Theism, the view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one

supreme or ultimate reality of which one may also speak in personal terms.
In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this ultimate reality is often called God. This
article explores approaches to theism in Western theology and philosophy.
Theistic Views Of God
Theism’s view of God can be clarified by contrasting it with those
of deism, pantheism, and mysticism.
Deism
Deism closely resembles theism, but for the deist God is not involved in the world in
the same personal way. God has made it, so to speak, or set the laws of it—and to that
extent he sustains it in being. But God, as the deist sees him, allows the world to
continue in its own way, subject to this final and somewhat remote control. This view
simplifies some problems, especially those that arise from the scientific account of the
world: one does not have to allow for any factor that cannot be handled and
understood in the ordinary way. God is in the shadows or beyond, and, though people
may still in some way centre their lives upon him, this calls for no radical adjustment
at the human or finite level. The deist proceeds, for most purposes at least, as if there
were no God—or only an absent one. This approach is especially true of humans’
understanding of the world. This is why deism appealed so much to thinkers in the
time of the first triumphs of modern science. They could indeed allow for God, but
they had “no need of that hypothesis” in science or in their normal account of things.
Religion, being wholly superadded, was significant only in a manner that involved
little else in the world or in human life. The theist, on the other hand, questions this
view and seeks in various ways (as noted below) to bring humanity’s relation to God
into closer involvement with the way he understands himself and the world around
him.

Theism, pantheism, and monism

Theism sharply contrasts with pantheism, which identifies God with all that there is,
and with various forms of monism, which regards all finite things as parts, modes,
limitations, or appearances of some one ultimate Being, which is all that there is.
Some types of absolute Idealism, a philosophy of all-pervading Mind, while regarding
every finite thing as comprising some limitation of the one whole of Being, seek also
to retain the theistic element in their view of the world. They do this normally by
stressing the role of unifying finite centres, such as self-conscious human beings, in
the way the universe as a whole functions. But there is no recognition here of the
finality of what is technically known as “the distinctness of persons.” The theist, by
contrast, considers the world to be quite distinct from its author or creator, human life
being thus in no sense strictly the life of God, while also making room for a
peculiarly intimate involvement of God in the world and in human life.
Theism and mysticism
Mysticism in practice comes close to theism, but mystical thought and much of its
practice have often involved a repudiation of the proper reality of finite things and
sometimes tends to dismiss all of the finite manifold or multiplicity of things as some
wholly unreal phantasm that has no place in the one undiversified Being, which alone
is real. Theism is very far removed from ideas of this kind.
The personal God and the world

The idea that the world, as humanity understands it in a finite way, is dependent on
some reality altogether beyond human comprehension, perfect and self-sustained but
also peculiarly involved in the world and its events, is presented with exceptional
sharpness and discernment in the Hebrew Bible, whence it became a formative
influence in Jewish history and subsequently in Christianity and Islam. Behind the
creation stories, behind the patriarchal narratives, like that of Jacob at Bethel (Genesis
28) or wrestling with his strange visitor at Penuel (Genesis 32), and behind the high
moments of prophecy, like Isaiah’s famous vision in the Temple (Isaiah 6), and of
moving religious experience in the Psalms, in the Book of Job, and (with remarkable
explicitness) in some well-known passages, like the story of Moses at the burning
bush (Exodus 3), behind all these there lies a sense of some mysterious, all-
encompassing reality by which human beings are also in some way addressed and
which they may also venture to address in turn. Moses wished to see God, to have
some explicit sign that could convince the people and establish his own authority, but
he was shown instead that this is just what he could not have. All that he could be
assured of was that God is real and is bound to be: “I am who I am,” he was told. On
the other hand, in the throes of this humbling and staggering experience, Moses began
to learn also what was expected of him and how his people should live and be led. The
God who was so strange and elusive was somehow found to be a God who “talked” to
him and with whom people could “walk.” The same seemingly bewildering claim of
remoteness, almost to the point of unreality, linked with a compelling explicitness and
closeness, is also found in other cultures, as illustrated below. This claim presents the
reflective thinker with the twofold problem of theism: how can a reality as remote and
mysterious as the God of theism—the “wholly other,” in the famous words of the
German theologian Rudolf Otto—be known at all and how, if it can be known, can it
be spoken of in precise and intimate ways and encountered as a person?
Intellectual Background
There have been many attempts to establish the existence of one supreme and ultimate
Being—whom in religion one speaks of as God—and some of these have been given
very precise forms in the course of time.
The influence of Plato and Aristotle
The pattern for many of these was laid down in ancient Greece by Plato. He taught
about God mostly in mythical terms, stressing the goodness of God (as in
the Republic and Timaeus) and his care for human beings (as in the Phaedo). But in
the Phaedrus, and much more explicitly in the Laws, he presented a more rigorous
argument, based on the fact that things change and are in motion. Not all change
comes from outside; some of it is spontaneous and must be due to “soul” and
ultimately to a supreme or perfect soul. Whether God so conceived quite gives the
traditional theist all that he wants, however, is not certain. For God, in Plato, fashions
the world on the pattern of immutable forms and, above all, on “the Good,” which is
“beyond being and knowledge”; i.e., it is transcendent and beyond the grasp of
thought. But Plato’s combination of the notion of the transcendent, which is also
supremely good, and the argument from change provided the model for much of the
course that subsequent philosophical arguments were to take. Aristotle made the
argument from motion more precise, but he coupled it with a doubtful astronomical
view and a less theistic notion of God, who, as the unmoved mover, is the ultimate
source of all other movement, not by expressly communicating it but by being a
supreme object of aspiration, all appetite and activity being in fact directed to some
good. Aristotle thus set the pattern for the more deistic view of God, whereas the
theist, taken in the strict sense, turns more for his start and inspiration to Plato.
The causal argument

