Deism

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DEISM

DEISM . The term deism was originally equivalent to theism, differing only in etymology: theism based on the Greek word for god (theos ), and deism on the Latin (deus ). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, deism came to signify one or another form of rationalistic theological unorthodoxy. Often used pejoratively, it was also sometimes worn as a badge of honor. The first known use of the term occurs in the Instruction chrétienne (1564) of the Calvinist theologian Pierre Viret: "I have heard he is of that band who call themselves 'Deists,' a wholly new word which they would oppose to 'Atheist.'"

In its principal meaning, deism signifies the belief in a single God and in a religious practice founded solely on natural reason rather than on supernatural revelation. Thus Viret characterizes deists as "those who profess belief in God as creator of heaven and earth, but reject Jesus Christ and his doctrines." John Dryden's preface to his poem Religio Laici (1682) defines deism as "the opinion of those that acknowledge one God, without the reception of any revealed religion." The currency of the term in the eighteenth century was undoubtedly enhanced by the article on Viret in Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697).

Like most epithets of controversy, deism was used in a number of senses other than its principal one. It was often used as a vague term of abuse with no determinate meaning at all. Among the chief subordinate or deviant senses of the term are (1) belief in a supreme being lacking in all attributes of personality (such as intellect and will); (2) belief in a God, but denial of any divine providential care for the world; (3) belief in a God, but denial of any future life; (4) belief in a God, but rejection of all other articles of religious faith (so defined by Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary, 1755).

Some Deists completely rejected all revealed and ecclesiastical religion, adopted anticlerical attitudes, challenged the scriptural canon, questioned the credibility of miracle narratives, or even rejected the New Testament as fabrication and imposture. Thus Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, described the addressee of his polemical Letter to a Deist (1677) as "a particular person who owned the Being and Providence of God, but expressed mean esteem of the Scriptures and the Christian Religion." Yet a number of influential seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British thinkers described themselves as "Christian Deists" on the grounds that they accepted both the Christian religion based on supernatural revelation and a Deistic religion based solely on natural reason, consistent with Christianity but independent of any revealed authority.

Thus, even the principal sense of deism, which refers to belief in God without belief in supernatural revelation, is inherently imprecise. No sharp dividing line can be drawn between Christian or revelationist Deists and Deists who recognized no revelation. The former often accepted Christian revelation precisely because it accords with natural or rational religion and sometimes advocated allegorical readings of scripture in order to secure this agreement, while the latter often disavowed any "mean esteem" of Christian scriptures and expressed admiration for the inspiring way in which the truths of natural religion were presented in them. Further, there is no sharp line separating Christian Deists and orthodox Christian theologians (such as Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus) who maintain that some parts of Christian doctrine can be known by natural reason.

Deism was most prominent in England, the only place where it approached the status of a movement. Among its best-known representatives were Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648), author of De veritate (1624); his disciple Charles Blount (1654–1693); John Toland (1670–1722), author of Christianity not Mysterious (1696); Anthony Collins (1676–1729); and Matthew Tindal (1657–1733), author of Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730), often described as "the Deist's Bible." The powerful influence of English Deism is attested by the sizable number of attacks on it by the orthodox, including not only Stillingfleet, but also Richard Bentley, Charles Leslie, Samuel Clarke, and (most famously) Joseph Butler in his Analogy of Religion (1736). Deism also met with vicious persecution in England, where blasphemy was punishable by forfeiture of civil rights, fines, and even imprisonment. At least two prominent Deists were imprisoned for expressing their blasphemous opinions: Thomas Woolston (1670–1733) was sent to prison in 1729 and died there; Peter Annet was fined, pilloried, and imprisoned to hard labor in 1764 at age seventy.

Deism is generally associated with British religious thought. However, a number of major continental religious thinkers of the late sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries clearly qualify as Deists under the principal meaning of the term. They include Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) and Lucilio Vanini (1584–1619), both burned as heretics for rejecting ecclesiastical authority and scriptural revelation; Barukh Spinoza (1632–1677); François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire; 1694–1778); Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778); Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768); Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781); Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786); and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). (Both Voltaire and Kant, however, repudiated the label "Deist" and always described themselves as "Theists.") There were outspoken Deists among the founding fathers of the United States of America, notably Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Thomas Paine (1737–1809), and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826).

Deism appears to be exclusively a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century phenomenon, but this is partly an illusion. There are special reasons why the term deism attained currency then but did not survive longer. The rise of modern science did not immediately initiate warfare of science with religion, but it did initiate warfare within religion, between the orthodox who held fast to tradition, authority, and the supernatural, and the freethinkers, who sought a religion that harmonized with nature and reason. A term was needed by the orthodox to distinguish the freethinkers from themselves, and by the religious freethinkers to distinguish themselves from mere atheists. Deism served both needs. The term has fallen into disuse in the past two centuries, however, perhaps chiefly because in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical and religious thought the distinctions between reason and tradition, nature and supernature, have lost the sharpness they had for thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Greater tolerance of diversity of opinion within Christian society has also lessened the need for an epithet whose principal function was to scourge independent thinkers. Deism itself has also become a less popular position, owing to the increasing tendency of rationalists to become simple unbelievers rather than to settle for compromises and half-measures. Yet deism—in fact, if not in name—still survives in all religious communities and individuals whose convictions arise from autonomous thinking rather than from the submission of reason to ecclesiastical or scriptural authorities.

Bibliography

An excellent nineteenth-century account of British Deism is to be found in Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1 (1876; reprint, New York, 1963). A detailed account of Deistic thinkers is presented by J. M. Robertson in A History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, vol. 2, To the Period of the French Revolution, 4th ed. (London, 1936). For the social background of Deism, see W. K. Jordan's Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols. (1932–1940; reprint, Gloucester, Mass., 1965). Two very good studies of aspects of Deism are Norman L. Torrey's Voltaire and the English Deists (1930; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1967) and Ernest C. Mossner's Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason (New York, 1936). Perhaps the two most classic works on religion by thinkers identified above as Deists are Barukh Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670), translated by R. H. M. Elwes in Chief Works, vol. 1 (1883; reprint, New York, 1955), and Immanuel Kant's Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), translated by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (LaSalle, Ill., 1960).