The complete negation of theism in its generic sense is atheism—the denial of the existence or of the knowability of the Divine. It is only in modern times that the word atheism has acquired this meaning, only in recent times that it has come to be exclusively employed with this meaning. The Greeks meant by it simply disbelief in the Greek gods. The early Christians were called atheists because they refused to acknowledge the pagan deities. Protestants have been charged by Roman Catholics and Roman Catholics by Protestants with atheism. Throughout even the 18th century the word was used in an extremely loose manner, and often affixed to systems by which the existence and agency of God were unequivocally recognized. Atheism, in the sense now generally admitted to be alone appropriate, may be of three species,—namely, denial of the existence of the Divine, denial that the Divine has been shown to exist, and denial that it can be known that the Divine exists. The first species has been called dogmatic atheism, the second critical atheism ; and the third has been designated, and may conveniently be designated, religious agnosticism. Agnosticism per se should not be identified with atheism or with any of its forms. The term antitheism has been used by some theologians, e.g., Chalmers and Foster, as equivalent to dogmatic atheism; but it may with much more practical advantage be employed to denote all systems of belief opposed to theism, either in the generic sense already indicated, or in the specific sense of monotheism. Understood in this latter mode, it is much more comprehensive than the term atheism. Polytheism and pantheism are alike antitheistic theories, although on different grounds; while only those theories which deny that there is evidence for belief even in the existence of any god, any divine being, are atheistic.

It is somewhat remarkable that the term theism by itself never occurs in its etymological and generic sense, never means as a separate word what it means in the compounds atheism, polytheism, pantheism, and monotheism. Ordinarily it is identified with monotheism, and consequently opposed to polytheism and to pantheism, as well as to atheism. Whereas polytheism acknowledges a plurality of finite gods, theism as monotheism acknowledges only one absolute infinite God. Whereas pantheism regards all finite things as merely aspects, modifications, or parts of one eternal self-existent being—all material objects and all particular minds as necessarily derived from a single infinite substance,—and thus combines, in its conception of the Divine, monism and determinism, theism as monotheism, while accepting monism, rejects determinism, and attributes to the Divine all that is essentially implied in free personal existence and agency. Pantheism is, however, wonderfully protean, and rarely conforms to its ideal; hence the systems called pantheistic are seldom purely pantheistic, and are often more monotheistic than pantheistic.

Sometimes the term theism is employed in a still more special sense, namely, to denote one of two kinds of monotheism, the other kind being deism. Although deus and theos are equivalent, deism has come to be distinguished from theism. The former word first appeared in the 16th century, when it was used to designate antitrinitarian opinions. In the 17th century it came to be applied to the view that the light of nature is the only light in which man can know God, no special revelation having been given to the human race. Dr Samuel Clarke, in the Boyle Lectures preached in 1705, distributed deists into four classes. The first class “pretend to believe the existence of an eternal, infinite, independent, intelligent being, and, to avoid the name of Epicurean atheists, teach also that this supreme being made the world; though at the same time they agree with the Epicureans in this, that they fancy God does not at all concern Himself in the government of the world, nor has any regard to, or care of, what is done therein.” The second class acknowledge not only that God made all things, but that He sustains and governs them, yet deny that He has any regard in His government to moral distinctions, these being merely the products of human will and law. The third class believe in the being, natural attributes, providence, and to some extent in the moral attributes and government of God, but deny the immortality of the soul and a future state of rewards and punishments. The fourth class acknowledge the being, natural and moral perfections, and providence of God, as also the immortality of the soul and a future state of rewards and punishments, yet profess to believe only what is discoverable by the light of nature, without believing any divine revelation (Clarke, On the Attributes, pp. 140-153, ed. 1823). This division is not an exact classification, nor does it rest on any precise definition of deism, but it, with substantial accuracy, discriminates and grades the varieties of English deism. Clarke did not contrast deism with theism, or even employ the latter word. His contemporary, Lord Shaftesbury, on the other hand, generally used the term theism, yet only as synonymous with deism, and with a protest against either being opposed to revelation (Characteristics, vol. ii. p. 209, ed. 1727). Kant, in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, explicitly distinguished and opposed deism and theism, but in a very peculiar manner. “The person who believes in a transcendental theology alone is termed a deist; he who acknowledges the possibility of a natural theology also, a theist. The former admits that we can cognize by pure reason alone the existence of a supreme being, but at the same time maintains that our conception of this being is purely transcendental, and that all that we can say of it is that it possesses all reality, without being able to define it more closely. The second asserts that reason is capable of presenting us, from the analogy of nature, with a more definite conception of this being, and that its operations, as the cause of all things, are the results of intelligence and .free will. The former regards the supreme being as the cause of the world— whether by the necessity of his nature, or as a free agent, is left undetermined; the latter considers this being as the author of the world” ( Werke, ii. 49ι, edited by Rosenkranz, Meiklejohn’s tr., 387-8). The account here given of deism seems neither self-consistent nor intelligible, and applies, equally well or equally ill, to every system—atheistic, agnostic, pantheistic, idealistic, or materialistic—which admits the existence but not the intelligence or personality of an Urwesen, eternal being, or first cause; and the account of theism excludes all reference to revelation, and applies to every form of what has been regarded as deism. In recent theology deism has generally come to be regarded as, in common with theism, holding in opposition to atheism that there is a God, and in opposition to pantheism that God is distinct from the world, but as differing from theism in maintaining that God is separate from the world, having endowed it with self-sustaining and self-acting powers, and then abandoned it to itself. This distinction is real, and perhaps the best attainable. At the same time many called deists must be admitted not to have taught deism thus understood; for example, most of the “English deists” did not deny that God was present and active in the laws of nature, but merely denied that He worked otherwise than through natural laws. If by deism be meant belief in a personal God who acts only through natural laws, and by theism belief in a personal God who acts both through natural laws and by special interventions, this distinction also is real, and may be useful. The chief objection to it is that deism when so contrasted with theism does not denote, or even include, what theologians have generally agreed to call by the name.

