Amyraldianism is a modified form of Calvinism, named after the French theologian Moses Amyraut (1596–1664), which holds that Christ died for all people, yet God only elects some to believe.
Amyraldianism is often called "four-point Calvinism" because it rejects limited atonement while keeping the rest of TULIP. Christ's death is sufficient and intended for everyone, but only the elect are effectually brought to faith. Scripture is clear that Christ died for the whole world (1 John 2:2) and that the offer of eternal life is sincerely made to all. However, the Bible never describes faith as a gift given only to the unconditionally elect. If Jesus really died for everyone, then everyone who hears the promise can actually believe it.
Antinomianism (from Greek ἀντί, against, and νόμος, law) is the view that believers are under no moral obligation to obey God, or that grace gives license to sin.
Martin Luther coined the term in his dispute with Johann Agricola, and today it is a common accusation made against Free Grace theology. But saying that eternal life is free is not the same as saying sin doesn't matter. Believers are still commanded to obey, and disobedience brings real consequences, including the Father's discipline (Heb. 12:5–11) and the loss of rewards at the Bema. Interestingly, Paul faced the same accusation (Rom. 3:8) and anticipated the question, "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" (Rom. 6:1). If our gospel never draws that objection, we should ask whether we are preaching grace the way Paul did.
The Apocrypha ("hidden" things) refers to a group of Jewish writings from the intertestamental period, such as Tobit, Judith, Sirach, and 1–2 Maccabees, that are included in Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments but not in the Hebrew or Protestant canon.
Catholics call these books "deuterocanonical" and officially declared them Scripture at the Council of Trent in 1546. The Jews, who were entrusted with the oracles of God (Rom. 3:2), never received them into the Hebrew Bible, and Jerome himself distinguished them from the canonical books. Jesus referred to the Scriptures as the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44). The Apocrypha can be useful for history, but it is not inspired. This matters for grace, since 2 Maccabees 12:43–45 is used to support prayers for the dead and purgatory.
Aseity (from Latin a se, "from oneself") is the attribute of God by which He exists of Himself, depending on nothing and no one outside of Himself.
Everything in creation has a cause and depends on something else to exist. God does not. He is uncreated and needs nothing from His creatures (Acts 17:24–25). When God revealed His name to Moses as "I AM WHO I AM" (Exod. 3:14), He described Himself as the One who simply is. Jesus claimed the same kind of life for Himself, having "life in Himself" (John 5:26). This also means God's promises don't depend on us. The One who needs nothing gives eternal life freely.
Confidence in the knowledge or reality of a believer's salvation. While someone can waver in their assurance from bad theology, the assurance the Bible describes is absolute certainty based on the faithfulness of God alone.
Assurance is intrinstic to, or inseperable from, saving faith. In orders orders, if someone has been convinced of Jesus as the Christ who gives eternal life, then they have assurance (at least in that moment). Lasting assurance rests on God's promise of security. Reformed theology adds the needs for ongoing works, conviction and outward sorrow over sin, and peseverance to the end of one's life in faith to find assurnace of one's eternal destiny. This approach leads, if honest, to subjectivism and uncertainity. The Catholic and Orthodoxy faiths go as far as outright denying any asbolute assurance, often labeling such claims as prideful. The Quest for Full Assurance provides a concise history of the Protestant struggle for assurance. By contrast, the Bible describes assurance as an expected present experience for every beleiver because of God's nature to keep His promises and the finality of the atonement in 1 John 5:6-13. God wants us to be certain.
The Bema Seat (from Greek βῆμα, a raised platform) is the judgment seat of Christ where believers are evaluated after death — not for salvation, but for the quality of their service and faithfulness in this life.
