Glossary

the already / not-yet kingdom

The New Testament tension that God’s kingdom has truly arrived in Jesus (“already”) yet awaits its full completion at his return (“not yet”). The Church lives between Christ’s two comings.

amillennialism

ay-mil-LEN-ee-uhl-ism

The view that the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 is symbolic of the whole present church age, during which Christ already reigns and Satan is bound from deceiving the nations. It became dominant after Augustine’s shift in the early fifth century.

ancestral sin

The doctrine that Adam’s fall corrupted the human race. Pleasant Springs holds the Eastern ‘ancestral sin’ view — we inherit Adam’s mortality and corruption, not his personal guilt (Romans 5:12).

Distinct from the Augustinian view of inherited guilt.

the Antichrist

A figure of end-time opposition to Christ. John’s letters speak of “many antichrists” already at work, while popular prophecy systems expect one final world ruler. Revelation’s “beast” was first heard by its readers as imperial Rome.

the Atonement

Christ’s saving work on the cross by which God and sinners are reconciled — ‘at-one-ment.’ The New Testament pictures it as sacrifice, ransom, victory, and substitution.

the Augustinian view

aw-gus-TIN-ee-an

The teaching, named after Augustine and common in the West after the 4th century, that every person inherits Adam’s guilt and is born deserving punishment. Pleasant Springs instead holds that we inherit Adam’s mortality, while guilt is personal.

believer’s baptism

The conviction that baptism belongs only to those who can personally confess faith in Christ, administered to adults rather than infants. It was the defining (and, for the Anabaptists, deadly) mark of the Radical Reformation.

believing loyalty

A modern rendering of New Testament pistis — trust that produces fidelity and allegiance to Jesus as Lord. Scholars like Matthew Bates argue “allegiance” better captures the word than the thin modern sense of “belief,” which even the demons possess (James 2:19).

the blessed hope

From Titus 2:13, the Christian’s confident expectation of “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” Pleasant Springs roots its end-times teaching in this positive hope rather than in fear or speculation.

Christology

The area of theology concerned with the person and natures of Christ — who Jesus is, fully God and fully man.

covenant

A binding relationship God initiates with His people, with promises and obligations (Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the New Covenant in Christ’s blood). The Bible’s great organizing thread.

covenantal nomism

NOH-mih-zm

E. P. Sanders’s proposed name for a pattern he argued he found across Second Temple Judaism: one enters the covenant by God’s grace and election, and stays in by keeping the law (‘nomism’ is from Greek nomos, law). His thesis was that Judaism was fundamentally a religion of grace, not cold legalism — a reading many scholars have since debated.

John Barclay both used Sanders’s insight and qualified it: grace was everywhere in Judaism, he says, but it was not everywhere the same kind of grace.

creed

A short, fixed, often rhythmic statement of belief. The earliest Christian creeds — recited in worship and taught to converts — are embedded in New Testament letters and preserve confessions older than the documents that quote them.

the cup of wrath

A biblical image in which God hands the wicked — and rebellious nations — a cup they must drink to the dregs, picturing his measured, covenantal justice. The image runs from the Psalms and Prophets into Gethsemane, where Jesus drinks it in our place, and on into Revelation.

deacon

A servant-leader in the church who cares for practical needs and ministry. The Greek word is diakonos — the same word Paul uses for Phoebe and for his own ministry.

the Deuteronomy 32 worldview

The biblical picture (Deuteronomy 32:8–9; Genesis 11) in which God, at Babel, allotted the nations to lesser spiritual ‘sons of God’ but kept Israel as His own — the rebellion Christ reverses by reclaiming the nations.

the disinherited nations

In the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, the nations God set aside after Babel (Deut. 32:8–9), placing them under lesser elohim while keeping Israel as His own portion. The whole rescue story — Abraham to Christ — is about gathering these nations back into the family.

dispensationalism

A system of biblical interpretation begun by John Nelson Darby that divides history into distinct eras (“dispensations”) and keeps Israel and the Church as two permanently separate peoples of God. It usually includes the pretribulational Rapture and a literal earthly kingdom centered on ethnic Israel.

Pleasant Springs is not dispensational; it reads Israel and the Church as one covenant people in Christ.

the Divine Council

The heavenly host of spiritual beings (the ‘sons of God,’ bene elohim) over whom God presides as King (Psalm 82; 1 Kings 22). A key frame for the Deuteronomy 32 worldview.

election

God’s gracious choice of a people for salvation before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4–5). How election relates to free will is where Calvinism, Arminianism, and Molinism part ways.

the empty tomb

The Gospel claim that Jesus’ burial place was found vacated on the third day. The series notes that even the earliest hostile response — that the disciples stole the body — concedes the tomb was empty; no ancient source claims the corpse remained.

eschatology

es-kuh-TOL-uh-jee

The doctrine of ‘last things’ (Greek eschata)—death, resurrection, judgment, and the renewal of all things. Lilith is, at heart, an eschatological dream.

ESV

The English Standard Version—the English translation shown beside the Greek throughout this series.

eternal security

The teaching that those whom God truly saves He keeps to the end—they cannot finally fall away (John 10:28–29). The opposite error from universalism: not ‘all are saved,’ but ‘the saved are kept.’

the Fall

The moment in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, bringing sin, death, and brokenness into the world. Pleasant Springs teaches that we inherit Adam’s mortality and broken world — not his personal guilt.

futurism

An approach that reads most of Revelation (from chapter 4 onward) as still-unfulfilled prophecy about a final period just before Christ’s return. It is the newest of the four approaches and underlies most modern “prophecy” teaching.

Gehenna

geh-HEN-nah

A New Testament word for hell, from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem—a place of former idolatry and burning rubbish that became an image of final judgment (Matthew 10:28).

grace

Greek charis

God’s unmerited favor — the free gift of salvation and help that cannot be earned (Ephesians 2:8–9). Greek charis.

historicism

An approach that reads Revelation as a map of church history unfolding from John’s day to the end — popular among the Reformers, who often identified the papacy with its beast. Largely abandoned because each generation had to redraw the map.

hypostatic union

The union of the divine and human natures in the one Person of Christ — without mixing, confusing, dividing, or separating them. Defined at the Council of Chalcedon (451).

imager

Heiser’s plain-English term for a human being made in God’s image — one created to represent and reflect God on the earth, ruling and relating as His appointed steward. To “image” God is the verb-sense of imago Dei: not merely bearing a likeness but actively displaying His character.

imago Dei

ih-MAH-go DAY-ee

‘Image of God’ (Genesis 1:27)—the dignity, rationality, and moral capacity that make a human a person and not a thing.

imputation

To credit or reckon something to another’s account: Adam’s sin and Christ’s righteousness are both said to be imputed — charged or credited — to others (Romans 4–5).

the Incarnation

The eternal Son of God taking on a complete human nature in Jesus of Nazareth — ‘the Word became flesh’ (John 1:14). Fully God and fully man, one Person.

incongruous grace / incongruity

New Testament scholar John Barclay’s term for grace given without regard to the worth of the person who receives it. God gives His supreme gift — His Son — to those who have done nothing to deserve it; He “justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5). It is a ‘mismatch’ between the gift and the one who gets it.

Barclay argues this is the one facet of grace Paul pushes to its extreme; on it, Barclay says, Paul’s gospel ‘stands or falls.’

juridical

Having to do with law, courts, and the rendering of legal judgment. The cup of wrath is called a juridical image because it pictures a verdict lawfully decreed and a sentence administered — measured justice, not arbitrary anger.

justification

God’s legal declaration that a sinner is righteous in His sight — not by works, but through faith in Christ, whose righteousness is credited to the believer (Romans 5:1).

the kingdom of God

God’s reign — already inaugurated in Christ’s first coming and not yet consummated until His return. The central theme of Jesus’ preaching.

Logos

LOG-os (Greek λόγος)

‘Word, reason, account.’ In John 1:1 the eternal Word who was with God and was God, through whom all things were made—Christ. Our word logic is its child; reason has a Person behind it.

This is the fixed point of reference for the whole series.

Mary’s fiat

Mary’s consent at the Annunciation — “let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Fiat is Latin for “let it be done.” The lesson reads it as the human reversal of Eve’s grasping: where Eve reached out to take, Mary opens her hands in trust.

mediator

One who stands between God and humanity to reconcile them. ‘There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Timothy 2:5); the theme of the Melchizedek priesthood.

the Messiah

Hebrew mashiach / Greek Christos

The ‘Anointed One’ (Hebrew mashiach, Greek Christos) — the promised King and Deliverer of Israel, fulfilled in Jesus.

middle knowledge

scientia media

God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom—what any free agent would do under any possible circumstance—‘between’ His knowledge of the merely possible and His knowledge of what He decrees. The engine of Molinism.

the millennium

The thousand-year reign of Christ in Revelation 20. Christians differ as pre-, post-, and a-millennialists over whether it is future, present, or symbolic.

Pleasant Springs holds a historic premillennial view.

Molinism

moh-LEE-nism

The view (after Luis de Molina, 1535–1600) that God possesses middle knowledge—knowledge of what every free creature would freely do in any circumstance—and so providentially orders the world without overriding real freedom.

