Why the Divine Council Makes the Atheist’s Slogan Self-Defeating

“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.”

—Psalm 82:1

It’s one of the most popular lines in the online atheist playbook. If you’ve spent any time in digital debates or watched public dialogues between skeptics and Christians, you’ve heard it:

“You don’t believe in 999 gods—I just go one god further.”

It’s catchy. It’s dismissive. And it’s wrong.

What this slogan fails to account for is that Christians—particularly those with a serious grasp of biblical theology—actually don’t reject the existence of all other gods. In fact, the Bible acknowledges their reality. But here’s the crucial difference: they are not ultimate. They are not the Creator. They are not the maximally great being. They are, in biblical terms, lowercase “g” gods—created, limited, and often hostile spiritual beings who stand under the judgment of the one true God, the Elohim of elohim.

In this blog, we’ll explore how the Divine Council worldview makes the atheist slogan incoherent, show how the Bible affirms the existence of lesser spiritual beings, explain why Anselm’s “maximally great being” stands in a category all His own, and demonstrate why calling Yahweh “just one more god” is like calling the author of a novel just another character in the book.

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The Divine Council: Not Polytheism, But Supernatural Realism

In Psalm 82, God (Elohim) is portrayed as presiding in a council of other gods (elohim). The verse reads:

“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.”¹

To the modern reader, this can be jarring. Isn’t the Bible strictly monotheistic? Yes—but biblical monotheism is not the same as denying the existence of all other spiritual beings. Dr. Michael Heiser explains:

“The word elohim is not a name, but a term used to describe any being that inhabits the spiritual realm. Yahweh is an elohim—but no other elohim is Yahweh.”²

In other words, the term elohim refers to the location or realm of the being, not necessarily its divinity in the ultimate sense. Just as the word “doctor” can describe both a heart surgeon and a veterinarian without implying they are identical in authority or function, so elohim can refer to both Yahweh and lesser beings—while preserving His unique status.

The Divine Council was not a late theological innovation. It reflects the ancient worldview of the biblical authors, found not only in the Psalms but throughout the Hebrew Scriptures:

• In Job 1–2, the “sons of God” (bene elohim) present themselves before the Lord.
• In 1 Kings 22:19–23, Micaiah describes a scene where Yahweh consults a heavenly court.
• Daniel 7 portrays thrones being set and “the Ancient of Days” presiding over judgment.

This is not polytheism. It’s a council of lesser spiritual agents under the sovereign rule of the one God. As Heiser puts it:

“The Bible presents a hierarchy of spiritual beings and a cosmic bureaucracy. This doesn’t threaten monotheism—it actually explains how the ancient world viewed divine action.”³

After humanity’s rebellion at Babel, God disinherited the nations and appointed lesser divine beings over them—elohim who were meant to govern the nations that rejected God, akin to what Paul writes in Romans 1:23-24 where those who reject God have “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.” As Deuteronomy 32:8–9 describes, God “fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God,” but “the LORD’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance.” These spiritual powers, however, were corrupt and sought worship for themselves; thus these lower elohim (spirits) were real beings that the nations worshipped (and who sought to destroy the people which is why human sacrifice were common among pagan religions). This biblical truth explains why other gods appear in Scripture—not as inventions of myth, but as real, rebellious beings to whom God temporarily handed over the nations.

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Not All ‘Gods’ Are the Same: The Ontological Distinction

The greatest mistake in the “one god further” slogan is the assumption that all gods are ontologically equal—mere interchangeable beings with slightly different cultural attire. But Christian theology, rooted in Scripture and sharpened by thinkers like Saint Anselm, says otherwise.

In his work Proslogion, Anselm offers a definition that forever changed Christian thought:

“God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”⁴

This “maximally great being” is not simply one deity among others. He is unique in kind: omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, eternal, necessary, and uncreated. Any being that lacks even one of these attributes cannot, by definition, be God.

The gods of pagan mythology—whether Zeus or Baal or Odin—are finite, petty, limited. They have origins. They fight. They die. They lack the necessary qualities to be ultimate in any meaningful sense. In the biblical worldview, these beings may exist as spiritual entities, but they do not belong in the same category as Yahweh.

