The Unseen Realm and the Catholic Church:

A Catholic Evaluation of Michael Heiser, the Divine Council, and the Evangelical Controversy**

By Chris M. Forte

(first-person Catholic perspective, Chicago-style citations)

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Abstract

Michael S. Heiser’s The Unseen Realm has generated significant debate within Evangelical Protestantism, with many accusing his “divine council worldview” of promoting polytheism, Gnosticism, or unorthodox spiritual cosmology. As a Catholic, however, I find that much of the controversy arises not from Heiser’s ideas themselves but from limitations within modern Evangelical theology. The Catholic Church has never abandoned the cosmic, supernatural worldview of Scripture, the angelic hierarchy, or the ancient understanding of spiritual powers and principalities. In this article, I offer my first-person Catholic perspective on Heiser’s work, explain why many Evangelicals oppose it, and show how Catholic theology already contains a coherent, ancient, and thoroughly orthodox framework for understanding the “unseen realm.”

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1. Introduction: Why the Debate Exists at All

As a Catholic, I’ve watched with interest the upheaval Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm has caused in Evangelical circles. The irony is that very little of his core argument is controversial from a Catholic point of view. The Church has always affirmed a richly supernatural cosmology, the existence of angelic beings of various ranks, the reality of heavenly councils, and the destiny of humanity to share in divine life.

But because much of modern Evangelicalism operates within a post-Reformation, rationalistic, and often de-supernaturalized framework, Heiser’s retrieval of the ancient biblical worldview felt, to some Evangelicals, like a dangerous novelty. Critics such as Dr. Thomas Howe have condemned Heiser’s divine council concept as “theologically untenable” and even a threat to monotheism.¹ Others, like the “TruthWatchers” ministry, label his scholarship “neo-Gnostic” or accuse him of smuggling pagan cosmology into Scripture.²

As a Catholic, I do not share these fears. In fact, many of Heiser’s insights fit comfortably within — and even illuminate — the Catholic understanding of Scripture, tradition, and the heavenly host.

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2. What Heiser Is Arguing (and Why Evangelicals React Strongly)

Heiser’s basic thesis is straightforward: the Bible reflects a supernatural worldview in which God presides over a heavenly council of spiritual beings, referred to variously as elohim, “sons of God,” “holy ones,” or “heavenly hosts.”³ This council participates in God’s governance, carries out His will, and plays roles in judgment, messaging, and spiritual conflict.

Evangelicals object for four main reasons:

1. Fear of polytheism — Some Evangelicals worry that acknowledging “gods” (elohim) in Psalm 82 opens the door to pagan cosmology.

2. Suspicion of Ancient Near Eastern background studies — Heiser uses extra-biblical literature such as Ugaritic texts, which some Protestants distrust.

3. Rejection of tradition — Without a Magisterium, Evangelicals fear theological innovation.

4. Tension with sola scriptura — Heiser draws on ancient Jewish tradition and Second Temple literature, which lie outside the Protestant canon.

But from a Catholic standpoint, none of these are problematic. We have always interpreted Scripture within the larger historical, literary, and theological framework of the ancient Church.

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**3. The Catholic Supernatural Worldview:

Why I Don’t Fear “Divine Council Theology”**

A. The Angelic Hierarchy

Catholic teaching, as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas and rooted in earlier Fathers such as Dionysius the Areopagite, affirms nine choirs of angels with distinct powers and roles.⁴ The concept of divine “councils” or “assemblies” appears repeatedly in the Fathers. St. Augustine acknowledges that angels participate in God’s governance and that Scripture depicts their deliberative functions in symbolic forms.⁵

B. Participation in Divine Life (Theosis)

Heiser emphasizes human destiny to join God’s divine family and rule with Christ. This is not new to me as a Catholic — it is classical Christian doctrine.

St. Athanasius famously taught:

*“The Son of God became man so that we might become God.”*⁶

A doctrine that Protestant critics sometimes accuse Heiser of teaching “heretically” is, in fact, foundational to Catholic theology.

