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Theism and Absolutism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
Theism is sometimes defined by reference to the contrasted doctrines of Deism and Pantheism. Deism, it is said, lays stress on God's transcendence, while Pantheism emphasizes his immanence to the exclusion of his transcendence. Theism, on the other hand, mediates between these two one-sided doctrines and affirms that God is at once both immanent and transcendent. He is in the world and yet beyond it. This definition, however, can only be accepted with qualification because some forms of Pantheism are arrived at by stressing, not the immanence, but the transcendence of God. According to Neo-Platonism, for example, the ineffable Absolute is so transcendent in existence and value that the world is reduced to the humble status of a mere illusory appearance and all veritable reality is absorbed in the Divine. This complication of the matter means that when studying the nature of Theism it is necessary to consider the opposition between Cosmism and Acosmism as well as that between transcendence and immanence The cosmistic tendency is to affirm, whereas the acosmistic tendency is to deny, the ultimate reality of the finite individual's effective autonomy. Theism is cosmistic, in the sense that it refuses to reduce the finite individual to a mere dependent mode of God. Nevertheless, the acosmistic tendency is very evident in many so-called theistic systems—so much so in some cases, indeed, that what is alleged to be Theism really amounts to Pantheism in disguise.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1944
References
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