The Triune God and His Divine Council

The Triune God and His Divine Council

If you were to sit down with a modern Christian, hand them a Bible, and ask them where the story begins, almost all of them would immediately turn to Genesis 1:1. We tend to open the book, look at the physical creation of the heavens and the earth, and assume we are starting at the absolute beginning of the story. Yet, the story of God actually begins much earlier than that. We already understand that God exists outside of time, before a single atom of matter was ever spoken into existence. But there’s more to the biblical story than our usual, flattened perspective tends to recognize. Understanding this pre-historical beginning is not just an exercise in academic trivia. If we misunderstand where the story truly starts, the rest of the biblical narrative—especially the Old Testament—can easily seem like a disconnected series of strange or even violent events that do not fit together. We end up missing the larger cosmic conflict that’s unfolding just beyond the surface of human history. To really grasp the story of salvation, we need to recover the perspective of the early Church and consider what God was doing before humanity ever entered the picture. Before any act of creation, God existed perfectly. God isn’t a solitary, isolated monarch sitting alone in the sky. He’s a Triune community of perfect love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As St. Gregory of Nazianzus taught in the fourth century, the “monad” is moved by love into a “triad.” This means God’s very nature is relational and communal. Because God is love, He did not create the universe out of any need, lack, or loneliness. He did not require creation in order to have someone to love, since perfect love already existed within the Trinity itself. Instead, God created the cosmos out of an overflowing desire to share His own life and love with others. In this sense, creation is best understood as an act of pure grace. The Unknowable God When we talk about this eternal God, we have to start by admitting what we cannot know. The Eastern Patristic tradition heavily emphasizes “apophatic” theology, which means approaching God by defining what He’s not. We can say God is uncreated, infinite, immortal, and incomprehensible. If we could fully comprehend God, He wouldn’t be God. He would be something small enough to fit inside our finite minds. But if God is completely beyond our comprehension, how can we actually know Him without it being a contradiction? To explain how an infinite God can interact with a finite creation, the early Church Fathers (such as St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Palamas) maintained a strict distinction between God’s Essence (what He is in Himself) and His Energies (His actions and grace in the world). One of the simplest ways to understand this distinction is to think about the sun. The sun itself is a blazing core that we cannot touch. If you tried to approach the essence of the sun, you would not survive. Yet, the sun also sends out rays of light and heat. You can stand outside, feel the warmth on your skin, and see by its light. These rays aren’t something separate from the sun; they’re the real energy of the sun reaching us. In the same way, God’s Essence (ousia) is completely unknowable and unapproachable. No created thing can touch the Essence of God and live. But God’s Energies (energeiai) are His grace, light, and life radiating outward. We can experience, know, and participate in His energies. This distinction resolves the apparent contradiction and establishes the doctrine of Theosis (deification). It means we don’t just learn intellectual facts about a distant deity. We literally participate in God’s uncreated life and energies without becoming the Creator ourselves. God remains entirely distinct by nature but completely united to us by grace. The First Creation: The Unseen Realm Before God created the physical universe, He first brought into being the spiritual realm and the angelic hosts. In doing so, He established a spiritual family that would share in His governance. If you grew up in the modern West, especially within a Protestant or Evangelical context, your understanding of the spiritual world is probably much more limited than that of the early Christians. Many of us picture heaven as a mostly empty space, with God seated on a throne and a group of indistinguishable angels playing harps and singing songs around Him. This image misses the rich and complex supernatural worldview that the biblical authors assumed. In the ancient perspective of the Apostles, the spiritual realm was not a passive choir, but rather a highly organized administration. We see this clearly in the Greek Old Testament used by the early Church. Take a look at the vision of the prophet Micaiah: “I saw the God of Israel sitting upon his throne, and all the army of heaven stood around him, on his right and on his left.” (1 Kgs 22:19). The Greek word translated here as “army” is stratia, which refers to an organized host or a military camp. This is not just a crowd of spectators. It’s an active, structured administration of spiritual beings gathered around God’s throne to receive instructions, discuss decisions, and participate in God’s rule over the world. We see a similar scene in the introduction to the trials of Job: “And it happened on this day, and behold, the messengers of God came to stand before the Lord, and the devil came with them.” (Job 1:6). The Greek word angeloi simply means “messengers.” They’re described as “standing before” the Lord (parastēnai). This is a very specific term used for courtiers standing before a king in a royal court. God holds a royal audience with His created spiritual beings, taking their reports and delegating tasks. The early Church understood that God assigned these ranks of bodiless powers to govern the natural elements, the stars, and eventually the nations. In fact, this is precisely why New Testament writers frequently use political terms like “thrones,” “dominions,” and “principalities” to describe spiritual forces. They were acknowledging these beings as literal, geographical ruling deities. The Divine Council God chooses to govern His creation together with His spiritual family, delegating real authority to them. The early Church recognized this administrative body as the Divine Council. The Greek text makes it clear that these spiritual beings hold a high status. They’re not just messengers; they are rulers. Notice how the psalmist describes them: “God stood in the assembly of gods, and in the midst, he will judge gods.” (Ps 82:1). The phrase “assembly of gods” translates the Greek synagōgē theōn. Here, the psalmist is describing an actual gathering of divine beings. God stands in the midst of this council to pronounce judgment on those