The Divine

Theos (θεός) is the Greek word for a god, and to theion, 'the divine', the divine as such. The Greek conception was strikingly broad: divinity meant not a single creator but whatever is deathless, blessed, and supremely powerful — the gods of Olympus, the heavenly bodies, the powers of nature, even abstractions like Justice or Love could be called gods. (Our word 'theology', the account of the divine, is built from theos.)

The god of the philosophers

Greek philosophy gradually refined this into something more exalted and unified. Xenophanes mocked the gods made in human image and spoke of one greatest god; Plato set the Good beyond being as the source of all; Aristotle reasoned to an Unmoved Mover, thought thinking itself; and the Neoplatonists placed the ineffable One above even Intellect. The divine became less a person than a principle — the perfect, self-sufficient ground of all that is.

Many gods and one source

Yet the philosophers did not, for the most part, abolish the many gods. They ranked them as orders proceeding from the one source, so that polytheism and a kind of monotheism could coexist: the highest divine is one and beyond name, while the gods of worship are its radiant expressions. To 'become like god' (homoiōsis theōi) was held to be the very goal of the philosophical life.