A good place to start is with 4th century Western Church theologian Augustine's "City of God." In his opening chapters he discusses the gods of the Romans (since he was also a Roman) and using his brand of neo-Platonism, consigns all other gods/goddesses to the realm of demons. That has been the essential position of the Roman Catholic Church and of most mainstream Protestant denominations ever since. The 20th century has seen a little moderation of this doctrine in practice (it took Christians awhile to admit that maybe they worship the same "god" as Jews....and then maybe Muslims). For the greater part of its history, the Church has followed Augustine on this...regardless of how intellectually it has been poised. It was upon this basis that the justification for the destruction of Mayan and Aztec folding codices formulated, for example. I have seen the same said of both Hindu and Buddhist deities/bodhisattvas very
recently by various Christian leaders in the United States (e.g. Pat Robertson). The Roman Catholic Church still holds this specific dogma as an official teaching, but will rarely publicly voice it about Hindus and Buddhists, since these traditions are ancient and venerable.
Carol Matthews
I thought someone here might possibly be able to point me towards a good reference regarding early Christian beliefs around the existence of gods.
The first commandment as popularly translated (the Jewish & Protestant wording I think) "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." - would appear to indicate that other gods not only exist but are also ok to believe in long
as you recognize the Christian God as supreme. Catholics appear to recognize the existence of "strange gods" as in "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me."
Compare this to say the verse in the Qur'an "There is no other god beside God."(47:19) which appears to be explicit that there is only the one God with the capital G.
My assumption is that early Christians accepted that "strange gods" existed, similar to how they accepted that "bone-conjurers" could raise the spirits of the dead (King Saul and the shade of Samuel, etc.)
Thanks
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