members of the administration who have not fulfilled their responsibilities. What were these duties? The Scriptures reveal that when God scattered humanity at Babel, He literally assigned these divine beings to govern the different nations of the earth. As the Greek text says, “When the Most High divided the nations... he set up the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.” (Deut 32:8). God delegated actual geographic and political dominion to this council. Just a few verses later in the Psalm, God explicitly addresses these beings: “I said, you are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High.” (Ps 82:6). God directly calls these beings theoi (gods). For Western Christians, seeing the word “gods” used in this way can be unsettling. Influenced heavily by the Enlightenment, the modern West has demythologized the Bible. Modern commentaries often try to explain this away by claiming the “gods” in Psalm 82 are just corrupt human judges of Israel, or perhaps statues made of wood and stone. They do this out of a fear that acknowledging other spiritual rulers will lead to polylatreia. But applying this metaphorically to human leaders is completely inconsistent and falls apart when you look closely at the text. First, the psalmist records God’s judgment against these beings, declaring, “But you will die like humans, and you will fall like one of the rulers” (Ps 82:7). If these beings were already human judges, threatening them that they will “die like humans” makes absolutely no sense. You don’t threaten a human by telling him he will die like a human. Second, the human leaders of Israel were never given dominion over all the pagan nations of the earth. The beings being judged here are the exact same spiritual entities who were assigned to govern the nations back in Deuteronomy 32. The ancient Jews and the early Christians didn’t share this modern fear. To understand how they read these texts, we have to note the crucial difference between the ideas of theism and latreia. The concept of theism simply deals with believing in the existence of spiritual beings. But latreia specifically refers to divine worship. Acknowledging that other created gods existed didn’t violate their strict monolatreia (the worship of only one God). Monolatreia didn’t mean that no other spiritual beings exist. It meant there is only one uncreated, eternal Source worthy of our worship: God. The other “gods” are created beings who were given administrative authority over the cosmos by the Most High. Recognizing a king’s royal court doesn’t threaten the king’s ultimate sovereignty. The Historical Shift While this concept has mostly faded from view in the modern era, the idea of the Divine Council and a plurality of divine figures in heaven was actually mainstream, orthodox Judaism during the Second Temple period. This was the very framework the Apostles themselves used to make sense of the world. Similarly, Christian Trinitarian theology wasn’t a later Greek invention layered over the Bible. It grew directly out of this ancient, pre-Christian Palestinian belief in a High God who ruled over a council of divine beings. However, after the first century, Rabbinic Judaism began to heavily downplay and actively suppress this theology. The reason is directly tied to the rise of the early Church. Early Christians were successfully using this ancient Jewish framework of multiple divine figures to explain the Trinity and how Jesus Christ could be God incarnate. When early Christians pointed to the “assembly of gods” or the visible “Angel of the Lord” who accepted worship in the Old Testament, they argued this was the pre-incarnate Christ. Even into the second century, some rabbis still taught that passages like Daniel 7 revealed multiple thrones in heaven for divine figures. But their peers quickly condemned them, accusing them of treating the Divine Presence as “profane” in a frantic effort to suppress anything that sounded like Christian doctrine. In an effort to distance themselves from Christianity, later rabbis redefined Jewish monotheism into a much stricter, more solitary model than what existed in the ancient Second Temple period. They deliberately set aside the older texts that spoke of God’s divine council, hoping to avoid any overlap with Christian theology. Centuries later, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment continued this trend, further removing the supernatural hierarchy from the Western imagination and leaving us with the much flatter spiritual world we see today. The earliest Christians didn’t invent a new religion or infect Judaism with Greek ideas. They were simply preserving the original, ancient Israelite belief in a High God and His divine council. To understand the biblical story correctly, we have to put back on the lenses of the early Church. God is a Trinity who created a vast spiritual family to help rule His cosmos long before humanity arrived on the scene. He delegates authority to His creatures (including Man) because He’s a God of love and communion. Get full access to Test Everything at testeverything.substack.com/subscribe [https://testeverything.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The House Church Myth Revisited

In their video response to my article, “The House Church Myth,” Matt Dabbs and Tom Wadsworth attempt to defend the modern “organic” house church movement. They argue that the first-century church was highly informal, non-liturgical, and practically democratic, claiming that formal liturgy and hierarchy were later corruptions. To be fair, Dabbs and Wadsworth present a thoughtful pushback against generalizations. They correctly identify that modern, personality-driven Evangelical churches have severe flaws. However, a close examination of their arguments reveals a heavy reliance on historical anachronism and a severe misrepresentation of the very scholars they cite. By conflating the locations of early Christian gatherings (houses) with a modern, egalitarian style of worship (living-room chats), they project twenty-first-century Western democratic ideals onto the ancient Near East. Below is a comprehensive, point-by-point refutation of their major claims, demonstrating why their interpretations are historically inaccurate, sociologically flawed, and theologically divorced from the first millennium of Christianity. The False Dichotomy of the “CEO Pastor” vs. The Living Room Dabbs argues that traditional, institutional churches are breeding grounds for unchecked egos, shielded by layers of bureaucracy. In contrast, he asserts that the physical proximity of a living room provides immediate, unavoidable accountability. This argument relies on a false dichotomy and fundamentally misunderstands my critique. Dabbs assumes my rejection of the modern house church is a defense of the modern Evangelical “CEO-pastor” model. It