The present article will treat specially of theism in the sense of monotheism, but not to the exclusion of the relations between theism thus understood and theism in other acceptations.

Monotheism has been very generally assumed to have been the primitive religion. Lord Herbert, Cudworth, and others have elaborately defended this opinion in the past, and it still finds learned advocates. On the other hand, the vast majority of recent anthropologists hold that religion originated in some rude phase of polytheism, and that monotheism has been everywhere preceded by polytheism. Schelling, Max Müller, and Hartmann have maintained that the starting-point of religion λvas henotheism, an imperfect kind of monotheism, in which God was thought of as one, only because others had not yet presented themselves to the mind,—a monotheism of which polytheism was not the contradiction, but the natural development. Pantheism has also been frequently represented to be the earliest phase of religion. All these representations, however, will be found on examination to be very conjectural. The present state of our knowledge does not warrant our holding any view regarding the nature of primeval religion as established. The data which carry us farthest in our search for the historical origin of religion are undoubtedly the names expressive of the Divine which have been preserved in the most ancient languages. They show us how men conceived of the Divinity long before the erection of the oldest monuments or the inscription of the oldest records. Language is much older than any of the statements in language. But language by no means carries us back to primitive man, or even to the historical origin of the idea of deity. The Egyptian word nutar and the names of the Egyptian gods found in the oldest Egyptian inscriptions prove that at a date long before the Egyptians wrote history, or are known to have worshipped animals or ancestors, they conceived of Divinity as power, and their deities as great cosmic forces; but, as that word and these names cannot be shown to have belonged to man’s primitive speech, they cannot show what was man’s primitive religious belief, and do not disprove that the forefathers of the people who first used them may have had some lower and ruder conception of the Divine than that which they convey. There are, according to Dr Legge, no words in the Chinese language known to be older than ti, t'ien, shaηg-ti, and these words are good historical evidence that the Chinese conceived of the Divine, thousands of years before the Christian era, as a universal ruling power, comprehending the visible heavens, and an invisible, infinite, omnipresent force, manifested in the azure of the firmament, possessed so far of intellectual and moral qualities, and working towards ethical ends. There is no evidence that when the Chinese first used these words they worshipped fetiches, but neither is there evidence to the contrary, and even if there were it would not disprove that the ancestors of the Chinese had passed through an era of fetichism. All members of the Semitic family of languages have the word El, or some modification of it, to denote deity, and hence we may conclude that the Semites had the word in this sense before they separated and became distinct peoples, but not that the idea of God originated when the word was first thus employed. All members of the Teutonic group of languages have the word God, or some slightly modified form thereof, and all members of the Slavic group of languages have the word Bog, or some modification thereof, to express the same conception: it does not follow that either Teutons or Slavs had no idea of deity until the former so applied the word God, and the latter so applied the word Bog. Both Teutons and Slavs are Aryans, and there is an older Aryan term for deity than either God or Bog. The Sanscrit deva, the Latin deus, and the northern ti, tivar, are forms of a word which must have been used by the Aryans to express their idea of the Divine when, in a prehistoric age, they lived together in their original home; but we are not entitled to infer that even that prehistoric Aryan term is the oldest word for deity. It may not be older than the primitive Semitic word or the primitive Turanian word, or the nutar of the Egyptians, or the t'ien of the Chinese, or the earliest designations for the Divine in the earliest African and American languages. And there may have been Divine names older than any of these. The science of language has been able to reconstruct in part a prehistoric Aryan language, and may similarly be able to reconstruct a prehistoric Semitic language, a prehistoric Turanian, and perhaps a prehistoric Hamitic language. Should it proceed thus far it will probably perceive that all these prehistoric languages arose out of a still earlier prehistoric language in which also were words expressing ideas of the Divine. There may be many strata of language buried too deep for human excavation in the abysses of unrecorded time. By no possibility, therefore, can the analysis of existing languages disclose to us the oldest name for deity or the historical origin of the idea of deity. Geology shows the vast antiquity of man, and nothing proves that he may not have been awed or comforted by thoughts of the Divine ages before the invention of the oldest Aryan or Semitic words. It is merest conjecture to assign the formation of the conception of deity to the dawn of historic time. Between primitive speech, primitive religion, the primitive condition of man, and the little streak of light called human history there stretches an immeasurable expanse of darkness.

