As Bradlaugh used to point out, the modern Theist denies the existence of any type of "God" save his own.
That is to say, the Theist makes his own mind and personality the type and analogue of an Infinite and Eternal Power.
Thus the Theist himself "denies the existence" of a thousand Gods.
The Atheist, in reality, does but carry negation a step further than does theTheist himself.
At the same time, he admitted that the understanding had no escape from the logical demonstration of the impossibility of a personal God; and that the Theist must throw himself "overhead into the depths of faith.
No man is a Theist in all things; but in the ages of ignorance men were theistic in most matters.
The Theist rushes in where the Atheist declines to tread.
I agree with Pascal[69] that there is virtually nothing to be gained by being a theist as distinguished from a Christian.
The Theist who speaks of God creating the universe, must either suppose that Deity evolved it out of himself, or that he produced it from nothing.
In the mind of the Theist "God" is equivalent to the sphere of the unknown; by the use of the word he answers, without thought, problems which might otherwise obtain scientific solution.
Nor can the Theist regard the universe as created out of nothing, because Deity is, according to him, necessarily eternal and infinite.
Reason and understanding are sometimes treated as separate faculties, yet it is not unfair to presume that the Theist would include them both under the word intelligence.
Every Theist must also agree that if a God exists, he would wish all men to have such a clear consciousness of his existence and attributes, that doubt, disagreement, or disbelief on this subject would be impossible.
But the Theist cannot regard the universe as evolution of Deity, because this would identify Universe and Deity, and be Pantheism rather than Theism.
Every Theist must admit that if a God exists, he could have so convinced all men of the fact of his existence that doubt, disagreement, or disbelief would be impossible.
In alleging a moral nature for man, the Theist overlooks the fact that the moral nature of man differs somewhat in each individual, differs considerably in each nation, and differs entirely in some peoples.
While the Theist provides future happiness for a scoundrel repentant on his death-bed, Atheism affirms present and certain happiness for the man who does his best to live here so well as to have little cause for repenting hereafter.
The perceptive ability differs in each animal; yet, in speaking of matter, the Theist uses the word "intelligence" as though the same meaning were to be understood in every case.
The theist confesses freely that the importance of the moral end is a thing that the facts of life, as we now know them, will never properly explain to us.
He challenged the theist (the theist addressed at the time was Dr.
All this, of course, does not prove that Catholicism is the truth; but it will show the theist that, for all that the modern world can tell him, it may be.
Love of goodness for its own sake is for the Theist identical with the love of God.
And theTheist who rejects Idealism but admits the existence of self-evident truths will be equally justified in assuming that, for God as well as for man, two and two must make {63} four.
The finite mind cannot expect to understand the Infinite," retorts a theist to our Martian.
This contention would make it appear that there is a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve the purpose of the theist since he is not the ultimate lawgiver.
If thetheist insists that his deity is all that he claims him to be, then it is only logical that instead of man asking his god for forgiveness, what actually should be is that God should ask the forgiveness of man for his bungling and error.
When the theist finds intention and design in nature he is but reading his own feeling and desires into nature.
If the theist claims that a supreme intelligence issued laws for his own pleasure and without any reason, then he must admit that there is something which is not subject to law and the train of natural law is interrupted.
The theist recognizes a creator who created the universe and is responsible for its operation.
Thus the theist is led to the conclusion that the end justifies the means.
It is impossible for the theist to show any instance in which the normal consequences of known forces did not transpire in which the aberration could not be accounted for by the operation of other known forces.
The theist cannot infer God from the cosmic process until he can discover some feature of it which is unintelligible without him.
In former ages the theist saw God in the color and construction of a flower, in the starry heavens, and in a sunset or sunrise.
The theist realizes, however, that belief is at one pole, reason at the other.
If the theist puts forward the statement that God has always existed, the atheist may well reply that if God has always existed, why can he not say that the universe has always existed?
There are still many gaps in our knowledge, and if the theist persists in finding the manifestation of a supreme being in these vague zones of our present ignorance, he is at the mercy of the science of the future.
That is just what machines and organisms are for; and a consistent Christian theist should maintain that is what all matter is for.
But, whatever view one unconvinced may take, it cannot remain doubtful what position a theist ought to occupy.