is not. Dabbs and Wadsworth are fighting the ghosts of modern Protestant megachurches and projecting those specific, novel failures onto the entirety of historic Christianity. The modern house church is simply an overcorrection to a uniquely modern Protestant problem. Fleeing to a living room to escape being “told what to believe” is rooted in modern Western individualism rather than New Testament reality. It abandons the biblical, ordained ecclesiology established by Christ in favor of a democratic free-for-all. The “Democratic” Gathering vs. Biblical Hierarchy and Roman Sociology Wadsworth argues that the first-century church gathering, specifically in 1 Corinthians 14, was participatory to the point of being democratic. Because every believer possesses the Holy Spirit, he argues, there was a “flattening of the dynamics.” He explicitly describes the Corinthian gathering as “chaotic rather than cultic,” and presents this chaotic state not as a problem, but as the positive, prescriptive ideal for how church should be done. This claim fails on both biblical and sociological grounds. First, the New Testament knows absolutely nothing of a “flat,” democratic church structure. Wadsworth attempts to hold up the Corinthian church as his prescriptive ideal, commending its gatherings as “chaotic” and “democratic” in a positive sense. This is a flat-out misrepresentation of Scripture. Paul did not write 1 Corinthians to endorse a disorderly free-for-all; he wrote the epistle to severely correct precisely that behavior and restore the apostolic order originally established. Holding up the Corinthian chaos as the ideal way the church should be done turns Paul’s corrective intent completely on its head. Wadsworth’s warning against anyone “running the show” is a post-Enlightenment fantasy. The Apostles ordained specific, authoritative leaders. Consider Hebrews 13:17 “Be persuaded by the ones leading you and yield to them, for they themselves keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.” Paul commands Titus to appoint presbyters (elders) in every city who must be able “to encourage with healthy teaching and to reprove the ones speaking against it” (Titus 1:9). The biblical standard is an ordered, hierarchical body governed by ordained men entrusted to protect the apostolic deposit, not a democratic roundtable. Second, their assumption that a home gathering is equivalent to a casual, egalitarian hangout reveals a severe ignorance of Roman sociology. Architectural historians and sociologists such as Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Carolyn Osiek, David L. Balch, and L. Michael White have thoroughly documented that the Greco-Roman home (domus) was a highly structured, hierarchical public space, centered on the paterfamilias (the male head of household), and characterized by strict patron-client relationships. White notes that the adaptation of the private home for Christian worship naturally brought the hierarchical realities of the domus into the church structure. The “living room” was a place of deep social stratification, not democratic leveling. The Rejection of Synagogue Influence and Early Liturgy Wadsworth forcefully rejects the idea that the early church inherited a structured liturgy from the Jewish synagogue. He claims there is “no evidence” for first-century liturgy and that reading liturgy into first-century texts is anachronistic thinking. This claim contradicts a vast body of historical evidence. Scholars like Larry W. Hurtado and Ralph P. Martin have thoroughly demonstrated that early Christian worship maintained the structural blueprints of Jewish devotion (prayers at set hours, chanting of Psalms, reading of Scripture). Early Christian prayer forms were deeply indebted to Jewish models, particularly the Birkat HaMazon (table blessings), which formed the foundation of the early Eucharist. Furthermore, the Didache, a first-century Christian manual contemporaneous with later New Testament texts, shatters the organic myth. It prescribes exact, rote liturgical formulas for baptism (fasting, specific running water) and the Eucharist (prescribing exact, non-spontaneous prayers to be recited). This is precisely why Paul concludes his corrective discourse to the chaotic Corinthians by commanding, “But let all things occur decently and according to order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). The Greek word used for order is taxis, which refers to an arranged, fixed succession. Paul is establishing an apostolic framework to prevent exactly the kind of unstructured individualism Wadsworth advocates. Sola Scriptura and Tradition Wadsworth admits that altars, priests, and liturgy existed before Constantine, but operating from a strict Sola Scriptura paradigm, he dismisses them entirely as “anti-New Testament intrusions.” He explicitly urges believers to divorce themselves from tradition and “just look at the New Testament text.” Wadsworth treats “tradition” as a dirty word, but the biblical text he claims to defend explicitly authorizes the use of apostolic tradition and the Church’s authority. Paul writes to Timothy concerning how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is “the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). He commands the Thessalonians, “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, whether by word or by our letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). The modern House Church movement requires believing that immediately after the Apostles died, the entire global Church (the very pillar and foundation of truth) instantaneously apostatized. By severing the Scriptures from the historic Church, Dabbs and Wadsworth are forcing a post-Enlightenment, anti-institutional bias back into the first century, casually dismissing centuries of saints, martyrs, and early Church Fathers. Fulfillment vs. Abolishment Underlying their entire framework is the assumption that Jesus came to overthrow structured “religion,” replacing the temple and synagogue with a decentralized, structureless, “organic” movement. The ultimate theological kill shot against the organic house church myth lies in Jesus’s own words. He said, “Do not suppose that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). To “fulfill” does not mean to get rid of, discard, or sweep away; it means to bring to its ultimate completion and give it its full, intended meaning. For example, the Old Covenant sacrifices were fulfilled, not abolished, in the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, which the early church participated in through the Eucharist. Jesus did not hate the ordered priesthood, the altar, or the liturgy. He even told His followers to honor the authority of the Pharisees; to do what they say because they sit in the seat of Moses, but to not do what they do because they are hypocrites. He even tells