Glossary

The movement, led largely by Christians, to end the slave trade and then slavery itself in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

God meeting people where they are and moving them, rather than imposing the ideal at once.

Matters neither commanded nor forbidden, on which Christians may legitimately differ.

Being brought into God's family with the full status of a son or daughter.

Praise directed at who God is, rather than at what he gives.

The indigenous religious systems of Africa — varied, and sharing common structures.

Deliberate, self-giving love — an act of the will rather than a feeling.

A family of African-founded churches in Nigeria, beginning around 1918, that stress prayer, divine healing, visions and the Holy Spirit.

Paul's image for a Christian: someone carrying another's message with another's authority.

The Buddhist doctrine that there is no permanent, enduring self.

The Eastern Orthodox understanding that we inherit mortality and a disordered nature from Adam, but not his personal guilt.

Impermanence — the Buddhist teaching that nothing persists unchanged.

The view that the lost are finally destroyed rather than tormented forever.

Treating forgiveness as licence — that behaviour no longer matters.

A genre using dense symbolic imagery to disclose God's perspective on history.

Books in Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments that Protestant Bibles do not include.

Making the case for the Christian faith. Nothing to do with apologising.

A courtroom defence speech. Nothing to do with apologising.

Abandoning a faith once held. In some legal systems, a crime.

A commissioned messenger — in the strict sense, an eyewitness sent by the risen Christ.

Everything that exists needs an explanation; the universe is contingent; therefore God.

The teaching that Jesus is a created being — the first and greatest creature.

God's self-existence: he depends on nothing and is caused by nothing.

Knowing, rather than hoping, that you belong to God.

What Christ's death accomplished — the repair of the breach between God and humanity.

The status of an Orthodox church that governs itself and elects its own head.

The original manuscripts of the biblical books as their authors wrote or dictated them.

In Hinduism, a temporary descent of the divine into the world.

The washing that marks entry into the Christian community and union with Christ.

Updating how confident you are in a claim as new evidence arrives.

Devotional love for a personal deity — the most grace-like strand of Hindu practice.

Ultimate reality in Hindu thought — impersonal in some schools, personal in others.

The peoples of the land before Israel, whose practices Scripture names as grounds for judgement.

The list of books recognised as authoritative Scripture.

A person under instruction before baptism in the early church.

Universal — as in "one holy catholic church", meaning the whole church everywhere.

The name Jesus gave Simon; *Petros* (Peter) is its Greek equivalent.

The view that the miraculous gifts ceased with the apostolic age.

A society in which church and state are bound together and Christianity is the official, public faith.

The earliest Christian belief that Jesus is included within the identity of Israel's one God.

The doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man.

The picture of the cross as a battlefield conquest over sin, death and the powers.

The Syriac church of Persia and Asia — the most geographically ambitious in Christian history.

A bound book rather than a scroll — a format early Christians adopted almost universally.

The bread and cup Jesus instituted as a remembrance of his death until he returns.

The view that divine sovereignty and genuine human choice are not in conflict.

Reading modern scientific findings back into the biblical creation accounts.

The aspect of providence by which God works in and through the actions of his creatures without cancelling them.

Agreeing with God about your sin — and also, stating what you believe.

The surrounding text, situation and culture that determine a passage's meaning.

Expressing the unchanged gospel in the language, categories and forms of a particular culture.

The view that all the spiritual gifts continue today.

The turning of a person from self-rule to trust in Christ.

The Christian tradition and language of Egypt, descended from ancient Egyptian.

The council that settled how Christ's two natures relate: one person, two natures.

The council that affirmed the Son is of the same being as the Father, against Arianism.

A solemn, binding relationship that God establishes with his people, with promises and obligations.

The doctrine that God created everything from nothing, not from pre-existing material.

The practice of baptising only those who personally profess faith in Christ — believer's baptism.

A short confession summarising essential Christian belief.

The military expeditions launched from Latin Europe from 1095, chiefly to take and hold Jerusalem.

The reading that the "days" of Genesis 1 are long periods rather than 24-hour days.

