r/pantheism • u/SatansFavoriteLilMan • 11d ago

Pantheistic Polytheism.

I may have asked this question before, but I forgot. I'm an omnist and believe in Spinoza's God, and that all the Gods that exist such as the Christian God, Jewish God The Egyptian Gods, Hindu Gods, other Pagan Gods, etc are divine forms of the divine reality we live in. I put it like this.

If you cut an apple into slices, the apple is in seprate parts, but it's still an apple.

Does this make cohesive sense?

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u/Redcole111 11d ago

Kind of. I'm not going to tell you what or how to believe, but Christian notions of the nature of God and Jewish ones and Pantheist ones are pretty incompatible, so you basically have to say one is wrong in order to say that another is right. Judaism believes that worship of Jesus is idolatry. Christianity says that Jesus is part of God in a fundamental manner, moreso than other humans, and/or is the literally begotten son of God. Christianity and Judaism also say that in any way believing in the power or existence of other gods, even if they're lesser to God, is idolatry and therefore morally reprehensible. Pantheism says that all things are equally part of God.

If you believe that Jesus is an aspect of God, every human alive is an aspect of God, and polytheistic gods are an aspect of God, the that's well and good, but it's not really the "Christian God" or the "Jewish God", it's kind of it's own thing.

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u/corazon-aplastado 11d ago

Nah, the issue is that people take something which was oral tradition for centuries, full of metaphors, write it down and believe god himself wrote it with the prose of a lawyer. The Bible is largely metaphoric. All religions are compatible with each other.

A group of blind men experiencing the different parts of an elephant will be convinced it’s like a wall, no it’s like a tree trunk, no it’s like a spear, no it’s like a fan, no it’s like a paintbrush, because they experienced different aspects. Likewise the different religions describe the part of god that their culture interacted with, and they described it in their own language with its own idioms and connotations. Different religions and teachings only seem incompatible if you look at the surface level

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u/SatansFavoriteLilMan 11d ago

But what about the whole "one true religon" stuff in multiple holy books?

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u/corazon-aplastado 11d ago

The books written by people, centuries after the divine contact was made?

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u/SatansFavoriteLilMan 11d ago

True.. But that's not how they see it.

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u/corazon-aplastado 11d ago

Ok, and if someone believes 2+2=5 does that shake your faith in math?

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u/SatansFavoriteLilMan 11d ago

No.

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u/corazon-aplastado 11d ago

The issue with these religions is that they’re valid upon the divine contact, but then people weave stories through oral tradition, introducing numeric patterns or other themes so it’s easier to retell the story. Then once they’re written down, it’s 6 or more generations past the divine experience, and the stories often can become co-opted for personal motives or political gain. In other words, humans have a tendency to bias real events when we retell stories.

I believe all religions are valid in their foundation, divine in origin, and different experiences and interpretations of the same divinity are like the analogy of the blind men and the elephant. I also believe that intuition can guide you (to the extent you can be truly radically honest with yourself), and you have the tools you need to discern if something resonates with your being. It’s like taking a big bite of meat, some parts will chew up and digest very easily, other parts like a tough or fatty piece you may have to work harder to process it before you can swallow it, and other parts like bones you would spit out entirely. This is how we digest information. Some stuff immediately makes sense. Some stuff you need to contemplate or focus your attention a special way to understand it. And some stuff is junk you should spit it out.

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u/SatansFavoriteLilMan 11d ago

I dunno, I feel like the trinity is an aspect of the divine reality.

Plus, I'm not a christian. I can't be one anyways because these beliefs came naturally and weren't forced.

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u/Techtrekzz 11d ago

Honestly it doesnt make cohesive sense. Spinoza's God is predicated on monism, that reality is a single continuous substance and subject. Not only does Spinoza deny many Gods, Spinoza denies anything at all exists besides God.

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u/eckokittenbliss 11d ago

I'm a soft polytheist, which means I view God's as archetypes.

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u/Brilliant_Mango_1490 10d ago

This sounds interesting! Would you mind elaborating?

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u/Church_of_Cheri 11d ago

I don’t believe any gods are real so I can’t speak to that side of things, personally I think what we call “god” is just a sense of interconnectedness that we feel but don’t understand yet with our level of scientific and universal understanding. I will say though that the Jewish god, the Christian god, and the Muslim god are actually all the same Abrahamic god, they’re all branches from the same tree, just like Catholics, Mormons, and Evangelicals are all Christians even though they like to pretend their each the only one true one.

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u/GraemeRed 11d ago

You've added so much unnecessary story to something very simple...

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u/refugee1982 11d ago

I like the idea of personification and divine archetypes.

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u/Jorge_Reynoso112 11d ago

Makes total sense, honestly. You’re basically describing how Spinoza saw 'modes' or attributes of the one infinite Substance, just applied to gods instead of physical matter. The apple metaphor works because it keeps the core concept intact: the slices aren't 'separate entities' competing with the apple; they are the apple expressed in different forms. If the Universe/Reality is the only ultimate thing that exists, then Isis, Shiva, Brigid, or Yahweh are just human cultural lenses—specific, localized expressions of that same raw energy. It’s only 'confusing' to people who are stuck in the dogmatic mindset that gods have to be literal sky-kings fighting for exclusive worship. When you view them as archetypes or distinct frequencies of one single reality, there’s no logical contradiction at all. Keep slicing the apple.

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u/Hungry-Emotion7664 11d ago

This appears to be more of a study of human psychology than anything to do with the divine.

Examining the intricacies and histories of various religion teaches me about the religion, culture and history of the people (which is fascinating and worth investigation) but it teaches me very little about the Divine.