We’re in a series investigating the two powers in heaven heresy. Last time I laid out for you the six groups of Jewish literature that we are going to look at. Today we are beginning with 1 Enoch. This is a collection of apocalyptic Jewish literature centered on the Enoch mentioned in Genesis. What does 1 Enoch have to tell us about two powers in heaven? Does 1 Enoch even mention the heresy? When should we date 1 Enoch? Get answers to these questions and more as we delve into this fascinating book together.
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Hey Sean,
I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you are doing this series; it is much needed. I have been writing about this on my blog for some time and engaging with Heiser’s material on this subject, but mainly from an exegetical approach. The way trinitarian apologists have tried to capitalize on the two powers concept to ground the trinity doctrine in early Jewish thought is clearly an overreach and a distortion of the data. This overreach must be confronted and the record set straight by able scholars like yourself. One glaring inconsistency in Heiser’s teaching on this subject was that he would admit that all of the candidates for a second power in Jewish literature were either an exalted angel or human, i.e. created beings, but then simply jump to the idea of multiple persons in God being something that Jews would have been comfortable with. It became apparent to me, early on in my research on Heiser’s position, that his presupposition of trinitarianism is what drove much of his exegesis of those salient passages in the Hebrew scriptures, along with his presupposition of the divine council. It was strange, his being an ANE scholar, that he totally ignored the concept of representative agency, a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon of the ANE, as an interpretive option and simply fixated on multiplicity of persons in God. So many of the online trinitarian apologists today, whether they realize it or not, are simply repeating Heiser’s views on this subject and, like Heiser, completely ignore or are ignorant of representative agency as a viable and even preferable conceptual framework for interpreting the relevant passages. Thank you for tackling this subject head on. I hope that many will have their minds changed on this subject through this series.
Heiser opened the can of worms and apparently handed it to you!
Love your work!
Hi Sean,
I’m enjoying your podcasts on the “two-powers” theory. Thanks for going through the sources and explaining what the sources really say, compared to what modern Christianity wants to think the sources say. As you’ve shown, the “second power” in the sources is never equal to God, always subordinate, and has been exalted and given authority from his God.
All Trinitarian two-power theorists make the false assumption that evidence for what they think are “two gods” is evidence for “two persons in one God”. It doesn’t. Evidence for “two gods” is evidence for polytheism.
A divine plurality which acknowledges “gods” is one thing (Canaanites, et al). A divine plurality that involves the notion that a single God is comprised of multiple persons is something entirely different.
None of the sources describe a singular God who consists of two persons — let alone a singular god who consists of three persons! And, if Trinitarians want to declare that in the 2nd Century, “God” was believed to be two persons, they are showing that a three-person god was an even later development, not the God presented in the Bible.
Thanks again!