This is why classical theism insists that only one being could exist necessarily: the one who is actus purus, the fullness of being itself. All other beings—whether human, angelic, or demonic—are contingent.

To say, “I believe in one less god than you do,” is like saying, “I believe in one fewer universes than you do”—and pointing to the difference between the sun and a flashlight. The sun gives light by its nature; the flashlight by borrowed power.

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Idols, Demons, and the Spirit of the Gods

Ancient pagan worship wasn’t a matter of abstract symbols. When people in the ancient world bowed before an idol, they believed it housed the presence of a real spiritual being. As Heiser explains:

“In the ancient Near East, the idol wasn’t the god itself, but it was the place where the spirit of the god would reside when summoned.”⁵

This is why Scripture takes idol worship so seriously. It’s not just superstition—it’s dangerous. The Apostle Paul echoes Deuteronomy when he says:

“What pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God.” (1 Corinthians 10:20)

Deuteronomy 32:17 is even more explicit:

“They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known.”⁶

In other words, behind many so-called “gods” were fallen beings—what the Bible calls demons. The early Church Fathers agreed. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, said:

“The gods of the nations are demons who delighted in blood and lust and corrupted the minds of men.”⁷

Likewise, Augustine writes in The City of God:

“The gods of the Gentiles are nothing but wicked spirits, glorified through men’s ignorance.”⁸

The Christian does not deny the supernatural. Far from it. We affirm the reality of spiritual beings—but we do not ascribe to them divinity. We acknowledge their existence, but we reject their authority.

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A Category Mistake: Why the Atheist Slogan Fails

The claim that Christians “go one god less than the Greeks” fails on three levels:

1. It collapses categories. Yahweh is not simply a more powerful god among many. He is qualitatively different. He is uncreated, the ground of all being, the necessary being without whom nothing else exists.
2. It ignores biblical supernaturalism. Christians believe that other “gods” (spirits, demons, principalities) exist. The Bible speaks of them repeatedly. But they are creatures, not the Creator.
3. It commits philosophical error. Anselm’s definition rules out the possibility of two maximally great beings. Why? Because if two exist, neither is maximally great—since the greatness of one would limit the other. Therefore, only one can exist.

As philosopher Norman Geisler writes:

“A being who is infinite cannot have an equal, for two infinite beings would limit each other.”⁹

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So Do Christians Believe in Other Gods?

Yes—and no.

Yes, we believe that real spiritual entities have been worshipped under the name of gods. We believe they have power, influence, and have deceived the nations. We believe the Bible’s warnings are serious because these beings are not merely myth—they are fallen, rebellious spirits, sometimes referred to as “watchers,” “demons,” or “sons of God.”

But no, we do not believe any of these are God. That title belongs only to the One who created all things, sustains the cosmos by the word of His power, and revealed Himself definitively in Jesus Christ.

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Yahweh vs the gods

A table or chart comparing Yahweh vs. Pagan Gods could enhance this section. For example:

Attribute	Yahweh (Biblical God)	Pagan gods (e.g., Zeus, Baal)
Created or Eternal?	Eternal	Created
Power	Omnipotent	Limited
Nature	Unchanging	Capricious
Moral Character	Holy and Just	Morally flawed
Worship Worthy?	Yes	No

This helps drive home the ontological and moral distinction.

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What If the Maximally Great Being Is Real?

If you’re an atheist reading this, let me leave you with a question: what if the one true God is not “one more god,” but the very reason there are any gods, any beings, any anything at all?

What if rejecting Him is not like declining one item on a menu—but like walking out of the only building with a foundation?

What if your instinct to mock other gods is actually evidence of your longing for the real one?

You’re not “going one god further.” You’re walking past the only One who can forgive you, restore you, and bring you home.

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Endnotes

¹ Psalm 82:1, ESV.
² Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), 32.
³ Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 33.
⁴ Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), §2.
⁵ Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 104.
⁶ Deuteronomy 32:17, ESV.
⁷ Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 5.
⁸ Augustine, City of God, Book 7, Chapter 33.
⁹ Norman Geisler and Winfried Corduan, Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 230.