ABSTRACT: Several biblical passages speak of what some theologians call a “divine council,” an assembly of heavenly beings or “gods.” For Israel’s neighbors in the ancient Near East, such councils reflected polytheistic worldviews, where rival gods vied for power and supremacy. For Israel, however, the members of the divine council, though heavenly and supernatural, remained subject to the providence and decrees of the one Creator God. Furthermore, God disarmed all these malevolent spiritual powers at the cross of Christ, and one day he will strip them of all authority entirely.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Kaspars Ozolins, research associate at Tyndale House in Cambridge, to explain the meaning of the divine council in Scripture.

When studying Scripture, it is always helpful to understand more about the particular historical, cultural, and linguistic setting in which the story of the Bible unfolds. Michael Heiser’s 2015 book The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible has introduced many ordinary readers of Scripture to a new concept with ancient roots: the divine council.

This term, although not found in the Bible, is best illustrated with reference to the famous prologue in Job 1–2, where “the sons of God” present themselves before the Lord. Heiser’s work has been lauded by such established evangelical scholars as Darrell L. Bock, John Goldingay, and Tremper Longman III. It has also received favorable reviews in Themelios, the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, and the Review of Biblical Literature. In his book, Heiser presents the divine council as an assembly of lesser divine figures, presided by a higher, supreme being. While in ancient Near Eastern (ANE) societies, such a concept entails a polytheistic pantheon of deities, its occurrence in Scripture is variously interpreted and debated.

How might Christians today approach the divine council theme in Scripture? We can begin by looking at the Old Testament’s ANE context.

Israel’s Ancient Near Eastern Context

In exploring the divine council theme and potential connections to extrabiblical contexts, it is useful to understand the ancient setting of the Bible itself. For the Old Testament, the context is largely ancient Canaan, a land situated in the Levant, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The books of the Hebrew Bible span approximately one thousand years, from the Late Bronze Age up to the Persian period. These centuries witnessed the rise and fall of major world empires, as well as innumerable smaller local kingdoms. Within this relatively small territory, many languages and cultures came into contact with God’s people.

The linguistic context of the Old Testament is particularly important to us because culture and language go hand in hand. Words, concepts, and ideas are conveyed through language, and these connections are often more transparent when examining genetically related languages. Linguistically speaking, biblical Hebrew is the language of the vast majority of the Old Testament (just a few chapters in Ezra and Daniel are written in Aramaic), and it was the language spoken by the ancient Israelites themselves. Its closest relatives are the other Canaanite languages: Moabite, Edomite, Ammonite, and Phoenician. These languages are unfortunately very poorly attested, being found only occasionally in a few inscriptions.

More distant languages, yet still closely related to biblical Hebrew, are Aramaic and Ugaritic. The former was the language of various kingdoms in the region of Aram, mostly located in present-day Syria. This language would later greatly spread in influence and become the lingua franca of the entire ANE for centuries. Many important religious texts, both Christian and Jewish, were written in varieties of Aramaic.

The latter, Ugaritic, is of more interest for our purposes because of its very early collection of clay cuneiform tablets, discovered by accident in 1928.

Ugaritic Pantheon

When archaeologists and other scholars began working on this significant collection of Ugaritic texts, they were amazed to discover extensive documentation of a language and a culture that flourished north of Israel, around the time of the biblical judges. Many of the cuneiform texts (an ancient writing system that made use of various combinations of wedge-impressions made in wet clay tablets) are records of mundane economic activities and other facets of daily life. A select few, however, provide invaluable information about the religious practices of the ancient city-state of Ugarit, including the deities worshiped there, and the temple rituals carried out within the kingdom.

A famous series of large tablets, called the “Baal cycle,” contains epic texts that depict a divine council of deities, headed by the chief god ’Ilu (a word that is related to the generic words for God in biblical Hebrew: ’Ēl and ’Ĕlōhîm). Featuring prominently in the epic is the deity Ba‘lu, parallel to the Hebrew word Ba‘al. He was perceived by the ancient Canaanites as a storm deity who brought life-giving rains in the winter season.

In the epic, Ba‘lu engages in annual combat with Môtu, the god of death and drought. The Mediterranean cycle of rains and drought was thus conceived of as a struggle between rival deities for supremacy. Although Ba‘lu is defeated and descends into the underworld, he is subsequently assisted by ‘Anatu and Šapšu (the sun deity), who resurrect his body and transport it to Mount Ṣapunu (a mountain directly north of Ugarit, and whose name is related to the cardinal direction ṣāfôn, “north” in biblical Hebrew). It was here, in fact, that the autumn rains broke, as the sea-borne clouds were trapped by this towering landmark.

Other deities could be named as part of the divine council of gods: ’Aṯiratu (related to Hebrew ’Ăšērâ, “Asherah”) was seen as the wife of ’Ilu and his consort. Kôṯaru-wa-Ḫasīsu was the craftsman of the council, who helped fashion a mace for Ba‘lu. Yammu (related to Hebrew yām, “sea”) was the god of the seas and another adversary of Ba‘lu. Together, they paint a portrait of an Ugaritic cosmology in which the various deities are active in their respective domains, forming alliances and also vying for power.