Pleasant Springs holds a Molinist account of sovereignty and free will. See the Statement of Beliefs.

the new Adam

A title for Christ drawn from Paul (Romans 5; 1 Corinthians 15): where the first Adam brought ruin to the human family, Jesus — born of a woman yet conceived from above — begins a renewed humanity and undoes Adam’s fall.

the new creation

The biblical hope that God will renew, not destroy, the material world — a new heavens and new earth where he dwells face to face with his people (Romans 8, 2 Peter 3, Revelation 21–22). Salvation is consummation, not evacuation.

notitia, assensus, fiducia

The Reformers’ threefold analysis of saving faith: notitia (knowing the content of the gospel), assensus (agreeing it is true), and fiducia (personally trusting Christ Himself). Many stop at the first two and mistake mere agreement for faith; genuine faith includes trust.

obedience of faith

Paul’s phrase in Romans 1:5 and 16:26 for the response the gospel calls forth — a faith that is itself a glad obedience, a settled allegiance to the risen Christ rather than a one-time mental transaction.

omnipresence

The attribute of God by which He is fully present everywhere at once. The series distinguishes passive omnipresence (merely being present) from active omnipresence (being present and at work in every event), and likens it to how light pervades and upholds all things.

the parousia

pa-roo-SEE-a

The ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’ — the New Testament word for the visible Second Coming of Christ in glory (1 Thessalonians 4:15).

postmillennialism

post-mil-LEN-ee-uhl-ism

The view that the gospel will gradually Christianize the world, producing a long age of peace (the “millennium”) after which Christ returns. It is optimistic about history under the Spirit’s work through the Church.

premillennialism

pre-mil-LEN-ee-uhl-ism

The view that Christ returns before the thousand-year reign of Revelation 20, then reigns bodily over a renewed earth. Its historic (non-dispensational) form was the consensus of the earliest Church — Papias, Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian.

Pleasant Springs holds historic premillennialism, paired with a covenantal reading of Israel and the Church.

preterism

An approach to Revelation that reads most of its prophecies as fulfilled in the first century, especially in the persecution under Rome and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. The name comes from Latin praeter, “past.”

Pleasant Springs reads Revelation as an eclectic idealist-preterist.

pretribulationism

The view that Christ secretly removes the Church from the earth before a seven-year tribulation, returning publicly only afterward. First taught in the 1830s, it is the “Left Behind” scenario familiar to many American Christians.

Pleasant Springs does not teach this, while loving brothers and sisters who hold it.

propitiation

pro-pih-shee-AY-shun

The turning away of God’s righteous wrath against sin by the sacrifice of Christ (Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2). Distinct from expiation, which is the cleansing of the sin itself.

providence

God’s wise and sovereign governance of all that comes to pass—upholding, directing, and weaving even evil toward His good ends (Genesis 50:20).

the rapture

The catching up of believers to meet the returning Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:17). The popular ‘left behind’ pre-tribulation version is a recent (Darby, c. 1830) and disputed reading.

regeneration

The Holy Spirit’s work of giving new spiritual life — being ‘born again’ (John 3:3) — that precedes and produces faith and repentance.

repentance

Greek metanoia

A change of mind that turns the whole person from sin to God (Greek metanoia). In Lilith, dramatized as Lilith’s long refusal—and the opening—of her clenched hand.

ROSES

A five-point soteriology summarizing the Pleasant Springs position: Radical depravity, Overcoming grace, Sovereign election, Eternal life, Singular redemption—a Molinist-friendly alternative to the older TULIP.

The ‘E’ (eternal life) is the doctrine of eternal security: the truly redeemed are kept and cannot finally be lost.

the ruined soul

Dallas Willard’s phrase (in Renovation of the Heart) for the soul thrown into disorder by sin and the world. It is not destroyed or annihilated — it is out of its right relation to God, no longer working the way it was designed to.

The remedy Willard offers is not repair by willpower but renovation by grace — the soul put back in order under God.

sanctification

The lifelong work of the Spirit making a believer actually holy — growing in Christ-likeness after justification, until final glorification.

Septuagint

sep-TOO-a-jint

The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament (begun 3rd c. BC), abbreviated LXX (‘the Seventy’). The Old Testament most often quoted by the New Testament writers, and the one this series reads.

the Shekinah

sheh-KY-nah

The visible dwelling-presence and glory of God among His people — the pillar of fire, the cloud filling the temple. From a Hebrew root for ‘dwelling.’

sin as debt

An ancient way of picturing sin — not as a stain or a weight, but as a debt owed to God — which took hold in the Aramaic-speaking world of the Second Temple period. It is why Jesus teaches us to pray “forgive us our debts” (Matthew 6:12), and why the cross ‘cancels the record of debt that stood against us’ (Colossians 2:14).

Traced by biblical scholar Gary Anderson in Sin: A History.

the six perfections of grace

John Barclay’s map (in Paul and the Gift, 2015) of six different ways the word ‘grace’ can be pushed to an extreme: superabundance (its lavish scale), singularity (God is only good), priority (it comes before we act), incongruity (it ignores our worth), efficacy (it truly changes us), and non-circularity (it expects nothing back). Barclay offers this as a tool for reading the sources, not a creed.

On his reading, Paul perfects incongruity but not non-circularity — the gift still expects a return of transformed life.

sons of God

bene elohim

In several Old Testament texts (Job 1:6; Psalm 82; Genesis 6), the spiritual beings of God’s heavenly court — not mere metaphors but members of the divine council.

soteriology

so-teer-ee-OL-uh-jee

The doctrine of salvation (Greek soteria)—how God rescues sinners through Christ.

spiritual formation

The process by which the inner person — heart, mind, and will — is shaped over time. Dallas Willard stressed that everyone receives a spiritual formation, good or bad; the question is only which. Christian spiritual formation is the Spirit-led shaping of the inner self into the character of Christ (Galatians 4:19).

Willard’s point: this is for everybody — it takes no budget and no genius, only willingness.

supersessionism

Often called “replacement theology,” the teaching that the Church simply replaces Israel, leaving no distinct future for the Jewish people. Drawn from Latin supersedere, “to sit above.”

Pleasant Springs rejects strict supersessionism, affirming with Romans 11 a future salvation of ethnic Israel grafted into one olive tree.

the Tribulation

In dispensational teaching, a future seven-year period of unprecedented suffering under the Antichrist, between the secret Rapture and Christ’s public return. The duration is drawn largely from Daniel’s seventy weeks.

Pleasant Springs reads the New Testament’s “tribulation” as the Church’s present-age suffering, not a single future seven years.

the Trinity

The one God who eternally exists as three co-equal, co-eternal Persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — one in essence, three in person. Not three gods, and not one Person in three masks.

Hammered out against early errors at Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381).

typology

Reading earlier persons, things, or events of Scripture as God-intended foreshadowings (‘types’) of Christ and His work—e.g., the sleep of death as a type of resurrection rest.

unconditioned but not unconditional

John Barclay’s careful formula: the Christ-gift is unconditioned — it asks no prior worth of us — yet it is not unconditional, because it carries a real expectation that grace will bear fruit in a transformed, obedient life (Romans 6). Grace is free, but it is not cheap.

At Pleasant Springs we read this obedient life as a grateful response to a salvation already secured, never a price we pay for it — and it does not make our salvation something we can lose.

universalism

The belief that in the end all souls will be saved. MacDonald hoped for it; Lilith leans toward it. Pleasant Springs does not hold it—Scripture teaches a real and final judgment (Matthew 25:31–46; Revelation 20:11–15) and saving repentance in this life.

Greek apokatastasis, ‘restoration of all things’ (cf. Acts 3:21, which speaks of cosmic renewal, not the salvation of every person).

VIM: vision, intention, means

rhymes with ‘him’

Dallas Willard’s pattern (in Renovation of the Heart) for how any real personal change happens: a clear Vision of the life you could have, a settled Intention (an actual decision) to have it, and the practical Means to get there. Leave out any one and transformation stalls.

Willard applies it to becoming like Christ: see the kingdom life, decide for it, then use the historic disciplines to grow into it.

the 1 Corinthians 15 creed

An early Christian confession that Paul “received” and quotes in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 — that Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to named witnesses. Scholars date the tradition to within a few years of the crucifixion, making it the earliest summary of the gospel we possess.

1 Enoch

EE-nok

An influential Jewish apocalyptic work (composed in stages, roughly 3rd century BC onward) not in the Protestant canon but quoted in Jude. Its visions of fallen angels, final judgment, and a heavenly “Son of Man” shaped the imaginative world Jesus and the apostles inherited.

the 144,000

The symbolic number in Revelation 7 and 14 (12 x 12 x 1,000) for the sealed people of God. Pleasant Springs reads the 144,000 and the innumerable “great multitude” as one redeemed people described two ways — counted as an army, then seen as a worshiping crowd.

apocalyptic

A genre of vivid symbolic vision-literature (Daniel, Revelation) that ‘unveils’ (Greek apokalypsis) heavenly realities and God’s triumph — meant to be read as symbol, not flat prediction.

the Apocrypha

Jewish writings (e.g., 1–2 Maccabees, Sirach) found in the Septuagint and Catholic/Orthodox Bibles but set apart by Protestants as not canonical — useful but not the rule of faith.

Armageddon

ar-muh-GED-un

From the Hebrew Har Megiddo (“mountain of Megiddo”), the symbolic gathering place of the kings of the earth in Revelation 16:16. Megiddo was an ancient battlefield in northern Israel; in Revelation it pictures the final defeat of evil rather than a literal modern war.

Asaph

AY-saf

A Levite worship leader appointed in David’s reign and the named author of several Psalms, including Psalm 75, which pictures the LORD holding a cup of foaming, judgment-laden wine.

Babel

The city of Genesis 11 whose tower-building rebellion ended in God dividing the nations and, in Heiser’s reading of Deuteronomy 32, “disinheriting” them — handing them over to lesser spiritual powers. The call of Abram in Genesis 12 is God’s answer: starting one family to win the disinherited nations back.

benefaction and patronage

BEN-eh-fak-shun

The Greco-Roman gift system in which wealthy patrons and benefactors gave to clients and cities, and were repaid in honor and loyalty. This is the social world in which the New Testament’s charis (grace/gift) language was first heard.

