The unity of God previously mentioned does not exclude the possibility of a plurality of divine persons. God the one would be the first and foremost, _rex hominum deorumque_. Some there may be that rise through saintliness to divinity, Sons of God, persons surpassing man in intelligence, power and morality. To take sides in this matter is equivalent to professing a particular religion. We must avoid the absolutist spirit in religion no less than in philosophy. By this Renouvier means that brutal fanaticism which prohibits the Gods of other people by passion and hatred, which aims at establishing and imposing its own God (which is, after all, but its own idea of God) as the imperialist plants his flag, his kind and his customs in new territory, in the spirit of war and conquest. Such a “holy war” is an outrage, based not upon real religion, but on intolerant fanaticism in which freedom and the inherent rights of personality to construct its own particular faith are denied.
Renouvier finds a parallelism between the worship of the State in politics and of the One God in religion. The systems in which unity or plurality of divine personality appears differ from one another in the same way in which monarchal and republican ideas differ. Monarchy in religion offers the same obstacles to progress as it has done in politics. It involves a parallel enslavement of one’s entire self and goods, a conscription which is hateful to freedom and detrimental to personality. To this supreme and regal Providence all is due; it alone in any real sense exists. Persons are shadows, of no reality, serfs less than the dust, to whom a miserable dole is given called grace, for which prayer and sacrifice are to be unceasingly made or chastisements from the Almighty will follow. This notion is the product of monarchy in politics, and with monarchy it will perish. The two are bound up, for “by the grace of God” we are told monarchs hold their thrones, by his favour their sceptre sways and their battalions move on to victory. This monarchal God, this King of kings and Lord of hosts, ruler of heaven and earth, is the last refuge of monarchs on the earth. Confidence in both has been shaken, and both, Renouvier asserts, will disappear and give place to a real democracy, not only to republics on earth, but to the conception of the whole universe as a republic. Men raise up saints and intercessors to bridge the gulf between the divine Monarch and his slaves. They conceive angels as doing his work in heaven; they tolerate priests to bring down grace to them here and now. The doctrine of unity thus gives rise to fanatical religious devotion or philosophical belief in the absolute, which stifles religion and perishes in its own turn. The doctrine of immortality, based on the belief in the value of human personality, leads us away from monarchy to a republic of free spirits. A democratic religion in this sense will display human nature raised to its highest dignity by virtue of an energetic affirmation of personal liberty, tolerance, mutual respect and liberty of faith—a free religion without priests or clericalism, not in conflict with science and philosophy, but encouraging these pursuits and in turn encouraged by them.[28]