LECTURE NOTES 6

BSTC1003 INTRO TO RELIGIOUS STUDIES

GODS
(HOLY BEINGS)

G. A. Somaratne
The University of Hong Kong
2019
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Who is a god?
• A god is not just a bare object or a statue
in a museum.

• A god is part of a bilateral relationship: A

god is god of someone or to someone.

• Only in the eyes of the religious person

can a god be a god as such.

• A god is a category of social interactive

behavior:

• With gods one receives, gives, follows,

loves, imitates, communes, negotiates,
contests, entrusts.
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Relational quality
• We address it, or it can address us. There is
a relational quality.

• The term god is linked to a root (gheu) “to

invoke” or “sacrificed to”.

• In Sanskrit, the root is hū –to invoke > hutâ –

what is worshipped by sacrifice.

• The religious meaning of a god lies in what

one does in the presence of the god.

• The scientific language flattens everything it

sees into data. But in the religious language,
the world is experienced through categories
of invocation, listening, and respect.
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Dialogical factor
• The dialogical factor may be understood
better if we see how virtually any object
can function as a “being.”

• Anything can be spoken to. Poetry has

always known this.

• And any form can confront us with its own

power and message.

• A person may find a turning point in his life

when he meets an object “he could talk to”:
e.g., a book (a scripture).

• With the book he becomes friends and find

solace.
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Personification of objects
• Religiously endowed things easily become
personified:

• The Sabbath = God’s “bride”;

• Tibetan Buddhist stupas = “precious one”

(rimpoche);

• The Sikh scripture = “the ultimate guru”;

• Any object, any “other” thing, can assume a

temporary absoluteness in the way it faces
and dominates us,

• in the way it forms a conduit between us and

the infinite “wholly other,” the “thou”. Again,
we both address and are addressed.
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A god of a locality
• Gods go with their worlds. A god—in
traditional geographies—could not really be
worshipped outside its own land.

• In ancient Semitic religion, the term baal—

“master” of a house, “owner” of a field,
“husband”—meant the god who possessed
some place or district.

• In the ancient world, priests were not priests

of gods in general, and not even of one god
or goddess in general, but of a particular god
at a particular site.

• The god has its polis, its relative totality of

influence. The god of the hills would have no
power in the plains. My great ancestors and
heroes may not be yours.
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Gods correlate with the critical points of a world

• Gods are beings whose realms cannot be
violated with impunity. Where sacrilege does
take place with no consequence, the gods have
fled.

• Gods correlate with the critical points of a world

where humans are most open to the power of
“the other.”

• If a world is crucially subject to what comes from

the sky, from animal or plant life, from clan or
political order, or from ritual purity, we may
expect to find gods located in these junctures
and conceived in these categories.

• In societies based firmly on the family

relationships and social hierarchy (as in China),
we find ancestors, elders, and emperors
receiving the same reverence as gods.
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Location of gods and location of the sacred

• The location of gods follows the location of the
sacred. There are:
• gods of mountains, rivers, vegetation, and fire;
gods of the hearth, village, tribe, nation, and
humanity;
• gods of thieves, merchants, smiths, hermits,
priests, and mystics; gods for collecting wood,
for cutting wood, and for burning wood.
• gods of longevity, child protection, health, and
success; gods of death, misfortune, and every
disease;
• gods who are called “The True Parents”; gods
who are the sun itself and gods of the inner
light.
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Gods with powers

• Roman gods are specialists for different
things. They are connected with complex
areas of power.

• Agricultural gods marked off the different

moments in the growth of grain:

• Seia is the goddess of sowing and the

sprouting seed in the earth. Segesta is the
shoots which have come up above ground;

• Proserpina forms the stalks. Nodotus forms

the sections of the stem; Volutina forms the
protective sheath around the ear; Patelana
later removes it.

• Lacturnus and Matuta take care of the

different ages of ripening. Flora makes the
plant blossom.
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Gods as living beings

• The gods are names given to particular life
processes.