The argument for the existence of God inferred from motion was given a more
familiar form in the first of the Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas, five major proofs
of God that also owed much to the emphasis on the complete transcendence of God in
the teaching of Plotinus, the leading Neoplatonist of the 3rd century CE, and his
followers. (The word that Plotinus used for the ultimate but mysterious dependence of
all things on God is “emanation,” but this characterization was not understood by him
as it has been by some later thinkers, as questioning the genuine independent
existence of finite things.) In the first way, Aquinas put forward the view that all
movement implies, in the last analysis, an unmoved mover, and, though this argument
as he understood it presupposes certain views about movement and physical change
that may not be accepted today, it does make the main point that finite processes call
for some ground or condition other than themselves.
This becomes more explicit in the second way, which proceeds from the principle that
everything must have an “efficient cause”—i.e., a cause that actively produces and
accounts for it—to the notion of a first cause required to avoid an infinite regress, or
tracing of causes endlessly backward. As normally found, the idea of efficient
causality, in respect to change and process, has many difficulties, and some would
prefer to speak instead of regular or necessary sequence. But a more serious objection
stresses the apparent inconsistency of thinkers who invoke a general principle of
causality and then exempt the alleged first cause. As the child is apt to put it, “Who
then made God?” To this a defender of St. Thomas, or at least of the present approach
to the idea of God, would reply that the first cause is not supposed to be itself a
member of any ordinary causal sequence but altogether beyond it, an infinite reality
not itself a part of the natural or temporal order at all. This point, in fact, is what
the third way, starting from the contingency of the world, brings out more explicitly.
Nothing explains itself, and all other explanations fall short of showing in any
exhaustive way why anything is as it is or why there is anything at all. But it is also
hard to suppose that things just happen to be. Nothing could come out of just nothing,
and so the course of events as humans find and explain them points to some reality
that is not itself to be understood or explained in the normal way at all: it
is Explanation with a capital E, as it were, that is seen to be necessitated by all that
there is—of whose nature, however, nothing may be directly discerned beyond the
inevitability of its being as the ultimate or unconditioned ground of all else and in this
way transcendent or utterly mysterious in itself.
The ontological argument
Scholars have often converged upon the same theme in what appears to be a very
different line of argument, namely the ontological one, with which are associated
especially the names of St. Anselm, first of the Scholastic philosophers (in the 11th
century), and René Descartes, first major modern philosopher (in the mid-17th
century). Proponents of this argument try to show that the very idea of God implies
his existence. God is the being none greater than which can be conceived. Other
things equal, a thing that has the attribute of existence is greater than a thing that does
not. Thus, if God did not exist, it would be possible to conceive a being greater than
him: namely, one that has all of God’s attributes plus existence. Therefore, God exists.
Critics—such as Gaunilo, a monk of Marmoutier in Anselm’s day, and Immanuel
Kant, one of the major architects of modern philosophy many centuries later—have
fastened on the weakness that existence is not a predicate or attribute in the same way,
at least, as colour or shape, but in the 20th century there were highly ingenious
attempts by influential religious thinkers—e.g., Charles Hartshorne and Norman
Malcolm—to restate the argument in an acceptable form. Others find in the argument
an oblique and needlessly elaborate way of eliciting the feeling that there must be
some reality that exists by the very necessity of its own nature and to which
everything else directs human thought.
 Descartes, RenéRené Descartes.National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland

