Conceptions of God in classical theist, monotheist, pantheist, and panentheist traditions – or of the supreme deity in henotheistic religions – can extend to various levels of abstraction:

The first recordings that survive of monotheistic conceptions of God, borne out of henotheism and (mostly in Eastern religions) monism, are from the Hellenistic period. Of the many objects and entities that religions and other belief systems across the ages have labeled as divine, the one criterion they share is their acknowledgment as divine by a group or groups of human beings.

In his Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses the meaning of "being as being". Aristotle holds that "being" primarily refers to the Unmoved Movers, and assigned one of these to each movement in the heavens. Each Unmoved mover continuously contemplates its own contemplation, and everything that fits the second meaning of "being" by having its source of motion in itself, i.e., moves because the knowledge of its Mover causes it to emulate this Mover (or should).

Aristotle's definition of God attributes perfection to this being, and, as a perfect being, it can only contemplate upon perfection and not on imperfection; otherwise perfection would not be one of his attributes. God, according to Aristotle, is in a state of "stasis" untouched by change and imperfection. The "unmoved mover" is very unlike the conception of God that one sees in most religions. It has been likened to a person who is playing dominos and pushes one of them over, so that every other domino in the set is pushed over as well, without the being having to do anything about it. Although, in the 18th century, the French educator Allan Kardec brought a very similar conception of God during his work of codifying Spiritism, this differs from the interpretation of God in most religions, where he is seen to be personally involved in his creation.

In the ancient Greek philosophical Hermetica, the ultimate reality is called by many names, such as God, Lord, Father, Mind (Nous), the Creator, the All, the One, etc. However, peculiar to the Hermetic view of the divinity is that it is both the all (Greek: to pan) and the creator of the all: all created things pre-exist in God, and God is the nature of the cosmos (being both the substance from which it proceeds and the governing principle which orders it), yet the things themselves and the cosmos were all created by God. Thus, God creates itself, and is both transcendent (as the creator of the cosmos) and immanent (as the created cosmos). These ideas are closely related to the cosmo-theological views of the Stoics.

The term "Abrahamic God", in this sense, refers to the conception of God that remains a foundational point of belief and doctrine in all three of the largest and best-known Abrahamic religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (While similar views also predominate among those Abrahamic faiths to which there are far fewer adherents, such as Samaritanism and Babism, the quintessentially-Abrahamic conception of deity is most well-attested in the aforementioned three overarching faiths.)

In this view, God is conceived of as eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and as the creator of the universe. God is further held to have the properties of holiness, justice, jealousy, omnibenevolence and omnipresence. Proponents of Abrahamic faiths believe that God is also transcendent, meaning that he is outside space and outside time and therefore not subject to anything within his creation, but at the same time a personal God, involved, listening to prayer and reacting to the actions of his creatures.

The Baháʼí Faith believes in a single, imperishable God, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. In Baháʼí belief, God is beyond space and time but is also described as "a personal God, unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and almighty." Though inaccessible directly, God is nevertheless seen as conscious of creation, possessing a mind, will and purpose. Baháʼís believe that God expresses this will at all times and in many ways, including Manifestations, a series of divine "messengers" or "educators". In expressing God's intent, these manifestations are seen to establish religion in the world. Baháʼí teachings state that God is too great for humans to fully comprehend, nor to create a complete and accurate image. Bahá'u'lláh often refers to God by titles, such as the "All-Powerful" or the "All-Loving".