C. The Communion of Saints and Heavenly Intercessors

Catholics already believe in:

• heavenly intercession

• spiritual hierarchy

• the cooperation of angels and saints in God’s plan

This is incompatible with a rigid monotheistic literalism that sees any spiritual hierarchy as polytheism, but it aligns perfectly with the worldview presented by Heiser — and the Bible.

D. Ancient Near Eastern Context

The Catholic Church has long embraced the need to interpret Scripture within its historical and cultural context — a point reaffirmed by Vatican II’s Dei Verbum.⁷ We have no theological reason to resist ANE background, Second Temple texts, or patristic readings.

Evangelicals who fear these tools do so because of the constraints of sola scriptura. Catholics do not share that limitation.

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4. Where I Disagree with Heiser as a Catholic

A. He operates within a Protestant canon

Heiser rejects the Deuterocanon, which weakens his analysis of Second Temple angelology. Books like Tobit, Sirach, and Wisdom offer critical supernatural insights.

B. He lacks sacramental and ecclesial theology

Heiser’s vision of “joining God’s divine family” is powerful — but incomplete without:

• Baptismal regeneration

• Eucharistic participation in divine life

• Apostolic succession

• The visible, sacramental Church

In other words, he recovered the cosmic worldview but lacked the ecclesial one.

C. He sometimes overstates his novelty

When Heiser says most Christians “missed” the divine council for centuries, I disagree. The early Fathers constantly referenced heavenly hosts and councils — but Protestants lost this tradition during the Reformation.

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5. Why Evangelicals Resist Heiser — A Catholic Diagnosis

From my perspective as a Catholic, Evangelical criticism reveals deeper tensions within Protestant theology:

A. A flattened, minimalist supernatural worldview

Modern Evangelicalism often emphasizes:

• personal salvation

• legal atonement language

• individual belief
  While paying less attention to:

• cosmic spiritual hierarchy

• angelology

• theosis

• sacramental participation in divine life

Heiser challenges that reductionism.

B. Sola Scriptura without historical anchor

When Scripture is divorced from:

• Jewish tradition

• ancient context

• the Fathers

• liturgy

• the Church
  Then the supernatural worldview of the Bible feels “foreign.”

C. Fear of Catholic or Orthodox theological categories

Many Evangelicals instinctively resist anything that sounds like:

• hierarchy

• divinization

• communal salvation

• spiritual intercession

Ironically, the very things Protestants fear are the teachings of the Early Church.

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6. Conclusion: Where I Stand as a Catholic

As a Catholic, I appreciate Michael Heiser’s work. The Unseen Realm helped many Protestants rediscover the supernatural worldview the Catholic Church never abandoned.

What I affirm:

• The existence of a divine council (in the biblical sense)

• The hierarchy of spiritual beings

• Humanity’s destiny to share God’s rule

• The reality of cosmic spiritual conflict

• The importance of Second Temple literature

What I reject:

• Protestant limitations on the canon

• The absence of tradition, liturgy, and sacrament

• A churchless supernatural worldview

• Any language that implies ontological plurality of gods

My position:

Heiser recovered truths that Catholics already hold, but his theology remains incomplete.
Evangelical critics reject him for moving toward ancient Christianity.
Catholics recognize that he is still several steps away from the fullness of it.

In short:

Heiser’s supernatural worldview aligns with Catholic tradition — his Protestant framework does not. Catholics can affirm the best of his insights while remaining rooted in the fullness of the Church.

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Footnotes

1. Thomas Howe, The Unseemly Realm, critique discussed in Theopolis Institute, “Evaluating the Divine Council Theology of Michael Heiser,” https://theopolisinstitute.com.

2. “Michael Heiser’s Gnostic Heresy,” TruthWatchers, https://truthwatchers.com.

3. Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Lexham Press, 2015).

4. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.

5. Augustine, City of God, Book 11.

6. St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54:3.

7. Vatican II, Dei Verbum, 12.

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Bibliography (Selected)

• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae.

• Athanasius. On the Incarnation.

