THE next false view of God that we will consider is deism. Although deism accepts the existence of a personal God, it stands for a false view of God, of man, and of the hereafter. Let us consider these three phases of deism in the order named.
Deists believe that God is a great, mighty, wise, and loving personal Creator who has always existed. We can agree upon all these things. But the deist believes that after God created everything perfect and subjected everything to His perfect laws, He then left His creative work as a perfect thing to take care of itself without any further involvement from Him.
Our first objection to this view is in deism’s teaching that creation is perfect, while the Bible, reason, and facts are to the contrary. While the Bible teaches that the earth and its animate beings will sometime be perfect, it distinctly teaches that both the earth and its animate beings are imperfect. A little consideration will show that facts are in harmony with the Scriptures.
The deist would object by saying that we claim that God’s work is imperfect. However, we claim that that part of His creative work which is completed is doubtless without a flaw (Deuteronomy 32: 4). But so far as our knowledge goes there is only one place in the universe wherein the Creator’s work is completed, and that is heaven. The imperfections in the earth and doubtless in other planets are present because the Creator’s creative process is not yet complete in them. But when such processes are complete this earth and they will be perfect, as the Scriptures teach.
God’s Providential Care Disproves Deism
The deist’s view of God cuts Him off from all providential care of His creatures, but we must also disagree with this view. The fact of an incomplete universe implies providential preservation exercised over its incomplete parts, that the past gains of the creative process be not lost and that they may be maintained as a foundation for the remaining advancing stages of the creative processes. Furthermore, the creative processes cannot be left in the hands of nature’s laws because nature’s laws like all other laws are not self-enforcing. There must be a ruler to order and enforce these.
The condition of the curse, which both Scripture and facts prove man to be under, creates the necessity of the intervention of a wise, just, loving, and powerful Creator, lest man become utterly and eternally ruined. Hence the necessity of God’s intervening, to show man a way out of his ruined condition and to help him avail himself of that way out. The former implies a Divine revelation, which the Christian believes he has in the Bible; and the latter implies a Divinely ordained and efficient Savior, whom the Christian believes God arranged for him to have in Jesus Christ.
But deism’s God can give no Divine revelation nor send a Divinely appointed and efficient Savior. From the nature of the Divine attributes that the deist claims that his God in creation had, we must conclude that the deist’s idea of an absentee and unconcerned God is incompatible with his view of God’s attributes as displayed in His creative work. These considerations prove the reasonableness of a Divine revelation and the unreasonableness of the deist’s denial of its possibility.
Furthermore, man is unable to attain the needed knowledge that a Divine revelation could impart. Such knowledge is beyond man to attain by his own unaided powers. This is seen in the prevalence of so many mutually contradictory and self-contradictory religions, each teaching a different theory of man’s relation to God and of attaining harmony with God. This is further proven by the fact that even with the Divine revelation, the Bible, in their hands, the vast majority misunderstand it, as can be seen from the clashing creeds of Christendom. Man’s inability to solve the problem of his relations to God and to amend them, make a Divine revelation necessary, if such needed knowledge and accompanying help are to come to man.
(to be continued)