The Bible describes two clearly different judgments, the Bema Seat and the Great White Throne Judgment (Rev. 20:11–15). The unbelievers are judged in the latter on the basis of whether their names are in the Book of Life. Meanwhile at the Bema (2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Cor. 3:12–15), believers receive or lose rewards — not eternal life, which was already secured by faith alone. A believer whose works are burned up "will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Cor. 3:15). Conflating the two judgments is a common mistake in Lordship Salvation.
Cessationism is the view that the miraculous and revelatory gifts — tongues, prophecy, healing, and the office of apostle — served to authenticate the apostles and their message, and ceased once that foundation was complete.
The strongest case rests on the stated purpose of the sign gifts rather than on a text announcing their end. Hebrews 2:3–4 looks back on the message as having been confirmed by signs and wonders, 2 Corinthians 12:12 calls them the signs of an apostle, and Ephesians 2:20 describes apostles and prophets as the foundation of the church, which is laid once rather than repeatedly. Dispensationalists add that tongues functioned as a sign to unbelieving Israel, since Paul quotes Isaiah 28:11–12 to that effect (1 Cor. 14:21–22). A weaker argument, still common in popular treatments, reads “that which is complete” in 1 Corinthians 13:10 as the finished canon; the next verse speaks of seeing face to face, which points more naturally to the Lord's return, and careful cessationists generally no longer press the canon reading. The position varies in strictness, from holding the gifts entirely withdrawn to holding that God may still act miraculously while no one possesses a gift as an ongoing endowment. Regardless of anyone's stance, it's abundantly clear that no gift or experience is a condition of eternal life or required evidence of having received it (1 Cor. 12:13). Compare continuationism.
A chiasm is inverted parallelism, where a series of elements is repeated in reverse order (ABB′A′). It is named for the Greek letter chi (Χ) because the pattern crosses.
Jesus uses one in Matthew 7:6 — do not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast pearls before swine, lest the swine trample them and the dogs turn and tear you — where the second half answers the first in reverse. Mark 2:27 is simpler: the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Genesis 9:6 turns on the same crossing in Hebrew, and Isaiah 6:10 moves inward from heart, ears, and eyes, then back out through eyes, ears, and heart. Where a chiasm has an odd number of elements, the unpaired center often carries the weight, since the structure drives inward toward it. Two cautions apply. The center-as-emphasis rule is a tendency rather than a law, and it should be confirmed from the content rather than assumed from the shape. And while sentence-level chiasms are plain enough, proposals that map an entire book onto one pattern are often built by labeling sections loosely enough to make them match; if a pattern depends on summaries no ordinary reader would produce, it likely belongs to the interpreter rather than the author.
Continuationism is the view that the gifts given in the New Testament, including tongues, prophecy, and healing, continue to be given until the Lord returns.
The case rests largely on the absence of any announcement that they would stop. Paul ties the ceasing of tongues, prophecy, and knowledge to the arrival of what is complete and to seeing face to face (1 Cor. 13:8–12), which reads most naturally as the Lord's return, and he tells the Corinthians plainly not to forbid speaking in tongues (1 Cor. 14:39). Peter's citation of Joel at Pentecost describes prophecy as a mark of the last days (Acts 2:17–18), a period many take to span the whole present age. Some Pentecostal churches and charismatic movements add that baptism in the Holy Spirit is a second work of grace following conversion, with speaking in tongues as its evidence, while other continuationists deny that any particular gift must be manifested in every believer. That distinction matters, since Paul states that all believers were baptized in one Spirit and then asks whether all speak with tongues, expecting the answer no (1 Cor. 12:13, 30). Assurance rests on the promise of the Son, never on a gift or an experience. Compare cessationism.
The belief that salvation must involve some outward decision, such as praying a prayer, walking an aisle or signing a commitment card.
The widespread evangelistic teaching and practice that a person becomes eternally saved from Hell primarily by making a conscious, external “decision” for Christ. Typically this is understood as the "sinner's prayer" or a traditional similar invitation. Making decisions for Christ after faith is not wrong - yet too often the faith is not distinguished from the expression itself. Decisionism produces false assurance by insisting people look at their external responses, rather than the finished work of Christ.
