The Deist Controversy

This course is a survey of the principal authors and works in the Deist Controversy, a theological and philosophical debate that stretched from Spinoza and Stillingfleet in the late 17th century through David Hume’s “Of Miracles,” published in the middle of the 18th century, and some of the major responses to Hume. We explore the principal issues in dispute between the deists and their various opponents (members of the established church, dissenters, nonjurors, unitarians) and examine the arguments employed by the most important deists and the rejoinders to those arguments from the defenders of revealed religion. These lectures come from a course taught by Dr Timothy McGrew, Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Western Michigan University, Summer 2014.