This is a small essay that tries to show how polytheism is universal in all theistic religious traditions.  I pick Christianity to make my case, but I think Islam or Judaism would also ‘work.’ In the process those who wonder why I sometimes defend Christianity and sometimes criticize it will see why that is so.

For thousands of years people
lived in a world populated by many spiritual forces, and did not think of them
as all being subordinate to or in revolt against some central divine king.  Today many scholars see their awareness as a first primitive step
towards more sophisticated spiritual understandings, culminating in
monotheism.  To them, we Pagans
seem a kind of romantic throwback or evolutionary degeneration.  Even liberal and tolerant scholars of
religion and theologians who are often  friendly to non-Western Pagans often have a hard time taking NeoPagans seriously.  After all, modern Westerners should know better.  (Happily this dismissive attitude is improving, but is still
prominent.)  

I want to present an
argument that this common attitude is wrong.

Anyone knowledgeable of Western
history knows hundreds of years of religious war and well over a thousand years
of religious persecution characterized Europe dominated by Biblical
monotheism.  Most of the killing
was Christian killing Christian after they had eliminated competing faiths, and
here is a puzzle I want to explore. 
Why so much killing when everyone initially started out agreeing on a
single text? (Even parts of the initial text were eventually rejected by some,
such as Luther’s rejection of the Epistle of James.) 

I think this puzzle is solved
when looked at from a Pagan perspective. 
From this vantage point, when taken inclusively Christianity is a
polytheistic religion.  It is only monotheistic when we consider a single church or doctrine as sanding for the religion as a whole.  

The Catholic God has little in
common with the Southern Baptist one beyond a claim to universal
domination.  That is what “God
Almighty” means.  More then one
such Baptist has said the Catholics are serving the Devil.  Many
Pentecostals say the Pope is the “Whore of Babylon” described in
Revelations.  Many nonPentecostals
say Pentecostals channel demons when speaking in tongues.  More than one Catholic has said the
Baptists are going to Hell.  All
are sincere. All have sincerely different conceptions of their God and what He
desires from them.

The
God of some Missouri Synod Lutherans does not want His devotees praying with
non Christians, not even in Jesus’ name. Many such Lutherans filed charges
against a Lutheran pastor who prayed at an interfaith event after 9-11, because
his act could be interpreted as granting legitimacy to other beliefs. The national second vice president of the Missouri
Synod argued  “to participate with pagans in an interfaith service and, additionally, to give
the impression that there might be more than one god, is an extremely serious
offense against the God of the Bible.”

Other Christian denominations,
Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox alike, were not so bothered. Their God was
more accommodating and perhaps more secure.   The Lutheran God seems quite different in important respects from the God these
other denominations honor.

For some Christians God is  “the
God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some
loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his
wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else,
but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in
his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the
most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.” Such were the views of
Jonathan Edwards, America’s most famous Calvinist theologian. 

The
United Churches of Christ make a point of welcoming practicing gays and
lesbians, people whom some other denominations declare are abominations in the
eyes of their God. With apparent
guidance by conservative American Christians  some Ugandan fundamentalists want to execute gays and lesbians.  Whether they might be UCoC members seems irrelevant.  Seems like they worship different Gods
to me.  Sort of like Socrates and
the Aztecs both being Pagan but pretty clearly attuned to different Gods. 

Quakers
believe the Holy Spirit speaks to and through us, hence the distinct nature of
Quaker meetings.  At its core,
Quakerism does not depend on specific beliefs from outside authorities but
rather upon each person’s direct experience of God.  God dwells in every soul and Quaker meetings give people
time to slow down and listen. More than a few Pagans find Quaker Meetings spiritually valuable.

For
some Christians, nothing we choose to do can win salvation.  We are predestined for heaven or hell
because it was God who chooses who goes to heaven, and who to hell. From a
purely human standpoint all are equally unworthy. Technically this is called
‘double predestination’ because God chooses whom to save and whom to damn. 

Others
hold that good works and sincere repentance will win salvation.  Others that faith alone is all that is
necessary.  These are radically
different conceptions of not only our relationship to God, they are radically
different understandings of what kind of being God is. 

The
differences continue.  Original sin
is a key element in most Western Christianity, accepted by Catholics and
Protestants alike.  However, the
Eastern Orthodox churches do not believe in original sin.  In one case we are guilty of sin at birth, in the other we are not.  It could not get much more different
than that.

Differences
between Catholic and Orthodox views led to the Byzantine “Massacre of the
Latins”  where Catholics were killed or sold as slaves to Muslim Turks.  Special nasty attention was paid
to  clergymen.   The later Catholic capture and
sack of Constantinople during a Fourth Crusade supposedly to fight Muslims led
to the desecration of Orthodox sacred sites.  The subsequent Catholic domination
of Constantinople led to many Orthodox Christians preferring Muslim rulers over
Catholic Christian ones.

All
this variety in the name of monotheism is perplexing, to say the least.  I suggest it is because the entire idea
of monotheism is suspect when that deity is considered in other than a mystical
vein. Rather, what we are looking at from a Pagan point of view is a diverse
polytheism, but with each deity, or the devotees of ach deity, usually claiming
sole dominion over the whole. Because they worship different Gods under the
same name, in 2000 years sincere Christians have never been able to agree on
central matters of doctrine. 
Christians worship a God who loathes us, and a God who loves us,  a God who surrounds us with intricate
rules that we violate at the cost of our souls and a God who only requires us
to take Jesus as savior, a God who holds us guilty of Original sin, and a God
who holds us guilty only of sins we personally commit.  The variety of sincere interpretations
from a single text is remarkable, and to the degree unity has existed it has
come from political force, not the persuasive power of argument and faith.