• Alemona nourished the fetus; Vagitanus

opened the child’s mouth at its first cry;
Levana raised it from the ground; Cunina
protected the cradle; Statanus taught it to
stand; Fabulinus to speak.

• Each part of the body had a god. Every

virtue did. There were gods of bees, sewers,
mildew, broken bones, silence, and
sneezing.

• Christians ridiculed: In Rome there were

more gods than men.

• However, as a historian pointed out, these

were not fake gods, arising out of artificial
theories, but living beings, who were
worshipped.
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Veneration of saints
• In traditional Roman
Catholicism the polytheistic
outlook was carried on to some
degree in the veneration of a
multitude of saints.

• Forty different saints were

invoked in the French Vosges,
as “guardians of livestock and
protectors from all kinds of
sickness, such as gout,
toothache, and burns, as
protectors in storms and against
fleas.”
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Demons
• There are also the negative gods, a
class of supernatural beings called
the demons.

• Every world has its negative forces.

• The Satan figure in the West is a

diabolical antagonist to the biblical
God.

• Minor demons may be limited to

specific functions, like drought,
leprosy, or the weakness of hunters.

• The Ifugao of the Philippines count

thirty-one gods who send dysentery
and twenty-one who produce boils
and abscesses.
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Polytheism
• Many ancient religions were
polytheistic.

• “Polytheism means that many gods are

worshipped not only at the same place
and at the same time, but by the same
community and by the same individual;
only the totality of the gods constitutes
the divine world.

• However much a god is intent on his

honour, he never disputes the existence
of any other god; they are all
everlasting ones… What is fatal is if a
god is overlooked.” (Walter Burkert,
Greek Religion)
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To ignore gods is to invite disaster

• The divinities did not demand
exclusive attention or loyalty.

• They often shared cities,

temples, shrines, and priestly
attendants.

• They exercised hegemony and

leadership over their jurisdiction
or sphere of influence and
expected to receive their proper
due.

• To ignore them was to invite

disaster.
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The supreme being

• The supreme being is that god that
grounds the entire world, not just
some part of it.

• There are several versions of such

unity—different families, as it were, of
supreme gods.

• Many tribal religions refer to a creator

god who is ultimately responsible for
the world but has withdrawn from
activity in it.

• In biblical religions, theocratic images

of power over the world—such as God
as creator, king, and lord—are central.
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Creator and creation as One or two

• In Hinduism, the supreme being is the
indwelling reality of the world. Brahman
is “being, consciousness, joy”
(satchitananda). Shiva and Shakti are
the “perpetual union of consciousness
and energy”—that is existence itself.

• Chinese religion pictures the cosmos as

the harmonious “Way” (Tao) of “heaven
and earth.”

• In biblical religions, the world is under

the monarchical power of the god. There
is an unbridgeable distance between the
holiness of the Creator and the finitude
of the creation.
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Hindu supreme god

• All the countless gods are only
the million faces of the one
god.

• Brahman manifests as Brahma

(the creator), Vishnu (the
maintainer), and Shiva (the
destroyer).

• But any of these gods can be

the supreme itself.
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Hindu supreme god

• Krishna (himself an incarnation of Vishnu)
plays the role of the supreme god when he
says:

• “I [am] the oblation and I the flame into which

it is offered…I am the end of the path, the
witness, the Lord, the sustainer; I am … the
beginning, the friend and the refuge;

• I am the breaking-apart, and the storehouse

of life’s dissolution; I lie under the seen, of all
creatures of the seed that is changeless.

• I am the heat of the sun; and the heat of the

fire am I also: Life eternal and death.

