Deism

DEISM. - Etymologically d. (from Deus) is identical with theism (from Reis) but its philosophical and historical sense is different. The philosophical meaning common today is the one already specified by Kant: the deist "admits that we... can know by simple reason the existence of an original Being, but... only as a Being that has every reality, of which however we cannot give a more precise determination"; the theist "affirms that reason is capable of further determining its object according to the analogy with nature, that is: as a Being that contains in itself the first principle of all other things through intellect and freedom. The former therefore represents in such a being only a Cause of the world (whether through the necessity of its own nature, or through freedom, remains undecided), the latter an Author of the world"; and a little further on: "the deist believes in a God, but the theist in a living God (summam intelligentiam)" (I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1st ed., Riga 1781, pp. 631-33; cf. Italian trans., 2nd ed. Bari 1925, pp. 493-94).

As a historical fact d. does not have such a determined and restricted sense. It generally indicates that philosophical-religious movement of the 17th-18th centuries, either preliminary to or interwoven with or flowing into the Enlightenment, which tended to eliminate every supernatural element of religion and to establish a purely natural religion. In concrete terms it took different forms. At the beginning of the 18th century Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), an opponent of d., in A demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (London 1705) distinguished four classes of deists: 1) Those who admit God, but deny every providence in him: God, an intelligent cause, drew the world from chaos and left it completely to itself. 2) Those who also admit providence, but limited to physical events alone: God does not concern himself with moral good and evil, which derives only from positive laws; for man there is no future life. 3) Those who admit providence also for the moral life: the moral law is from God; but there is no immortality, nor therefore any sanction in a further life. 4) Those who profess all the natural truths about God; they admit the future life; but they reject every religious authority and revelation.

The term deist appears in the 16th century. The Calvinist pastor M. Viret, in the Épître dédicatoire of part 2 of the Instruction chrétienne (1564), speaks of it as "a brand-new word, which they (the deists) wish to oppose to Atheism." Of their ideas he says: "They acknowledge God, but do not admit Jesus Christ. The teaching of the Apostles and Evangelists is for them pure fable and fantasy." The use of the word spreads in the 17th century. Until the 18th century, and even into the early 19th, sometimes theism is also used in the same sense (a term of English origin, brought into vogue especially by Ralph Cudworth, [1617-88]).

D. had its systematic assertors first in England, where however, at least until D. Hume and E. Gibbon, it was, both for scientific and literary value, a movement of secondary importance. Among the principal representatives, particularly worthy of note are: J. Toland (1670-1722) and M. Tindal (1656-1733). Toland in Christianity not mysterious (London 1696) intends to demonstrate, as the subtitle of the work says, "that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to Reason, nor above it, and that no Christian doctrine can properly be called a mystery." Revelation is admitted there, but "revelation serves only to inform us, while the demonstration of its object is what persuades us." Tindal in the work (often called the Bible of d.), Christianity as old as the Creation: or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature (London 1730), intends to demonstrate that the natural religion was absolutely perfect from the beginning; that revelation could add nothing to it; that Christ re-established the natural religion or law of nature. Other notable representatives of English d. were: A. Collins (1676-1729); Th. Chubb (1679-1747); Th. Morgan (d. 1743); Lord H. Bolingbroke (H. St. John, 1678-1731), a friend of Voltaire, whom he met during his exile in France, and whom he later hosted for three years in England.

English d. derived in part from France. In France it returned more developed, and was spread there especially through the work of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists. There was a revival there in the 19th century with Cousin and the spiritualists.