Ancient Jewish manuscripts from caves near Qumran, including the oldest known copies of the Old Testament.

A word covering two very different things: correcting a distorted faith, and leaving the faith.

In Gnostic teaching, the lesser and ignorant god who made the material world.

An organised family of churches sharing doctrine and governance.

The Catholic and Orthodox term for the books Protestants call the Apocrypha.

Duty, right order, the way things ought to be for a person in their situation.

The word behind "deacon" — used of Phoebe, and of Paul himself.

Jewish communities living outside Palestine — the infrastructure the early mission ran on.

A short early Christian manual on Christian living, baptism, prayer, fasting and the Lord's Supper.

Seeking hidden knowledge or the future through spiritual means — forbidden in Scripture.

The classical doctrine that God is not composed of parts; he is identical with his attributes.

An unresolved question held by someone who has not let go — not the opposite of faith.

Suffering or unsatisfactoriness — the first of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths.

A disputed scholarly category grouping ancient gods said to die and return with the seasons.

Thought-for-thought translation — reproducing the meaning in natural English.

The pursuit of visible unity between Christian traditions.

The agreement between Constantine and Licinius granting religious freedom and returning seized church property.

Reading your own meaning into a text rather than drawing the author's out.

A people summoned — never a building, in the New Testament.

God's choice of a people for salvation — understood differently across traditions.

A letter — the New Testament's most common genre, and occasional by nature.

The study of last things: Christ's return, resurrection, judgement and new creation.

A strict Jewish movement of the time of Jesus, widely — but not universally — linked with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?

Telling people the gospel — an assignment given to every believer, not a professional class.

The apologetic method that goes straight to historical evidence, chiefly the resurrection.

The position that salvation comes only through explicit faith in Christ.

The claim that salvation comes only through Christ.

Drawing the meaning out of a text — as opposed to reading your own into it.

The removal or cleansing of sin — one half of what propitiation covers.

Trust in a person, grounded in reasons — not belief without evidence.

The belief that an impersonal force has fixed every outcome, so that human choices make no real difference.

The view that Adam acted as humanity's covenant representative, so that his guilt is counted to all.

The Western addition to the Nicene Creed saying the Spirit proceeds from the Father "and from the Son".

The universe's constants fall within extraordinarily narrow life-permitting ranges.

God's knowledge of what will happen — and, in some readings, his prior loving choice.

Word-for-word translation — preserving the original's structure as closely as English allows.

The character the Spirit grows in a believer: love, joy, peace and six more.

The word usually translated "hell" — a real valley outside Jerusalem used as a byword.

The kind of writing a passage is — which determines how it should be read.

The final removal of sin and the resurrection of the body.

A second-century movement teaching salvation by secret knowledge and that matter is evil.

The announcement that Jesus died for sins, rose again, and reigns as king.

God's unearned favour toward people who have no claim on it.

The realm of the dead in Greek usage — the New Testament's equivalent of Sheol.

Reports of Muhammad's sayings and actions — Islam's second source of authority after the Quran.

The total-destruction language of the conquest narratives — a conventional ancient formula.

A teaching that denies something essential to the faith.

The principles by which a text is interpreted.

Covenant loyalty — love that keeps its commitments regardless of desert.

God's otherness — being in a category of one — and only then his moral purity.

The Nicene term affirming that the Son is of the same being as the Father.

Scottish philosopher whose arguments against miracles and on is–ought still shape the debate.

Two complete natures — divine and human — united in one person.

Anything trusted to do what only God can do.

The status God gives every human being as his representative and reflection in creation.

God does not change in nature, character or purpose.

The doctrine that God is not overcome, changed or made to suffer by anything outside himself.

Crediting something to an account that did not generate it.

God the Son becoming genuinely and permanently human without ceasing to be God.

The view that Christ's work can save someone who never explicitly heard of him.

A remission of temporal punishment for sin — sold in the sixteenth century, which triggered the Reformation.

The permanent presence of the Holy Spirit in every believer since Pentecost.

The claim that Scripture does not err in what it affirms.

The claim that Scripture will not fail or mislead in what it is given to do.