A diatribe is a style of argument in which the writer raises an objection in an imagined opponent's voice and then answers it. Paul uses it throughout Romans.
The pattern is a question, often introduced by “What shall we say then?”, followed by a sharp denial: “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? May it never be!” (Rom. 6:1–2). The same move appears at Romans 3:1–9, 7:7, 9:14, 9:19, and 11:1, and James introduces a speaker the same way with “But someone will say” (James 2:18). The style was common among the moral teachers of the period, which is why the letters read as conversational in places where a modern writer would simply assert. Recognizing the device matters for a plain reason: it tells the reader whose voice a sentence is in. Romans 6:1 is the objection, not Paul's doctrine. More than that, the objection is itself evidence of what Paul had been teaching, since the charge that grace licenses sin only arises against a gospel that justifies apart from works. A teacher of salvation by faith plus obedience would never have to answer it. Greek carries no punctuation marks noting quotations, so identifying where an objector's words begin and end is an interpretive choice in some diatribes, as in James 2:18–20.
ECT is the traditional view of Hell as a place of eternal conscious suffering for those who have rejected Christ.
The Bible describes unbelievers being resurrected, judged at the Great White Throne (Revelation 20:11–15), and then cast into the Lake of Fire where they will experience conscious, unending suffering forever, rather than annihilation, reincarnation, or purification. It is based on various biblical passages that describe Hell as a place of unending fire and darkness.
Eternal security is the doctrine that a person who has believed in Jesus Christ for eternal life can never lose that salvation, regardless of subsequent sin or failure of faith.
The Scripture grounds eternal security not in the perseverance of the believer but in the promise of God. Jesus said, "I give eternal life to them. They will never perish" (John 10:28). The word eternal (Greek: αἰώνιος) means unending — a life that could be forfeited would not qualify. The nature of the new birth also points this way (John 3:3–7): just as physical birth cannot be undone, neither can spiritual regeneration. This stands in contrast to Arminian views of conditionalism and to Lordship Salvation's implicit conditionalism, where perseverance in obedience becomes the evidence — and thus de facto condition — of genuine faith.
The Bible clearly understands faith in the normative sense of believing, or being convinced and fully persuaded. It's not a special or elevated kind of faith that saves. Rather, we receive salvation by believing the right content, God's gift of life through Christ.
The Greek noun πίστις (pistis) and verb πιστεύω (pisteúō) mean "belief," not "submission" or "lordship." We should rightly emphasize the Gospel of John in evangelism, since it was written explicitly so that readers "may believe" and "have life" (John 20:31). Inserting surrender or commitment into saving faith is a category error that conflates justification with discipleship. The object of saving faith is also significant: one must believe in Jesus as the guarantor of eternal life, not merely believe historical facts about Him.
Glossolalia is a modern term for speaking in tongues, formed from the Greek γλῶσσα (glōssa, “tongue” or “language”) and λαλέω (laleō, “to speak”). Scripture itself uses the verbal phrase, “to speak in tongues.”
At Pentecost the tongues are identifiable human languages: each man in the crowd heard his own dialect (Acts 2:6, 8), and Luke lists the regions represented. Whether the tongues at Corinth are the same thing is debated, since Paul speaks of one who “speaks not to men, but to God” (1 Cor. 14:2) and mentions tongues of angels (13:1), while also comparing the gift to the many languages of the world and the frustration of not knowing what a foreign speaker means (14:10–11). His regulation of the practice is strict: two or three at most, each in turn, never without an interpreter, and all of it for the building up of the assembly rather than the speaker (1 Cor. 14:12, 27–28). The KJV's “unknown tongue” supplies the word unknown, which is not in the Greek and is printed in italics for that reason. Whatever one concludes about the gift, speaking in tongues is nowhere a condition of eternal life, and Paul expects that not every believer has it (1 Cor. 12:30). Compare cessationism, continuationism.
