Christian deism
[1] The earliest-found usage of the term Christian deism in print in English is in 1738 in a book by Thomas Morgan,[2] appearing about ten times by 1800.
In an 1803 letter to Joseph Priestley, Jefferson states that he conceived the idea of writing his view of the "Christian system" in a conversation with Benjamin Rush during 1798–99.
"[9] Deism is a humanist theological position (though encompassing a wide variety of view-points) concerning God's relationship with the natural world which emerged during the scientific revolution of 17th-century Europe and came to exert a powerful influence during the 18th-century Enlightenment.
Because God does not control or interfere with his self-sustaining Creation, its component systems work in concert to achieve the balanced natural processes that make up the physical world.
But I hope they will mend their Scheme, and compound this Matter for their own Honour, and not pretend to fay, that God has made a necessary World, or a self-existent System of Creatures.
Are these natural, essential and inherent Properties of the Bodies themselves, or are they the regular Effects of some universal, extrinsick Cause acting incessantly upon the whole material System, by such and such general Laws and Conditions of Agency?
The second law is that God intends for human beings to live by love for each other, as illustrated in Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan.
In his parables, Jesus spoke of mustard seeds, wheat, weeds, fishing nets, pearls, vineyards, fig trees, salt, candlelight and sheep to illustrate his points.
Jesus refused to stop preaching his "gospel" even though he knew that he was risking crucifixion, the usual Roman penalty for revolutionaries.
The broad spectrum of thought available within the idea of a Christian deism encompasses models of classical deism and pandeism with simple reverence for the message of tolerance claimed as espoused by the human Jesus, to belief in Jesus as a sort of naturally occurring divine figure, a mystical product of the rational processes of a rational universe.
Morgan alleges with great boldness, that his religion of reason alone is divine, that the Christian is a mere invention and device of man, and through all ages since its introduction, has been regarded as such by a small but oppressed party: that the character of Judaism, which is not only human, but altogether devilish, cleaves still to the followers of a blind faith': that the apostle Paul was the chief of the freethinkers who wished to have no connexion with Judaism, and alone preached Christianity in its purity, whilst the other apostles were merely the chiefs of a political party who in the spirit of Judaism had attached themselves to it.
The freer Paulinian party, according to Morgan's view, had been from the first always persecuted and oppressed by the others; and although the Jewish Christians had afterwards fallen asunder and separated into various hostile sects, the same intolerant Jewish spirit still, in a greater or a less degree, animated them all, and they would not consent to relinquish the service of sacrifices; this spirit has given birth to a religion of priests among all those sects, which is immeasurably removed from the true religion.
In addition, Morgan will not at all admit that his opinions approach in any respect to atheism, or that his object is to defend any thing similar to it; he alone, as he alleges, is a teacher of the true moral religion.
It will not therefore be a matter of surprise, that a division of his book treats of the public forms of divine worship, and especially upon prayer.
[16] They take a modified view of Pelagius, that there is no need for divine aid in performing good works and that the only "grace" necessary is the declaration of the law.
Christian deists reject these ideas as products of human hatred and a failure to recognize God's natural laws of love for others.
Christian deism is opposed to the doctrine of predestination in which everything that happens is thought to be the will of God, and instead tend to believe in the concept of free will.
These bad things may be caused by interfering with naturalistic processes that result in negative consequences to life, or by human interaction on the surface of the Earth that leads to degrees of inhospitable conditions for others.
Humans are believed to already have the endowed capacity to create synergies and contribute in some way toward the development of fairer societies on Earth, whether it be through scientific understanding or spiritual enlightenment.
However, some Christian deists also strongly oppose the mainstream deistic notion that sacred texts like the Bible contain no revealed truths.
