The hit television series Supernatural follows the exploits of brothers Sam and Dean Winchester as they hunt monsters, ghosts, demons, and other supernatural threats. As the show progresses, the stakes become higher and higher, as the Winchesters tangle with angels, Death, and, eventually, God Himself. After watching all 15 seasons of the series, I thought it would be interesting to examine the theology of the show’s fictional universe and to contrast it with orthodox Christian theology. In what follows, the theology of Supernatural is in italics, while Christian theology is in normal type (Warning: For those who have not watched the show and may want to at some point, there are major spoilers ahead).
God
At first, there was nothing: an endless void known as the Empty. Then, at some point, two entities came into existence: God, and God’s “sister,” the Darkness. God and the Darkness are two equally powerful, opposite forces. God is light and being, while the Darkness is, well, darkness and destruction.
God is eternal. There was no time when God did not exist. In fact, time itself is something which God created, and to which God is not subject. As the infinite, supreme being, God has no limitations, including the limitations of space and time. God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (present everywhere). The “God” of Supernatural is not actually the God of monotheism, but the limited God of Manichean dualism, in which good and evil are two equal and opposite forces. Christian theology, in contrast, affirms that God alone is the source of all that exists, that existence is fundamentally good, and that the evil in the world is merely a distortion of that fundamental goodness.
Creation
God wanted to create the universe, but in order to do so, He had to somehow seal the Darkness away. So, He created His four archangels–Michael, Lucifer, Gabriel, and Raphael–to help Him. Together with His archangels, God was able to subdue the Darkness and seal Her away, entrusting the seal of Her imprisonment to one of His archangels, Lucifer. God was then able to create other angels, as well as the physical universe.
God’s creation of the universe was effortless. While many ancient pagan creation myths depicted the creation of the universe as the result of a battle between gods or between a god and primeval monsters of chaos, the Bible presents God’s creation of the world as simply a result of God speaking the world into being. God is omnipotent. He did not need to plot and struggle against something else in order to create the universe.
Death
At some point not long after God created the universe, Death came into existence. Death is a cosmic entity almost as old as God, and claims that He will still be there when God dies. There is no explanation for how Death came to exist, any more than there is an explanation for how God and the Darkness came to exist.
Death is the unfortunate result of human sin. Currently, all human beings are subject to death. However, God is more than strong enough to overcome death. One day, there will be a resurrection of the dead and a Final Judgment. Then, death itself will be destroyed (Rev 20:14), and redeemed humanity will enjoy eternal life forever. God can never die, since He is immortal and eternal. It is death which will one day cease to exist.
The Fall
Eventually, God created human beings, and He commanded His angels to serve them. But, over time, the seal on the Darkness entrusted to Lucifer had corrupted Him. He refused to serve humanity, and instead decided to tempt them to sin. As a result, humanity fell away from its original goodness and became subject to sin, suffering, and death.
The Devil’s decision to rebel against God and tempt humanity to sin was a free choice, not the result of a corrupting influence which God had unwisely burdened him with. The existence of evil in creation is not God’s fault. It is the result of the free choices of angels and humans who have rebelled against God.
Demons
Lucifer then began to torment and corrupt the souls of dead, wicked humans, to the point of transforming them into demons. Before Lucifer could do any more harm, God imprisoned Him in a cage deep within Hell. By this point, though, the damage had been done. Lucifer’s demons were able to continue to grow in numbers by continuing to transform human souls into more demons in Hell. They would continue to torment and corrupt humanity throughout history.
Demons are fallen angels whom the Devil convinced to join with him in His rebellion against God. The Devil has not been imprisoned in a cage since the beginning of human history. Rather, he has been and continues to be active in the world, leading his demons in their efforts to tempt and corrupt humanity. He will continue to do so until the Final Judgment.
Afterlife
Whenever a human being dies, they are judged according to their works. If they have done more bad than good, their soul goes to Hell to be tormented. If they have done more good than bad, their soul goes to Heaven. In Heaven, each soul experiences its own kind of blissful “virtual reality” composed of happy memories of their lifetime.
A person’s salvation is dependent upon whether they have faith in Christ, not on them earning salvation through good works. The souls of those who are saved will experience rest in Heaven after their deaths. However, this will merely be a temporary state as they await their bodily resurrection. Then, they will experience an eternal life of embodied existence in God’s new creation, a new heavens and a new earth. Redeemed humanity will experience communion with God and with one another as they forever contribute to the beauty and order of God’s perfected creation.
Salvation History
In ancient times, God interacted with human beings to a significant extent. However, at some point (it is not clear exactly when), God, disappointed with the failures of angels and humans, abandoned them to their own devices and went into hiding. For thousands of years, humanity had no real contact with God, and the angels, most of whom had never even seen God, were left to run Heaven on their own.
Though God has often judged and condemned humanity, He has never abandoned it. God has been at work attempting to reconcile wayward humanity to Himself for thousands of years of salvation history. He formed an intimate relationship with His covenant people, Israel; came directly to humanity in the most intimate manner possible in the person of Jesus, God Incarnate; and continues to be present among His Church, the body of Christ. As for angels, all of them are always in the very presence of God, for that is what the definition of Heaven is: God’s presence.
The Character of God
Eventually, God does intervene a few times to help the heroes leading up to the Apocalypse, a devastating showdown between Michael and Lucifer. Later, He returns to help protect His creation from the Darkness after She is released from Her imprisonment. However, eventually, God Himself decides to destroy the universe after getting bored and upset with its inhabitants. God’s character is then revealed as uncaring and cruel, even sadistic. He views His creations as just toys, and people as just characters in His “stories” He has created for His own amusement. When they don’t turn out the way He wants, He loses His temper or grows bored, and destroys or abandons them. Before God destroys the universe, though, the heroes are able to trick Him and drain Him of all His power. One of them absorbs God’s power and ascends to become the new God, who decides to take a hands-off approach to creation in the future.
God is perfectly good, merciful, and just. Above all, God is Love. Jesus, God Incarnate, is the ultimate revelation of who God is. God’s willingness to suffer and die with us and for us on the cross of Jesus Christ, so that we could be reconciled to Him and experience eternal life, shows us beyond any doubt the infinite depths to which God is willing to go to show His love for us. God did not need to create the universe. But, having created it, He truly loves it and its human inhabitants. God will one day finish His work of freeing His creation from all sin, corruption, death, and decay, bringing it to its perfected fulfillment. God’s plan to do this cannot possibly fail, for God is omnipotent and indestructible. We can participate in this amazing work of God. We just need to repent of our sins, put faith in Jesus, and follow Him as His disciples, and we will have the certain hope of resurrection and eternal life.