Theism is the belief in a god or gods. Classical theism affirms the existence of one god, and ascribes to this god certain attributes, e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, and impassibility. The aim of this site is to define these attributes, and explore the difficulties that arise when one tries to explain them.

There are many different positions concerning the existence and nature of God; theism is just one of many alternatives. Rival positions include atheism, agnosticism, pantheism, and deism.

Atheism and Agnosticism

Those without belief in God may be either atheists or agnostics. Atheism may be defined either weakly as the absence of belief in God, or in a stronger form as active disbelief in God.

Agnosticism too comes in weaker and stronger forms; agnosticism may be understood as simple uncertainty, indecision concerning God’s existence, or it may be understood as the view that the question as to whether God exists is one that in principle can never be answered.

Pantheism and Panentheism

Pantheism, meanwhile, instead of affirming the existence of a God who is outside the universe, transcending it, identifies God with the universe. Everything, according to pantheists, is a part of God, because God simply is the sum total of all that exists.

This view is close to, but distinct from, that of panentheism, which holds not that God is everything, but that God is in everything. This view combines the pantheist’s reverence for the natural world with the theist’s insistence that God himself is a supernatural being.

Deism

In Western society, one of theism’s strongest rivals, historically speaking, has been deism. Deists affirm the existence of God, but deny that he has revealed himself to us as is claimed by the monotheistic religions. They thus accept the idea of God as Creator, but reject purported revelation such as the Torah, the Bible, and the Koran. The deist god merely set the universe in motion; he does not intervene in it on a continuous basis in the way that theists have claimed.

Theism

Theism, against each of the views described above, affirms both the existence of a transcendent God and that that God is involved in Creation. It comes in different forms: monotheism insists that there is only one God; polytheism holds that there are many; henotheism agrees with polytheism that there are many gods but pays special homage to one of them.

While different theistic religions may vary in some respects, they all share a common core. Though Jews, Christians, and Muslims, for example, disagree in some respects about the nature of God, their conception of him is close enough that it makes sense to ask whether these three different religions all involve worship of the same being.

The theism explored on this site is classical theism, a description of God’s attributes that emerged from the fusion of Jewish, Greek, and Christian influences. Classical theism sees God as all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), unchanging (immutable), perfect, and eternal, for example. This God is not simply the God of faith; he is also the God of philosophy.