• I let loose the rain, or withhold it… I am the

cosmos revealed, and its germ that lies
hidden.” (The Bhagavad Gita)
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Hindu Syncretism via God Vishnu

• A number of popular divinities are accumulated as Vishnu’s
avatars (incarnations, coming down to earth)
• (1) Matsya (fish) who saved the sage Manu from the floods
and recovered the Vedas from a demon’s hands.
• (2) Kurma (tortoise) who recovered the divine nectar of
immortality which had been lost and was at the bottom of
the sea.
• (3) Varaha (boar) who killed a demon when dragged the
earth to the bottom of the ocean.
• (4) Narasinha (man-lion) who killed a demon king who
could not be killed by either a man or an animal.
• (5) Vamana (dwarf) who got rid of demon king.
• (6) Parasurama (warrior with an ax) who saved the brahmin
caste from the tyranny of the warrior caste.
• (7) Rama (a prince) who annihilated Ravana.
• (8) Krishna.
• (9) Buddha.
• (10) Kalki (the man on a white horse) who will restore the
earth’s purity.
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Shiva
• He is the ultimate ascetic;
sits on a tiger skin on mount
Kailasa;
• he has a dangerous aspect;
wears a garland of skulls,
haunts burning-grounds and
battle fields.
• He maintains the world
through the power of his
meditation.
• He is the divine destroyer.

• He is the lord of dance

(Naṭarāja); the patron deity
of dance.
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Lesser deities – good spirits

• Nāgas – snake spirits – bestow
boons on humans; Serpents and
ant-hills are objects of
veneration
• Yakshas – fairies – beneficent

• Rsis – original composers of the

Vedas – worshiped through
study of the Vedas
• Siddhas – local saints, religious
teachers, pious lives.
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Lesser deities – Evil spirits, dark forces

• Asuras – spirits whose power was
directed toward evil ends; demons at
war with the gods.
• Rākshasas – demons who assume
many forms; capture and devour
humans.
• Pisācas – inhabits places of death;
live on corpses; harm the
unsuspecting.
• Bhūtas/ Pretas – those who have
died violent deaths; have denied the
ancestor rites; anger and
malevolence, sickness, unusual
misfortunes directed to the living and
negligent relatives.
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Sakti – Feminine Principle

• The twin aspects of the cult of mother
goddess:

• (1) fertility—Mother as a benevolent fertility

symbol;

• (2) disease—Mother as a malevolent bringer

of disease and death.

• Sankhya Dualism: (1) Prakrti—female

principle – motion of power/ potency; (2)
Purusha—Inactive masculine principle.

• Sakti is the principle of energy through which

all divinity functions. It shows the masculine
as depending on the feminine.

• The strength/ potency of a divinity manifests

only in his (god’s) female consort.
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Saktism
• Brahma pairs with Sarasvati (goddess of
art, music, and learning).

• Vishnu pairs with Lakshmi (goddess of

wealth, fortune, and prosperity)

• Shiva pairs with Parvati who is represented

through:

• benevolent aspect = Parvati, Mahadevi,

Sati, Mata or Ammai

• Malevolent aspect = Durga, Kali, Candi

• Durga is depicted with huge tusks, bulging

eyes, lolling tongue, wearing a garland of
skulls.

• She is worshipped in the form of a phallic

symbol (Yoni).
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The biblical god

• Yahweh is connected with the symbolism of power,
reflecting the kingship imagery.

• The Lord’s “answer” to the suffering Job states:

• “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the

earth? Tell me, if you have understanding… have the
gates of death been revealed to you, or have you
seen the gates of deep darkness?... Do you know
when the mountain goats bring forth? … who has let
the wild ass go free? … whatever is under the whole
heaven is mine.” (Job 38-41).

• Here the god is establishing his rule and mastery

over creation. There is nothing he cannot do: He
made the world and parted the Red Sea.
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Focus
• Religious means engaging the
sacred; having a focus, a point of
engagement.

• These points are the earthly

embodiments of the gods:
incarnations, authorities, priests,
and a multitude of symbolic
objects.

• The institution of the guru-disciple

relationship illustrates this idea of
focus.
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Guru
• In Asian traditions, the guru has some of the
functions of a god.

• The guru is a living embodiment of the divine,

a “realized being,” a “living master.”

• True progress is possible only with the

guidance of such a person, who initiates and
prescribes one’s spiritual path.

• To be in the presence of the guru is to be in

the presence of a god.

