English

Noun

theion ‎(uncountable)

1. (archaic) the divine, especially a divine fire
   • 2004, David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, p. 205:

     ...the human soul, assumed into Christ, is a theion striving ever after the theioteron, seeking the uncontainable plenitude of God.

   • 2000, Ilse Nina Bulhof and Laurens ten Kate, Flight of the Gods: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Theology p. 50:

     Heidegger's attempts to transform theology into "theiology" and thus to transform a thinking/speaking about God into a thinking/speaking of the divine (theion) point in this direction.

   • 1996, Lucas Siorvanes, Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science, p.265:
   • 1967, Francis E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, p. 169:

     What appeared here, at the center of the Pythagorean tradition in philosophy, is another view of psyche that seems to owe little or nothing to the pan-vitalism or pan-deism (see theion) that is the legacy of the Milesians.

     The impersonal 'divinity' (theion) has a longer history than the personal, god (theos).

   • 1936, Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche:

     This question inquires into the first cause and highest existent ground of beings. It is the question of the theion, a question that had already arisen at the beginning of metaphysics in Plato and Aristotle; that is to say, arisen from the essence of metaphysics. Because metaphysics, thinking the being as such, is approached by Being but thinks it on the basis of and with reference to beings, metaphysics must therefore say (legein) the theion in the sense of the highest existent ground.

2. (archaic) sulfur, especially in the context of fire and brimstone
   • 1931, Rev. Charles H. Pridgeon, Is **** Eternal or Will God's Plan Fail?:

     The word theion translated "brimstone" is exactly the same word theion which means "divine."

See also

• theory
• logos

Anagrams

• ethion, thieno, thione