What is "theism?"

The background...

• The ancient Greeks invented theater: staging events & actions for an audience to see

• The Greek word for such viewing is thea [θεα]

• The Greek for “god” is theo [θεο]

• I take these terms to be connected: they suggest a picture of the world as a kind of theater overseen by the gods, which is both managed & manipulated by such deities (from the closely-related Latin deos = “god”)

• The world is thus both a scene overlooked by deities and a stage for divine action or creation: this picture has dominated human existence ever since; every language embodies such a theater-like picture of our world

• So, again, the primary sense of theism is that of a world as a stage or scene in which the work of the gods is enacted

• Ancient Greek religion pictured this rather literally: positing a realm of divine beings dramatically acting upon the human world before them

• Once again: this picture emphasizes seeing; the gods look down and judge or act, create or destroy; so the relationship between the human and the divine embodied in theism is one of oversight and judgement

• Much later another feature was added to this picture: monotheism; that is, postulating not multiple deities but a single god

• There are only three monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, & Islam—and only the latter two are proselytizing religions: that is, only Islam & Christianity actively seek to convince others to join

• And they do so while actively claiming their deity to be absolute — the only true god

• Were it not for this claim to absolute authority, there would be no basis for conflict between these theisms; indeed, Mohammad—the founder of Islam—intentionally incorporated much of the doctrine and history of Judaism & Christianity into the text of Islamic scripture

• So theism is not the problem: it is absolutism that sustains the contest between the two monotheisms—and the warfare that results both dominates & distorts human life…