Gospel & Universe 🌎 Many Tribes
One God
Monotheism & Henotheism - Brahman & Dharma - Absolute Monotheism - Polytheism - Definitions & Anti-definitions - Que Scais-je?
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Monotheism & Henotheism
Somewhere in the shift from Classical to Medieval, Europeans began to think of monotheism as the most advanced or sophisticated way to see the universe. This may be partly because many of the Greek thinkers already had ideas about a unifying principle or Force in the universe, such as Plato's Good, the Neoplatonic One, or the natural Force of the Stoics.
Whatever the origins, many people still think of monotheism as the religious equivalent of social and political progress. They think of it as the final stage of an evolution from primitive superstitions (using gods to explain such things as thunder) to rational notions of order, coherence, and progress. In this sense monotheism is the moral and metaphysical equivalent of a unifying principle in physics, like Newton’s gravity or Einstein’s space-time. Agnostics admire the optimism of such a unifying monotheistic vision, yet to them it also recalls the naïveté of Alexander Pope’s 18th century optimism — Nature and Nature's Laws lay hid in Night; / God said, Let Newton Be! and all was Light — to which Sir John Squire responds in 1926: It did not last. Satan, howling Ho! / Let Einstein Be! restored the status quo.
In Babylone et la Bible (1994), the famous Assyriologist Jean Bottéro describes the radical monotheism of the Jews in relation to the polytheism of their Near Eastern neighbours (the free translation is my own):
Ce dieu, [Moïse] conçoit d'une façon nouvelle: à la différence de toutes les religions attestées d'alors, il le trouve trop élevé, trop sublime pour qu'on puisse le représenter, en faire des images. C'est là, au moins virtuellement, une vision religieuse d'une totale nouveauté et d'une grande profondeur, si l'on pense à toutes les mythologies environnantes. D'un autre côté, innovation tout aussi révolutionnaire, il ne veut pas que l'on rende à ce dieu-sans-image un culte d'offrandes, de sacrifices et de rituels plus ou moins matériels et pompeux, comme le font les fidèles des autres dieux, mais en s'attachant à lui et en obéissant à ses volontés, qui commandent une vie conforme à un code purement éthique celui — ou quelque chose d'approchant qui nous a été conservé dans la Bible sous le nom de Décalogue.
[Moses] conceives this God in a new way: different from all religions attested so far, he finds Him too elevated, too sublime to be represented in images. Here, at least virtually, is a religious vision of total newness and of great depth, that is, if one thinks of the surrounding religions. From another angle, an innovation just as revolutionary, he doesn’t want us to give to this God-without-image a cult of offerings, sacrifices, and rituals that are more or less materialistic and pompous, like those performed by the faithful of the other gods; instead, but to attach ourselves to this God and obey his wishes, which command a life in conformity to a purely ethical code — or something approaching what’s been preserved for us in the Bible under the name of the Ten Commandments.
This view of monotheism assumes a great deal, even while it makes several good points. First, because this type of laudatory language has been so deeply engrained in the religious and moral terminology of the West for the last 1500 years, it’s easy to accept it, with the assumption that there were no comparable movements toward monotheism in Mesopotamia, Persia, India, and Egypt. Yet the supremacy of Marduk and Ahura Mazda, the Vedic notion of Purusha (a forerunner of Brahman), and Akenhaten’s Atenism all suggest that the Jewish idea wasn’t necessarily one of “total newness.”
Also, the early Jews were more henotheist than monotheist, that is, they acknowledged the existence of other deities but rejected them. The manic degree of their henotheism is also striking, and is the main aspect that sticks in my craw about my own religious background, however much this might make my Scottish, English, and Dutch ancestors turn in their graves.
As an agnostic who isn’t against religion, I’ll argue throughout this chapter against what I see as a manic henotheism that derives from early Jewish history and descends through the burning of libraries and the persecution of pagans (after the Christians themselves were persecuted) to the bonfires of the inquisition, the crusades, and the Bartholomew Day battles between the various sects. In many cases, my goal to open up Christianity is something of a lost cause, at least as far as those who are already convinced are concerned. As usual, agnosticism will appeal most to those who already doubt.
It’s one thing to prefer your own god, and leave aside other gods. It’s quite another to say that your god is the only one to get a capital G, and that all the others are false or wicked. Unfortunately, this is what religion has often been in the West — and is, unfortunately what some Hindus are now doing politically in India, in a newly vociferous antagonism to Islam. Yet Christians and Muslims have been doing this for centuries: they very forcefully reject the gods of other groups and they deny the value and wisdom of believers who don’t hold their particular view of God & history — or their view of the history of God.