Grasping this shows how radical the gospel is: God gives to the unworthy who could never repay in honor — a gift that breaks the system’s rules.

Caesar Augustus

63 BC–AD 14

The first Roman emperor, reigning at the time of Jesus’ birth. Luke 2:1 attributes to him the decree of enrollment that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem.

the canon

The collection of books recognized as Scripture (Greek kanon, ‘measuring rod’). The church recognized, rather than created, the books God had inspired.

the census

The Roman registration for taxation that, in Luke 2, brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. Inscriptions such as the Titulus Venetus and an Egyptian papyrus show such enrollments — including returning to one’s home district — were a real imperial practice.

Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)

yohm kih-POOR

The single annual day (Leviticus 16) when Israel’s high priest entered the Most Holy Place with sacrificial blood to cleanse the people’s sins. The whole ritual of restricted access pictured the cross, where Jesus became both priest and sacrifice once for all.

the Day of the Lord

The prophets’ term for God’s decisive coming in judgment and salvation — both near historical reckonings and the final one.

the Dead Sea Scrolls

Ancient Jewish manuscripts (c. 250 BC–AD 70) found at Qumran from 1947 on — including Old Testament copies a thousand years older than any previously known, confirming the text’s faithful transmission.

the Diaspora

dy-AS-por-a

The ‘scattering’ — Jewish communities living outside the land of Israel, who spread the synagogue, the Septuagint, and a readiness for the gospel across the Roman world.

the Essenes

A strict, communal Jewish sect of the Second Temple period, often linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The series notes that early speculative “lives of Jesus” wrongly cast them as a secret society that staged his miracles — a fanciful theory with no support.

euergetism

you-ER-jeh-tiz-um

Civic benefaction — the public giving of the wealthy (games, grain, temples, public buildings) rewarded with honor, statues, and inscriptions naming the giver a euergetēs (‘benefactor’). It was the ancient world’s way of turning money into lasting glory.

Against this backdrop, Jesus’ warning to give in secret (Matthew 6:1–4) overturns a whole culture of giving-for-praise.

exegesis

ex-uh-JEE-sis

Drawing the meaning out of a text (its original sense), as opposed to eisegesis, reading one’s own ideas into it.

gematria

guh-MAY-tree-uh

An ancient practice of adding up the numeric values of the letters in a name or word. Revelation’s “666” is most likely the gematria of Nero Caesar written in Hebrew letters — a coded reference John’s persecuted readers could decode.

Gentiles

Anyone who was not Jewish. A huge part of the New Testament’s good news is that Gentiles and Jews are welcomed together into one family of God (Romans 16).

Gethsemane

geth-SEM-uh-nee

The garden on the Mount of Olives where Jesus prayed in anguish the night before his crucifixion, asking that “this cup” pass from him yet submitting to the Father’s will (Matt 26:36–46). The name means “oil press.”

Hellenism

The Greek culture, language, and thought spread by Alexander the Great that shaped the New Testament world — and the very Greek in which the New Testament was written.

hermeneutics

her-meh-NEW-tiks

The principles and method of interpreting a text — how we read Scripture rightly, attending to genre, context, author, and audience.

the intertestamental period

The roughly four centuries (c. 430–5 BC) between Malachi and Matthew with no canonical prophet — the so-called “silent years.” Far from quiet, it saw Greek conquest, the Septuagint, the rise of synagogues, the Maccabean revolt, and the arrival of Rome: God preparing the world for the Messiah.

Jeroboam

jair-uh-BOH-am

The first king of the breakaway northern kingdom of Israel (reigned c. 931–910 BC). To keep his people from worshiping in Jerusalem, he set up golden calves at Dan and Bethel and installed a parallel, unauthorized priesthood and feast day — the founding sin the prophets blamed for the north’s eventual collapse.

John the Baptist

The prophet who broke four centuries of silence, calling Israel to repentance and preparing the way for Jesus. The Gospels present him as the fulfillment of Malachi’s promised messenger and the “returned Elijah,” the herald who announces the true Mediator.

the Jubilee

JOO-bih-lee

The fiftieth-year release commanded in Leviticus 25 (Hebrew deror): debts forgiven, debt-slaves set free, and family land returned to its owners. The Septuagint renders the release with aphesis, and Jesus proclaims its fulfilment at Nazareth (Luke 4:18–19; Isaiah 61).

It reset Israel’s economy every generation so that no family stayed permanently enslaved or landless — a picture of the gospel’s liberty.

Junia

JOO-nee-uh

A woman whom Paul calls “outstanding among the apostles” in Romans 16:7. The early church teacher Chrysostom marveled that a woman was counted worthy of the title apostle.

the Letter of Aristeas

air-iss-TEE-as

A 2nd-century BC Jewish work that gives the legendary account of the Septuagint’s origin: 72 elders summoned by Ptolemy II to translate the Torah into Greek. The legend embroiders a real historical kernel — the Torah was indeed first translated in early Ptolemaic Alexandria.

the Maccabees

The Jewish family that led the revolt (167–160 BC) against Antiochus IV’s persecution, rededicated the temple (Hanukkah), and founded the Hasmonean dynasty.

Malachi

MAL-uh-kye

The last writing prophet of the Old Testament (c. 430 BC), whose short book confronts the post-exilic priests for blemished sacrifices and a profaned covenant. His name means “my messenger,” and his closing promise of a coming messenger and the return of Elijah forms the bridge to the New Testament.

the Masoretic Text

The standardized Hebrew Old Testament text preserved and vowel-pointed by Jewish scribes (the Masoretes, c. AD 600–1000) — the basis of most modern Old Testaments, alongside the Septuagint.

Melchizedek

mel-KIZ-eh-dek

The mysterious priest-king of Salem who blessed Abraham (Genesis 14) and appears with no recorded genealogy. Hebrews uses him to show a priesthood that precedes and outranks Aaron’s — the order to which the Messiah, “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek,” belongs.

mīšarum and andurārum

mee-SHAR-um / an-doo-RAR-um

Ancient Mesopotamian royal ‘clean slate’ edicts. A new king would proclaim mīšarum (‘justice/equity’) and andurārum (‘freedom, return’) — cancelling debts and freeing debt-slaves — as under Ammi-saduqa of Babylon (c. 1646–1626 BC). They form the cultural backdrop to Israel’s release laws.

The parallel is real but careful: Scripture shares the ancient world’s vocabulary of release while grounding it not in a king’s whim but in God’s covenant — a family resemblance, not a borrowing.

the Nazareth Decree

A marble inscription, an ordinance attributed to the emperor Claudius (AD 41–54), threatening death for anyone who disturbs graves or moves bodies from tombs. Some see in its unusual severity a possible echo of controversy over an empty tomb.

NLT

The New Living Translation, an easy-to-read English Bible that puts verses into clear, everyday words. Pleasant Springs uses it for the youngest learners; older lessons move to the ESV.

the olive tree (Romans 11)

Paul’s image in Romans 11:17–24 of God’s one people: believing Gentiles are wild branches grafted into the cultivated olive tree of Israel, sharing its root rather than starting a separate tree.

ossuary

A stone box used in Second Temple Judaism to hold the bones of the dead after the flesh had decayed. The crucified man Yohanan, whose nail-pierced heel bone confirms the mechanics of crucifixion, was found reburied in such an ossuary near Jerusalem.

Pentecost

The Jewish feast fifty days after Passover on which the Holy Spirit was poured out on the first believers (Acts 2). Peter’s sermon there gives the pattern repeated through Acts: repent, be baptized in Jesus’ name, and receive the gift of the Spirit.

Pesach (פֶסַח)

PEH-sakh

The Hebrew name for Passover, the night God rescued Israel from Egypt (Exodus 12). These lessons suggest the word may picture God spreading His wings to cover and protect His people, not merely “passing by.”

the Pharisees

A lay renewal movement of Jesus’ day devoted to the Law and oral tradition, believing in resurrection and angels. Often Jesus’ sparring partners; the seedbed of later rabbinic Judaism.

Phoebe

FEE-bee

A woman Paul honors in Romans 16:1–2 as a deacon and patron of the church. Paul trusted her to carry his letter to the Romans to its destination — a respected leader and supporter of ministry.

the Pilate inscription

A limestone block discovered at Caesarea Maritima in 1961 bearing the name of Pontius Pilate as prefect of Judea — the first archaeological confirmation, in stone, of the Roman governor under whom Jesus was crucified.

Quirinius

The Roman official named in Luke 2:2 as governor of Syria at the time of the census surrounding Jesus’ birth. Inscriptions found by Sir William Ramsay suggest he held authority in Syria on more than one occasion, easing a long-debated chronological question.

Qumran

koom-RAHN

The desert settlement near the Dead Sea associated with a Jewish sectarian community (often identified with the Essenes) that produced and stored the Dead Sea Scrolls. Their writings reveal an intense expectation of two messiahs — one priestly, one royal — in the centuries before Christ.

recension

A particular edited version of an ancient text as it has been transmitted. The series cites the Arabic recension of Josephus’s passage on Jesus, a form some scholars regard as preserving his words with less later Christian embellishment.

the sabbatical year (shemitah)

sh'-mee-TAH

The seventh-year release: every seven years debts were forgiven and the land was left to rest (Deuteronomy 15; Exodus 23:10–11). This regular letting-go trained Israel to trust God’s provision and pointed forward to the greater release of the Jubilee.

