On Sat, 3 May 1997 18:49:09 -5000, Kim McMurtry wrote:
KM>I am a graduate student in English at Western Carolina
>University, working on a thesis entitled "Deism in Selected Novels
>of Cormac McCarthy." McCarthy is a southern fiction writer who has
>been compared to Flannery O'Connor due his concerns about God and
>the meaning of human existence. Critics have argued various
>interpretations of McCarthy's metaphysical assumptions, ranging
>from nihilism to theism, and I am suggesting that a deistic view
>may reconcile the conflict between these opposing views.
Maybe O'Connor is just an inconsistent theist? An inconsistent theism
may result in something like deism.
KM>I give all of this background to ask: Can anyone offer resources
>for deism in the twentieth century?
For an example of deism in the 20th century, see the end of
my post to Pim van Meurs:
------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, 04 May 1997 20:17:24 -0400, Pim van Meurs wrote:
[...]
PM>So yes I do believe in the existance of a deity but I do not
>believe that the deity actively played a role in evolution other than
>by providing the boundary conditions making it possible for the big
>bang to have happened. Sort of a large experiment left to itself.
This answers Kim McMurtry question about whether deism is alive and
well in the 20th century!
------------------------------------------------------
I found a reference to modern-day deism:
Corey, Michael A. 1994. Back to Darwin: The Scientific Case for
Deistic Evolution. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
Also, while not "in the twentieth century", Geisler N.L., "Christian
Apologetics", Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1976, pp151-171, Brown C.,
"Philosophy and the Christian Faith", Tyndale Press: London, 1969,
pp73-81; 84-106 and Brown C., "Miracles and the Critical Mind",
Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, 1984, pp47-77.
KM>I need to demonstrate that deism, although primarily an 18th
>century view, is still alive in the 20th century.
Before we can determine if "deism...is still alive in the 20th
century" we need to define what it is. Here are some definitions
organised into major (though overlapping themes):
1. Creator set up natural laws and left creation to those laws:
"Some theists have held that God created the world at a first moment
of its history and imposed upon it then the laws of its future operation
and thereafter left it to itself. This is the view of the deist."
(Swinburne R., "The Existence of God", Clarendon Press: Oxford,
Revised Edition, 1991, pp90-91)
"The Christian worldview should be distinguished from any version of
deism. This theory dared to suggest that although God created the
world, he absents himself from the creation and allows it to run on its
own. This view and several twentieth-century varieties seem to
present the picture of a God (or god) who is incapable of acting
causally within nature." (Nash R.H., "Worldviews in Conflict:
Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas", Zondervan: Grand Rapids
MI, 1992, p36)
"The deistic controversy which raged in England during the first half
of the eighteenth century remains to this day a classic illustration of
one of the persisting problems in theology: How close should God
get to his creation? Great thinkers, such as Toland, Collins, Tindal,
Woolston, and Chubb, defended the thesis (with varying degrees of
stress) that God need only have started the process of nature. From
then on resident laws within the universe itself are able to carry the
process on. What need is there for further divine intrusions when God
has impregnated nature with the powers of natural law, and mind
with the light of rationality?" (Carnell E.J., "A Philosophy of the
Christian Religion", Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, 1952, pp286-287)
"...there are...other theories concerning God's relation to the
Universe...that of the Rational Deists, Socinians, and many
rationalists, that God's concern with the Universe is not universal,
special and perpetual, but only general, viz: by first endowing it with
general laws of action, to the operation of which each individual
being is then wholly left God only exercising a general oversight of
the laws, and not of specific agents..." (Dabney R.L., "Systematic
Theology, 1985 reprint, p276)
2. Mechanistic view of universe (analogy of clockwork mechanism):
"In so far as the term Deism is used in common parlance today, it has
come to denote the sort of thinking which believes in a God but
which treats him as an absentee landlord. In the beginning God made
the world and set it in motion. But he has now left it to its own
devices, running of its own accord rather like a clockwork toy. God
exists. But he is too remote to be personally involved in the day-to-
day events of his creation." (Brown C., "Philosophy and the
Christian Faith, 1969, p74)
"Deism is the name which describes the religious beliefs of many in
Europe in the eighteenth century who did not deny the existence of
God, but simply modified, ignored or denied certain aspects of
traditional Christian teaching. They found it convenient to hold
onto their belief in God as Creator, because their understanding of
the universe as a mechanical system needed a Creator who could
