I am watching and listening to an interview between John Ankerberg and the most preeminent scholar on the resurrection of Jesus, Dr. Gary Habermas, as they are discussing primitive high-Christology creedal statements used among Christians in the first 24 months after Jesus rose and ascended back to heaven! The material is stunning. Let's lay a little groundwork though because we're going to bring in 1 Enoch and the Watchers into screaming full view!
Then He will also say to those on His left, Go away from Me, cursed ones, into the everlasting fire having been prepared for the Devil and his angels.
For if God did not spare sinning angels, but delivered them to chains of darkness, thrust down into Tartarus, having been kept to judgment;
... in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, to disobeying ones, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, an ark having been prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.
And those angels not having kept their first place, but having deserted their dwelling-place, He has kept in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of a great Day;
That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
And now—drum roll please: The Creedal Statement! There are actually two of many that specifically mention the angels—and more to the point—the angels that fell and sinned at Mount Hermon!
And confessedly, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in flesh, was justified in Spirit, was seen by angels, was proclaimed among nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.
The passage of 1 Peter 3:18-22 is also a creedal statement. You can find verse 18 of this passage already above, but we'll quote the entire creedal statement here for reference:
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which HE WENT AND PROCLAIMED TO THE SPIRITS IN PRISON, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
Let's bring in our final "Angel Creed" statement now:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, HAVING BECOME AS MUCH SUPERIOR TO ANGELS AS THE NAME HE HAS INHERITED IS MORE EXCELLENT THAN THEIRS.
So far, we have a number of angel-based scripture passages in front of us (Matthew 25:41, 1 Corinthians 11:10, 1 Timothy 3:16, Hebrews 1:1-4, 1 Peter 3:19 [18-22], 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6). Each of these passages is referring to the "angels that sinned"—especially those of Mount Hermon, 1 Enoch, and Genesis 6:1-4 fame, but they could include those who fell in Genesis 11 as well. For the moment, we will really focus on those of Mount Hermon fame.
The final note to make of this is how three of the seven passages are "creedal statements". We now need to understand why this is significant and what it does to our understanding of the "primitive gospel".
Creedal statements? What?
Dr. Gary Habermas, a renowned scholar and historian, has extensively studied the early Christian creeds and their significance. According to him, creedal statements are concise summaries of essential Christian beliefs, often used in the early church for teaching, worship, and confessional purposes. They are crucial because they provide a snapshot of the earliest Christian beliefs, often dating back to within a few years of Jesus' life.
Creedal statements served several functions in the early church. Firstly, they were used as a form of teaching and instruction for new converts, encapsulating the core beliefs of Christianity. Secondly, they were used in worship, often recited or sung as part of liturgical practices. Thirdly, they served a confessional purpose, acting as a statement of faith that differentiated Christians from non-Christians and heretics.
Dr. Habermas argues that we can know these creedal statements came within the first 24 months of the early church through a method called "historical backtracking." This involves tracing the beliefs recorded in the creeds back to their earliest possible origin. For example, the Apostle Paul's letters, which contain several early creeds (like 1 Corinthians 15:3-8), were written within 20-30 years of Jesus' death. Paul indicates that he received this information from others, suggesting that these creeds were already in circulation when he wrote his letters. Given the need for the early church to establish its beliefs and practices quickly, it's reasonable to conclude that these creeds were formulated within the first 24 months of the church's existence.
Allow me to be a bit more nitty-gritty about it.
The lion's share of those who embraced Christ at the commencement of the church (notably, Pentecost) were predominantly illiterate, unable to read or write. Nevertheless, they were articulate and most had proficiency in koine Greek. Picture educating an illiterate 4-year-old on a new concept of importance. What intuitive method would you employ? You would utilize the power of music, songs, and rhythm! These elements function akin to succinct hymns, designed to facilitate ease of memorization for recurrent use. Correspondingly, what does Paul advise his audience in his Epistles?
15 Look carefully then how you walk [live daily], not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Creedal statements, written as psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, were devised in the period immediately following Pentecost within the early church. Their purpose was straightforward: to provide a digestible, easily-replicated, and daily-contemplated Gospel of Jesus Christ. This distillation of the Gospel's narrative was delivered through succinct hymns and songs for expedited pedagogical purposes.
Moreover, the songs, hymns, and psalms were intended to be memory joggers, where words and small phrases in the mind of the disciple be unfolded into a much larger and more detailed story. Thus, these creedal statements were packed with teaching and training behind them. As a new disciple of Christ, you were not just learning little ditty hymns, but exercising a tool of compressing the Gospel story into small verbal and oral packages that could be expanded in the minds of the disciple on-demand. What better way to facilitate evangelism in the disciple even though they were illiterate and unable to read or write.
