DEISM (Lat. dens, god)

This article appears in Volume V07, Page 934 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: DAH-DEM

DEISM (Lat. dens, god) , strictly the belief in one supreme God. It is however the received name for a current of rationalistic theological thought which, though not confined to one country, or to any well-defined period, was most conspicuous in England in the last years .of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. The deists, differing widely in important matters of belief, were yet agreed in seeking above all to establish the certainty and sufficiency of natural religion in opposition to the positive religions, and in tacitly or expressly denying the unique significance of the supernatural

revelation

REVELATION, BOOK OF

in the Old and New Testaments. They either ignored the Scriptures, endeavoured to prove them in the main by a helpful republication of the Evangelium aeternum, or directly impugned their divine character, their infallibility, and the validity of their evidences as a complete manifestation of the will of God. The

term

TERM

" deism " not only is used to signify the main

body

BODY

of the deists' teaching, or the tendency they represent, but has come into use as a technical

term

TERM

for one specific metaphysical

doctrine

DOCTRINE

as to the relation of God to the universe, assumed to have been characteristic of the deists, and to have distinguished them from atheists, pantheists and theists,the belief, namely, that the first cause of the universe is a personal God, who is, however, not only distinct from the world but apart from it and its concerns.
The words " deism" and " deist " appear first about the middle of the 16th century in France (cf. Bayle's Dictionnaire, s.v. " Viret," note D), though the deistic standpoint had already been foreshadowed to some extent by Averroists, by Italian authors like Boccaccio and Petrarch, in More's Utopia (r 515), and by French writers like Montaigne, Charron and Bodin. The first specific attack on deism in English was

Bishop

Stillingfleet's

Letter

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the
alphabet
- ALPHABET (see also WRITING)
; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

to a Deist (1677). By the

majority

MAJORITY (Fr. majorite; Med. Lat. majoritas; Lat. major, greater)

of those historically known as the English deists, from Blount onwards, the name was owned and honoured. They were also occasionally called " rationalists." " Free-thinker " (in Germany, Freidenker) was generally taken to be synonymous with " deist," though obviously
capable of a wider signification, and as coincident with esprit fort and with libertin in the

original

ORIGINAL

and theological sense of the word.' " Naturalists " was a name frequently used of such as recognized no god but nature, of so-called Spinozists, atheists; but both in England and Germany, in the 18th century, this word was more commonly and aptly in use for those who founded their religion on the lumen nalurae alone. It was evidently in common use in the latter half of the 16th century as it is used by De Mornay in De la verite de la religion chrelienne (1581) and by Montaigne. The same men were not seldom assaulted under the name of "theists"; the later distinction between "theist" and "deist," which stamped the latter word as excluding the belief in providence or in the immanence of God, was apparently formulated in the end of the 18th century by those rationalists who were aggrieved at being identified with the naturalists. (See also

End of Article: DEISM (Lat. dens, god)

If you wish, you can link directly to this article.

<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/DAH_DEM/DEISM_Lat_dens_god_.html">
DEISM (Lat. dens, god)
</a>

(Previous)
DEIRA

(Next)
DEISTER

JCSM was founded in 1997 and exists to help the community and bring people into a life-changing and productive relationship with Jesus Christ. JCSM offers over 200,000 free web pages, including its weekly inspirational emails that were sent continuously for over a decade.

Jesus Christ Saves Ministries
P.O. Box 9297
San Diego, CA 92169
1-888-887-0417 or Email