create the universe, wind it up like a great clock, and then leave
it to run by itself." (Chapman C., "Christianity on Trial", 1981, p184)
"According to the deistic view, God set the world going like a
machine and then left it independent of Himself." (Machen J.G.,
"Christianity and Liberalism", 1923, p100)
"Deism. This view represents the universe as a self-sustained
mechanism, from which God withdrew as soon as he had created it,
and which he left to a process of self-development. It was held in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the English Herbert, Collins,
Tindal, and Bolingbroke." (Strong A.H., "Systematic Theology",
1967 reprint, p414)
"According to Deism God's concern with the world is not universal,
special and perpetual, but only of a general nature. At the time of
creation He imparted to all His creatures certain inalienable
properties, placed them under invariable laws, and left them to work
out their destiny by their own inherent powers. Meanwhile He merely
exercises a general oversight, not of the specific agents that appear on
the scene, but of the general laws which He has established. The
world is simply a machine which God has put in motion, and not at all
a vessel which He pilots from day to day...It was clothed in a
philosophic garb by the Deists of the eighteenth century, and
appeared in a new form in the nineteenth century, under the influence
of the theory of evolution and of natural science, with its strong
emphasis on the uniformity of nature as controlled by an inflexible
system of iron-clad laws." (Berkhof L., "Systematic Theology", 1966
reprint, p167)
3. Creator does not supernaturally intervene in his creation:
"Deism holds with theism that God created the world but denies his
supernatural intervention in it on the grounds that the world operates
by natural and self-sustaining laws of the Creator. In short, God is
beyond the world but he is not active in the world in a supernatural
way." (Geisler N.L., "Christian Apologetics", 1976, p151)
"Deism, from deus, although etymologically synonymous with theism,
from theos, has been distinguished from it since the middle of the
sixteenth century, and designates a system admitting the existence of
a personal Creator, but denying his controlling presence in the world,
his immediate moral government, and all supernatural intervention
and revelation." (Hodge A.A., "Outlines of Theology", 1983 reprint,
p48)
"The first point to be determined in the controversy with the Deistical
Rationalists, concerns the-possibility of a supernatural revelation.
This they commonly deny, either on philosophical or moral grounds.
It is said to be inconsistent with the nature of God, and with his
relation to the world, to suppose that He interferes by his direct
agency in the course of events. The true theory of the universe,
according to their doctrine, is that God having created the world and
endowed his creatures with their attributes and properties, He has
done all that is consistent with his nature. He does not interfere by his
immediate agency in the production of effects. These belong to the
efficiency of second causes. Or if the metaphysical possibility of such
intervention be admitted, it is nevertheless morally impossible,
because it would imply imperfection in God. If his work needs bis
constant interference it must be imperfect, and if imperfect, it must be
that God is deficient either in wisdom or power." (Hodge C.,
"Systematic Theology", 1960 reprint, Vol. I, p35)
"By deism that tendency of thought is meant which is willing to
accept an original creation but for the rest holds that God withdrew
from the world and left it to its own devices. In such an instance the
notion of creation serves only to give the world its independent
existence, and in this sense it is an idea which was still accepted by
even Kant and Darwin. But the idea was that in creating the world
God had endowed it with total independence and equipped it with an
adequacy of gifts and energies, so that it can in and through itself
exist perfectly well and also under all circumstances save itself. The
world, according to the familiar figure, was thought of as a watch or
a clock which, once it is wound up, goes its own way unattended.
Naturally this was an idea which led to the further thought that the
world has no need of any revelation but can come by the necessary
truth in its own strength and from its own inherent resources."
(Bavinck H., "Our Reasonable Faith", Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1984
reprint, p177)
3. Rejection of revelation and organised religion:
"Deism in some of its forms denied, not only the necessity, but also
the possibility and reality of supernatural revelation." (Berkhof L.,
"Systematic Theology", 1966 reprint, p38)
"Rationalism has appeared under different forms. (1.) The Deistical,
which denies either the possibility or the fact of any supernatural
revelation, and maintains that reason is both the source and ground of
all religious knowledge and conviction." (Hodge C., "Systematic
Theology", 1960 reprint, Vol. I, p34)
"Deism, an unorthodox religious attitude that found expression
especially among a group of English writers beginning with Edward
Herbert in the first half of the 17th century and ending with Henry St.
