ABSTRACT
Talk of ‘non-theistic concepts of deity’ is meant to provide a framework for thinking about ideas of God that are, in varying degrees, non-theistic – that is, non-personal and not ontologically distinct from and transcendent to the world. At least since the rise of monotheism (theism for short) in the West, any notion of deity conceived non-theistically has been explicated in contrast to some version of theism. Aside from illustrating Foucault’s contention that those in power control the ways in which discourse and even truth conditions operate, it indicates that those concerned with articulating a nontheistic concept of deity have been motivated by dissatisfaction with theism to examine alternatives. Non-theistic concepts of deity are seen as alternatives to theistic notions regarded as unacceptable on religious, as well as affective and rational, grounds. The relation between theistic and non-theistic concepts of deity in early Greek (pre-Socratic) philosophy is far from clear. For one thing, it is dif cult to know just what the early Greeks really did believe (see Veyne 1988). On some accounts, theistic (even monotheistic) and non-theistic notions of deity in early Greek thought were regarded as philosophically and religiously compatible. Whatever the relation between theistic and non-theistic notions of deity was in early Greek, Indian, or Chinese thought, it does not seem to be the case that they were, or are, regarded as antithetical to or reactively played off against one another as in western theism. They are more often seen as complementary. Virtually all eastern traditions have non-theistic or atheistic aspects to them, although even allegedly atheistic traditions such as Buddhism or Taoism have theistic, usually polytheistic, practices and beliefs associated with them. Hinduism, an umbrella term for a variety of Vedic Indian traditions, is rightly viewed as polytheistic, non-theistic or atheistic depending on which aspect or tradition one is focusing on, and whether one is attending to religious practice or accompanying philosophies. Their philosophies are often concerned to account for such diversity and compatibility. Panentheism – the other form of theistic cross-dressing – may be seen as a way of combining theism and pantheism (a non-theistic concept of deity). Like deism and
pantheism, it too is best seen, from a western perspective, as a response to theism: a way of overcoming allegedly unacceptable aspects. It can also be seen this way in the Vedantic theology of Ramanuja (1017-1137 ce) (Lipner 1985). The historical tendency to regard non-theistic concepts of deity in terms of, and in the West, as alternatives to, theism continued into the mid-twentieth century. This is roughly when accounts of non-theistic concepts of deity (e.g., Whitehead’s process theology, Tillich’s notion of God as ‘ultimate concern,’ Hartshorne’s ‘dipolar theism,’ and Christian existentialist notions like John Macquarrie’s) peaked. There was also much discussion of Freud’s psychoanalytic account of religion, Sartre’s existentialist and Marxist critiques, and A. J. Ayer’s logical positivistic challenge to the meaningfulness of religion assertions. Socio-scienti c and comparative approaches to the study of religion generally were also more widely introduced. Though not often considered as such, there is a sense in which some of these critiques, Freudian and Marxist for example, constitute radical accounts (not just critiques) of theism in their own right. They are, after all, concerned with articulating the origins of, and motivations for, belief in a theistic God and thus give some account of theism itself. They are not, however, non-theistic but atheistic – and certainly the Marxist and Freudian critiques of theism can mutatis mutandis be leveled similarly at non-theistic conceptions. This was a time, and there has been no time since, when academic discussion about the nature of deity and religion ourished. Although in journals devoted to process thought, Tillich’s views (God as ‘the ground of being’), etc. remain, discussion of non-theistic views has waned greatly since Tillich, Whitehead, and Hartshorne were in vogue. The case with gures such as Spinoza and Plotinus is different. However, these discussions of Spinoza and Plotinus are considered largely in the context of history of philosophy and generally not as a plausible metaphysic, or a source of a viable non-theistic concept of deity in their own right. With the ascendency of analytical philosophy of religion with a Christian fundamentalist bent, discussion of non-theistic concepts of deity rarely appears. Although some self-servingly argue that philosophy of religion is again mainstream in contemporary analytic philosophy, the accurate view is that even its dominant Christian strain has been sidelined. This coincides with the fading of any promulgation of alternatives to classical theism. Non-theistic concepts of deity are best understood not only as resulting from many of the same kinds of theoretical dissatisfactions with theism that theists may have – with the idea, for example, that a theistic God would (or could) allow the kinds and scope of evil there is in the world for the purpose of an allegedly greater good. Related to such disbelief, they are also motivated by a profoundly different ethos and way of seeing things. The deist or pantheist may, for example, think of theodicies based on free will or ‘soul making’ as not just bad arguments, but as desperate or even questionbegging attempts to vindicate the theistic worldview. The situation is little different in the religious case than in the political case – where those of vastly different political views not only see and feel differently about the world; they also cannot understand how the others can believe what they do.