From an agnostic point of view, this henotheism self-implodes, because 1. it’s based on the notion that there are other gods or other versions of God, 2. no one can prove any of their claims about deity, and 3. the antagonism and hatred they demonstrate makes their religion look bad, both from a theological point of view (which includes love and fraternity) and from a practical point of view (which includes the practical management of geographical, economic, political, linguistic, and cultural groups). This exclusivity, which all too often ends up in antagonism and hatred, makes the agnostic yearn for a more civilized dynamic of belief, where one group had their g/God and didn’t mind if another group had theirs.
The Judaeo-Christian tradition assumes that the Jews had a unique and superior form of monotheism. What agnostics find most challenging about this is that this exclusivity appears, to all extents and purposes, to be built into the architecture of belief — a historical design that insists, “Our God is the best!” This is why it’s such a challenge to try to make Western religions more inclusive. We can point out that mystics, poets, and philosophers are able to glean wisdom and spiritual depth from their religion without the dogmatic rejection of other religions and without the claim to exclusivity, yet the main body of believers still seems to want to believe in exclusivity, in the idea that they alone are chosen or saved.
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Brahman & Dharma
There are many problems with the notion that the monotheism of the Jewish God is a superior form of belief. To begin with, the henotheistic background of the Jewish Yahweh, in addition to the existence of Christian figures such as The Son of God, the Mother of God, Satan, the Archangels Michael & Uriel, etc., make other religious philosophies seem just as monotheistic. For instance, we find deep currents of monotheism in Plato’s notion of the Good, in Stoic notions of the universal mind of Nature, or in Hindu notions of Purusha and Brahman. The ‘polytheism’ of Hindusim is particularly problematic for the Western religious claim of superior monotheism. Hindus might claim that this or that God is the highest or most powerful, yet all their versions of God dissolve into one ineffable, immanent, transcendent deity, Brahman, who is within and beyond everything that possibly is.
It’s also difficult for agnostics to accept Bottéro’s insinuation that Jews were special or revolutionary because they were the first to anchor their religion in ethics (he says that the Jews had an innovation that was “revolutionary” and commanded “a life in conformity to a purely ethical code — or something approaching what’s been preserved for us in the Bible under the name of the Ten Commandments”). This notion of a unique ethical foundation is countered by one word that’s used by both Hindus and Buddhists: dharma.
In Hinduism, dharma denotes behaviours that are considered to be in accord with Ṛta—the "order and custom" that makes life and universe possible. This includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living". The concept is believed to have a transtemporal validity, and is one of the four Puruṣārthas. In Buddhism, dharma (Pali: Dhamma) refers to "cosmic law and order", as expressed by the teachings of the Buddha. […]
In the Rigveda, the word appears as an n-stem, dhárman-, with a range of meanings encompassing "something established or firm" (in the literal sense of prods or poles). Figuratively, it means "sustainer" and "supporter" (of deities). It is semantically similar to the Greek themis ("fixed decree, statute, law"). (from “Dharma,” in Wikipedia, Feb.20, 2024)
The Rg Veda dates from the mid-2nd millennium BC, and thus comes centuries before the consolidation of Jewish thinking in the first millennium. Also, the insinuation that the Ten Commandments is somehow special is odd when seen in the context of Mesopotamia: the legal codes of Ur-Nammu (late 3rd millennium) and Hammurabi (early 2nd millennium) long pre-date Judaism. While these codes contain prejudices we find unacceptable today, so too are some of the notions of justice and hierarchy we find millennia later in the Bible. In any case, while the Ten Commandments are no doubt excellent, they can’t be a universal religious code simply because they begin with the most stridently exclusive religious statement possible: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
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Absolute Monotheism
Bottéro also sees the movement from henotheism to monotheism as a movement to absolute monotheism, a claim that I think is very doubtful, or at least needs to be extensively qualified:
Moïse a inauguré ce que nous appelons l'« hénothéisme», forme de polythéisme qui, sans nier l'existence d'autres divinités, oblige à les écarter pour ne 'attacher qu'à une seule. C'est à cet hénothéisme originel que la religion d'Israël devra, au bout d'une évolution séculaire, son « invention » et sa mutation la plus importante et la plus prodigieuse le monothéisme absolu.
