The belief that there is only one God
MONOTHEISM.—At whatever period in their early history the people of Israel may be supposed to have passed through the obscure and uncertain stages of belief that precede a clear and reasoned theism, that period had been left behind long before the days of Christ and the NT writers. The bitter experiences of exile and suffering on the one hand, and on the other the lofty teachings of prophets and men of God, had eradicated all tendencies to polytheism, and had fixed immovably in the conscience and conviction of the entire nation the faith that Jehovah was the one God of the whole earth. If Israel’s early beliefs, as some contend, were henotheistic, and conceded a place and right to other national gods, as Chemosh, Molech, or Rimmon, as equal and paramount lords of their own peoples, such recognition of external divinities had long since ceased to be permissible. There were not really gods many and lords many; there is one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ (1Co 8:6).
This monotheistic belief, however, is assumed rather than formulated or defined in the Gospels. The doctrine that God is one, universally supreme and without rival, does not need to be explained or defended, for it runs no risk of being assailed. Like the belief in the existence of God, it is an article of faith accepted on all sides, by Jesus and by His opponents, and is rather implicit in the thought than explicit in the teaching of Christ and of His disciples.
While, however, this is true, and all the more so because His controversy with the Jews turned largely upon the question of His claim to equality with God, and the blasphemy which this claim appeared to them to imply, epithets and phrases may readily be quoted from the Gospels which have no meaning except as presupposing an absolute and pure monotheism. Such phrases, as would naturally be anticipated, are more generally employed by St. John than by the Synoptists. Thus the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel, tracing all things back to God with whom the Word is one (Joh 1:1), asserts nothing less than the uniqueness as well as the eternity and sovereignty of Him from whom they proceed; and the true Light entering into the world enlighteneth not this or that nation only, but every man (Joh 1:9). To the same effect and with the same background of accepted and common belief are the repeated declarations of His oneness with the Father (Joh 10:30; Joh 10:38; Joh 14:10; cf. Joh 17:21; cf. Joh 17:23). The area and claims of the Divine Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, are explicitly enlarged beyond any mere national limits, and made to embrace the whole world (Luk 16:16, Joh 4:21 ff.), and so the disciples are taught to pray that it may come upon earth, as it is in heaven (Mat 6:10). It is indeed not bodily or material (Luk 17:21), but transcends the world (Joh 18:36). In the Last Judgment, again, all nations are gathered before the throne, and all receive sentence. ‘The field’ in which the seed is sown is ‘the world’ (Mat 13:38); and the final injunction to Christ’s followers is that they are to go into all the world to make disciples of all the nations (Mat 28:19).
The same teaching is conveyed with more or less directness in the assertion of the subordination and judgment of the prince of this world (Joh 16:11); in the stress laid upon the unique obligation and importance of love to God as constituting the first and greatest commandment (Mat 22:37 || Mar 12:30, Luk 10:27); in the appeal made by Christ Himself to a similar unique obligation of worship and service to the one only God (Mat 4:10 || Luk 4:8); in the emphatic affirmation of a common Fatherhood and Godhead (Joh 20:17; cf. Joh 8:41); and in the solemn declaration of the permanence and inviolability of the words of the Son (Mat 24:35 || Mar 13:31, Luk 21:33), while elsewhere there is ascribed to Him that omniscience which is an attribute of God Himself (Joh 16:30).
There are also passages in which the epithet ‘one’ or ‘only’ is directly applied to the Divine Ruler, thus claiming for Him with more or less emphasis the sole dominion and the exclusive right to homage. ‘The Lord our God is one Lord’ (Mar 12:29 from Deu 6:4, cf. Mar 12:32). The God who forgives sins is
Some of these expressions might, it is true, be satisfied by a wide conception, such as the ancient prophets had formed, of a God of Israel to whom the sons of Israel were a first interest and charge, or even of a Sovereign the limits of whose sway left room for other sovereigns beside Him. Not all of them, evidently, if read apart and by themselves, will bear the weight of a full monotheistic inference. Taken together, however, and in their context, their joint and several significance is unmistakable. They assume on the part of speaker and hearer alike a belief in the sole supremacy of one God. Nor is this inference as to their meaning seriously contested.
The conclusion, therefore, is that a monotheistic belief is everywhere assumed in the Gospels; and if it is rarely formulated, the reason is to be sought in the universal assent with which it was received. Christ did not need to teach with definiteness and reiteration, as though it were a new truth, that there is one only Lord of heaven and of earth; for this belief was common to Himself and to His hearers, and formed the solid and accepted foundation of their religious faith.
