So, is hegemonic divinity a curse or punishment rather than a privilege?
Given reality, that seems at least possible and perhaps probable; well, assuming hegemonic divinity involving the five traditional attributes exists. The traditional attributes, at least to hegemonic, monotheistic Abrahamics are: eternal existence, without beginning or end; ubiquity, omnipresence, presence everywhere concurrently and permanently; omniscience, all knowingness; omnipotence, all powerful; and, the trickiest in light of the others, omnibenevolence, all good, perfectly so.
Imagine how incredibly boring eternal existence must be, especially eternal existence without peers or companions.
But perhaps it’s much worse than just boring.
In one postulate, the divine experiences everything that anything and anyone experiences and does so perpetually, over and over again time being inapplicable thus, every single experience is permanent: all the joy and all the pleasure, sure; but also all the pain and all the suffering, all the frustration, all the betrayal, all the injustice, all the blame, whether fair or not.
In a more scientifically sophisticated version, one predicated on string and quantic hypotheses, one where every possibility exists in an infinity of universes, that scenario is multiplied in infinite variations. Would it be possible to remain sane in that context while being omnibenevolent? If divinity were callous and indifferent, or even evil, perhaps. But being omnibenevolent, and eternally so, sanity would seem quantically improbable.
So, what sane omnipotent and omnibenevolent divinity would voluntarily tolerate such eternal punishment? It certainly seems as though the experience would be the ultimate punishment, the ultimate curse but if so, imposed by what?
Might it be that divinity, in addition to the five traditional hegemonic, monotheistic, Abrahamic attributes is a masochist?
That would seem the only answer and sort of explains the crucifixion of Yešu, assuming any of the foregoing is accurate.
I wonder how frustrated the foregoing would make masochists feel.
_____
© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television in both Colombia and abroad; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
