Gods And God

Poul Anderson's Vault Of The Ages (New York, 1969) ends with two climactic chapters:

19. The Last Battle
20. Twilight of the Gods

(CS Lewis and Wagner.)

In this post-nuclear future, polytheism has returned although Carl thinks:

"If the idols of the Dalesmen were no more than wood and stone, then only the great God of the ancients could really be alive - and he would be more just than the powers of earth and air and fire." (p. 100)

Pagans worship not wood and stone but an indwelling spirit or presence.

According to one theory of religion:

(i) dependent on natural forces that they could neither understand nor control, people personified the forces and tried to placate them;

(ii) as society became more complex, social forces, like economics and war, oppressed people with the same apparently external power as nature so that as a result the social forces were also personified;

(iii) the personified forces were unified;

(iv) as natural and social forces come to be understood and controlled, they cease to be personified.

In this Anderson novel, nuclear war has thrown society back to stage (i).