Literature.—Treatises on the Theology of the NT discuss the conception of God, and the general doctrine is treated in works on Theism; cf. Ed. Caird, Evolution of Religion2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , 2 vols., Glasgow, 1894; Orr, Christian View of God and the World1 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , pp. 91–96.
A. S. Geden.
By: Joseph Jacobs, David Philipson
The belief in one God. The French writer Ernest Renan has propounded the theory that the monotheistic instinct was a Semitic trait, and that therefore the universal belief that it was characteristic of the Hebrews alone must be modified. But later research into Semitic origins has demonstrated the untenability of Renan's contention. Robertson Smith has summed up the matter with the statement that "what is often described as a natural tendency of Semitic religion toward ethical monotheism is in the main nothing more than a consequence of the alliance of religion with monarchy" ("Rel. of Sem." p. 74; Montefiore, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 24; Schreiner, "Die Jüngsten Urtheile über das Judenthum," p. 7). The Hebrews alone of all the Semitic peoples reached the stage of pure monotheism, through the teachings of their prophets; however, it required centuries of development before every trace of idolatry disappeared even from among them, and before they stood forth as a "unique people on earth," worshipers of the one God and of Him alone.
Rise of the Belief.
In Hebrew tradition the origin of the belief in the one God is connected with the religious awakening of the patriarch Abraham. Later legends describe circumstantially how Abraham reached this belief (Beer, "Leben Abrahams nach Auffassung der Jüdischen Sage"; see Abraham). Though the tradition contains without doubt the kernel of the truth, modern criticism holds that the Hebrew tribes were brought to a clear realization of the difference between their God and the gods of the surrounding nations through the work and teachings of Moses. The acceptance of the pure monotheistic belief by the whole people was a slow process at best; how slow, many statements in the historical and prophetical books of the Bible prove amply. Throughout the period of the first commonwealth there was constant reversion to idolatry on the part of the people (comp. Judges ii. 11-13, 17, 19; iii. 7; viii. 33; x. 6, 10, 13; I Sam. viii. 8, xii. 10; I Kings ix. 9, xiv. 9, xvi. 31; II Kings xvii. 7, xxii. 17; Isa. ii. 8, x. 11, xxxi. 7; Jer. i. 16; vii. 9, 18; ix. 13; xi. 10, 13, 17; xii. 16; xiii. 10; xvi. 11; xix. 4-5, 23; xxii. 9; xxxii. 29, 35; xliv. 3, 5, 15; Hos. ii. 7, iii. 1, iv. 17, viii. 4, xi. 2; Ps. cvi. 36; II Chron. vii. 22; xxiv. 18; xxviii. 2, 25; xxxiii. 7; xxxiv. 25). Forgetful of their obligation to worship Yhwh and Him alone, the people followed after the "ba'alim"; the "bamot" and the "asherot" dotted the land; frequently, too, the Israelites confounded the worship of Yhwh with the worship of Baal.
Monolatry.
In the development of religious belief in Israel there are indications of a growth through various stages before the conception of absolute uncompromising monotheism was reached. Down to the eighth-century prophets, the religionof the people was monolatrous rather than monotheistic; they considered Yhwh to be the one God and their God, but not the one and only God. He was the national God of Israel as Chemosh was the god of Moab and Milkom the god of Ammon (Num. xxi. 29; Judges xi. 24; I Kings xi. 33). He was not yet the God of all the nations and of the universe. The existence of other gods was not definitively denied; even the second commandment does not disclaim the existence of other gods; it merely forbids Israel to bow down to them or serve them (comp. Deut. iv. 19). There was, in truth there could be, no other God in Israel; but this, it is held, did not affect the reality of the gods of other nations; though, in comparison with the might and glory of Yhwh, they were weak and powerless. A very early poem has the words, "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?" (Ex. xv. 11)—a sufficient indication that the idea that there were other gods was in the writer's mind. In a later psalm there is a reminiscence of this early state of thought—"there is none like unto thee among the gods" (Ps. lxxxvi. 8, R. V.).
God, Land, and People.
As among other Semitic peoples (Smith, l.c. p. 91), so, too, in early Israel the closest relationship was supposed to subsist between the Deity, the land, and the people. Yhwh was the God not only of Israel the people (II Sam. vii. 23; I Kings viii. 59), but of the land of Israel; He could be approached nowhere else (comp. the story of Naaman, II Kings v. 15); the great conception of His omnipresence as held by the author of the 139th Psalm was not yet reached. Thus when David was compelled by his enemies to flee he complained bitterly: "They have driven me out this day that I should not cleave unto the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve other gods" (I Sam. xxvi. 19, R. V.); and the prophet Hosea speaks of the domain of the Israelites as" God's land" (ix. 7). The triple relationship of God, people, and land is forcibly expressed in as late a passage as the prayer of the Deuteronomist, "Look down from thy holy habitation, from heaven, and bless thy people Israel, and the land which thou hast given us" (Deut. xxvi. 15).