• The entire focus of Christianity is on one great

manifestation of the supreme god—Jesus
Christ (the Christian guru).

• “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” and

“no one comes to the Father, but by me.”
(John 14:6).
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A god’s presence
• A god’s presence can be
experienced in virtually anything, in
shrines, words, and sacraments, in
stones, and in people.

• Hindu scriptures teach that the

supreme being is to be seen in all
life.

• Sacramental religion finds the god

in the rites of church and shrine.

• The religious person always knows

where to find and honor the god,
and with what actions.
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Behaviors of gods and goddesses

• In polytheistic religions, the gods and
goddess were symbolized by and
embodied in all manner of things.

• Their behaviors and purposes were

similar to human behaviors and purposes.

• They married, had affairs, produced

children, argued, fought, took part in
contests.

• They did not respond kindly to insults or

assaults. On their honor, they demanded
the praise and service of human beings.

• They were angry if they did not receive

their due, and sometimes overstepped
the bounds of the divine order of things
(with adverse consequences).
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Power, status, and permanence

• The gods and goddesses differed
from humans in the degree of
their power, status, and
permanence.

• They were usually immortal, but

not eternal, beings.

• Like other elements of the

cosmos, they came into being.

• Their power and knowledge far

surpassed that of humans.

• But they were neither all-powerful

(omnipotent) nor all-knowing
(omniscient).
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Authority
• The divinities were also limited
in jurisdiction:

• They were associated with

cities, peoples, localities, and
functions (for example, arts,
rain, fertility, healing, and war).

• Deities were often paired,

bound together by marriage,
affairs, or bipolarities (for
example, good/evil, day/night,
or heaven/earth).
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Divinities are everywhere

• The pantheism of a polytheistic religion is
usually extensive.

• Shinto tradition speaks of 800,000 spirits

(kami).

• Hindu traditions place the number of

deities at 3,300 or, more remarkably, at 33
million.

• Perhaps the incomprehensibility of such

estimates is a way of saying that divinities
are everywhere.

• A familiarity with some divinities is

instructive as to their nature, jurisdiction,
and form.
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God in Christianity
• God is both utterly beyond and yet,
paradoxically, intimately near. God—a personal
being with whom one can have a relationship—
is, at the same time and without contradiction,
one and plural.

• God’s nature is dynamic; this nature expresses

itself.

• The belief in the Trinity lies at the very heart of

the nature of God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
are names for the Godhead.

• Christians have attributed the act of creation to

the Father, the first person of the Trinity;
redemption to the Son, the second person; and
comfort and inspiration to the Holy Spirit, the
third person.
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Why do Christians value the gift of Jesus Christ?

• Jesus is God who became flesh. He is God
incarnate. He is the ultimate revelation of the
Father.

• Jesus shows us who God is and what God is

like.

• Throughout the Christian scripture, the role

of Jesus as the one who can speak with
authority about God is pointed to again and
again:

• “He who sees me sees him who sent me”

(John 13:45).

• The Son is like the Father, so to know Christ

is to know the Father.

• Jesus is the personality of the Father made

known.
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God as Daddy
• The best way to address God in prayer is
by the use of the Aramaic word Abba,
“Daddy.” The Creator is like a loving and
kind parent.

• When Jesus was asked about who the

Father was:

• What is this God like? God is like the

Father who forgives his prodigal son
without being asked for forgiveness (Luke
15).

• God is like the man who owned a vineyard

and paid his workers according to his
generosity, not their merit (Matt. 20:1-16).
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Love
• “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

• Christians celebrate this absolute

and unconditional love of God
revealed in the Passion and
Resurrection of Jesus.

• This is what love does; it gives of

itself:

• “In this is love, not that we loved

God but that He loved us and sent
his son to be the expiation for our
sins” (1 John 4:10).
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Allah in Islam
• The Qur’an provides the foundation for
the Muslim worldview.

• At its center is belief in Allah. Islam is

monotheistic. It acknowledges one God,
and only one God—Allah.