Illegitimate totality transfer is the error of importing the whole range of a word's possible meanings into a single occurrence, instead of letting the context decide which sense is in play. The term comes from James Barr's The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961).
A lexicon entry lists what a word can mean across all its uses, not what it does mean in the verse at hand. When “flesh” appears, σάρξ can refer to physical tissue, to human descent, or to the sinful inclination, but no single occurrence carries all three at once, and a reader who hears the whole list every time has stopped reading the sentence. The same discipline applies to words at the center of theological disputes. “Save” renders σῴζω, which in Scripture covers rescue from physical danger, healing, deliverance from an enemy, and deliverance from God's wrath, so each occurrence has to be settled from its own context rather than from a definition carried in from elsewhere (Matt. 24:13; James 2:14; 1 Tim. 2:15). The counterpart error is assuming a word must mean in one place exactly what it meant in another, which is the same mistake running the opposite direction. Compare root fallacy.
An inclusio is a literary bracket, where a passage opens and closes with the same word, phrase, or image, marking off where the unit begins and ends.
Psalm 8 opens and closes with “Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (vv. 1, 9), and Ecclesiastes frames its whole argument with “vanity of vanities” at 1:2 and 12:8. Matthew works the device across an entire Gospel, opening with the child called “God with us” (1:23) and closing with “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (28:20). Recognizing it matters because it shows where the author intended a unit to start and stop, which guards against breaking a passage at the wrong verse — chapter and verse divisions were added long after the text was written and sometimes cut across the author's own boundaries. The bracket frequently carries the theme as well, since a writer tends to frame a section with what the section is about. The caution is that repetition is ordinary in both Hebrew and Greek, so a word appearing twice is not by itself a structural marker. A proposed inclusio should rest on a distinctive phrase and should bracket a unit that holds together on other grounds.
Ipsissima verba is Latin for “the very words themselves,” the view that a Gospel writer recorded what Jesus said word for word rather than a faithful report of it.
On this view the Gospel writers wrote what the Lord actually said, since they wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the Lord had promised that the Spirit would bring His teaching back to their memory (John 14:26). That promise is read as securing the words and not merely the substance, since He said the Spirit would remind them of “all that I said to you.” Scripture also gives a plain case of dictation: in Revelation 1–3 the risen Christ tells John to write, and the letters to the seven churches follow as His own words (Rev. 1:11, 19; 2:1). Where the Gospels report the same teaching with differing wording — Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16, Mark 8:29, and Luke 9:20, or the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4 — this view answers that a traveling preacher taught the same things repeatedly, so similar discourses given on separate occasions were recorded separately, and that where a single scene is in view a writer may quote part of a longer exchange rather than restate it in other words. Those who argue for ipsissima vox take the same differences to show that the writers were free to render the Lord's meaning in their own wording. What divides them is how precisely the Spirit chose to have speech reported, not whether the report is true; both affirm that Scripture is God-breathed and without error (2 Tim. 3:16–17; 2 Pet. 1:21). Compare ipsissima vox.
Ipsissima vox is Latin for “the very voice,” the view that a Gospel may give us the Lord's own meaning in the writer's own wording rather than a transcript.
On this view the Lord's promise that the Spirit would remind the apostles of all He had said (John 14:26) secures a faithful account of His teaching rather than a word-for-word record, so a writer may give that teaching in his own wording without loss. Luke describes his own method in such terms, drawing on eyewitness reports to write an orderly account so that his reader would have certainty about what he had been taught (Luke 1:1–4), and the differing wording of parallel accounts is taken as evidence of the same freedom (Matt. 16:16; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20). Those who hold to ipsissima verba read the same promise as securing the words themselves, and explain the differences by teaching repeated on separate occasions or by one writer quoting part of a longer exchange. Vox in this sense is not paraphrase that invents, and it lends nothing to critics who treat “the voice of Jesus” as a way of concluding He never said a thing at all. On either view the text as it stands is God-breathed, and the promise of everlasting life to the one who believes in the Son is exactly what John wrote (John 3:16; 20:30–31).