In Israel, then, and in Israel's land Yhwh was sole God. Even this preparatory stage to universal monotheism was not reached until centuries after the occupation of the land; there was a syncretism of religious cults; the people were tolerant of the local ba'alim; Jeroboam was able to set up the calf-gods at Dan and Bethel without arousing a great outcry.
Yhwh alone in the land, the land Yhwh's alone, the worship of no other god to be tolerated in the land—this was the program of the zealous prophet Elijah, and in his activity there was a decided step forward to the recognition of Yhwh alone as the God of Israel. For Elijah it was Yhwh only or nothing; "How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him" (I Kings xviii. 21). Monolatry reaches its supreme expression in Elijah: "Yhwh is God" is the watchword of his activity; there is room for none other in Israel.
From this attitude of Elijah it was but a step to pure monotheism; the belief is found in full flower in the speeches of the great eighth-century prophets; the genius of Amos and his successors carried the conception of the "oneness" of Yhwh to its uttermost limit, although even in their time the people did not reach this height of thought; it was only after the return from the Babylonian exile that the monotheistic belief was a positive possession of the people as well as of the great spirits to whom the truth was first vouchsafed.
True Monotheism.
The modern view of the development of religious thought in Israel is that the conception of pure monotheism was reached through three channels—through the recognition of God in nature and in history, and through the belief in the ethical character or holiness of God. When Yhwh was recognized as the Creator of heaven and earth and all that in them is (comp. Amos v. 8, ix. 6), when the appellation "the Lord of the heavenly hosts" was given Him (Amos iv. 13, v. 27, Hebr.), when the whole earth was spoken of as being full of His glory (Isa. vi. 3), then there was room for no other god; for the conception of God as the Lord and Creator of nature carried with it, as a necessary corollary, the belief that there was no god beside Him (Jer. x. 11). The great conceptions of the Prophets that Yhwh punishes wrong-doing not only in Israel but in other nations (Amos i.-ii.), that He is the arbiter of the destinies of such other nations (ib. ix. 7), that He uses heathen kings as instruments of punishment or salvation, as when Isaiah speaks of the Assyrian monarch as "the rod of God's anger," when Jeremiah points to the Babylonian king as the instrument whereby God will punish Jerusalem, and when deutero-Isaiah refers to Cyrus as God's anointed—all this involves the conclusion that there was no god but Yhwh, for His dominion extended not only over Israel, but over the nations of the earth also, and His guiding hand directed the course of kings and peoples in the working out of their history.
But the conception of the holiness of Yhwh (Isa. v. 16, vi. 3; Hab. ii. 3), the recognition of His ethical character, led more than anything else to monotheism, as Kuenen has pointed out ("Hibbert Lectures,"1882, p. 127). As long as Yhwh was looked upon as only the national God, it was a question of the supremacy of the strongest as between Him and the national gods of other peoples. But when God was presented primarily in His ethical character and worshiped as the God of holiness, there was no longer any measure of comparison. If Yhwh was the holy God, then the other gods were not. Here was an entirely new element; Yhwh as the moral governor of men and nations was absolutely unique; the gods of the nations were "elilim" (= "nothings"; Isa. ii. 8, 18, 20; x. 10-11; xix. 1, 3; xxxi. 7; Hab. ii. 18; Ezek. xxx. 13), "vanity" (Jer. ii. 5, viii. 19, x. 15, xvi. 19, xviii. 15; Isa. xliv. 9, lix. 4), "lies" (Amos ii. 4; Hab. ii. 18; Jer. xxix. 31), "abomination" (Hos. ix. 10; Jer. iv. 1, vii. 30, xiii. 27, xxxii. 34; Ezek. v. 11; vii. 20; xx. 7-8, 30; Isa. xliv. 19).
Culmination in Isaiah.