John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, in the middle of the 18th century. In
general, it refers to what can be called natural religion, the acceptance
of a certain body of religious knowledge that is inborn in every
person or that can be acquired by the use of reason, as opposed to
knowledge acquired through either revelation or the teaching of any
church." ("Deism", Encyclopaedia Britannica, Benton: Chicago,
1984, 15th edition, iii:439)
"In his celebrated Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Dr.
Samuel Johnson defined "deist" as "a man who follows no particular
religion, but only acknowledges the existence of God, without any
other article of faith." The word seems to have been first used by
Calvin's disciple, Pierre Viret, to describe an unidentified group of
thinkers who professed belief in God, but rejected Christ and his
teaching.'...Its leaders were freethinking, idiosyncratic individuals
who shared a common distaste for institutional religion and a belief in
reason and humanity." (Brown C., "Miracles and the Critical Mind",
Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, 1984, p47)
4. Espousal of natural religion:
"DEISM is the name given to a movement which started late in the
17th century and persisted long into the next, with its programme
for replacing traditional by rational religion. It is popularly
regarded as belief in a remote creator, uninvolved in the world
whose mechanism he devised; but this does not readily serve as a
defining or even essential characteristic of the movement. Deism is
hard to define, and deists are sometimes hard to identify. Broadly,
deism stands for the abolition of dogma founded on alleged
revelation and promulgated by an authoritarian priesthood such that
the principle of rational scrutiny is quashed and its results
disavowed. Constructively, deists often sought to promote a natural
religion, universally bestowed on humanity by an impartial and
benevolent God, its content in conformity with the unchanging moral
law. Assault on the principle of revelation in history (if it
proclaims more than what reason can, or does, know independently)
and on the claim that it occurred (if founded on belief in miracles,
prophecies - or inerrant Scripture) was meant to vindicate reason
over against superstition. Deists, Dryden remarked, are
'rationalists with a heart-hunger for religion'. (Williams S.N.,
"Deism", in Ferguson S.B., ed., "New Dictionary of Theology,
Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester, 1988, p190)
5. Rejection of miracles:
"Although Deists accepted the existence of God, his conservation of
the world in being, and his general revelation in nature, they
strenuously denied that he had revealed himself in any special way in
the world. They were therefore very exercised to demonstrate the
impossibility of the occurrence of miracle, or at least ofthe
identification of miracle." (Craig W.L., "Reasonable Faith: Christian
Truth and Apologetics", Crossway Books: Wheaton Ill., Revised
Edition, 1994, p128)
"Deism, a rationalist religious philosophy that flourished in the 17th
and 18th centuries, particularly in England. Generally, Deists held
that a certain kind of religious knowledge (sometimes called natural
religion) is either inherent in each person or accessible through the
exercise of reason, but they denied the validity of religious claims
based on revelation or on the specific teachings of any church.
Deism emerged as a major religious and philosophical view in
England. The most prominent 17th-century Deists were Edward
Herbert, John Toland, and Charles Blount (1654-93), all of whom
advocated a rationalist religion and criticized the supernatural or
nonrational elements in the Jewish and Christian traditions. In the
early 18th century, Anthony Collins (1676-1729), Thomas Chubb
(1679-1746), and Matthew Tindal (circa 1655-1733) sharpened the
rationalist attack on orthodoxy by attempting to discredit the miracles
and mysteries of the Bible." (Popkin R.H., "Deism," MicrosofT Encarta,
Microsoft Corporation & Funk & Wagnall's Corporation, , 1993)
Recently I posted the following from Erickson:
"Although the term is rarely heard, deistic evolution is perhaps the
best way to describe one variety of what is generally called
theistic evolution. This is the view that God began the process of
evolution, producing the first matter and implanting within the
creation the laws which its development has followed. Thus, he
programmed the process. Then he withdrew from active involvement
with the world, becoming, so to speak, Creator emeritus. The
progress of the created order is free of direct influence by God.
