The Principles & Ideas Of Deism

One of the perplexities of philosophical and religious research is that it can be easy to misconstrue the personalities and movements one is attempting to study through the prism of one's own respective worldview. This tendency, if one is not careful to adjust for it, can be compounded when decades and even centuries separate those seeking to understand the past and those events, personalities, or ideas one is attempting to learn more about. This is especially true if the undertaking is of a more casual nature.

Often with the passage of such considerable lengths of time, entire ways of conceptualizing and categorizing the universe can come into existence, gain in popularity, and then recede from prominence long before an individual seeking to know more about them even comes into existence. One such system the contemporary enthusiast of the past might stumble upon is Deism. And if one is not cautious in the encounter, one could easily come away thinking that little of consequence separates this seemingly antiquarian perspective from more orthodox or Biblical expressions of Christianity. To get a better grasp on this worldview that one is not very likely to encounter from the standpoint of meeting in the flesh a professed adherent of it, it would perhaps be best to first examine the background of the world giving rise to Deism, to elaborate upon a number of basic Deistic beliefs so that they might be easier to spot if encountered in today's world under another name, and the divergent paths Deism took in the respective cultural settings in which the viewpoint manifested itself.

Contrary to popular conception, religion in some form or the other is one of the primary motivating forces of history. It is just that at times either man as an overall social organism is either moving towards or away from a particular understanding of this particular epistemological structure. As such, it might be best to think of Deism as a path away from one way of comprehending the world toward another or as a kind of inn or tavern at which a great epoch stopped to catch its breath as the popular perception looked back towards what it once professed but was not quite fully ready to openly embrace the outright or deliberately conscientious secularism set out before it.

Christians weary of the cultural rot brought about by the licentiousness and the permissiveness resulting from an expansive secularism that keeps claiming additional areas of life and endeavor as part of its purview might long for a time when there was little formally delineating religious authority and the administrative reach of the kingdom or the state. However, such romantics might think differently had they been alive during the waning years of the Middle Ages or even in lands where certain brands of Protestantism held sway or were struggling to establish themselves. For even though it was an era where courageous believers lived and died for their convictions, it was also an age where in pursuit of an idealized Christian order less than Christian means were at times utilized in the attempt to realize a theonomically proper milieu.

The episode that in many ways broke the camel's back of a political system not recognizing the distinction between the life of the mind and that of socioal obligation was the Thirty Years War. Fought between 1618 and 1648, the Thirty Years War was a conflict waged across significant portions of Europe that was sparked as a result of not only a complex series of international alliances and rival monarchs jockeying for position but also intense animosities as to which side professed the superior form of Christianity. Of the war, Glenn Sunshine writes in Why You Think The Way You Do: The Story Of Western Worldviews From Rome To Home, "To this day, the Thirty Years' War is still remembered in Germany as the most devastating war ever fought there (including World Wars I and II). Almost every territorial unit within the Holy Roman Empire lost 30% or more of its population...people were exhausted by the war (107-108)."

Such hardship and desolation would naturally cause the educated of a reflective inclination to stop and ponder. Was such a price really worth it to see that one form of the Christian faith prevailed over another where those beaten on the battlefield were not necessarily convinced of the matter in the depths of the heart? And was such a God requiring His followers to spread His truth in such a manner to such an extent in order to prove their devotion to Him really all that worthy of devotion? More importantly, was such a God the God that actually existed?

The Thirty Years' War was not the only development going on in Europe in the middle centuries of that particular millennium to shake the continent’s foundations of establishmentarian Christian orthodoxy. After all, it was not like the vast swaths of humanity had not had an acquaintance with suffering. With an average life expectancy of about 35 years and conditions such as malnutrition and disease quite common, part of the allure of the Church that allowed the institution to acquire and maintain a pervasive influence for so long was no doubt the promise of a blissful afterlife for its members in good standing.