Key Passages and Concepts in Scripture

With this ANE background in place, one can now compare and contrast some of the various passages and concepts associated with the divine council theme in Scripture. Certain passages in the Bible seem in particular to give evidence to a spiritual realm beyond that of our physical world. Generally, students of the Bible conceive of only two broad categories — angels and demons (fallen angels) — but there is much more.

Although in modern parlance we equate the term “angel” with any non-physical heavenly being, in the biblical languages (both Greek and Hebrew), the words translated “angel” (Hebrew mal’āk; Greek ángelos) are more properly descriptors of messenger activity (in particular from the heavenly realm to the earthly realm). Thus, it would not be precise, for example, to speak of the śerāfîm in Isaiah 6 — or indeed the four living creatures described in Revelation — as “angels.”

Beyond these more familiar categories is an additional term that may not be as apparent to students of the Bible: “sons of God” (Hebrew bnê hā’ĕlōhîm). It appears to be related to the equivalent Ugaritic expression banū ’ili, “sons of ’Ilu,” a descriptor for the various non-human divinities in their pantheon. We can examine its occurrence in a few biblical passages.

Genesis 6

The phrase occurs in key passages in Scripture, most notably in Genesis 6 and Job 1–2, as well as in a number of psalms. According to Genesis 6, one precursor for the flood was the intermarriage of the “sons of God” with the “daughters of men.” Although the understanding of this passage is difficult, it seems likely, when taking into account the references to this passage in Jude and 2 Peter, that “sons of God” here refers not to men from the godly line of Seth, but rather to fallen spiritual beings. Thus, Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 appear to be describing the unnatural union of fallen angels and humans.

The primary objection to this interpretation is Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 22 in response to the Sadducees’ question about marriage in the resurrection. However, when Jesus states that in the resurrection people “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30), he probably did not intend to claim that an (unlawful) union of this sort had never occurred in history. The offspring of this unholy union are called Nephilim (Genesis 6:4), a word in Hebrew that means “fallen ones.”1

Deuteronomy 32

Other intriguing references to the “sons of God” can be found in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 32:8, Moses speaks: “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.” This is the rendering from the ESV. Most English versions have “sons of Israel” here instead of “sons of God.” “Sons of Israel” is the reading reflected in various ancient translations of the Bible; it is also the reading in the Masoretic Hebrew tradition, which is the basis of our English Old Testament. The Greek Septuagint, however, features the reading angélōn theou, “angels of God,” and most intriguingly, a Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript has “sons of God.”

The context of the verse appears to allude to the Tower of Babel and the subsequent dispersal of the nations. If so, the “sons of God” would seem to be heavenly beings assigned by God to the various nations of mankind. By contrast, the Lord’s inheritance is Israel, specifically (Deuteronomy 32:9). An alternative interpretation, which cannot be excluded, is that the (approximately) seventy nations listed in Genesis 10 correspond to the seventy members of Jacob’s household (i.e., Israel), which went down to Egypt to Joseph (Genesis 46:27). On this understanding, however, it is not entirely clear what kind of connection between Israel and the nations Moses would have intended.

Job 1–2

Probably the best-known reference to the “sons of God” is found in the prologue to the book of Job (chs. 1–2). Here we learn that the “sons of God” present themselves before the Lord, and furthermore, that Satan is among their number. The word “Satan” is a transliteration of the Hebrew śātān, “(the) accuser.” Strictly speaking, it is an epithet, not a personal name, and yet we know from other passages of Scripture, especially in the New Testament, that Satan is a particular fallen angel who is the originator of sin. Revelation 12:9 describes him as “the dragon . . . that ancient serpent,” a clear allusion to the serpent who tempted Eve in the garden. In the Septuagint and the New Testament, the equivalent term in Greek for Satan is diábolos (also meaning “accuser”), transliterated in English as devil.

Yet another, less well-understood reference to this member of the divine council is “Beelzebul,” sometimes also spelled “Beelzebub.” The Pharisees and scribes describe him as the “prince of demons” (Matthew 12:24), and Jesus calls him the “master of the house” (Matthew 10:25). This title appears to be equivalent to the Old Testament “Baal-zebub,” who is described as the god of Ekron (a Philistine city) in 2 Kings 1. The epithet ba‘al zəbûb, “lord of the flies,” is apparently a deliberate corruption of ba‘al zəbûl, “exalted lord,” whose equivalent is found in Ugaritic literature (ba‘lu zabūlu).

Interpreting the Divine Council Passages

Mainstream secular scholarship argues that passages hinting at the divine council theme are remnants of the original polytheistic cult of Yahwism, the religion peculiar to the ancient Israelites. In particular, it is asserted from archaeological evidence that Yahweh was worshiped alongside his consort, Asherah.2 These scholars claim that the majority of the Hebrew Bible, considered to have been written late, witnesses a kind of anachronistic polemic of the worship of deities beside Yahweh (when in fact there was no such taboo originally). Concomitantly, over time Yahweh increasingly assumes roles that were previously assigned to other deities, or to his wife Asherah. Thus developed the classical conception of monotheism, which is the foundation of Western Judeo-Christian civilization. Despite this paradigm shift, these scholars argue, extrabiblical evidence, together with clues such as the divine council theme in Scripture, allow for the reconstruction of the Israelites’ original polytheistic system of worship.

