A Paladin of the Unknown God,

Contributed by Tom Kolar

I was listening to the Dice Steeple Christian gaming podcast, and the hosts raised an issue related to Christian tabletop RPG play that I’d never considered: polytheism and “divine” magic.  If I believe in a single God who is the Creator of all things, the source of all power and divinity, and who is the only correct object of worship–how do I GM or play in a setting with a polytheistic universe, in which PCs and NPCs receive “divine” power from the gods of that setting?  This is the default cosmology of D & D and, in my experiences, of most fantasy RPG settings.  Now, to be perfectly honest, this is not an issue that previously occurred to me.  I’ve played and GMed clerics and paladins in polytheistic fantasy settings, and I initially had what I imagine is the reaction of a lot gamers, Christian or otherwise: “It’s just a game!  It’s just an imaginary wizard game!  Don’t worry about it!”  However, one of the points of Innroads, and geekdom in general, is that imaginary wizard games are worth taking seriously. So if this is an issue that makes some other believers uncomfortable, it’s worth addressing.  

It’s not at all theologically problematic to have supernaturally powerful clerics of evil-aligned gods.  We can easily imagine demons being worshipped as gods and empowering their servitors to “cast spells” like Pharaoh’s servants in Exodus 7:10-12 or Exodus 8:6-7.  The real dilemma is having empowered clerics of good-aligned gods, because we recognize the Lord as the only source of the “domains” of those gods–divinity, healing, virtue, etc.  One solution is “don’t play or have clerics or paladins of good gods” and yeah, that works.    However, the cleric or paladin classes are attractive to a lot of Christian player. A holy warrior who heals the sick, protects the weak, and courageously smites the forces of evil–for many of us, that’s the kind of hero we dream of being, and thus a real joy to role play.  But in almost all fantasy settings, that involves worship and divine power in a polytheistic universe, which could strike some as uncomfortably close to idolatry.  Another solution is to be a cleric or paladin of Jesus or God, but that’s a pretty huge, question-raising world change if someone is running a pre-established world or if the game is just straight d20 PHB fantasy.   

As I said, I’ve never personally had this sort of discomfort come up as a player or as a GM, but if I did, here’s some suggestions to make the standard PHB fantasy setting more compatible with an Abrahamic monotheistic worldview.  Now, I’m not offering these as serious theological suggestions or religious points; I’ve just got a couple of ideas for setting tweaks that would make a polytheistic RPG-setting fantasy world monotheistic, and do it with as little change to the actual world or the session-to-session play as possible.   Some of these are setting changes; others are just ideas for thinking about or imaging the gods of, say, the Iron Kingdoms in a way that might be more comfortable for some believers.

So first, taking a d20 setting seriously as a universe, we have to imagine that these are worlds filled with sentient creatures with free will, ultimately created and sustained by the Lord (our beliefs about the nature of reality and existence sort of demand this).  These worlds have not been gifted with the specific revelation of that Creator’s nature and identity that was given to our dimension via the people of Israel or later, the Church of Christ.  So, these campaign worlds are whole planets and dimensions and planes analogous to the gentile nations in Scripture.  Looking at a couple of passages about the relationship of God to the gentiles might suggest some ways of imagining a possible relationship of God to Faerun, or any other d20 fantasy world.  

One possibility is the titular “Unknown God.”  A player wants to specifically be a cleric or paladin of the Lord, but it doesn’t make sense to have a religious tradition from our world in a fantasy universe like, say, Greyhawk.  Rather than make the dramatic change of adding an explicitly Christian religion with knowledge from our dimension (pretty jarring to the setting), a GM could introduce a Church of the Unknown God.  This would be a church that believed in a single, supreme Creator who is transcendently greater than the other gods of the setting.  Now, this is based on the missionary strategy of Paul in Acts 17 (where he encounters the altar to the Unknown God).  Paul is evangelizing the people of Athens by introducing Christianity not as a totally foreign set of ideas, but as the logical fulfillment of truths already grasped even among the gentiles, and in doing this he specifically says that the previous ignorance and idolatry of the gentiles in Athens will not be held against them.  Paul lays that premise out explicitly in Romans 2:13-16.  The gentiles are not responsible for their own ignorance, and it is right to acknowledge and build on what truths of God they have been able to grasp by reason, even when those truths can be mixed up with errors.  