The doctrine of absolute monotheism is preached in the most emphatic manner by Jeremiah (x. 10; xiv. 22; xxiii. 36; xxxii. 18, 27) and the Deuteronomist(iv. 35, 39), but the Biblical teaching on the subject may be said to have culminated in Isaiah of Babylon. Yhwh, though in a peculiar sense the God of Israel, is still the God of all the world. This prophet's standpoint is uncompromising: "I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no savior" (xliii. 11); "I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God" (xliv. 6, xlviii. 12); "that they may know from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof that there is none besides me; I am God and there is none else" (xlv. 6, Hebr.). In the post-exilic psalms and such other portions of the Bible as were produced during the second commonwealth—Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Daniel—the belief in the one God and in Him alone is positively assured. Not only in Palestine was monotheism now the sure possession of the Jewish people, but it may be said that the Judaism of the Diaspora is conscious of itself as the bearer of the monotheistic doctrine and as being therein distinguished from all its surroundings (comp. Friedländer, "Gesch. der Jüdischen Apologetik," p. 217). In proof of this latter statement many passages can be cited from the apocryphal and the pseudepigraphical writings. "Let them [the nations] know thee, as we also have known thee, that there is no God but only thou, O God" (Ecclus. xxxvi. 5; comp. also xliii. 28); "neither is there any God besides thee, that careth for all" (Wisdom of Solomon xii. 13); "O Lord, Lord God, the Creator of all things, . . . who alone art King and gracious, who alone suppliest every need, who alone art righteous and almighty and eternal" (II Macc. i. 24-25; comp. Ep. Jer. 5, in Kautzsch, "Apokryphen," i. 226; Aristeas Letter, 134: ib. ii. 16; Sibyllines, Proem, 7, 15, 54; iii. 584 et seq., v. 76 et seq.: ib. i. 184, 196, 207; comp. also Josephus, "Ant." iv. 8, § 5).
Talmudic Attitude.
The spread of Christianity with its doctrine of the divinity of its founder called forth a number of expressions from the Jewish sages touching the subject of the absolute unity of God; thus a commentary on the first commandment reads, "A king of flesh and blood has a father and a brother; but God says, 'With Me it is not so; "I am the first" because I have no father, and "I am the last" because I have no brother; and "besides me there is no God," because I have no son'" (Ex. R. xxix. 5). A similar expression is used in explanation of Ecclus. iv. 8 ("There is one alone, and there is not a second"): "he hath neither child nor brother; but hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One" (Deut. R. ii. 33). There can be little doubt that such a saying as "Whoever draws out the pronunciation of the word 'one' [in the Shema'], his days and years will be lengthened" is of similar import (Ber. 13b); the emphasizing of the unity was the particular characteristic of the faithful in a world of dualistic and trinitarian propaganda. As long as a man refused allegiance to other gods he was looked upon as a Jew; "whoever denies the existence of other gods is called a Jew" (Meg. 13a).
The unity of God was a revealed truth for the Jew; there was no need of proofs to establish it; it was the leading tenet of the faith; nor is any attempt at such proof found until the time of the medieval Jewish philosophers, who, in building up their systems of religious philosophy, devoted considerable space to the consideration of the attributes of God, especially of His unity. Proofs for the unity are given at length by Saadia ("Emunot we-De'ot," i. 7), Maimonides ("Moreh," ii. 1), Gersonides ("Milḥamot Adonai," iii. 3), and Ḥasdai Crescas ("Or Adonai," iii. 4).
The belief in the unity was formulated by Maimonides as the second of the thirteen articles of the faith known as the Maimonidean Creed: "I believe that the Creator, Blessed be His name, is One, and that no unity is like His in any form, and that He alone is our God, who was, is, and ever will be." Solomon ibn Gabirol expressed the idea in another manner in his great liturgical poem "Keter Malkut": "Thou art One, the first great Cause of all; Thou art One, and none can penetrate—not even the wise in heart—the mystery of Thy unfathomable unity; Thou art One, the Infinitely Great." This statement of belief found constant expression in the liturgy, as in the Minḥah service for Sabbath afternoon ("Thou art One and Thy name is One"), and in such liturgical poems as the "Adon 'Olam" ("He is One and there is no second, to compare to Him or associate with Him") and the "Yigdal" ("He is One and there is no unity like His unity. . . . His unity is unending").
The profession of the unity is the climax of the devotion of the greatest of the holy days, the Day of Atonement. At death it is the last word to fall from the Jew's lips and from the lips of the bystanders. This has been Judaism's great contribution to the religious thought of mankind, and still constitutes the burden of its Messianic ideal, the coming of the day when all over the world "God shall be One and His name One" (comp. Zech. xiv. 9). See Shema'.