The Quranic name for the Gospel given to Jesus.

God's superintendence of the human authors so that what they wrote is his word.

Evangelism and social action as two aspects of one obedience, not two competing programmes.

Praying on behalf of someone else — and what Christ and the Spirit do for believers.

Hume's observation that descriptions of how things are cannot yield prescriptions of how they should be.

The Quranic name for Jesus, honoured in Islam as a prophet.

A Latinised rendering of the divine name YHWH, used by Jehovah's Witnesses as a distinctive.

Jewish historian whose works are a key non-Christian source for first-century Judea.

The Christian tradition that a war may sometimes be morally permitted, but only under strict conditions.

God's legal declaration that a believer is righteous in his sight, on Christ's record.

Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began; therefore it has a cause.

In Hinduism and Buddhism, the moral law of cause and effect carried across lifetimes.

The Son's voluntary self-humbling in becoming human.

The everyday Greek of the first-century Mediterranean, in which the New Testament was written.

Bringing grief, anger and confusion to God — a biblical category, not a failure of faith.

Treating obedience as the ground of acceptance with God rather than its fruit.

John's title for the pre-incarnate Christ: God's self-expression.

Followers of John Wycliffe, who produced the first complete English Bible in 1382.

The formal act of a slave-owner setting a slave free.

An Aramaic prayer to Jesus, preserved untranslated in 1 Corinthians 16:22.

A witness — the meaning shifted to "one who dies for the testimony" because so many did.

The standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament, preserved by Jewish scribes.

The standard Hebrew Old Testament text, preserved with extraordinary scribal care.

The one who stands between God and humanity to reconcile them.

The anointed king promised in the Old Testament; "Christ" is the Greek form of the same title.

The Christology of the Oriental Orthodox churches: one united nature of the incarnate Word.

The thousand years of Revelation 20 — understood in at least three ways.

God introducing a new causal factor into the natural order — not a violation of it.

The error that Father, Son and Spirit are one person in three successive modes.

Release from the cycle of rebirth — the goal of Hindu and Buddhist practice.

The view that God sovereignly governs free creatures through "middle knowledge" of what they would freely do in any circumstance.

Life organised in community under vows, for prayer, work and study.

Objective moral obligation exists and is difficult to ground without God.

The deliberate putting to death of remaining sin in a believer.

The hypothesis of vast numbers of universes, often invoked to explain fine-tuning by chance.

The view that Jesus never existed and was invented from myth — rejected by virtually all historians of the period.

The view that physical nature is all that exists.

The renewal of heaven and earth — the Christian hope, rather than escape to heaven.

The extinction of craving and release from rebirth — Buddhism's goal.

God can do anything consistent with his own nature.

God knows all things — actual and possible, past, present and future.

The view that the future free choices of creatures are not yet knowable, even to God.

A rite Christ commanded his church to practise — the term many Baptist and free churches prefer to "sacrament".

The inherited condition that inclines every person toward sin from birth.

Right belief — the core the church has recognised and defended across traditions.

A stone box used to hold a person's bones after the body had decayed.

The practice of baptising the infant children of believers.

The writing material of the earliest New Testament manuscripts.

A restatement of the sense in fresh words — not a translation.

The second coming of Christ — visible, bodily and public.

The ancient name for Easter — the Christian celebration of Christ's death and resurrection as the true Passover.

The Aegean island where John was exiled and received the visions of Revelation.

A wealthy supporter — the economic infrastructure the early church ran on.

The outpouring of the Spirit on all believers, fifty days after the resurrection.

The movement, beginning in 1906, that expects the gifts of the Spirit described in Acts to be normal now.

The eternal mutual indwelling and self-giving of the three persons of the Trinity.

The teaching that all whom God has truly saved will be kept by him and continue in faith to the end.

The clarity of Scripture: what is necessary for salvation is plain enough for ordinary believers to understand.

A first-century Jewish movement committed to rigorous law-keeping.

The doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

A title for city magistrates in Macedonia, used by Luke for the authorities of Thessalonica.

The way a church is governed — its structure of leadership and authority.

God determining beforehand the destiny of those he saves.