‘Shemitah’ means ‘release’ or ‘letting drop’ — the year Israel let its grip go.

the Sadducees

The priestly, aristocratic party centered on the temple, accepting only the written Torah and denying the resurrection (Acts 23:8).

the Sanhedrin

san-HEE-drin

The supreme Jewish council and court in Jerusalem — the body that tried Jesus and later the apostles.

the Second Temple period

The era from the rebuilding of the temple (516 BC) to its destruction (AD 70) — the ‘four hundred silent years’ and beyond, the world of the Maccabees, Pharisees, and the New Testament.

the Septuagint

sep-TOO-a-jint

The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament (begun 3rd c. BC), abbreviated LXX. The Old Testament most quoted by the New Testament writers, and the one this church reads.

the Sermon on the Mount

Jesus’ great teaching in Matthew 5–7, where He explains what life in God’s kingdom really looks like — including the Beatitudes and the call to a faith that is real, not just for show.

the seven churches of Asia

The seven real first-century congregations to whom Revelation was addressed — Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea — in what is today western Turkey. Reading with them guards against treating ourselves as the book’s first audience.

the Talmud

The vast body of rabbinic Jewish law and commentary. Though hostile to Christian claims, certain passages refer to Jesus — a witness to his existence from a tradition that had every reason to deny it.

Tiberius

reigned AD 14–37

The Roman emperor during Jesus’ public ministry and crucifixion. Tacitus dates the execution of “Christus” to his reign, under the governor Pontius Pilate.

to the dregs

The bitter sediment left at the bottom of a cup of wine. To drain a cup “to the dregs” (Ps 75:8) means to receive the full measure of judgment with nothing skipped or left undrunk.

the veil (καταπέτασμα)

The heavy temple curtain (Greek katapetasma) that screened the Most Holy Place, signaling that God’s presence was off-limits without blood and a priest. At Jesus’ death it tore from top to bottom — God’s own act declaring the way of access now open.

the Vulgate

VUL-gayt

Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible (c. AD 400), the standard Bible of the Western church for a thousand years.

the wedding supper of the Lamb

The great feast of Revelation 19 and 21–22 where Christ (the Lamb) is joined to His people (the Bride) in the new heavens and new earth. It is the Bible’s closing image of the family fully restored — what humanity was always made for.

the Wisdom of Solomon

A book of the Apocrypha (also called Wisdom), included in the Septuagint, that praises God for ordering all things “by measure and number and weight” (Wis 11:20) — a verse this study reads alongside the mathematical order Feynman found in the cosmos.

the Anabaptists

Radical Reformers who rejected infant baptism for believer’s baptism (‘re-baptizers’), church–state separation, and discipleship — forebears of Mennonites, Amish, and Baptists.

the Ancient Near East

The cultures surrounding ancient Israel — Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan, and their neighbors. Knowing this world (its courts, treaties, and shared images like a god’s cup of judgment) often illuminates what biblical authors assumed their first readers already understood.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes

an-TY-uh-kus ep-IF-uh-neez

The Seleucid Greek king (reigned 175–164 BC) who outlawed Jewish practice and desecrated the Jerusalem temple by sacrificing to Zeus on its altar. His persecution sparked the Maccabean revolt and is widely identified with the “little horn” of Daniel 8.

the Apologists

c. AD 130–200

Second-century Christian writers (Justin Martyr, Aristides, Quadratus, and others) who addressed emperors and educated pagans to show that Christianity was philosophically serious and socially harmless. The name comes from the Greek apologia, “a spoken defense.”

the Apostolic Fathers

The earliest post-New-Testament writers (c. AD 90–150) — Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, the Didache — some of whom knew the apostles personally.

apostolic succession

The doctrine that legitimate church authority descends in an unbroken chain from the Apostles through the bishops they appointed. Early writers like Irenaeus and Clement of Rome appealed to it to distinguish the public apostolic faith from secret Gnostic teaching.

Arianism

AIR-ee-an-ism

The fourth-century heresy of Arius that the Son was a created being, not eternal God. Rejected at Nicaea (325), which confessed the Son homoousios — of one essence — with the Father.

Chrysostom

KRIS-uh-stuhm

John Chrysostom (c. AD 347–407), a famous early church preacher from Antioch whose name means “golden-mouthed.” He praised Junia as a woman counted worthy of the title apostle.

the Church Fathers

The influential Christian teachers of the first centuries (e.g., Ignatius, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine) whose writings shaped doctrine and the canon. ‘Patristics’ is their study.

The City of God

Augustine’s monumental twenty-two-book work, begun after Rome was sacked in 410, contrasting the “city of God” with the “earthly city” and shaping nearly all later Christian thinking about history, politics, and the church in the world.

clemency (clementia)

kleh-MEN-tee-ah

The discretionary mercy a Roman ruler — above all Caesar — could choose to extend to a defeated or guilty person. It was a kindness from the strong to the weak that bound the pardoned one to loyalty, which is part of how the word ‘forgiveness’ would have sounded to first-century ears.

Caesar famously pardoned enemies after they swore allegiance again — mercy that also made allies.

the Council of Chalcedon

The fourth ecumenical council (451) that defined Christ as one Person in two natures, fully God and fully man, ‘without confusion or division.’

crucifixion

The Roman method of execution by nailing or binding a victim to a wooden cross. Death came slowly by asphyxiation as the exhausted victim could no longer push up to breathe. Jesus’ death by crucifixion is one of the best-attested facts in ancient history.

crucifragium

kroo-sih-FRAH-gee-um

The Roman practice of breaking a crucified victim’s legs to hasten death, robbing him of the ability to push up and breathe. John 19:31–32 records that the soldiers did this to the others but not to Jesus, finding him already dead.

demythologizing

Rudolf Bultmann’s program of reinterpreting the supernatural, “mythical” language of the Gospels — angels, miracles, resurrection — for its existential meaning rather than taking it as literal historical report. The series notes that even Bultmann never doubted Jesus actually lived.

the Didache

DID-uh-kay

An early Christian manual (its name is Greek for “Teaching”), also called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, giving instructions on baptism, the Lord’s Supper, fasting, and church order. It is one of the oldest of the Apostolic Fathers.

ecumenical council

A church-wide assembly of bishops convened to settle doctrine and order (e.g., Nicaea, Chalcedon). ‘Ecumenical’ means ‘of the whole inhabited world.’

Gnosticism

NOS-ti-sizm

An early heresy claiming secret gnosis (knowledge) saves, that matter is evil, and that Christ only seemed human. Opposed by John, Irenaeus, and the rule of faith.

the Great Awakening

Sweeping revivals in Britain and America (Edwards, Whitefield, the Wesleys; 1730s on, and again in the 1800s) marked by mass conversions and renewed zeal.

the Great Schism

The lasting split (1054) between the Western (Roman Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) churches over authority and the filioque clause.

the hallucination theory

The claim that the disciples’ reports of seeing the risen Jesus were psychological hallucinations. The series argues it fails because hallucinations are private and individual, yet the appearances were to groups — including more than five hundred at once — and cannot explain the empty tomb.

the Hasmoneans

haz-moh-NEE-anz

The dynasty of Jewish priest-kings descended from the Maccabees who ruled an independent Judea (c. 140–37 BC) after the revolt against the Seleucids. Their later corruption and merging of priestly and royal power set part of the stage into which Jesus was born.

homoousios

ho-mo-OO-see-os

Greek ‘of the same essence.’ The decisive word of the Nicene Creed affirming that the Son is fully God, the same divine being as the Father — against the Arian homoiousios (‘similar essence’).

the Hutterites

An Anabaptist communal tradition, named for Jakob Hutter, distinguished by the practice of holding goods in common (community of goods) alongside believer’s baptism and nonviolence.

the Magisterial Reformation

The mainstream Protestant reform led by Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, carried out under the civil magistrate — retaining infant baptism, a territorial state church, and the parish system — in contrast to the “radical” reformers who separated church from state.

the Manhattan Project

The secret Allied program during World War II that developed the first atomic bombs. The young Richard Feynman worked on it at Los Alamos, part of the biography behind his lifelong reflections on science and nature.

Manichaeism

MAN-ih-kee-iz-uhm

A dualist religion of light versus darkness that claimed Jesus and offered intellectual respectability; Augustine was a “hearer” among the Manichaeans for nine years before his conversion. It treated matter as evil and the soul as trapped sparks of light.

martyrology

A written account or collection of the lives and deaths of Christian martyrs, often read to strengthen and honor the persecuted church. The early Anabaptists and the second-century church alike produced such records.

the Mennonites

A peace-church tradition descending from the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, named for the Dutch leader Menno Simons, who practice believer’s baptism, nonviolence, and separation of church and state.

the minimal facts method

An approach to the resurrection, developed by Gary Habermas, that argues only from historical facts granted by the great majority of scholars — including critics — such as Jesus’ death by crucifixion, the disciples’ belief that they saw him alive, and the conversions of Paul and James. The aim is to make the case without first having to prove the Bible inspired.

the myth theory

The claim that Jesus never lived as a real person but was a legendary or mythical figure. Reframed by David Strauss in 1835, it is today rejected by virtually all professional historians, believing and skeptical alike.

the Nicene Creed

The creed from the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325, expanded 381) confessing the full deity of the Son and the Spirit — the church’s definitive answer to Arianism.

orthodoxy and heresy

Orthodoxy is ‘right belief’ held by the whole church; heresy is a teaching that contradicts an essential of the faith and divides the body.

