it if more people read it, because it gets people excited about the Old Testament. And so, I would encourage people to read more Heiser, The Unseen Realm, Angels, Demons, some of that. As you read it, I would say, first of all, be aware of the danger of secret knowledge. And so, some of the responses to Heiser is, oh, he's talking about things that everyone else, all the other church leaders know, but they're hiding. And so, Heiser is showing the truth. And so, you get almost this sense of, oh, I'm now part of the inner club, because I know the secret knowledge. And I think much of that is…Like, sometimes it can be good, like, learning these things, but it can quickly become dangerous and cultish where you have this desire for the inner knowledge that's been kept from all the other people, and now I actually know it. And so, I think that relates to some of the confidence I mentioned earlier. It's not that pastors are hiding it or other Old Testament scholars. It's just, we're not as confident as Heiser in this. And so, it's not as important for us to talk about. There were other things in the Old Testament that are more important. And I think that the other caution would be the angels and demons…Like, I think Heiser is often correct, but that's only a small part of what the Bible is talking about. And so, to make that the center…It seems like the Bible is only hinting at angels and demons. This is someone else's story. And the Bible is about our story. And so, we get hints of this other story—and it's really helpful to read—about this other story of angels and demons and spirit beings as it impacts us, but it's not our story. And so, to make that the center of our worldview, I think, is problematic. And so, yeah, read Heiser. I think it's great. I often agree with him. When I don't necessarily agree with him, it's more just a confidence level difference rather than I think he's wrong. But I think the focus needs to be on, what is the Bible actually doing with these texts? And, often, angels and demons are kind of peripheral to it all that are really interesting, but not necessarily what God is trying to communicate to us through those texts.

Sean: I'm really glad I asked you to do this conversation. I think you're the perfect person. And I'm thrilled you gave such an enthusiastic endorsement to read his material. I had no clue if you were to say, maybe with caution. I love it. And I agree with that wholeheartedly. There are so many moments…And I've studied this stuff. Obviously not as much as you. I'm not an Old Testament scholar. But there are so many moments where my kids just give this kind of, like, eye-opening [...], even if I disagree with them, I'm like, I've got to think about that. That is fascinating. So, he's a good writer, he's biblical, he'll make you think, he does his homework, he gets you excited about the Old Testament. I would just as enthusiastically encourage people to read his works. I appreciate some of the perspective you brought. Like, for example, reading it, he mentioned so much in his book how we can have a certain naturalistic bias and not see the supernatural. You're right to say sometimes, you can have too much of a totalizing bias. So, you've brought some good balance, I think, to his work while showing respect to him. I wish I had interviewed him more. I miss him, just having somebody who just has such a presence on YouTube, who's just such a thoughtful, kind person, a good scholar, getting people excited about the Bible. These kinds of people, there's not just a magic in the bottle that you can just replicate. There's something from his heart and his life experience, and I think his love for the Lord, that bubbled over into his scholarship. I had emailed him to do another interview before his diagnosis, and he said he was happy to. Obviously, it didn't work out, so I regret not reaching out to him earlier. My first interview with him was on demons, and he talked a little bit about what we discussed. He goes into more depth. We were gonna talk about angels, but he has a whole book on that people can read, as well as The Unseen Realm. Anything else on this I missed? Or do we read his stuff at Talbot? Do people assign it, as far as you know? Do you have any awareness if it's a part of the curriculum?

Charlie: I don't think anyone assigns Heiser. We talk about it some in classes. Like, I talk about some of these things in, say, OT Survey and so on, but it's not necessarily a required textbook. So, you get some of the ideas, but kind of in a broader curriculum. One interesting thing about Heiser, as far as how does it actually play out in life today, surprisingly, he's not a fan of exorcism. So, as much as he talks about demons, he says we are not called to cast out demons, and there's no instructions for it, he says, and so on. And another interesting place he doesn't go is there's some people who say spiritual mapping is the way forward. So, if there is territorial demons, we need to find out where these demons are, and so you do research and so on to find out where this demon is, find out their name, and then you can fight them. Heiser's like, no, that's not helpful, don't do that at all. And so, some places you could logically go with some of his arguments, he actually doesn't go there.

Sean: That's fascinating. In some ways, I like that he doesn't, because really what he's doing is he's getting us to see the supernatural worldview of the Bible, supernatural worldview in the world. But rather than saying put your cape on and do exorcisms, which we typically associate with supernatural phenomena, he's like, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the normal spiritual practices, just see them differently and maybe practice them differently. You're already engaged in a supernatural worldview. That takeaway in itself is gold, and I love that. Thanks for coming on, thanks for prepping, reading this book again, doing so much work. I would definitely recommend the book. I think when we release this, it can be pre-ordered right now if you just search it on the Lexham website. The update comes out sometime this summer. So, that's worth picking up. Thanks to the Logos team for just sending us this copy ahead of time. But this is brought to you by Talbot School of Theology. Can you imagine being in a class with Charlie, Dr. Trimm, talking about this stuff, dissecting it, looking at these verses, learning how to read the Bible, and interacting with a scholar like Heiser? We'd love to have you at Biola or Talbot School of Theology. Thanks again for coming on, this was fun.

Charlie: Thanks.