(Greek: monos, single; theos, God)
The religious system that admits belief in one and only one supreme God. First and foremost in this system comes Christian Monotheism which began with the establishment of Christianity by Jesus Christ. Its principal articles of faith are to be found in the early creeds of the Christian Church, such as the Apostles’ Creed, the Athanasian, the Nicene. The principal present day forms of non-Christian Monotheism are:
Jewish Monotheism which among the orthodox Jews of today is the same as the monotheism of tne Jews in the pre-Christian era
Mohammedan Monotheism in which Allah, the one and only God, is practically the same as Jehovah of the Jews
New Catholic Dictionary
Monotheism (from the Greek monos "only", and theos "god") is a word coined in comparatively modern times to designate belief in the one supreme God, the Creator and Lord of the world, the eternal Spirit, All-powerful, All-wise, and All-good, the Rewarder of good and the Punisher of evil, the Source of our happiness and perfection. It is opposed to Polytheism, which is belief in more gods than one, and to Atheism, which is disbelief in any deity whatsoever. In contrast with Deism, it is the recognition of God’s presence and activity in every part of creation. In contrast with Pantheism, it is belief in a God of conscious freedom, distinct from the physical world. Both Deism and Pantheism are religious philosophies rather than religions.On the other hand, Monotheism, like Polytheism, is a term applying primarily to a concrete system of religion. The grounds of reason underlying monotheism have already been set forth in the article GOD. These grounds enable the inquiring mind to recognize the existence of God as a morally certain truth. Its reasonableness acquires still greater force from the positive data associated with the revelation of Christianity. (See REVELATION.) PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISMWas monotheism the religion of our first parents? Many Evolutionists and Rationalist Protestants answer No. Rejecting the very notion of positive, Divine revelation, they hold that the mind of man was in the beginning but little above that of his ape-like ancestors, and hence incapable of grasping so intellectual a conception as that of Monotheism.They assert that the first religious notions entertained by man in his upward course towards civilization were superstitions of the grossest kind. In a word, primitive man was, in their opinion, a savage, differing but little from existing savages in his intellectual, moral, and religious life. Catholic doctrine teaches that the religion of our first parents was monotheistic and supernatural, being the result of Divine revelation. Not that primitive man without Divine help could not possibly have come to know and worship God. The first man, like his descendants to-day, had by nature the capacity and the aptitude for religion. Being a man in the true sense, with the use of reason, he had the tendency then, as men have now, to recognize in the phenomena of nature the workings of a mind and a will vastly superior to his own. But, as he lacked experience and scientific knowledge, it was not easy for him to unify the diverse phenomena of the visible world. Hence he was not without danger of going astray in his religious interpretation of nature. He was liable to miss the important truth that, as nature is a unity, so the God of nature is one. Revelation was morally necessary for our first parents, as it is for men to-day, to secure the possession of true monotheistic belief and worship.The conception that Almighty God vouchsafed such a revelation is eminently reasonable to everyone who recognizes that the end of man is to know, love, and serve God. It is repugnant to think that the first generations of men were left to grope in the dark, ignorant alike of the true God and of their religious duties, while at the same time it was God’s will that they should know and love Him. The instruction in religion which children receive from their parents and superiors, anticipating their powers of independent reasoning, and guiding them to a right knowledge of God, being impossible for our first parents, was not without a fitting substitute. They were set right from the first in the knowledge of their religious duties by a Divine revelation. It is a Catholic dogma, intimately connected with the dogma of original sin and with that of the Atonement, that our first parents were raised to the state of sanctifying grace and were destined to a supernatural end, namely, the beatific vision of God in heaven. This necessarily implies supernatural faith, which could come only by revelation.Nor is there anything in sound science or philosophy to invalidate this teaching that Monotheistic belief was imparted by God to primitive man. While it may be true that human life in the beginning was on a comparatively low plane of material culture, it is also true that the first men were endowed with reason, i.e., with the ability to conceive with sufficient distinctness of a being who was the cause of the manifold phenomena presented in nature. On the other hand, a humble degree of culture along the lines of art and industry is quite compatible with right religion and morality, as is evident in the case of tribes converted to Catholicism in recent times; while retaining much of their rude and primitive mode of living, they have reached very clear notions concerning God and shown remarkable fidelity in the observance of His law. As to the bearing of the Evolutionistic