the Pharisees that this authority will be taken away from them and given to another group; namely, His Apostles. Contrary to what many “spiritual but not religious” people believe, Jesus did not throw away the old system. He fulfilled it by revealing it’s true meaning, which is Himself. The Levitical priesthood was brought to its ultimate fulfillment in Christ the High Priest and the ordained New Covenant presbyterate. The early church did not abandon “religion” for a casual hangout. They practiced the fulfilled religion of the New Israel. To claim otherwise borders on Marcionism, completely severing the New Covenant from the continuity of redemptive history. Hijacking Scholarship For all the points above that can be easily refuted using “scholarly consensus,” Wadsworth constantly appeals to authority and “scholarly consensus” where none exists in his favor. He specifically cites Anglican liturgical scholar Paul F. Bradshaw to claim that modern scholarship admits we have been “dreaming this stuff up” and that there was zero liturgy in the first century. He also cites W.C. van Unnik regarding “panliturgism” and Wolfram Kinzig regarding persecution. It is supremely ironic that Tom Wadsworth leans heavily on Paul F. Bradshaw to defend a non-liturgical, anti-hierarchical tradition. Bradshaw is not a free-church radical. He is an ordained Anglican priest, a priest-vicar of Westminster Abbey, and a Professor of Liturgy. He spends his life studying, teaching, and practicing formal liturgy. Wadsworth completely twists Bradshaw’s actual thesis. In The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, Bradshaw pushes back against the older theory that there was a single uniform “Classic Shape” of early liturgy dating back to the apostles. Instead, Bradshaw argues for early liturgical diversity, warning scholars not to assume that fully calcified fourth-century rites existed in identical form in AD 50. Wadsworth misconstrues this academic argument about variety as proof of absence. Just because the first-century church in Antioch prayed with a different structure than the church in Rome does not mean either of them was sitting in a circle waiting for spontaneous inspiration. Wadsworth hijacks an Anglican priest’s work to argue for an unstructured ecclesiology that the author himself rejects. Wadsworth also name-drops other scholars, twisting their specific academic points into sweeping generalizations. Wadsworth cites W.C. van Unnik, who coined the term “panliturgism” in 1959. Van Unnik warned biblical scholars not to read fully developed liturgical scripts into every New Testament text. Wadsworth stretches this specialized academic warning to claim the early church had no liturgy at all, confusing the idea that “not everything is liturgy” with the idea that “nothing is liturgy.” The supreme irony lies in the very essay in which van Unnik’s liturgical views are put on full display. In Dominus vobiscum, van Unnik dedicates an entire academic paper to defending the deep, biblical antiquity of the classic liturgical dialogue between the priest and the congregation (”The Lord be with you” and “And with your spirit”). Far from portraying an unstructured living room, van Unnik traces this well-structured, formal dialogue directly back to apostolic greetings, arguing that the congregational response was an ancient recognition of the specific, pneumatic grace given to the ordained leader to guide the church in prayer. Wadsworth has literally hijacked a scholar who spent his time proving the biblical roots of hierarchical liturgical chants to argue that the early church had no structured liturgy. Wadsworth also cites Wolfram Kinzig’s book, Christian Persecution in Antiquity, to note that empire-wide, systematic persecution of Christians did not begin until the reign of Decius in AD 249; prior to this, it was sporadic. From this historically accurate premise, Wadsworth makes a breathtaking leap in logic: he concludes that because Christians were not constantly hiding from an empire-wide dragnet, their choice to meet in homes was not driven by necessity, but by a preference for an “egalitarian” and “democratic” environment. A reading of Kinzig’s actual text reveals how Wadsworth draws yet another false conclusion from a true premise. Kinzig’s book is a detailed legal and historical analysis of Roman jurisprudence; there is absolutely zero support in it for the idea that Christians met in homes because they wanted an anti-hierarchical environment. Furthermore, Kinzig paints a picture of severe marginalization, noting that Christians faced constant, daily threats of denunciation by informants and mob violence. To survive in this volatile setting where a single rumor could trigger a bloody outbreak, Christians naturally met in the private, walled domus of wealthy patrons. It was a matter of survival, not an ideological preference for a “flat” power dynamic. Despite their constant appeals to authority, the overwhelming scholarly consensus does not support their position. To make their points, they must intentionally reinterpret the data and read their own preconceived conclusions into the scholarship. For any serious student of history or theology, this blatant mishandling of the sources destroys their credibility right out of the gate. Conclusion Ultimately, the entire video response from Dabbs and Wadsworth is an exercise in confirmation bias cope. Their methodology depends on a deeply flawed hermeneutic born of a postmodern worship of academia, the culmination of a trajectory of extreme individualism that began in the Reformation. This approach turns the New Testament text into a cold dataset to be endlessly dissected under a microscope. By isolating the Scriptures from the historic Church that compiled and preserved them, they intentionally rip the text out of its original, organic (ironic) context. They treat the Bible as a sterile blueprint for reconstructing a dead religion rather than the living documentation of the body of Christ. Operating from this detached, academic vacuum, they have already decided that modern, democratic, unstructured gatherings are the ideal. They then comb through academic literature, cherry-picking fragments that sound supportive if taken entirely out of context. When a liturgical scholar says, “First-century liturgy wasn’t as uniform as the fourth century,” they hear, “First-century gatherings were chaotic and unstructured.” When an architectural historian says, “They met in homes,” they hear, “They rejected authority and hierarchical structures.” Finally, there is a glaring hypocrisy in their outright allergy to the word “tradition.” They dismiss centuries of historic, conciliar Christian practice as unbiblical intrusions, yet they are completely blind to the fact that they are simply defending a made-up tradition of their own. This exposes the fatal