By contrast, evangelicals, such as Heiser, maintain that the divine council in Scripture, while influenced by the surrounding ANE cultures, nevertheless is distinctive, and does not contravene monotheism. Another scholar who has popularized the use of ANE backgrounds in studying Scripture is John Walton, whose Lost World book series examines various Old Testament passages in light of the ANE context. A common distinction he makes is the following: “Although the Bible was written for us, it was not written to us.” If the Bible was not written to us, then it seems we must adjust to the worldview of the biblical authors, at least to some degree, in order to properly understand the Old Testament, including the theme of the divine council.

Given the work of these scholars (and others), however, ordinary Christians might be wondering how they could possibly access the meaning of the Old Testament (almost eighty percent of God’s word!) without an adequate understanding of its ANE background. What is more, if the Hebrew Bible is a product of its own cultural and historical setting, does it even make sense to speak of it as Christian Scripture?

As is so often the case, one’s hermeneutics plays a decisive role in determining the interpretive outcome. A critical component in any hermeneutical process is the assessment and incorporation of various types of contexts. There are near and far biblical contexts (e.g., verse, chapter, book, canon). There are also extrabiblical contexts situated around the ANE milieu in which Holy Scripture arose. It is precisely here — the proper adjudication of biblical and extrabiblical contexts — where significant hermeneutical battles are fought. When faced with apparently conflicting contextual evidence, which type of context ought to play a more primary role? Should the ANE context of the Old Testament be dominant, with the Bible’s internal textual context playing a subservient role?

Heiser argues,

The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers — the context that produced the Bible. Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.3

Heiser appears to be arguing that certain key elements about the biblical text (here, especially the divine realm) were essentially obscured to Christians over two millennia because they lacked access to the extrabiblical resources that we now possess, thanks to archaeology and other historical disciplines. Thus, he goes on to state,

The biblical text was produced by men who lived in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean between the second millennium BC and the first century AD. To understand how biblical writers thought, we need to tap into the intellectual output of that world. A vast amount of that material is available to us, thanks to modern technology.4

Just how unique was Israel in its ancient context? On the one hand, Israel, as we have seen, was a nation and a people with a language and culture that was situated in a specific historical context, one that we dare not ignore. On the other hand, Israel was a distinct entity, constituted by God to be a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Its God, Yahweh, the true God, was unlike the false gods of the nations (Jeremiah 14:22). We must be careful not to assume that the true meaning of divine Scripture (both New and Old Testaments) is somehow ultimately inaccessible to modern people apart from specialist knowledge of the ancient cultural context. While the Bible is indeed the product of multiple human authors, the ultimate author of Scripture is God himself, and it bears witness to a fundamental unity from Genesis through to Revelation.

“Israel was a distinct entity, constituted by God to be a ‘kingdom of priests’ and a ‘holy nation.’”

In general, Heiser’s work offers interesting and sometimes illuminating exegeses of many passages. Unfortunately, it is sometimes imbalanced and suffers from a deliberate attempt to downplay the church’s historical engagement with Scripture. Some of the language in the book on Trinitarian matters, for example, is unhelpful, and potentially dangerous. Certain terms that Heiser uses to point out a distinction between the Father and the Son in the Old Testament (such as “a second Yahweh” and “two powers in heaven”), are at best careless, and at worst ignorant of historic orthodox Christian doctrines such as divine simplicity.5 More broadly, in emphasizing the reality of other spiritual beings, especially malevolent powers, Heiser tends to downplay the central problem described in Scripture (our sinful state before a holy God) and its only solution (the substitutionary death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for us and in our stead).

Divine Council and Christian Theology

Consequently, while it is helpful to consider the ancient cultural context, it is vital to always think theologically and canonically when studying Scripture, especially in the context of the historical theology of God’s church. When thinking about the divine council theme, one vital component of historic Christian theology is the Creator-creature distinction. God is not merely the greatest of all beings, as though he were somehow a species of a genus of “things” in common with plants, galaxies, and humans. Rather, God is utterly unique, separate from his creation. God is in a class of his own.

“God is utterly unique, separate from his creation. God is in a class of his own.”

A major section in Scripture devoted to the uniqueness of God is the so-called “trial of the false gods” in Isaiah 40–45. There, Yahweh sets himself in distinction to both the false gods and more broadly his entire creation. God cannot be likened to anything (Isaiah 40:18), neither to the idols of men nor to his majestic creation. Yahweh challenges his opponents to “tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come” (Isaiah 41:22). The “former things” in history may be known, but their deep purposes in the hand of a sovereign God are beyond the grasp of his creatures. Because of this, the Lord does not give his praise or glory to anyone else in creation (Isaiah 42:8). Indeed, the Lord declares, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Isaiah 43:10). It is the Lord who created the heavens, and there is no other (Isaiah 45:18). God’s creatorship and sovereignty are thus vital indications of his uniqueness.

