DEISM AS RELIGION PART II

The concept of deism covers a wide variety of positions on a wide variety of religious issues. Following Sir Leslie Stephen’s English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, two basic features make up its core:

The rejection of revealed religion, the negative or critical aspect of deism, and the belief that reason, rather than faith, leads us to certain basic religious truths, the positive or constructive aspect of deism.

What is most curious to me, however, is that deism does not seem to conflict with Christianity, in fact, such a thing as Christian deism is apparently widely recognized.

Here is an illuminating quote from a younger contemporary of John Locke, the consummate English deist Matthew Tindal, who sums up his own understanding of what was to identify him as a deist:

"If there were not some propositions which need not to be proved, it would be in vain for men to argue with one another [because there would be no basis for demonstrative reasoning] Those propositions which need no proof, we call self-evident; because by comparing the ideas, signified by the terms of such propositions, we immediately discern their agreement, or disagreement. This is what we call intuitive knowledge, which may, I think, be called divine inspiration as being immediately from God, and not acquired by any human deduction or drawing of consequences. This certainly is that divine, uniform light that shines in the minds of all men." (Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation II.)

Reading Tindal, I may start questioning myself, whether I am myself a fellow deist, by his definition? But then, I make no answer, by dismissing the question. Who cares for tags, so pointless and misleading! It is one thing to understand the meanings of the terms we are using in a particular context, but quite another, to incarcerate a person’s free spirit in the cage of a spurious label.

And one more thing. When I talk about the God of Philosophy, and about us ascending to the upper floor of the two-storied temple, how close is my understanding of this spiritual emancipation to what Tindal is calling a natural religion? Here is Tindal again:

By natural religion, I understand the belief in the existence of a God, and the sense and practice of duties, which result from the knowledge we, by our reason, have of Him and his perfections; and of ourselves, and our own imperfections, and of the relationship we stand in to Him, and to our fellow-creatures; so that the religion of nature takes in everything which is founded on the reason and nature of things... I suppose you will allow that it is evident by the light of nature that there is a God, or in other words, a being absolutely perfect, and infinitely happy in himself, who is the source of all other beings. (Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation II.)

Analyzing Thomas Paine’s outrageously controversial Age of Reason, for which he was branded an atheist and a deist (in certain minds amounting to one and the same thing), we are obviously faced with the man’s firm belief in God, that is, in the Supreme Being, and the whole subject of hot controversy and objection boils down to Paine’s refusal to acknowledge organized religion, and, with it, any particular Church above any other Church or Creed, as a legitimate expression of one’s religious spirit or personal faith, as I am putting it, in distinction from the politically, socially, and particularly culturally pre-conditioned adherence to this or that given denomination...

It is quite obvious to me that, in the light of my religious philosophy, and its apparent connection, at least on the face of it, to the religious philosophy of deism, with its definition of natural religion, I ought to devote a considerable effort in the interrelated spheres of religion, philosophy, and history, to a further exploration of deism, and to my philosophical connection to it. After all, my culturally-fixed religion of Russian Orthodox Christianity (which I was born with, and I shall die with) cannot be affected by my philosophical curiosity in matters of knowledge, as opposed to matters of belief.

This mission of exploration has just started within this entry, and is certainly to be continued.