Justification is God's legal declaration that a sinner is righteous in His sight, based entirely on faith in Christ — not on works, character, or continued obedience.
Justification is a forensic (legal) act, not a transformative one — it changes one's standing before God, not one's inner state (that is sanctification). Paul's argument in Romans 3–5 is that Abraham was justified before circumcision (Rom. 4:10) and apart from the law (Rom. 3:21), establishing that the ground of justification is always and only faith. Scripture presents this as a one-time, permanent verdict — not an ongoing process. The imputed righteousness of Christ (2 Cor. 5:21) is credited to the believer the moment they believe. Any teaching that makes justification contingent on future performance or perseverance undermines Paul's entire argument in Galatians.
Kenosis is the self-emptying of Christ in His incarnation, where He laid aside His divine privileges and took on the form of a servant.
From the Greek word Κενόω, meaning to make empty. The doctrine of kenosis is derived from Philippians 2:7, which describes how Christ "made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant." By becoming incarnate, Jesus accepted limitation of humanity, being able to experience hunger, tiredness, and death. Yet, He never become less divine - or He would cease to be God. He voluntarily forfieted distinct honor and glory with the Father in taking on flesh.
Litotes is understatement used for emphasis, most often by negating the opposite of what is meant. Paul calls Tarsus “no insignificant city” (Acts 21:39), meaning it was a notable one.
Litotes is common in both Greek and Hebrew, and it lands harder than the plain statement it replaces. Paul's “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (Rom. 1:16) is a declaration of confidence rather than a modest admission, and Hebrews says God is “not unjust” to forget the saints' work (Heb. 6:10), meaning He will certainly remember it. Luke reports “no small stir” over Paul's preaching and “no little time” at Antioch (Acts 12:18; 14:28), each meaning a great deal of what is denied. The figure matters in Revelation 3:5, where the Lord promises the overcomer, “I will in no way blot his name out of the book of life.” Read as litotes, that understates how secure the name is, just as the promise that the overcomer at Smyrna will not be hurt by the second death (Rev. 2:11) means far more than bare survival. Taken instead as a hint that names can be erased, it becomes a threat the sentence never makes, and turns a reward for faithfulness into a condition for keeping eternal life. Zane Hodges argued the point this way in Grace in Eclipse. John 6:37 works the same way: the one who comes will certainly not be cast out.
Lordship Salvation is the teaching that genuine saving faith necessarily includes submission to Christ as Lord, a willingness to obey, and a life marked by perseverance in good works — otherwise the faith was never real.
Associated primarily with John MacArthur and Reformed evangelicalism, Lordship Salvation frames repentance and surrender as inseparable components of saving faith. Free Grace theologians — particularly Zane Hodges and Charles Ryrie — argue this view smuggles works into the gospel. If ongoing obedience is the necessary evidence of real faith, then assurance becomes impossible and the gospel is no longer free. Another problem is the hermeneutical move of reading discipleship passages (Luke 9:23, "take up your cross") as salvation passages. In context, these are addressed to already-believing disciples about rewards, not to unbelievers about the new birth.
Original sin is the doctrine that Adam's first sin brought sin and death to the entire human race, so that every person is born with a sinful nature and under the sentence of death.
Paul explains that "through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, because all sinned" (Rom. 5:12). Theologians differ on the details, such as whether Adam's guilt is imputed to us directly, or whether we inherit only the corruption. The Pelagians denied original sin altogether, while the Eastern Orthodox prefer to speak of "ancestral sin." Regardless of the details, the Bible is clear that no one is born righteous, and everyone needs the life that only Jesus gives. The good news is that as in Adam all die, in Christ all will be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22).