Arguments from value and design

Attempts to arrive at the idea of God in somewhat more comprehensible terms are
reflected in the references to value and design in the fourth and fifth ways of Aquinas.
This approach, however, has been given a more explicit presentation and critical
discussion in the works of the 18th-century Scottish skeptic David Hume and of Kant.
The main idea of the argument from design (or teleological argument) is that of the
worth and purpose, or apparent design, to be found in the world. This purposiveness is
taken to imply a supreme Designer. It has been questioned, however (by Kant, for
example), whether this argument can really get started without presupposing some
feature of the causal argument. The presence of seemingly purposeless features of the
world and of much that is positively bad, like wickedness and suffering, while always
embarrassing for a theistic view, presents peculiar difficulties here, for the arguer is
now throwing hostages to fortune in the shape of a special assessment of the way
things actually happen, which goes far beyond the mere requirement of some ultimate
ground, whatever the world appears to be like. The arguments from worth and design
have, however, one considerable advantage: they provide a fairly straightforward way
of learning about the nature of God and of ascribing a certain aim and character to him
from one’s understanding of the phenomena that he is required to explain. The
supreme Designer or Architect is known from his works, especially perhaps as
reflected in the lives of human beings, and this approach opens up one way of
speaking of God, not just as mysterious power behind the world but as some reality
whom humans may come to know in a personal way from the way the world goes and
from their understanding of what it means. (For a contemporary version of the
argument from design, see intelligent design.)

Hume, DavidDavid Hume, oil on canvas by Allan Ramsay, 1766; in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery,
Edinburgh.Fine Art Images—Heritage Images/age fotostock

Many thinkers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought to establish human
knowledge of God in the way suggested through the individual’s understanding of
himself and the world, and among them the most notable and valuable were the
British theists James Ward, a psychologist, and F.R. Tennant, a philosophical
theologian. But the work of thinkers like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit
paleoanthropologist, and the spate of discussion that he provoked are also relevant
here, and such work in turn owes much—directly or otherwise—to the work of
evolutionary thinkers like Samuel Alexander and Henri Bergson and of 20th-century
scientists like Julian Huxley.
The Problem Of Particular Knowledge Of God
If the central theme of traditional theism, that the finite world depends in some way on
one transcendent and infinite Being, can be sustained, then a crucial problem presents
itself at once: the question of how a being whose essence can never be known to
human beings—a being who, as infinite, is bound to be beyond the grasp
of reason and to remain wholly mysterious—can be said to be known at all, much less
known and experienced in the close and intimate personal ways that the theist makes
equally central to his claim. Part of the answer is that the theist does not claim to
fathom the ultimate mystery of God or to know him as he is in himself. All that is
claimed on this score is that humans see the inevitability of there being God in
the contingent and limited character of everything else. Though this line of thought
could not be adopted for any finite existence—since one could not normally affirm in
any sensible way the existence of anything without specifying in some measure,
however slight, what it is like—one can, nonetheless, regard the case of God as
unique and not subject to the conditions of finite intelligibility. In these ways, an
insight or intuition into the being of God may be claimed without a commitment to
anything about his nature beyond the sort of completeness or perfection required to
account for there being limited finite things. This insight is much in line with the
“deliverances of religious consciousness” in which it is claimed that God is “hidden,”
is “past finding out,” that his ways are not human ways, that he is eternal, uncreated,
and so on. But the theist still has a major problem on his hands, for he also makes a
central issue of the claim that God can be known—“met” and “encountered” in some
way—indeed, that some very bold affirmations about God and his dealings with
humanity may be made.
Theism and natural theology
Theists have tried to deal with this problem in various ways. One of them is their use
of the doctrine of analogy, which owes a great deal to the teaching of Aquinas.
Various types of analogy are distinguished in the traditional doctrine, but the central
claim is that certain predicates, such as “love,” “faithfulness,” or “justice,” may be
affirmed of God in whatever way may reflect his involvement as the author of the
limited realities, such as humanity, of which such predicates may be affirmed in the
normal, straightforward way. The difficulty with this procedure is that, whatever it
yields, the content of faith is still very thin and remote, far from the warm fellowship
of personal relations. Most of the traditional sponsors of the doctrine admit this and
contend, therefore, that the findings of their “natural theology,” as it is called, must be
supplemented by that of revelation or of divine disclosure. Theism, in fact, is hardly
conceivable without some doctrine of revelation. But even if the theologian says that
God takes the initiative in communicating himself to people,
the epistemological problem remains of how the essentially finite human mind can
apprehend anything pertaining to infinite or eternal Being.
Theism and religious experience
At this point, recourse is sometimes had to authority, the authority of a sacred book,
an institution, or a system of doctrines or one of divinely implanted images. But there
must at least be some initial justification of an authority, to say nothing of an
evaluation of rival claims. A more attractive solution, then, especially for those who
stress the personal involvement of God in the lives of human beings, is one posed in
terms of religious experience. Such experience is usually given prominence in
theistic contexts. It is sometimes understood in terms of paranormal phenomena, like
hearing voices or seeing visions, which have no natural origin, or like being in some
peculiar psychical state. Some of the faithful believe that God literally speaks to them
(or spoke in times past to prophets) in this way. A more subtle view holds that people
have reason to regard certain experiences as their clue to what they should say of God
in his relation to them. The question then arises of how these experiences should be
recognized, and various answers are given, such as that which stresses the formative
influence (within such experiences) of the initial insight into the being of God and the
patterning of the experiences, in themselves and in wider ramifications, as a result.
Much use is made in this context of the analogy with limitations on the knowledge
that individual human beings may have of each other. No person knows the mind of
another in the same way that he knows his own; rather, one person’s knowledge of
another person’s thought is mediated through bodily states and behaviour. In a similar
way, a person may come to know an otherwise impenetrable God from evidence of
the impact that God makes within experiences and events in the person’s life. In the
molding and perpetuating of such experiences, prominence is given to imagination
and to the place of figurative terms and symbolism. These forms therefore have a
place of special importance in theistic types of religion, the personal encounter being
extended and deepened through art and literature, song, dance, myth, and ritual. This
fact in turn presents problems for thought and practice, since the art forms and ritual
must not be allowed to take wing on their own and thereby be loosed from
the discipline and direction of the proper dynamic of religious life.
Theism and religious language
Preoccupation with the forms in which religious life expresses itself has led some
theistic writers to lean heavily on the contribution made to religious understanding
today by studies of religious language. In some cases this concern has carried with it,
as it generally did in much linguistic philosophy of the mid-20th century, a skeptical
or agnostic view of the transcendent factor in religion. It is hard to see, however, how
attenuations of this kind could be strictly regarded as forms of theism, though clearly,
within their more restricted scope, they can retain many of the other characteristics of
theism, such as the stress on personal involvement and response. This tendency is
very marked in some recent studies of religion, in which the inspiration and form of
theism are retained without the substance—though how long and how properly are
moot points. There are others who, while retaining the transcendent reference of
theism, look for the solution of the central problem less in the substance of religious
awareness and in varieties of experience than in the modes of articulation and
religious language. Controversy centres to a great degree on which of these
approaches is the most fruitful.

