Quotes About Polytheism

Roman polytheism was opportunistic and thus open in advance to possible expansion. Like the English, who would rather make a new law than abolish an old one, the Romans adopted other gods without rejecting any from the old pantheon.

Sometimes the mere rhythm of a sentence will require God instead of the Gods; at other times the two syllables of 'the Gods' will be necessary, and I'll verbally change universe; on still other occasions what will matter is an internal rhyme, a metrical displacement, or a burst of emotion, and polytheism or monotheism will prevail accordingly. The Gods are contingent on style.

But the Christian emperor inherited a share of the devotion to the sovereign, and incense was burnt before his holy image (Philost., 2, 17), lamps were lit at the foot of his statues, and he was invoked on equal terms with a tutelary god to divert the ills that threatened people (C. Th., 15, 4, 1) just as in the heyday of official polytheism.

This is the world of polytheism: it knows no overall truth and order, only fragments and limited connections in the shambles of time and space. Polytheism is a fact of cultural decay and collapse.

Freedom is the right to difference; being plurality, it postulates the dispersion of the absolute, its resolution into a dust of truths, equally justified and provisional. There is an underlying polytheism in liberal democracy (call it an unconscious polytheism); conversely, every authoritarian regime partakes of a disguised monotheism.

The most serious disadvantage a Christian encounters is that of not being able to serve consciously more than one god, though he has the latitude to adhere, in practice, to several (the worship of saints!). A salutary adherence which has permitted polytheism to continue, in spite of everything, indirectly. Without it, an excessively pure Christianity would not have failed to found a universal schizophrenia.

Religion in the form of polytheism entered the world as the vindication of power. Not only was there no separation of church and state; religion was the transcendental justification of the state.

The plethora of gods were created to explain a world without rules. In that way, polytheism is more pessimistic and more cynical than Judeo-Christian monotheism.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were comfortable with any number of deities and were quite open to allowing conquered nations to continue to worship in whatever ways they saw fit, as long as they didn't mind having an emperor who required taxes and tributes.

Because of the open nature of polytheism, there was virtually no such thing as "conversion." Anyone who chose to begin worshiping a new god was welcome to do so and was not required or expected to leave behind any previous practices of worship or make an exclusive commitment to this one deity.

Furthermore, we exist in a psychologically fragmented state, a state of continuous inner conflicts among the parts of ourselves. We have lost the principle of unity within ourselves. We are not only psychological polytheists, worshipping gods of our own creation, we are "polyselfists," because we have many selves and have not known our essential self.

The Jews were the first monotheistic culture in history. They believed in one God and one God only. The Greco-Roman world of Herod's day was polytheistic. They believed in many gods, and much of their worship was sexual in nature.

It's very clear from Biblical history and Jewish history that Jewish monotheism wasn't developed in an instant, that it became gradually the accepted norm. But undoubtedly, Jewish ancestors were polytheists.

In contemporary practice, a pagan is someone who follows a polytheistic/pantheistic spiritual system.

Polytheism may be more consonant with contemporary life, its mixed populations, and its recognition of psychic complexity and interdependence, than a rigorous Protestant monotheism.

All ancient polytheisms revered one high god above all others.

The tragedy of polytheism and idolatry is not the arithmetic (many gods instead of one), but that they exchange the only true source of salvation for lifeless and powerless substitutes, and in doing so, introduce injustice, bondage, and cruelty into human life (cf. Rom. 1:21–32).

The ancient Greeks named about five hundred gods, the Romans five thousand, the Tibetan Buddhists nine million, but Americans are the most polytheistic people in history: they have named 330 million gods. That is the root of our insanity. We demand to be our own authorities because we demand to be the authors of our own being and meaning

I let you find all those polytheistic truths yourself; life in them, find the joy in them, and even sorrow. But in these joys and sorrows rest content with the thought that they give meaning to our world.

God's curse de-deified the serpent, which was worshipped in many pagan societies, including the Egyptian, Sumerian, Hittite, and Canaanite. Throughout the Torah, the Torah seeks to undermine polytheism by dethroning the gods of the ancient world.

Say: I am only a mortal like you; it is revealed to me that your God is one God, therefore follow the right way to Him and ask His forgiveness; and woe to the polytheists; (To) those who do not give poor-rate and they are unbelievers in the hereafter.

What is the probability that Yahweh is the one true god, and Amon Ra, Aphrodite, Apollo, Baal, Brahma, Ganesha, Isis, Mithra, Osiris, Shiva, Thor, Vishnu, Wotan, Zeus, and the other 986 gods are false gods? As skeptics like to say, everyone is an atheist about these gods; some of us just go one god further.

We had returned to the age of polytheism without realizing it. Which God we worshipped depended on which tribe we belonged to, which wish we prayed granted. Even Reason had become a God to millions over the last century—an omnipotent being of pure science, worshipped by lettered liberals in the organic produce aisles of their local Whole Foods. And Whole Foods Jesus knows there's no such thing as ghosts. Firm in

The polytheism of the popular Hinduism[38] is practically a pantheism in which the various deities are regarded