Given this, how are we to understand the divine council theme? Where do these beings fit? Clearly, they fit on the creature side of the Creator-creature division, and as such they share none of God’s incommunicable attributes (for example, his aseity, his omnipotence, his omnipresence). Consequently, it is better to speak of the members of the divine council as “heavenly beings” and not “divine beings.” For although the council is of a heavenly, spiritual nature, and although Scripture portrays God as heading this council, these beings are not in the same class as him. As A.W. Pink so eloquently states in his book The Sovereignty of God, even the loftiest creatures of all, the awe-inspiring seraphim who dwell in God’s presence (as seen in Isaiah’s vision), are infinitely closer to the tiny insect with its fleeting life than they are to Yahweh. They cover their feet before their Creator because they too are made by him.6

“God, although he maintains a divine council, is not in any way subject to it, but is in fact ultimately sovereign.”

It is also important to understand that God, although he maintains a divine council, is not in any way subject to it, but is in fact ultimately sovereign over both it and the rest of his creation. By employing the important theological concept of secondary causation, we can thus properly understand how 1 Chronicles 21:1 states that Satan incited David to number Israel in a census, and yet 2 Samuel 24:1 claims that it was the Lord who ultimately incited David. Although Satan and other members of the divine council are genuine agents and active in the world, nevertheless, none of their activities is ultimately independent of God’s providence and his divine decree.7

The ‘gods’ Behind Idols

Given this theological foundation, what should we make of the fact that in a number of passages, Satan and other members of the divine council are described as “god(s)”? For example, Satan himself is described as “the god of this world” in 2 Corinthians 4:4, an apparent reference to his temporary domination of fallen mankind by means of blinding them to the “gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” When Hebrews 2:7 quotes from Psalm 8, it appears to be interpreting the occurrence of ’ĕlōhîm in that passage as a reference to the members of the divine council (i.e., angels). This word is ambiguous in Hebrew, since it has a plural form (the -îm suffix indicates plural), yet it usually refers in context to God (singular). Thus, one could translate the verse as follows: “You have made him [man] a little lower than the gods.”

Likewise, Psalm 82, although exegetically challenging, appears to be describing a council of non-human beings as gods: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” If this interpretation is correct, it seems that these beings had some kind of jurisdiction over the nations (as is also hinted in the passage discussed earlier, Deuteronomy 32:8). They are faulted for judging unjustly (Psalm 82:2) and hence condemned by God in verses 6 and 7: “I said, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.’” Astonishingly, the psalm ends with the promise that God will one day both judge all the nations and inherit them (i.e., redeem them).

It is crucial to observe what Paul’s theology both says and does not say about other gods in the context of idol worship. In his extended discussion of food offerings to idols, beginning in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul does not deny the existence of malevolent spiritual realities behind the physical idols worshiped by the pagan nations. On the one hand, he states that the physical object (the idol) “has no real existence” (1 Corinthians 8:4), something that even the ancients acknowledged. Nevertheless, there is an actual demonic realm behind idol worship, for Paul later warns the Corinthians not to be “participants with demons” like the pagans, who, when they sacrifice, “offer to demons and not to God” (1 Corinthians 10:20). Consequently, Paul is not being sarcastic or speaking hypothetically when he says the following:

Although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords” — yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:5–6)

The gods behind idols are “gods” for the pagan unbelieving nations, not for Christians. One day, all such “gods” will be judged, and their authority over the nations will be stripped away. Indeed, this process began at the cross and the resurrection of Christ, where God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and them put to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15).8

New-Covenant Realities

For the believer, everything in the new covenant is new. Not only does he have a new relationship with God, but he has a new relationship with sin, the flesh, and indeed the fallen heavenly beings who presently are in this world. There has been a fundamental shift in allegiances, to the point that Paul boldly declares to the Colossians that God has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13–14).

Furthermore, the Gentile nations are now progressively turning to God and becoming part of his eschatological people. This was already promised in the Old Testament prophets and was inaugurated with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is very significant, therefore, in Acts 2, when the disciples begin to speak in the languages of the nations and three thousand are added to their number. Later in Acts, Paul is specifically told that he is being sent to the Gentiles “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18).

As modern Western believers, we should be aware of the supernatural realm that exists around us. Yet just the same, as Christians we must always put these spiritual realities into their proper context in terms of our theology of God. Furthermore, as new-covenant believers, we joyfully recognize that we have been delivered from genuine spiritual darkness and that our gospel witness to the nations is truly a matter of life and death.

Joe tracked me down one day. With desperation in his voice, he pleaded that I help him resolve a crisis moment. As a seminary student, he was overwrought with thoughts that he didn’t belong in seminary. He ticked off several reasons for his doubt. He went to class, and his mind wandered. He attempted to do course assignments, but he couldn’t care less. He was tired of exegeting biblical passages and developing theological convictions. He felt listless in his relationship with God. And he entertained strong doubts about his sense of call to ministry.

Joe certainly isn’t alone in experiencing such doubts about his ministry aspirations while in seminary. So, how should a student respond if he enrolled in seminary with great expectations and wide-eyed wonder, only to find himself in such a faith crisis sometime during his studies? As a longtime seminary professor, I have counseled students with at least three lessons.

