Heiser’s Interpretive Iconoclasm: A Gracious Response

I’ve known about Michael Heiser’s writings since 2008 when I stumbled upon his fascinating 2001 BibSac article on the textual variant of Deut 32:8. Though several interesting providences, I became one of the very few Reformed Christians (certainly RBs) who actually knew Mike and counted him as a friend. In recent days, there has been a growing “full-frontal attack” (to quote the words of the article I will interact with on this post) against Mike and his teachings. A recent and ongoing flurry of critiques (and worse) are being collected at the Theopolis website. The range from pretty decent to, well, not that. In this article, I want to look at one of the better articles thus far, “Heiser’s Interpretive Iconoclasm,” by Luke Stamps. Stamps is Professor of Christian Studies at Anderson University and is the author of Ultimate Guide to Angels and Demons, forthcoming. In what follows, my goal is to be fair, charitable, gracious, and kind in my reading, agreements, and disagreements with professor Stamps, whom I have never met.

He begins by briefly recounting Mike’s growing and even “astonishing” influence in conservative Evangelical circles. He states, I think correctly, that in a sense, Heiser “has been the only game in town,” which accounts for at least some of the popularity. In truth, whether Mike understood this or not, he was a genius of marketing his ideas to an internet world. (I actually think he knew that.)

Moving into the piece, he cites perhaps the best article of the group thus far, written by my friend Christopher Kow, on some of the methodological and hermeneutical weaknesses of Heiser’s approach. I’ve discussed some of these myself, even in our defense of Heiser done over a year ago. Stamps wanted to delve deeper. 

As the argument took off, I found myself saying, “Amen,” on several occasions. “Christian interpretation must take account of canonical and traditional dimensions.” Amen! “ANE literature has a role to play.” Amen! “But the ultimate horizon for biblical interpretation is the whole canon of Scripture,” especially the NT.” Amen!!! This was always one of my great frustrations with how Mike approached many topics in the Bible. But then he started saying a mixture of things that I would agree with and then disagree with and ultimate say this is a lot more complicated than that. Let me move slowly here, going line for line.

“Furthermore, the community within which our interpretation must proceed is not finally the original audiences to whom the discrete parts of Scripture were first addressed (though reconstructing that original context is a crucial first step).” The intent here seems to be that it is a first step to interpret the original context, best we can. But we must never stop there. We want to know how the church has interpreted something, because we have 2,000 years of people who have gone before us to learn from. If this is the case, I agree. I more than agree. We must consult the church, although we also must admit that the church can and has been wrong on many secondary, non-gospel issues (obviously, we have disagreed over just about everything, but that’s precisely why I think the creeds and confessions are so helpful, though perhaps not for identical reasons that Stamps and/or others critiquing Heiser do). 

Continuing, “Rather, we interpret the Bible as Christian Scripture within the communion of saints, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ across space and time, deferring the sensus fidelium and the teaching officers whom the living Christ appoints for our instruction.” The fact that there is a “rather” here seems to imply that this sentence defines what was meant by the first. But this one is different from my interpretation above. First, in italicizing “Christian,” Stamps is likely referring to interpreting the text either with ANE lenses or Jewish lenses as opposed to a Christian lens. For me, this moves too fast. There’s a lot going on here. Is this implying an either/or? Is it impossible to read the text as a Christian if you are trying to look at the original pre-Christian Jewish context? How about if you are looking at ANE context? What if you are looking at ANE context to see how the Bible subverts it rather than perhaps incorporates it? Those are very different things. I think those are fair questions to ask and there are likely many more. I certainly agree that we want to read the text as Christians, and not as pagans, but Mike never read the text as a pagan or a Jew. I agree that he could and should have interacted with the church more than he did though. 

The next part is where I really think we need to be careful. He refers to something called the sensus fidelium. I had never heard of this before, so I looked it up in Muller’s Latin dictionary. It wasn’t there. Muller has everything in that dictionary though, so I asked the A. I. (I know, not often a trustworthy source and I’m open to a different take). It said the phrase really has its origins in Vatican II amongst Roman Catholics, which is likely why Muller didn’t include it. If true, that may not have been the best choice of phrase to use. Stamps then linked this to the teaching officers whom the living Christ appoints for our instruction. But that makes me ask, which “teaching officers”? Church officers (as opposed to “mere” professors like Mike)? If so, which church? Only Reformed Baptist? How about Lutheran? Anglican? Presbyterian? Since many of those are liberal, which ones among those? How about Rome itself? What happens when those teaching officers disagree on something? I mean, I’m a teaching officer in a church too. This whole thing gets much too close to the whole debacle 500 years ago that made Luther say, “Here I stand,” when confronted with a similar dilemma from Rome. I’m pretty uncomfortable with that.

