I have a feeling that you have very different concepts of revolutionary and evolutionary than I have, Tom. I don’t even see how having “writings with good dates in which we see a tension between henotheism and monotheism” would argue for or against either concept. Honestly that’s just a “huh?” to me.
The point is for Western society there was an evolutionary path over at least several hundreds of years from polytheism to henotheism probably to monotheism. Going from many gods, to we worship just one among many, to those others are not worth much or are just manifestations of the uberGod, to that they do not even exisit and anyone who says they do is itchin for a fight. No single point is intellectually revolutionary and in the societal sense of the terms they are anything but revolutionary as the evolving concepts served the nationalist needs of the time.
More like “My Internet sources vs Your Internet sources.” Same net, no? But it’s a good example. Like others have pointed out, OT god vs. NT god really do have little in common, it just depends on what your preference is. You like PC, then buy a blackberry. Apple? Get an iPhone. (Personally, I’ll never bring a PC into my house, but I’ll never bring an Apple to a post house. )
Well one way I’ve seen as looking at it is if you personalize God and think he has a plan, then it’s possible that his relationship to mankind changes over time. The difference between OT God and NT is as simple as ‘he changed his mind’. This is not to imply that he saw the error of his ways, but that there is a progressive plan that requires are different handling based on a different era. To me that makes a certain kind of sense. God treats us based on what we know, and interacts with each culture in a way that will accomplish a certain outcome. Maybe he wanted Arabs to be Muslim, and Europeans to be Christian, while in Southeast Asia he wants them to be Buddhists. Not trying to say this is absolute truth or anything, just an idea I’ve pondered.
Thank you. That backs me up on the “monotheism isn’t really possible” statement I made. I realize it’s just one way of looking at it, as you said. Now my list of possible gods is up to eight. The god you describe is controlled by what we think and do making it "possible that his relationship to mankind changes over time. "
Again, same book, same church, different god. Possibly.
Meh, I hope I’m wrong anyway. That would make Depeche Mode well-versed and honored theists.
More I was saying that we are controlled by what God thinks and does, but ok. It’s not that there are many Gods, because our misconceptions of God are not valid ‘Gods’, they are just our poorly crafted models for trying to understand exactly what God is. Allah, Jehovah, Krsna etc… are not different Gods, they are the same God, just we are describing it differently. Just like the internet, or a mountain. If I climb up the east side of a mountain and you climb up the west and we recount our stories in detail separately to the same person, it doesn’t mean we are talking about a different mountain. What I am saying is that God is really real and not a construct of our minds. If anything we are a construct of God’s mind.
If the President tasks the State Department to have talks with the President of Iran while tasking a CIA task force to overthrow the Iranian government, does that make him two different Presidents because he gave two different groups different missions with different perceived end goals?
Henotheism is simply a particular form of polytheism. It accepts that there are many gods, simply noting that “ours is best.”
Some ancient Romans and some modern Hindus each practice(d) forms of henotheism without ever moving to monotheism.
By revolutionary, I mean only that there was an abrupt change from one system of belief to another in contrast to evolution in which a polytheistic (or henotheistic) system began to show signs of monotheism, gradually dropping enough polytheistic features that only monotheism remained. A polytheistic (or polytheistic through henotheistic) transformation to monotheism does not explain the Platonic toying with monotheism or the cultural changes that accompanied Mohammed, the Reformation, or the RCC following Vatican II. In each case, there was an abrupt change from a polytheistic system to a monotheistic system. While Judaism appears to have had a henotheistic phase, its change from poly-/henotheism to monotheism also appears to have been abrupt.
As I said above, the shift from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism happened in Ancient Egypt within the span of only a few years. Maybe the same process took centuries among the Hebrews, but it could have happened much faster than that.
The catholics have the father, the son and the holy ghost. They see a war with the devil and god coming. If he is that strong he must be a god. They have angels with great abilities and the devils minions balance the scale. They have guardian angels . They are hardly monotheistic.
Er… if the President were omnipotent, omniscient, as you’re claiming god is, then… sure!
But, no, unfortunately presidents are human. Plus he (or she) HAS to be two-faced, or they won’t get a single vote. If they were honest, we’d be blowed up!
Now I know that all your claims of having gone to Catholic school are smoke and mirrors. (Your body might have gone through the doors, but you couldn’t have been paying attention.) The “war with the devil” stuff is much more fully rooted among a certain number of Evangelical or Pentecostal groups than it is in Catholicism where the “war” is generally considered to have already occurred.
At any rate, since the thread is an exploration of how monotheism arises from polytheism, your comments are off topic and irrelevant.
Bwahahahah! Tommy, me boyo, I see now that you are younger than I. By about ten years. In my education, The Church (note the vital capitalizations) has been at war with Satan for millenia. You are speaking from a more accommodating Church, but for most of its life what you say was heresy. You would be seen as denying the Truth, and woe betide you if the Baptist Satan shows up first. He’s not nearly as accommodating. Me, I’m waiting for the ELCA Satan. He’s cool.
Actually, the claim was that Satan was already at war with the Church, not that the Church planned for a war with Satan. Planning a big, final war is part and parcel of the literalist interpretation of Revelation that the Church has never embraced in its entire history.
It is interesting that the OP has not been back to participate in this discussion, but given that his name is “Drum God”, I think he may be worried about losing his job to “Music God”
You all are debating how monotheism emerged from an assumed preexisting background of polytheism. I read the question differently - what I heard was “why have monotheistic religions gained dominance in the western world”
So my response to that is about social Darwinism and memes (if I am using either of the terms correctly). I think that at the time of Jesus some Jews adopted the new ideas that are the basis of modern Christianity, and those ideas had certain advantages, including the need to spread the ideas to non-tribe members, intolerance to other ideas, and they had a book. So due to those and many other advantages it eventually pushed the polytheistic ideas out by being better evolved than the other ideas to survive in that culture. In some ways, Islam is an even higher evolution of those same important idea-survival (Meme survival?) traits.
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It’s not that there are many Gods, because our misconceptions of God are not valid ‘Gods’, they are just our poorly crafted models for trying to understand exactly what God is. Allah, Jehovah, Krsna etc… are not different Gods, they are the same God, just we are describing it differently. Just like the internet, or a mountain. If I climb up the east side of a mountain and you climb up the west and we recount our stories in detail separately to the same person, it doesn’t mean we are talking about a different mountain. What I am saying is that God is really real and not a construct of our minds. If anything we are a construct of God’s mind.