On Fri, 28 Mar 1997 23:05:56 -0600, Glenn Morton wrote:
>RC>Some TE's do not believe that God intervened in any supernatural
>way and that everything has come down from the beginning by purely
>natural mechanisms. This view sounds very much like deism to me.
>(You TE's out there that disagree with my definition, please
>correct me.) I do not say that TE denies the supernatural elements
>of Christianity, only that it denies that super- natural mechanisms
>were used in Creation.
GM>Deism is the belief that God never intervenes in the universe
>after the initial creation. Any believer CANNOT be a deist by
>definition, because of the resurrection which is clearly an
>intervention. Any TE who believes in the resurrection is not a
>deist.
This is too cut and dried. No doubt classical rationalistic deism was
comprised mainly of unbelievers in the resurrection of Christ:
"In his celebrated Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Dr.
Samuel Johnson defined "deist" as "a man who follows no particular
religion, but only acknowledges the existence of God, without any
other article of faith." The word seems to have been first used by
Calvin's disciple, Pierre Viret, to describe an unidentified group of
thinkers who professed belief in God, but rejected Christ and his
teaching. In Viret's sense, the deists were opposed to atheism, but
by Dr. Johnson's day the word "deist" had been used in both England
and France as a euphemism for "atheist" " (Brown C., "Miracles and
the Critical Mind", 1984, p47)
But many TEs seem close to deism in that they push back all creation
to the very beginning of the universe and restrict supernatural
intervention to the absolute minimum necessary to remain within the
Christian fold. Indeed, Erickson regards "Deistic Evolution" as a variety
of Theistic Evolution:
"Although the term is rarely heard, deistic evolution is perhaps the
best way to describe one variety of what is generally called theistic
evolution. This is the view that God began the process of evolution,
producing the first matter and implanting within the creation the
laws which its development has followed. Thus, he programmed the
process. Then he withdrew from active involvement with the world,
becoming, so to speak, Creator emeritus. The progress of the created
order is free of direct influence by God. He is the Creator of
everything, but only the first living form was directly created. All
the rest of God's creating has been done indirectly. God is the
Creator, the ultimate cause, but evolution is the means, the
proximate cause. Thus, except for its view of the very beginning of
matter, deistic evolution is identical to naturalistic evolution for
it denies that there is any direct activity by a personal God during
the ongoing creative process." (Erickson M.J., "Christian Theology",
1985, p480).
It seems to me that there are a number of TEs on this Reflector that
best fit the above description.
God bless.
Steve
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