Deisme (berasal dari istilah bahasa Latin, deus, yang berarti "tuhan")[1][2] adalah sebuah posisi filosofis dan teologirasionalistik[3] yang umumnya menolak wahyu sebagai sumber pengetahuan ilahi. Sebagai suatu posisi teologi, deisme menilai bahwa akal dan pengamatan terhadap dunia secara empiris merupakan satu-satunya cara yang logis, dapat diandalkan, dan cukup untuk menentukan keberadaan Tuhan sebagai pencipta alam semesta.[9] Secara lebih sederhana, Deisme adalah keyakinan akan keberadaan Tuhan—sering kali dipahami sebagai Tuhan yang tidak mempunyai kepribadian dan tidak dapat dijangkau, yang tidak campur tangan terhadap alam semesta setelah Ia menciptakannya.[10] Keyakinan ini sepenuhnya didasarkan pada pemikiran rasional tanpa bergantung pada wahyu atau otoritas keagamaan.[11] Deisme menekankan konsep teologi alamiah, yaitu bahwa keberadaan Tuhan dapat diketahui melalui alam yang rasional.[12]
Sejak abad ke-17 dan selama Era Pencerahan—terutama di Inggris, Prancis, dan Amerika Utara pada abad ke-18—berbagai filsuf dan teolog Barat mulai merumuskan penolakan kritis terhadap berbagai teks agama yang berasal dari beragam agama terorganisir. Sejak saat itu, mereka mulai mengacu pada kebenaran-kebenaran yang dapat dibuktikan melalui akal dan observasi empiris sebagai sumber pengetahuan tentang hal-hal ilahi.[14] Para filsuf dan teolog ini kemudian dikenal sebagai "Deis", dan pandangan filosofis/teologis yang mereka anut disebut "Deisme".[15]
Deisme sebagai sebuah gerakan filsafat dan intelektual mengalami kemunduran pada akhir abad ke-18,[16] namun bangkit kembali pada awal abad ke-19.[17] Beberapa ajarannya kini menjadi bagian dari gerakan intelektual dan spiritual lainnya, seperti Unitarianisme.[18] Deisme terus memiliki pendukung hingga saat ini,[19] dan mempunyai beberapa varian modern seperti deisme Kristen dan pandeisme.
Perkembangan awal
Zaman kuno
Pemikiran deistik telah ada sejak zaman kuno; akar Deisme dapat ditelusuri kembali ke tradisi filsafatYunani Kuno.[20] Teolog dan filsuf Kristen abad ke-3, Clement dari Alexandria, secara eksplisit menyebutkan orang-orang yang percaya bahwa Tuhan tidak terlibat dalam urusan manusia. Orang-orang itu dianggapnya menjalani kehidupan yang tidak bermoral.[21] Meskipun demikian, Deisme baru berkembang sebagai sebuah gerakan religio-filosofis setelah Revolusi Ilmiah, yang dimulai pada pertengahan abad ke-16 di Eropa modern awal.[22]
Teologi Islam
Dalam sejarah Islam, salah satu mazhab teologi Islam paling awal yang berkembang adalah Muʿtazilah , yang muncul pada pertengahan abad ke-8.[23][24] Para teolog Muʿtazilah menekankan pentingnya penggunaan akal dan pemikiran rasional, dengan menyatakan bahwa perintah-perintah Tuhan dapat diakses melalui pemikiran dan penyelidikan rasional, dan menegaskan bahwa Al-Quran diciptakan (makhlūq) dan bukan sesuatu yang kekal seperti Tuhan—sebuah pandangan yang kemudian menjadi salah satu isu paling kontroversial dalam sejarah teologi Islam.[23][24]
Pada abad ke-9 hingga ke-10 M, mazhab Ash'arī berkembang sebagai tanggapan terhadap Muʿtazilah. Mazhab ini didirikan oleh cendekiawan dan teolog Muslim abad ke-10, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ash'arī.[25] Para pengikut Asyʿarīyah tetap mengajarkan pentingnya penggunaan akal dalam memahami Al-Qur'an, tetapi menolak kemungkinan untuk menyimpulkan kebenaran moral semata-mata melalui penalaran rasional.[25] Posisi ini ditentang oleh mazhab Māturīdīyah.[26] Menurut pendirinya, cendekiawan dan teolog Muslim abad ke-10, Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī, akal manusia seharusnya dapat mengenali keberadaan Tuhan pencipta (bāriʾ) hanya berdasarkan pemikiran rasional, tanpa bergantung pada wahyu ilahi.[26] Keyakinan ini juga dianut oleh gurunya sekaligus pendahulunya, Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān (abad ke-8 M), sedangkan al-Ashʿarī tidak pernah memiliki pandangan seperti itu.[26]
Menurut filsuf Afghanistan-Amerika, Sayed Hassan Hussaini, mazhab-mazhab awal dalam teologi Islam serta pandangan teologis para filsuf Muslim klasik ditandai oleh "karakter Deisme yang kaa dengan sedikit kecenderungan ke arah Teisme".
