#979 “Am I a Deist?”

Hi Dr. Craig, your work has been very helpful in keeping me convinced of the soundness of belief in God and I am very grateful for it. However, I've always been a little confused about how best to characterize my view. This might be an odd question to ask you but I’m wondering if you could help me understand whether it’s better to use the label “theist” or “deist.” I’ve found it to be extraordinarily difficult to find a good answer to this. It seems like different resources give wildly different answers.

To sum up my basic beliefs: I believe in a personal, supreme or maximally excellent being who created the universe, and I am sincerely open to the possibility of miracles, obviously I believe in the miracle of creation, although I am agnostic about whether God performs miracles like those discussed for instance in Craig Keener’s big book on the topic. I also accept the moral argument and see God as the source of moral values and duties; to the best of my understanding I accept a divine will theory of ethics. I am a substance dualist – I lean toward a creationist view of the soul but ultimately remain agnostic about which view of the soul is correct. I expect there to be an afterlife and am inclined to believe in ultimate moral accountability. I won’t go into the reasons why I left Christianity after growing up in it but just for full context, I am not persuaded that God has chosen to speak to us via a special revelation like a written text or a prophet.

I’ve always struggled with not knowing exactly what term best describes my view, since it makes it difficult to know exactly where I fit in on the theological map. Am I still a theist if I reject all the revealed religions? Am I a deist if I am still open to the possibility that God directly intervenes in the natural order? I’ve heard conflicting claims about whether you can believe in miracles, an afterlife, and a “final judgment” and still be a deist. Is deism one form of theism or are the two completely different things? Does deism necessarily entail the “absentee landlord” view of God, or is it more just a question of accepting “natural religion” as opposed to “revealed religion”?

Thank you very much!

Dan