The Nature Of God

Theism and incarnation

The core of human personality has often been thought to be human moral existence,
and, accordingly, theists have often taken this fact to be the main clue to the way they
are to think of divine perfection and to the recognition of a peculiar divine
involvement in the world. Prominence is thus accorded to the high ethical teaching
and character of saints and prophets, who have a special role to play in transmitting
the divine message. In some religions this tendency culminates in doctrines
of incarnation, of God manifesting himself expressly in refined or perfected human
form. This trend is peculiarly marked in the Christian religion, in which the claim is
usually made that a unique and “once for all” incarnation of God has occurred in Jesus
Christ. Islam, on the other hand, centres on a transcendent personal deity
yet envisions the holiness and majesty of God in such a way that it rejects
incarnational doctrines as a form of blasphemy. However, it sometimes represents
actions by a human individual as the action of God within him. This identification of
humanity with God is most evident in the mysticism of the Sufis, yet in its devotional
and emotional dimensions it also accords with theism.
Incarnational claims seem certainly to take their place easily in some main forms of
theism. The vindication of such claims, however, relies much on consideration of the
personal factor in religion generally. For these and related reasons, the theist may find
himself calling to his aid certain other disciplines that centre upon the person, such as
psychology and anthropology. Not all of the forms and findings of these studies
favour the theist, and he should take special note of their challenge when they seem
hostile, for they may touch him at his tenderest spot. He may, on the other hand, find
in such studies, and certain general literature that borders on kindred themes,
substantial help in reconstructing his case in the full context of contemporary thought
and culture.
Humanism and transcendence
It is indeed from certain modern studies of human beings and their environment that
some of the most disturbing challenges to the theist have come. It has been argued that
the very idea of God, as well as the more specific forms that it takes, emanates from
human emotional needs for succour and comfort. People themselves, it is said, have
created God in their own image, and the attempt is made to substantiate this view
from accounts of the human proclivity, especially in early times, to personify natural
objects—rivers, trees, mountains, and so forth—and, in due course, to confer peculiar
properties upon them, leading in time to the notion of some superbeing in whom these
powers and properties are concentrated. The classical statement of this position
appeared before the development of anthropology and the modern systematic study of
religions. Hume’s short but splendidly lucid and challenging essay “The Natural
History of Religion” (1757) set the pattern for the more scientific and empiricalstudies
of religion that began to take shape in the 19th century in pioneer work by E.B. Tylor,
a British ethnologist and anthropologist, in his Primitive Culture (1871), and by
Sir James Frazer, an ethnographer and historian of religion, in his Golden
Bough (1890–1915). But a corrective to this approach was soon provided by other
scholars equally renowned, who started from the historical and empirical evidence
available to them at the time. Andrew Lang, a Scottish litterateur, drew attention to
the phenomenon, among very early peoples, of the High God, a Supreme Being who
created himself and the earth and dwelt at one time on earth. John H. King, in The
Supernatural: Its Origin, Nature and Evolution (1892), stressed the importance of the
element of mystery in all religions, and another pioneer of religious
anthropology, R.R. Marett, showed how extensively tribal peoples ascribed the
mysteries of life and power to a supernatural source. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, a French
sociologist, noted the pervasiveness of prelogical factors in primitive mentality,
and Rudolf Otto, the most famous name in this context, found evidence in early forms
of religion of a response to “the wholly other,” which he called both the numinous and
the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (the mystery that both terrifies and compels).
The idea of a finite God

