Christian Deism 101

Deism is not a word you hear every day.

Deism: the form of theological rationalism that believes in God on the basis of reason without reference to revelation. (Words API)

That's the cleanest definition I've seen. Basically, a deist believes in God but places no special trust in reports of God's alleged activities, such as performing miracles and inspiring scriptures.

You may have heard that most of the founding fathers of the United States were deists, not orthodox Christians. Even that is underselling its popularity at the time. From Merriam-Webster:

By the late 18th century, deism was the dominant religious attitude among Europe’s educated classes; it was accepted by many upper-class Americans of the same era, including the first three US presidents.

But if we appeal to history for credibility, we risk giving the impression that deism is some bygone fad with its own special features. Think of it instead as a minimalist theology: belief in a benevolent but mysterious creator God who doesn't seem to interfere with nature. It is what many people intuitively believe, though they don't have a name for it.

So what is a Christian Deist? An oxymoron? It's not a term I invented, but it doesn't have a clearly defined catechism either. Since deists as a rule tend to be independent thinkers, I will just explain what it means to me, though I do think others use it similarly.

To me, a Christian deist is just a deist whose moral values and general concept of God are informed by Christianity to a significant extent. We aren't orthodox Christians, but we are believers in a more basic sense, and we choose to carry Christian teachings and ideas forward as an important aspect of our philosophy.

In this essay, I'll discuss what I see as the four main tenets of belief and nonbelief for a Christian Deist. I should be clear that Christian deism is not some elegant scientific theory where each part of it necessitates or proves all the others. Instead, it is a worldview: a collection of a few big ideas which, when taken together, form a general outlook on God, the universe, humanity, and living life.

1. Rationalism

In definitions of Deism, the word "rational" keeps popping up. This is not a way of accusing other people as being irrational or unintelligent. It means we are playing by rationalist rules.

To a rationalist, the scrutiny of reason applies to all subjects, including religion. Nothing is off limits. Feelings matter, but they aren't a reliable test for truth. Expert opinion can be useful, but no authority can negate critical thinking. Obviously, we can still be wrong. But a rationalist doesn't accept contradictions and absurdities, no matter the source.

Rationalism shouldn't be confused with empiricism, which has to do with relying on physical evidence. In the context of religion, "rational" is sometimes misused by reddit atheist types who only believe in things they can see through a microscope. That aside, it's probably true that rationalists have a tendency toward atheism.

But we deists believe we can have it both ways. We decline to abdicate our right to think to priests, prophets or councils. At the same time, we see the existence of an ultimate being as the most logical answer to the big questions. Consequently, many of us feel gratitude, awe and even a sense of moral responsibility, just like other religious people do.

There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found in any other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.

But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes.

(Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason)

In short, deists believe in God based on reason, not dogma. Christian deists tend to be rationalists who grew up on Christianity and eventually developed skepticism toward some of its central doctrines, yet they remain convinced of monotheism and still have a deep appreciation for what Christianity brings to the table.

2. Classical Theism

A classical theist believes in God, which is defined as the ultimate reality or the greatest conceivable being. This being created the universe. Ancient Greek philosophers, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all generally agree on this idea. From Christianity's Nicene Creed:

I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

But let's go a little deeper into what God must be like. From Wikipedia:

Classical theism is characterized by a set of core attributes that define God as absolute, perfect, and transcendent. These attributes include aseity, divine simplicity, eternality, immutability, omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience, each of which has been developed and refined through centuries of philosophical and theological discourse.

For my money, the best book on the subject is a short and modern one titled How Reason Can Lead to God by Joshua Rasmussen. The title may sound generic, but it's a truly deep-thinking philosophy book. Without any reference to religion, history or scientific factoids, it makes a rationalist case for why God must exist and also possess these kinds of qualities.

I said that Christians usually affirm all the ideas of classical theism, but note that there is at least a minor tension with the Nicene Creed from the first line, where God is called a Father. A fine analogy, but a classical theist might caution against imagining that God is a person in the ordinary sense, as it leads to other misconceptions.

To further the tension, divine simplicity means a perfect being doesn't have separate parts, which makes the Christian doctrine of the trinity a suspicious paradox. Christians have their ways around this, but remember what I said about rationalists not liking contradictions. So I find the unitarians more persuasive than the trinitarians. I can't help but think of this Curtis Yarvin quip:

When we study the errors of others, we see that nonsense often conceals the obvious. And what is nonsense, to those who believe in it? To a Catholic, what is the Trinity? A mystery. Some things are truly mysterious. But others have simple explanations. The Trinity is a compromise designed by a standards committee. History 1, Mystery 0.

3. Skepticism Toward Miracles

As is probably clear by now, deists are skeptics, despite not being atheists. This is our main dispute with organized religions which rely on credulity toward tales of divine revelation. Deists differ from most other monotheists in that we are not inclined to believe that God writes books, backs institutions, heals the sick through prayer, and so on. Obviously, an all-powerful being could do any of these things if it saw fit. But deists have two main reasons for default skepticism toward any claim that God did some specific, localized thing.

