Eutheism

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The conviction that God or ultimate reality is fundamentally good and acts benevolently toward creation
2. A theological position asserting that the divine power governing the universe is essentially kind and favors the wellbeing of its creatures
3. The faith that a supremely powerful and ultimately beneficial deity oversees existence and directs it toward good ends

Etymology: "Eutheism" is a deliberately constructed term, built from the Greek "eu" meaning "good" or "well" and "theism," the belief in a god or gods. Its coiner set it up as the opposite of "dystheism," the view that God is malevolent or evil, so the pair describes a benevolent deity on one side and a malign one on the other. The "theism" half traces back to ancient Greek "theós," meaning "god," which passed into Latin as "theo-" and then into English as a combining element. The suffix "-ism," from Greek "-ismos" through Latin and French, turns the root into a doctrine or belief system. Put together, the word names the position that God is good, a clean mirror of the older and rarer "dystheism." The term first appeared in a theology lecture in 1998, and it surfaced again in a humorous Usenet post in 2002, where its playful construction seems to have made it memorable among online readers.