Concern with the problem of evil—i.e., with reconciling the existence of evil with that
of a good God—becomes acute for thinkers who rest their case mainly on what they
find in the world around them, and this has led many to retreat to the notion of a finite
God, according to which the world may be under the direction of a superior being who
is nonetheless limited in power, though not in goodness. This is a
serious alternative to the idea of a supreme and unlimited source of all reality as found
in the usual forms of theism. Indeed, it is a moot point whether the idea of a finite God
should be classified as a form of theism. It does come close to traditional theism,
however, in its insistence on the unity and absolute benevolence of God. There are
clearly advantages in the notion of God as a limited being, especially where evil is
concerned. Though one could still insist that God intends nothing that is not wholly
good, one can now account for extensive suffering and other ills on the basis of the
limits to God’s power. He is doing his utmost, the finitist holds, but there are things—
refractory materials or explicitly evil powers—that he has not yet subdued, though
hopefully he will eventually do so. There is also induced in this way a sense of
urgency in humanity’s own obligation, as the apex of creation, to cooperate with
God—to be a “fellow worker.” God will clearly need this help, though he himself is in
the vanguard of the battle against evil. Thus, those who incline to the idea of a finite
God usually have been activist in thought and practice.
There are also grave difficulties to be met. For if a thinker has recourse to the idea of
God simply to account for what is otherwise bewildering in the finite course of things,
he may find no warrant for the inference involved and indeed may find himself
desperately clinging to what is sometimes called “the God of the gaps” (i.e., of the
gaps in human explanations). If, on the other hand, he starts from the inherently
incomplete character of finite explanation as such, or from the contingency of finite
things, nothing short of an infinite or absolute God will meet the case. It is also
questionable whether the attitude of worship is appropriate for a limited being,
however superior he may be to humans.
Among the outstanding advocates of the idea of a finite God were, at the turn of the
20th century, the American pragmatist William James and some of his disciples,
notably Ralph Barton Perry. Thus, it is not surprising that a closely similar notion that
arose in the mid-20th century found its main inspiration and support in the United
States, in the work of thinkers in the tradition of process philosophy, such as the
logician Charles Hartshorne and the theologian Schubert Ogden. Both these figures
built upon some of the leading ideas of Alfred North Whitehead, an eminent
mathematician and metaphysician. Philosophers and theologians who base their work
on Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme dispute the nature of God’s presence within
creation and the extent of God’s power within it, thus departing from more traditional
theistic views. God is himself in the process of fulfillment within the incessantly
emerging world. He is also himself a creature among other creatures, even though he
permeates and unifies the universe by providing the “divine lure” that encourages all
other creatures, and thus the universe overall, toward fulfillment. There are admitted
problems in this view—e.g., the nature of the relationship between God and individual
creatures, which Whitehead thought occurred through a mode of perception that he
called “prehension”—that have spurred its late 20th- and early 21st-century advocates
to develop novel solutions. For example, the American philosopher and theologian
Bernard M. Loomer ultimately moved toward a sophisticated variety of pantheism.
Others remained within the theist camp or, like the American theologian Marjorie
Suchocki, moved toward a position called panentheism, in which God remains
something greater than the created world and helps to lure it toward greater
fulfillment.
Definition
Theism (pronounced THEE-ism) means “belief in one or more gods.” It covers a
huge range of religious beliefs, notably the Abrahamic monotheisms, Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam.
Theism refers to any kind of belief in any god or gods, so it is difficult to
make any other generalizations about it. Two people may both say they
believe in God, so they’re both theists; but what they mean by “God” could be
completely different. This does however raise the interesting question of what
all gods have in common—in order to be called gods; but since this is a
matter of belief, not fact, we shall not attempt such a definition here.
Belief in God is also normally attached to other beliefs, such as belief in an
afterlife or the soul. However, theism can also refer to religions with
extremely different beliefs, such as reincarnation.

II. Types of Theism

You can subdivide theism in many ways. For example, you can divide it into
separate historical / cultural traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity,
Hinduism, and Islam (and each of these could be subdivided still further).
You can also define types of theism by number of Gods:

 Monotheism: one god

 Polytheism: many gods
 Ditheism: two gods, usually one good and one evil
 Henotheism: one main god with many minor gods

Alternatively, you can divide it in terms of different ideas about the nature of
the god or gods:
 Pantheism: God = everything or the universe
 Deism: God created the whole universe but does not interfere in events
 Autotheism: God = the self or is within the self
 Eutheism: God is entirely merciful and just
 Misotheism / Dystheism: God is evil
 and many others