Pietism

A renewal movement (Spener, Francke; 17th–18th c.) stressing heartfelt personal devotion, Bible study, and holy living over dead orthodoxy — a wellspring of the Awakenings and missions.

the Ptolemies

TOL-eh-meez

The Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great, centered on Alexandria and its great library. Under royal patronage (especially Ptolemy II Philadelphus) the Hebrew Torah was first translated into Greek, beginning the Septuagint.

the quest for the historical Jesus

The roughly two-century scholarly effort to reconstruct the life of Jesus by historical methods. It moved through several phases — the early “lives of Jesus,” a skeptical lull, Ernst Käsemann’s “New Quest,” and today’s “Third Quest,” which firmly roots Jesus in first-century Judaism.

the Radical Reformation

The third stream of the sixteenth-century Reformation — chiefly the Anabaptists — who sought to rebuild the church from its “root” (Latin radix): a gathered church of baptized believers only, separated from the state and committed to nonviolence.

the Reformation

The sixteenth-century renewal movement (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli) recovering justification by faith and the authority of Scripture — summed up in the ‘solas.’

the Rule of Faith

Latin: regula fidei

The early church’s shared summary of apostolic teaching — a brief, baptismal outline of the one God, Christ, and the Spirit — used as a measuring rod for sound doctrine before the creeds and canon were fixed. It was one of the chief weapons against Gnosticism.

sola fide

SO-la FEE-day

‘Faith alone’ — the Reformation conviction that sinners are justified by faith in Christ, not by works.

sola scriptura

SO-la skrip-TOO-ra

‘Scripture alone’ — the Reformation principle that the Bible is the final authority for faith and life, above tradition and church office.

the swoon theory

The claim that Jesus did not truly die on the cross but merely fainted and later revived. The series argues it collapses under the medical and historical evidence of Roman crucifixion, which killed by asphyxiation and was confirmed before the body was released.

theatrum gloriae Dei

theh-AH-trum GLOH-ree-eye DEH-ee

Latin for “the theater of God’s glory,” John Calvin’s phrase for the created world as a stage on which the Creator’s majesty is displayed for all to behold.

the Toledoth Jesu

A later medieval Jewish polemical account of Jesus’ life, hostile to Christian claims. One version says a gardener moved and later sold the body — a story that, like the earlier “stolen body” charge, still concedes the tomb was empty.

the two books

A historic Christian idea that God has written two books — the book of scripture and the book of nature — both by the same Author. Rightly read, they cannot contradict; when they seem to, we have misread one or the other.

actus purus

AHK-toos POOR-oos

‘Pure act’ (Aquinas): God as fully actual, with no unrealized potential—He does not change or become, because there is nothing in Him left to fulfill.

contingent being

That which exists but could have not existed—dependent, caused, passing. The whole created world is contingent (2 Corinthians 4:18, ‘the things that are seen are transient’).

dualism

The view that reality has two irreducible kinds—classically mind and matter (or soul and body), seen and unseen.

empiricism

The view that knowledge comes through the senses—experience and observation. Its overreach is to claim that only the empirically detectable is real, a claim the senses can never verify.

epistemology

eh-pis-teh-MOL-uh-jee

The branch of philosophy that asks how we know—the sources, limits, and reliability of knowledge.

idealism

The view that reality is fundamentally mind or idea rather than matter—that the mental is more basic than the physical.

the Law of Identity

The first law of classical logic: A is A—a thing is what it is. To deny it is to deny that anything is anything.

the Law of Non-Contradiction

The second law: not both A and not-A in the same respect at the same time. A claim that must break this law to be stated (e.g. ‘only the visible is real’) refutes itself.

the Law of the Excluded Middle

The third law: either A or not-A—there is no third option. It forbids permanent neutrality where a real question has been put.

materialism

The metaphysical claim that only matter exists—that mind, value, and God reduce to physical stuff. The creed of old Sir Ralph: ‘nothing is real but what I can see or lay hold of.’

metaphysics

met-uh-FIZ-iks

The study of being as such—what is real, what kinds of things exist, and what is most fundamental. Literally ‘after/beyond the physics.’

naturalism

The view that nature is all there is—no supernatural, no transcendent cause. Close cousin to materialism.

necessary being

That which cannot not exist—self-existent, uncaused, the ground of everything else. In classical theism, God alone (Exodus 3:14, ‘I AM’).

Neoplatonism

The refined Platonic philosophy of Plotinus and Porphyry, centered on a hierarchy of reality flowing from the transcendent One. It helped free Augustine from materialism and shaped how he conceived of God as immaterial and supremely good.

ontology

on-TOL-uh-jee

The part of metaphysics that studies existence and the categories of being—what it means for a thing to be at all.

phenomenon and noumenon

NOO-meh-non

Kant’s distinction between the phenomenon (a thing as it appears to us) and the noumenon (the thing-in-itself, as it is apart from our perceiving). MacDonald’s mirror plays on exactly this gap.

physicalism (materialism)

The view that a human being is nothing but a physical body and brain, with no immaterial soul — mind is simply what the brain does. This is the position substance dualists such as Moreland and Craig argue against.

For physicalism to hold, mind and brain must be strictly identical; dualists reply that things true of the mind are not true of any lump of matter.

point of reference

The fixed standard that all reasoning presupposes—something that stays itself while we think about it. This series fixes it on the unchanging God, the Logos (John 1:1; Exodus 3:14), the ground of the laws of logic.

a priori

ah pree-OR-ee

A priori knowledge is known independent of experience (e.g. the laws of logic); a posteriori knowledge is known through experience (e.g. that it rained).

property dualism

A halfway position in the mind-body debate: there is only one kind of substance (the physical), but it has both physical and genuinely mental properties that cannot be reduced to the physical. Contrast substance dualism, which holds that the soul itself is a distinct substance, not just a set of properties of the body.

Substance dualists like Moreland argue this ‘one substance’ view still can’t account for the unified self who thinks and chooses.

solipsism

SOL-ip-sism

The extreme claim that only one’s own mind is sure to exist—the dead end of a knowledge that trusts nothing it cannot privately verify.

substance dualism

The view — defended by philosophers J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig — that a human being is an immaterial substance (a soul) that has and uses a body. The soul is not the same thing as the brain, nor merely a byproduct of it (Matthew 10:28). This need not deny the body’s goodness or the promised bodily resurrection; the soul and body belong together as God made them.

One common form, Thomistic dualism, sees the person as one soul that gives life to and works through the body.

teleology

tel-ee-OL-uh-jee

Explanation by purpose or end (Greek telos)—asking not only what a thing is made of, but what it is for.

the Big Bang

The standard cosmological model in which space, time, matter, and energy began together a finite time ago — a scientific echo of ‘In the beginning’ (Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 11:3).

Calabi–Yau manifold

A complex, multi-dimensional geometric shape in which string theory proposes the universe’s extra, hidden dimensions are curled up too small to see. The series notes that such exotic realities were unimaginable when Psalm 33 was written.

Cargo Cult Science

Richard Feynman’s phrase, from his 1974 Caltech commencement address, for work that imitates the outward forms of science yet lacks its essential integrity — a rigorous, self-critical honesty about the ways one might be fooling oneself.

cosmic microwave background

The faint afterglow of radiation left over from the Big Bang, discovered in 1965 and detectable in every direction of the sky. Its existence turned the once-heretical idea of a universe with a beginning into mainstream science.

cosmology

The science of the universe’s origin and structure. Modern cosmology holds that space, time, and matter had a beginning—an echo of Genesis 1:1 and Hebrews 11:3.

dark matter and dark energy

The roughly 95% of the universe’s contents that is unseen and undetected by light—known only by its gravitational effects. Most of reality is, quite literally, invisible.

Edwin Hubble

1889–1953

The American astronomer who in 1929, at Mount Wilson Observatory, measured the redshift of distant galaxies and confirmed that the universe is expanding — the observational evidence for the Big Bang and for a universe with a beginning.

electromagnetic spectrum

The full range of light, from radio waves through microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. Visible light is only a sliver of it; the whole spectrum is everywhere in the universe at every moment.

entropy

The measure of disorder in a system; the Second Law of Thermodynamics says it always increases in the universe as a whole. Time has a direction—things run down—which is why the cosmos cannot be eternal and unchanging.

fine-tuning

The observation that the constants of physics sit in the extraordinarily narrow range that permits life — widely taken as a pointer to a Designer.

Fred Hoyle

1915–2001

An English physicist who rejected an expanding, beginning universe and championed a steady-state cosmos. In a 1949 BBC broadcast he mocked the rival theory as the “Big Bang” idea — and the dismissive nickname stuck for good.

Georges Lemaître

1894–1966

A Belgian Catholic priest and physicist who in 1927 first proposed that the universe is expanding and therefore had a beginning — the idea that became the Big Bang. He called the universe’s origin point the “primeval atom.”

information

In modern physics, an immaterial yet fundamental quantity—arrangement and code, not stuff. That reality is, at bottom, word-like resonates with John 1:1.

the multiverse

The speculative idea of many or infinite other universes, often invoked to explain away fine-tuning without a Designer — itself unobservable and much disputed.

Newtonian physics

The “classical” physics of Isaac Newton — forces, gravity, and motion described by predictable laws like F=ma. It works beautifully for large everyday objects but breaks down at the sub-atomic scale, where quantum rules take over.

photon

The fundamental particle of light and of all electromagnetic energy. Photons carry the electromagnetic force, mediating the bonds that hold atoms — and therefore all matter — together.

primeval atom

Georges Lemaître’s name for the single dense point from which the expanding universe began — an early way of describing the origin we now call the Big Bang.

