Catholic Church and deism

Relations between the Catholic Church and Deism have historically largely been critical, with the Church having an openly hostile view on Deism.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) recounts Catholic opposition in this period to Deism:

The deistical tendency passed through several more or less clearly defined phases. All the forces possible were mustered against its advance. Parliaments took cognizance of it. Some of the productions of the deists were publicly burnt. The bishops and clergy of the Establishment were strenuous in resisting it. For every pamphlet or book that a deist wrote, several "answers" were at once put before the public as antidotes. Bishops addressed pastoral letters to their dioceses warning the faithful of the danger. Woolston's "Moderator" provoked no less than five such pastorals from the Bishop of London. All that was ecclesiastically official and respectable was ranged in opposition to the movement, and the deists were held up to general detestation in the strongest terms.

Emblem of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which addresses elements of Pandeism.

The 1992-published Catechism of the Catholic Church, like the Catholic Encyclopedia written nearly a century before it, similarly addresses Deism, in Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article I, Paragraph 285:

285 Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human.

In 2013, Catholic author Al Kresta wrote that Scientism was opposed to the Church, and specified that under Scientism, "Newton's mechanics turn into the clockwork universe of deism."

Catholic influence on deism

The Catholic philosopher René Descartes is credited with developing Cartesian dualism. Cartesian dualism reinforced natural theology in 18th century French deism, especially in the writings of Claude Gilbert and in the anonymous Militaire philosophe.

Deism relies on the teleological argument for the existence of God on the basis of his orderly design. This concept, although present in both Classical philosophy and the Bible, was also taught within Catholicism in the writings of Thomas Aquinas.

See also

• Catholic Church and Pandeism

References

Attribution: contains material from the articles Pandeism.