Stamps continues, “Heiser fatally omits and explicitly disavows these traditional voices and cuts himself off from the regulating function they ought to exercise in proper biblical interpretation and synthesis.” I agree with this to some degree. However, as I’ve pointed out many times before, even our own Confession tells us “The supreme judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit, into which Scripture so delivered, our faith is finally resolved” (LBC 1689 1.10). Surely, there is something to this as well? Unfortunately, in similar contexts I’ve seen this paragraph greatly downplayed and almost even mocked as being a “biblicist” to even invoke it. 

There is clearly a balance between Scripture and our traditions. I think Mike was at best unwise to call his podcast “the Naked Bible,” which is the next thing Stamps addresses adding, “It betrays a modernist spirit to presume that such a presuppositionless posture is even possible.” I mean, kind of? Maybe? Although, having listened to most of Heiser’s material over the last 18 years, I can tell you I heard him say on more than one occasion that he knew he was not unbiased. Whereas I’m not certain it is the most generous interpretation of Mike to say, “He had his own interpretive framework, constructed almost exclusively from background literature, and he rendered his own systematico-theological judgments, with often puzzling and problematic results,” I think I would put it more like this: At the very least, Mike didn’t like the position that systematic theology took in some people’s overall authority structure (although I’ve heard rumblings, believe it or not, that he was working on his own systematic theology); that was obvious. He didn’t want a system to have the ultimate say on the text, since systems could be wrong. He was quite aware that the church could in fact err and sometimes those errors crept in early on. All of us should be able to agree that even our own camps don’t have it all figure out, right? 

But this position can also be an achilles heel, because Mike can also be wrong. I know he knew that to though, and that is precisely why Mike was not leading some kind of new cult, even if some of his followers make him out to be more than he was. Mike didn’t mind being challenged. He encouraged people to study for themselves. Mike actually explicitly affirmed the creeds, he just didn’t want them coloring everything we think about everything (no, he wasn't fond of Confessions of faith). I happen to think there is something good, as I think Stamps himself does, in trying to interpret the text in the century in which it was written. After all, taken too far, isn’t one possible logical conclusion that the OT couldn’t actually be interpreted properly at all until the Christians came along? And what then happens when different traditions interpret things in contradictory ways? And for the record, I’m not bringing in some relativist idea here about “truth” or tying to question the Creeds. There are first level doctrines and then there are other levels of doctrines. I’ve always thought these are second level doctrines, though I’ve been accused ad nauseum of denying first level doctrines for taking Heiser’s side on many things. I disagreed with Mike on some pretty important stuff, but Mike was not guilty of the charges that many (thankfully not Stamps) are bringing against him in recent days. 

Obviously, I can’t go at this pace for the rest of the article, and the next few paragraphs I mostly found myself in agreement, although I have a feeling Mike would have too, which is slightly ironic. Mike knew that many Fathers saw much of the stuff he was talking about. It just wasn’t his emphasis. Nearly all RB PhDs are being done in some kind of historical theology. Mike's was in ancient semitic languages and the OT. Is he wrong for doing that? He actually wasn’t trying to create a new religion or a cult. Nor do I think he was trying to be a biblicist. Biblicism, in its worst sense, is not exegeting the Scripture, but eisogeting it, making it say what you want it to say. Mike can be accused of a lot of things, but this shouldn’t be one of them. My friend cared more deeply about the Scripture than most Christians I know, and that includes my own circles. Almost everything he did was peer reviewed, which is one of the reasons he is taken so seriously. If some men think that the entire academy of peer review is hopelessly lost, I can’t do anything about that. But it showed that he was not some theological vigilante trying to dupe a bunch of mindless followers into drinking the Kool-Aid (and no, for the record, Dr. Stamps isn't even hinting that Mike was; but others are).

Probably to the disbelief of some, I think it is important to say that I appreciated much of the remaining article from Stamps. I have always thought Mike’s deemphasis on the Creeds was odd, especially since, as Stamps admits, they really don’t say hardly anything at all about the things Mike wrote about. As for Confessions, my personal opinion is that Mike must have had some kind of bad run-in with Reformed or Lutheran or some other kind of credal tradition that rubbed him the wrong way and he knee-jerked against it. Nevertheless, wrongly so if true. Perhaps it was simply his theological education that unknowingly biased him, I don’t know. I am on the record as saying that I found this annoying at best and deeply unwise. For the record, Mike also created strawmen out of Calvinism, the same as many are doing with Mike’s own writings. No one is perfect. 

