Wasn’t
Paul a Monotheist?
The philosopher Thales reportedly
said, “All things are full of gods!” The same applies to Paul’s letters. Not
only do we have reference to “the” god in these letters (namely the Father),
but we also find “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4) “many gods and many lords”
(1 Cor 8:5) “elementals” (Gal 4:9) “angel” (Gal 3:19; 1 Cor 6:3) “daimonian” (1
Cor 10:20), “a spirit” (Gal 4:5) “rulers of this aeon” (1 Cor 2:6), not to
mention “authorities, powers, thrones,” and so on. If a polytheist is a believer
in multiple divine powers, then Paul was a polytheist. To put it more “kosher”
in terms, Paul assumed—like virtually everyone else in Mediterranean antiquity—that
there were multiple superhuman powers and authorities were subordinate to a
single creative power called “the” god (ho theos). In this respect, Paul
was no different than many Stoic and Platonic philosophers who imagined a
divine hierarchy with a chief power on top (the God or Zeus), who governed a
whole bureaucracy of middle-management powers who performed the daily grunt
work of running the cosmos. These born gods are often thought to be generated
(directly or indirectly) from the primal god, just as the “son” is generated
from the Father. (M. David Litwa, “Paul on Becoming (a) God,” in Paul Within
Paganism: Restoring the Mediterranean Context to the Apostle, ed. Alexander
Chantziantoniou, Paula Fredriksen, and Stephen L. Young [Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2025], 108)
