Monotheism or Henotheism?

4 Epiphany B  January 28, 2024
Deut. 18:15-20  Ps. 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13   Mark 1:21-28

Lectionary Link

We are taught that Christianity and Judaism are monotheistic religions, and yet our Scriptures indicate writings which suggests that both are henotheistic religions, which means that they acknowledge a superior deity among other deities.

The unfolding of Hebrew Scriptures includes the ascendency of a supreme God over the other gods in the invisible realm even as the God of Israel was showing superiority over the gods of the people of the land of Canaan, but mostly when the people of Israel were being obedient to the One God.

The contexts of origin of both the Hebrew and Christian religion was polytheistic, meaning that people who did not embrace the Hebraic and Christian notions of a superior  God, were people who followed a variety of gods and and goddesses.  In the Roman Empire context, there was also the cult of the Emperor who was designated as a god.

Just as the Hebrew Scriptures is a record of how the God of Israel demonstrates a superiority over the other gods in the ancient world, so too the New Testament presents Jesus Christ as one who demonstrates a power over the interior hierarchies of principalities and powers of darkness.  In the New Testament, these lords of the interior life had their messenger agents, the demons, and the unclean spirits.

St. Paul wrote that life is first an interior battle before it becomes an exterior battle.  "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." In effect, the former gods were renamed as interior principalities, powers, and rulers of darkness.

In the Gospel rendering of this Pauline view of interior cosmology, Jesus is presented as the one who went interior to flesh and blood and was known to be the Higher Power against principalities, powers, and rulers of the darkness in this world.

Our interior world can be experience as an interior bundle of unnamed sensations, emotional instincts, and forces until a creative word can name, tame, and designate alternative acting out for such powers and energies.

St. Paul in giving practical advice for those who worried about food sacrificed to idols, asserted that the One God of all made false any other claim to the proper designation of the word God.   The Anselmian definition of God is that which none greater can be conceived.  St. Paul was recognizing the many divine pretenders which were part of the human experience of his time, but he was asserting the first commandment of not having any other god but the One God.  And Jesus was the human representation of the one God to be the one who could tame all the pretending forces of superiority.

In the cry of the Psalmist, was a request for a clean heart and a renewed right spirit within him.  O that I could know my interior life as a place of peace and calm and organized in such a way that I could act out with impulse control.

The words of Moses promised a prophet who would speak in the name of the interior one who could rule and tame the principalities, the powers, and the rulers of the darkness in this world.

The Psalmist proclaimed a superior Lord who if given the ultimate respect would provide wisdom for living, wisdom for impulse control, wisdom for peace, and wisdom for justice.

How is the Pauline battle of the interior presented in a narrative of Jesus?  Jesus is the ultimate interior whisperer.  He is the one who does interior repair.  He is the Eternal Christ, the Word of God, who moves again over the face of the interior deep and void of untamed forces, and he speaks and tames to peace and quietude to return people to their "right minds." 

In the religious purity code of his time, something which is designated as unclean was the ultimate in a cursed and condemned state of being.  Imagine having one's interior life designated as an "unclean spirit."  It was the extreme state of condemnation for his time.  And yet such a condemned designated person came into the synagogue to hear Jesus speak.  This person who was said to have an unclean spirit, a controlling impulse, co-existed with the volition of this person who was seeking an empowerment for his frail sense of impaired freedom.  He was the like the addict needing an experience of a Higher Power to restore his freedom to learn self control.

Jesus Christ is presented in the Gospel as the Higher Power to the release of our human freedom to give us power to repent and be on the path of becoming better each day.  Jesus is the One who can make real within each person a new monotheism out of the henotheistic past lives of having yielded control of our lives to many unworthy principalities, powers, and rulers.

May each of us be delivered from our apparent henotheistic devotions to other gods, idols, and controlling impulses, and may we see the One God of Jesus Christ rise in us as the one who whispers our lives to the freedom of self control which comes from the Holy Spirit being the clean heart within us.  Amen.