I think it is clear that Paul does not "think there are actually other gods." The paragraph cited above as a whole affirms his belief in only the one God. You say that he also affirms the existence of many other gods and lords--but he really doesn't! By using the expression λεγόμενοι θεοὶ, "so-called" gods, in the immediately preceding clause of the sentence in question, he makes it explicit that he is talking about worshipped idols, not beings that he would acknowledge to be gods. 1 Cor 10:18-22 (assuming this is the same Paul) specifically identifies such beings as demons.GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 10:23 pmWell, I actually used 1 Cor 8:4-7 to support my view. To paraphrase Paul from above": "There are many gods and many lords, but for us there is but One God and One Lord". Those other gods are being worshipped as gods. Does Paul think there are actually other gods? If so, what does he mean by "god"?Irish1975 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 5:22 pm…we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. However not all men have this knowledge.
We may be following different interpretative methodologies, because here you seem to be relying on a general notion of what the historical Paul believes (sc. that the One God is the Creator God of the Jews), and using that notion to constrain your reading of particular texts, with the added assumption that our texts are reliably authentic and integral.Paul seems to follow the idea that the One God is the Creator God of the Jews and the creator of Adam.
I argue from the particular to the general. That is, I don't assume a historical Paul behind every verse of the authentic epistles. I don't know who wrote 2 Cor 4:4, or the larger fragment from 2:14 to 7:4, which seems to be a unity (although perhaps 6:14 to 7:1 doesn't belong with it). My working hypothesis these days is that there was an evolving Pauline school, which probably took its origins from the letters of a historical Paul, although it may be impossible to reconstruct his originals. So what we have is the scripture of "Paul," a relative unity.
Within that context, I see elements of demiurgism, intermingled with the redactions of the more Jewish-monotheistic Paul that you invoke (particularly in Romans).
I don't know what you mean by "valid"; that's a normative concept, and I'm just interested in what the words actually meant in the thought world of the person who wrote them.Unless Paul is following a Zoroastrian belief of two equal but opposed Gods, how is calling a non-Creator demiurge a "god" any more valid than calling Satan a "god"?
A demiurge, by definition, is a creator god. But we should be careful about what assumptions we are putting onto Paul w/r/t ideas of creation. That's because he rarely talks about it. Even in 1 Cor 8:6, the reference to the Father ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα could admit of various belief systems, in addition to the anthropomorphic creation story in Genesis. In particular, I think some gnostics would have affirmed this way of speaking about the Father, even though they attributed the creation of the material cosmos to a subordinate deity or emanation or aeon.
What specifically does "the rest of Paul's description" refer to? And how does it negate the demiurgic reading? Appealing to canonical Paul's general Jewishness and general monotheism does not negate this reading, unless the possibility of diverse voices and theologies within the Pauline Corpus is ruled out in principle.It's not that "god of this age" can't mean a Gnostic Creator God, because obviously it can. It's that the rest of Paul's description negates the idea AFAICS.