• Allah is all powerful, merciful,

compassionate, just, the Lord of the
Universe.

• The belief in one God sets Islam apart

from its historic predecessors on the
Arabian peninsula.

• That belief distinguishes Islam from every

other religion, even other monotheisms.
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Monotheism
• Islam claims a certain value and
authority for the other “religions of the
Book,” Christianity and Judaism.

• But Islam considers that these traditions

have not maintained the purity and
integrity of the monotheism that is the
basis of faith.

• The Quran (112) says:

• “Say: ‘He is God, One, God, the

Everlasting Refuge, who has not
begotten, and has not been begotten,
and equal to Him is not any one.”
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There is no god but Allah

• The recitation of the creed: “there is no god
but Allah; Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah”
affirms monotheism and rejects polytheism.

• The worst offense in Islam is idolatry. Allah

cannot be shown with an image or picture.

• Artistic expression, in and on mosques, has

tended to utilize geometric patterns.

• There are, however, examples/images of

human beings, animals, flowers and other
venues for art.

• For example, there are illustrated manuscripts

depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
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Majesty of Allah
• Characteristics of Allah are majesty and the ability to
inspire awe.

• Allah is present everywhere (omnipresent), all knowing

(omniscient), and all powerful (omnipotent):

• “Surely your Lord is God, who created the heavens and

the earth in six days…and the sun, and the moon, and
the stars subservient, by His command. Verily, His are
the creation and the command. Blessed be God, the
Lord of all Being.” (7:54).

• Allah is not merely power. Allah embodies absolute

justice and mercy as well:

• “Surely thy Lord is wide in His forgiveness. Very well

He knows you, when He produced you from the earth,
and when you were yet unborn in your mothers’
wombs; therefore hold not yourselves purified; God
knows very well him who is godfearing.” (53:32-33).
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How gods are approached?

• If a god is a god only in relationship to a human,
then how is this relationship enacted?

• How is a god’s existence or presence

acknowledged?

• Gods appear to us reciprocally according to our

attitudes toward them. Our attitudes toward
them are reciprocal with the way gods appear to
us.

• These patterns of interaction can be understood

in terms of two main types:

• (1) The ways humans experience themselves

on the receiving end of the relation;

• (2) The ways humans are the active agent in

the relation.
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Receiving gods
• A god is something received.

• The numinous is something that

comes to us channeled through
given cultural forms.

• The sense of the numinous is the

feeling of being encountered by a
powerful “other”—of being faced by a
reality or being that is astonishingly
greater than one’s self.

• The contrast between this greater

presence and one’s ordinary reality
is dramatic and produces awe,
amazement, ecstasy.
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Interaction with gods

• Religious systems anticipate the
points at which interaction with
things supernatural might or will
occur.

• For some, these points are

visions and dreams.

• For others, they are ritually

induced states of possession,
conversion experiences, church
services, sacraments, faith
healing, illnesses, contact with a
holy person, divination, contact
with nature, meditation, or private
prayer.
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Visions and voices

• Many religions have begun
with visions or voices.

• Moses is reported to have

seen the majesty of
Yahweh on Mt. Sinai.

• Islam is the direct result of

the words of Allah that
came to the non-literate
Muhammad via the
Archangel Gabriel.

• These words were

enshrined as the holy
Qur’an.
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Presence of gods
• For some the presence of the supernatural is
received intensely in holy objects such as relics
or icons.

• “Seeing” the divine image, or darshan, is central

to Hindu worship.

• A Hindu goes to a temple, pilgrimage site, or

holy person not for “worship” but “for darshan.”

• The deity or holy person “gives darshan” and

the people “take darshan.”

• Catholic and Orthodox Christianity focus on the

presence of God in the rites of the Eucharist.

• In the Eucharist, the consecrated bread and

wine are transformed into the body and blood of
Christ. The bread and wine are not just symbols
but divine presences.
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Human responses to gods

• Human responses gods
follow certain patterns.

