Philosophical monotheism
Pre-Socratic
According to the Greek poet Hesiod of the eighth to seventh
centuries BCE, the Arche (‘Source’, ‘Origin’, ‘Beginning’) of everything in the
Universe was Chaos, then came Gaia (‘Earth’), Tatarus (‘Underworld’), and Eros
(‘Love’). In his cosmology, these were the primordial gods. Chaos
gave birth to Nyx (‘Night’) and Erebus (‘Darkness’).
Orphism, which goes back to at least the sixth century BCE,
that Chronos (‘Undifferentiated Time’) produced Aether and Chaos, and that it
is the former from which all things come.
Anaximander of Miletus in Ionia, c. 610-546 BCE, sometimes
called the founder of Western philosophy, proposed as the Arke the Apeiron, or
the Infinite. In his system, everything comes from the Apeiron and to the
Apeiron all things eventually return. He developed this idea partly in
reaction to his teacher and predecessor of the philosophical school at Miletus,
Thales, who proposed the the substance from which all things came was water.
He is also the first known to state that the Earth was a sphere hanging
unsupported in space, as well as the fact that space has depth. Pythagoras
may have been one of his students.
Platonism
Plato (428-347 BCE) – Socrates’ pupil Plato promulgated the
first monotheistic philosophy in the Hellenic world. His supreme being, though he never called its
such, was a Being existing in three hypostases: Tagathon (‘The Good’), which he
also called the Monad; Nous (‘Intellect’), and either the World-Psyche (‘Soul’)
or the Demiurgos (‘Craftsman’), depending upon which of his works the
discussion takes place. He also used the
term To Hen (‘The One) for the Tagathon and for all three hypostases
collectively as a single Being.
Plato’s The Good was for him the ultimate reality, but that
did not mean for him that other gods did not exist. For him they did, but they were almost
entirely irrelevant to human life.
Plato also introduced the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul.
For Plato and succeeding Hellenistic philosophers, the
Demiurgos was a benevolent being with good intentions.
Plato’s Three Hypostates pervaded much of Hellenistic
philosophy and helped begat the doctrine of the Christian Trinity by way of the
Gnostic teacher Valentinus.
All three Hypostases were in Plato’s doctrine subject to the
Forms, or Ideas, the eternal patterns upon which reality shapes everything that
is.
Peripateticism
Aristotle (382-322 BCE) – Though more concerned with
empirical evidence than metaphysical speculation, this student of Plato who
shifted to empiricism after his teacher’s death taught the Peripatetics that
there was an Uncaused Cause or Prime Mover that he sometimes called Ho Theos,
or The God, the attached article implying that was the only one.
Stoicism
Zeno of Citium (334-262 BCE) – He and his followers, the
Stoics, were pantheists. To them
everything in the Cosmos was composed of Matter and Pneuma (‘Spirit’ or
‘Breath’), with the Divine Pneuma being the Source of pneuma for the rest of
the cosmos. Zeno introduced the concept
of Logos, equated with the Primal Fire, as the corporeal Cosmic Reason,
immanent throughout the Cosmos, also called the World Psyche. Zeno and the Stoics also believed in the
doctrine of eternal return, the idea that the cosmos would be destroyed and
recreated over and over and over again, following the same pattern.
Middle Platonism
Antiochus of Ascalon (125-68 BCE) became the founder of
Middle Platonism when he turned the Academy from its then current skepticism
back toward its roots in the doctrines of Scorates and Plato. Antiochus combined the Demiurgos and the World-Psyche
of two separate works of Plato with nearly identical functions into the single Logos
(‘Reason’).
Plutarch of Chaeronea in Boeotia (45-120 CE) taught that
there were two cosmic principles: Ho Theos (‘The God’), or the Monad, and the
Indefinite Dyad. The Monad for Plutarch
operates through Logos, or Reason, which is identified with the Demiurgos,
while the Indefinite Dyad operates through the World Psyche (‘Soul’).
Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism
combined Middle Platonism and Orphism to create a savior-god religion with
celibacy, renunciation, communal living, and esoteric rituals.
Nigilius Figudius (98-45 BCE), a friend of noted Roman
orator Cicero, revived the Pythagorean philosophy in the first century BCE, but
it was Apollonius of Tyana (3-100 CE) who really got it restarted. Besides being a teacher of ethical behavior
and orator, Apollonius, a contemporary of Jesus the Nazorean, was revered as a
wonder-worker and healer was often compared in ancient times to the latter.
Neopythagoreans taught that the rational, ordered male Monad
and the irrational, chaotic female Dyad produced everything else that is,
starting with the Decad. The third
principle, or hypostatis, of Harmony provided the balance between Monad and
Dyad.
