What is deism and what do deists believe?
Deism is the name given to belief in a Creator combined with a flat refusal of the Bible — God made the world, but He has not spoken in it. The writers below treat it as a live question rather than a museum piece: can the God who made us be known at all if He has not revealed Himself, and what happens to a man who settles for a Maker who never speaks?
The Basic Position
One writer sets out the definition plainly, along with what it costs the person who holds it.
A. J. PollockBy Deism is meant belief in the existence of a Creator—a great First Cause—unknown and unknowable, coupled with the refusal to admit that God has made any revelation outside of nature in creation. That is to say, the deist, while believing in God as Creator, refuses the Bible as God's revelation and rejects Christ as a Saviour.
A Creator Who Withdrew
Deism does not simply leave a gap in the shelf where the Bible would sit. It has a positive picture of God — one who finished His work and stepped back from the world He made.
A. J. PollockDeists admit the fact of a Creator, but hold that once the creation is complete, the Creator retired from any further activity in this world's concerns. They therefore did not believe in revealed religion, in the Bible, in Christ, in the need for salvation.
What the Position Protects
In a written conversation between two men, one of them names what he thinks such a system is really defending — and it is not God's honour.
J. N. DarbyYes, but it shuts out a living intervention of God in men's matters, and that is their great object. God may give an impulse, but the intervention of a living God, or fellowship with Him, does not suit the dignity or independence of man.
If a Man Can Speak, Can God Not?
The core deist claim is that God has made no revelation. One writer turns that claim against the very book in which it was printed.
William KellyA keen infidel who is still living said the contrary — said it was impossible for God to make a revelation of Himself; but the book in which he, a deist, said this proved the folly of it. If an infidel can make a revelation of his mind to do people harm, I suppose God can make a revelation of His mind to do people good… If man can make a revelation of his mind, surely God can of His. Otherwise you are reduced to the absurdity that what is possible to man is impossible to God.
The Limits of Nature's Witness
Deism leans on creation as the only place God may be sought. Writers here grant that creation says something real, and then mark exactly where its testimony stops.
The Bible TreasuryNature was never intended to tell us. But even what nature, or rather creation, should have shown was reasoned away — His eternal power and divinity. The heavens declare His glory, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. But not even that glorious display of wisdom and power could tell more than that there must be a God — not that God in His nature is essentially light and love.
There is also a moral gap, not only a gap in information. Worship offered to the God of nature quietly assumes the worshipper has nothing to be forgiven.
An Outline of Sound WordsThe testimony of creation leaves man without excuse, but it does not bring him the knowledge of God. God's power is seen in the creation, but God Himself is only known in the Person of the Son. Man is a sinner, at a distance from God by sin, and the pretence of worshipping God and having fellowship with Him in the works of His hands ignores the sinful condition of man, his guilt, and the need of salvation.
Where the Road Leads
Deism presents itself as a resting place between faith and unbelief. One writer doubts it can hold that ground.
C. H. MackintoshThe one great object of unbelief, in all its forms, in all its stages, in all its varied shades of thought and argument, is to shut out from the human soul the blessed light of divine revelation. And when once that light is shut out, there is no consistent standing ground short of the pantheism which declares that everything is God, or the atheism which declares there is no God at all.
Two Deists Who Examined the Evidence
Two lawyers of the eighteenth century, Lord Lyttleton and Gilbert West, decided to attack Christianity at what they judged to be its weakest point.
A. J. PollockLord Lyttleton therefore attempted to prove that the alleged conversion of the Apostle Paul was a fraud, while Gilbert West set out to prove that the resurrection of Christ never happened.
Trained men, examining the case they meant to destroy, came out the other side.
A. J. PollockBeing lawyers, and well trained in weighing evidence, they found to their astonishment that the evidence for the resurrection of Christ could not be assailed, and the conversion of the Apostle Paul was clearly true… instead of writing to disprove the truth of the resurrection of Christ, they wrote as men fully convinced of its truth.
Summary
- Claim — The deist keeps the Creator and drops the Bible: God made the world, then retired from it, so there is no revealed religion, no Christ, no salvation needed.
- Motive — Shutting out a living God who intervenes leaves man's independence intact; that, one writer says, is the real object.
- Answer — A man can put his mind into a book; to say God cannot do the same makes what is possible to man impossible to God.
- Limit — Creation proves there must be a God and leaves man without excuse, but it never says that God is light and love, and worshipping Him in His works ignores sin and the need of salvation.
- Result — Deism is not a stable halfway house; shut out revelation and the road runs on to pantheism or atheism — while two deists who actually weighed the evidence for the resurrection ended up believing it.