Don’t Be Surprised

A good place to start is the apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 1:29: “It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” As a seminary student, you are preparing for Christian ministry, and Satan hates Christian ministry. He will attack your faith and try to disturb your hope, derailing you from God’s call and future plans for you. Also, the world — people who are hostile toward God and systems that are ungodly — has you in its sights to entice unbelief and destroy you. And of course, your own sinful nature rears its ugly head and seeks to drag you away from such a calling.

How should you respond to these three enemies? Don’t yield to Satan’s trickery: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Direct your heart toward God and away from the world: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). Depend on the Holy Spirit: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

“Ask veteran saints around you about their experience of doubt, and know that you are not alone in the fight.”

What you experience is common to all of us who have been in seminary. Indeed, “do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12–13). Ask veteran saints around you about their experience of doubt, and know that you are not alone in the fight.

Don’t Stay for the Wrong Reasons

This kind of experience is also a good opportunity to carefully assess the reason(s) you enrolled in seminary. Are you there because your grandfather and father (who were pastors before you) expect you to become a pastor too? Or maybe you assume that they expect you to become a pastor (though that’s not actually true of them). And if you’re honest with yourself, you’d rather be a dentist or an educator. But if you were to take that other direction, you’d no longer be on “God’s A-team.” You’d be settling for his second best.

Now, if you have a very sensitive conscience, please don’t apply the above discussion to yourself so that you doubt what you know as God’s leading to seminary. Rather, if you’re in seminary to please others (granddad and dad), or if you’re looking for people to admire you because you’re on the elite squad (and that doesn’t include examining braces or educating biologists), please reconsider your plans.

Switching from theology to thermodynamics, if that’s how God has wired and gifted you, may be the right step — not the embarrassing or shameful step — to take. And it may calm any doubts that have arisen from wrongly attending seminary.

Don’t Consider Doubt a Virtue

Lastly, don’t yield to the popular contemporary move to embrace doubt as a proper posture for Christians. Jesus rebuked his disciples as men “of little faith” when they questioned his ability to provide for their basic needs (Matthew 6:30). They feared for their life though he was ready to rescue them (Matthew 8:26). They were in full panic mode when threatened by their surroundings (Matthew 14:31). They disbelieved his vivid examples of provision (Matthew 16:8). They wondered why they failed when they didn’t trust Jesus and his power (Matthew 17:20). Jesus rebuked doubt as misguided.

Oppositely, Jesus healed people in response to their stunning faith. One example is his healing of two blind men: Jesus “touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’ And their eyes were opened” (Matthew 9:29–30). As a woman with a persistent discharge of blood touched him, “Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.’ And instantly the woman was made well” (Matthew 9:22). As for the leper whose skin was made whole, Jesus “said to him, ‘Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well’” (Luke 17:19). As these narratives are offered to underscore the necessity of faith, we rightly conclude that these miracles would not have happened if doubt had won the day.

Moreover, Scripture celebrates men and women who, though in dire straits, refused to cave in to doubt but remained steadfastly faithful. Abraham is so extolled:

In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:18–21)

Likewise, Scripture applauds Sarah for her persistent trust in the face of an impossibility: “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11).

“Don’t give way to the faddish fixation on doubt as a virtue.”

So, don’t give way to the faddish fixation on doubt as a virtue. Faith is a fruit of the Spirit. It is ignited by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). It is directed not inwardly but outwardly toward Christ and his gospel of grace. Even if assailed by doubt and shaken by temptations and trials, faith will prevail when it is riveted on the divine promises of our faithful God.

End of a Faith Crisis

This proved to be Joe’s experience. When he initially approached me with his concerns and fears, my heart went out to him. Though I and others were confident about God’s calling on his life (which I believed included completion of seminary studies in preparation for church ministry), I was grieved that Joe was facing such a test of his faith.

For several weeks, we met together, poring over the biblical passages noted above, examining how to overcome the distractions to his studies, praying for a renewed sense of God’s presence and provision, and envisioning the fruitful ministry that could open up in front of him. By God’s grace and Joe’s persistence, he moved from disabling doubt to robust faith in God’s call on his life.

If you, like Joe, didn’t sign up for a “faith crisis” class in seminary, but find yourself in one nonetheless, I hope and pray the same outcome will be true of you.

ABSTRACT: Some Christians presume the story of evangelicalism in America to be one of steady decline, from the robust faith of the founding generation to the increasing secularism of today. In fact, America was far more evangelical in 1860 than it was in 1776. The Second Great Awakening of the mid-1800s brought a surge of new members into the nation’s churches, especially its Methodist and Baptist churches, both of which sought to reach the masses on the frontiers and among the slave populations. Whether America on the eve of the Civil War can be called a “Christian nation” is doubtful; nevertheless, in 1860 the nation was more deeply influenced by evangelical faith than it ever had been before, or ever has been since.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Thomas Kidd, Vardaman Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, to trace the development of evangelical faith from America’s founding through the Second Great Awakening.

Brilliant as he may have been as a writer, Thomas Jefferson was a lousy religious demographer. In 1822, he wrote to his friend Benjamin Waterhouse about the future of American religion, and his preference for a non-Trinitarian, naturalistic version of Christianity. After denouncing the “demoralizing dogmas of Calvin,” the former president issued a bold prediction: “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the U.S. who will not die a Unitarian.”1 If there were a list of the all-time worst religious predictions in American history, this would have to be at the top of it.

