Spike asked:

Here's a bunch of questions I've been thinking on recently all to do with polytheism. I'm particularly
interested as to whether there could be more than one omnipotent God. This seems of particular
importance to the Christian trinitarian who seems, at least controversially, to be committed to the
notion of three supreme beings.

Are there any other 'God' characteristics you can think of which are problematic to be owned by more
than one being, or even better characteristics that would be greater only if there is another being
which possesses them? Love has been suggested but I'm not convinced by that.

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All these issues depend on your concept of 'omnipotence'. It is, I think, a delusion to believe that we
have, or ever had, a thoroughly satisfactory, unambiguous notion of it. And thus, as you must know,
quite a bevy of omnipotent gods have crossed the horizons of mankind. The Greeks thought of Zeus
as omnipotent, yet he had trouble reading the future (cf. Prometheus myth) and was easily
hoodwinked (cf. Iliad, he and Hera on Mount Ida), so at best this must reckoned as a qualified
'omnipotence'. Jehovah (and the Christian God) are also understood to be omnipotent, but he (or
they) have dreadful communications problems with his/ their flocks, who simply couldn't understand
his messages or thought they were mutually contradictory, on top of which he/ they broke or forgot
promises rather too casually, so here is another qualified 'omnipotence'. All of which ought to suggest
to you that it's the thought we associate with 'omnipotence' that is the really crucial issue. I'm inclined
to think that it's an anthropomorphism to begin with and therefore irrelevant to spirit beings. I mean: to
be totally blunt about it, a being absolutely omnipotent and omniscient could not be separated from
the universe, it would have to be the universe itself; and this suggests that only pantheism and
spinozist philosophy have a proper conception. But you may question whether even this 'proper'
notion is meaningful. I can't see much sense in calling the universe and God by two separate names
if they are the same, even if, as in Spinoza, there is God and everything in the universe is adjectival
to him.

About trinitarianism I can't pretend to be knowledgeable, but even the little I know does not argue (as
you put it) for three supreme beings. The very thought is a non-issue, for it is one being in three
emanations. I think there is some confusion here (maybe shared even by some trinitarians
themselves?) between the concept of three persons and the three-personed God. To God, one or
three or three million makes no difference nor conflict; he is not bound by our sense of individuality;
and thus however many 'persons' God is comprised of, he is still just one.

I don't know if this what you wanted to hear; but religion in my opinion is a seed bed of rubbery
concepts, very few of them amenable to stringent philosophical examination, and the concept of
omnipotence is one of these. I think one of the reasons why scholasticism has been in ill repute for
such a long time (on the whole undeservedly so) is because they were obliged to invent ever more
ingenious schemes for making such intrinsically unrealistic concepts credible; and you will see at
once that, when the influence of the Church waned, it was one of the casualties and to be
irremediably estranged from philosophy. So ultimately, if your curiosity is not dimmed, you need to
keep with religions and swallow (if you can) whatever arguments are put forward by one doctrine or
another.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney