The Transition into Deism
Kurtis Villa
Grace Bible College For years, Christian Theism was the most prominent worldview. Christian Theist believed that God was the creator of all, and that he had laid out a plan for humanity. In the Seventeenth Century, as theist started to question their worldviews, a new view began to rise. Deism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is, “Movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe.”(2017) To understand how Deism came about, let’s take a look at the Theistic Worldview, first. In the Theists view, God is personal, he is triune, and he is the creator of all existence.
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(Sire, 2009) In Theism, humans relied on the Scripture to lead them. The Scripture was God’s word that laid out the direction to his plan. As Deism started to evolve, humans began to listen to their inner thoughts and curiosities. They began to rely more on the human mind, which separated God from them in a way that had never been done before.
Deists were also separated from Theists because in their worldview, there were no miracles or spontaneous gestures from God. As Sire puts it, “For he is not interested in it,” meaning that God created the cosmos, but he left it to humanity. (2009) The separation in worldviews brings up the separation within Deism, itself. One way that Deism is very different from Theism is that it is not a specific view; there are different types of Deists. While most Deists believe along a similar line, they do differ with one of the worldview questions. Cold Deists do not believe in afterlife, and Warm Deists do. (Sire, 2009)
Overall, the Deism Worldview was just an expansion of Theism. Not all humans transitioned into the Deist view from Theism. At the same time, not all Deists continued with the Deism Worldview. Later in time, more and more Worldviews have been
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