QED (quantum electrodynamics)

The remarkably precise theory of how light and matter interact, for which Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize. Its astonishing accuracy is offered in this study as one window onto the deep, intelligible order woven into creation.

quantum

The physics of the very small, where matter behaves as both wave and particle, exists in superposition until observed, and dissolves into fields and probabilities rather than little solid balls.

quantum electrodynamics

The branch of quantum physics describing how light (photons) and matter interact. As the most precisely verified theory in science, it shows that every chemical bond and every interaction of matter is mediated by photons — light, in a sense, holding all things together.

quantum entanglement

A quantum link in which two particles share one state, so measuring one instantly fixes the other however far apart — Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance.’

redshift

The stretching of light from a distant galaxy toward the red end of the spectrum, which signals that the galaxy is moving away from us. Hubble’s measurement of redshift across the sky showed the universe is expanding.

steady-state universe

The long-dominant belief, inherited from Plato and Aristotle, that the cosmos has always existed in roughly its present form — eternal, static, and without a beginning. The discovery of cosmic expansion overturned it.

string theory

A proposal that the fundamental constituents of reality are tiny vibrating ‘strings,’ whose modes of vibration give rise to the particles — reality as something very like music.

superposition

A quantum system existing in a blend of all its possible states at once, until a measurement collapses it to one definite outcome (Schrödinger’s cat).

the uncertainty principle

Heisenberg’s result that certain pairs of properties (e.g., a particle’s position and momentum) cannot both be known exactly — a built-in limit, not a measuring flaw.

wave-particle duality

The finding that light and matter behave as both waves and particles depending on how they are observed — reality at bottom is not a tiny billiard ball.

דָבָר (dabar)

dah-VAR

Hebrew: ‘word,’ but also ‘thing’ or ‘deed’—for in Hebrew, God’s speaking and His doing are one. The word by which the worlds were made (Psalm 33:6).

ἀόρατα (aorata)

ah-OR-ah-tah

Greek: ‘the invisible things’ (Colossians 1:16)—the unseen realities created in and held together by Christ.

ὁ ὤν (ho ōn)

ho OWN

‘The One who is’—the Septuagint’s rendering of the divine name at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14, Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh, ‘I AM WHO I AM’). God as Being itself.

ὄργή (orgē)

or-GAY

Greek for wrath as a settled, judicial posture of condemnation — the verdict before the sentence is carried out. Paul uses it for “the wrath of God” (Rom 1:18) and “the day of wrath” (Rom 2:5). It is the decree from which the cup of judgment proceeds.

καιρός / χρόνος (kairos / chronos)

kai-ROSS / KHRON-os

Two Greek words for time: chronos is clock-time, mere succession; kairos is the appointed, decisive moment—the right time to act or to wake.

κοιμάομαι (koimaomai)

koy-MAH-oh-my

Greek: ‘to fall asleep’—the New Testament’s gentle word for the death of believers (John 11:11; 1 Thessalonians 4:14), the very image of MacDonald’s House of Death.

It gives us cemetery, from koimētērion, ‘a sleeping-place.’

λόγος (logos)

LOG-os

Greek: word, reason, account, the rational ordering principle. The title of Christ in John 1:1 and the root of logic.

μετάνοια (metanoia)

met-AH-noy-ah

Greek: ‘repentance’—literally a change of mind, a turning of the whole self. The hinge between the old life and the new.

ποτήριον (potērion)

po-TAY-ree-on

Greek for “cup” or “drinking vessel.” In Scripture the word is neutral in itself — what matters is the contents: it can hold blessing (1 Cor 10:16) or, in the prophetic and Gethsemane texts, the assigned portion of God’s judgment.

ψυχή / πνεῦμα (psyche / pneuma)

psoo-KHAY / PNYOO-mah

Greek words for the inner person: psyche, soul or life; pneuma, spirit or breath; nous, mind. The unseen self the story keeps probing.

θυμός (thumos)

THOO-mos

Greek for fierce, blazing wrath, from a root meaning “to boil.” It denotes the burning, active outpouring of divine anger — the heat of judgment poured from the cup — and recurs throughout Revelation. Not chaotic rage but the execution of a settled verdict.

agapē (ἀγάπη)

ah-GAH-pay

Greek for self-giving, sacrificial love — the love God is and commands (1 John 4:8; 1 Corinthians 13), as distinct from eros (desire) or philia (friendship).

almah (עַלְמָה)

al-MAH

Hebrew for a young woman of marriageable age (Isaiah 7:14). It usually presumes an unmarried woman but does not by itself specify virginity — the precise Hebrew word for virgin being betulah.

anôthen (ἄνωθεν)

AH-no-then

Greek adverb meaning both “from above” and “again.” In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus one must be born anôthen — the double meaning underscores that the new birth is something God works from heaven, not something we generate ourselves.

apantêsis (ἀπάντησις)

ah-PAN-tay-sis

A Greek word in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 for the welcoming delegation that goes out to meet an arriving king or dignitary and escort him back in — the same picture as the Palm Sunday crowds. It implies the Lord returns to earth, not that believers are whisked permanently away.

Key evidence against the secret-Rapture reading.

aphesis (ἄφεσις)

AH-feh-sis

Greek for release or letting-go. In the Septuagint it names the Jubilee ‘release’ when debts are cancelled and captives freed (Leviticus 25:10), and in the New Testament it is the standard word for the forgiveness of sins — aphesis hamartiōn (Luke 4:18; Luke 24:47).

The same word carries both meanings, so when Jesus reads Isaiah at Nazareth, ‘release’ and ‘forgiveness’ are one gospel word.

apologia (ἀπολογία)

ah-poh-loh-GEE-ah

Greek for “a spoken defense,” as in a defendant’s reply in court (think of Socrates’ Apology) or Peter’s charge to be “always prepared to make a defense” (1 Peter 3:15). It gives us the word apologetics.

basileion hierateuma (βασίλειον ἱεράτευμα)

bah-SIL-ay-on hee-er-AT-yoo-mah

Greek for “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9, quoting Exodus 19:6). What Israel was always called to be is reconstituted in the church at Pentecost: every believer given priestly access to God through the one Mediator.

charis (χάρις)

KHAR-iss

The ordinary Greek word for gift, favor, or grace — and also the gratitude returned for a gift. It fills the New Testament with the language of God’s free giving (Ephesians 2:8).

By itself charis does not spell out ‘unmerited’ (a point John Barclay stresses); Scripture makes clear that God freely gives it to the undeserving.

charizomai (χαρίζομαι)

kha-RID-zoh-my

Built on charis (grace/gift), this verb means to give graciously — and so, to forgive. In Ephesians 4:32 ‘forgiving one another’ is charizomenoi, literally ‘gift-ing one another’ as God in Christ gift-ed you (also Colossians 2:13; Luke 7:42).

To forgive, in this word, is to hand someone the same free grace you were handed.

cheirographon (χειρόγραφον)

khy-ROG-ra-fon

Greek for a handwritten certificate of debt — an IOU signed in one’s own hand. In Colossians 2:14 it is the ‘record of debt’ that stood against us, which God cancelled and nailed to the cross.

The picture is a paid bill stamped and posted publicly: the debt is not hidden but openly declared settled.

christos (χριστός)

khris-TOS

Greek for “anointed one,” the Septuagint’s rendering of Hebrew mashiach (Messiah). Through the Greek Bible this title carried the whole hope of an anointed king-priest into the New Testament, where it becomes Jesus’ title: Christ.

demuth (דְמוּת)

deh-MOOTH

Hebrew for “likeness,” paired with tselem (“image”) in Genesis 1:26. Together they describe humanity as made to resemble and represent God. The Greek Old Testament renders it homoiôsis.

diákonos (διάκονος)

dee-AH-koh-nos

Greek for servant or minister, the root of our word “deacon.” Paul applies it both to himself and to Phoebe in Romans 16, honoring her gospel work.

diatheke (διαθήκη)

dee-ah-THAY-kay

Greek for “covenant” (and also “testament/will”), the Septuagint’s rendering of Hebrew berit. This word choice underlies the New Testament’s language of a “new covenant” in Christ’s blood and even the names “Old” and “New Testament.”

dikaiosynē (δικαιοσύνη)

dee-kai-oh-SOO-nay

Greek for ‘righteousness’ / ‘justice’ — both God’s own rightness and the right standing He gives the believer.

eikôn (εἰκών)

ay-KONE

Greek for “image,” the Septuagint’s rendering of Hebrew tselem in Genesis 1. The New Testament later calls Christ Himself the eikôn of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).

emunah (אֱמוּנָה)

eh-moo-NAH

Hebrew for faithfulness, steadiness, or trust — the Old Testament cousin of Greek pistis. It names the reliable, loyal trust one places in a covenant partner, not mere intellectual agreement.

ephapax (ἐφάπαξ)

eh-FAH-pax

Greek for “once for all,” a key term in Hebrews. Christ’s self-offering happened a single, unrepeatable time and needs no supplement — the opposite of the daily, yearly sacrifices of the old priesthood.

eskênôsen (ἐσκήνωσεν)

es-KAY-no-sen

Greek verb in John 1:14, usually translated “dwelt,” but literally “tabernacled” or “pitched His tent.” It deliberately echoes the wilderness Tabernacle where God’s presence rested among His people: now the tent is a Person, the Word made flesh.

eskēnōsen (ἐσκήνωσεν)

es-KAY-no-sen

The Greek verb in John 1:14, literally “he pitched his tent” or “tabernacled” among us. John deliberately echoes the wilderness tabernacle: in Jesus, God’s glory comes to dwell with people in flesh rather than in a building.

Gnosis (γνῶσις)

NOH-sis

Greek for “knowledge.” The Gnostics claimed a secret, saving gnosis available only to the spiritually advanced — the very word Paul had already warned against as “what is falsely called knowledge” (1 Timothy 6:20).

harpazô (ἁρπάζω)

har-PAD-zo

The Greek verb meaning “to seize, snatch, or catch up” used in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 (“caught up together… in the clouds”). The Latin rapio translating it gives us the English word rapture.

