GODS VERSUS GOD

Returning to the question of religious monotheism, as opposed to all polytheistic mythology, let us examine one particular example of Nietzsche’s “Theogony,” which has undoubtedly raised a lot of brows:

“Within the original tribal community, the living generation always recognized a duty toward the earlier generations. The fear of the ancestor and his power increases in exactly the same measure as the power of the tribe itself. This logic carried to its conclusion, the ancestors of the most powerful tribes grow to monstrous dimensions. In the end, the ancestor must necessarily be transfigured into a god. Perhaps this is even the origin of gods, an origin out of fear! And whoever should feel obliged to add, but out of piety also! would hardly be right for the greater part of the existence of man, his prehistory. He would be right for the intermediate age, in which the noble tribes developed, who paid back their ancestors (heroes, gods) with interest all the qualities that had become palpable in themselves, the noble qualities. ‘Ennoblement’ here should not be confused with their becoming holy.” (From his Genealogy of Morals; 2^nd Essay, #19, but notice his significant use of plural in the phrase: “Perhaps, this is even the origin of gods, an origin out of fear!”)

I have no problem with Nietzsche’s theogony here. There can certainly be some confusion in the minds of those who would have us believe that the philosophical concept of God has somehow emerged out of those polytheistic mythologies, which have survived the test of time not as religions, but as folklore. These gods and God are, in fact, so dissimilar, that Greek philosophers always disregarded polytheism in their thinking, and would turn out to be strongly monotheistic when talking of the Deity. There is not much difference, in principle, between the gods and heroes of Greek mythology, except that the former are more powerful and live longer than the latter. But the heroes are mostly born of gods, and often become gods themselves, after they die in their human capacity, so the whole kitchen of god-making is exposed here, and it has nothing to do with the philosophical nature of the Deity referred to by the philosophers, except that occasionally, perhaps, some Cleanthes or other might refer to God as Zeus,--- not that Zeus thus becomes identified as the Deity, but only as a matter of using a traditional proper noun metaphorically. Intentional or not, but still a matter of some significant confusion, if taken at its face value. (Another good example is the portrayal of Zeus in Hesiod’s poems Theogony and Works and Days, where, unlike in Homer, Zeus appears very much like the all-powerful, moral and just God of the great monotheistic religions, even though he, Hesiod, may not be going far enough for the great pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes, who was the first Greek to explicitly formulate the basic principles of monotheism: “One God, neither in form like unto mortals, nor in thought. He sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over. Without toil, he sways all things by the thought of his mind.”)

So much for Nietzsche’s discussion of the origins of polytheistic “religions.” Another way of saying this, it becomes clear that polytheism always tends to be the pseudo-religion of the uneducated masses whereas the philosophically-inclined mind is unfalteringly and necessarily monotheistic. The Jewish monotheism of the Bible is thus not a new discovery but its first installation as the religion of the masses, which the masses are not too happy to adopt, as the incident with the Golden Calf demonstrates.

No wonder, then, that popular religion, even in monotheistic societies, pushes toward polytheistic elements through excessive cults of saints and superstition, and even the difficult Christian concept of the Trinity of One God is quite often unconsciously polytheized…

To sum it up, we are not looking at a straightforward evolution of religion from polytheism to monotheism, but at an early parallelism of the popular polytheism and philosophical monotheism, followed by regression to polytheism in established monotheistic societies.

Returning to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, we are moving on to the next passage in Second Essay #20, where he talks of “the advent of the Christian God, as the maximum god attained so far,… accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on earth.” Then he proceeds with the following:

“Presuming we have gradually entered upon the reverse course, there is no small probability that with the irresistible decline of faith in the Christian God there is now also a considerable decline in mankind’s feeling of guilt; indeed, the prospect cannot be dismissed that the complete and definitive victory of atheism might free mankind of this whole feeling of guilty indebtedness toward its origin, its causa prima. Atheism and a kind of second innocence belong together…”

I do grant Nietzsche his justification in observing a “reverse” trend in his contemporary society, suggesting the coming of a post-religious society and its establishment as a world without God. This trend is obviously noticeable in the free nations of Europe but to generalize it on the basis of Europe alone would be incorrect. There are at least two important reasons why a post-religious world is an impossibility. One is the cultural connection of religion. Each specific culture is too closely connected to religion to erode its own identity. It is no longer a popular belief in God per se, as it is a belief in one’s own culture. Only where that culture has been disintegrating is that kind of loss of religion possible. Conversely, a reaffirmation of one’s religion has the power to reenergize one’s disintegrating culture, and effectively save it from degeneration.

The second reason is the already mentioned fact that the history of religion isn’t a straightforward evolution from polytheism to monotheism to atheism, but a parallel run of all three, answerable to a very different set of factors than evolution. I have no doubt that the philosophical idea of God is impervious to all historical-religious perturbations.

Now, combining these two reasons, we can say that Nietzsche is wrong. There is no such thing as Christian God! There is Russian God (do not believe the idiotic polls suggesting that Russia is not religious enough!), there is Polish God, Brazilian God, etc. Departing from the Christian religions we find many other national and cultural non-Christian manifestations of God. Meanwhile, they are all manifestations of only One God, the God of the philosophers, a “God without borders,” to whom the Torah refers as “Adonai Ehad,” whose Oneness is faithfully observed by the religion of Islam, albeit culturally fractured by its internecine conflicts.

The very concept of some Christian God, as opposed to a Jewish God, or as opposed to other Gods of other religions, is, on the philosophical level, a blasphemy against that Oneness of God. There is only one way to overcome the splintering of One God into the multitude of Gods of religions. It is to regard the religions of all great world cultures only as different forms of worship of the same One God who is also the Deity of Greek Philosophers, the monistic vision of Thales, etc. One must be very careful, however, with freedom of religion and all, not to give any legitimacy to the frivolous “gods” of frivolous sects and cults, which go under the name of religions, but whose objects of worship do not organically correspond to the philosophical idea of the Deity. Thus, the latter becomes the only valid criterion that legitimizes the freedom of worship, where the great cultures easily pass the test, but most of the sects and cults, and other excesses of religious freedom, do not.