One thing that struck me in the beginning of Maurizio Bettini’s In Praise of Polytheism is that he does not start with living polytheistic traditions—Hinduism and its billion adherents, for example, or the various African-derived traditions (Santeria, Macumba, Condomble, and others) that together have hundreds of millions of followers, but with the Greeks and Romans in European antiquity. He has good rhetorical reasons for doing so, beginning with discussion of the foundations of European culture and the living currents of philosophy that begin with Aristotle and Plato and are still relevant reference points. He is arguing for the relevance of the foundation religious traditions within which Greek and Roman art and philosophy developed to contemporary issues of religious pluralism in modern Italy.
Bettini’s book has a number of short chapters, and he moves quickly from one point to another. There are overarching themes and a coherent grounding in Jamesian pragmatism. He aims to identify positive ‘cash-value’ of experiences derived through polytheistic engagement in dealing with issues of the present day as well as historically. In particular, he finds value in how polytheism leads us to engage with the gods of others. Throughout, he also draws direct comparisons between Roman polytheism (supplemented with examples from other polytheisms) and monotheism (principally Catholic Christianity) to anchor his discussion in the familiar.
Throughout the book Bettini constructs his arguments clearly and effectively, and his examples are carefully chosen. He began considering two positions around tolerance and inclusion in contemporary Italy, the discussion of removing nativity scenes from schools out of respect to the sensibilities of Muslim children versus a campaign to prevent mosques from being built in small towns. He sees both of these positions as grounded in monotheist assumptions about a ‘jealous god’ and returns to them in this later discussion. He also contrasts the seasonal decorations of Winter Solstice celebrations - the Christian nativity scene and the Roman Saturnalia and Sigillaria with the first illustrating the Christian focus on the dominant figure and the second a polytheist multi-vocal approach to household shrines. He points to the colonialist and Eurocentric assumptions underlying evolutionary theories of religion and challenges the reduction of the gods of antiquity to mythological characters in stories in arguing for their relevance.
Bettini begins by stating that monotheists believe that there is one god, and that there can only be one god, who is unique, whose qualities cannot be shared with any other being whatsoever, who is not comparable to anything save itself. The monotheistic systems have conflated the concept of divinity with that of uniqueness—not simply primus inter pares (first among equals) but exclusive, such that all other conceptions of the divine are false. So, from the monotheistic worldview, one cannot accept deities together and contemporaneous, integrated within a single religious system, all equally real but nevertheless different beings. And by extension, one cannot truly include multiple religions and cultures and languages in a single society – ‘tolerance’, Bettini argues, is provisional.
Bettini’s position is that in the Roman world gods were integrated rather than excluded and religious pluralism, translation, and syncretism were so normal as to be unquestioned. There were no religious wars, although war was common for other reasons, because the gods of other people were equally true and valid as one’s own. It might be that these gods were not known to you, and so you might need to find how they resembled gods that you knew already and learn the appropriate ceremonies to honor them.
Roman polytheists had a process of seeking correspondences among deities, ways in which deities shared common interests or characteristics and might have joint sovereignty over a part of life or natural phenomenon, even within the same pantheon, finding connection and inclusion rather than exclusion. They also had a curious interest in the gods of others, seen ‘not as a menace to the unique truth of one’s own god, but as an opportunity, sometimes even a resource” (62). This approach differs from modern interfaith dialogue and tolerance, which still puts minority religions on probation, no matter how well-meaning, but was centered in recognition and appreciation.
Bettini makes several fascinating digressions to discuss polytheism as language. He sees the adoption of deities into the Roman pantheon as like translation into a common tongue, deities as idioms that could be rephrased, the growth in their numbers like growth in vocabulary, compounding deities together around common interests like compound words, and borrowing deities. This analogy works particularly well when considering the sacred writings of polytheistic and monotheistic religions—in monotheisms the writings are scriptures whose authorship is attributed to the deity, while in polytheism Homer, Hesiod, and the playwrights and poets are known to be individual humans reflecting on the divine, not themselves gods. The gods and their worship are created by human beings and exist in society; they can readily change as the society changes.
Through the idea of citizenship, which was central to Rome, and was extended to deities as well as humans, Bettini argues that the two opposing modern tendencies toward individualism and identity politics and reactionary forced assimilation can also be overcome.
So, the gods of polytheism are not only many, but also fluidly connected and interpenetrating. This pluralism, which in Bettini’s view inevitably results from positing the reality of many deities, is the essential characteristic of polytheism, and it requires plural methods of interpretation and intervention in the world. The comparison he develops between exclusive monotheistic religions and inclusive ancient polytheistic religions is not simple but is clearly and expressively developed.
Ultimately Bettini asks whether the insights of polytheistic practice and theology— translatability of deities, reciprocal interpretation of different deities, curiosity toward others’ deities and naturalization of practices and rituals—could be adopted by the monotheistic religions and cultures. He sees three great obstacles to this adoption—the concept of the single and unique god who excludes all others, the problem of a set canon of scriptures, and the assigned authorship of those scriptures to the god. He concludes that the decline of the book and the weakening of authorship through social media may open the way for these adjustments.
This is a valuable and long-overdue work. What surprised and delighted me, a polytheist, is the amount that I learned about the theology of Roman polytheism, methods of polytheistic theological reflection, and how clear the parallels between our ancient forebears in Greece and Rome and modern syncretic polytheistic practice and attitudes are.
Samuel Wagar is the dean of Edmonton Wiccan Seminary, and the priest of Edmonton Sacred Oak Wiccan Temple.
Samuel Wagar
Date Of Review:
July 17, 2023