This is an extraordinarily important idea for Christian gamers playing in fantasy worlds–that God makes Himself known in imperfect, but true forms even among those who have not been gifted the specific Revelation of this world.  It is the morally correct and righteous thing for those people to follow that natural revelation, as long as the actual revelation is unavailable to them (as it would be the average d20 fantasy world).  A paladin or cleric of “the unknown God” or “the Creator” would be receiving empowerment and guidance from the Lord, even though they would not have our understanding of the being they worship.  What the Church of the Unknown God’s relationship would be to other churches or worshippers of the other gods of the setting is up to the GM to work out, and could be an excellent source of conflict and drama for that Church’s PC member,  if that is what the group wants

One hesitation to add such a church to the campaign world might be the fear that this would necessarily lead to religious conflict within the party or between the party and the wider setting.  This is an understandable fear, but I do not believe that conflict is in fact necessary.  It may seem to many believers that a Church which is in contact with the Lord, even imperfectly, would be required to be a missionary church and to entail rejection of the other religions of the setting as false gods.  A Church of the Unknown God seems to complicate the world and the society and to interfere with the story the game is supposed to be about.  However, once again, if we imagine the setting world existing in a lesser stage of revelation to our own universe, a believer can find analogues that eliminate the necessity of religious conflict.   

It’s very clear from even a cursory read of the Old Testament, especially the Historical books, that Israel took a long, long time to become truly capital M Monotheist.  From the time of the Exodus, there was a specific prohibition of the worship of other gods, but the language and the attitudes of the people of Israel clearly indicates that many if not most of them believed other gods exist.  A truly monotheist people wouldn’t be continually reverting to worship of other gods, as the people of Israel did over and over again, and there also doesn’t seem to be much of a missionary impulse to stop other peoples from worshipping their gods.  The faith of Israel in the period of, say, the monarchy seems to be primarily concerned with the worship life of Israel alone, and not that of other nations.  I do not recall any scriptural passage from the Historical books such as Judges or Samuel where the gentile nations are condemned for worship of their gods or called to worship the God of Israel.  Once again, it is possible to adapt that era of revelation in the story of Israel for an average d20 fantasy world.  The cleric or paladin worships that world’s revelation of the Lord, while accepting the existence of other gods and the worship of those gods by people of other churches or nations. This minimizes unwanted inter-party religious conflict but allows the potential for that conflict if it is desired by the group.  

Using the model of the faith of Israel at the time of the Judges or Kings gives us another possibility for a Christian cosmology compatible setting tweak.  It’s not much stretch to imagine that, in a fantasy world, the Lord is in the process of revealing Himself to a particular people or nation (the Greyhawk version of Israel), but they are at an imperfect stage of Revelation.  They believe that other gods exist, but their specific god (say, Pelor) has a special, exclusive covenantal relationship with their people, and is the supreme god who is greater than all others.  If a believer accepts a story where Jesus appears in another world in the form of a lion named Aslan, then I don’t see them balking at the Lord appearing in another world under the guise of most of the specific good-aligned deities in a d20 fantasy setting.  This does involve a pretty significant re-working of the cosmology of the setting, but unless you are doing an epic-level multi-plane adventure, it would have almost no effect on the ground floor, session-to-session play of the setting.  If the group wants to make the revised cosmology of the game into a story element, the divine PC could be playing the role of a Jeremiah-type, calling their people to see that Pelor is not only their god, but is the only god, and that the others are “like scarecrows” (Jeremiah 10).  However, the religious PC doesn’t need to be Jeremiah.  This doesn’t need to be a source of unwanted conflict or drama.  Ninety –nine percent of the gameplay and adventure can be exactly the same as it would have been playing an off-the-PHB cleric, but in a world that’s much more compatible with a Christian cosmological understanding. 

Having a cleric or paladin who derives their power from the Lord raises a troubling mechanical issue, which is “how do you deal with a botch or bad roll?”  If the Lord has empowered someone to fight evil and do works of good, how does a GM prevent that from turning into an “I win” button?  How can someone acting for an all-powerful God fail in a battle (roll low) with someone empowered by a lesser evil entity?  A way of explaining this in a Christian sense is to understand the failure produced by the PC’s low roll not as a failure of the divine power, but of the character channeling that power.  A good scriptural model is Peter walking on water (and then sinking) in Matthew 14:22-33.  It’s clear that this miraculous act of Peter fails because he loses faith, not because of any deficiency or failure of God’s divine power.  Any PC can adopt this as an in character explanation for poor performance, especially against the forces of evil.  Out of character, the “searing light” spell failed because of a low roll, but in-universe it was a failure of the faith or virtue of the cleric.       

