What is polytheism?

A third worldview that will come up from time to time is polytheism - the idea that there are many gods, goddesses and spirits that we must appease and please to have a reasonably good life. Some polytheists wear loincloths; others are dressed in business suits. Polytheism can be found in Hinduism and branches of the New Age, as well as among Mormons (although they would indignantly deny this-see chapter 10).

Imaginary creatures were regarded as gods, and these were feared and propitiated. Some believed in a fetish of good and a fetish of evil. Others had an elaborate system of mythology, as the Greeks, with husbands and wives and sons and daughters of the gods and goddesses. Man himself was exalted by some into a god, as with the Greeks and the Romans.

In Fetishism - degraded into a dread of some terrible unknown power, which priests used for their own purposes; in more cultivated religions, kept as the secret mysterious knowledge belonging to them, or to the initiated only, while the vulgar were kept in play with the more convenient everyday materials of popular mythology - the gods and goddesses of nature and imagination; yet still, though inconsistently, clothing them with attributes and powers which, if true, could only belong to one supreme God. And this was so true, that each local mythology had this twofold character, and that, even to particular cities.

7 In India, in the sects of Vaishnavas and Saivas, and one supreme God above the rest, the idea of God, and attributes of supremacy, omniscience and omnipotence, ran through all, however confused and inconsistent. These attributes were symbolised, too, as in the winged bulls, and lions, and men of Assyria - symbols recognised in Scripture; with this immense difference, that in heathen symbols, save in the vague idea of divinity, God was thought of no further than the attributes or symbols.

Such is the mental condition of man. The idea of One God was not suddenly lost at the first; but, man's mind not liking it, the truth became fainter in each successive generation, and at last was completely swamped in the flood of gods many and lords many which spread its devastating waters over the whole world.

Yet notwithstanding the visible effects, and the character of idolatry, it is strange to hear men gravely asserting that, in all ages and regions, the nations of the world (however different in character and manners) have yet united in the belief of a supreme Being. That man had in the age next succeeding the deluge a faint idea of the One God is true; but that in all ages and regions a supreme being was acknowledged is an assertion which lacks not boldness but proof. A "Supreme Being" is more than being superior to other gods. It means no other god beside the One God. Idolaters always had gods. A writer of the past age, speaking of the heathen, says that in their public and private affairs "the Divinity is invoked." And again, "In every people we discover a reverence and awe of the Divinity." That the pagan betrayed a servile and superstitious fear both in public and private, and under its influence performed rites to his idol, is true.

But in "public," as is known, each nation had its own god; even the cities of the same nation did not give pre-eminence to the same divinity; and as to the "private affairs" all the respectable families had each their own lares et penates. What is the meaning of invoking the Divinity, when the rites observed were a sort of entreaty that the god would not maliciously interfere with them rather than seeking his aid? And why the Divinity, as if there was but one object before the idolatrous world? The same writer (Rollin; see Anc. Hist. Pre.) speaks of the treatment those received who depraved by false philosophy rose up against this "doctrine." Were there any ever found who spoke against the "Divinity" as the One Supreme? There were some who despised the folly of idol-worship, and were called atheists by the idol-mongers. Was it false philosophy to speak against the abominations which could only shock the feelings of a moral pagan (if such could be found), and would lead the intellectual away from the senseless worship? But to speak of idolatry as adoration of the "Divinity" is a hiding of the sin of "many gods" if not an apology for it.

Even Max Müller, though far from believing reverence, is compelled by overwhelming facts to abandon the Rationalistic dream and to pay in a measure at least to the truth, as another has culled out of his "Chips out of a German Workshop," i. 345. "Can it be said that a monotheistic instinct could have been implanted in all those nations which adored Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, Baalzebub, Chemosh, Milcom, Adrammelech, Anammelech, Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal, Succoth-benoth, the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the host of heaven." Shemitic races worshipped these and more.

This we see in the deities of ancient Greece and Rome on the one hand—Jupiter, Mercurius, and all of the gods of the Olympian Heights,—or the bulls and cats and beetles of ancient Egypt.

91 In the laws or institutes of Menu we have it directly stated that, the sole self-existing power having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, he divided his own substance, and the mighty power became male and female. This gives perhaps the most complete original system of idolatry which exists, its most stupid and early form being Grecian mythology; but the same was really current everywhere. You can see these things, if you are anxious, in Guigniaut's Kreuser, or Faber, and the Asiatic Researches, and in many curious facts in Bryant, in Wilkinson for Egypt, and Cory's Fragments for Orphic and Phoenician.

The first verse of the book of Genesis and of the whole Bible stands alone in majestic greatness. Like some mountain peak rising from the valley in solitary grandeur with its snow-capped summit, it inspires awe. In the Hebrew the verse is composed of seven words. When that beginning was in which God created the heavens and the earth is not revealed. It must have been many millions of years ago; God only knows it and science can never discover it. It is incorrect to say that it was 6,000 years ago. God does not speak of Himself; no statement concerning His existence or His eternity is given. How different from the myths and speculations of pagan nations. God's Name mentioned for the first time in the Bible is "Elohim." It is in the plural indicating God's great dignity and power as well as the fact that God is triune. (See the "Let us make man," in verse 26.) Elohim is God's name as Creator. This verse answers all the different "isms" about God and His creation, while its depths cannot be sounded. Here atheism is answered; polytheism (the many gods of the heathen) is exposed to be false. The verse disproves materialism as well as pantheism, that God and the universe are one.

It excludes another: "The Lord our God is one Lord." (Deut. vi. 4.) "In that day there shall be one Lord, and His name one." (Zech. xiv. 9.)

We have here presented to us that great cardinal truth which the nation of Israel was specially responsible to hold fast and confess, namely, the unity of the Godhead. This truth lay at the very foundation of the Jewish economy. It was the grand centre round which the people were to rally. So long as they maintained this, they were a happy, prosperous, fruitful people; but when it was let go, all was gone. It was their great national bulwark, and that which was to mark them off from all the nations of the east. They were called to confess this glorious truth in the face of an idolatrous world, with "its gods many, and lords many." It was Israel's high privilege and holy responsibility to bear a steady witness to the truth contained in that one weighty sentence, "The Lord our God is one Lord," in marked opposition to the false gods innumerable of the heathen around. Their father Abraham had been called out from the very midst of heathen idolatry, to be a witness to the one true and living God, to trust Him; to walk with Him; to lean on Him; and to obey Him.