flaw of their strict Sola Scriptura framework: it rarely means “Scripture alone”; rather, it functionally means “sola my personal interpretation.” They operate on a standard of “tradition for me, but not for thee.” By isolating themselves from the historic Church, they don’t escape tradition; they just invent a new tradition, historically and biblically disconnected, based on modern American values of individualism and non-institutionalism. It is also incredibly telling to look at the response to their own videos. While Dabbs and Wadsworth actively push back against my claim that the house church movement is driven by a rejection of ecclesiastical authority, the comment sections on their videos are overwhelmingly filled with people doing exactly that: complaining about traditional leadership and embracing the house church model to explicitly reject it. There is a reason this generalization exists, and it is playing out in real-time right under their own defense. Instead of submitting to the historical reality of an ordered, hierarchical early church, they filter the data through their own modern, individualistic lens. They start with their conclusion and reverse-engineer the history to fit it. Their defense of the “organic” house church is historically, sociologically, and theologically untenable. If a “Doctor” repeatedly forces scholars to say the exact opposite of their life’s work, it is either sloppy research or blatant dishonesty. Either way, it’s hard to justify listening to any more arguments from someone like this. Get full access to Test Everything at testeverything.substack.com/subscribe [https://testeverything.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

A Supernatural Worldview for a Supernatural Book

We like to think we read the Bible exactly as it was written. We open the text, read the words, and assume our modern brains are perfectly capturing the original intent of the authors. But the truth is, most modern Christians read the Bible like functional atheists. We have inherited a post-modern, materialistic worldview. Because of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, we assume the physical, observable world is all that really matters. We obsess over the search for “the Historical Jesus.” We treat the Bible as if its only value lies in what can be historically known as fact. We dig for archaeological proof of every king and battle, assuming that if we can just prove the physical events happened, we have successfully defended the faith. We treat the Bible like a textbook we can simply extract a religion from. But the ancient reality is the exact opposite. Religion is not derived from a text. The text derives from a real, lived, supernatural experience of God that was handed down through ritual, art, and community. But reducing the biblical texts to mere historical data strips the Scriptures of their power. The biblical authors didn’t write secular history books. They wrote theological history. They weren’t just recording what happened on the ground; they were revealing the cosmic realities happening in the unseen realm. The events that take place in the spiritual and physical realms often have consequences in both, and that is something Scripture itself reveals. Yet we don’t even realize it. By filtering the Bible through the limits of modern historical criticism, we reduce a cosmic, supernatural revelation into a dry list of political events and moral fables. When we encounter the supernatural elements of the Bible, we often treat them as embarrassing ancient superstitions. To make the Scriptures more palatable and accessible to a scientific age, we actively strip them of their supernatural meaning. We reduce miracles to simple metaphors. We reduce demons to primitive diagnoses of mental illness. We reduce cosmic warfare to localized human politics. For instance, when the Apostle Paul writes about the “rulers of this age” who are “being brought to nothing” (1 Cor 2:6), modern readers almost universally assume he’s talking about corrupt human politicians like Caesar or Pilate. But Paul isn’t talking about people; he’s talking about the fallen spiritual entities governing the pagan world. When we import these materialistic presuppositions into the text, we blind ourselves to the actual story the biblical authors were telling. If we want to understand the cosmic scope of God’s story of salvation, we have to dismantle our own modern views and adopt the worldview of the Gospel writers. We have to read the Bible like an ancient. The worldview of the Apostles was heavily shaped by Second Temple Jewish literature, particularly books like 1 Enoch and Jubilees. These texts provided the early Church with their primary theological framework for understanding the origin and proliferation of evil. In the modern West, we usually blame all the evil in the world on a single event: Adam and Eve eating the fruit in Eden. But the ancient Jewish and early Christian worldview recognized three distinct falls. The most devastating of these, which resulted in the overwhelming demonic reality of the ancient world, is detailed in 1 Enoch. The main importance of 1 Enoch lies in its expansion on the strange narrative found in Genesis 6. It details how a group of high-ranking angels, known as the Watchers, rebelled against God. They descended to earth, took human wives, and produced a race of giant, hybrid offspring known as the Nephilim. Worse, these Watchers taught humanity illicit knowledge, including warfare, sorcery, and occult practices. The resulting bloodshed and corruption forced God to send the flood to cleanse the earth. When the physical bodies of the Nephilim died in the flood, their disembodied spirits were condemned to roam the earth. These spirits are what the ancient world, and the New Testament, call demons. The book of Jubilees picks up where 1 Enoch leaves off and explains why these demons are still a problem. After the flood, the chief of these evil spirits (named Mastema) petitions God, asking that some of the demons be allowed to remain free to tempt and test humanity. God allows one tenth of them to remain active on the earth, but only until a specific, appointed day of final judgment. While these specific texts aren’t part of the canonical Scriptures for most Christians today, they were the theological air the early Church breathed. Early Church Fathers like St. Athenagoras of Athens, St. Justin Martyr, and St. Irenaeus actively utilized the theological frameworks of these books to explain the origin of evil, the demonic world, and the nature of the cosmos. If we ignore the frameworks these early Christians took for granted, we will fundamentally misunderstand Jesus. To see how much our materialistic blindfold distorts the text, let’s look at two specific examples where modern interpretation completely misses the mark. Case Study 