According to some, the world would be better off if we believed in more than one God.

Boston University’s website has an interesting interview with professor Paula Fredriksen, BU’s William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture.

Prof. Fredriksen is an expert on Augustine and was asked why the Church Father was so positive in his rhetoric towards Jews. Her response (and I’m paraphrasing) was that monotheists in the ancient Mediterranean world were actually henotheists (she doesn’t use this term), which is to say that they weren’t strict monotheists–they believed that other gods existed, but that their God was supreme.

She explains:

When ancient monotheists are talking about heavenly architecture, what they meant is that there was a pyramid structure to divinity, and their god was on top. So there are always other divinities to deal with, and as you would imagine, showing courtesy to other people’s gods ensures courteous interactions between the gods’ humans.

When the interviewer comments that this perspective seems very “tolerant”, the professor replies that it is not really tolerance at all.

It’s not a question of tolerance; it’s an issue of pluralism. Other people have their own gods, and everybody has to get along, so it’s just a condition of existence in antiquity. Now, we’re on the far side of Christian culture, and the cosmic clutter of heaven has gotten seriously thinned out. Modern monotheists believe there’s only one single God, and people tend to get embarrassed if you talk about angels — that already is too folkloric for many.

So our model today is not pluralism, but tolerance, which is different; tolerance implies that even though I think it’s wrong, as long as nobody gets hurt I will tolerate it. But in a tolerant society we can be very intolerant, because we don’t think other people’s gods really exist.

I find it amazing that even when modern people encounter others who do worship the same God, like Jews and Muslims (Allah is not a different God), not to mention Christians of other denominations, there is still so little tolerance sometimes.  I think in many ways we are getting better, but there is still too much misunderstanding, and sometimes it’s deliberate.

If you want to read the whole interview, please click here. I probably wouldn’t agree with all her opinions, but the article is interesting and her view is refreshing.  I agree with her that the Judaism and Christianity of today would likely be unrecognizeable to Jesus and Paul.

[via PaleoJudaica]