5. Transition to Monotheism.—From the higher Polytheism an easy step leads to some form of Monotheism. The transition may be effected in various ways. Max Müller observed the Vedic poets addressing themselves to the several objects of their devotion, as if each occupied the field alone. Varuna or Indra was for the time being the only god within the worshipper's view; and to this mode of thought he gave the name Henotheism.[1] It obviously reappears elsewhere, as it is the natural attitude of prayer, and may be seen in the pious homage of the pilgrims to the Virgin of Loretto or Einsiedeln. Pfleiderer employed the word to denote a relative monotheism like that of the early religion of Israel, whose teachers demanded that the nation should worship but one god, Yahweh, but did not deny the existence of other gods for other peoples. Yet once again the term has been applied to characterize a whole group of religions, like the Indo-Germanic, which are ultimately founded on the unity of the divine nature in a plurality of divine persons. A designation of such doubtful meaning it seems better (with Chantepie de la Saussaye) to abandon. But the unifying process may advance along different lines. The deities of different local centres may be identified; many such combinations took place in Egypt, and Isis in late days served to her votaries as the unitary principle which appeared in one figure after another of whole pantheons. Again, the gods may be viewed as a collective totality, like the “All-gods” of the Vedic poets, or as at Olympia where there was a “common altar for all the gods” (cf. the frequent Roman dedication in later days, “Jovi optimo maximo caeterisque dis immortalibus”). Or the relation between the inferior deities and the most exalted may be conceived politically and explained by Tertullian's formula, “Imperium penes unum, officia penes multos.” One particular god may be eminent enough, like Zeus, to rise above all others, and supply cultivated thought with a name for the supreme power; and this may be strengthened by the national motive as in the case of Israel. Or philosophic theology may penetrate to an abstract conception of deity, like the Babylonian ’iluth, or the Vedic devatva and asuratva; and some seer may have the courage and insight to formulate the principle that “the great asuratva of the devas is one” (R.V. iii. 55. 1). “The One with many names” was recognized alike in India and in Greece; “πολλῶν ὀνομάτων μορφὴ μία,” says Aeschylus, almost in the words of the Vedic poet.[2] Historians have usually recognized only three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islām. The Christian apologists of the 2nd century, however, found plenty of testimony to their doctrine of the unity of God in the writings of Greek poets and philosophers; it was a commonplace in the revival under the Empire; and among the group of religions embraced under the name Buddhism more than one form must be ranked as monotheistic. The idealist philosophy of the Prajña Pāramitā in the system of the “Great Vehicle” declared that “every phenomenon is the manifestation of mind” (Beal, Catena, p. 303). In the “Lotus of the Good Law” (S.B.E. xxi.) the Buddha is the “Father of the World,” “Self-born” or Uncreate (like the eternal Brahma of the Hindu theology), the protector of all creatures, the Healer (Saviour) of the sickness of their sins. These types have reappeared in Japan. Nichiren taught a philosophical monism in the 13th century which is the basis of a vigorous sect at the present day; and the “True Sect of the Pure Land,” founded by his older contemporary Shin-ran, and now the most numerous, wealthy and powerful of the Buddhist denominations, has dropped the original Gotama altogether out of sight, and permits worship to Amida alone, the sublime figure of “Boundless Light,” whose saving power is appropriated by faith. Here is a monotheism of a definite and clear-cut type, arising apparently by spontaneous development apart from any external impulse.[3] On the other hand, the monotheism of Judaism was subject to serious qualifications. An exuberant demonology admitted all kinds of interfering causes in the field of human life. Above man on earth rose rank after rank of angels in the seven heavens; These were of course created, but they were in their turn the agents of the phenomena of nature, “the angels of the spirit of fire and the angels of the spirit of the winds, and the angels of the spirits of the clouds and of darkness and of snow and of hail and of hoarfrost, and the angels of the voices and of the thunder and of the lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer” (Jubilees, tr. R. H. Charles, ii. 2). These powers are of a well-marked animistic type, and correspond to the Chinese Shin, save that they were not incorporated in the cultus. Higher in rank came various mediating forms, like Wisdom, Memra (the Word) or Shekinah (the Presence), more or less definitely personalized. Mahommedanism still recognizes innumerable jinn peopling the solitudes of the desert, and over the grave of the deceased saint a little mosque is built, and prayers are offered and miracles performed.[4] Christianity has, in like manner, in the course of its long and eventful history, admitted numerous agencies within the sphere of superhuman causation. The Virgin, the angelic hierarchy, the saints, have received the believer's homage, and answered his petitions. Theology might draw subtle distinctions between different forms of devotion; but, tried by the comparisons of the anthropologist, the monotheism even of historical Christianity cannot be strictly maintained.
6. Classification.—In the panorama of religious development thus briefly sketched, the different stages constantly appear to shade off into one another, and any one of the higher seems to contain elements of all the rest. This is the great difficulty of classification. All religions, even the most conservative and traditional, are in constant flux, they either advance or decay. In these processes, which do not take place at equal rates in different cases, all kinds of survivals remain lodged, and embarrass every attempt to fix the place of specific religions in any general course of development. The theologian, the philosopher, the historian, have all tried their hands at distribution. (i.) The 18th-century divine who divided religions into True and False grimly remarked that the second chapter was much the longer of the two.[5] The corresponding distinction into Natural and Revealed breaks down in view of the fact that revelation by dream and oracle, by inspired seer or divine teacher and law-giver, is a practically universal phenomenon in more or less distinctly defined forms. (ii.) Philosophy, in the person of Hegel, classified religion in a threefold form: (a) the religion of Nature, (b) the religion of Spiritual Individuality, (c) the Absolute Religion (Christianity).[6] The subdivisions of this scheme have been long since abandoned, as the progress of knowledge rendered them untenable. K. F. A. Wuttke, however, adopted its fundamental idea[7] and distinguished three periods or phases: (1) the objective, producing the religions of nature; (2) the subjective, God as comprehended in the individual mind; (3) God as Absolute Spirit. In the same way Dr Edward Caird[8] recognizes three similar stages: (1) objective consciousness, the divine in nature; (2) self-consciousness, the divine in man (e.g. Judaism, Stoicism, and modern philosophy of the type of Kant); (3) God-consciousness, where God is above the contrast of subject and object, yet is revealed in both (Christianity). (iii.) On the historical side numerous bases have been suggested. (1) Max Müller proposed to group religions ethnologically by tests of language. This had the obvious advantage of lifting two great families into prominence, the Semitic and the Indo-Germanic. The Semitic peoples were closely bound together by common types of thought and civilization, and produced three of the leading religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islām. But a glance at the table of Indo-Germanic religions
- ↑ Or Kathenotheism, a term which did not succeed in gaining permanent support, Hibbert Lect., p. 271.
- ↑ R.V. i. 164. 46, “Men call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni. . . . Poets name variously what is but one.”
- ↑ Cf. Carpenter, “Japanese Buddhism,” in Hibbert Journal, April 1906, p. 522.
- ↑ Cf. Goldziher, Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel. ii. 257; Weir, The Shaikhs of Morocco (1904).
- ↑ Broughton, Dict. of all Religions (1745), preface.
- ↑ Philosophy of Religion (Eng. trans.), i. p. 266.
- ↑ Geschichte des Heidenthums (1852), i. p. 95.
- ↑ Evolution of Religion (1893), lect. vii.
