monotheismcreative, and impermanent Buddha-nature is the lone reality that a person
must realize to become liberated.Further reading: Dōgen (2007); Loy (1988); Rāmānuja (1971); Śankara (1968)MONOTHEISM
Derived from the Greek terms mono (one) and theos (god), this is the
belief in a single God in sharp contrast to polytheism, or belief in
many deities. A religion that is monotheistic, such as Judaism,
Christianity, or Islam, defines its singular God in a context of polythe-
ism which it opposes. Although polytheistic religions do not assert their
identity by opposing monotheistic religions, from the perspective of
monotheistic faiths, the deities of polytheistic religions are false and
cannot compete with the power of a singular God. The three major
monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – are all based
on revelation and not rational or empirical evidence. In the Qur’an,
Allah is called al-Wahid (the One, 37.4), which eliminates any chance
of pluralistic confusion with respect to the definitions of the deity and
the cultural context for the understanding of His divine nature. The
singularity of Allah represents the first article of the Islamic confession
of faith (shahada: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His
messenger” (37.35). Overall, the monotheistic Gods tend to be extra-
mundane and transcendent, whereas polytheistic deities tend to be more
involved in the everyday lives of adherents, although both types are
perceived as creator figures.
It is possible to find strands of monotheism within polytheistic reli-
gions. Hinduism is a good example of this phenomenon because when a
devotee is worshiping his/her deity this god or goddess that is called the
iãæa deva (personal deity) becomes the only genuine deity for that wor-
shiper. The Oxford University scholar F. Max Müller (d. 1900) calls this
development henotheism (etymologically derived from the Greek hen
(one) and theos or deity). According to Müller, within a henotheistic con-
text, many gods associate and cooperate with each other in an impersonal
system in which one god assumes leadership of the pantheon for an
unspecified period of time before relinquishing leadership to another deity,
a pattern suggested to Müller by the Vedic pantheon of ancient India
depicted in the Vedic texts. More recently, Indologist Axel Michaels gives
three reasons why Müller’s term is inadequate. First, there is basically no