There is a somewhat hot debate today about whether the Bible teaches there is only one God (monotheism) or whether God is the chief god among many gods (henotheism) but who alone should be worshiped by the Israelites (monolatry).
Different passages seem to suggest different things. For example, “the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods” (Ps 95:3) and “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” (Ps 82:1) both suggest that God is one god among others, that there is a council of divine beings, and that the God of the Israelites is the foremost deity among them.
Other texts have a stronger monotheistic thrust: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Is 44:6) and “yet for us there is one God” (1 Cor 8:6).
How should we understand all these biblical references to God and the gods? Is the Bible henotheistic or monotheistic?
The Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words for “god” (el, theos, and deus, respectively) have a range of meaning, similar to our English word “divine.” They could refer to a range of beings (including humans) who possessed powers and attributes beyond the typically human, such as immortality, incorruptibility, glory, or transcendent beauty. Indeed, drawing upon traditions present in both the Old and New Testament, the Church Fathers believed, and argued, that the world was full of spiritual beings—angels and demons, thrones and dominions, principalities and powers—who populated the invisible world. Between humans and God were countless invisible creatures who either served or opposed God’s plans. Any of them could be called “gods” or “divine,” meaning only that they possessed some excellence beyond the normal course of nature.
The “gods” of the Old and New Testament are creations of God, all of whom were originally good, but some of whom turned away from God in rebellion. But, good or evil, these spiritual beings are creatures of the one true God and in no way equal to the God who made them.
The Church Fathers had another provocative way of explaining the language of “gods” in the Bible, an interpretation all the more striking because of their pagan surroundings. Early Christians, following Isaiah (see Is 44, for example), mocked the pagan gods as demons or idols or projections of human desire or imagination, false gods who tempted God’s people away from worshiping God.
The “true gods,” these Christians argued, are the baptized, those who have been transformed into true children of God. St. Clement of Alexandria, writing at the turn of the third century, is typical in his explanation:
It is time, then, for us to say that the pious Christian alone is rich and wise, and of noble birth [because born of God through baptism], and thus call and believe him to be God’s image, and also His likeness, having become righteous and holy and wise by Jesus Christ, and so far already like God. Accordingly this grace is indicated by the prophet, when he says, “I said that you are gods, and all sons of the Highest” (Ps 82:6). For us, yea us, He has adopted, and wishes to be called the Father of us alone, not of the unbelieving. (Exhortation to the Heathen, 12).
Baptism makes us God’s sons and therefore “gods,” that is, creatures of God who have become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) and who, as the Catechism says, “share in God’s own blessed life” (CCC, 1). Augustine is typically striking when he says, “If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods: but this is the effect of Grace adopting, not of nature generating” (Exposition on the Psalms 50.2). There is only one God who has only one (eternal) Son, but we can become “sons” and therefore “gods” through God’s grace. “The only-begotten Son of God,” states the Catechism, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas, “wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods” (CCC, 460).
In a rather shocking (to us) rhetorical question, St. Paul says, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels” (1 Cor 6:3)? Paul is reminding the Corinthian Christians that there is one God and he became human so that through his humanity we might become gods, which means that, at the end of all things, we will share in his judgment. Sharing in Christ’s divinity, we will share in his power to judge. We will be the true gods who will judge the false ones.
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