“By the eve of the Civil War, America was as deeply influenced by evangelical faith as it ever had been before.”

Even as Jefferson wrote — much to his chagrin — the Second Great Awakening was turning America into a heavily evangelical nation. By the eve of the Civil War, America was as deeply influenced by evangelical faith as it ever had been before, or ever has been since.

Scarce Among the Founders

Evangelical Christianity was not inconsequential at the time of the American founding, of course. For example, we can thank evangelical Christians, especially Baptists, for many of the Revolutionary-era gains in religious liberty. Non-evangelical politicians such as Jefferson and James Madison depended on rank-and-file Baptists to pressure state governments to drop their official state denominations, or “establishments” of religion. Virginia abolished its official tie to the Church of England (or Episcopal Church) in 1786, guaranteeing all Virginia citizens liberty of conscience. This created a veritable free market of religion in the state. Virginia’s move was a critical precedent for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with its prohibition on a national established denomination, and its promise of “free exercise of religion” for all. It was not only evangelicals who wanted full religious liberty, but it would be hard to imagine America achieving religious freedom to the extent that it did without the aid of evangelical Christians.

Yet evangelicals did not have anything like the dominant religious and cultural position in 1776 that they would enjoy by the 1850s. Among the major Founders, evangelicals were rare. To find clear examples of evangelical believers, one has to look to lesser-known leaders such as John Jay of New York, author of a few of the Federalist essays, and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Then there’s the devout Roger Sherman of Connecticut, the only person to have signed all four great state papers of the American founding: the Continental Association,2 the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Among the most recognizable Founders, there were moderate but deistic-leaning Anglicans such as George Washington, wandering and reticent figures such as Alexander Hamilton,3 Unitarians such as Jefferson and John Adams, and self-described deists such as Ben Franklin. Dyed-in-the-wool evangelicals were scarce.

Born out of the Great Awakening in the 1740s, the evangelical movement was growing across America in 1776, but it remained a minority within most segments of American Christianity. The dominant denominations in America prior to 1776, including Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, usually had a conflicted attitude toward the revivals and revivalists of the First Great Awakening. Church of England officials had an especially rocky relationship with George Whitefield, the leading evangelist of the Great Awakening, who died on his last visit to America in 1770. By the mid-1740s, many Congregationalist ministers in New England also had denounced Whitefield as a rabble-rouser. These “Old Light” Congregationalists had their counterpart in “Old Side” Presbyterians, who worried that revivalists would splinter the churches and bring established ministers into disrepute.

Even many of the pre–Great Awakening Baptist churches in America opposed the revivals. But the Separate Baptists changed that stance. The Separate Baptists were former Congregationalists who not only supported the revivals, but who questioned the validity of infant baptism. Separate Baptists started to become the most dynamic evangelical group in America during the mid-1740s. By the 1750s, they transported their fervor from New England, where they originated, to the southern colonies. This began the century-long transformation of the South into America’s “Bible Belt.”

Rise of Methodism

Arguably the key factor in the story of American evangelical ascendancy was Methodism. Going back to his student days, Whitefield was considered a type of Methodist, because of his association with John and Charles Wesley, and with the so-called Holy Club of pious students at Oxford. But the Wesleys spent little time in America, and John Wesley and George Whitefield had a terrible split during the Great Awakening, due to differences over their respective Arminian and Calvinist beliefs. For a quarter century, they would struggle even to get back on speaking terms. Thus, Wesleyan Methodism had almost no impact on American revivals until the 1760s, when Wesleyan preachers began to appear in Virginia and Maryland.

In the early 1770s, John Wesley vociferously opposed the burgeoning American Patriot movement. The small numbers of Methodist preachers in America accordingly had to lay low, or return to Britain, during the American Revolution, for fear of Patriot reprisals. After the Revolutionary War (1775–1783) ended, Wesleyan Methodists came to the fore again. Wesley granted the American Methodists their functional independence in 1784, ensuring that the denomination would remain nimble and responsive to local American conditions. By the mid-1780s, the Methodists were seeing massive numbers of conversions and new church members, especially in the mid-Atlantic states.

One of the Methodists’ converts-turned-preachers was the former slave Richard Allen, who would go on to become one of Methodism’s most formidable leaders and the organizer of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Bethel was one of the founding churches of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first African American–led denomination in the country. Few African Americans were affiliated with any churches at all during the American colonial period. By the 1780s, groups such as the Methodists and Baptists began to make great evangelistic inroads among African Americans. They were especially effective when these groups employed blacks such as Allen as preachers and evangelists. When most enslaved African people had arrived in America, they had no Christian background whatsoever. The Second Great Awakening represented a major pivot in the mass conversion of most of the African American population, at least nominally, to some kind of Protestant faith.

“The Second Great Awakening represented a major pivot in the mass conversion of most of the African American population.”

