Theism

Theism (from Greek theós, “god”) — Belief in the existence of a personal God, creator and sustainer of the world, transcendent to it and active in it. The term is associated with Ralph Cudworth, who uses it in The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) to designate the position opposed to atheism. In its current philosophical sense, classical theism attributes to God such attributes as omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, eternity, and simplicity, and holds that he relates to creation through providence and, in revealed religions, through revelation. It is the conception of God shared by the great monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). It contrasts with deism, which denies divine intervention; with pantheism, which identifies God and world; and with atheism, which denies God’s existence. The philosophical tradition has produced arguments for God’s existence: Anselm’s ontological argument (Proslogion, c. 1077-1078), Aquinas’s Five Ways (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3), and the cosmological and design arguments, criticized by Hume and Kant. Theism faces the challenge of the problem of evil, treated by theodicy. In contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, authors such as Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne (The Existence of God, 1979) defend sophisticated versions of theism, and Plantinga argues that belief in God can be rationally “basic,” not dependent on proofs. See Thomas Aquinas, Anselm of Canterbury, Hume, and Kant.

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