What is deism?

Other Beliefs & ReligionsIn theological review

The short answer

Deism is the belief that God created the world and its laws and then left it to run on its own, like a watchmaker who winds a watch and walks away. Classic deists, such as Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason, accepted a creator known by reason and nature and rejected revelation, miracles, prayer and a God who acts in history. Scripture answers that God is not served as though he needed anything, since he gives all men life and breath continually, upholds all things, and notices even a sparrow's fall.

The fuller answer

Deism reached its classic form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. God, on this account, is real and is the intelligent maker of an ordered universe, knowable by reason from nature. Having made the world and its laws, he does not intervene in it: no miracles, no incarnation, no answered prayer, no revealed book, because a perfect maker would not need to adjust his machine. Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason is the famous popular statement, honouring a creator while attacking the Bible and the churches. Deism still appears wherever someone says they believe in God but not in a God who gets involved.

Nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

Acts 17:25 (BSB)

Paul, in Athens, describes a God far too alive for the watchmaker picture. God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. The giving is present tense and continuous. Creation, in the Bible, is not God winding a spring and leaving. It is God sustaining every breath as it is taken, so that prayer is not an interruption of the machine but a conversation with the one who is, at this moment, keeping the speaker alive.

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature, upholding all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Hebrews 1:3 (BSB)

The writer to the Hebrews says the Son upholds the universe by the word of his power. Upholding is ongoing work. The biblical God also speaks, in history, through prophets and finally in his Son, which deism's rejection of revelation cannot allow. A deist can admire Jesus as a moral teacher, and many have. What deism cannot do is hear him: a Jesus who claims to be sent, who prays and is heard, who rises, belongs to a world where God acts. The disagreement is therefore not really about whether God exists. It is about whether he is still present.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.

Matthew 10:29 (BSB)

Jesus settles the scale of God's attention with a sparrow. Two sparrows are sold for a penny, and not one falls to the ground apart from the Father. The God of the Gospels notices events too small for any human register, and numbers the hairs of his children's heads in the same breath. That is the opposite of an absent maker. For the person drawn to deism because distant religion felt safer than a demanding church, this is worth hearing plainly: the biblical God is not less than the watchmaker. He is more, nearer, and he asks to be known rather than merely inferred.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
Classic deist texts

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Does God exist?Yes. Christians do not believe in God as a guess to fill a gap. We believe because the world he made shows his power and nature, and because he has spoken, first through the prophets and then in his Son. The question is not really whether there is evidence, but whether we will treat the evidence as what it is.What is God like?God is spirit, eternal, unchanging, all powerful, holy, just, good, and true. And he is love. Scripture gives his character in his own words and deeds rather than in our guesses: he is the I AM who always is, the Maker who never tires, and the Father who so loved the world that he gave his Son.Do all religions lead to God?No, and the reason is not tribal loyalty: the faiths contradict each other about God, sin, and salvation, so they cannot all be roads to the same place. More decisively, Jesus did not present himself as one guide among many, saying, I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me. Christians can respect their neighbours of other faiths, and should, without pretending the differences are small.How can I know God personally?You can know God personally through Jesus Christ, whom God sent to make him known. Jesus defines eternal life as knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent, Jeremiah calls knowing God the one boast worth having, and Scripture tests that knowledge by a life that keeps God's word.