Absolutist Monotheism
jeffd
Egypt had its own bout with it under Ahknaton. Usually he is
portrayed as a good guy of history. But he sought to eliminate all
images.
His changes did not last long.
We see where Absolutist Monotheism goes. Joshua mowed down Amalek and
his people on the edge of the sword. Soon Moses was commissioning
death squads too.
It amounts to killing anyone who disagrees. And you can use
theocratic arguments to justify it too.
This continued up until New Testament times, and then the Christians
picked it up as their own.
It continues today. Maybe it isn't always killing, but it is
oppostion to all that is not explicitly Christian. It is even the
belief that you can separate religion from the rest of our culture.
I think this is all wrong, predictable, but wrong.
You can't enforce monotheism in that way. It amounts to trying to
exterminate diversity, attacking culture itself.
Now, I know that the Jewish postion is that scripture is always right,
especially the Torah. It is up to us to find out exactly in what way
it is right. I can accept this. There are lots of ways.
But in the more direct and general sense, though I draw strength from
scripture, I take strong exception to how it is generally interpreted.
I see the real issue being the rejection of popular idolotries, as
well as a faith that change can be made, even against extreme odds.
Idolotry creates a condition where nothing can change. Things are the
way they are, and have always been, and there is nothing you can do
about it. You are wrong for even wanting to try.
But the prophetic call is the call to reject the popular idolotry and
to have faith that things can be changed, and a personal relationship
with God is developed.
Now, something important must be clarified here. Each page of the Old
Testament says, "Believe in God or else". It also says this is
Revelations, the Pastoral Letters, the Pauline Letters, Acts, and each
of the four Gospels.
But this is a surface reading. Not only is it naive objectivism, not
only does it create problems in dealing with Eastern thinking, but it
is also a severe form of idolotry itself.
A better way to understand the biblical injuctions is as a simple
statement of the fact that idolotry is destructive and against life.
The consequences are evident in the people themselves. Just spend
some time with religious congregations.
But idolotry and polytheism are not necessarily the same. This
differs from the understanding of the biblical author.
Biblical monotheism starts with the prophetic call. It is repeated
time and time again. It is a personal relationship with God, and
amounts to a rejection of the popular form of belief.
This personal relationship is intense, and becomes singular. But
again, the experience is personal, not corporate.
To try and enforce doctrine based on this personal experience puts you
in the role of Ahknaton banising all images, or of Moses sending out
death squads.
There has to be an allowance for plurality in culture, and this means
an allowance for polytheism.
Remember, the monotheism of Ahknaton was an aberation. Monotheism
started some years before in their Mystery Schools, and after
Ahknatons failed reforms, it continued the same way. It was a kind of
an understanding of what was behind appearances, behind folk religion,
and that the various dieties of the pantheon, neters, were aspects of
one.
Then tendency towards multiplicity is always there, on conjuction with
the desire to find one. We have the holy trinity. In Kabalah we have
the same 3. We have the duality of God and Satan. We have the
duality of the Gnotics positing the popular God as a Demiurge and
there being a real God behind that.
Its all a response to the basic philosophical question, if there is an
all good, all knowing, and all powerful God, how can there be evil?
Multiplicity and Monism exist simultaneously. They just are cut
different ways.
Remember Baruch Spinoza, one of the greatest monists, expelled from
the synagoge.
A recent issue of Biblical Archeology showed who there was continuous
Egyptian influence in the art forms of Israel's monarchy.
A reasonable reading of the extreme Egyptian Mystery School symbolism
of the Gospels is as a reunification of the falacious split between
the Hebrew monotheism and the Egyptian tradition.
Monotheism and Polytheism are not in oppostion. They exist
simultaeously, as varied expressions and experiences.
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God. But look what is really being claimed here. It amounts to
saying that I, or my group, has the only answer, and anyone who
doesn't go along with it is wrong. This takes us right back to Moses
in the Siani.
Remember, the Hebrews did not really develop into true monotheists
until the time of the exile. Prior to that, they considered their God
to be one amont many, but it was just the one they were to be loyal
to. The late redactions of the Torah tend to obscure this.
At the time of the Exile, they came to see Nebachadnezer, a foreign
polytheist, as an agent of Yahweh. There really was a change. Judaism
become a compassionate religion, for the first time. Karen Armstrong
cites Jeremiah as the key.
Much of this was lost during the second temple era, and Christianity
still has not developed this far, as it still separates the world into
Christians and nonChristians and into Christian Culture and Secular
Culture. Paul is another Moses in this sense.
Now many see tht polytheism results in superstition. You get
situations like in the Illiad. People have to ask, are the gods
moral?
