Monotheism

[7] Monotheism characterizes the traditions of Atenism, Bábism, the Baháʼí Faith, Christianity,[8] Deism, Druzism,[9] Eckankar, Islam, Judaism, Mandaeism, Manichaeism, Rastafari, Samaritanism, Seicho-no-Ie, Sikhism, Tenrikyo, Yazidism, and Zoroastrianism.

[17] Quasi-monotheistic claims of the existence of a universal deity date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten from the 14th century BCE.

The Rigveda exhibits notions of monism of the Brahman, particularly in the comparatively late tenth book,[19] which is dated to the early Iron Age, e.g. in the Nasadiya Sukta.

[10] Scholars are conflicted whether Zoroastrianism is best characterized as monotheistic, polytheistic, or henotheistic religion[27] due to the centrality of Ahriman as a component or opposite force of Ahura Mazda.

[20] The concept of ethical monotheism, which holds that morality stems from God alone and that its laws are unchanging,[29] first occurred in Judaism,[30] but is now a core tenet of most modern monotheistic religions, including Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Baháʼí Faith.

[31] Also from the 6th century BCE, Thales (followed by other Monists, such as Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides) proposed that nature can be explained by reference to a single unitary principle that pervades everything.

[20] The first known reference to a unitary God is Plato's Demiurge (divine Craftsman), followed by Aristotle's unmoved mover, both of which would profoundly influence Jewish and Christian theology.

This religious reformation appears to coincide with the proclamation of a Sed festival, a sort of royal jubilee intended to reinforce the Pharaoh's divine powers of kingship.

[56] The Great Spirit, called Wakan Tanka among the Sioux,[39] and Gitche Manitou in Algonquian, is a conception of universal spiritual force, or supreme being prevalent among some Native American and First Nation cultures.

While the populace at large believed in a polytheistic pantheon, Aztec priests and nobles might have come to an interpretation of Teotl as a single universal force with many facets.

In the Nyaya Kusumanjali, this is discussed against the proposition of the Mimamsa school that let us assume there were many demigods (devas) and sages (rishis) in the beginning, who wrote the Vedas and created the world.

The famous Hindu revitalist leader Ram Swarup, for example, points to the Vedas as being specifically polytheistic,[82] and states that, "only some form of polytheism alone can do justice to this variety and richness.

The following quotation from the Guru Granth Sahib highlights this point: Chant, and meditate on the One God, who permeates and pervades the many beings of the whole Universe.

The Perfect Lord is perfectly pervading and permeating the water, the land and the sky; there is no place without Him.However, there is a strong case for arguing that the Guru Granth Sahib teaches monism due to its non-dualistic tendencies: Punjabi: ਸਹਸ ਪਦ ਬਿਮਲ ਨਨ ਏਕ ਪਦ ਗੰਧ ਬਿਨੁ ਸਹਸ ਤਵ ਗੰਧ ਇਵ ਚਲਤ ਮੋਹੀ ॥੨॥ You have thousands of Lotus Feet, and yet You do not have even one foot.

[41] Still, later variants such as Mohism (470 BCE–c.391 BCE) approached true monotheism, teaching that the function of lesser gods and ancestral spirits is merely to carry out the will of Shangdi.

He appointed the dukes and lords to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked, and to gather metal and wood, birds and beasts, and to engage in cultivating the five grains and flax and silk to provide for the people's food and clothing.

The ruler of China in every Chinese dynasty would perform annual sacrificial rituals to Shangdi, usually by slaughtering a completely healthy bull as sacrifice.

[90] Tengrism or Tangrism (sometimes stylized as Tengriism), occasionally referred to as Tengrianism, is a modern term[91] for a Central Asian religion characterized by features of shamanism, animism, totemism, both polytheism and monotheism,[92][93][94][95] and ancestor worship.

[103] Among early Christians, there was considerable debate over the nature of the Godhead, with some denying the incarnation but not the deity of Jesus (Docetism) and others later calling for an Arian conception of God.

According to Roger E. Olson and Christopher Hall, through prayer, meditation, study and practice, the Christian community concluded "that God must exist as both a unity and trinity", codifying this in ecumenical council at the end of the 4th century.

Ash'arism teaches that human knowledge regarding it is limited to what has been revealed through the prophets, and on such paradoxes as God's creation of evil, revelation had to accept bila kayfa (without [asking] how).

Judaism is traditionally considered one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world,[151] although up to the 8th century BCE the Israelites were polytheistic, with their worship including the gods El, Baal, Asherah, and Astarte.

After the fall of Judah and the beginning of the Babylonian captivity, a small circle of priests and scribes gathered around the exiled royal court, where they first developed the concept of Yahweh as the sole God of the world.

But before hastening to conclude that the Amesha Spentas and the other yazatas compromise the purity of monotheism, we should consider that the other historical monotheisms too made room for other figures endowed with supernatural powers to bridge the gulf between the exalted, remote Creator God and the human world: the angels in all of them (whose conception in post-exilic Judaism was apparently developed after the pattern of the Amesha Spentas; Boyce and Grenet, 1991, 404–405), the saints and the Virgin Mary in several Christian churches, and the other persons of the Trinity in all of Christianity.

In the sixth century AD, the Byzantine chronicler Procopius recorded that the Slavs "acknowledge that one god, creator of lightning, is the only lord of all: to him do they sacrifice an ox and all sacrificial animals.

[184] The surviving fragments of the poems of the classical Greek philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon suggest that he held views very similar to those of modern monotheists.

[193] In Southeastern Australian cultures, the sky father Baiame is perceived as the creator of the universe (though this role is sometimes taken by other gods like Yhi or Bunjil) and at least among the Gamilaraay traditionally revered above other mythical figures.

The god Walitha'walitha is based on Allah (specifically, with the wa-Ta'ala suffix), but while this deity had a role in funerary practises it is unclear if it was "Allah-like" in terms of functions.

[200] Mark S. Smith, an American biblical scholar and ancient historian, wrote that monotheism has been a "totalizing discourse", often co-opting all aspects of a social belief system, resulting in the exclusion of "others".

Being incorporeal, He was in the body; being impassible, He was in a passable body; being immortal, He was in a mortal body; being life, He became subject to corruption, that He might free our souls from death and corruption, and heal them, and might restore them to health, when they were diseased with ungodliness and wicked lustsThe Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: ...one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father 'to gather all things in one,' and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Savior, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, 'every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess; to him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all...'For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water