Numenius of Apamea (latter 2nd century), borrowed
the Three Hypostases from the Platonists and taught that these were Tagathon or
Ho On (‘The Being’) or First Intellect; the Nous or the Demiurgos; and the Cosmos
or the World-Psyche.
Hermeticism
The Hermeticists of ancient Egypt who arose in the first
century CE were monotheists, even monists, who referred to their version of the
deity as The One, Theos, or The All, whose agents in the cosmos were Nous and
Logos.
Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism was in large part a reaction to doctrines later
called Gnostic, particularly the latter’s idea of the Demiurgos as a malevolent
rebel against The One which in Platonism had been a benevolent servant of The
One.
The Neoplatonists introduced the concept of The One as
“Beyond Being”, and also explicitly equated The One with Ho Theos, ‘The God’. The founder of this school, Plotinus of Rome
(204-270), named the Three Hypostases as the One, the Divine Nous, and the Psyche,
which he identified with the Demiurgos.
He taught that Logos is the underlying plan tying it all together.
Iamblichus of Chalcis (245-325) conceived that the Three
Hypostases were the transcendant One, the Monad, or the Nous; the superexistent
One, the Dyad, or the Psyche; and, lastly, the Demiurgos. To make matters more complex, the first is a
triad of triads, the second also a triad of triads, and the third is a
hebdomad, of which one part is the Demiurgos proper and another the monad of
Time. He also taught of an Unmanifest Absolute that was beyond the One, which he called the Ineffable.
Proclus Lycaeus of Athens (412-483) was more traditional
than Iamblichus, teaching that the Three Hypostases were To Hen, or Tagathon; the
Nous; and the Psyche. However, between
To Hen and Nous Proclus inserted the Henads, which for him corresponded roughly
to Plato’s Forms or Ideas. He postulated
a threefold production of Nous from To Hen: mone (abiding), prohodos
(procession), and epistrophe (return)
Religious monotheism
The parent of Western monotheism was Mazdayasna, or
Zoroastrianism, influencing Hellenic thought through trade and cultural
contact, then Hellenistic thought following the conquests of Alexander the
Great of Macedonia. The monotheism of
the Israelites in Samerina/Samereia, Yehud/Iudeia, and Egypt which later
exerted an additional direct influence on Western thought also owed its
existence to Mazdayasna.
Hypsistarians
According to the
best ancient sources, in particular the Greek Fathers Gregory of Nazianus
(whose father had been an adherent) and Gregory of Nyssa, the autonym of these
deviant religious devotees was Theosebeis (‘God-reverers’). I say “deviant” because they only revered One
True God in a society that was mostly polytheistic.
The worship of
Theos Hypsistos (‘God Most High’), or just Hypsistos, was not so much a sect as
a trend moving toward becoming a sect that began in the first century and began
to make itself felt in the second. Its
peak was in the latter half of the second through the fourth century.
At first glance,
Hypsistos (‘Most High’) is almost certainly an Israelite appellation for the
deity and derived from that influence.
After all, that epithet is used one hundred seventy-five times in the
Septuagint, the Tanakh of the Hellenistai, the Greek-speaking Jews of the
Diaspora. In some cases, this assumption
was very likely accurate, but in others there was little or no direct Jewish
influence to explain its use, other than arising from the natural evolution of
religion.
Some of the
features of the worship of the Theosbeis include a prohibition against images
for worship and against animal sacrifice.
Their revulsion against anthropomorphism extended to refusing to
call Theos Hypsistos “Father”. Women
often played a prominent part in worship and governance. At most sites, prayer was held at sunset and
sunrise, and worship took place outside of any building. Fire and light were major motifs, and
numerous lamps have been found at sites with Hypsistarian inscription.
Supposedly, they kept the Sabbath, or at least a Sabbath.
Another major
feature were common meals, a feature of nearly all Hellenistic associations,
such that Theosebeis were referred to in some documents as synklitai (‘those
who eat together’), with one of them designated a triklinarchos (‘head of the
symposion’).
Not all such inscriptions signal the presence of the
cult. During the same time, the epithet
Hypsistos came to be applied to many Hellenistic deities: Zeus Hypsistos, Serapis
Hypsistos, Attis Hypsistos, Helios Hypsistos, Isis Hypsista, and Thea Hypsista
(in Anatolia, referring to Cybele), for example. In some cases, inscriptions referred to one
of the deities above. The presence of
features of the monotheistic Theos Hypsistos cult listed above, or the lack
thereof, would determine which is which.
The two main forms in which the Hypsistos epithet have been
found are Theos Hypsistos and Zeus Hypsistos, both dominating different
contiguous regions for the most part.