Asal-usul deisme
Istilah deisme dan teisme sama-sama berasal dari kata yang berarti "Tuhan": istilah Latin deus dan istilah Yunani Kuno theós (θεός).[27] Kata déiste pertama kali muncul dalam bahasa Prancis pada tahun 1563 dalam sebuah risalah teologis yang ditulis oleh teolog CalvinisSwiss yang bernama Pierre Viret.[7] Namun, gagasan tentang Deisme umumnya baru dikenal di Kerajaan Prancis sejak tahun 1690-an ketika Pierre Bayle menerbitkan karya terkenalnya, Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, yang memuat sebuah artikel tentang Viret.[28]
Dalam bahasa Inggris, kata deist dan theist pada awalnya memiliki makna yang sama. Namun, sejak abad ke-17, kedua istilah tersebut mulai mengalami pergeseran makna.[29] Istilah deist dalam pengertiannya yang sekarang pertama kali muncul dalam bahasa Inggris melalui karya Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).
Puncak deisme
Karya John LockeEssay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) merupakan fase baru dalam sejarah Deisme Inggris. Epistemologi Lord Herbert sebelumnya didasarkan pada gagasan tentang ide bawaan. Locke, melalui esainya, justru mengkritik keras fondasi dasar ide bawaan tersebut. Setelah Locke, para deis tidak lagi bisa merujuk pada ide bawaan sebagaimana yang dilakukan Herbert. Sebagai gantinya, mereka beralih kepada argumen yang bersumber pada pengalaman dan alam. Di bawah pengaruh Newton, mereka kemudian menjadikan argumen dari desain (argument from design) sebagai argumen utama untuk membuktikan keberadaan Tuhan.[30]
Karya Matthew Tindal Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) menjadi pusat perdebatan dalam kontroversi Deisme. Hampir semua argumen, kutipan, dan isu yang dibahas selama beberapa dekade dapat ditemukan di dalam karya ini, sehingga ia sering dijuluki sebagai “Alkitab para Deis”.
Setelah kritik keras Locke yang berhasil menggugurkan gagasan tentang ide bawaan, “Alkitab” Tindal ini mendefinisikan dasar epistemologi Deisme sebagai pengetahuan yang bersumber dari pengalaman atau akal budi manusia. Hal ini secara efektif memperlebar jarak antara kaum Kristen tradisional dan apa yang disebut Tindal sebagai “Deis Kristen,” karena dasar baru ini menuntut agar kebenaran yang “diwahyukan” harus terlebih dahulu divalidasi melalui akal budi manusia.
Deisme Pencerahan
Aspek deisme dalam filsafat pencerahan
Deisme pada masa Pencerahan terdiri dari dua pokok pemikiran filosofis: (1) akal budi dan alam semesta, merupakan sumber pengetahuan yang sah; dan (2) wahyu bukanlah sumber pengetahuan yang sah. Para filsuf Deis kemudian mengembangkan dua hal pokok ini menjadi apa yang kemudian disebut Leslie Stephen sebagai aspek “konstruktif” dan “kritis” dari Deisme.[31][32]
Pernyataan “konstruktif” — yaitu pernyataan yang dianggap para penulis Deis dapat dibenarkan melalui akal budi dan ciri-ciri alam semesta (atau bahkan dianggap jelas secara intuitif maupun sebagai gagasan umum) — mencakup antara lain:[33][34]
Tuhan ada dan menciptakan alam semesta.
Tuhan memberi manusia kemampuan untuk berpikir.
Pernyataan "kritis" — pernyataan yang muncul setelah penolakan wahyu sebagai sumber pengetahuan yang sah — jumlahnya jauh lebih banyak, dan mencakup:
Penolakan terhadap semua buku suci (termasuk Al-Quran dan Alkitab) yang mengklaim mengandung wahyu ilahi.[35]
Penolakan terhadap gagasan Trinitas yang tidak dapat dipahami dan "misteri" keagamaan lainnya.
