7._ Theism

Who believes in God, calls "going vision (to God)" to the fact to notice the creative capacity of the Nature and everything what it implies, while attributes to its own vision, that calls "of return (from God)" -or "of coming"-, recognizing that capacity as "spirit of God", immanent God to the Nature.

Creative capacity of the Nature <------> Spirit of God
(Vision of going) ---------------------(Vision of return)

And this does not mean, in no way, that the spirit of God is something external to the Nature, that is added to confer the creative capacity to her (what would correspond to a deist conception), but that, being truely immanent, the Spirit is inherent to the essence of the Nature so that is inseparable of her. For that reason we can fully identify saying that the nature has the creative capacity "by itself" with saying that has it "by virtue of the spirit of God". This corresponds to our conception theist, who maintains so much the true immanence as the true trascendence of God.

We know well that the deism is a conception of God that usually opposes to the mythical and anthropomorphic theism. The deism would be then the rational conception, illustrated, that conceives God like different from the forces of the Nature and the human people. He would be trascendent, immaterial, immutable and impassible; the God "of the philosophers".

Nevertheless, from our point of view, from our "emergentist theism", the philosophical deism and the mythical theism look like to each other much more of which usually it is believed. The deism is mythical in as much whatever supposes a relation or activity between the trascendence and the nature that does not reach to being a true immanence, like for example by way of "emanations", or like "immovable motor" or like "supernatural efficient agent". On the other hand, the mythical theism is deism also, in the measurement in which he is not truly immanentist, when it separates the activity of God of his inherence in the essence of the nature, and it conceives it like anthropomorphic external efficient cause.

Both conceptions, the philosophical deism and the anthropomorphic theism, have in common separating God of the nature, doing unintelligibles their mutual relations. The remedy seems to be in admitting the immanence of God, the inherence of God in the very essence of the nature, and that seems to lead to which it has been considered as another form of deism: the pantheism. Because it seems to imply resigning to all real distinction between God and the nature, which merely comes to be --as it has been said-- a "courteous atheism". (With reason compares Schopenhauer the pantheist with a prince that, to end the abusive differences between the nobility and the common people, solves to grant titles of nobility to all its subjects.)

In sum, we see the deism and the mythical theism as two forms --a philosophical one, the other ingenuous-anthropomorphic one-- of "deism", are to say of transcendentalism with absence of true immanence. And we see the pantheism like an immanentism that, when not conceiving tension towards the trascendence, falls simply in the atheism.

The solution is in recognizing both the true trascendence and the true immanence of God, and the continuous and acute tension and dynamism between them, that causes --and is manifested in-- the process of cosmic emergence. This is the "emergentist theism".

As well as our theism is against the deism, by his nontrue immanence, also is against to the pantheism and the panentheism, by his nontrue trascendence. In the pantheism there is no truly place for the creature, that would be merely an appearance of God, and in the deism there is no truly place for God, that would be only an appearance (or projection) of the creature (God "ad-hoc", "Deus ex-machina", "God of gaps", "miraclemongering" God, etc.). We think that in the hegelian panentheism there is an attempt valid to conciliate to the creature with God, by means of a dialectic one, but it seems to us that it needs the radicality of the emergentism to obtain it totally.

In order to affirm the trascendence from the immanence, we lean in the "emergence" that maintains the "emergentism". The concept of radical newness, implicit in the emergence, takes us to the real trascendence.

Immanence ------> Emergence ------> Trascendence

Pantheism--- Panentheism--------------------- Deism

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V
Emergentist Theism