Catholic Church and deism

Deism is the philosophical belief which posits that although God exists as the uncaused First Cause, responsible for the creation of the universe, God does not interact directly with that subsequently created world. It manifested itself principally in England towards the latter end of the seventeenth century.

Description

Because of the individualistic standpoint which they adopt, it is difficult to class together the representative writers who contributed to the literature of English deism as forming any one definite school, or to group together the positive teachings contained in their writings as any one systematic expression of a concordant philosophy. Many of them were materialistic in their doctrines; while the French thinkers who subsequently built upon the foundations laid by the English deists were almost exclusively so. Others rested content with a criticism of ecclesiastical authority in teaching the inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures, or the fact of an external revelation of supernatural truth given by God to man. "Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own...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)."

In 2013, Catholic author Al Kresta wrote that "Newton's mechanics turn into the clockwork universe of deism."

History

In England the deistical movement seems to be an almost necessary outcome of the political and religious conditions of the time and country. The Renaissance had fairly swept away the later scholasticism and with it, very largely, the constructive philosophy of the Middle Ages. The Protestant Reformation, in its open revolt against the authority of the Catholic Church, had inaugurated a slow revolution, in which all religious pretensions were to be involved. The new life of the empirical sciences, the enormous enlargement of the physical horizon in such discoveries as those of astronomy and geography, the philosophical doubt and rationalistic method of Descartes, the advocated empiricism of Bacon, the political changes of the times--all these things were factors in the preparation and arrangement of a stage upon which a criticism levelled at revelational religion might come forward and play its part. And though the first essays of deism were somewhat veiled and intentionally indirect in their attack upon revelation, with the revolution and the civil and religious liberty consequent upon it, with the spread of the critical and empirical spirit as exemplified in the philosophy of Locke, the time was ripe for the full rehearsal of the case against Christianity as expounded by the Establishment and the sects. The issue of private judgment had split Protestantism into a great number of conflicting sects.

Catholic philosophers foreshadowing deism

In addition to the 13th century Averroist movement, the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica identified the following philosophers as men whose writings foreshadowed deism:

• Giovanni Boccaccio
• Petrarch
• Thomas Moore, in his Utopia
• Michel de Montaigne
• Pierre Charron
• Jean Bodin (nominal Catholic)

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.

18th century Irish Protestant clergyman Philip Skelton argued that Deists and Catholics were allied in certain matters. In particular, they both attacked certain arrangements involving the government and the Church of England. Skelton noted that although deists sometimes railed against Protestant writers, they never argued against them; deist writers argued against Protestant rather than Catholic writers. Skelton was of the opinion that some deists would actually convert to Catholicism prior to death. Skelton felt that Catholics and deists had similar positions on the authority of Scripture, the indulgence of vice, and even purgatory. Skelton also thought that since Protestants and deists were equally heretics in the eyes of the Catholics anyway, they had no real reason to favor Protestants against the deists. Rather, Skelton thought Catholic apologists would prefer to work with a Deist than a Protestant, as it is easier to convert someone who is an unbeliever already. As part of his argument, Skelton cited the Jesuit educations of the prominent deists Matthew Tindal and John Toland and also noted that Pilloniere was once a member of the Jesuit order himself.

Persecution of deism

The last case of an execution by the inquisition was that of the schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll, accused of deism by the waning Spanish Inquisition and hanged on 26 July 1826 in Valencia after a two-year trial. Eight years later in 1834, Spain, the last remaining government to still be providing the Catholic Church with the right to pronounce and effect capital punishment, formally withdrew that right from the Church.

See also

• Catholic Church and Pandeism

References

Attribution: contains material from the articles Pandeism.