Not even the psalmists were one hundred percent monotheists !

It will also come as a shock to most modern evangelical Christians to realise that this ambivalence is clearly shown as late as David (1000 BCE), and even beyond, and appears regularly in some of the Psalms. For instance:

Psalm 95.3: “For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all [as in, ‘all other’] gods.”
Psalm 97.9: “For you Lord [Elohim]… are exalted far above all gods.”
Psalm 136.2: “O give thanks to the God [Elohim] of gods…”
Psalm 138.1: “…. before the gods I will sing praises to you [O God].”

What is not in question is the obvious fact that those more enlightened Jews like the best of the prophets, priests, Levites and some of the more pious ‘lay’ folk, certainly regarded the other ‘gods’ as ‘evil gods’ and as ‘not god’ in the way Elohim was. In their occasional more revelatory moments both prophets and psalmists could declare sentiments like those expressed in Psalm 96.5, “For all the gods of the nations are idols but the Lord made the heavens.” But to imagine that any of them were monotheists in the strict way modern Christians, Jews or Muslims are, is to misunderstand the mind-set of the times.

In fact the verses quoted above show clearly the accepted majority belief of the Israelite culture that the God of Moses was ‘Elohim’ and as such was in fact the great ‘High God’ who was far above the lesser deities.

While they had all heard of Moses’ statement in Deuteronomy 4.35 where he tells the Israelites that “besides him [Elohim] there is no other”, their polytheistic blinkers were so strong they understandably could only interpret this as saying ‘there can be no other God, besides Elohim, for us.’ It was not until after the bitter lessons of the Exile that for the first time the Jewish nation, as a whole, finally accepted full-blown monotheism.

For the modern Christian, ingrained as we are with centuries of assumed monotheism, it is virtually impossible to quickly grasp the underlying beliefs in the psalmists’ mind that caused them to write as they did. We quite understandably make the mistaken assumption that the writers were merely being ironic and held precisely the same strict monotheism that we do.

The whole point of what been argued above is to suggest that the ‘fool’ in this Psalm 14 is not an atheist as we would define this today.
However, whether this type of fool is or is not an atheist in any modern sense is not the real point at issue in this Psalm. What is being condemned is not primarily either refusal to worship Elohim in favour of another god or ‘atheism’. Any reading of the entire seven verses will show that what is being condemned is the vast evil inflicted on what verse six calls ‘the poor and patient’.

This is an important point, as it shows that even if these were atheists, as we understand the word, then the particular atheists being referred to were evil people, certainly not ones living truly good selfless lives. Therefore the opening question of this article which asks “What about the ‘truly good’ atheist?” still stands!

Now to the next verse.