Moses inaugurated what we call henotheism, a form of polytheism which, without denying the existence of other divinities, obliges us to throw them away so that we believe in only one. It’s to this original henotheism that Israel owes, after centuries of evolution, its ‘invention’ and its most important and prodigious mutation of absolute monotheism.
Three difficult question arise from this statement about absolute monotheism, all of which find their most clear answers when one considers Hinduism.
1. Was Israel really the first to embrace monotheism? Leaving aside the brief foray into monotheism in 18th century BC Egypt, and leaving aside the monotheistic slant of Zoroastrianism, one can't ignore that the Hindus developed, very early on, the notion of monotheism in an important and prodigious way. The creative and unifying concept of Purusha evolved into the concept of Brahman during the 2nd and 1st millennia. Rg Veda is attested long before the Bible, and has clear lines leading to the absolute monotheism of Brahman, lines which are clearly articulated in the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras of Shankara.
2. Even if Yahweh was the first monotheistic God, what difference does that make, if other monotheisms developed from their own roots (instead of being derived from Judaism)?
3. How is Advaita Vedanta less absolute than the Jewish version of monotheism? Both are polytheistic and henotheistic to some degree, with Advaita Vedantists arguing, rather than making war against other deities. Perhaps the reason Hindus aren’t so antagonistic to other deities is that Brahman takes them over in a friendly way, whereas the relation between Jews and the deities of Mesopotamia, Rome, and Mecca resemble attempts at hostile takeovers.
In Hinduism, Brahman not only subsumes all other deities, but also has no human form. Brahman is hence not anthropomorphic, and is certainly not so in the manner of the feeling, thinking, happy, jealous, angry, judge-like, historically-intervening Yahweh. The Jewish tradition reveres iconoclasm, refusing to allow images of God (although clearly this changed in the course of history, splitting into the extreme iconoclasm of Islam and the icons & artistry of Europe), yet despite Yahweh’s warnings against golden icons and anthropomorphic gods, He acts in very human ways, and is very much concerned about advancing the material and property interests of a specific people. For the God of all Time, He’s very much concerned with one specific group of people.
Brahman on the other hand isn't seen as the protector of one people in one Age, but as the substratum of reality for all people in all Ages. Just because Hindus don't mind what form Brahman might take in the minds of believers doesn't mean that Brahman is Itself an anthropomorphic deity. And just because Advaita Vedantists like Shankara insist that Brahman is everywhere and in everything doesn't mean that they speak on behalf of a paganism or pantheism that disseminates spiritual meaning in meaningless or downgrading ways. To the contrary, the aim of much Hindu practice is yoga or union: to experience the unity of the spiritual Infinite in everything.
The notion of Brahman is deep and unified. It's seen as the spiritual basis of everything, and it's the object (or, rather, the non-object) of the highest reverence. What more absolute notion of one omnipresent and omnipotent God could there be?
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Polytheism
There’s also the fundamental objection against seeing an intrinsic superiority in monotheism. While the Western religions see monotheism as superior to polytheism, the latter is in many ways more like the real world. In polytheistic systems, nothing is ever final: forces and figures are in continual interaction with other forces and other figures. This is like the real world, which is historically defined by its changing customs, power structures, philosophies, religions, and technologies. Throughout human existence, there’s never been one all-powerful Leader, Power, or System. There’s no historical parallel to the concepts of an eternally omnipotent Deity or Divine Providence.
One can see a complex dynamic of forces at work in Hinduism, the only extant polytheistic world religion. Transformation and diversification are the hallmarks of the Vedas, the Puranas, Mahabharata, and Ramayana, just as they are of our universe. There’s perhaps no greater analogy for the interplay of biological, geographical, and astronomical systems than the intricate worlds-within-worlds of Hinduism. These worlds are framed within cosmic cycles (or yugas) that last hundreds of thousands of years — the only major religious time-frame we have that comes close to that of today’s astronomy. Hinduism and astronomy also share the interconnectedness that Alexander Pope writes of in the first section of his Essay on Man (1734):
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied being peoples every star.
One might argue that Hindu polytheism accepts diverse and transformative perspectives more easily than the monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Hinduism’s easy alignment with secularism and democracy, with rational and materialistic philosophy (Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Mimansa schools of Hinduism), and with monotheism (Vedanta’s Brahman, Qualified Non-dualism or Vishisht-Advaita Vedanta, Bhakti’s devotional sects, etc.), suggest that it’s hasty to generalize about the innate superiority of monotheism.
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Next: Anti-Definitions
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