The word names the catching up; it does not by itself teach a secret, pretribulational timing.

hesed (חֶסֶד)

KHEH-sed

Hebrew for God’s steadfast covenant love and loyal-kindness — mercy that keeps its promises (Psalm 136’s ‘his steadfast love endures forever’).

huiothesía (υἱοθεσία)

hwee-oth-eh-SEE-ah

Greek for adoption. In Roman law an adopted child had full rights, just like a born heir. Paul says believers are adopted into God’s family — a place you are given, not one you earn (Rom 8:15, Gal 4:5).

itsavon (עִצָבוֹן)

eet-sah-VOHN

A rare Hebrew word for the painful, toilsome sorrow of the curse in Genesis 3 — the grief of childbearing and of working stubborn ground. It appears only in Genesis, marking the broken “curse-world.”

kōs (כּוֹס)

kohs

The Hebrew word for “cup,” underlying the cup-of-judgment image in the Psalms and Prophets; the Septuagint renders it with the Greek potērion.

kenosis (κένωσις)

ke-NO-sis

Greek ‘emptying’ — Christ’s self-emptying in taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7), not laying aside His deity but veiling His glory.

koinōnia (κοινωνία)

koy-no-NEE-ah

Greek for ‘fellowship,’ ‘communion,’ ‘sharing’ — the deep common life of believers with God and one another (Acts 2:42).

kreittōn (κρείττων)

KRAYT-tone

Greek for “better,” the drumbeat word of Hebrews. Christ is better than angels, Moses, and Aaron; he brings a better covenant, better promises, a better sanctuary, and a better sacrifice — the whole argument that the old order pointed forward to him.

Kyrios (κύριος)

KOO-ree-os

Greek for “Lord.” To confess “Jesus is Kyrios” (Romans 10:9) was a loyalty oath in a world where Caesar also claimed the title — a pledge of allegiance to a new King, not merely a statement of belief.

kyrios (κύριος)

KOO-ree-os

Greek for “Lord,” the word the Septuagint used to render the divine name YHWH. When the New Testament calls Jesus kyrios, it draws on this usage, applying to him the very name reserved for God.

lýpē (λύπη)

LOO-pay

Greek for grief or sorrow. The Septuagint uses it to translate the Hebrew itsavon, capturing the deep distress that entered the world at the Fall.

metamorphoō (μεταμορφόω)

met-a-mor-FOH-oh

Greek for to transform or transfigure — the root of our word ‘metamorphosis.’ In Romans 12:2 the passive command ‘be transformed by the renewal of your mind’ is metamorphousthe: a change worked on us, from the inside out.

The same verb describes Christ’s Transfiguration (Matthew 17:2) — the glory we are being changed toward.

nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ)

NEH-fesh

Hebrew for the living ‘soul’ or ‘self’ — the whole living person, not a ghost trapped in a body.

oἶkos (οἶκος)

OY-kos

Greek for household — everyone who shares life under one roof, not just blood relatives. Paul pictures the church as an oikos, a family bound together by shared loyalty to Christ.

parthenos (παρθένος)

par-THEN-os

Greek for “virgin,” unambiguously. The pre-Christian Septuagint translators chose this word to render Hebrew almah in Isaiah 7:14, and Matthew 1:23 quotes that Greek wording in announcing the virgin birth.

pistis (πίστις)

PIS-tis

Greek for ‘faith’ / ‘faithfulness’ / ‘trust’ — not bare belief but believing loyalty to God.

prostátis (προστάτις)

pros-TAH-tis

Greek for a patron or benefactor — someone who used their resources to support others. Paul gives this title to Phoebe, who funded ministry and helped many (Romans 16:2).

ruach (רוּח)

ROO-akh

Hebrew for ‘spirit,’ ‘breath,’ or ‘wind’ — the Spirit of God hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2) and breathing life into humanity.

shalom (שָׁלוֹם)

sha-LOME

Hebrew ‘peace’ — far more than the absence of conflict: wholeness, flourishing, and right relationship with God, others, and creation.

Sheol / Hades

SHEE-ohl / HAY-deez

Hebrew Sheol and Greek Hades: the realm of the dead, the grave-world—not yet the final judgment, but the place of the departed awaiting it.

sōma (σῶμα)

SOH-mah

Greek for the body — not a shell we escape but the whole embodied self, which God will one day raise. Paul urges us to ‘present your bodies as a living sacrifice’ (Romans 12:1), making the body a sphere of worship and stewardship, an arena where God’s dominion is lived out.

tetelestai (τετέλεσται)

teh-TEL-es-tye

Greek for “it is finished” (John 19:30), Jesus’ final word from the cross. The perfect tense denotes a completed action with lasting effect — the work of atonement done and standing done forever; the word also appears on ancient receipts meaning “paid in full.”

tselem (צֶלֶם)

TSEH-lem

Hebrew for “image,” the word used in Genesis 1:26. In the ancient Near East a tselem was a king’s representative statue set up in a territory to mark his rule; Scripture daringly makes every human God’s living image on earth. Rendered eikôn in the Greek.

YHWH (יהוה)

YAH-weh

The personal covenant name of God revealed to Moses (Exodus 3:14–15), the four Hebrew letters (the ‘Tetragrammaton’) usually rendered ‘the LORD.’ Tied to ‘I AM.’

Albert Schweitzer

1875–1965

Theologian, physician, and historian who chronicled and critiqued the nineteenth-century “quest for the historical Jesus,” dismissing many imaginative reconstructions of Jesus’ life as “a sorry makeshift” built on supposition.

Ambrose of Milan

c. AD 339–397

The learned bishop of Milan whose preaching and example helped lead Augustine to faith, and who baptized him at the Easter Vigil of 387. He is counted among the great fathers of the Western church.

BibleProject

A teaching ministry, founded by Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, known for tracing literary themes — such as the cup image — across the whole of Scripture to show how its many books tell one connected story of justice and mercy.

Boyle

Robert Boyle · 1627–1691

The Anglo-Irish natural philosopher remembered as a father of modern chemistry (Boyle’s Law) and a founder of the Royal Society—and a devout Christian who studied nature as a second book of God’s revelation.

His union of rigorous science and faith is the very theme of the chapter’s lesson.

Brandon Rickabaugh

American philosopher, lead author with J. P. Moreland of The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism (2023), a book-length case that the human person is a real, immaterial soul and not merely matter (Genesis 2:7).

Clement of Rome

d. c. AD 99

An early bishop of Rome and disciple of Peter and Paul, whose letter to the Corinthians (1 Clement, c. AD 96) is the earliest surviving Christian writing outside the New Testament. It grounds church authority in an unbroken chain from God to Christ to Apostles to appointed leaders.

Dallas Willard

WILL-erd

American philosopher (1935–2013) who taught at the University of Southern California for nearly fifty years and wrote widely on the Christian life, including The Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart. He is remembered for the saying, “Grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning” (Philippians 2:12–13).

A leading teacher of spiritual formation — the slow reshaping of the heart into Christ’s likeness.

Dante

Dante Alighieri · 1265–1321

The supreme medieval Italian poet, author of The Divine Comedy—the vast vision-journey of a living man led down through Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory, and into the light of Paradise.

Lilith stands in Dante’s line: a guided pilgrimage through death toward waking.

Darwin

Charles Darwin · 1809–1882

The English naturalist whose On the Origin of Species (1859) proposed evolution by natural selection. MacDonald lists him among the newer men of science, set against the older Ptolemy, Bacon, and Boyle.

David Strauss

1808–1874

German theologian whose 1835 Life of Jesus reframed the Gospels as myth — stories clothing transcendent ideas in seemingly historical dress — rather than as either fact or deliberate fraud, shaping much later skeptical scholarship.

Dennis Zetting

The author of A Quantum Case For God, the book this twelve-week series engages chapter by chapter. He argues that the discoveries of modern quantum and string physics are consistent with — and often illuminate — what scripture has long said about an eternal, omnipresent Creator.

E. P. Sanders

American New Testament scholar (1937–2022) whose Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) argued that first-century Judaism was itself a religion of grace — a pattern he called “covenantal nomism” (God graciously chooses Israel; the law is how the chosen live). This launched the “New Perspective on Paul.”

Sanders’s thesis is much debated; John Barclay both drew on it and qualified it, and Pleasant Springs still confesses salvation by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8–9).

Ernst Käsemann

1906–1998

New Testament scholar whose landmark 1953 lecture argued that Christian faith requires some genuine historical content about Jesus — that belief cannot float free of history — reopening serious historical study in what became the “New Quest.”

Gary A. Anderson

American Old Testament and early-Judaism scholar at the University of Notre Dame whose book Sin: A History traces how the Bible’s picture of sin shifts — from a weight or burden that must be carried and lifted, to a debt that must be paid (Colossians 2:14).

This shift helps explain why the New Testament can speak of Christ ‘cancelling the record of debt’ that stood against us.

Gary Habermas

b. 1950

American historian and philosopher whose book The Historical Jesus anchors this series. He is best known for the “minimal facts” method, which builds the case for the resurrection only on historical data that even skeptical scholars accept.

George Eldon Ladd

1911–1982

An American New Testament scholar who defended historic (non-dispensational) premillennialism and the “already / not-yet” kingdom of God. His The Blessed Hope (1956) argued the Church passes through tribulation rather than escaping it by a secret Rapture.

Ignatius of Antioch

c. AD 35–108

Bishop of Antioch who wrote seven letters while being taken to Rome for execution, urging unity around the bishop and longing to imitate Christ in martyrdom. His writings are a cornerstone of the Apostolic Fathers.

Irenaeus of Lyon

c. AD 130–202

Bishop of Lyon and the great second-century opponent of Gnosticism, whose work Against Heresies defended the apostolic faith using the Rule of Faith, the Scriptures, and apostolic succession. He was a disciple of Polycarp, who had known the Apostle John.