^ abcdeBristow, William (Fall 2017). "Religion and the Enlightenment: Deism". Dalam Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. ISSN1095-5054. OCLC643092515. Diarsipkan dari versi aslinya tanggal 11 December 2017. Diakses tanggal 3 August 2021. Deism is the form of religion most associated with the Enlightenment. According to deism, we can know by the natural light of reason that the universe is created and governed by a supreme intelligence; however, although this supreme being has a plan for creation from the beginning, the being does not interfere with creation; the deist typically rejects miracles and reliance on special revelation as a source of religious doctrine and belief, in favor of the natural light of reason. Thus, a deist typically rejects the divinity of Christ, as repugnant to reason; the deist typically demotes the figure of Jesus from agent of miraculous redemption to extraordinary moral teacher. Deism is the form of religion fitted to the new discoveries in natural science, according to which the cosmos displays an intricate machine-like order; the deists suppose that the supposition of a God is necessary as the source or author of this order. Though not a deist himself, Isaac Newton provides fuel for deism with his argument in his Opticks (1704) that we must infer from the order and beauty in the world to the existence of an intelligent supreme being as the cause of this order and beauty. Samuel Clarke, perhaps the most important proponent and popularizer of Newtonian philosophy in the early eighteenth century, supplies some of the more developed arguments for the position that the correct exercise of unaided human reason leads inevitably to the well-grounded belief in a God. He argues that the Newtonian physical system implies the existence of a transcendent cause, the creator a God. In his first set of Boyle lectures, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1705), Clarke presents the metaphysical or "argument a priori" for God's existence. This argument concludes from the rationalist principle that whatever exists must have a sufficient reason or cause of its existence to the existence of a transcendent, necessary being who stands as the cause of the chain of natural causes and effects.
^ abcdeManuel, Frank Edward; Pailin, David A.; Mapson, K.; Stefon, Matt (13 March 2020) [26 July 1999]. "Deism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Edinburgh: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Diarsipkan dari versi aslinya tanggal 9 June 2021. Diakses tanggal 3 August 2021. Deism, an unorthodox religious attitude that found expression among a group of English writers beginning with Edward Herbert (later 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury) in the first half of the 17th century and ending with Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, in the middle of the 18th century. These writers subsequently inspired a similar religious attitude in Europe during the second half of the 18th century and in the colonial United States of America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In general, Deism refers to what can be called natural religion, the acceptance of a certain body of religious knowledge that is inborn in every person or that can be acquired by the use of reason and the rejection of religious knowledge when it is acquired through either revelation or the teaching of any church.
^ abcdKohler, Kaufmann; Hirsch, Emil G. (1906). "Deism". Jewish Encyclopedia. Kopelman Foundation. Diarsipkan dari versi aslinya tanggal 15 January 2013. Diakses tanggal 3 August 2021. A system of belief which posits a God's existence as the cause of all things, and admits His perfection, but rejects Divine revelation and government, proclaiming the all-sufficiency of natural laws. The Socinians, as opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity, were designated as deists [...]. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries deism became synonymous with "natural religion," and deist with "freethinker." England and France have been successively the strongholds of deism. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the "father of deism" in England, assumes certain "innate ideas," which establish five religious truths: (1) that God is; (2) that it is man's duty to worship Him; (3) that worship consists in virtue and piety; (4) that man must repent of sin and abandon his evil ways; (5) that divine retribution either in this or in the next life is certain. He holds that all positive religions are either allegorical and poetic interpretations of nature or deliberately organized impositions of priests.
^Doniger, Wendy; Eliade, Mircea, ed. (1999). "DEUS OTIOSUS". Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster. hlm. 288. ISBN9780877790440. OCLC1150050382. Diarsipkan dari versi aslinya tanggal 2023-03-13. Diakses tanggal 2023-03-15. DEUS OTIOSUS (Latin: "inactive god") in the history of religions and philosophy, a High God who has withdrawn from the immediate details of the government of the world. [...] In Western philosophy, the deus otiosus concept has been attributed to Deism, a 17th–18th century Western rationalistic religio-philosophical movement, in its view of a non-intervening creator of the universe. Although this stark interpretation was accepted by very few Deists, many of their antagonists attempted to force them into the position of stating that after the original act of creation God virtually withdrew and refrained from interfering in the processes of nature and human affairs.