• Two kinds of relationships

are:

• (1) the long-term relation to

the god;

• (2) the set of short-term

occasions where the superior
being is enjoined in particular
ways.
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Long-term relationship
• The long-term relationship is
characterized by the theme of service
and attitudes such as faith and trust.

• This is the realm of loyalty,

steadfastness, and commitment.

• One aspect of service is obedience or

allegiance.

• Gods, after all, are “lords” of the world

they embody. They have authority and
in turn require fealty or loyalty.

• They are guarantors and maintainers of

the world and moral order.
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Forms of loyalty
• There are different social forms of loyalty.

• Onto the idea of deity are projected the

modes of allegiance familiar to the group’s
tradition.

• Traditional monotheism reflects the imagery

of the king-subject relationship.

• The primary themes of scriptures and

worship are homage and obedience.

• Disloyalty to the god is the greatest sin.

• An apostate is a traitor.

• A joint obligation: if the people serve

obediently, the lord protects; if people uphold
their world, their world will uphold them.
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Patterned ways
• There are patterned ways that
behavioral relationship between
humans and gods is acted out.
• We can identify:

• (1) petition,

• (2) atonement or confession,

• (3) offering,

• (4) celebration,

• (5) divination.
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(1) Petition
• Petitionary behavior is that connected with
prayer and propitiation.
• Humans need and desire things.

• What they cannot obtain on their own they

must seek and receive from a higher, other
power.
• Asking things of gods does not necessarily
take the form of simple petition. It could be
simple self-accusation, flattery, vows,
conciliation, and meditation.
• Some words for prayer mean ask; others
mean seek, long for, speak in a formal
manner, or soften.
• Different gods will have different
expectations and standards for
determining the adherent’s sincerity.
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(2) Atonement and purification

• One must actively remove offence to
the gods in order to avoid their
judgment and be a recipient of their
benefits.
• Petition is often accompanied by acts
of purification.
• One must make up for something
done wrong, make oneself worthy of
that which is desired, rid oneself of
any impurity that may be obstructing
one’s goals.
• Confession of sins is one format.
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(3) Giving
• The third pattern is giving.

• One gives—just as one serves,

asks, and atones—according to
the nature of the god.
• Some offerings to gods are like
tributes or even taxes.
• A material offering may be
appropriate for continuing land
rights.
• But in return for salvation one
offers one’s entire allegiance and
moral life.
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Reciprocity
• There is reciprocity to giving:

• “The gift allows a stream to flow, which

from the moment of the giving runs
uninterruptedly from donor to recipient
and from receiver to giver: ‘recipient is in
the power of the giver.’”
• The gift or offering sets in motion a cycle
of giving.
• Giver and receiver are united in this
binding quality of the offering.
• The more we give, the more the god
gives; the more we have received, the
more we must give back.
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Forms of giving
• Sacrifices and offerings are the
common external forms of giving.
• But to be effective they must always
involve giving something that is one’s
own possession or part of one’s own
self.
• When an animal is sacrificed, it is not a
wild animal but a domesticated one.
• In the bear sacrifice of the Ainu of
Japan, the animal is reared among the
villagers and treated as a member of
the family before it is ultimately sent
back to the gods.
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(4) Celebration/ thanks giving

• A forth pattern of actions is
celebration, the human response
to blessings received.
• This is the behavior of thanks-
giving, worship, and praise, again
expressed in countless cultural
styles.
• “I was hungry and you gave me
food, I was thirsty and you gave
me drink, I was a stranger and
you welcomed me, I was naked
and you clothed me, I was sick
and you visited me, I was in
prison and you come to me.”
(Matthews 25:35-36).
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(5) Divination
• The fifth pattern of relating to the gods
is through divination.

• It is the act of “reading” objects in the

physical world to see how they
express the activity or inclination of the
gods.

• The premise of divination is that there

is a synchronistic sympathy between
the wholeness of life and each
fragment of it, and,

• therefore, the action of gods can be

deciphered by scrutinizing certain
patterns in nature and interpreting
them as signs or adumbrations of the
future.