He is the Creator of everything, but only the first living form was
directly created. All the rest of God's creating has been done
indirectly. God is the Creator, the ultimate cause, but evolution
is the means, the proximate cause. Thus, except for its view of the
very beginning of matter, deistic evolution is identical to
naturalistic evolution for it denies that there is any direct
activity by a personal God during the ongoing creative process."
(Erickson M.J., "Christian Theology", Baker: Grand Rapids, 1985,
p480)
According to Erickson, "deism...is still alive in the 20th century".
It would seem that the more theistic evolution is "identical to
naturalistic evolution", the more it resembles deism. In fact
Craig identifies theistic evolutionist Arthur Peacocke with "Deistic
thinking":
"The presupposition against miracles survives in theology only as a
hangover from an earlier Deistic age and ought now to be once for
all abandoned...I've been surprised to find how often Deistic
thinking under lies the flowering dialogue between science and
religion on the contemporary scene. For example, in a recent
conference at Notre Dame on "Science and Religion in the
Post-Positivist Era, " Arthur Peacocke claimed that modern cell
biology has "radically undermined" the credibility of the virgin
birth because it would require God's making a Y- chromosome de novo
in Mary's ovum-in other words, it would have to be a miracle!"
(Craig W.L., "Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics",
Crossway Books: Wheaton Ill., Revised Edition, 1994, pp154-155).
Indeed, using the above definitions as criteria, one finds many of
them in the writings of modern theistic evolutionists. In
particular Howard Van Till seems to come close to deism, by his
doctrine of "functional integrity" and "gapless economy":
"The created world envisioned by Basil and Augustine was a world
endowed by the Creator with a functionally complete economy-no gaps,
no deficiencies, no need for God to overpower matter or to perform
theokinetic acts in order to make up for capacities missing in the
economy of the created world....I have a dream that some day the
forgotten doctrine of Creation's functional integrity will be
recovered; that it will once and for all displace all variants of
the God-of-the-gaps perspective" (Van Till H.J., "God and Evolution:
An Exchange: Howard J. Van Till - Phillip E. Johnson", First
Things, June 1993.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9306/johnson.html)
This is borne out by the fact Van Till labels those ordinary
Christians who actually believe that God can and does intervene in
the material world, as "interventionists":
"Adjacent to the pit of deism is the quicksand of interventionism.
According to that perspective, most things in the material world
happen "naturally" (in essence, naturalistically), but on certain
special occasions God breaks into this realm and supernaturally
intervenes in the affairs of the material world or its creatures...
According to Scripture, God need not `intervene' or `break into' the
natural machinery of the cosmos as if it were already running
independently of him. God's active presence is required at all
times, not just on special occasions that demand supernatural
intervention." (Van Till H.J., "The Fourth Day", 1986, p225)
After I wrote this I noticed that Van Till has posted a further
criticism against what he calls the "interventionist view":
--------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 8 May 1997 12:57:27 EST5EDT, HVANTILL@legacy.calvin.edu
wrote:
[...]
HVT>I cannot speak for Behe, but there is a large portion of the
>Christian community that welcomes Behe's thesis because it gives
>the appearance of scientific support for an interventionist concept
>of divine creative action. This interventionist view contrasts
>with another perspective, deeply rooted in historic Christian
>theology (one that I hold): that the essence of God's creative
>work is not the manipulation of insufficiently gifted raw materials,
>but the giving of being to a world robustly equipped for
>self-organisation and transformation of the sort now envisioned by
>the natural sciences. (See my essay "Basil, Augustine, and the
>Doctrine of Creation's Functional Integrity" in _Science and
>Christian Belief_, Vol. 8, No. 1, April, 1996, pp. 21-38.)
>
>The label "Intelligent Design" is used by Behe and others to
>represent the manipulative or coercive action of some unidentified
>transcendent being who imposes form on matter that was never given
>capabilities sufficient for achieving the full spectrum of extant
>forms...
--------------------------------------------------
This hostility to the Creator's supernatural intervention in
His creation, and the characterisation of it as "manipulative or
coercive", seems close to deism.
To be fair, Van Till does not deny miracles, or revelation, or God's
upholding the world, so his view technically is not deism, at least
in the strict sense of the word. But it clearly seem to fit within
Erickson's definition of Deistic Evolution.
I would be interested what you think, from your studies of Deism.
God bless.
Steve
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