1: The Conquest of Canaan When modern readers look at the book of Joshua and God’s command to wipe out the populations of Canaan, they see a localized, ethnic land grab. Through our materialistic lens, it looks like divinely sanctioned genocide. This causes many Christians to stumble, question the goodness of God, or try to explain the text away as ancient political propaganda. But the ancients didn’t view this as ethnic cleansing. They viewed it as cosmic warfare. When you read the Greek Old Testament used by the early Church, the target of the Israelite conquest becomes very clear. The Israelites were specifically targeting tribal groups like the Anakim and the Rephaim. The Greek text explicitly translates these groups as the gigantes (giants). The conquest of Canaan was a targeted extermination campaign against the Nephilim bloodlines, which were the surviving seed of the supernatural rebellion described in Genesis 6. God was purging a supernaturally corrupted threat from the land to protect the lineage of the coming Messiah. He wasn’t acting as a petty tribal warlord settling land disputes. When we strip the supernatural giants out of the story, we turn a divine rescue mission into a human atrocity. Case Study 2: Jesus and the Demons We do the exact same thing with the Gospels. When Jesus encounters demons, modern readers often dismiss it as primitive psychology. Even when we accept the demonic presence as real, we tend to treat the demons as generic, spooky ghosts who are just arbitrarily causing trouble in the neighborhood. But the ancient, correct interpretation is much more specific. The demons in the Gospels know exactly who Jesus is, and they are terrified of a very specific timeline. When Jesus crosses into Gentile territory in Matthew 8, two possessed men confront Him. Notice exactly what the demonic spirits say: “And behold, they cried out saying, ‘What is there between us and you, Son of God? Did you come here before the time to torment us?’” (Matt 8:29, NRSVue). The Greek word translated as “time” is kairos. It doesn’t mean time in a general sense. It means a specific, appointed deadline or season. Why are the demons surprised Jesus is there? Why are they complaining about the schedule? To answer that, we only need to recall the framework of the Watchers we looked at earlier. Remember that according to the tradition preserved in Jubilees, these demons (the disembodied spirits of the dead giants) were granted a temporary lease to remain on the earth and test humanity until the appointed day of final judgment. The demons knew the schedule. They knew they had a lease on the earth. They’re panicking in Matthew 8 because the Son of God has invaded their territory “before the time” to begin the reclamation of the cosmos. Jesus isn’t just performing random acts of healing. He is a divine warrior triggering the apocalypse for the powers of darkness. Welcome to the War We can’t understand the story of salvation if we insist on stripping the supernatural out of it. We must lay down our modern arrogance, stop trying to make the text “accessible,” and submit to the ancient, Spirit-filled mindset of the early Church. Only then does the Bible open up into the brilliant, cosmic rescue mission it truly is. Welcome to Beyond the Veil: The Cosmic Scope of Salvation. In this series, we will trace the grand narrative of God’s redemptive work from eternity past, through the proliferation of evil in the world, and all the way to the final restoration of the cosmos. Get full access to Test Everything at testeverything.substack.com/subscribe [https://testeverything.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Preachers for Hire

Today’s church pulpits often feel more like corporate seminar stages than sacred spaces. Many focus on polish, production, and engaging speakers. We look for someone who can keep an audience’s attention, share three relatable points, and finish on time. This focus has led to what could be called the “preacher for hire” industry. When a church loses its main teacher, it rarely looks within. Instead, they use search committees, post job ads, and review resumes and preaching samples. Often, they hire charismatic outsiders who stay for a while before leaving for better opportunities. When churches choose professional speakers instead of developing their own teachers, they break the important biblical link between teaching and local elder leadership. This shows a shift toward a more secular leadership style, moving away from the apostolic model. Hired Hands vs. Local Servants The main issue with professional preachers is their lack of a close connection with their congregations. A hired speaker may give a good sermon, but they don’t know the people. They’re out of touch with the congregation’s real struggles and victories. Teaching without real relationships often becomes just sharing information. Real spiritual growth needs a teacher who knows the people well and works under the guidance of elders. To be fair, a hired hand can sometimes connect with people over time. But typically, by the time that connection begins, the situation devolves into one of three common scenarios. First, the connection becomes a cliquey or cultish following that sows deep division, often pitting the preacher’s loyal fans against local elders. Second, the preacher maintains shallow, manufactured relationships to feign interest and keep their job secure. Third, just as relational roots begin to take hold, the preacher decides to move on to a better or bigger platform. Jesus issues a serious warning about spiritual leaders who treat the local church as nothing more than a job rather than a family. He said, “The hired worker, who isn’t a shepherd and doesn’t own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and abandons the sheep and runs away. He flees because he’s a hired worker and doesn’t care about the sheep” (John 10:12-13). When the pulpit is separate from the people, the church becomes more like a show for consumers. The congregation turns into a passive audience, judging each sermon by how entertaining it is. Instead of being a family cared for by local leaders who know them, people just rate the performance. Apostolic vs. Post-Reformation Models To address this disconnect, we must look back at the apostolic deposit and test ourselves against it. The New Testament model for church leadership is organic, localized, and relational. Leaders weren’t recruited from external staffing agencies. They were identified, tested, and raised within the local community. The apostles laid out two distinct, local roles. The elders serve as the actual shepherds who oversee the flock. The deacons serve the congregation under the elders’ oversight. Peter writes directly to these local shepherds: “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, watching over them not under