Panentheism ("all-in-God") is the belief that the universe exists within God, so that God is more than the world but the world is still a part of Him.
Unlike pantheism, panentheism does not say God is identical to the world, but it still denies the clear line between Creator and creation. It is most associated with process theology (Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne), where God changes and grows along with the world. Some point to Paul saying "in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28), but in context Paul is preaching the God who made the world and needs nothing from it (Acts 17:24–25). The God of the Bible is present everywhere, yet the heavens cannot contain Him (1 Kings 8:27).
Pantheism ("all is God") is the belief that God and the universe are one and the same, so that everything that exists is divine.
Pantheism is found in forms of Hinduism, in some New Age spirituality, and in philosophers like Baruch Spinoza. The Bible teaches instead that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing (Gen. 1:1), and that He is distinct from what He made. A pantheistic god is impersonal and cannot love, make promises, or give eternal life to anyone. And if everything is God, then evil is just as divine as good, and a lie is just as much a part of God as the truth. Pantheism has no way to say that anything is truly wrong or truly false. Paul describes the exchange of the Creator for the creation as the root of idolatry (Rom. 1:25).
Plenary verbal inspiration is the doctrine that all of Scripture is inspired (plenary, meaning full) and that the inspiration extends to the words themselves (verbal), not merely to the ideas behind them.
Paul says that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16), and Peter that the writers were carried along by the Holy Spirit rather than speaking from their own impulse (2 Pet. 1:20–21). The Lord's own arguments rest on the smallest details of the text: not the least letter or stroke of a pen will pass away (Matt. 5:18), the Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35), and He argued from the meaning of a single word in Psalm 110 (Matt. 22:43–45), as Paul argued from a singular noun in Genesis (Gal. 3:16). The doctrine is not dictation. The writers' vocabulary, style, and research are plainly their own and differ from one another, as Luke says of his own method (Luke 1:1–4). It stands against partial inspiration, which limits inspiration to matters of faith and salvation, and against dynamic or conceptual inspiration, which inspires the thought and leaves the wording to the writer. It applies to what the writers originally wrote, which differs from the study of manuscript copies (textual criticism). Note also the distinction from ipsissima verba: verbal inspiration concerns the words of the biblical text, not whether a Gospel reproduces the exact words the Lord spoke. The two are often confused, and one may hold full verbal inspiration while concluding that a writer gave the Lord's teaching in his own wording.
Propitiation is the satisfaction of God's righteous wrath against sin through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, making God favorable toward sinners.
The Greek words ἱλασμός (hilasmos) and ἱλαστήριον (hilastērion) point back to the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant, where the blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16). John says Jesus is the propitiation "not for ours only, but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:2). Because the sin problem was fully dealt with at the cross, the only issue left between God and man is whether a person will believe in Jesus for eternal life (John 3:18). This is why eternal life can be offered freely to anyone.
Pseudepigrapha ("falsely inscribed") are ancient writings attributed to a famous biblical figure who did not actually write them, such as 1 Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, or the Gospel of Peter.
Many of these books were written in the centuries around the time of Christ. It's often debated whether Jude quotes 1 Enoch (Jude 14–15), since the Greek is not an exact match and he may be paraphrasing or drawing on a common oral tradition. Even if he did quote it, quoting a book doesn't make it Scripture, just as Paul quoting Greek poets didn't make them inspired (Acts 17:28). Some modern critics claim that books like 2 Peter or the Pastoral Epistles are also pseudepigraphal. But the early church was careful to reject known forgeries, and Paul himself warned against letters falsely written in his name (2 Thess. 2:2). A forged letter claiming apostolic authority would be a lie, which does not fit with God-breathed Scripture.
Regeneration is the new birth, where God gives spiritual life to a person the moment they believe in Jesus for eternal life.