^Stromata, book 7, ch. 3. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds.), Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to AD 325, vol. 12, p. 416
^Bayle, Pierre (1820). "Viret". Dictionnaire historique et critique (dalam bahasa Prancis). Vol. 14 (Edisi Nouvelle). Paris: Desoer. Diakses tanggal 2017-11-23. (1697/1820) Bayle quotes Viret (see below) as follows: “J'ai entendu qu'il y en a de ceste bande, qui s'appellent déistes, d'un mot tout nouveau, lequel ils veulent opposer à l'athéiste,” remarking on the term as a neologism (un mot tout nouveau). (p.418)
^Orr, John (1934). English Deism: Its Roots and Its Fruits. Eerdmans. The words deism and theism are both derived words meaning "god" - "THE": Latin ZEUS-deus /"deist" and Greek theos/ "theist" (θεός). The word deus/déiste first appears in French in 1564 in a work by a Swiss Calvinist named Pierre Viret, but was generally unknown in France until the 1690s when Pierre Bayle published his famous Dictionary, which contained an article on Viret.“Prior to the 17th Century the terms ["deism" and "deist"] were used interchangeably with the terms "theism" and "theist", respectively. .. Theologians and philosophers of the 17th Century began to give a different signification to the words. .. Both [theists and deists] asserted belief in one supreme God, the Creator. .. But the theist taught that God remained actively interested in and operative in the world which he had made, whereas the Deist maintained that God endowed the world at creation with self-sustaining and self-acting powers and then surrendered it wholly to the operation of these powers acting as second causes.” (p.13)
^Note that Locke himself was not a deist. He believed in both miracles and revelation. See Orr, pp.96-99.
^Stephen, Leslie (1881). History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century 3rd Edition 2 vols (reprinted 1949). London: Smith, Elder & Co. ISBN978-0844614212. Diarsipkan dari versi aslinya tanggal 2015-06-30. Diakses tanggal 2019-01-04. Stephen’s book, despite its “perhaps too ambitious” title (preface, Vol.I p.vii), was conceived as an “account of the deist controversy” (p.vi). Stephen notes the difficulty of interpreting the primary sources, as religious toleration was yet far from complete in law, and entirely not a settled fact in practice (Ch.II s.12): deist authors “were forced to .. cover [their opinions] with a veil of decent ambiguity.” He writes of Deist books being burned by the hangman, mentions the Aikenhead blasphemy case (1697) Diarsipkan 2019-01-06 di Wayback Machine., and names five deists who were banished, imprisoned etc.
^Tindal: "By natural religion, I understand the belief of the existence of a God, and the sense and practice of those duties which result from the knowledge we, by our reason, have of him and his perfections; and of ourselves, and our own imperfections, and of the relationship we stand in to him, and to our fellow-creatures; so that the religion of nature takes in everything that is founded on the reason and nature of things." Christianity as Old as the Creation (II), quoted in Waring (see above), p.113.
^Toland: “I hope to make it appear that the use of reason is not so dangerous in religion as it is commonly represented .. There is nothing that men make a greater noise about than the "mysteries of the Christian religion". The divines gravely tell us "we must adore what we cannot comprehend" .. [Some] contend [that] some mysteries may be, or at least seem to be, contrary to reason, and yet received by faith. [Others contend] that no mystery is contrary to reason, but that all are "above" it. On the contrary, we hold that reason is the only foundation of all certitude .. Wherefore, we likewise maintain, according to the title of this discourse, that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to reason, nor above it; and that no Christian doctrine can be properly called a mystery." Christianity Not Mysterious: or, a Treatise Shewing That There Is Nothing in the Gospel Contrary to Reason, Nor above It (1696), quoted in Waring (see above), pp. 1–12
^Stephens, William. An Account of the Growth of Deism in England. Diarsipkan dari versi aslinya tanggal 2019-01-05. Diakses tanggal 2019-01-04. (1696 / 1990). Introduction (James E. Force, 1990): "[W]hat sets the Deists apart from even their most latitudinarian Christian contemporaries is their desire to lay aside scriptural revelation as rationally incomprehensible, and thus useless, or even detrimental, to human society and to religion. While there may possibly be exceptions, .. most Deists, especially as the eighteenth century wears on, agree that revealed Scripture is nothing but a joke or "well-invented flam." About mid-century, John Leland, in his historical and analytical account of the movement [View of the Principal Deistical WritersDiarsipkan 2019-01-05 di Wayback Machine. (1754–1755)], squarely states that the rejection of revealed Scripture is the characteristic element of deism, a view further codified by such authorities as Ephraim Chambers and Samuel Johnson. .. "DEISM," writes Stephens bluntly, "is a denial of all reveal'd Religion."”
