Early developments.  
Ancient history.  
Deistical thinking has existed since ancient times; the roots of Deism can be traced back to the philosophical tradition of Ancient Greece. The 3rd-century Christian theologian and philosopher Clement of Alexandria explicitly mentioned persons who believed that God was not involved in human affairs, and therefore led what he considered a licentious life. However, Deism did not develop as a religio-philosophical movement until after the Scientific Revolution, which began in the mid-16th century in early modern Europe.  
Early Pandeism and Deism.  
Several ancient theological doctrines are considered as combination of several aspects of pantheism with those of deism, often known as Pandeism, and unlike classical deism, pandeism holds that such an entity became the universe and ceased to exist as a separate entity. The early concepts of pandeism coincide with notions of monotheism and spiritual traditions from ancient eastern traditions, such as Taoism as expressed by Lao-Tze, and from India, such as in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita.  
The 6th-century BC Greek philosopher, Xenophanes, has been described by scholars as having a one-God theology that projects pandeistic and deistic ideals, as he stated that there was One God, that is unmoving, and abides in the self space, yet "sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over". Stoics, and especially in the later students of the 'Platonic Pythagoreans' and the 'Pythagorean Platonists are considered to have a pandeistic philosophy. The 3rd century BC Greek philosopher Chrysippus affirmed that "the universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul".  
Defining of Deism.  
The terms deism and theism are both derived from words meaning "god": the Latin term deus and the Ancient Greek term theós, respectively. The word déiste first appeared in French in 1563 in a theological treatise written by the Swiss Calvinist theologian named Pierre Viret, but Deism was generally unknown in the Kingdom of France until the 1690s when Pierre Bayle published his famous Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, which contained an article on Viret.  
In English, the words deist and theist were originally synonymous, but by the 17th century the terms started to diverge in meaning. The term deist with its current meaning first appears in English in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).  
Herbert of Cherbury and early English Deism.  
The first major statement of Deism in English literature is Lord Herbert of Cherbury's book De Veritate (1624). Lord Herbert, like his contemporary Descartes, searched for the foundations of knowledge. The first two-thirds of his book De Veritate (On Truth, as It Is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False) are devoted to an exposition of Herbert's theory of knowledge. Herbert distinguished truths from experience and distinguished reasoning about experience from innate and revealed truths. Innate truths are imprinted on our minds, as evidenced by their universal acceptance. Herbert referred to universally accepted truths as notitiae communes—Common Notions. Herbert believed there were five Common Notions that unify all religious beliefs.  
- There is one Supreme God.  
- God ought to be worshipped.  
- Virtue and piety are the main parts of divine worship.  
- We ought to be remorseful for our sins and repent.  
- Divine goodness dispenses rewards and punishments, both in this life and after it.  
Herbert himself had relatively few followers, and it was not until the 1680s that Herbert found a true successor in Charles Blount (1654 – 1693).  
The peak of Deism (1696–1801).  
The appearance of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) marks an important turning-point and new phase in the history of English Deism. Lord Herbert's epistemology was based on the idea of "common notions" (or innate ideas). Locke's Essay was an attack on the foundation of innate ideas. After Locke, deists could no longer appeal to innate ideas as Herbert had done. Instead, deists were forced to turn to arguments based on experience and nature. Under the influence of Newton, they turned to the argument from design as the principal argument for the existence of God.  
Peter Gay identifies John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), and the "vehement response" it provoked, as the beginning of post-Lockian Deism. Among the notable figures, Gay describes Toland and Matthew Tindal as the best known; however, Gay considered them to be talented publicists rather than philosophers or scholars. He regards Conyers Middleton and Anthony Collins as contributing more to the substance of debate, in contrast with fringe writers such as Thomas Chubb and Thomas Woolston.  
Other English Deists prominent during the period include William Wollaston, Charles Blount, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, and, in the latter part, Peter Annet, Thomas Chubb, and Thomas Morgan. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury was also influential; though not presenting himself as a Deist, he shared many of the deists' key attitudes and is now usually regarded as a Deist.  
Especially noteworthy is Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730), which became, very soon after its publication, the focal center of the Deist controversy. Because almost every argument, quotation, and issue raised for decades can be found here, the work is often termed "the Deist's Bible". Following Locke's successful attack on innate ideas, Tindal's "Bible" redefined the foundation of Deist epistemology as knowledge based on experience or human reason. This effectively widened the gap between traditional Christians and what he called "Christian Deists", since this new foundation required that "revealed" truth be validated through human reason.  
Other early rational theologies.  
The Stoic tradition of rationality and logical theology originated in the 4th-century BCE with its founder, Zeno of Citium. In 3rd century BCE, Chrysippus shaped much of Stoic logical theology on the God and the Universe For the Stoics, logic was the part of philosophy to achieve a happy life aligned with divine and the Universe. The Stoics held that an understanding of ethics was impossible without logic.  
Around 8th CE, Adi Shankara promoted the Advaita Vedanta school of Indian philosophy, incorporating Yoga and other traditions, stressed the eternal, unchanging ultimate self (ātman), similar to the Vedic concept of the creator God, Brahman, who is understood as the real observer and cognizer. Advaita Vedanta also espouses monism, and holds Brahman to be unchanging and undifferentiated from the individual self, or Atman.  
Around 1250 AD, Catholic priest, and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas wrote about "an intellectual assent", and reason, and was a proponent of natural theology, while arguing that God is the source of the light of natural reason and the light of faith. He embraced several rational ideas on God put forward by Aristotle and attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity.  
One of the early systematic schools of Islamic theology, was Muʿtazila in the mid-8th century CE, whoose theologians emphasized the use of reason and rational thought, positing that the injunctions of God are accessible through rational thought and inquiry, and affirmed that the Quran was created (makhlūq) rather than co-eternal with God, an affirmation that would develop into one of the most contentious questions in the history of Islamic theology.  
In the 9th–10th century CE, the Ashʿarī school developed as a response to the Muʿtazila, founded by the 10th-century Muslim scholar and theologian Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī. Ashʿarītes still taught the use of reason in understanding the Quran, but denied the possibility to deduce moral truths by reasoning. This position was opposed by the Māturīdī school; according to its founder, the 10th-century Muslim scholar and theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī, human reason is supposed to acknowledge the existence of a creator deity (bāriʾ) solely based on rational thought and independently from divine revelation. He shared this conviction with his teacher and predecessor Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān (8th century CE), whereas al-Ashʿarī never held such a view. According to the Afghan-American philosopher Sayed Hassan Hussaini, the early schools of Islamic theology and theological beliefs among classical Muslim philosophers are characterized by "a rich color of Deism with a slight disposition toward theism". 


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