Jesus told Nicodemus that "unless one is born anew, he can't see God's Kingdom" (John 3:3), and then explained that whoever believes in Him has eternal life (John 3:15–16). Reformed theology teaches that regeneration must come before faith, since the sinner is thought to be unable to believe otherwise. The Bible consistently puts faith first, with life as the result (John 1:12–13, John 20:31). And since regeneration is a birth, it can't be undone. A person cannot be unborn from God.
Repentance (Greek: μετάνοια, metanoia) might rarely be used as a synonym for belief (Acts 11:18). The normal New Testament usage is a call to turn from sin and move towards God. Regardless, it's never a condition of eternal life.
Repentance is sometimes characterized as merely a "change of mind", which many free grace theologians argue is the only suitable use as a synonym for faith itself. Although, the context varies. It may be used of turning from sins to delay temporal judgment and extend physical life (2 Peter 3:9, 2 Cor. 7:10, Jonah 3:5-10), a command for the 1st Century nation of Israel to experience the Kingdom (Matthew 4:17, Mark 1:14-15, Luke 13:3-5), or is clearly addressed to believers to renounce sin for spiritual maturity (Acts 8:22, Revelation 2:21-22). Significantly, the word in every form is absent from the Gospel of John, the only explicitly evangelical book of the Bible
The root fallacy (or sometimes called the etymological fallacy) is the assumption that the word parts define the meaning of a term. This fallacy is often applied to terms like "repentance," which is sometimes misunderstood based on its etymology rather than letting the context determine the best usage.
We don't look at the word "butterfly" and assume the word means a flying stick of butter! Sometimes though people do make too much of the component parts of word in Hebrew and Koine Greek that stretches beyond the intended meaning. For example, the word for apostle is the noun form of ἀποστέλλω (to send), yet clearly it has a more technical meaning of those called by Christ to establish the Church (Epheisans 2:20). Similarly, repentence literally is made up the words for "change" and "mind" but context determines the type of change implied, whether a kind of synonym for belief or a directional change away from sin.
Sanctification is the ongoing process of a believer growing in holiness and conformity to Christ after salvation. It is entirely distinct from justification, which is complete and instantaneous at the moment of faith.
The Bible maintains a clear distinction between justification (positional, complete, the basis of eternal life) and sanctification (progressive, experiential, the basis of rewards at the Bema). Conflating them leads either to works-based assurance or to despair. The "carnal Christian" (1 Cor. 3:1–4) is Paul's own acknowledgment that a genuine believer can live in persistent carnality — saved but not growing. Lordship Salvation tends to deny this category, arguing that such a person was never truly regenerate. This denial makes sanctification a hidden condition of justification.
The Septuagint, abbreviated LXX, is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, begun in Alexandria in the third century BC and the form of the Old Testament most often quoted in the New.
The name comes from the tradition in the Letter of Aristeas that seventy-two Jewish elders translated the Law for Ptolemy II, and strictly speaking it names that Pentateuch translation; the remaining books were rendered over the following two centuries by different hands, with widely varying technique, some nearly word for word and others loose enough to count as paraphrase. Most New Testament citations of the Old Testament follow it, at times where it differs from the Hebrew text behind our English Old Testament. Hebrews 10:5 quotes Psalm 40:6 as “a body you prepared for me” where the Hebrew speaks of ears, and at the Jerusalem Council James cites Amos 9:11–12 in its Greek form (Acts 15:16–18), significant in eschatological frameworks. Matthew 1:23 likewise cites Isaiah 7:14 with παρθένος (parthenos, virgin) for the Hebrew עַלְמָה (almah, a young woman of marriageable age). The Septuagint is therefore a witness to how the Hebrew was read centuries before the vowel points were added, and the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed that some of its readings reflect a genuine Hebrew variant rather than translator error. One qualification is often overlooked: the complete manuscripts we possess are Christian codices from the fourth century and later, and their contents vary from one another. Alongside the deuterocanonical books they carry writings that neither Protestants nor Catholics receive, among them 1 Esdras, 3 and 4 Maccabees, Psalm 151 and the Prayer of Manasseh, while Sinaiticus adds the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. A book travelling inside a Greek collection is not a judgment about canon. Compare apocrypha, pseudepigrapha.