The belief in primitive monotheism is generally rested on the authority of the opening chapters of Genesis. It is, however, doubtful if the appeal to them be legitimate, because doubtful if their strict historicity can be proved to those who insist on judging them merely by critical and historical criteria, or even if it can be fairly inferred from the view that they form part of a revelation. Then, although these chapters plainly teach monotheism, and represent the God whose words and acts are recorded in the Bible as no mere national God but the only true God, they do not teach, what is alone in question, that there was a primitive monotheism,—a monotheism revealed and known from the beginning. They give no warrant to the common assumption that God revealed monotheism to Adam, Noah, and others before the flood, and that the traces of monotheistic beliefs and tendencies in heathendom are derivable from the tradition of this primitive and antediluvian monotheism. The one true God is represented in Genesis as making himself known by particular words and in particular ways to Adam, but is nowhere said to have taught him that He only was God. Adam knew, of course, only one God, as there was only one God to know; but that he knew there was only one God we are not told, nor are any grounds given us even for conjecturing that he knew it. We are told that God created the heavens and earth, but not that Adam was told it, and we know too little about Adam to be able to conceive how he could have understood the statement. We are informed that he knew God—the God who manifested himself to him in particular acts, but not what general idea he formed of God—whether henotheistic, pantheistic, or monotheistic, whether definitely exclusive of polytheism or not, or in what measure anthropomorphic. It is not otherwise as regards what is reported of Noah. In fact, primitive monotheism is read into the records in Genesis only because they are read in an inaccurate and uncritical manner. If read aright, it would be seen that, while they speak much of how God acted towards man, they speak so extremely little as to what early man knew of God that the appeal to them on behalf of the hypothesis of primitive monotheism must be futile, even on the traditional view of their authorship and historicity.

It is impossible to prove historically that monotheism was the primitive religion. Were, then, the oldest known historical forms of religion monotheistic? Many maintain they were, but adequate evidence has never been adduced for the opinion. The oldest known religion is probably the Egyptian, and for at least three thousand years its history can be traced by the aid of authentic records contemporary with the facts to which they relate. Its origin, however, is not disclosed by Egyptian history, and was unknown to the Egyptians themselves. When it first appears in the light of history it has already a definite form, a character not rude and simple, but of considerable elevation and subtility, and is complex in contents, having certain great gods, but not so many as in later times, ancestor-worship, but not so developed as in later times, and animal worship, but very little of it as compared with later times. For the opinion that its lower elements were older than the higher there is not a particle of properly historical evidence,—not a trace in the inscriptions of mere propitiation of ancestors, or of belief in the absolute divinity of kings or animals; on the contrary, ancestors are always found propitiated through prayer to some of the great gods, kings worshipped as emanations and images of the sun-god, and the divine animals adored as divine symbols and incarnations. The greater gods mentioned on the oldest tombs and in the oldest writings are comparatively few, and their mere names—Osiris, Horus, Thoth, Seb, Nut, Anubis, Apheru, Ra, Isis, Neith, Apis—conclusively prove that they were not ancient kings or deceased ancestors, but chiefly powers of nature, and especially, although not exclusively, of the heavens ; yet from the earliest historical time they were regarded as not merely elemental, but as also ethical powers, working indeed visibly and physically in the aspects and agents of nature, yet in conformity to law and with intelligence and moral purpose. Wherever the powers of nature are thus worshipped as gods, the feeling that the separate powers are not all power, that the particular deities are not the whole of divinity, must be entertained and will find expression. The Egyptians had undoubtedly such a sense of the unity of the Divine from the dawn of their history, and they expressed it so strongly in various ways from a very early period that they have been pronounced monotheists not merely by theologians attached to a traditional dogma but by most eminent Egyptologists—De Rougé, Mariette, Brugsch, and Renouf. As these scholars, however, truthfully present the facts, they satisfactorily refute themselves. A religion with about a dozen great gods— distinct as regards their names, characteristics, histories, relationships, symbols, and worship—is not monotheism in the ordinary or proper sense of the term. A religion in which the Divine is viewed as merely immanent in nature, and the deities deemed physical as well as moral, elemental as well as ethical powers, is rather pantheistic than monotheistic. Further, all assertions to the effect that the unity of the Divine is most emphatically expressed in the earliest historical stages of the religion are contrary to the evidence adduced even by those who make them. To quote Patah-Hotep as a proof of the monotheism of the Egyptian religion in its oldest historical phase is as uncritical as it would be to draw Homeric theology from the dialogues of Plato. The Egyptian religion was a polytheism which implied monism; it was not monotheism, which is exclusive of polytheism. Hence, notwithstanding frequent approximations to monotheism,...