The imperial divinity

The image of a singular and all-powerful god has become an obsession of the human imagination—particularly in the West—over the last two thousand years or so.  That such a god is now firmly lodged in the human imagination is not a matter of dispute.  It is an easily-defended observational claim.  We just have to ask a sampling of people and quote a myriad of texts.  But whether such a deity exists anywhere beyond human habits of speech or the human imagination is an entirely different question, requiring a very different sort of evidence.  But if we consider it exclusively as an idea within the shared space of human minds, we might wonder about some of its more distressing consequences.

These various notions—first of an exclusive, singular deity, and then of a deity concocted of various superlatives, without boundaries or limits—are much more recent in human thinking than we usually realize.  The idea of a singular godhead is itself little more than two and a half thousand years old.  It was the Greeks who came to it by way of abstract reasoning, which we call philosophy.  This deity had no notable human features or character quirks.  The notion of a divinity with a kind of personality that human beings might recognize had much older roots.  But the idea that one of these personality-enhanced beings might enjoy so much power that there was none left for any other was rather new.  The concept seems to have developed in tandem with notions of imperial sovereignty in the realm of human politics (empires being rather newish inventions themselves).  So the idea of an all-powerful God may have reflected the visible spectacle of a seemingly all-powerful earthly emperor.  But just as the political practice of vesting exclusive power in one individual has produced some perverse civic consequences, so has the idea of an all-powerful God laid a foundation for some troubling moral outcomes.

First, the idea of divine omnipotence has given rise to rather extreme ways of speaking and behaving.  The most inspired devotees of this conception of god will abandon families and careers, embark on missions to faraway places, create political parties, launch wars (military and cultural), and occasionally fly large planes into buildings.  But perhaps even such life-altering or life-ending actions would not be enough for a god such as this.  If one supposes that the universe and everything in it was conceived, created, arranged and managed—thereby fully owned—by such a singular divinity, then this supreme will could not be gainsaid or even held to questioning by any lesser being for any reason whatever.  This god could not possibly answer to any morality or authority that it did not itself bring into being and enforce.  Indeed the very existence of morality (and its fanciful supposition of choices) would be entirely superfluous next to the purity of this god’s will.  The declarations of such a being would necessarily be irresistible and binding, no matter how they might appear to lesser beings.  What this god intended to happen would necessarily come to pass.  The slaves of this god’s will, which would include all (other) sentient beings, would be obliged to look for no other morality but its declared will.  Indeed, it would be remarkable (perhaps unaccountable) that they would even be able to conceive of other options or entertain independent desires.  Any creature capable of reflection would necessarily conclude that there was no possibility of a will apart from the imperial will and therefore no possibility of choosing otherwise.  Freedom of will, if it could be named and imagined, would be entirely nonsensical since there were no other possibilities available.

In such an exclusively-owned universe the directives of this god would be carried out without hesitation or reflection.  Even faithfulness of service would not be the decision of the individual but entirely the determination of the god.  If some served well and others connived and resisted, then it was the god’s will that they acted so.  They may not be culpable—in the sense that they could not have done otherwise—but it would hardly matter.  Guilt would be irrelevant.  Innocence likewise.  If the god decided to create innocent-looking babies and have them slaughtered by the bearers of his sword, or by some flesh-penetrating worm that it had designed and unleashed, there would be no moral objection that could stand against such righteous consequences.  If this god in its unfathomable pleasure were first to prefer a particular people group and then decide that they were unworthy after all, it could order another people group to remove them from its holy sight.

And we may even be able to find instances, in ancient narratives and purported revelations, that such a god of power has apparently done these very things.  Perhaps even destroyed all the peoples of the earth in a cataclysmic gush of water.  Then apparently regretted the decision.  But who could possibly hold this against the god?  None of these actions could be called crimes because the only real crime in such a universe would be the futile attempt to take something that belonged to the divinity—which is everything that is.  All lives belong to the god.  The divinity is the only one who could even be the victim of a supposed crime.  As well as the only judge, the only enforcer.  And so any dutiful servant of this god’s will would waste no time asking whether the orders were just or morally worthy.  They would merely ask themselves, how expeditiously can I carry out the god’s will.

So if such a god were to exist, there would be no goodness apart from fulfilling the imperial will of the god.  In fact, there would be no sense at all in speaking of goodness.  Only godness.  Pure unapologetic will.  One of the consequences, therefore, of belief in such a singular and infinitely powerful being is that there really can be no morality.  No choice.  Only obedience.  And if the god were bound by no morality beyond its declared pleasure, neither would be its devoted servants.  (For some reason, they still prefer that term over slaves.)  They know better than to second-guess the intentions of such a magnificent being.

But even if we back off from such an extreme view of the imperial divinity, God still has to be the one and only god, right?  And if it is the one and only god, then it must be—in some sense—an all-powerful God, right?  Sadly, no.  Neither of these conclusions necessarily follows from the supposition that there is some sort of divine superintendency in the universe.  Even if we were to grant that this obviously-created world demands a creator (which is not a necessary supposition either), the presupposition would only require a creative power sufficient to have produced the universe as we observe it.  The creator-god we could deduce from the observed universe would have to be powerful enough to have accomplished what can be observed, but would not need to be a whit more powerful than this.  If we were to bring our car to be fixed by a mechanic and it was returned to us in good working condition, we would not assume that the mechanic was brilliant enough to have designed and built the car, only that she was sufficiently skilled to have carried out the successful repair that we can observe.  An all-competent mechanic would not be required to explain the happy outcome.  Neither would a god-of-all-the-power be required to explain the world as we experience it.

Nevertheless, it would be laughably presumptuous for any creature so poor in will and understanding as a human being to attempt to speak with authority about any sort of divine power.  No such pitiful creature would be able to distinguish an impressively-powerful-god from a maximally-powerful-god, let alone a god-of-all-the-power.  That pathetic being would just not be competent to do so.  It could not even judge the reliability of any supposed communication sent down by a god of any degree of power.  Best not go down that road.  So perhaps such a creature would do better to stop trying to understand it and just let any god that might actually exist get on with doing whatever it has a will to do.  Which it will do in any case, with or without your leave.  Better that such a poor human creature get on with its lowly business of trying to get to the end of the day alive and with a slightly better understanding of the natural and observable world in which it actually lives.  This may not seem much in terms of power or ambition, but it is a goal within our capacity.  Let the gods rage above.  Their concerns are far beyond our own and we can do nothing for or against them.

But take heart.  We have no obvious natural evidence or reason to think that such gods have any concern for us, or that they are still there at all.  And if there were in truth only one, we would have no idea what it was like or what it wanted from us.  The peculiar notion of a god-of-all-the-power exists, as far as we can observe, only in the fevered imaginations of a few human brains.  Better for us if we ignored them too.