hypothesis on this question, see FETISHISM.It is thus quite in accordance with the accredited results of physical science to maintain that the first man, created by God, was keen of mind as well as sound of body, and that, through Divine instruction, he began life with right notions of God and of his moral and religious duties. This does not necessarily mean that his conception of God was scientifically and philosophically profound. Here it is that scholars are wide of the mark when they argue that Monotheism is a conception that implies a philosophic grasp and training of mind absolutely impossible to primitive man.The notion of the supreme God needed for religion is not the highly metaphysical conception demanded by right philosophy. If it were, but few could hope for salvation. The God of religion is the unspeakably great Lord on whom man depends, in whom he recognizes the source of his happiness and perfection; He is the righteous Judge, rewarding good and punishing evil; the loving and merciful Father, whose ear is ever open to the prayers of His needy and penitent children. Such a conception of God can be readily grasped by simple, unphilosophic minds -- by children, by the unlettered peasant, by the converted savage.Nor are these notions of a supreme being utterly lacking even where barbarism still reigns. Bishop Le Roy, in his interesting work, "Religion des primitifs" (Paris, 1909), and Mr. A. Lang, in his "Making of Religion" (New York, 1898), have emphasized a point too often overlooked by students of religion, namely, that with all their religious crudities and superstitions, such low-grade savages as the Pygmies of the Northern Congo, the Australians, and the natives of the Andaman Islands entertain very noble conceptions of the Supreme Deity. To say, then, that primitive man, fresh from the hand of God, was incapable of monotheistic belief, even with the aid of Divine revelation, is contrary to well-ascertained fact. From the opening chapters of Genesis we gather that our first parents recognized God to be the author of all things, their Lord and Master, the source of their happiness, rewarding good and punishing evil. The simplicity of their life made the range of their moral obligation easy of recognition. Worship was of the simplest kind. MOSAIC MONOTHEISMThe ancient Hebrew religion, promulgated by Moses in the name of Jehovah (Jahweh), was an impressive form of Monotheism. That it was Divinely revealed is the unmistakable teaching of Holy Scripture, particularly of Exodus and the following books which treat explicitly of Mosaic legislation. Even non-Catholic Scriptural scholars, who no longer accept the Pentateuch, as it stands, as the literary production of Moses, recognize, in great part, that, in the older sources which, according to them, go to make up the Pentateuch, there are portions that reach back to the time of Moses, showing the existence of Hebrew monotheistic worship in his day. Now, the transcendent superiority of this Monotheism taught by Moses offers a strong proof of its Divine origin. At a time when the neighbouring nations representing the highest civilization of that time -- Egypt, Babylonia, Greece -- were giving an impure and idolatrous worship to many deities, we find the insignificant Hebrew people professing a religion in which idolatry, impure rites, and a degrading mythology had no legitimate place, but where, instead, belief in the one true God was associated with a dignified worship and a lofty moral code. Those who reject the claim of Mosaic Monotheism to have been revealed have never yet succeeded in giving a satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary phenomenon. It was, however, pre-eminently the religion of the Hebrew people, destined in the fullness of time to give place to the higher monotheistic religion revealed by Christ, in which all the nations of the earth should find peace and salvation. The Jewish people was thus God’s chosen people, not so much by reason of their own merit, as because they were destined to prepare the way for the absolute and universal religion, Christianity. The God of Moses is no mere tribal deity. He is the Creator and Lord of the world. He gives over to His chosen people the land of the Chanaanites. He is a jealous God, forbidding not only worship of strange gods, but the use of images, which might lead to abuses in that age of almost universal idolatry. Love of God is made a duty, but reverential fear is the predominant emotion. The religious sanction of the law is centred chiefly in temporal rewards and punishments. Laws of conduct, though determined by justice rather than by charity and mercy, are still eminently humane. CHRISTIAN MONOTHEISMThe sublime Monotheism taught by Jesus Christ has no parallel in the history of religions. God is presented to us as the loving, merciful Father, not of one privileged people, but of all mankind. In this filial relation with God -- a relation of confidence, gratitude, love -- Christ centres our obligations both to God and to our fellow-men. He lays hold of the individual soul and reveals to it its high destiny of Divine sonship. At the same time, He impresses on us the corresponding duty of treating others as God’s children, and hence as our brethren, entitled not simply to justice, but to mercy and charity. To complete this idea of Christian fellowship, Jesus shows Himself to be the eternal Son of God, sent by His heavenly Father to save us from sin, to raise us to the life of grace and to the dignity of children of God through the