Recently a Substack user writing under the name DonahuePapa posted a lengthy article interacting with my book The Unseen Throne: Psalm 82 and the Divine Council. The article is titled “The Unseen Throne: Background Followed By My Review.”
Before saying anything else, I want to sincerely thank him for taking the time to read the book and write such an extensive review. Anyone who has ever written a book knows that simply getting someone to read it is no small thing, and the number of readers who take the additional step of writing a thoughtful review is even smaller. For that reason alone I genuinely appreciate the time and effort he invested in engaging with the material.
The article also includes a large amount of background discussion related to Michael Heiser’s work, the so-called Deuteronomy 32 worldview, and broader scholarly debates surrounding those topics. Much of that material is not directly interacting with the specific arguments presented in The Unseen Throne, so I will not attempt to respond to every element of the article.
Instead, I will focus only on the portions that directly relate to the claims and arguments made in the book itself.
That said, as you might expect, I would push back on several of the supposed weaknesses identified in the review.
In a few places, I suspect the issue stems from reading the book through the lens of Michael Heiser’s framework rather than fully recognizing where my argument challenges the assumptions underlying that framework.
One example is the mention of Genesis 6. In the review, Genesis 6 is treated as though it supports the broader Divine Council worldview in a way that would challenge my position. However, my book deliberately does not address Genesis 6 precisely because it is unrelated to the central issue under discussion. In fact, I personally hold a supernatural interpretation of Genesis 6 and do not dispute that the “sons of God” there refer to spiritual beings. But that observation has no bearing on the question being debated in the book. Genesis 6 simply describes a group of spiritual beings who rebelled by taking human wives and were subsequently judged. It says nothing about the governance of nations, the division of the nations at Babel, or the interpretation of Psalm 82. Conflating these issues is common in discussions of the Divine Council worldview, but the texts themselves do not make those connections.
Similarly, Daniel 10 is often raised as evidence that spiritual beings exercise governing authority over the nations. But Daniel 10 actually demonstrates something more limited: the existence of hierarchical spiritual opposition to God’s purposes. The “Prince of Persia” clearly represents a hostile spiritual power resisting God’s messenger, and the chapter even suggests a kind of territorial correspondence between spiritual opposition and earthly kingdoms. However, the text never suggests that this being was originally appointed by Yahweh as a legitimate administrator over Persia, nor that he once served as a faithful member of Yahweh’s divine administration who later fell. Daniel 10 depicts opposition, not appointment. It shows conflict within the unseen realm, but it does not establish the framework required by the Deuteronomy 32 worldview.
The same principle applies to Colossians 2:15, which speaks of Christ disarming “rulers and authorities.” I fully affirm that Scripture presents a real hierarchy of hostile spiritual powers opposed to God. But the existence of such opposition does not demonstrate that these powers were once assigned judicial authority over the nations as part of a divine administrative structure. The claim that these beings correspond to the “sons of God” of Deuteronomy 32, or that they once ruled the nations by divine appointment, must be demonstrated from the biblical text rather than assumed.
This distinction is particularly important when discussing the Babel event and the interpretation of Deuteronomy 32:8–9. My critique of the Divine Council worldview is not that it recognizes the existence of spiritual beings or a heavenly assembly. Scripture clearly affirms both. The issue is far more specific: the claim that the nations were judicially disinherited at Babel and placed under the governance of spiritual beings who later became the corrupt gods of the nations. That claim requires several interpretive steps that the biblical text never explicitly states. It assumes that the “sons of God” were given judicial or moral responsibility over the nations, that they subsequently rebelled in that role, and that Psalm 82 records their later judgment. But none of those elements are actually present in the relevant passages themselves.
Another area that deserves clarification is the discussion of Jesus’ citation of Psalm 82 in John 10. One of the central arguments of The Unseen Throne is that the Divine Council interpretation of Psalm 82 creates significant tension with the way Jesus uses the passage in John 10. For that reason, the book provides an extended exegetical treatment of John 10 in its literary and theological context.
However, the review does not engage those arguments. While the article references the broader scholarly discussion, it does not attempt to address the specific exegetical case presented in the book or offer a counter reading of the textual details discussed there.
This is especially important because the interpretation of John 10 often associated with the Divine Council framework is not simply a minority view. It is a fringe interpretation. Outside of the modern Divine Council discussion, it is extremely difficult to point to reputable New Testament scholarship or Johannine commentary that interprets Jesus’ use of Psalm 82 in the way Michael Heiser proposes. The reading is not derived naturally from the Johannine context but is largely driven by the presuppositions of the Divine Council system itself.
That observation does not automatically make the interpretation wrong, but it does mean the burden of proof rests squarely on demonstrating that the reading arises from the text itself.
One of the aims of The Unseen Throne is precisely to provide a robust engagement with that issue by offering a comprehensive exegetical and historical examination of John 10 that reflects the broader consensus within Johannine scholarship.
I also want to briefly address the question of academic credentials. It is certainly true that I do not possess formal academic training in ancient Near Eastern studies. However, my engagement with these issues has not been casual. I have spent hundreds of hours reading and listening to Michael Heiser’s work, as well as dozens of other studies, journals, commentaries, and works on the divine council concept and its ancient Near Eastern parallels. My critique of the Divine Council worldview is not based on dismissing that scholarship but on the observation that the system itself cannot be sustained from the Hebrew text without importing several significant assumptions into the passages under discussion. And many of the observations presented in the book are also supported by broader scholarship.
Of course, no review can interact with every argument presented in a book. However, some of the critiques appear to address the book's conclusions without engaging with the central exegetical arguments that lead to them. That includes several of the weightier objections raised in the book, including the broader issue of Scripture's silence regarding the supposed judicial sentencing of the spiritual rulers of the nations. I have written at length about this issue both in the book and in a separate extended Substack post, and I have yet to hear a clear response to that particular challenge.
That may simply reflect the limits of a review format, but it also suggests that some of the nuance of the argument may not have been fully appreciated.
One final observation may be worth mentioning.
One surprising aspect of the review is that it does not directly engage with the extensive exegetical work presented in the book itself. A substantial portion of The Unseen Throne is devoted to a careful analysis of Psalm 82, including five chapters that examine the passage in detail and address many of the central arguments supporting the Divine Council interpretation, such as appeals to passages like Psalm 89 and related texts. The book also includes a robust exegetical treatment of Jesus’ citation of Psalm 82 in John 10, where the claims commonly associated with the Divine Council interpretation are examined in detail, yet that discussion likewise goes unaddressed.
While the review provides a broad discussion of the Divine Council worldview and surveys various scholarly perspectives, it does not engage directly with those exegetical arguments or offer a counter-reading of Psalm 82 itself. Of course, no review can address every argument contained in a book. But given how central Psalm 82 is to the entire discussion, it was somewhat surprising that the detailed textual arguments presented there were not engaged more directly.
For readers interested in evaluating these issues for themselves, I would simply encourage them to examine the arguments presented in the book and consider the biblical text carefully.
Again, I genuinely appreciate the time and effort invested in reading and reviewing the book and welcome the opportunity for continued discussion of these important questions.