Paper on Monotheism vs polytheism

Hello everyone, today I wanted to treat you to the paper that I talked about a few posts back in regards to the difference between Monotheism and Polytheism.  As I said before it was very interesting to write, I hope you enjoy it.

Peace,
Adam

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Adam James

Philosophy of Nature

Polytheism vs. Monotheism:

The Metaphysical Implications of Their Respective Narratives

            When thinking about the differences between a polytheistic faith and one that is monotheistic, it is common to believe that it is simply a difference of the number of gods that a faith embraces.  While this is an understandable mistake, the words are deceiving.  The idea of god is completely different in the polytheistic view compared to that of the monotheist.  In these two settings the idea of gods is different in part because of the different views on the matrix that encompasses everything. 

            In a polytheistic tradition people grow up with the notion that their gods are born.  This in itself means that there must be something before their gods.  It also means that there must be more than one, for one has to give birth to another.  The gods in this view are procreated, so there is an element of the unsuspected and unwilled involved with them and their actions.  From this it is seen that the matrix of all reality predates the gods.  This raises the question as to what or who created the matrix.    

            The gods in a polytheistic view are subject to fate, as is all that exists.  Fate means that what is destined to happen will happen with no effect of will.  The polytheistic people pay homage to the gods, despite the belief that all is subject to fate.  They do this because the gods are typically quite cruel and demanding of their attention. 

The only way that a person can influence fate is through magic.  This magic is not simple tricks as in the current definition of magic but is a way for the polytheist to tap into the metadivine.   If the act for magic fails to influence fate, it doesn’t necessarily hurt the faith of the polytheists.  They feel that if magic doesn’t work it can only be because they performed the magical act wrong.

A polytheist learns all of this through narrative.  The best known of these narratives would be Iliad and Odyssey by Homer.  These stories tell the tales of the gods and show all about them, how they came about, how they act, and the fact that they are subject to fate.  These tales are the narrative that tied the culture together and similar tales exist in every polytheistic culture.  These tales show a cyclical system to the polytheists’ understanding.

Monotheism has a completely different take on the metaphysical realm.  Monotheism is unique in history from the Israelite God to the faiths that have come from that, namely Christianity and Islam.  Monotheistic metaphysics is summed up in the first line of Genesis.  Which describes how in the beginning there was nothing and then God willed everything into being.  This shows a couple of the biggest differences between polytheism and monotheism.  The first that this shows is that God has always been, not born from something.  Along this same line it shows that God pre-existed everything.  This shows that in monotheism the metadivine is linear, not cyclical as in polytheism, if there is such a sing as a metadivine in monotheism, maybe it is more accurate to say time or history.

The other big difference that this first idea in the Genesis shows is that God’s will is the ultimate thing in this realm.  God is not subject to fate, His will trumps all.  God willed the world into existence, and it was so.  This is a big difference, it means that everything was created intentionally, not procreated and getting whatever comes. 

In monotheism prayer is the way to influence God, not magic.  This leads to and understanding that God can do anything that He wills. 

While monotheism has a narrative as does polytheism it differs in several ways.  One way that the narrative differs is that it comes about through revelation.  In revelation God has shown himself and what is true at the time and to whom He knows will spread it in the proper way.  Polytheists don’t believe in this idea of revelation, although their gods interact with them in a constant manner.  Monotheism tends to be more difficult to get people to convert to because of this revelation aspect.  It has a less obvious metaphysical idea than polytheism, so is believed in primarily by those to whom it has been revealed.

So while polytheists have many gods and monotheists believe only in one God as the words would show there is a very great deal more to the difference between monotheism and polytheism.  This difference is shown best in the narratives of the two ideas.  In the polytheistic narrative one sees the creation, or more properly procreation, of the gods while in the monotheistic narrative one sees that God is before and above everything else that has and will ever exist.