LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Theism: Gods
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[O]pen theism fails biblically. Deuteronomy 18:22 establishes the test of a true prophet as complete accuracy. In matters of prophetic future, a true prophet functions as a spokesperson for the God who knows the future. In Isaiah, the living God chides the false gods because they fail to meet the criteria of telling events yet future (Isaiah 41:21-23). While false gods fail to foretell the future, the living God declares the end from the beginning. The eighth century B.C. prophet connects God's detailed knowledge of the future with His role as Savior (Isaiah 43:11; 45:21).
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The next stage in the evolution of Indian theism is the crucial one. It is marked by the brahmanization of the theistic tradition. At this point the question of the relation of God or Isvara to the impersonal One of the Upanishadic tradition arises. This development may be seen in the famous story of the Bhagavad Gita. The impetus behind the marriage of the theistic movement to Upanishadic monism was the rise of Buddhism and Jainism in the Outland (7:100; 5:541). Buddhism especially was a genuine threat to the brahmin orthodoxy of the Midland.
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The mention of angelic existence in the previous paragraph brings up a point seldom noticed in discussions of process theism. Aquinas approximates the Hartshornean distinction between immutable existence and mutable actuality in what he says about the nature of angels — a Thomist might say that Hartshorne approximates Aquinas! Aquinas holds that angels are not subject to natural decay or destruction for they are incorporeal. Like God, their existence is not affected by the flow of time. They are... capable of certain kinds of change. While their existence is constant, they have free will and their knowledge can increase, and in a certain sense, they can move from place to place.
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A final example of this form of theism is found in Hegel's conception of God as Spirit. This notion of Spirit does not allow God to be a person in the Judeo Christian sense, but sees him as a force, or general consciousness, uniting all finite consciousnesses. In other words, he is not just all finite consciousnesses taken together, but rather the force that underlies and unites all intersubjectivity. Such a God is clearly immanent and not personal.
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These two definitions are crucial to distinguish theism from deism or pantheism. Deism considers the deity to be a transcendent feature of the universe and pantheism is where God and nature are considered to be the same. In deism the universe is considered to be a part of God, in pantheism the universe is considered to be god. In theism then, a distinguishing idea is that god is distinct from the universe that he has created.
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