Consider Oedipus Rex, that play starts out with a land that is in
blight. So rather than open his graineries, or starting to pool
resources, he sends people to oracles to find out who sinned. This is
superstitsion.
But you see the same kind of things in the Hebrew Scripture, even
scape goats. At least, it is the kind of thinking, highly self
serving, promoted by the Biblical authors.
Now look at the third play in the Oedipus triology, Antigone. It is
entirely different. Another town, another king. Nominally the same
polytheistic religion, but it works totally differently. The kind
make moderate offerings to the diety, but it is more just a way of
righting himself, a kind of meditation or attunement.
Along come Antigone's relatives. They say, "you should not be hanging
around Oedipus, you should be married". A basic normative and popular
kind of argument. They abduct her and make haste.
In the first play this would have worked. But in this third play the
king does not go to oracles, he does not yield to that kind of
argumentation. Futher he sees his role as king entirely
differently. He has prepared. He has relay stations with fast horses
and expert riders. He has them intercepted and brings Antigone back.
There really is light in this third play, not superstion and fear.
Superstistion is in new agers. I see this all the time. It is in
Asian cultures. I see this too.
But it is also real real strong as a kind of shadow of Christianity.
There is in Catholicism this fear of not following rules, or of
running afowl of church authority.
Of course, Word Faith Pentecostalism seems to be entirely superstion.
It is saturated with Biblical quotations and the name Jesus, but they
are woven into a story of some kind of impersonal metaphysics of
worthyness and unworthyness and faith vs nonfaith.
They worship Achievement, Affluence, and Attractiveness.
Now, most people do to some extent worship money and power. It is
hard not to. Actually it is because of the problems built into
Biblical monotheism that this is not surfaced.
Nietzche's critique of Chrisianity is that it is not life affirming,
but is life denying. I believe this is generally true. And it is
because of this that Christian leaders have no real way of answering
the Word Faith Pentecostals, except to say, "well we aren't exactly
like them". No, not exactly. But not totally dissimilar either.
Nietzche was an advocate of Greatness. But this does not mean
conformism. Achievement, Affluence, and Attractiveness are about
normative conformism, as are most forms of worshiping wealth, power
and military might. There is no simple answer here.
I would just go back to where I started that monotheism is an
expression of a mystical experience, a liminal experience where
subjectivity and objectivity cross.
Whether or not neo-pagan polytheists claim their dieties to be facets
of an underlying unity is not really that important. Unity and
multiplicity exist simultaneiously.
The real issue is superstitios idolotry and conformism out of fear, vs
the courage to act.
jeffd
What happens when one really promotes monism, infront of the leaders
of monotheism? Baruch Spinoza was expelled from the synagoge.
Matthew Fox was clobered by Joseph Ratzinger.
Ratzinger has just gone on about the objective reality of Hell, a
realm which exists *without God*.
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Jonathan Kirsch says that Josiah had more to do with the development
of Biblical Judaism than any other individual. This is because the
unprecedented power he gave to the priesthood, and of course because
of the planted Deuteronomical scroll.
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Pharasees the enemies of Peter and the disciples. When in fact, the
Disciples and the Pharasees were on the same side, players in a
conflict between the entire Pharaseeic movement and the Saducees.
Matthew and John made "Jews" the enemies.
No good has ever come from a straight reading of this. Rather those
who reject Christ are those who see religion as a fixed thing of
following external rules, they are rejecting your own actual
experience.
The prophets would say, "Thus says the Lord", like God was standing
right behind.
Jesus is quoted as saying, "Amen I say to you", a clear difference.
It seems to mean, you can look within your own heart and know what is
right, that the sabbath is made for us, not we for the sabbath.
In the Hebrew Scripture, Egypt is shown as the baddie. I can show you
passages, like in Psalms, Wisdom, and Sirach, that seem written as
deliberate correctives to Comming Forth by Day ( Book of the Dead ).
We know that this Widsom division ws redacted quite late, and with
Greek influence. We also know that the Egypt and the Israeli monarcy
were in close close communication. Josiah died campaging with the
Egyptians.
These corrective passages sound like CFD passages, except they try to
circuscribe the feminin element and the panenteistic element.
Its kind of like Catholicism and the Virgin Mary. It subsumes
something very powerful, only so it can be constrained.
But maybe making a straw man out of Egypt is not that important. What
really comes out of the Hebrew Scripture that promulgates Absolutist
Monotheism is this idea that you have to worship the one true God and
no other. So other Gods are false, and polytheism is wrong.
What arrogance!
The strength you can draw from the Hebrew Scriptures is in the
prophetic callings. These are mystical experiences, and so they are
singular in their expression. They give one the courage to resist and
to try to make change.
But that does not mean you can try and enforce it theocratically.