pre-theistic

See also: pretheistic

English

Etymology

pre- +‎ theistic

Adjective

pre-theistic (comparative more pre-theistic, superlative most pre-theistic)

1. Of or relating to a point preceding the development of theism.
   • 1908, James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie, Louis Herbert Gray, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, page 554:

     If we look at the controlling source of its virtue, the potentially sacred substance of the human body, and compare the earliest forms of consecration, we see that the theory of anointing leads us back to pre-theistic and even pre-fetishistic times.

   • 1978, Park McGinty, Interpretation and Dionysos: Method in the Study of a God, page 13:

     In order to demonstrate the pre-theistic or pre-deistic origin of religion from primitive simplicity, genealogical scholars elaborated a standard method of evolutionary stratification.

   • 1997, Sarah C. Humphreys, Cultures of Scholarship, page 69:

     "Though not jeopardizing the human status of its practitioners, however, the lowest, dream-related form of animism was categorically pretheistic in Tylor's scheme, merely furnishing the ground upon which gods would later develop".