Imagine that you are a new convert disciple. You are illiterate, unable to read or write, but you are fantastic at memorization and using your mastery that this oral tradition of Gospel hymns bestows upon you as an extraordinary mnemonic tool through which narratives are etched into your memory in correlation with each distinct hymn.
It was sister Carey Griffel, host of the podcast site "Genesis Marks the Spot", episode 059, who points out that how the early church presented and digested the gospel is through narratives, stories, and story pattens and not propositional logic and theologies. This thought aligns perfectly with the reality of what really happened in the days of the primitive Gospel preached by the early church apostles in the opening months of the church after Pentecost.
The creedal statement hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs were the mnemonic tools that helped to both spread and stabilize the Gospel against heretical alternative stories that immediately sprang up in the wake of Pentecost. Thus, we find them being used for this very purpose by apostles like Paul who employ them as they push back against heresy in their epistles.
Story compression and expansion - sources!
Our discussion has highlighted the prominence of condensed creedal statements as the early church's preferred method for engaging incoming Christian converts, who were predominantly illiterate. These new disciples were drawn in by the Gospel's account of Christ as Sovereign, corroborated by tangible miracles, demonstrating the promise of resurrection power both in Jesus and in each believer. Notably, these creedal expressions, configured as easily digestible story-hymns, were designed to unfold into more elaborate narratives. This design was intended as a mnemonic device, easing discipleship training and facilitating the spread of the Gospel into Gentile territories incrementally. A comprehensive examination of the creeds' specific components—being a substantial undertaking—demands independent inquiry.
In this article, our focal point is what I term as "Angel Creeds" or "Angel Hymns". This article starts out by mentioning seven passages, of which are three Angelic Creedal statements or hymns. Our next objective is to scrutinize more meticulously how these Angel Creeds are expand into broader narratives, and then identify the origins of these stories in a coherent way from the data available.
For anyone who has taken the time to closely study and examine the works, books, podcasts, papers, and so on of the late Dr. Michael S. Heiser, you will immediately understand the assertion that the "Angel Creeds" unpack into the Enochic Watcher story along with giants and the violence of this rebellion and invasion back in Genesis 6:1-4 as well as subsequent fallen gods in Genesis 11, Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 82, and other related passages throughout the Old Testament.
What may not be clear to you just yet as you are reading is an assertion that I will make now and then let you sit with the thought as I expand upon it. The assertion is straight-forward.
ASSERTION: Once we understand that the creedal statements, hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs of the primitive Gospel of Jesus Christ were the tool-of-choice for teaching and spreading of the story of God through Jesus Christ and his Kingdom, it becomes apparent that any story or narrative included in the creedal statements played a significant role in the primitive beliefs, doctrines, dogmas, and theologies of the primitive church. Because these creedal statements include "angel" (specifically "fallen angel") references, and we know from our studies that these are the fallen angels most specifically of Genesis 6:1-4 fame, we can safely surmise that the Enochic Watcher story was an integral part of the Gospel storyline right from the opening months of the church!
What we can further strongly suggest from all of this taken together is that right from the start that the Enochic Watcher story and the sins of the Watchers and Jesus' coming and reversal of their violence and damage was not only a part, but a critical part of the core Gospel of Jesus Christ as presented by the Apostles, including Paul and others coming after in the first century, especially the first two to ten years of the church. With the now clear knowledge of the creedal statements, their use, their purpose, and their function—as well as their content—we can now know that the Enochic Watcher story is what unpacked from the "angel creeds". This story is now critically indispensable to the Gospel and needs to be put back into our lineup of stories in the 21st century!
I realize that this is going to strike a lot of you reading these words in a way that has blind-sided you out of left-field. Nevertheless, the logical, reasonable, and coherent conclusion fits the facts as we know them when taken in totality, given what we know from Dr. Heiser's "Unseen Realm", "Reversing Hermon", "Angels", and "Demons" works as well as his many papers and podcasts, courses and teachings over his lifetime. And it is not just Dr. Heiser, but a host of other scholars sharing this same pathway towards the Enochic material as being critical mass to Second Temple Jews and first to fourth century Christians.
When one realizes that these creedal statements are being built and used to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the first opening months of the church and that they are condensed story packages containing Enochic "fallen angel" references, one cannot help but conclude that this raises the bar beyond contestation for the Watcher's story to be included in the modern era if we are to be faithful to the primitive Gospel as taught by the very disciples and apostles of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior!