Per this article isn’t Christianity actually like a pantheon in practice? Sure you can claim these are all aspects of “God”, but when you are praying to, cursing or otherwise recognizing a discrete entity aside from “the” God as a being of supernatural power it (in practice) of weakens this metaphysical “two mints in one” claim that Christians make.
From this list here are just a few of the entities Christians pray to or recognize as discrete beings of power.
God (Jehovah/The Father)
The Christ
The Holy Spirit
The Archangels - Gabriel, Michael etc
Lesser Angels
The Virgin Mary
The Apostles
Mary Magdalene
All of the saints
Satan/Lucifer
The Greater Demons - Beelzebub, Azrael etc
Lesser Demons
not all Christians ‘pray’ to all of those on your list - in fact many would pray thru several of them - and some would ignore all but the top dog himself.
Pantheon depends on how you interpret the trinity - the top three on the list - and some sects have gone out of their way to declare jesus ‘a god’ and not ‘GOD’ to break the trinity (but then they get themselves into a nasty time explaining the ‘no other gods before me’ bits).
The Angels (and Demons) don’t count: they’re just the hired help.
The Saints? Lower management at best.
Only the Trinity are really “God” level figures, and conventional Christianity gets around that by saying “They’re all One.” Really. Sort of. When they aren’t separate.
A proper pantheon usually entails internal strife. Loki stealing things from Freya; Set cutting off Osiris’ wing-ding; Hera doing horrible things to as many of Zeus’ loves as she can. Christianity generally describes a much more orderly situation, with zero internal conflict. In this, it really is different from pretty much all other known pantheons.
Nah, it’s part of management. And if you take the view that free will doesn’t exist without choice and that Lucy got the job to provide more options than “do what’s good for you”, then Hell turns out to be a field office.
I never understood why one god was considered such a great advance over many gods. If anything it would appear to enhance intolerance. Of course, if they took it one step further…
Jesus said, quoting from psalms ‘you are gods’ speaking to men also the biblical quote ‘you are all children of God most high’, Angels or archangels depending on your translation are likewise called the sons of God.
Every being is a child of God and therefore a god.
The difference is Jesus’s statements ‘I and the Father are one’ along with ‘God is One’, Jesus marries the church and the marriage makes them one. It is the oneness of everything that is the difference, and that oneness is the living entity God, it is also what we experience as the emotion of Love, as God is Love. So in Love there is a connection between all living beings of a single spirit.
When you pray to a saint or angel, the concept it to pray to one God as you see his power manifested in that being as you have noticed that is the help you need or request.
I’d say that Jesus, The Father, and Satan all are supposedly powerful enough that they’d be recognized as gods in ancient times. I don’t think that the saints and the Holy Spirit are even referred to (magically, that is,) enough to be considered much of anything let alone gods. For devout Catholics I would add Mary as well, not saying that they consider her a being with Godlike powers, but she definitely is mentioned a whole lot.
I think the distinction is between a god, and God. “You shall have no other gods before Me.” If you want to define Satan or the other angels as gods, fine. The trouble is when you define him as God by worshipping him. Same with angels. Technically, Roman Catholics aren’t praying to the saints or the BVM or angels; they are asking them to invoke God’s help onthe prayer’s behalf. (Although in practice it sometimes shades off into what appears to Protestants like me to be invoking their assistance directly.)
The Trinity is a separate issue, and one I am not qualified to discuss, because my understanding of the Trinity (more or less) was condemned as heretical in the fourth century AD.
Shodan’s got it. The distinction is between prayer and worship. Worship is for God alone. A prayer to a saint is not asking for their direct intervention but instead asking them to act as your intercessor.
Well some other religions like Hinduism we describe as true “pantheons” have all the small “g” godlike entities as wholly subservient to and aspects of a superior Godhead. Brahman in this case.. Christianity does not appear to any more or less polytheistic in practice if we are appealing to intercessors to carry our message to the Godhead vs a Hindus appeal to his or her small g gods to accomplish the same thing.
If you’re referring to praying to saints, Mary, etc., for intervention, IME, while that’s typical of Roman Catholicism, it’s extremely uncommon, if not unheard of, in most Protestant faiths. (I don’t know enough about the Eastern branches of Christianity to know if they pray to saints.)
I know relatively little about Hinduism, but -
[ul][li]I believe Hinduism teaches that it is appropriate to worship these lesser, small-g gods. []I am not sure that a Hindu asking some god to intervene directly is the same as a Roman Catholic asking a saint to pray that God will intervene. []You are conflating all of Christianity with what amounts to an abuse of some Roman Catholics. Protestants do not, by and large, ask saints or angels to pray for them, nor to intervene directly. Roman Catholics are not supposed to ask saints to intervene directly, but only to ask God to do so. This, as I mentioned, is a gray area, subject to what to my non-Catholic eyes are abuses. And one can find any number of examples of Catholics attributing intervention to saints/angels/the Virgin Mary directly. My understanding is that, officially, this is shorthand for “the Blessed Virgin asked God to protect my son in Afghanistan and He did it” when they say “the Blessed Virgin protected my son in Afghanistan”.[/ul]IMO, it is not unusual for Roman Catholics to stray over the line from veneration and asking for intercession, into what appears to me to be direct worship. And thus, again IMO, Roman Catholics who do so could be seen as polytheistic, and are in violation of the first commandment. Which is one of the reasons I am not Roman Catholic. [/li]
Regards,
Shodan
Jesus is one of the Persons of the Trinity - the Three-in-One which in turn is one of the Mysteries, one of the dogmas that nobody is expected to understand without heavy doses of hallucinogenic aid, and then only for an instant. Worshipping Jesus is inseparable from worshipping God the Father and the Holy Ghost, you can’t worship one without the others any more than I can have the left half of my body in New York, the right half in Tokyo, and stay alive.