Last time<\/a>, I ended with a question: what are the Jews famous for?<\/p>\n The answer, of course, is Monotheism<\/em>.\u00a0 The Jews are famous for either bringing into the world, or else preserving, the doctrine that there is just one God.<\/p>\n It’s important to realize that this is not just a matter of counting, as though Monotheism were the golden mean between Polytheism and Atheism.\u00a0 It’s not just about having the right number of gods.\u00a0 It’s a matter of what kind<\/em> of gods you believe in.<\/p>\n Polytheists believe in gods which were born at particular times and places, and have limited spheres of influence.\u00a0 In other words, their gods are just like you and me, except for being a lot more powerful.\u00a0 In Greek or Norse mythology, most of the gods don’t seem to have a moral advantage over human beings either.\u00a0 They just get their way more often\u2014except when they are quarreling with each other.<\/p>\n Monotheists, on the other hand, believe that God is the fundamental entity in existence, that he has no <\/em>external limitations, that he is perfectly good and wise, that he is eternal, and that he created everything besides himself.\u00a0 This, obviously, is a completely different kind <\/em>of entity than the polytheistic divinities.\u00a0 And, equally obviously, there cannot be more than one of these.\u00a0 Logic says that there cannot be two rival Deities, each of which created everything else, including the other one.<\/p>\n Thus on the Monotheistic conception there can be only one God, and following the usual grammatical convention of capitalizing titles like “President” or “Dad” which single out a particular entity<\/a>, one normally capitalizes the G.\u00a0 But as a convenience, since in the rest of the post I will be talking about the Monotheistic God side by side with Polytheistic gods, in the rest of this post I will always use the captial letter to distinguish the two, so I don’t have to keep using adjectives to keep them apart. (*)<\/p>\n A certain sort of Atheist likes to say, “What makes Jehovah any different than Zeus, Thor, Athena, or Allah?\u00a0 Once you realize why you disbelieve in any of those gods, you’ll know why I disbelieve in yours.”\u00a0 But this completely misses the point.\u00a0 Thor and Athena are polytheistic gods, and they can both exist at the same time without contradiction.\u00a0 Whereas “Allah” is not a different God from the God of the Jews or Christian, it’s a name for the same concept of an ethical Ultimate Reality who created everything.\u00a0 Monotheistic religions may disagree about how we should think about God<\/em>, about what he is like<\/em>, but we do not disagree about which<\/em> God exists, since the basic concept is similar enough.\u00a0 That’s why Arabic speaking Christians also refer to God by the name Allah<\/a>!<\/p>\n Monotheists criticize Polytheists, not because they have too many gods, but because to us they don’t have any!\u00a0 They are idolators, worshipping things which do not deserve to be worshipped.\u00a0\u00a0 Worship is an act of total submission and reverence, holding nothing back.\u00a0 The polytheistic gods are not worthy of that.\u00a0 They are mere creatures like us.\u00a0 Polytheism is a form of Atheism.<\/p>\n In fact, the concepts of God and “gods” are so distinct, that one could even believe in the existence of both!\u00a0 We Christians believe in the existence of many “supernatural” beings (angels and demons) who are much more powerful than we are.\u00a0 But we don’t worship them, because they aren’t God; like us they are limited creations.\u00a0 As St. Paul says:<\/p>\n We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one.\u00a0 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many \u201cgods\u201d and many \u201clords\u201d), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.\u00a0\u00a0(1 Corinthians 8:4-6<\/a>).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s important not to get confused, as St. John is near the end of the Book of Revelation:<\/p>\n I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me.\u00a0 But he said to me, \u201cDo not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers the prophets and with all who keep the words of this book. Worship God!\u201d (Revelation 22:8-9<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The flip side of this coin is that even worshipping just one god doesn’t necessary square you with the Monotheistic worldview.\u00a0 To make a silly example, suppose that the Internet became a sentient being and that some former Atheists started worshipping it as the most powerful and wise being in existence.\u00a0 It would still be a polytheistic-type “god”, even though there was just one of it.<\/p>\n Zeus is a particularly interesting case.\u00a0 Most people are familiar with Greek mythology, in which Zeus is simply the most powerful of the many gods.\u00a0 But many educated Greeks knew full well that mythology was just lies made up by poets, and\u00a0used “Zeus” as the name for the monotheistic-type God.\u00a0 One Greek text, a sky altas quoted by<\/a> St. Paul in his sermon to the Athenians, illustrates this confusion well.\u00a0 Aratus’ Phaenomena<\/a> begins by invoking Zeus as though he were the Absolute Creator who dwells in all things:<\/p>\n From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; and he in his kindness unto men giveth favourable signs and wakeneth the people to work, reminding them of livelihood. He tells what time the soil is best for the labour of the ox and for the mattock, and what time the seasons are favourable both for the planting of trees and for casting all manner of seeds.\u00a0 For himself it was who set the signs in heaven, and marked out the constellations, and for the year devised what stars chiefly should give to men right signs of the seasons, to the end that all things might grow unfailingly. Wherefore him do men ever worship first and last.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n and then in the middle inconsistently recounts the origin of Zeus as a deity who was born at a particular time and place, with the world already in existence:<\/p>\n If, indeed, the tale be true, from Crete they by the will of mighty Zeus entered up into heaven, for that when in olden days he played as a child in fragrant Dicton, near the hill of Ida, they set him in a cave and nurtured him for the space of a year, what time the Dictaean Curetes were deceiving Cronus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We see here that Greek religion and Greek mythology were not the same thing.\u00a0 Even more striking is the Stoic<\/a> philosopher Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus<\/a>, written in the 3rd century B.C.\u00a0 Go ahead, click on the link.\u00a0 I wager you’ll be a shocked at how Christian his poem sounds, if you read “God” for “Zeus”.<\/p>\n To Monotheists, it is blasphemous to think of God as being the same as any created thing.\u00a0 He is more superior to an archangel, than the archangel is to a slug.\u00a0 Neither angels, nor souls, nor the heavenly realms, not even the entire universe, have any intrinsic religious significance to us at all.\u00a0 We desire God alone.\u00a0 As one modern Christian song<\/a> says:<\/p>\n We are a moment, You are forever Only one is Holy<\/a>, only one is Good<\/a>.\u00a0 He is the Supernatural.\u00a0 Everything else is a limited, finite being, subject to laws set by the Almighty.\u00a0 They are natural.\u00a0 We don’t always know their laws, but that doesn’t change the fact that they part of a definite Nature, which originates from, and is circumscribed by, God’s will.\u00a0 God is the Unlimited, in whose bosom all of these limited things exist.<\/p>\n Forget heliocentrism<\/a> and geocentrism<\/a>!\u00a0 In Christianity, everything revolves around God.<\/p>\n UPDATE: Edited post in response to some criticism.\u00a0 The paragraph marked with a (*) used to read: “Thus there can be only one God, and following the usual grammatical convention of capitalizing unique titles<\/a>, we capitalize the G.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last time, I ended with a question: what are the Jews famous for? The answer, of course, is Monotheism.\u00a0 The Jews are famous for either bringing into the world, or else preserving, the doctrine that there is just one God. … Continue reading
\nLord of the Ages, God before time
\nWe are a vapor, You are eternal
\nLove everlasting, reigning on high<\/p><\/blockquote>\n