In Germany the ideas of d. arrived both directly from England and through France, and flowed, developing there, into the broader Enlightenment movement. Among its proponents were: H. Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), known especially for the Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, published posthumously (1774-77) in part by Lessing, as fragments of an anonymous author found in the library of Wolfenbüttel (in Braunschweig); M. Mendelssohn (1729-86), the most notable representative of "popular philosophy," often mentioned by Kant; and especially G. E. Lessing (1729-81). In his most mature work, and one that exercised an influence not limited to his own time: Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes (Berlin 1780) he considers the Old and New Testaments as simple historical products, not however arbitrary, but founded on the intrinsic law of the development of humanity. They are products of its infancy and youth; it falls to maturity to discover in their dogmas the rational truths imaginatively shadowed forth in them. Kant is, as regards the concept of God, a theist, though in his own way (the existence of God is not demonstrable speculatively, but only from man's moral law, as a simple practical postulate); for his concept of religion, however, he is to be numbered among the deists.

D. as a historical phenomenon is explained principally by the weariness and skepticism caused by the religious struggles between Catholics and Protestants, and even more by those of the Protestants among themselves. Proof of this is found in the fact that, while it spread in England, France and Germany, it had only weak resonance both in Italy (which had nonetheless given the English deists suggestions and ideas) and in Spain.

Among the various ideas conveyed by the deist current, fundamental is that of natural religion, affirmed by d. as the only true and legitimate one. For this affirmation to be validly founded it would be necessary to demonstrate: either the impossibility of revelation; or its non-existence in fact; or finally that, even granting the existence of revelation, it does not have such requisites as to demand our assent.

The impossibility of revelation could be maintained only on the presupposition of an impersonal God, who acts not as an intelligent and, relatively to operations ad extra, free cause, but as a blind and necessary natural force; on the presupposition, that is, of a God conceived pantheistically. The fortunes of this hypothesis are bound to those of pantheism.

To demonstrate that in fact there has been no revelation, it is necessary to demolish its factual proofs, that is, those deduced from supernatural facts. This could be achieved by denying of such facts either radically their very historical reality or their supernatural character. This was the path followed by Reimarus, in the work of which Lessing published fragments. On the value of such attempts, see especially: GESÙ CRISTO; RIVELAZIONE.

Leaving aside that question, one may instead try to demonstrate that, even if supernatural facts existed, the certainty of the propositions of faith cannot in any case be deduced from them. The argument here passes into the field of philosophy; and it was formulated in the most technically precise manner by Lessing: "contingent historical truths can never serve as proof of necessary truths of reason." This principle is closely connected with the general epistemological problem: whether knowledge of the universal and necessary can be derived from the particular and contingent. Kant, as is well known, started precisely from the negative answer on which empiricists and rationalists agreed, in order to formulate the theory of the synthetic judgment a priori. In our case one can, in part, abstract from that problem, provided one admits the objective validity of the principle of causality. For what is at issue here is proving from historical facts not directly the revealed truths (which are necessary), but only that God has spoken; therefore from contingent facts a contingent fact (revelation is, as a fact, contingent, since it is free on God's part). And the necessary truths of faith derive, properly speaking, not from the contingency of the fact of revelation, but from the necessary veracity of the author of this fact.

There would remain only, in order to reach the ultimate roots of the problem, to examine whether from a historical fact one can ascend to God as to a sufficient reason. That problem, however, is but one aspect of the general question: whether from the contingent it is possible to ascend to God, the necessary Being; on which question v. Dio.

As for the technical meaning it has in philosophy, deism appears as an inconsequent compromise between agnosticism and theism. It wishes to affirm the knowability of God's existence, and to deny the knowability, even analogical, of his nature. But the unknowability of God's nature also involves that of his existence. For when it is unknown whether God is transcendent or immanent to the world, an intelligent and free cause or a blind natural force, it is in reality unknown whether he exists: since an immanent God (in the pantheistic sense) is God only in name, and a blind force is not so even in name. Deism therefore possesses only the apparent consistency of confused concepts.

As soon as one thinks it through to the end, that is, truly thinks it, it dissolves: into pure agnosticism, if one unfolds what deism has implicit in its negative aspect (unknowability of the divine nature); into theism or pantheism and atheism, if one specifies its positive content (knowability of God's existence).

Felice Cenci