Textual criticism is the discipline of determining the original wording of Scripture from the surviving manuscripts, since no autograph survives and the copies differ from one another in places.
It is sometimes called lower criticism, and it should not be confused with higher criticism, which asks about authorship, sources, and historicity; textual criticism asks only what the text said. The great majority of the variants concern spelling, word order, or a definite article and change nothing in translation, while a small number are substantial and well known, such as the longer ending of Mark, the passage about the woman taken in adultery, and the wording of 1 John 5:7–8. Approaches differ on how to weigh the evidence. The modern critical editions judge each reading by the age of the manuscripts that carry it, how widely those manuscripts are spread geographically, and which reading best explains how the others arose, an approach called reasoned eclecticism. Majority Text editions instead give greater weight to the reading found in the bulk of the surviving manuscripts; two have been published, Hodges and Farstad's and Robinson and Pierpont's. The Textus Receptus position holds to the printed text behind the King James Version. The discipline bears directly on inspiration, since what was God-breathed is what the writers originally wrote, and the copies are the means by which it reached us. Compare plenary verbal inspiration.
The theological and philosophcial attempt to defend the Christian God's goodness, righteousness, and power in light of the existence of evil and suffering the world
The Bible describes God as perfectly good, just, and powerful. The existence of evil then creates a challenge for understanding why God allows sin to exist at all. Epicurus, and later David Hume, popularized a paradox around the "problem of evil", where either God is not all powerful and thus cannot defeat evil, not willing to prevent evil (making Him malevolent), or both. Traditionally apologists have proposed various solutions to this dilemma. Evil may exists because God simply allows humans the free will to choose Him and to reap the consequences of rejecting His Word, suffering allows for growth and spiritual maturity, some evil is necessary for a greater good to occur (namely the atonement of the cross), and God has certainly promised to defeat sin forever and is patient that all might come to faith. Believers can be certain God did not create or decree evil but sovereignly permits it, often for purposes beyond our comprehension
Total depravity is the doctrine that sin has affected every part of human nature, so that no one can save themselves or earn favor with God.
The Apostle Paul agrees that every person is a sinner and completely unable to earn eternal life (Rom. 3:10–12). The disagreement is over what depravity means for faith. Reformed theology usually takes it to mean total inability, where a person must be regenerated before they can believe. The Bible, however, calls spiritually dead people to believe, and describes God drawing all people (John 12:32) and the Spirit convicting the world (John 16:8). Being dead in sin means being separated from God's life, not being unable to be persuaded of what God says.
Typology is the study of persons, events, and institutions in the Old Testament that God designed as patterns of a greater reality to come, usually Christ or His work. The pattern is the type; what it prefigures is the antitype.
Paul calls Adam a type of the One to come (Rom. 5:14) and says Israel's wilderness experiences happened as types for our instruction (1 Cor. 10:6, 11). Peter speaks of baptism as an antitype (1 Pet. 3:21), Hebrews calls the tabernacle and its sacrifices a shadow and copy of heavenly things (Heb. 8:5; 10:1), and the Lord identified types of Himself in the bronze serpent and in Jonah (John 3:14; Matt. 12:40). We should look to Scripture's own use of types. Some theologians invent their own typologies outside of Scripture, which has a danger of creating unintended, or even contrary, meanings. The difference from allegory is not that one deals in real history and the other does not: Paul calls the account of Sarah and Hagar an allegory (Gal. 4:24) while treating both women as historical. What makes that reading sound is that an apostle drew it under inspiration, a warrant no later interpreter has. How far typology may reshape the original promise is disputed, and the answer usually tracks whether an interpreter reads Israel's covenants as literal and still outstanding.