[f. next + -IST. (In sense 2, f. Gr. θεόγονος born of God.)]
1. One who is versed in or treats of theogony.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. iii. § 13. 114. Such Theologers as these, who were Theogonists, and Generated all the Gods … out of Sensless and Stupid Matter.
1845. Maurice, Mor, & Met. Philos., in Encycl. Metrop. (1847), II. 635/1. Plato, the cosmogonist and theogonist, is another man altogether from Plato the seeker of hidden truths in the facts which lay before him.
1880. E. Myers, Æschylus, in E. Abbott, Hellenica, 16. If Pindar and Aeschylus treated the primitive theogonies with reverence, it was not the reverence of a primitive theogonist.
¶ 2. erron. One who is born of God.
1833. Fraser’s Mag., VIII. 570. [In] Genesis … it is … stated that the aboriginal races of just men distinguished themselves by this … title, Alibenim, theogonists, or God’s sons, from the atheistical Sathanists, or evil-seekers.
So Theogonism, a system or theory of theogony; Theogonite = sense 2.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., Pref. 34. That strange kind of Religious Atheism, or Atheistick Theogonism, which asserted … Beings … called by them Gods;… Generated at First out of Night and Chaos … and Corruptible again into the same. Ibid., Contents, I. v. 726. A certain kind of Atheistick Theism, or Theogonism, which acknowledging a God or Soul of the World,… supposed Him … to have emerged out of Night and Chaos.
1831. Fraser’s Mag., IV. 94. He [Lord Brougham] assumes too much of the theogonite to be wise.
