I wondered if this has ever happened at all. Maybe Catholicism comes close with saints but, to my knowledge, there isn't a religion which started off monotheistic and then became polytheistic. Would this even be possible and why did this not really happen OTL?
AHQ: Has there even been a religion or culture that started off monotheistic and became polytheistic?
- Thread starter HumptyDumpty
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I doubt that. Monotheistist religions, at least Abrahamic ones, are pretty strickt regarding the issue. And it ratherly seems that firstly there has been beliefs to spirits which have evolved as gods. In some polytheist faiths one god has eventually taken bigger role and religion has evolved as monotheist religion via several phases. But I can't think any case where monotheist religion has evolved as polytheist religion. But Catholism is indeed pretty close due its saint cults. But probably that couldn't had ever evolved as polytheist religion. At best there would had been small off-shoot sect but it hardly would had survived long.
Buddhism might be the closest, since the nature of the Buddha was originally those few individuals who became superior beings based on their enlightenment to in Mahayana Buddhism a much larger number of individuals (some of whom do not live in this spiritual realm) who have nigh-divine powers, are worthy of prayer, and can accelerate one's path to enlightenment by causing one to reborn in a realm more conducive to achieving enlightenment.
But it's debateable if you can really call them gods since they are considered examples to be venerated and none of them created the world.
But it's debateable if you can really call them gods since they are considered examples to be venerated and none of them created the world.
I'm not really seeing the Catholic connection beyond a very surface level appearance (which maybe what you mean). All the theology is quite clear that the saints only act as God's intermediaries & praying to them is no different from asking someone who is alive to pray for you except the saints have no earthy distractions.
Mormonism on the other hand, is exactly what you are looking for. From my understanding, it even works from their point of view. As Mormonism was re-revealed to a strictly monotheistic Christianity. (If I am mistaken, please correct me.)
Most traditional Gnostic sects also usually works for this.
And I'm pretty sure there are some modern Christan based "spiritual but not religious" beliefs that fit the bill, but that depends on your definition of religion.
The explicit theology matters less than how it’s taken. The Catholic Church had a lot of debates and grumbling about the veneration of saints and whether or not it was being taken too far into the realm of worship. The Saint tradition partly resembled Hellenistic hero cults but also always gave me a vibe similar to village gods. Not seen as powerful as major pantheon deities but more approachable and able to serve as intermediaries to higher powers. The line between spirit and god is very vague when it comes to village deities and hero cults. Not theologically but from the perspective of the practitioners themselves.
The Saint tradition was never going to evolve into anything polytheistic within Catholicism itself but I certainly could see it evolving into a pantheistic Christianity in say Mesoamerica had Spanish rule been interrupted in a very specific and unlikely way. A lot of the early and intermediary forms of Catholicism tend to resemble a polytheistic Christianity as a result of the Saint tradition being used to syncretise and incorporate local faiths and therefore encourage conversions. Though how one would halt the Christianisation of Mesoamerica partway through it occurring I’m not too sure.
I don’t think any monotheistic religion can go polytheistic unless it was already a weakly monotheistic religion or it’s a syncretisation of the faith that for some reason was interrupted during the tradition religions attempt to bring it back into orthodoxy. Thought that would be equally polytheistic religion incorporating Christ as monotheistic religion going polytheistic.
I did think of India as a possibility but the Islamic Realms emphasised monotheism there over anything else.
Depends on the context of the question.
If we only care about what common people practice, then maybe.
But if we do that, we can run into problems, as this include apostasies, personal misunderstandings, etc., the misunderstanding being the most problematic as they often don't make sense when reintegrated into the beliefs as a whole.
And for this specifically, it's not like Catholicism doesn't have an independent & coherent explanation for the devotion to the saints that doesn't even relate at all to earlier polytheisms.
Santa Muerte & the Day of the Dead are basically this in OTL. And you could look how the Church tried to control those practices.
Not in context (at least for most sects), all three members of the Trinity are still part of the same divine being.
Very Oversimplified! Claiming that the Trinity are different gods is similar to claiming that I am three beings because I have an id, ego, & super-ego. (I'm not comparing these to the Trinity itself, just the similarity of having three parts in one.)