III. Theism vs. Atheism vs. Agnosticism

The opposite of theism is atheism, or the belief that there are no gods.
Atheism was once rare in the Western world, but it has grown rapidly over the
 past two centuries since traditional theistic beliefs and organized religions
have been threatened both by science and by exposure to alternative belief
systems from around the world.
Atheists deny the existence of God, but often embrace other religious
teachings, especially regarding morality and compassion; and atheists argue
that true morality springs from reason and compassion rather than the will of
God or the fear of disobeying God.
Although atheism is relatively new in the west, various atheistic belief
systems have been popular in Asia for thousands of years. While some forms
of Buddhism (from India) and Taoism (from China) are theistic, other forms have
no gods, and can be considered atheistic. And Indian and Chinese atheism
are very different from Western atheism in their rituals, traditions, and
general philosophical outlook.
Agnosticism is quite different from either atheism or theism; it is not a belief,
but rather an acknowledgement that we don’t know whether gods exist or
not; or at least the agnostic claims that he or she doesn’t know! Most
reasonable people are at least a little agnostic: some theists acknowledge that
they don’t know for a fact that God exists, even though they have faith; and
some atheists, conversely, acknowledge that they can’t be certain there is no
God. However agnostics consider both theism and atheism to be irrationally
based on faith.

IV. Quotes About Theism

Quote 1
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the
counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” (Isaac Newton)
Isaac Newton was a theist and one of the greatest scientists of all time.
Newton’s vision of the universe was extremely orderly and rational, like an
elaborate and beautiful machine. His ideas gave rise to deism, or the view of
God as a cosmic watchmaker who designed the universe and then left it alone
to unwind according to its own laws.
Quote 2
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who
prays.” (Søren Kiergkegaard)
Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, and a Christian, who tried to argue
philosophically for monotheism. He argued that faith alone was not a reason
to believe in something, and tried to develop a more philosophically rigorous
understanding of God and Christian practice. Part of his argument was that we
should give up on the idea of asking God for help and instead take
responsibility for our own lives and actions.
IV. The History and Importance of Theism
No one knows when human beings began to worship gods. Most scholars
speculate that early humans believed in nature spirits and ancestor-worship,
much like many tribal people throughout the world still do today (in fact,
most modern Chinese still carry out the rituals of ancestor worship). There is
physical evidence throughout the world for ancient nature worship, such as
paintings and carvings of half-human / half-animal beings. However, this is
still mostly speculation. Tribal groups in the 21st century have been evolving
and changing for just as long as modern city-dwellers, so we can’t assume
that their lifestyles or beliefs are similar to the lifestyles of our ancient
ancestors.
We mostly have to guess and infer what people in the deep past believed, but
around 2100 BC our ancestors developed a new technology that completely
changed our understanding of their religions — literature. Ancient
civilizations began to produce poetry based on their myths, which allows us
to learn in more detail about their beliefs. Most of the earliest literature is
polytheistic, with multiple gods. Most well-known, perhaps, are the ancient
Greek gods, who controlled various aspects of nature and human life (Zeus =
sky / weather, Athena = wisdom, Poseidon = the sea, etc.) However, there
were many more ancient religions, and, other cultures did not necessarily
have the same sorts of gods. The ancient Celts, for example, worshipped
various gods who had different powers and attributes but were not
committed to certain parts of nature in the same way as the Greek gods.
Monotheism developed in several places out of various kinds of polytheism;
in India, for example, Hindu philosophers developed Vaishnava, a
monotheistic belief system that coexisted alongside Hindu polytheism.
Around the same time, Middle Eastern cities began to worship individual
deities associated with particular cities. While this religious system was in
some ways polytheistic (with many different city-gods), from the perspective
of any one city is was more like henotheism, worshipping only one god while
accepting that the others might exist.
Judaism, the first of the Abrahamic monotheisms, probably started out as a
kind of henotheism; in other words, the Jewish ‘one God’ was originally
simply the god of the Hebrews, while other gods were believed to exist. But
from there it was a simple jump to say that the other gods were not only
unworthy of worship but really didn’t exist at all. Jewish monotheism
eventually gave rise to Christianity and, indirectly, Islam, and as a result it is
often referred to as the “first” monotheism, but this isn’t accurate since there
were other monotheisms in India and the Middle East at the time.
In the West, we sometimes imagine that there is a natural progression from
polytheism to monotheism (and, some people add, from there to atheism),
but this progression has not held true in other parts of the world. In China,
 for example, monotheism never developed but various forms of atheism did.
The philosophy of Confucius was not based on the existence of any gods, so
some Confucians believed in polytheism while others were atheists. Similarly,
Buddhism has always had some polytheist strains, some monotheist, some
henotheist, and some atheist!

