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Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World – And Why It Matters by Michael S. Heiser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is a shorter, more accessible version of the author’s book, The Unseen Realm, which I reviewed here. This book continues with some of the same problems I mentioned of the other book, particularly issues of God’s sovereignty, will, and human autonomy. Heiser sticks mostly to biblical references in this book, but his conclusions are also drawn from extra-biblical writings, which are more documented in the first book.
The subject matter is Heiser’s specialized field of academic scholarship and these books illustrate one of the weaknesses of narrow specialization–to the man with only a hammer, everything is a nail. I think some of the conclusions he comes to are a stretch, at least based on the Bible alone. However, I still think the work is valuable and, at least, he will provide commentary on some things in different passages that a lot of commentaries don’t deal with at all. Read it carefully.