atoning merits of His life and death. The love of God the Father thus includes the love of His incarnate Son. Personal devotion to Jesus is the motive of right conduct in Christian Monotheism. Co-operating in the sanctification of mankind is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth and life, sent to confirm the faithful in faith, hope, and charity. These three Divine Persons, distinct from one another, equal in all things, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are one in essence, a trinity of persons in the one, undivided Godhead (see TRINITY). Such is the Monotheism taught by Jesus. The guaranty of the truth of His teaching is to be found in His supreme moral excellence, in the perfection of His ethical teaching, in His miracles, especially His bodily resurrection, and in His wonderful influence on mankind for all time. (Cf. John 17:3; 1 Corinthians 8:4) As Christianity in its beginnings was surrounded by the polytheistic beliefs and practices of the pagan world, a clear and authoritative expression of Monotheism was necessary. Hence the symbols of faith, or creeds, open with the words: "I [we] believe in God [theon, deum]" or, more explicitly, "I [we] believe in one God [hena theon, unum deum]". (See Denziger-Bannwart, "Enchiridion", 1-40; cf. APOSTLES’ CREED; ATHANASIAN CREED; NICENE CREED.) Among the early heresies, some of the most important and most directly opposed to Monotheism arose out of the attempt to account for the origin of evil. Good they ascribed to one divine principle, evil to another. (See GNOSTICISM; MANICHÆISM; MARCIONITES.) These dualistic errors gave occasion for a vigorous defence of Monotheism by such writers as St. Irenæus, Tertullian, St. Augustine, etc. (see Bardenhewer-Shahan, "Patrology", St. Louis, 1908).The same doctrine naturally held the foremost place in the teaching of the missionaries who converted the races of Northern Europe; in fact, it may be said that the diffusion of Monotheism is one of the great achievements of the Catholic Church. In the various conciliar definitions regarding the Trinity of Persons in God, emphasis is laid on the unity of the Divine nature; see, e.g., Fourth Council of Lateran (1215), in Denziger-Bannwart, "Enchiridion", 428. The medieval Scholastics, taking up the traditional belief, brought to its support a long array of arguments based on reason; see, for instance, St. Thomas, "Contra Gentes", I, xlii; and St. Anselm, "Monol.", iv. During the last three centuries the most conspicuous tendency outside the Catholic Church has been towards such extreme positions as those of Monism (q.v.) and Pantheism (q.v.) in which it is asserted that all things are really one in substance, and that God is identical with the world. The Church, however, has steadfastly maintained, not only that God is essentially distinct from all things else, but also that there is only one God. "If any one deny the one true God, Creator and Lord of all things visible and invisible, let him be anathema" (Conc. Vatican., Sess. III, "De fide", can. i). MOHAMMEDAN MONOTHEISMOf Mohammedan Monotheism little need be said. The Allah of the Koran is practically one with the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Its keynote is islam, submissive resignation to the will of God, which is expressed in everything that happens. Allah is, to use the words of the Koran, "The Almighty, the All-knowing, the All-just, the Lord of the worlds, the Author of the heavens and the earth, the Creator of life and death, in whose hand is dominion and irresistible power, the great all-powerful Lord of the glorious throne. God is the mighty . . . the Swift in reckoning, who knoweth every ant’s weight of good and of ill that each man hath done, and who suffereth not the reward of the faithful to perish. He is the King, the Holy, . . . the Guardian over His servants, the Shelterer of the orphan, the Guide of the erring, the Deliverer from every affliction, the Friend of the bereaved, the Consoler of the afflicted, . . . the generous Lord, the gracious Hearer, the Near-at-hand, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Forgiving" (cited from "Islam", by Ameer Ali Syed). The influence of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, on Mohammedan Monotheism is well known and need not be dwelt on here. MONOTHEISM AND POLYTHEISTIC RELIGIONSWhat has thus far been said leads to the conclusion that Christian Monotheism and its antecedent forms, Mosaic and primitive Monotheism, are independent in their origin of the Polytheistic religions of the world. The various forms of polytheism that now flourish, or that have existed in the past, are the result of man’s faulty attempts to interpret nature by the light of unaided reason. Wherever the scientific view of nature has not obtained, the mechanical, secondary causes that account for such striking phenomena as sun, moon, lightning, tempest, have invariably been viewed either as living beings, or as inert bodies kept in movement by invisible, intelligent agents. This personalizing of the striking phenomena of nature was common among the highest pagan nations of antiquity. It is the common view among peoples of inferior culture to-day. It is only since modern science has brought all these phenomena within the range of physical law that the tendency to view them as manifestations of distinct personalities has been thoroughly dispelled. Now such a personalizing of nature’s forces is compatible with Monotheism so long as these different intelligences fancied to produce the phenomena are