First, since miracles are by definition unusual events that break the rules, we never seem to be in a great epistemic position to believe them, unless they happen to us personally. For example, suppose I told you that an angel came into my bedroom last night and turned my glass of water into wine. Would you believe me? I suspect you would have doubts, even if you believe in angels. There is nothing impossible about the story, but the problem is the odds. Miracles are rare, lies are not. As Thomas Paine puts it:

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.

Of course, lies aren't the only alternative. Anyone who believes they have seen a miracle believes in a certain interpretation of their experience. For example, if you prayed for a sick loved one and they recovered against the odds, you are free to speculate about cause and effect. But so am I.

Second, it seems plausible, perhaps even fitting, that God would choose not to perform any miracles. The concept of a non-interfering God may seem disappointing at first, as if God created the universe and then turned his back on it due to an aloof personality. But deists have another way of looking at it. God designed the universe to work the way it works. It is not evil or "fallen". Nature is itself an act of God. Why should we expect God to meddle with it?

I don't want to overstate the case. People sometimes talk as if deism contains some kind of dogma against even the possibility of miracles, but that's a misconception. Views among deists vary, both now and historically. I for one think miracles are possible. What deists all agree on is that everyone has a right to be unconvinced by hearsay. This is a straightforward consequence of our commitment to rationalism. From Thomas Paine again:

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so [...]

I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to Mahomet by an angel [...] I did not see the angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.

4. Christian Values

Christian deists don't believe Jesus of Nazareth was literally God, but we hold his moral teachings in especially high regard and try to follow them. I think the most concise summary of Jesus' teaching is his answer to a tricky question:

Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

"Love your neighbor as yourself" seems like a normal teaching you could get anywhere until you slow down and consider each word. Basic empathy is one thing, but to really act as if everyone around you was just as important as you? Crazy. Yet the rightness of it is obvious.

Loving God with all your heart is more abstract, and to an atheist, it probably sounds extremely strange. But I believe it's key to understanding why a deist is a different animal than an atheist, even though we have some things in common.

If I jumped into a time machine and saw Jesus walk out of the tomb, that would legitimize his teachings all the more. But remember, deists don't require signs and wonders. When Jesus teaches us that it is good to love, and that it is bad to be a prideful hypocrite, we ask not for proof. To borrow a phrase from some fellow deists, we hold these truths to be self-evident.

I could stop there, but when I say I have Christian values, I mean something more. To be blunt, there is more to Christianity than the teachings of Jesus. Christianity is an entire lineage of thought. I know it's fashionable, even in Christian circles, to say good things about Jesus while looking down on Christian history and culture. And I get it; I've heard all the reasons and I sympathize with many of them. However, being a rational, independent thinker doesn't mean discarding the work of everyone who came before you so you can reinvent the wheel alone in your bedroom. That isn't how progress works. If you want to be a novelist, should you avoid reading the classics? Does an engineer make a better tool by being ignorant of the virtues of the most popular designs? You have to respect your elders.

Religions have always been a natural home for mankind's accumulated contemplations and moral insights. It's easy for overeducated people to pretend religion is dead, but most people today are still religious. Christianity, in addition to being the religion I was given, is also the most popular religion with by far the greatest national and ethnic diversity. It publishes the most books, builds the most buildings, funds the most charity work, and so on.

Are we really to assume all these people (in blue above) are totally misguided idiots? Nothing worthwhile comes from these brainwashed sheep, you say? Back to the depths of Reddit with you, heathen.

Can't the biggest group just be completely wrong about something? Yes; I have reasons and a right to think orthodox Christians are wrong about certain things, as I've mentioned. But here's a useful guideline for studying cultures: start by assuming other people are similar to you in intelligence and virtue, as opposed to being stupid and evil. That goes for people in other places as well as people in the past. It then stands to reason that an extraordinarily successful, global movement which has spent 2000 years contemplating morality and other big questions, and has been a backbone of an impressive array of stable societies everywhere, probably has an overall wisdom level higher than some blank-slate armchair philosopher.

Christianity has its problems. I only refrain from listing them because modern people are almost morbidly aware of them. But a practical reality remains: Christianity is a deep well to draw from. For most of the globe, it is the well in our own backyard. Boasting an endless list of great writers and thinkers, it offers timeless wisdom on many subjects. It has well-considered traditions for every life occasion. And it has active moral communities in gorgeous buildings on every street corner in the west.

I will not blame others for rejecting it altogether; they have their reasons. But I can see for myself through reason and life experience that many Christian attitudes, ideals, norms and traditions make a good foundation for life. For me at least, this is a crucial feature of the Christian deist viewpoint, and it should be sufficient reason to associate with traditional Christians. Whether we admit to being heretics at the church picnic is another matter.