V. Theism in Popular Culture

Example 1
Theism plays a major role in the God of War games. In these video games, you
play a demigod (half-god, half-human) seeking revenge against various gods
from Greek mythology. It’s somewhat debatable whether the theism in these
games is polytheism or henotheism; it’s polytheistic because there are many
gods, but it’s henotheistic because one of the gods (Zeus) rules over all the
others and is worshipped above the rest. In any event, the game definitely has
the feel of misotheism, because the gods are your enemies and portrayed as
evil and manipulative.
Example 2
“Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about
God?”
“No, no, I… don’t…”
“Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never
wanted you. In all probability, He hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.”
“It isn’t?”
“No! We don’t need Him!”
(Jack and Tyler, Fight Club)
In this exchange from Fight Club, Tyler is laying out a misotheist position. This
is a form of theism, because it implies that God exists. But unlike most
theists, Tyler claims that God hates mankind. Of course, Tyler’s argument is
meant to make a point about our attitudes towards ourselves and our lives;
he is probably not a true believer in misotheism.

VI. Controversies
Faith and Theism
Faith plays a major role in most forms of theism, especially monotheistic
religions like Christianity and Islam. According to most widely-held definitions
of God, the existence of such a being is impossible to prove; therefore,
theists have have to base their beliefs on something other than proof: faith
(meaning belief in spite of a lack of evidence). Conveniently, most sub-sects
of these religions have come to assert that faith is spiritually superior to
reason.
 Can faith be justified philosophically? Philosophers are divided on this issue,
but the majority say that faith is not enough by itself. Others point out that
most beliefs require some amount of faith; if you really look with a skeptical
eye, it’s hard to prove anything at all outside of math and some hard science.
So, according to this argument, you might as well have faith in God, because
most of your beliefs are already faiths anyway. However, this argument will
probably never convince an atheist, since it doesn’t give you any reason to
believe in God (other than wishful thinking)! It only implies that you have no
reason not to believe in God.
On the other hand, many philosophers of religion argue that faith is not
about “believing” anything; it’s about making a commitment to moral
behavior and diligent religious practice. For these theists, God is not
necessarily a being at all, but rather an idea that brings happiness and
spiritual peace. For example, when these philosophers read the Bible, they
don’t believe that it’s true in the normal sense; rather, they understand it as
expressing abstract moral, philosophical, and spiritual truths—not literal
ones.
Back to Top
Introduction
Theism is the belief in the existence of one or
more divinities or deities (gods), which are
both immanent (i.e. they exist within the universe) and
yet transcendent (i.e. they surpass, or are independent of,
physical existence). These gods also in some
way interact with the universe (unlike in Deism), and are
often considered to
be omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.
The word "theism" was first coined in English in the 17th
Century to contrast with the earlier term Atheism. "Deism"
and "theism" changed meanings slightly around 1700, due to
the increasing influence of Atheism: "deism" was originally
used as a synonym for today's "theism", but came to denote
a separate philosophical doctrine (see Deism).
Theism incorporates Monotheism (belief in one
God), Polytheism (belief in many gods) and Deism (belief in
one or more gods who do not intervene in the world), as well
as Pantheism (belief that God and the universe are the same
thing), Panentheism (belief that God is everywhere in the
universe but still greater and above the universe) and many
other variants (see the section on Philosophy of Religion).
What it does not include is Atheism (belief that there are no
gods) and Agnosticism (belief that it is unknown whether
gods exist or not).
The Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam)
as well
as Hinduism, Sikhism, Baha'i and Zoroastrianism, are
all theistic religions.
Back to Top
Types of Theism
Classical Theism refers to traditional ideas of the
major Monotheistic religions such
as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam which hold that God
is an absolute, eternal, all-knowing (omniscient), all-
powerful (omnipotent) and perfect being who is related to
the world as its cause, but is unaffected by the world
(immutable), as well as being transcendent over it.
The doctrines of Classical Theism are based on the writings
of Holy Scripture such as the Tanakh, the Bible or
the Qu'ran, although there is also a debt to Platonic and Neo-
Platonic philosophy, and thus synthesizes Christian thought
and Greek philosophy. To a large extent it was developed
during the 3rd Century by St. Augustine (heavily influenced
by Plotinus), who drew on Platonic Idealism to interpret
Christianity, and was extended by St. Thomas Aquinas in
the 13th Century after the rediscovery of the works
of Aristotle.
Open Theism, also known as Free Will Theism, is a recent
theological movement which attempts to explain the practical
relationship between the free will of man and
the sovereignty of God, contrary to Classical Theism which
holds that God fully determines the future. It argues, among
other things, that the concepts of omnipresence and
immutability do not stem from the Bible, but from the
subsequent fusion of Judeo-Christian thought with
the Greek philosophy of Platonism and Stoicism, which
posited an infinite God and a deterministic view of history.
What is a theist?

Question: "What is a theist?"

Answer: In the most general sense, a theist is a person who believes in at least one god or
deity. Theism stands in contrast with atheism (the denial of the existence of any god) and
agnosticism (the belief that the existence of a God or gods is uncertain). Theism can include
any of the following worldviews:

Monotheism: A monotheist is a person who believes in one God. Monotheism is accepted by

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, although each religion has a distinct view of God.