Before the Civil War, some of those African American Christians attended black-pastored churches such as Richard Allen’s. In the South, it was more common for black Christians to formally attend white-pastored congregations. There were also functionally independent (and often secret) “brush arbor” meetings, held by enslaved people in isolated groves on the plantations. We often think of early America as a time of pervasive Christian commitment, but that was decidedly not the case for the enslaved population of the colonies. But the Second Great Awakening began to change the religious character of the American enslaved population. By the 1840s, the evangelization of the African American population (free or slave) was hardly complete, but the church had already become the most important social institution in the African American community.4

Methodism experienced the most remarkable growth of any of the evangelical churches between the Revolution and the Civil War. Methodist organizers such as Allen, Francis Asbury, and countless other itinerants and “circuit riders” kept up with the breakneck pace of population growth in the early American republic. Their tireless evangelistic and church-planting efforts explain much of the Methodist surge during the era. By 1784, there were around 15,000 American Methodists. Within six years, that number had increased fourfold to 60,000; by 1810, there were some 150,000 Methodist adherents in the nation. By the 1840s, as the sectional crisis over slavery loomed, the Methodist Church had become the largest denomination in America.5

Revived Baptists

Were it not for the Methodists, we might regard the Baptists’ expansion before the Civil War as the most remarkable story of religious growth in American history. The Baptists had an older history in America than the Methodists did, dating back to the early colonial period. Some of the Regular Baptists did support the Great Awakening, at least tentatively, but the Separate Baptists put the denomination on a path of massive revivalist increases on the trans-Appalachian frontier. Baptists claimed about 35,000 members as of 1784, but grew to 170,000 by 1810. The Methodists soon exceeded Baptist membership, however, only to be overtaken again by the Southern Baptist Convention as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination during the mid-twentieth century.

As of 1800, almost all Baptists were moderate or strict Calvinists.6 The new Freewill Baptist denomination had begun to challenge Calvinism’s supremacy among the Baptists, however. By the 1820s, doctrinaire Calvinism waned among many mainstream Baptists. Hard Calvinist conviction became more characteristic of the Primitive Baptists, who also opposed newfangled national missionary societies, such as ones sponsored by the Baptists’ Triennial Convention. The Primitive Baptists regarded these missionary societies as unbiblical and elitist.7 Many Presbyterian and Congregationalist pastors remained Calvinists, though, and revivalist Christianity and Reformed theology found important institutional homes in new schools such as Andover Theological Seminary (1807) and Princeton Theological Seminary (1812). Older divinity schools such as Harvard’s came under the influence of Unitarian and Transcendentalist thought.

Arminian Popularity

Overall, evangelicals during the Second Great Awakening took a big step toward becoming more theologically Arminian, due especially to the increasing dominance of Wesleyan Methodism. This is an aspect of the Second Great Awakening that Reformed or Calvinist readers might well view with concern and ambivalence. The evangelical faith of the First Great Awakening in America (less so in Britain) was almost uniformly Calvinist. That of the Second Great Awakening was a mix of Calvinist and Arminian convictions. If Jonathan Edwards’s theology was representative of the First Great Awakening, John Wesley’s was more typical of the Second. Calvinist revivalism certainly retained an important place on the Anglo-American religious scene, but Calvinism’s former dominance was becoming increasingly contested by Arminian perspectives on free will, the atonement, and other doctrinal issues.

This turn toward popular Arminian theology was capped by the enormous success of Charles Finney in the northern states in the 1830s. Finney was not the most precise or consistent theologian, but there can be no doubt that his philosophy of revival was more human-centered than Edwards’s. It clashed with Edwards’s well-known emphasis on the sovereignty of God in conversions and awakenings. Finney’s wildly popular Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835) reviled the notion that people needed to wait on God to do anything in revival. God had given churches and ministers all they needed to see revival happen; the only contingency was whether people would obey God by praying for and preaching revival. With Finney, the concept of a planned revival, foreign to Edwards’s view of the “surprising” nature of true awakening, became a standard feature of American evangelical culture. “Religion is the work of man,” Finney explained. “It is something for man to do.” Finney regarded the notion of the church waiting on God to send revival as devilish. Instead, God was waiting on the church to obey him in seeking revival.

Finney became famous (or notorious, in critics’ eyes) for his use of “new measures” to induce revival, such as protracted, multiday meetings. The characteristic new measure was the “anxious seat” or bench, where men or women wishing to break through to assurance of salvation could come to the front of a sanctuary and receive prayer and exhortations to believe. Finney also followed John Wesley in his emphasis on holiness, and the prospect that devout believers could achieve a virtual state of sinless perfection in this life. This state did not necessarily last forever, or render it impossible for the believer to sin. Yet Finney and his followers taught that God’s call to holiness was not impossible to meet. After conversion, there was an opportunity to consecrate one’s life entirely to God, and to live for stretches of time with no taint of sin at all.8

Women Leaders

The evangelical movement always had powerful female figures, such as Whitefield’s patron Selina Hastings, or Sarah Osborn, whose small home became the epicenter of a remarkable revival in Newport, Rhode Island, in the 1760s. Limited numbers of women were chosen as deaconesses or eldresses in certain Baptist congregations in the mid- to late 1700s. But virtually all evangelicals understood that there were biblical and historic limits on women’s formal authority in congregations. Most obviously, women were not permitted to become ordained ministers. The Arminian proponents of revivalist Christianity — again following the example of John Wesley — tended to be more open to informal speaking and offices for women than were traditional Calvinists. These roles even led occasionally to arguments for the legitimacy of women serving formally as pastors and preachers.