I also know that Mike’s hermeneutics were not the same as mine. Thus, I think I will finish this discussion by going to the points that Stamps highlights specifically about Mike’s teaching. Fact is, I will agree with much of it. Here they are with my replies after:

·       That the plural divine pronouns in Genesis 1 do indicate something about the Trinity. Reply: Agree, but perhaps for a different reason. I think the “us” includes both the Trinity and the divine council; this is not an either/or. There are plenty of Reformed people who see one or the other. But in my view, the Trinity is what constituted the council in the first place. Father, Son, and Spirit sit on it, but not alone. Of course, going any deeper is for another time and place.

·       That a human interpretation of the sons of God in Genesis 6 still has purchase (though it should be noted that the rabbis and the church fathers were split on this question). Reply: Unfortunately, in my opinion, and I’m willing to have discussion on this, I don’t think Stamps understands why we have the human interpretation in the first place. There has actually been scholarship on this question and it does not bode well for the origin of the human interpretation. Basically, it arose as a deliberate rabbinical attempt to desupernaturalize several “sons of God” text—because of Jesus. Does that mean I think Sethite holders are heretics? No. I think they are wrong and largely ignorant of the history, But I also think it matters more than most have comprehended.

·       That Job’s tormenter was none other than Satan himself. Reply: Yep, I agree. And this was, in my mind, a weakness of Heiser’s hermeneutic. 

·       That the elect angels were confirmed in righteousness after the fall of the demons and therefore were rendered incapable of any future sin. Reply: Yeah, no. The tradition may say that, but this is one of those areas where more study of our earliest Christians traditions would be helpful to consult. I have consulted it, and unfortunately, as time forgot the original Church view of this very issue, the “tradition” lost sight of just who the fallen angels and demons even were, adopting a medieval invention that came out of confused sources. But that’s also quite the study in itself and I don’t blame people who hold the view. 

·       That Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 do allude to the angelic fall in describing the kings of Babylon and Tyre, respectively. Reply: Yep, I agree. 

·       That God does not, properly speaking, change in response to his angelic and human creatures. Reply: Yep, totally agree. And I think this is a classic example of where Mike would have greatly benefited from not bucking the tradition. Mike's chapter on this in the Unseen Realm was just bizarre and frankly, totally unneeded to the rest of his argument.

·       That the divine council does not, properly speaking, advise God in his decree (Heiser even speculates that God might have “vetoed” any unsuccessful ideas they offered). Reply: Yep. Totally agree. And yet, there is a divine council of heavenly beings that God uses to administer the affairs of the cosmos, same as he uses human government to administer the affairs of men.

·       That the “two powers in heaven” or “two YHWHs” framework threatens biblical monotheism (and entails a kind of subordinationism when applied to the divine persons). Reply: No, on this one I just disagree. I guess I would say that understood incorrectly, improperly, and apart from its original context, someone could take it that way. But the fact of the matter is, it was Mike’s making Two-Powers theology accessible to people outside of the ivory tower that drew me into a much deeper Trinitarianism than I ever thought possible. For example, dozens of church fathers recognized that there were two Yahweh’s in Gen 19:24. This was a “two-powers” text that actually the Rabbis of the Second Century condemned as heretical because of the rapid spread of Trinitarian Christianity against their Unitarian monotheism that the Fathers said referred to the Father and Son respectively. I believe all open-minded Reformed Baptists could actually come to love two-powers theology if they didn’t knee-jerk against it from the outset, dismissing it out of hand and actually spent some time trying to understand it and its wild history amongst both Jews and early Christians. 

At the end of the day, I think Stamps brings some important things to the table. At the same time, I also think that we don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Chew the meat. Spit out the bones. That’s the way all education is supposed to work. Mike used to say we don’t have to protect God from the Bible. I would like to say that we don’t have to protect Reformed Baptists from Mike Heiser. It’s why I read as broadly as I do. I deeply appreciated Mike’s work and counted him as a friend. I tried to understand his teachings. In fact, I devoured them. But I never left my tradition and I always sought to emphasize things I thought Mike was weak on. Stamps didn’t throw Mike under the bus. He brought out some valuable things that I’ve been saying as well to the forefront. I’m glad for that. But at the same time, Mike is still a valuable read. He was really in a lot of ways a generational mind, not for his novelty, but for his ability to bring things to Middle Earth out of the high ivory towers where they were long discussed only by the academic elites. 

Doug Van Dorn Nov 14, 2025