Spiritual Beings
Spiritual Beings
It was just a few weeks ago that we celebrated the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, as I said, in an attempt to “keep Christianity weird” following the advice of Justin Brierley in his book “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.” This past week in chapter two of Tom Holland’s “Dominion” we covered some of the history of Ancient Israel, and in our class I noted that I didn’t necessarily agree with everything that Holland said in that chapter.
Primarily, the disagreement results from the fact that Holland is by training an historian, and most certainly not a Bible scholar. What he puts forth in that chapter is in line with what a good number of secular historians put forth, sometimes referred to as “evolutionary monotheism.” Basically the idea is that Israel first began as polytheists, much like all their neighbors, and eventually arrived at the practice of worshipping and believing in just one God. This of course goes directly against what the Scriptures themselves claim, even though some historians think they can make an argument for it if you read between the lines of the Bible.
The problem is, monotheism, strictly as a term wasn’t used until the mid 17th century AD. The notion that we have when we think of monotheism would have been quite foreign to our Israelite and Christian forebears in the faith. Rather, they understood the world to filled with spiritual beings that went by a variety of different names, and they had no problem with that.
If you would like a great overview of and introduction to the notion of spiritual beings as found throughout the scriptures, I cannot recommend highly enough the following series of videos by the Bible Project, whom I’ve recommended many times before.
Here is the link to the whole playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH0Szn1yYNeef2AIszbltRK15dgoxA_57&si=hrsOPLHsMpRPREcV
I’ll post the first two in the series as well to get you started.
Who are Spiritual Beings:
https://youtu.be/cBxOZqtGTXE?si=QEkdqS3Gey7f3biL
Elohim: https://youtu.be/U5iyUik97Lg?si=weLHNqMA9bfzpTv-
I hope you’re doing well; I’ll see you in Church!
Peace,
Fr Adler+
“Dominion” Extra Credit
This week’s message above serves as the Extra Credit for last week’s chapter on Jerusalem. Here is the link to view a recording of last week’s class: https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/HdL271S0tiOZMgORGY7giQY8SI7ZWBoXBZKe4gCq0U9mAGuDKE5uESYzg3FAuRL0.ryvwzScK4u9tMtFr