polytheism

Updated: June 8, 2025

Bird, bee, blossom be my teacher. I do not like Mr. Emerson's lesson. The logical sequence of disbelief in what Mr. Emerson calls a "pistareen Providence" is a belief in pantheism or polytheism.

Timothy Titcomb - Lessons in Life: A Series of Familiar Essays

"Nowhere," he says, "do we find stronger arguments against idolatry, nowhere has the unity of God been upheld more strenuously against the errors of polytheism, than by some of the ancient sages of India.

Frank F. (Frank Field) Ellinwood - Oriental Religions and Christianity: A Course of Lectures Delivered on the Ely Foundation Before the: Students of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1891

The conjunction of pagan polytheism with Judaic monotheism, which had endeavoured by other means to save the personality of God, gave birth to the feeling of the Catholic God, a God who is a society, as the pagan God of whom I have spoken was a society, and who at the same time is one, as the God of Israel finally became one.

Miguel de Unamuno - Tragic Sense Of Life

This general theorem is completed by the addition, that the theological mode of thought has three stages, Fetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism: the successive transitions being prepared, and indeed caused, by the gradual uprising of the two rival modes of thought, the metaphysical and the positive, and in their turn preparing the way for the ascendancy of these; first and temporarily of the metaphysical, finally of the positive.

John Stuart Mill - Auguste Comte and Positivism

It is at least doubtful whether any of these philosophers perused the apologies * which the primitive Christians repeatedly published in behalf of themselves and of their religion; but it is much to be lamented that such a cause was not defended by abler advocates. They expose with superfluous with and eloquence the extravagance of Polytheism.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 1

Jesus was God, but he was also man. In this way, arose the doctrine of the incarnation. Instead of being a monument of mystical insight as theologians tell us, it was the consequence of a problem forced upon the Church. In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity is the attempt to combine gnostic polytheism and monotheism. The only way three can be made one is by a mystery, so a mystery it became.

Roy Wood Sellars - The Next Step in Religion: An Essay toward the Coming Renaissance

They easily convinced him that the Christians had been indebted for their victories to their regular discipline, and that the weakness of polytheism had principally flowed from a want of union and subordination among the ministers of religion. A system of government was therefore instituted, which was evidently copied from the policy of the church.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2

If there had been some Hebrew prophets about, and a tyrant or two, progressive and bloody-minded, to agree with them, polytheism might perhaps actually have been stamped out in Greece at one time. But Greek thought, always sincere and daring, was seldom brutal, seldom ruthless or cruel.

Gilbert Murray - Five Stages of Greek Religion

The other is a god too; all the gods he has ever worshipped he may on occasion worship again. Nor can he refuse to recognise the gods of others; to them no doubt they are gods, if not to him; they are beings of the same class with his god. And thus early man is a polytheist. Polytheism is a complex product; it is the addition to each other of a number of cults which have grown up separately.

Allan Menzies - History of Religion: A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems

This philosophy reduced Polytheism, or the multitude of gods, to Deism, or one God, and that one God to Nature, which according to them was eternal, infallible, intelligent, omnipotent, and divine.

François de Salignac de la Mothe- Fénelon - The Existence of God