The New Testament word for an elder — a recognised leader of a local church.

The method arguing that Christianity is the precondition for rationality itself.

Grace that goes before, restoring enough capacity for a person to respond freely.

Spiritual authorities opposed to God — real, and defeated at the cross.

The turning aside of God's wrath by a sacrifice.

Paul's second title for Phoebe: a person of standing who provided protection and resources.

God's continuous governance of everything he has made.

Writings published under the name of a famous figure who did not write them.

A hypothetical lost collection of Jesus' sayings thought to have been used by Matthew and Luke.

Islam's scripture, held by Muslims to be God's final revelation, given to Muhammad.

Believers being caught up to meet Christ at his return, described in 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

The restoration of a broken relationship between God and people.

The centuries-long war by the Christian kingdoms of Spain and Portugal to take back the Iberian peninsula from Muslim rule, ending in 1492.

Being bought out of slavery at a price.

The sixteenth-century movement that recovered justification by faith and put the Bible into ordinary languages.

The new birth — God giving spiritual life to someone spiritually dead.

The claim that truth is relative to a person or a culture.

The claim that all religions are equally valid paths to God.

Turning from running your own life and turning to God.

Bodily rising from death — Christ's, and every believer's at his return.

God making himself known — through creation and conscience, and through Scripture and Christ.

A season in which a church that already holds the truth becomes alive to it again.

A physical sign instituted by Christ that enacts a spiritual reality.

The cycle of birth, death and rebirth, driven by karma.

The lifelong process of a Christian actually becoming like Christ.

A division in the church over authority or practice rather than over core doctrine.

The medieval university method: state the question, state the objections, answer them.

The claim that scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge.

A framework in which religion is treated as private and largely irrelevant to public life.

The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, made from the 3rd century BC.

The Islamic confession of faith: "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God."

Wholeness and flourishing — far more than the absence of conflict.

Islamic law, derived from the Quran and the hadith and interpreted by schools of jurisprudence.

Israel's central confession of faith: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one."

The Old Testament's realm of the dead — shadowy, and not yet clearly divided.

In Islam, associating partners with God — regarded as the unforgivable sin.

Falling short of what God made us for — a condition, not merely a tally of acts.

The Reformation principle that Scripture is the only infallible and final rule of faith and practice.

The doctrine of salvation: how God rescues sinners through Christ.

The view that suffering exists because character cannot be created ready-made.

Capacities the Spirit distributes to believers for the good of the church.

The innocent standing in the place of the guilty and taking the penalty.

The mystical tradition within Islam, seeking a felt, personal nearness to God.

Blending Christian faith with another religious system rather than replacing it.

The question of how Matthew, Mark and Luke are related, given how much material they share.

A dialect of Aramaic, and the liturgical language of the Church of the East.

The study of what the whole Bible teaches on a topic, arranged in an ordered, coherent account.

Rome's most respected historian, and a hostile witness to the crucifixion.

The Islamic claim that the Jewish and Christian scriptures have been corrupted.

The Islamic doctrine of the absolute oneness and indivisibility of God.

A mound formed by layer upon layer of an ancient town built on its own ruins.

A binding agreement between God and people, and the framework of the whole Bible.

Your own account of what God has done in your life.

The discipline of establishing what a document originally said from surviving copies.

Any difference between manuscripts at a given point in the text.

Israel's taking of Canaan under Joshua — among the hardest passages in Scripture.

An attempted justification of God's goodness given the existence of evil.

Sin affects every part of a person — not that every person is maximally evil.

A final period of intense distress before Christ's return.

One God eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Reading real Old Testament people, events and institutions as God-given patterns fulfilled in Christ.

The belief that all people will finally be saved.

Jerome's Latin Bible, the Western church's Scripture for over a thousand years.

The organisation governing Jehovah's Witnesses, founded by Charles Taze Russell in the 1870s.

Testifying to what you have seen and know — the New Testament's primary model for evangelism.

The framework through which a person interprets everything — held by everyone, examined by few.

A member of the Jewish movement committed to violently overthrowing Roman rule.