• Augustine. City of God.

• Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015.

• Pseudo-Dionysius. The Celestial Hierarchy.

• Vatican II. Dei Verbum.

• TruthWatchers. “Michael Heiser’s Gnostic Heresy.”

• Theopolis Institute. “Evaluating the Divine Council Theology of Michael Heiser.”

Author’s Note 

By Chris M. Forte

Let me be blunt: the controversy surrounding Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm doesn’t expose anything wrong with Catholicism — it exposes what has long been wrong with modern Evangelicalism. The panic, the hostility, the accusations of “polytheism,” “Gnosticism,” or “heresy” reveal how far some Protestant traditions have drifted from the historic, supernatural worldview of Christianity that the Catholic Church has guarded since the first century.

As a Catholic, nothing in Heiser’s work shocks me. Nothing feels dangerous. Nothing undermines my faith. Why?
Because the Catholic Church never lost the worldview Heiser is trying to resurrect.

Evangelicals are reacting to The Unseen Realm like it’s some brand-new revelation. It isn’t. It’s Christianity — ancient Christianity — the Christianity of the apostles, the prophets, the Church Fathers, the desert monks, the martyrs, and the mystics. The Christianity that saw angels not as metaphors, but as real co-laborers. The Christianity that spoke of humans ruling with Christ, judging angels, and being divinized by grace. The Christianity that believed in councils of heaven, spiritual principalities, the cosmic battle of good and evil, and God’s supernatural family.

In other words: the Christianity that Protestantism abandoned but Catholicism preserved.

When Evangelical critics attack Heiser, what they are really attacking is the ancient worldview of the Bible itself — because it doesn’t fit within the narrow, post-Reformation categories created in the 1500s and 1800s. Categories that flattened Scripture, minimized the supernatural, severed tradition, and stripped the Gospel down to a court metaphor and a sinner’s prayer.

Let me say it clearly:

If the supernatural worldview of the Bible feels threatening, you are not defending Scripture — you are defending your system.

Heiser isn’t the threat.
The Bible isn’t the threat.
The ancient Church isn’t the threat.

The threat is the realization that the Catholic Church has been right the whole time about the unseen realm — while Protestantism reduced it, ignored it, or dismissed it as “too Catholic.”

Look at the reaction:
Some Evangelicals accuse Heiser of polytheism simply because he affirms the biblical existence of “sons of God” or heavenly councils. But this reveals more about their historical ignorance than his theology.

The Catholic Church wrote commentary on these passages long before modern Evangelicals existed.
The Fathers addressed them.
Aquinas addressed them.
The liturgy expresses them.
The saints and mystics lived their lives in awareness of them.

The idea that angels form a hierarchy and participate in God’s governance is not “pagan.”
It is Christian.
It is biblical.
It is Catholic.

Evangelicals who cannot accept that reality are not defending the faith — they are defending a truncated, post-biblical version of Christianity that cannot withstand the weight of Scripture itself.

Heiser stumbled into truths the Catholic Church has taught for 2,000 years. He simply lacked the sacramental, apostolic, and ecclesial structure to complete the picture. But many Protestants cannot tolerate the beginning of that picture, because reclaiming the supernatural worldview of the Bible inevitably leads back to the worldview of the early Church — and that path leads straight to Catholicism or Orthodoxy.

That is why The Unseen Realm is controversial among Evangelicals.
Not because it is unbiblical.
But because it is too biblical to fit within the constricted theological systems created during the Reformation.

As a Catholic, I am not threatened by the unseen realm.
I belong to the Church that preserved it — in doctrine, in liturgy, in sacrament, and in spiritual life — long before the modern debates began.

And I will say it plainly:
If your theology collapses in the presence of angels, councils, divine hierarchy, and the vocation of human divinization — then it is your theology, not Scripture, that needs to be reformed.

This is why I am Catholic.
This is why I remain Catholic.
And this is why the arguments against Heiser only convince me further that the ancient Church — the Catholic Church — still holds the fullness of the supernatural worldview God revealed from the beginning.