Polytheism: A polytheist believes in more than one god. Those who believed in the gods of
the Greco-Roman culture were polytheists. Today, those who accept the many gods and
goddesses of the spirit world would be considered polytheists.

Deism: Deists believe in a God (or sometimes gods) who created the universe but does not
operate within the universe.

Pantheism / Panentheism: Pantheists and panentheists believe god is all and all is god.
Panentheism also includes the idea that a god or gods created the material universe.

Autotheism: An autotheist is anyone who makes the claim that he or she is God or an
enlightened one.

According to Scripture, there is one God who created the heavens and the earth (Genesis
1:1). This teaching is not debated but assumed in the Bible. In fact, Psalm 14:1 teaches, “The
fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Further, the Old Testament clearly teaches
monotheism: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy
6:4). Deuteronomy 4:39 adds, “The Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath;
there is no other.”

According to the New Testament, God exists as one Triune God comprising God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19—“in the name”, singular). All three
Persons of the Triune God are also mentioned at Jesus’ baptism, when the voice of God the
Father speaks from the sky to Jesus and the Spirit descends like a dove (Matthew 3:16–17).

A Christian is a theist of a particular kind. A Christian is a monotheist who accepts the view of
a Triune God and believes in Jesus as the risen Lord (Romans 10:9).

Recommended Resource: Knowing God by J.I. Packer

More insights from your Bible study - Get Started with Logos Bible Software for Free!

Related Topics:

What is atheism?

What is agnosticism?
byAustin Cline
Updated February 18, 2019

To put it simply, theism is a belief in the existence of at least one god of some sort -
nothing more, nothing less. The only thing all theists have in common is that they all
accept the proposition that at least one god of some sort exists - nothing more, nothing
less. Theism does not depend on how many gods one believes in. Theism does not
depend on how the term 'god' is defined. Theism does not depend on how one arrives
at their belief. Theism does not depend on how one defends their belief or if they ever
defend it at all. Theism certainly does not depend on what other sorts of beliefs one
associates with their belief that a god exists.

Theism and Religion

That theism only means "belief in a god" and nothing more can be difficult to understand
at times because we don't normally encounter theism in such isolation. Instead, when
we see theism, it is embedded in a web of other beliefs - often religious in nature -
which color not only that particular instance of theism itself but also our perception of
that instance of theism. The connections between theism and religion are so strong, in
fact, that some have difficulty in separating the two, even to the point of imagining that
they are the same thing - or at least that theism is necessarily religious and religion is
necessarily theistic.

Thus, when considering and evaluating theism, we are normally engaged in considering
and evaluating a variety of interconnected beliefs, ideas, and assertions, most of which
aren't a part of theism itself. At least, that is what happens "in real life" when debating
the merits of theism and/or religion - but to do that well and not make mistakes like
those mentioned above, we need to be able to step back and take a look at theism in
isolation.

Why? Because if critics wish to argue that something about a theistic belief system is
valid or invalid, rational or irrational, justified or unjustified, we need to be able to identify
what exactly we are accepting or criticizing. Is it something inherent to theism, or is it
something introduced by something else in a person's web of beliefs? That, in turn,
means that we need to be able to separate the different elements because we have to
take the time to consider them both individually and jointly.

Limitations of Theism
Some might object that a broad definition of theism causes it to become meaningless,
but that isn't quite true. Theism is not meaningless; however, it also isn't as meaningful
as some might typically assume - especially those for whom their theism is an important
part of their lives and/or religions. Because theism does not automatically incorporate
any beliefs, attitudes, or ideas beyond the proposition that at least one exists, its
meaning and implications are necessarily limited.

Of course, the exact same thing is true about atheism, too. The only thing that all
atheists have in common is that they don't accept the proposition that at least one god
exists - nothing more, nothing less. Atheists aren't all necessarily rational, ethical,
logical, or anything else. Some are religious while others are anti-religious. Some are
politically conservative while others are liberal. Generalizations and assumptions about
all theists are just as invalid and unwarranted as generalizations and assumptions about
all atheists.

In practical terms, this means that atheists and anyone else critiquing theism cannot fall
victim to intellectual laziness. Generalizations about all theists and theism overall may
be easy, but they aren't valid. On the other hand, critiques and evaluations of specific
theistic belief systems are valid when a critique takes into account the particular truth-
claims, ideas, and methodologies beyond theism itself. This requires work - it requires a
careful study of the belief system and an evaluation of a complex web of ideas.

As difficult as it might be, however, it is also ultimately much more rewarding and
interesting than facile generalizations made without the slightest consideration for the
differences or similarities between believers and belief systems. If one isn't interested in
investing the time and effort needed to gain the requisite understanding, that is of
course just fine - but that means that one also lacks the intellectual standing needed to
judge the specific beliefs in question.

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