1910?: George Robert Stow Mead, Some Mystical Adventures, page 11 (1993 republication; Kessinger Publishing; ISBN 1564593592, 9781564593597)
Is our salvation to be dependent upon machines; are we to become dei ex machinis ?
1954: Meanjin Quarterly, page 211 (University of Melbourne)
The dei ex machinis and the bug-eyed monsters are both products of man’s imagination — extensions and projections of his own desires, fears and hopes about himself, often revealing more about the sorts of things he believes in — or unconsciously wants to believe in — than he himself recognises.
2007: Susan Miller, Trust in Texts: A Different History of Rhetoric, page 90 (Southern Illinois University Press; ISBN 0809327880, 9780809327881)
Apparitions, marvelous coincidences, and various dei ex machinis endow these true-life fictions with spiritual qualities, useful as new secular verification that God’s plan is […]