Noun

Singular theism

Plural theisms

theism (plural theisms)

1. belief in the existence of one or more deities.
2. belief in the existence of a personal creator God, especially by or through revelation (i.e, with no evidence other than faith or introspection).

Related terms

• theocracy
• theology

• theopanism
• theosophy

Derived terms

• atheism
• apatheism
• dystheism
• henotheism

• kathenotheism
• maltheism
• monotheism
• panentheism

• pantheism
• polytheism
• suitheism
• theist

• theistic
• theistical
• theistically
• theists

Theism in the broadest sense is the belief in at least one deity. In a more specific sense, theism refers to a particular doctrine concerning the nature of a god and his relationship to the universe. Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of a god as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe. The use of the word theism as indicating a particular doctrine of monotheism arose in the wake of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century to contrast with the then emerging deism which contended that a god — though transcendent and supreme — did not intervene in the natural world and could be known rationally but not via revelation.

The term "theism" derives from the Greek theos meaning God. The term theism was first used by Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688).

The negation, rejection, or absence of theism is known as atheism or agnosticism.

Types

Quotes about Theism or Theists.

• "As a theist I believe that God exists and that God creates." ~ Phillip E. Johnson

• "Even in ordinary speech we call a person unreasonable whose outlook is narrow, who is conscious of one thing only at a time, and who is consequently the prey of his own caprice, whilst we describe a person as reasonable whose outlook is comprehensive, who is capable of looking at more than one side of a question and of grasping a number of details as parts of a whole." ~ G. Dawes Hicks, The Philosophical Bases of Theism, p. 128, New York (1937).

• "I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mahomedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family." ~ Frances Wright

• "I'm not a practicing Catholic or I wouldn't be living unwed with a woman, and I don't think all poofs are going to hell, and I don't think everyone who's had an abortion is damned, most of my friends are atheists and I understand atheism, I get it, but I happen to be a theist. I believe in our answerableness to something else." ~ Martin Freeman

• "It must appear impossible, that theism could, from reasoning, have been the primary religion of human race, and have afterwards, by its corruption, given birth to polytheism and to all the various superstitions of the heathen world. Reason, when obvious, prevents these corruptions: When abstruse, it keeps the principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar, who are alone liable to corrupt any principle or opinion." ~ David Hume, The Natural History of Religion, sect. 1, p. 312 (1898).

• "Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Uses of Great Men, Representative Men (1850).

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sat Mar 6 12:43:09 2010