compulsion but willingly according to God, not for dishonest gain but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2-3). The apostles never taught that there should be a special office just for a “preacher” or “minister.” Making the minister a separate leader is not part of the biblical framework for church structure. In the Scriptures, those who preach and teach are deacons or laypeople who serve under the elders; the keyword being “serve,” not “rule.” There’s a glaring hypocrisy within traditions like the Churches of Christ to which I belong. We take issue with the practice of elevating a “Pastor” or a “Bishop” to rule over a local congregation. We proudly claim to have a plurality of elders instead. Yet by importing a hired “Minister” who serves as the primary spiritual authority, delivers all public teaching, and serves as the professional face of the church, we’ve functionally created the exact same unbiblical office. We just slapped a different title on the office door. How did we drift from this structure? In the COC context, it’s a holdover from Reformation traditions leading to the Restorationist movement. The Reformation brought necessary reforms and valid critiques against the Roman church, but in this area, it reinforced the institutionalization of the clergy. By making the sermon the central aspect of worship, Reformers replaced the Catholic priest with the Protestant academic. The pulpit became a lecture hall for professionals; the pastoral role became a corporate job. Today’s secular “church leadership” mirrors Fortune 500 companies: the church as a franchise, people as consumers, the preacher as CEO or content creator. Sent, Not Hired Every time I’ve seen this critique raised, it’s never failed that defenders of the modern minister system have inevitably pointed to biblical figures like Paul, Timothy, or Titus as examples of traveling preachers. But this conflates two fundamentally different roles. These men did not sign a contract to be hired by a congregation and deliver weekly keynote addresses until they lose favor with the crowd and it becomes time to bring in a shiny new preacher. Biblically, evangelists and missionaries like Paul, Timothy, and Titus were commissioned by established elderships, sent out to preach the gospel in unreached areas, and plant new churches. Their ministry was outward-facing and temporary in any single location, centered on founding communities of believers. In contrast, local teachers and elders were raised up from within those very communities, tasked with ongoing teaching, spiritual care, and shepherding of the flock after the evangelist had moved on. This distinction is clear in passages such as 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, where qualifications for elders and deacons are based on their local reputation and established relationships. Evangelists were foundation-layers and planters, not permanent resident teachers. Their presence was temporary and functional. They laid a foundation, then left. Paul explains to Titus: “For this reason I left you in Crete, so you might set right what remains unfinished and appoint elders in every city, as I instructed” (Titus 1:5). The apostolic missionary aimed to work themselves out of a job. Once a church matured enough to produce leaders, the missionary appointed elders and deacons and moved on. Congregations were entrusted to their own leaders, not to a long-term “Pulpit Minister.” Cultivating Homegrown Teachers If we want strong churches, we need to stop depending on search committees to find the next leader. Church leaders should take charge of their own communities. Churches should focus on discipleship, finding and training faithful men from within to teach and lead. Mentoring takes time, but raising leaders from inside the church creates a solid foundation that lasts. As a practical first step, leaders can identify members who demonstrate spiritual maturity and invite them to participate in leadership apprenticeships or small-group teaching opportunities. Pairing less experienced members with seasoned elders or deacons for intentional mentorship will help develop their gifts. Regularly rotating teaching responsibilities in Bible studies or small gatherings will allow emerging leaders to grow in experience, confidence, and connection with the congregation. Church leaders should value character more than charisma. A local deacon may not have the smooth delivery or clever jokes of a professional speaker, but they care deeply for their church. They have shared in the same struggles, built trust, and know how to speak to their community’s needs. A healthy church doesn’t need a flashy presentation. It needs faithful elders and humble deacons who teach and care for the people. We desperately need modern “ministers” to become Scriptural deacons. Instead of occupying their own elevated office or acting as a higher class of Christian, they should adopt the biblical definition of a servant. They’re meant to work under local elders to teach and serve the flock, not to be the star of the show. Let’s abandon the secular, corporate models of church staffing and return to the beautiful, messy, and relational work of building up our own elders and deacons from within our own spiritual families. 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Divine Scales

It’s incredibly common in modern church culture to hear people say that “all sin is the same to God” or “sin is just sin.” It usually comes from the good intention of emphasizing that everyone needs grace. We want to level the playing field to show that nobody is beyond the need for salvation. While the motivation behind the phrase is understandable, the theology behind it is fundamentally flawed. Philosophically, the idea that all sins are equal actually originates not in Scripture but in ancient Stoicism. The Stoics taught a paradox that all moral failures were exactly equal because any failure was simply a departure from perfect reason. To them, missing the mark by an inch was the same as missing it by a mile. But biblical Christianity rejects this flattened view of morality. The reality is, there is in fact a distinction between the status of being a sinner and the degree of the sin committed. An analogy, if you’ll allow: * A single drop of poison makes a glass of water undrinkable. That speaks to its status. * Drinking a single drop of poison doesn’t have the same physical consequence as drinking a whole gallon. That speaks to the degree. While every sin ruptures our relationship with God and makes us guilty in some sense, the Scriptures and the historical practice of Christians over the last 2,000 years consistently demonstrate that sins differ in severity, guilt, and judgment according to intent, knowledge, and the harm they cause. Old Testament Witness The Old Testament sacrificial system wasn’t