Fear of Clowns: Monotheisms

Fear of Clowns

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
- H. L. Mencken
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Saturday, April 09, 2005

Monotheisms

I find the short descriptions of various forms of monotheism in this Wikipedia entry quite thought-provoking,

Theism, a term that usually refers to the belief in a 'personal' god, that is, a single god with a distinctive personality, rather than just a divine force.
Deism is a form of monotheism in which it is believed that one god exists, however, a Deist comes to his belief through reason, and rejects any religious revelations such as the Bible, the Tanakh, or the Qur'an.
Monistic Theism is the type of monotheism found in Hindu culture. Such type of theism is different from the Semitic religions as it encompasses panentheism, monism, and at the same time includes the concept of a personal God as an universal, omnipotent Supreme Being.
Pantheism holds that the Universe is God. Depending on how this is understood, such a view may be tantamount to atheism, deism or theism.
Pandeism, which combines elements of deism and pantheism, suggests that a single, sentient God designed the universe, and then became the current, non-sentient universe.
Panentheism is a form of theism that holds that God contains, but is not identical to, the Universe. This is also the view of Process theology and also Hinduism. According to Hinduism, the universe is part of God but God is not equal to the universe but in fact transcends it as well. However, unlike Process theology, God in Hinduism is omnipotent. Panentheism is thought of as "God is within the universe as the soul is within the body". By some accounts, panentheism is also called monistic theism in Hinduism. But since process theology is also included in the broad definition of panenetheism and does not accept an omnipotent supreme being, the Hindu view would be called monistic theism.
Substance monotheism, found e.g. in some indigenous African religions, holds that the many gods are different forms of a single underlying substance, and that this underlying substance is God. This view has some similarities to the Christian trinitarian view of three persons sharing one nature.