One such advocate for female preaching was Jarena Lee. Lee, born to free African American parents in New Jersey, worked as a domestic servant in Philadelphia, and experienced conversion under the preaching of Richard Allen. She was baptized in 1807. Lee was inclined toward charismatic piety, and she believed that God called her in a vision to become a preacher. She requested that Allen and the Methodists appoint her as an evangelist, a request that Allen denied. This did not stop her from becoming a sought-after exhorter and an independent Methodist itinerant. Allen later relented and ordained her in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Lee wrote, “If the man may preach, because the Saviour died for him, why not the woman? seeing he died for her also. Is he not a whole Saviour, instead of a half one?”9 Despite such occasional protests, it remained far more common for evangelicals to adhere to limitations on women’s public teaching, guided by passages such as 1 Timothy 2:12 or 1 Corinthians 14:34–35.

Splits and Sects

Biblicism was a defining mark of the evangelical movement, but as seen in Jarena Lee’s struggle to preach, or in Wesley and Whitefield’s feud over Calvinism, biblicism did not end disagreements among evangelicals regarding what the Bible taught. This problem became more acute during the Second Great Awakening. American evangelicals grew more individualistic, and confident about the power of reason to interpret Scripture, without the aid of creeds, confessions, or church tradition. This kind of populist biblicism led to an incredible proliferation of new denominations and sectarian movements in the first half of the nineteenth century. The end of established state churches also fueled the centrifugal trend within evangelicalism. Before the Revolution, the established Church of England, and the Congregationalist churches in New England, kept a lid on disruptive church practices or aberrant theology, and they could employ the force of the state to suppress dissent. Now, the same freedom that allowed for the phenomenal growth of the Baptists and Methodists led to the virtually unchecked work of other new religious movements, prophets, exhorters, and visionaries.

Some of these movements developed jarringly innovative theology, and in the case of the Mormons, entirely new scriptures. Other movements, such as the Churches of Christ, would go on to become standard fixtures of the American Protestant landscape. The Churches of Christ, led by figures such as Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, were the ultimate products of the evangelical “Bible alone” ethos. Stone and Campbell imagined that through an unaided, plain reading of Scripture, they could take their movement back to the simple purity of the New Testament church. This effort led to distinctive priorities such as prohibiting the use of musical instruments in worship services. Not even members of the Churches of Christ could agree whether such strictures were truly biblical, however, leading to a split that divided the Churches of Christ from the Disciples of Christ in the late nineteenth century.10 Evangelicals were finding that sola scriptura, while an indisputable first principle of Protestants, was more difficult to practice in a unifying fashion when it was unmoored from Christian history and creedal traditions.

Reaching the Masses

For better or worse, then, the Second Great Awakening was arguably more formative than the First in American religious and cultural history. The first reason for its massive impact is that by the mid-1800s, white and black Americans were far more “churched” than they had been in 1776. In 1776, church life in America was more urban-centered and exclusively white than it was by 1860, when evangelical churches had made much progress in reaching frontier white populations and the African American community, both free and enslaved. Whites remained the leaders of most churches and denominations, yet African Americans not only were surging into Baptist and Methodist congregations but sometimes led their own churches and even denominations, as Richard Allen did. The vast church-planting initiative led by Baptists and Methodists not only facilitated the conversion of untold thousands of Americans, but it also provided basic social structure to the burgeoning frontier. For many frontier settlers or enslaved people on plantations, the church was the only social support outlet they had.

“The Second Great Awakening was arguably more formative than the First in American religious and cultural history.”

The second reason that the Second Great Awakening was so consequential was that it led to a range of ambitious missionary and moral reform initiatives. The formal evangelical missionary movement had begun in Britain in the 1790s, but American evangelicals readily adapted to missions too, initiating evangelistic works in city slums, in Native American villages, and to the ends of the earth. Through agencies such as the American Bible Society (founded in 1816), evangelicals made physical copies of the Bible nearly ubiquitous in American homes. Finally, Christians in the Second Great Awakening era took on moral reform causes, such as ministering to the homeless and to prostitutes, curbing alcohol abuse, and opening countless schools and colleges. Some evangelicals engaged in antislavery activism, too, though their influence among evangelical whites was exceeded by proslavery sentiment, especially in the South.

Christian America?

To conclude, let’s return to Jefferson’s faulty prediction. Unitarianism may have been growing in 1822, but on the broader American religious landscape, it was hardly the main event. Americans, especially devout Protestants, tend to recall the American founding as a time of intense Christian fervor, and maybe even evangelical dominance. Sometimes they imply that American history has been a story of decline and decay from that idyllic origin of 1776. As usual, the historical truth is more complicated. America was far more churched and more evangelical in 1860 than it was in 1776.

Did this mean that America was a “Christian nation” by 1860? The brutal nature of chattel slavery, and the ruthless expropriation of Native American lands, should give us pause about making unequivocal claims to Christian identity for the nation, even by 1860. In terms of religious adherence, however, America on the eve of the Civil War was probably as Christian as it ever has been in its history. Indeed, the era of the Second Great Awakening demonstrates the incredible capacity of churches focused on the Great Commission to transform the religious character of a nation.