a blind bureaucracy. It was a relational framework that categorized sins by the posture of the human heart. God makes clear distinctions between a genuine mistake and calculated rebellion. We see this in the law regarding unintentional sin: “And if one soul sins unintentionally, he will bring a yearling female goat for a sin offering” (Numbers 15:27). A sin committed out of ignorance still requires atonement because God is holy, but the required sacrifice is less costly. It acknowledges human frailty without destroying the person. On the other hand, willful and defiant rebellion carries a distinctly heavier weight and a fundamentally different consequence. The very next passage outlines this severity: “And the soul, whoever acts with a hand of arrogance, whether he is native-born or a foreigner, this one provokes God; and that soul will be cut off from among his people” (Numbers 15:30). To sin with a “hand of arrogance” is to act with premeditated defiance. For such a rebellion, there is no routine sacrifice offered; only severance from the community. God’s own law proves that the severity of the sin is connected to the sinner’s intent. God’s justice is proportional. New Testament Witness If anyone was going to flatten morality into a single standard, we might expect it to be Jesus. Yet, we see the exact opposite in his teaching. He actively calibrates the divine scales to show that certain offenses matter far more than others. Jesus explicitly uses comparative language when discussing the law: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23). He mocks the religious elite for obsessing over microscopic infractions while ignoring bigger moral failures. To God, neglecting justice and mercy is infinitely heavier on the scales than failing to tithe garden herbs. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on this specific verse, taught that while all sin is an offense against God, the punishment and severity vary wildly. He noted that Christ is showing us how God judges our actions not just by the rule broken, but by the intent and the specific harm caused. Jesus also teaches that a person’s awareness of God’s will directly impacts the severity of their judgment: “And that slave who knew the will of his master and did not prepare or act according to his will, will be beaten with many blows. But the one who did not know, yet did things worthy of blows, will be beaten with few blows” (Luke 12:47-48). Accountability scales with revelation. A person who sins in ignorance will face judgment, but the believer who knows the Master’s will and intentionally disobeys will face a far more severe consequence. Later, during his trial, Jesus clarifies to Pilate that guilt isn’t distributed equally among those involved in his crucifixion. He tells the Roman governor: “Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no authority against me at all, unless it had been given to you from above; because of this, the one handing me over to you has a greater sin’” (John 19:11). Pilate was a cowardly pragmatist sentencing an innocent man to die, which was terribly sinful, while the religious leaders were intentional orchestrators of the execution. Jesus looks at two groups participating in the same event and declares one to have a “greater sin.” The apostles carried this teaching forward, recognizing that certain sins give rise to distinct spiritual realities and require different pastoral responses. The Apostle John explicitly divides sins into two categories regarding their outcome: “If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he will ask, and God will give life to him, to those who are sinning not unto death. There is a sin unto death; I do not say that he should ask concerning that” (1 John 5:16). Different spiritual realities require different approaches. James also warns that those who teach will be judged with greater strictness: “Do not become many teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a greater judgment” (James 3:1). Actions have weighted consequences based on a person’s position and influence. A leader leading people astray carries more weight than someone struggling with a personal sin. Early Church Practice and Ancient Canons The historical record shows that Christians have always recognized that not all sins are created equal, a belief deeply embedded in early church practice. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the bishops explicitly codified degrees of guilt into canon law. In Canon 11, they established distinct canonical penalties for those who denied the faith. They carefully distinguished between those who lapsed under extreme coercion or torture and those who fell away without any compulsion at all, assigning much heavier penances to the willful betrayals. Canon 12, dealing with Christians who returned to the pagan military, the council instructed bishops to adjust the length of penance based on the person’s inward intent, fear, and sorrow. St. Basil’s canonical letters clearly demonstrate the same framework. He prescribed vastly different periods of repentance and exclusion from the Eucharist based on the severity of the sin. For example, he made strict, measured distinctions between intentional murder and involuntary manslaughter. The Council of Constantinople in 381 AD demonstrates that the early church even saw degrees of severity in false teaching. Canon 7 outlined that certain heretics needed to be rebaptized to re-enter the church, while others, whose errors were deemed less severe, only required chrismation. Canon 102 of the Quinisext Council in 692 AD explicitly instructs bishops to weigh the “quality of the sin” and the sinner’s disposition. The canon states that not all spiritual illnesses are the same, and they require different degrees of spiritual medicine. Measuring the weight of a sin wasn’t just a theological theory for the early church; it was standard pastoral practice. The Justice and Mercy of True Proportionality From the logic of natural law to the explicit teachings of Jesus, the Apostles, and the historic Church Fathers, the verdict is consistent: All sin separates us from God, but not all sin is created equal. If we teach that all sin is the exact same, we inadvertently make God out to be an unjust judge who lacks the nuance to distinguish between a momentary lapse in judgment and premeditated evil. It also breeds pastoral disaster, as flattening sin leads tender consciences to despair over minor flaws while allowing hardened sinners to justify grave wickedness under the excuse that “nobody is perfect.” We must rely completely on Christ’s grace for our salvation. But we must also pursue wisdom in how we live, knowing that our specific choices, our intent, and our influence carry real significance in the eyes of a perfectly just God. 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