Zeus Hypsistos dominates the Hypsistos inscriptions in
Greece, Caria, most of Macedonia, Dacia, Moesia, part of the Aegean islands,
and coastal Anatolia. In a few cases
where Zeus Hypsistos has been found, other features indicate a monotheistic
cult influenced by the Theosebeis,
such as lack of shrines for other deities, lack of images, lamps, etc. By the fourth century, a monotheistic cult
centered on Dionysos Hypsistos had arisen in Cyprus.
Theos Hypsistos and simple Hypsistos predominate in
Palestine, Phoenicia, Egypt, Delos, Thessaly, Thrace, Crete, Cyprus, Cimmeria,
Anatolia, Phrygia, Lydia, the Bosphoros, the north shores of the Black Sea, and
some of the Aegean islands. In some of
these places, the inscription is to Theos Hypsistos Epekoos (‘He Who
Hears’). The form Theos Hypsistos
Pantokrator (‘Almighty’, or ‘Ruler of all’) was dominate in Cappadocia, the use
of Pantokrator elsewhere almost exclusively limited to Jews and Samaritans,
thus showing their influence.
The deity in Athens called Agnostos Theos (‘Unknown God’),
mentioned in Acts of the Apostles and found elsewhere, may be another reference
to Theos Hypsistos.
When Hadrian
rebuilt the temple on Mount Gerizim near Flavia Neapolis after the Bar Kokhba
War (132-135), he dedicated it to "Zeus Hypsistos". That the
Samaritans used it unhesitatingly as their own lends credence to the idea that
by the second century the two separate deities, Zeus Hypsistos and Theos
Hypsistos, had merged in many places if not all, and that many Israelites equated
any deity with the epithet Hypsistos with Yahweh.
By the end of the fifth century, with all the
massive persecution by the state which was officially Christian, it had
vanished.
Deus Aeternus
The Latin-speaking western half of the empire had a
counterpart to Theos Hypsistos, though not as much is known about it. This monotheistic deity was called Deus
Aeternus (‘Eternal God’), and inscriptions to this deity have been found in Dacia,
which had many military camps, Pannonia, southern Italia, Sicilia, and
southeastern Hispania.
Just as the East has inscriptions to Zeus Hypsistos, the
West has inscriptions to Jupiter Aeternus.
Its worth noting that the earliest of the ancient church
orders, or rather their earliest known precursor, the De doctrina Apostolorum from the early first century CE, includes
the following passage: ‘The way of life is this: first,
you shall love the Eternal God (‘Deus Aeternus’) who made
you; second, your neighbor as yourself, and what you do not want to
befall you, do not do to another’.
This Latin document is an early version of the first six chapters of
the much better known Greek-language Didache of late first century
Syria. In the Didache, the “way
of life” is the same, minus the specific reference to the “Eternal God”. With the De doctrina Apostolorum being
widely acknowledged as having its origin among Hellenistic Jews, this use of a
divine designation peculiar to the Deus Aeternus cult shows some cultural
exchange between the two.
The West had its counterparts to the cult of Agnostos Theos
in Deus Ignotus (‘God Unknowable’) and Deus Incognitus (‘God Inconceivable’).
Gnosticism
The term “Gnostic” as a title for several highly diverse philosophical
religious cults which flourished in the Mediterranean and Iranian world in the
second through fourth centuries and survived in the former until the fifth
century, is a neologism no earlier than the 1700’s.
The cults almost certainly arose from Hellenistic Jews and
Samaritans trying to synchronize their religious tenets with Gentile
philosophy, particularly Platonism. For
instance, Philo Judaeus has sometimes been called “proto-Gnostic”.
Though only loosely sharing cosmologies, one feature of all
sects now called Gnostic was a single male Ultimate Deity who was often beyond
being. Usually, he stood at the head of
several beings called Aeons, all of which were directly or indirectly
emanations of him and therefore one with him.
The most common designation found for this Ultimate Reality
is The One, who was also known as the Monad, the Absolute, Aion Teleos
(‘Perfect Aion’), Bythos (‘Depth’), Arke (‘Beginning’), Proarke (‘Before the
Beginning’), Propator (‘First Father’), Agennitos Pateras (‘Unbegotten Father’),
Afato Gonea (‘Ineffable Parent’), Agnostos Theos (‘Unknown God’), and Arrhetus
(‘Unspeakable’). The One is often
referred to simply as Theos.
Another feature of nearly all Gnostic schools was that Aeons
always came in male and female pairs.
Every Aeon had its opposite sex counterpart, even The One, whose counterpart
in almost all systems was Sige (‘The Silence’), also known as Charis (‘Grace’),
Ennoia (‘Intent’), or Barbelo (‘Forethought’).
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