viewed as God’s creatures, and hence not worthy of Divine worship. But where the light of revelation has been obscured in whole or in part, the tendency to deify these personalities associated with natural phenomena has asserted itself.In this way polytheistic nature-worship seems to have arisen. It arose from the mistaken application of a sound principle, which man everywhere seems naturally to possess, namely, that the great operations of nature are due to the agency of mind and will. Professor George Fisher observes: "The polytheistic religions did not err in identifying the manifold activities of nature with voluntary agency. The spontaneous feelings of mankind in this particular are not belied by the principles of philosophy. The error of polytheism lies in the splintering of that will which is immanent in all the operations of nature into a plurality of personal agents, a throng of divinities, each active and dominant within a province of its own" ("Grounds of Christian and Theistic Belief", 1903, p. 29). Polytheistic nature-worship is to be found among practically all peoples who have lacked the guiding star of Divine revelation. Such history of these individual religions as we possess offers little evidence of an upward development towards Monotheism: on the contrary, in almost every instance of known historic development, the tendency has been to degenerate further and further from the monotheistic idea. There is, indeed, scarcely a Polytheistic religion in which one of the many deities recognized is not held in honour as the father and lord of the rest. That this is the result of an upward development, as non-Catholic scholars very generally assert, is speculatively possible. But that it may as well be the outcome of a downward development from a primitive monotheistic belief cannot be denied. The latter view seems to have the weight of positive evidence in its favour. The ancient Chinese religion, as depicted in the oldest records, was remarkably close to pure Monotheism. The gross Polytheistic nature-worship of the Egyptians of later times was decidedly a degeneration from the earlier quasi-Monotheistic belief. In the Vedic religion a strong Monotheistic tendency asserted itself, only to weaken later on and change into Pantheism. The one happy exception is the upward development which the ancient Aryan Polytheism took in the land of the Iranians. Through the wise reform of Zoroaster, the various gods of nature were subordinated to the supreme, omniscient spirit, Ormuzd, and were accorded an inferior worship as his creatures. Ormuzd was honoured as the creator of all that is good, the revealer and guardian of the laws of religious and moral conduct, and the sanctifier of the faithful. The sense of sin was strongly developed, and a standard of morality was set forth that justly excites admiration. Heaven and hell, the final renovation of the world, including the bodily resurrection, were elements in Zoroastrian eschatology. A nobler religion outside the sphere of revealed religion is not to be found. Yet even this religion is rarely classed by scholars among monotheistic religions, owing to the polytheistic colouring of its worship of the subordinate nature-spirits, and also to its retention of the ancient Aryan rite of fire-worship, justified by Zoroastrians of modern times as a form of symbolic worship of Ormuzd.The so-called survivals in higher religions, such as belief in food-eating ghosts, pain-causing spirits, witchcraft, the use of amulets and fetishes, are often cited as evidence that even such forms of Monotheism as Judaism and Christianity are but outgrowths of lower religions. The presence of the greater part of these superstitious beliefs and customs in the more ignorant sections of Christian peoples is easily explained as the survival of tenacious customs that flourished among the ancestors of European peoples long before their conversion to Christianity. Again, many of these beliefs and customs are such as might easily arise from faulty interpretations of nature, unavoidable in unscientific grades of culture, even where the monotheistic idea prevailed. Superstitions like these are but the rank weeds and vines growing around the tree of religion.-----------------------------------KRIEG, Der Monotheismus d. Offenbarung u. das Heidentum (Mainz, 1880); BOEDDER, Natural Theology (New York, 1891); DRISCOLL, Christian Philosophy. God (New York, 1900); HONTHEIM, Institutiones Theodicæ (Freiburg, 1893); LILLY,The Great Enigma (2nd ed., London, 1893); RICKABY, Of God and His Creatures (St. Louis, 1898); MICHELET, Dieu et l’agnosticisme contemporain (Paris, 1909); DE LA PAQUERIE, Eléments d’apologétique (Paris, 1898); GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, in Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique (Paris, 1910), s.v. Dieu; FISHER, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (New York, 1897); CAIRD, The Evolution of Religion (2 vols., Glasgow, 1899); GWATKIN, The Knowledge of God and its Historic Development (Edinburgh, 1906); FLINT, Theism (New York, 1896); IDEM, Anti-Theistic Theories (New York, 1894); IVERACH, Theism in the Light of Present Science and Philosophy (New York, 1899); ORR, The Christian View of God and the World (New York, 1907); RASHDALL, Philosophy and Religion (New York, 1910); SCHURMANN, Belief in God, its Origin, Nature, and Basis (New York, 1890).CHARLES F. AIKEN Transcribed by Gerald Rossi The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XCopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York