Monotheism- Origin and Development
The word monotheism is derived from the Greek, μόνος meaning "single" and θεός meaning "god". The English term was first used by Henry More.
The concept sees a gradual development out of notions of henotheism and monolatrism. In the Ancient Near East, each city had a local patron deity, such as Shamash at Larsa or Sin at Ur. The first claims of global supremacy of a specific god date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten (connected to Judaism by Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism), and, depending on dating issues, Zoroaster’s Gathas to Ahura Mazda. Currents of monism or monotheism emerge in Vedic India in the same period, with e.g. the Nasadiya Sukta. Philosophical monotheism and the associated concept of absolute good and evil emerges in Classical Antiquity, notably with Plato (c.f. Euthyphro dilemma), elaborated into the idea of The One in Neoplatonism.
In Islamic theology, a person who spontaneously "discovers" monotheism is called a ḥanīf, the original ḥanīf being Abraham.
Austrian anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt in the 1910s postulated an Urmonotheismus, "original" or "primitive monotheism", a thesis now widely rejected in comparative religion but still occasionally defended in creationist circles.
Varieties
Some argue that there are various forms of monotheism, including:
* Henotheism involves devotion to a single god while accepting the existence of other gods. Similarly, monolatrism is the worship of a single deity independent of the ontological claims regarding that deity.
* Theism a term that refers to the belief in the existence of a god or divine being.
* Deism is a form of monotheism in which it is believed that one god exists. However, a deist rejects the idea that this god intervenes in the world.
* Monistic Theism is the type of monotheism found in Hinduis, encompassing pantheism, monism, and at the same time the concept of a personal god
* Pantheism holds that the Universe itself is god. The existence of a transcendent supreme extraneous to nature is denied. Depending on how this is understood, such a view may well be presented as tantamount to atheism, deism or panentheism.
* Panentheism, or Monistic Monotheism, is a form of theism that holds that god contains, but is not identical to, the Universe. The ‘one god’ is omnipotent and all-pervading, the universe is part of god, and god is both immanent and transcendent.
* Substance monotheism, found in some indigenous African religions, holds that the many gods are different forms of a single underlying substance.
On the surface, monotheism is in contrast with polytheism, which is the worship of several deities. Polytheism is however reconcilable with Inclusive monotheism, which claims that all deities are just different names or forms for the single god. This approach is common in Hinduism, e.g. in Smartism. Exclusive monotheism, on the other hand, actively opposes polytheism. Monotheism is often contrasted with theistic dualism (ditheism). However, in dualistic theologies as that of Gnosticism, the two deities are not of equal rank, and the role of the Gnostic demiurge is closer to that of Satan in Christian theology than that of a diarch on equal terms with god (who is represented in pantheistic fashion, as Pleroma).
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written by DRSC