However, having “Pelor is really the Lord” still doesn’t solve one of the deeper cosmological problems of trying to imagine a d20 fantasy world existing in harmony with a Christian understanding of creation and divinity, which is the issue of a pantheon of good-aligned gods.  We see the Lord as the single source of creation, divinity, healing, grace, and all virtues associated with the good alignment, as well as the only singular and exclusive correct object of worship.  And yet the average d20 fantasy setting has a collective of entities that are sources of divinity, power, and goodness who are worshipped by the people in those settings–a pretty clear contradiction of the Christian worldview.      

I believe that with a little re-tooling of the internal theology of those in-universe churches, those fantasy settings can be made into ultimately monotheistic universes with very little setting alteration.  A group can agree (and please make sure everyone is on board with any setting changes) that in their version of whatever d20 fantasy setting they are playing, there is a single all-powerful Creator God who is the ultimate source of healing, truth, good, and all of the powers and abilities of the clerics of the “gods” of the setting.  Those “gods” have churches devoted to them, but those churches do not worship their “gods;” rather they revere them as sources of moral instruction, patronage, and channels of the power and divinity of the Creator.       

If the gods in question are ascended humans (such as Morrow in Iron Kingdoms or Ezra in Ravenloft) it’s easy to imagine their ascension to the celestial realm as a form of God-directed ascension, such as Elijah experienced in 2 Kings 2:10-14.  It’s also easy to reconfigure the theology of a good-aligned church based around an ascended human (or other sentient creature) to make them more compatible with a monotheistic view on worship belonging to God alone.  In this version of the setting, the church of these different “good gods” would acknowledge the Creator as ultimate source of power and divinity, and see their “god” as a particular model of virtue and a facilitator of the divine power of the Creator wielded by their clerics and paladins.  

The majority of d20 fantasy religions are not centered around ascended humans, but around transcendent independent entities called gods (thus the discomfort believers feel).  If you simply re-imagine that those in-universe gods are all lesser beings created by the Lord (more analogous to angels) called “gods” by the people of the setting, those universes can still be ultimately monotheist.  In this version, the good-aligned “gods” are angelic beings who have affinity with specific divine virtues (the domain) and who facilitate the empowerment of the clergy with supernatural abilities flowing from the one Creator God; those clergy worship the Creator alone, while looking to their “god” with devotion and respect.   I know for some people it’s the use of the word “god” that makes them uncomfortable.  If everyone in the group’s okay with it, it’s no problem to swap put a word that means “powerful ascendant being” like ‘Archon’ or ‘Eidolon’ or any other of possibilities that keep the ground-floor setting and role of clerics unchanged.     

There is some scriptural evidence for imaging angels with a more direct and focused patronage of territorial spirits similar to some beings in a d20 fantasy pantheon.  Daniel 10 describes patron angels of the different nations of the world, which is a small step away from patron angels for different sentient races.  It’s not  that much of a theological stretch to imagine that in a world where God was going to make gnomes, He would appoint a patron angel named “Garl Glittergold” who would be worthy of special reverence and attention by the beings that had been placed under Garl’s patronage by the Lord.      

It’s a cosmology similar to what Tolkien established in Middle Earth–powerful servitor beings of the Creator filling the role of gods in a normal mythological setting–and it’s easily portable to almost every d20 fantasy setting.  This is a big re-working of the normal cosmology of those fantasy settings, but as I said, unless you’re playing a super-high level multi-plane adventure, this change also wouldn’t have any effect on the average session’s ground floor adventuring.  It’s a simple “behind the curtain” change to the backstory of the different religions and cosmology of the world that might ease some GMs’ or players’ discomfort with a polytheistic setting.  As always, if this would still make you uncomfortable, go ahead and do something else–but if these ideas help resolve a desire to play a fantasy rpg while building a world compatible with Christian monotheism, have fun!