Meaning of henotheism | Babel Free

Definitions

Belief in or worship of one deity without denying the existence of other deities.

countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“There is one kind of oneness which does not exclude the idea of plurality; there is another which does. […] If, therefore, an expression had been given to that primitive intuition of the Deity, which is the mainspring of all later religion, it would have been—'There is a God,' but not yet 'There is but "One God."' The latter form of faith, the belief in One God, is properly called monotheism, whereas the term of henotheism would best express the faith in a single god.”

“[T]he form of worship presented to us in these most ancient documents [the Hindu Rigveda] of the Aryan people is what Professor Maxmüller [i.e., Max Müller] calls Henotheism, viz., the deity invoked for the time being is regarded as supreme, is extolled above the rest and is made the recipient of the worshipper's highest praises and most fervent supplications.”

“In both ethnography/anthropology and ancient history scholars have sometimes sought to 'rescue' polytheism by arguing for an element of monolatry or henotheism, in which the power of one god in the pantheon is proclaimed as supreme. But the manoeuvre is conditioned by a Judaeo-Christian evaluation of monotheism. The terms 'polytheism' and 'monotheism' are best abandoned to the theologians.”

“This new, enriched and reoriented Christian Platonic theology would then have the moral and intellectual resources to absorb the partial visions of Judaism and Islam and pagan henotheisms, preserving the best things in them and discarding the false and inferior things.”

CEFR level