Hi, Dr. Craig. Your work has been very helpful in keeping me convinced of the soundness of belief in God, and I am very grateful for it. However,

I've always been a little confused about how best to characterize my view. This might be an odd

question to ask you, but I'm wondering if you could help me understand whether it's better to use

the label Theist or Deist. I've found it to be extraordinarily difficult to find a good answer to this. It seems

like different resources give wildly different answers. To sum up my basic beliefs, I believe in a

personal, supreme, or maximally excellent being who created the universe, and I am sincerely

open to the possibility of miracles. Obviously, I believe in the miracle of creation,

although I am agnostic about whether God performs miracles like those discussed, for instance,

in Craig Keener's big book on the topic. I also accept the moral argument, and see God as the

source of moral values and duties. To the best of my understanding, I accept a divine

will theory of ethics. I am a substance dualist. I lean toward a creationist view of the soul,

but ultimately remain agnostic about which view of the soul is correct. I expect there to be

an afterlife, and am inclined to believe in ultimate moral accountability.

I won't go into the reasons why I left Christianity after growing up in it, but just for full context, I am not persuaded that God has chosen to speak to us via a special revelation, like a written text or a prophet.

I've always struggled with not knowing exactly what term best describes

my view, since it makes it difficult to know exactly where I fit in on the theological map.

Am I still a theist if I reject all the revealed religions? Am I a deist if I am still open to

the possibility that God directly intervenes in the natural order. I've heard

conflicting claims about whether you can believe in miracles, an afterlife, and a final judgment,

and still be a deist. Is deism one form of theism, or are the two completely different things?

Does deism necessarily entail the absentee landlord view of God?

Or is it more just a question of accepting natural religion as opposed to revealed religion?

...