J. P. Moreland

American analytic philosopher (b. 1948) at Talbot School of Theology, and a leading defender of the reality of the human soul and of substance dualism — the view that a person is more than a body, though not less than one. He wrote The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters and co-authored The Substance of Consciousness (2023) with Brandon Rickabaugh.

Moreland studied under Dallas Willard; both argued that the mind and soul are real, not just brain chemistry. This does not deny the bodily resurrection Christians hope for (1 Corinthians 15).

John Barclay

British New Testament scholar (b. 1958), for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University (until his retirement in 2025). In Paul and the Gift (2015) he recovered the ancient meaning of a ‘gift’ and proposed that Paul’s grace is incongruous — poured out on the unworthy, without regard to merit (Romans 5:8) — yet still calls for a transformed life in grateful response.

His reading of Paul is influential but one proposal among several; Pleasant Springs holds that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works, and that this salvation is secure in Christ.

John Howard Yoder

YOH-der

American Mennonite theologian (1927–1997), best known for The Politics of Jesus (1972). The opening chapter of Body Politics (1992) is the most-cited modern treatment of “binding and loosing” in Matthew 18 — the practice by which a congregation reconciles offenders and discerns together, which Anabaptists have long called the Rule of Christ.

Where we stand. Yoder abused and harassed many women over several decades. Yoder’s own denomination documented this at length and later acknowledged how long its leaders failed to act. We still cite the work, because an argument stands or falls on its own merits — but naming a teacher is not commending one, and Pleasant Springs Church does not stand by these actions. There is a hard irony worth naming here: the collapse of the church’s own binding and loosing is part of what Matthew 18 exists to prevent.

John Nelson Darby

1800–1882

An Irish Anglican priest and founder of the Plymouth (Exclusive) Brethren who, beginning around 1830, originated the modern systems of dispensationalism and the secret pretribulational Rapture. No Apostle, Church Father, or Reformer had taught these before him.

Pleasant Springs does not teach Darby’s pretribulational Rapture, while honoring believers who do.

Josephus

c. AD 37–100

A first-century Jewish historian, not a Christian, whose Antiquities (AD 90s) twice mentions Jesus — including a passage about “a wise man called Jesus” condemned under Pilate. His testimony is among the most important non-Christian sources for Jesus’ life.

Justin Martyr

c. AD 100–165

An early Christian philosopher and apologist, later martyred. The series cites him as evidence that, a century after the resurrection, Jewish leaders were still circulating the claim that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body — an ongoing admission that the tomb was empty.

Lucian of Samosata

c. AD 125–180

A Greek satirist who mocked Christians as gullible followers of a “crucified sage.” Even in ridicule, his writing confirms that Christians worshiped a real, crucified founder — a hostile witness to the basic facts.

Marcel Mauss

mar-SEL MOHSS

French sociologist and anthropologist (1872–1950) whose essay The Gift (Essai sur le don, 1925) showed that in traditional societies a gift is never simply free — it creates a bond and quietly obligates a return. His work underlies modern accounts of grace and gift, including John Barclay’s.

Marcion

c. AD 85–160

A second-century teacher from Sinope who rejected the Old Testament and its Creator God, kept only an edited Luke and ten Pauline letters, and taught that the God of Jesus was a different, higher deity. His truncated canon spurred the church to define its own.

Matthew Bates

Contemporary New Testament scholar known for arguing that pistis (“faith”) is best rendered “allegiance” in many contexts where Jesus is confessed as Lord — the idea of “believing loyalty” this lesson draws on.

Matthew Halsted

A New Testament scholar trained in the dispensational tradition who came to reject it through close exegesis. His book The End of the World as We Know It (IVP, 2023) is a primary modern resource for this series.

Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell · 1831–1879

The Scottish physicist who united electricity, magnetism, and light in his electromagnetic theory (Maxwell’s equations)—one of the towering achievements of science, and, like MacDonald, a devout Scottish Christian.

Michael Heiser

HY-zer; 1963–2023

American biblical scholar (1963–2023) whose work on the “Divine Council worldview” recovered the Old Testament picture of Yahweh presiding over a heavenly assembly, and read Deuteronomy 32:8–9 as the key to understanding judgment on the rebel nations.

Michael S. Heiser

1963–2023

American Hebrew Bible and Semitic-languages scholar (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin–Madison) who made the supernatural worldview of the biblical authors accessible to ordinary readers. Scholar-in-Residence at Logos Bible Software and author of The Unseen Realm, Supernatural, and What Does God Want? — the short book this study follows.

Papias

c. AD 60–130

An early bishop of Hierapolis who gathered oral traditions from those who had known the Apostles, preserving early notes on the origins of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. Only fragments of his work survive.

Pelagius

c. AD 354–418

A British-born teacher who held that human beings can choose good and obey God by their own unaided will, denying any inherited corruption from Adam. Augustine opposed him fiercely, insisting on the necessity of divine grace; the church condemned Pelagianism as heresy.

Pliny the Younger

c. AD 61–113

Roman governor of Bithynia who wrote to the emperor Trajan asking how to handle Christians on trial. His letters describe early believers worshiping Christ “as to a god” — an outsider’s glimpse of the young church.

Polycarp

c. AD 69–155

Bishop of Smyrna and a disciple of the Apostle John, martyred for refusing to curse Christ. His letter to the Philippians and the eyewitness account of his death (The Martyrdom of Polycarp) are among the Apostolic Fathers.

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy · c. AD 100–170

The great Greco-Roman astronomer and geographer of Alexandria. His Almagest fixed the geocentric (Earth-centered) picture of the heavens that ruled science for some fourteen centuries, until Copernicus and Galileo.

Vane prizes such old thinkers as ‘nearer the vanished van’—at the frontier, first breaking into the dark of ignorance.

Ravi Zacharias

RAH-vee zuh-KAR-ee-us

Indian-American Christian apologist (1946–2020) and founder of RZIM, who argued that every worldview must answer four ultimate questions — origin, meaning, morality, destiny — and that only the Christian story answers all four in a way that is true, coherent and actually livable. Books include Can Man Live Without God (1994) and Jesus Among Other Gods (2000).

Where we stand. An independent investigation commissioned by Zacharias’ own ministry and published in 2021 found sexual abuse of multiple women over a period of years; the ministry accepted the findings and apologized. We have kept the argument in our lessons, because an argument stands or falls on its own merits — but naming a teacher is not commending one, and Pleasant Springs Church does not stand by these actions. Scripture itself is candid about gifted people who did real harm; so are we.

Richard Feynman

1918–1988

One of the most celebrated physicists of the twentieth century and a founder of quantum electrodynamics. The series quotes his famous candor: nobody truly understands quantum mechanics — a humility scripture commends as the beginning of wisdom.

Rudolf Bultmann

1884–1976

One of the twentieth century’s most skeptical New Testament critics, famous for his program of “demythologizing.” Despite his doubts about how much can be known of Jesus, he still affirmed plainly that Jesus’ bare existence was beyond question.

Seneca

SEN-eh-kuh

Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman (c. 4 BC – AD 65) who served as tutor and advisor to the emperor Nero. His De Beneficiis (On Benefits) is the great surviving ancient treatise on gift-giving — how to give, receive, and repay, and how a giver should weigh the worth of a recipient.

Scholars like John Barclay use Seneca to show how startling Paul’s grace was: God gives to the unworthy, the opposite of Seneca’s careful matching of gift to merit.

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare · 1564–1616

The English playwright and poet—Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest—widely held the greatest writer in the English language, and a deep well of the moral imagination within which MacDonald writes.

Sir William Ramsay

1851–1939

A Scottish archaeologist who began as a skeptic of Luke’s reliability but, through fieldwork, came to regard him as a first-rate historian. The series cites his inscriptions suggesting Quirinius governed Syria more than once.

Suetonius

c. AD 69–122

Roman biographer and secretary to the emperor Hadrian. His Lives of the Caesars records that Claudius expelled Jews from Rome over disturbances stirred by “Chrestus” (a known variant of “Christ”) — the same expulsion noted in Acts 18:2.

Tacitus

c. AD 55–120

Often called Rome’s greatest historian. In his Annals (c. AD 115) he records that “Christus” was executed under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius — a hostile, non-Christian witness naming the founder, the era, and the manner of Jesus’ death.

Tertullian

c. AD 155–220

An early Latin church writer from Carthage. Like Justin Martyr, he reports that the “stolen body” rumor was still being spread generations after the resurrection — another hostile witness conceding the empty tomb.

the two Bacons

Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1292) & Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

Two Englishmen named Bacon, centuries apart, both pioneers of looking at the world for oneself: Roger Bacon, the medieval friar who urged experiment over mere authority, and Francis Bacon, who set out the modern scientific method of careful observation and induction.

Ulrich Zwingli

1484–1531

The reformer of Zurich and father of the Swiss Reformed tradition, who preached from the Grossmünster beginning in 1519. His former students broke with him in 1525 over infant baptism, launching the Anabaptist movement.

The Unseen Realm

Michael Heiser’s best-known book, recovering the Bible’s supernatural worldview — the divine council, the sons of God, and the spiritual backdrop the biblical authors assumed. What Does God Want? distills its big story into a one-sitting read.

Valentinus

c. AD 100–160

An influential second-century Gnostic teacher in Rome who built an elaborate mythology of divine emanations (aeons) and taught salvation through secret knowledge. His school was a primary target of Irenaeus.

William Lane Craig

American philosopher and theologian (b. 1949) known for reviving the Kalam cosmological argument (that the universe began, so it had a cause) and for defending the resurrection of Jesus. With J. P. Moreland he co-authored Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview.

Craig has also proposed a model of the incarnation in which the divine mind of the Son ran largely below the surface during Jesus’ earthly life — put forward as one possibility, not settled doctrine, and never denying that Jesus is fully God.