[Added] Both of this are basically a similar issue to calling Buddhism a religion.
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It’s interesting to consider also the distinction between two slightly different things here:
Ok. How about having and acknowledging other gods, but not putting them “before me” ?
What cultural histories, real or alternate, might result in continued tolerance or even integration of secondary gods?
- Belief in only a single deity
- Belief in a single deity above all others
Ok. How about having and acknowledging other gods, but not putting them “before me” ?
What cultural histories, real or alternate, might result in continued tolerance or even integration of secondary gods?
johnreiter
Banned
The Israelites did this frequently, abandoning the worship of God and adopting the Canaanite religion
Sometimes, such as with Nabonidus and the worship of Sin, Akhenaten and Aten, and Elagabalus and Sol Invictus, there may be abortive attempts to bring monothesim which fail, and the nation reverts back
Modern Neopaganism is an example of polytheism returning to a monotheistic civilization, though it is not whole-scale
Sometimes, such as with Nabonidus and the worship of Sin, Akhenaten and Aten, and Elagabalus and Sol Invictus, there may be abortive attempts to bring monothesim which fail, and the nation reverts back
Modern Neopaganism is an example of polytheism returning to a monotheistic civilization, though it is not whole-scale
There is no right and wrong, there are only subjective interpretations.
It would be wrong to say that Christians perceive their religion to be polytheistic, but this doesn't mean you cannot personally considered it so.
Was that originally monotheistic? I thought it was monolatrious originally.
I could be wrong though.
While there are instances where you are correct, but normally this is a case of not understanding what Trinitarians are saying.
It's like when someone says "I don't believe in the Christian God because there is no heavenly kingdom above the clouds." But that's not what Christians believe anyway, so yes, that person is technically wrong.
Folk tradition and the religion practiced outside of the theologians will often diverge and need to be forced back in line with the orthodoxy. That’s what the church purging heresy is. I’m not focusing only on the common people, I’m saying a fact. The veneration of saints was always a concern because the people skirted the line between veneration and worship. Church officials often brought it back into orthodoxy, that’s part of the role of church infrastructure and institution, guiding the flock to worship the right way.
Hence i said that veneration of saints won’t become polytheistic within a church setting because the church itself serves as a self-correction method to ensure Catholics stick to being Catholics and don’t push veneration into worship.
This is literally my point. Santa Muerte and the Day of the Dead are the remnants of the syncretism of modern day mesoamerican Catholicism. Noticeably this is after centuries of bringing the Catholics of Mexico back towards the orthodoxy of Catholicism with a very real and powerful church infrastructure/inquisitor presence in Mesoamerica.
To reiterate, Catholic religion can only evolve into polytheism if the church political structure is weak or nonexistent. Because the church political structure itself prevents any move towards polytheism. Most monotheistic faiths have these mechanisms, the widespread successful ones with state backing at least.
Mesoamerica itself I can’t really focus a lot on because it requires the kind of detailed alt hist scenario I can’t come up with but China might also provide the environment for a Catholic/Christian proselytisation project being cut off from church representatives/institutions and therefore being able to evolve into a somewhat polytheistic form. If a form that isn’t as dramatically polytheistic as the op envisions.
They both were ie Elah Gabal of Elagabalus is considered to be SI by a different name and Elagabalus's attempt failed. Whereas Aurelian's attempt succeeded. Which is because Elagabalus was meant to be a puppet of her Grandmother, whereas Aurelian and Constantine both had a legitimizing triumph before their successful religious reforms,
He did beat the Roman Empire back into a single entity, crushed corruption and was on his way to uniting Rome in the worship of the Sun as a monotheistic-sounding but still hellenic religion
So he might have been a self-insert, yes
I'd say the problem is less monotheism as an idea and more the character of Abrahamic traditions as a whole, rooted in the development of Iron Age Yahwism into the exclusive monotheism of Second Temple Judaism.
This is not the only path monotheism as an idea can take. The Hindu religious atmosphere has always had certain strands of what one could call monotheistic thought; so too the traditions of Chinese philosophy. Aluma mentioned Zarathustra, and Plato represents one strand of pre-Christian monotheistic thought in the West.