The New Deism

A few weeks ago, Howard Van Till asked me to comment on historical issues
surrounding deism, God, and nature. I did briefly comment at that time,
stressing the political and sceptical climate that gave rise to deism in the
late 17th and early 18th centuries. I also noted that some modern writers
mistakenly refer to "interventionism" as a type of "deism," thus reversing
the actual historical situation and confusing readers (incl. very
sophisticated theologians) who do not know the historical literature well.
I added that it is really certain modern theologians (Peacocke, e.g.) who
are closer to deism than the "interventionists" they criticize.

I stand by those comments, and have just discovered a fascinating little
book by an Anglican theologian that supports my comments. Richard Sturch, a
former professor at the Univ of Nigeria, "is vicar of Islip, Oxford"
(according to the book's cover, published 1990) and author of "The New
Deism: Divine Intervention and the Human Condition" (St Martin's Press,
1990). I strongly recommend this little work (ca. 150 pp.) to all on this
list interested in this subject.

I have only just begun to read it, but can see already that it is carefully
nuanced and scholarly. It covers such topics as "Consciousness," "Prayer,"
"Providence and Miracle," "Revelation," "Ethics," and many others. The
author rightly distinguishes between traditional deism, in which God was
really seen as wholly unconcerned with the present order of things, in which
God would never "intervene" (ie, purely transcendent and not immanent); and
what he calls "the new deism," in which immanence is paramount, b/c God *can
not* "intervene." Let me quote two passages to give a sense of the book's
attitude:

"This essay is intended as a criticism of a particular view of God and the
world, and the relationship between them, which has been explicitly avowed
by several Christian theologians ... and is, I suspect, lurking in the back
of the minds of a good many who are not theologians. I can best bring out
what this view is by quoting ... the late Rudolf Butlmann:

'The thought of the action of God as an unworldly and transcendent action
can be protected from misunderstanding only if it is not thought of as an
action which happens between the worldly actions and events, but as
happening within them.' "

"... But [these theologians] endorse the view that the whole of what goes
on in the universe (including that little bit of it which constitutes the
human race) can be seen as an unbroken and continuous web of events governed
by natural laws in which it is a mistake to look for special actions that
can be ascribed to the God whom all believe to have created the web in the
first place. I am going to call this sort of view 'continuism'. I might
have used 'deism', recalling the 18th-C movement which took an almost
identical view of the relationship between God and the world (as [Maurice]
Wiles points out); but the deists' starting-point was a great confidence in
the human intellect's power to understand God without the need of such
superstitious ideas as revelation. I do not think the modern continuists
are quite so sure of themselves. Moreover, many of them are clear that God
is not only the creator but the sustainer of the universe, and not all the
old deists realized this. In both respects, these theologians' position is
an improvement on deism, and deserves a new name."

Again, this little book is highly recommended. I would be interested to
hear comments from any who decide to read it this summer!

ted
Received on Mon Jul 12 14:33:17 2004