[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on The Deities Are Many

[jprussell]

This week, my thoughts on a short, but very well done book. If you read much of what I write, you'll likely like this one rather well.

Comments

[causticus]

Glad you enjoyed the book!

I have nothing really to add, as I think you wrote a very good summary of the book.

Though one random tidbit that came to mind as I was reading this, which isn't at all an argument or a gripe, but rather a reflection. Specifically, on the notion of there even being a such thing as a "monotheistic religious experience." Rather I think there is simply religious experience and the person having an experience will typically frame that experience though whatever mythical framework their culture happens to favor at the time. So a person in a monotheistic culture has some sort of experience and will very very likely (assuming they chose to share this with others) apply a monotheistic theological overlay to that experience.

Perhaps this distinction is one of the reasons (among several others) Paper finds monotheism to be the main source of close-mindedness when it comes to how we experience and explain the numinous. I guess we could also use this logic to say that a polytheistic theology can also put someone's religious experiences in a box (what if the person has an experience that doesn't fit their culture's pantheon??), though not nearly to the degree as the former might. Though to be fair, I would add that mystics will probably be done dirty by ANY sort of fixed theology. So yeah, I totally get why Paper expands the definition of theology to be something massively experiential.

[jprussell]

Ah yes, it was your recommendation that bumped it up to the top of my list, thank you for that and for the kind words!

That's an interesting speculation, and I suppose trickier than it first appears, almost by definition. If you accept that monotheism has metaphysics right, then by definition, all genuine religious experiences are monotheistic, regardless of how someone takes them, and if you think polytheism is more accurate, then something that seems to be an experience of "the one and only God" is not necessarily inauthentic, but is missing some part of the picture. As you say, how one interprets a given religious experience will almost certainly be shaped by his culture, upbringing, and so forth.

That being said, I'm wary of looking at anything as broad and diverse as "religious experience" as "basically all one thing, but with different personal framings." That might be the case, but I think if I were going to be believe that, I'd end up saying "well, that personal framing leads to some very different perceptions and interpretations." Which might be your whole point.

I suppose a more careful way of saying what I meant would be "religious experiences consistent with monotheistic beliefs." For every weirdo in Europe in the last thousand years who couldn't deny that he had experienced more than one divine being, and no, they weren't angels or demons, thank you very much, there were thousands (millions?) who had some kind of religious experience and thought "yup, that was Christ/the Father/the Holy Ghost/Mary/Michael the Archangel/etc" and it not only jived with their monotheistic frame, it reinforced it. If you took one of these religiously-experienced European peasants and dropped him in Japan, and he began talking with a Japanese peasant who experiences his rice paddy, that tree over there, this rock right here, the Sun, and so forth as obvious and distinct divine beings, it would take some wrangling for either one to become satisfied that the other's very different experience made sense in his own framing (though, obviously, missionaries did exactly this).

Anyhow, all of that is more by way of exploration than disagreement. I thought that several of Paper's points about the assumed default of monotheistic views, the kinds of lack of understanding they promote, and so forth were very cogent, but I was put off when he veered from "look at how they got this thing wrong because of their presuppositions" into "which is why they suck and the people they misunderstood are better." Or even just got especially emotional about it. Which, hey, it's a personal theology, so I suppose he's allowed to get emotional about it, and it might be better for him to be upfront about it than to hide it behind faux objectivity while sneaking in hidden digs.

As for polytheistic "boxing," yeah, I've noticed a certain amount of this, both in stuff I read, and in myself. Heathenry seems to fall for it more than I'd care to admit (more of that baggage from most Heathens being cradle protestants) - "well, sure, you have 'fate', but really 'wyrd' is a better way of understanding it." Or whatever. My own initial resistance to Revival Druidry and traditional western occultism basically came down to "but this doesn't fit in the Heathen boxes I like better." But as you say, if you start taking polytheism seriously, it tends to undermine too much "boxing" pretty quickly.

Also, yeah, "mystics," broadly defined, definitely are the red-headed stepchildren of whatever religion they find themselves in, and it seems like one fairly useful lens for evaluating a religion would be how they take the weirdo experiences and insights of their mystics and fold them into the day-to-day religion for everyone else (by this measure, Orthodoxy does pretty well, and mainline American protestantism does dismally).

Once again, thanks for your thoughts and for the recommendation!
Jeff