Psalm 82

"God stands in the divine assembly; he pronounces judgment among the gods"

Psalm 82 is famous for its expression of Hebrew henotheism. Henotheism is the belief in a supreme deity who reigns over lesser gods. As I expect you are aware, the Old Testament presents a mixed witness regarding how populous the heavens are. Some very monotheistic texts suggest that there are no other gods in existence other than Yahweh. Other texts, by contrast, seem to indicate that there are other gods and that Yahweh is supreme over them. Psalm 82 is one of those texts. We see Yahweh take his place in a "divine assembly" where he "pronounces judgment among the gods."

These gods in Psalm 82 are the cause of injustice and oppression upon earth:

“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
Provide justice for the needy and the fatherless;
uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute.
Rescue the poor and needy;
save them from the power of the wicked.”

In Reviving Old Scratch I trace a thread through the Old and New Testaments, linking these divine archons with what the New Testament calls "the principalities and powers." Texts like Deuteronomy 32.8-9 suggest that God assigned angelic archons to rule over the nations of the earth. We see this territoriality play out in Daniel 10 where the angelic messenger faces interference from territorial spirits, the "prince of Persia" and the "prince of Greece." These national angels become objects of illicit worship, the idolatry associated with the pagan gods. They eventually become identified as demons. 1 Corinthians 10.20 makes the connection: "The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons." A final step is to view Satan as the chief power over all these demonic archons. Satan becomes "the god of this world" (Eph 2:2) who rules over the nations (see the temptation of Jesus and the book of Revelation), the angelic cause of oppression and evil upon the earth.

All that to say, as I describe in Reviving Old Scratch, our battle against these spiritual powers is both moral and political, spiritual and systemic. This complicates how both conservatives and progressives think about "spiritual warfare." Conservatives tend to treat the demonic as a wholly moral/spiritual issue, separate from how nations and economies hurt and oppress. Progressives, for their part, reduce spiritual warfare to social justice and ignore the profoundly spiritual and moral aspects of spiritual warfare. Both miss the richer and holistic vision of Scripture where the moral, spiritual, political, and economic are deeply intertwined.