Since natural science deals only with secondary or natural causes, the scientific terms of a theory of derivation of species--no less than of a theory of dynamics--must needs be the same to the theist as to the atheist.
How strange that a convincedtheist should be so prone to associate design only with miracle!
Not to do so seems to concede that only supernatural events can be shown to be designed, which no theist can admit--seems also to misconceive the scope and meaning of all ordinary arguments for design in Nature.
So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is only the old one, long ago argued out--namely, whether organic Nature is a result of design or of chance.
To recognize such action in such laws is a religious mode of regarding phenomena, which a consistent theist must necessarily accept, and which an atheistic believer must similarly reject.
Neither the physical nor the hyperphysical actions, however, exclude the idea of the Divine concurrence, and with every consistent theist that idea is necessarily included.
Atheism forbids both, while the simply non-theist abstains in conformity with the prohibition of the atheist and thus practically sides with him.
The theist does not know how God punishes, how he protects, how he pardons, for he is not reckless enough to flatter himself that he knows how God acts, but he knows that God acts and that He is just.
The result was that I found myself coldshouldered, and those who had been warmly cordial to me as a Theist looked askance at me after I had avowed that my scepticism had advanced beyond their "limits of religious thought".
Grant such a God his chance of existence, what reason has the Theist to suppose or what right to assume his wisdom or his goodness?
The real difference is perhaps this; God appears to a Theist as the root, to a Pantheist as the flower of things.
All this is a powerful argument for a Theist or a Unitarian in favor of the divine origin and authority of the Catholic dogma.
The supernatural can only be denied by the atheist, who maintains that there is nothing superior to what the Theist calls second causes, or by the Pantheist, who either identifies God with nature, or nature with God.
Yet the theist firmly believes in creative acts of some kind, and that they are regulated by law.
To such a theist the utmost that evidence could prove would be, that the extraordinary event had been brought about by the action of an unknown force.
These are facts which the theist equally with the Christian must face, for they exist in the universe of that God, in whose moral perfections both believe.
And the reason is, because a religious theist and an impious pantheist both profess to believe the omnipresence of God.
It is therefore desirable that we should set down, in a provisional form, the general conception of God as it exists in the mind of the Theist and the Christian.
The universe resolves itself into a perpetual genesis," and "the Theistis perfectly justified in treating it as disqualified for self-existence.
They will be accepted by the scientific Theist and approved by the dogmatic Theologian.
Does not every theist believe that the Creator of matter "saw and knew every purpose which every particle and atom of matter should subserve in all suns and systems, and through all coming aeons of time?
Let us dismiss at once that crude and evasive state which affects Atheism, and, at the same time, denies it; which says noTheist has defined Deity, and therefore the disbelief in it is an impossibility.
Suppose that I admit that there is design in Nature, the Theist has then to account for some awkward and many horrible designs.
Some Theistmay say: "Suppose that I grant that I cannot prove that god exists, what then?
If the Theist retorts that a person need not have an organisation, the Atheist at once replies that neither need the designer of Nature be a person.
The human eye is very often adduced by the Theist as an illustration of design.
Once more, he does but ask the theist to take one more step in a criticism which he has already carried far, with small trouble to himself.
Of the defined God-idea, whichsoever, we demonstrate the untenableness; but in giving the theist an inconceivable universe we surely meet his appetite for the transcendent.
The logically strongest form of the theistic case as against the non-theist is that, even as he lives and moves in gravitation without any subjective consciousness of it, so he may be controlled in every thought by a transcendent volition.
Every theist has negated a million Gods save one: the rationalist does but negate the millionth.
The ultimate claims of the theist to spiritual superiority and serenity are oddly bracketed with the charges of arrogance and Epicureanism constantly made by him against his antagonist.
He is himself a theist and follows Wallin; besides, he has no time to think about me.
He still spoke of the Creator, for he was a theist and saw God's wisdom and goodness reflected in His works.
Either of these suppositions would be the death of natural philosophy: the hylozoist endows matter with a property which conflicts with its nature, and the theist oversteps the boundary of possible experience.
Theist and Atheist The fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
The difference is the same as that between plus nothing and minus nothing, and it is hard to say which we ought to admire and thank most--the first theist or the first atheist.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "theist" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