Mystical Monotheism

Upon
hearing my argument some Christians have told me that this diversity is not
polytheism, that, for example, their God is a God of justice as well as a God
of love.  Setting aside what
constitutes justice and its relation to love, and that there is no agreement on
that issue, if this argument is true then why all the religious wars and
killings and intolerance between Christians?  It goes back about 2000 years. 

An
honest observer would note that a great many people have proven willing to die
for these various beliefs, and often shifted from one perspective to another
through great personal introspection and prayer.  Sincerity and prayer have not led seekers to a common
understanding, yet the traditional doctrines of monotheism say there is ONE way
that is right.  Two thousand years
of history testify that the Biblical tradition has no solution to this dilemma.  Except…

Except
for the Christian mystical traditions, which often become indistinguishable at
the level of reported experience from other dualistic mystical traditions.  This is why Augustine, a Christian,
could learn and admit he learned, from Plotinus, a Pagan.   These traditions agree that the
Ultimate is beyond adequate expression or description in words and that the
human mind is incapable of grasping its reality.

From
a Pagan perspective that takes the mystical experience seriously, as I do, the
nature of the Gods we honor falls pretty neatly into place.  They are all   expressions/emanations of this Source, as are we.  Their closeness to this source is shown
in terms of their qualities, on which there seem to be two dimensions.  First, the mystical reports say this
source is loving and good.  How
loving and good is the particular entity we are encountering?  Second, how individualized is it?  I will set this very interesting point
aside for purposes of this little essay. 
But it’s important and I am still wrestling with dimensions of its
possible significance.  One
relevant point, love is impossible without individuality, for in its absence
there is nothing to love.

The
more the Christian God is seen as love the more easily Christians appear to see
the value of other traditions both within Christianity and outside of it.  And the less blood is on their hands.  If  Jesus’ injunction “by their fruits you shall know them” is
true, and it seems pretty reasonable to me, here are some pretty contrasting
harvests depending on the God they worship.

Perhaps
this is why Quakers in particular have had such a disproportionate influence
for good in the world.  Nor are
they threatened by a God who seems at first to speak in different voices, as
happens in their meetings. This is about as far from Jonathan Edwards’ demonic
God who regards us as a loathsome insect as one can get.

The
Amish and Mennonites also important from this perspective.  Their theologies are as exclusive as
many others, but demand peaceful and loving relations within their own
communities and towards others.  And
they practice what they preach to an awe inspiring degree that other
monotheists find disturbing.  Significantly, while the Amish and Mennonites were persecuted by Catholics,
Lutherans, and Calvinists, they have so far as I know never indulged in
persecution themselves. 

Cutting Across the
Polytheist/Monotheist Divide

I
would argue the record of Christian polytheism lends enormous support for those
Christian churches whose practices are most tolerant of other faith traditions,
and the record amassed by the opposite Jonathan Edwards and right wing Catholic
end suggests worship of very flawed conceptions of divinity and very low kinds
of spiritual entities that claim to rule over all.

In
this pattern Christianity has a similar record to the Pagan traditions.  Some Pagan ‘deities’ or spirits seem to
me quite demonic, that is, they are far more concerned with power and its
exercise than with qualities of kindness, love, compassion, and the like.  To me the Aztecs are a clear example of
a culture connected to demonic energies masquerading as divine. To the extent
stories about Moloch are true, there too was a demonic entity.  Gods and Goddesses who delight in
battle and slaughter seem to me little different in their essential nature from
some Old Testament versions of Yahweh, with the exception that so far as I know
they did not command killing and slaughtering people because they worshipped
other deities.  But that was small
consolation if you happened to be one so chosen.

Once
we see that all Gods of which we can conceptualize are partial expressions of
All That Is, and that we can never truly understand the latter, I think
something better than tolerations emerges. Toleration can accompany severe
dislike.  I tolerate plenty that I
wish was not around.  Toleration is
vastly better than killing or oppressing, but it’s not really respecting. 

Modern
Pagans, like a great many people in cosmopolitan cultures elsewhere in space
and time, do not simply tolerate other paths.  They see them as simply not theirs.  When I
became a Pagan and began to think what that really meant, I had to confront my
hostility to Christianity in general, and accept, deeply accept, that Christianity could be a good and beautiful
spiritual path for some people. Finally I did, which is why on this blog
sometimes I have been called a Christian apologist and sometimes a hater of
Christianity.  This confusion
arises because I distinguish between those forms of Christianity that allow
other paths their own existence, and those that do not.

I
believe we Pagans can easily respect and even honor and admire monotheists who
focus on their deity’s love and mercy and attend to their own spirituality,
whether they be engaged in the world like Quakers or separated from it, like
the Amish.  Either way they serve
as attractive examples of what such a life and such a spirituality can
accomplish.  Someday I hope and
pray still more of our Christian brethren will come to a similar
understanding,  as many lay
Christians already do, and let God, in whatever and however many forms
He/She/They are honored, sort it all out. 
We really think God/Goddess/the Gods are up to it.