showoff doctrinal terms

Tetragrammaton: The name of the Lord, literally. It refers to the four Hebrew letters used to denote God's name, often represented in English as YHWH or JHVH.

Decalogue: The Ten Commandments.

J-source, P-source, Q-source. These are terms made popular by the Jesus Seminar and other scholarly movements to determine who wrote what portions of the Bible.

E, P, J and D are the four "authors" of the Tanakh. E stands for Elohim and J for the Tetragrammaton as noticed; the two of these quite often appear in pairs, which suggests to scholars that they represent two separate traditions about the Israelite faith, which some editor -- called the redactor -- joined together into the single course of Scripture we now have. The E story of creation takes place over seven days; the J story begins in Eden. Similarly, there are some psalms that are virtually identical, except one uses "Elohim" and the other uses YHWH.

P is the priestly source, which includes most of the Torah. It lays out the laws for everybody, sets up the priesthood and so on. P is supposed to be responsible principally for the book of Exodus after the parting of the Red Sea up through the book of Numbers.

D is the Deuteronomist, who retells the law in the book of Deuteronomy, with a few minor variations, and then is generally held to be responsible for compling everything up through 2 Kings. I believe some people have linked the Deuteronomist to Jeremiah, who was a prophet during the reign of King Jehoshaphat (I think -- sorry, I'm writing this from memory, and I'm too lazy to look it up right now), the last righteous king of Judah who returned Judah to whole-hearted devotion to YHWH and during whose reign the book of the Law was rediscovered (*koff* *koff*, say the scholars).

The Q source remains the collected sayings of Jesus that Matthew and Luke supposedly cribbed from.

Parousia: The word's Latin root has to do with giving birth to something; the one time I distinctly remember reading it, I had understood it to be a reference to the Second Coming. I believe it refers to the birth of the Kingdom of God, which many first-century Christians expected would happen within their lifetimes, particularly when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

Pelagian heresy: In a nutshell, and if I understand it correctly, it's a heresy that claims it is possible for men to please God and live a righteous life apart from Christ simply by exercising free will.

Glossolalia: A fancy word for speaking in tongues under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Not to be confused with charisma, which is the supernatural endowment of a believer by the Holy Spirit to perform miraculous signs.

transubstantiation: A teaching held within the Catholic Church, but also within several mainline Protestant denominations, that Christ is physically present in the elements of the Eucharist, that when we take communion the wine miraculously becomes his blood and the bread miraculously becomes his body. There are actual names for the different views on how this takes place -- for example, it becomes it in the stomach so we don't become sick or commit cannibalism; or it becomes it at the moment of consecration but in such a way that it becomes indistinguishable from unconsecrated bread and wine -- but I never bothered to learn those names.

Christological: Christology is the doctrines of Christ, such as his being entirely God and entirely man, and what that means.

hermeneutics: a ten-dollar word that essentially means "Bible study"

synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. Those three gospels have a lot in common in terms of structure, narrative, sayings of Jesus and so on that suggest a common source. The gospel of John has an entirely different structure, has an entirely different set of sayings it draws on, has a radically different focus than the other three, and is considered by some scholars to be from a different tradition entirely (perhaps even later since some of the phraseology appears to be written to correct Gnostic error). Since Mark and Luke were both journeymen with Paul, and Matthew appears to be highly derivative from Mark as well, I suppose that makes some degree of sense.

In terms of divine election, I would say it is the Arminian position that best represents my understanding, although at the same time I agree with the basic principles of Calvinism. How's that for something to wrap your brain in a knot?

My understanding -- and I never went to seminary, so I'll readily concede that I very easily could be wrong -- is that the -lapsarian doctrines have to do with when God decreed that Christ would have to die for our sins. With that explanation, I'd have to say I'm prelapsarian since I can't see God playing catch-up with us.

The Arian heresy is essentially one of the doctrines propagated by the Jehovah's Witnesses today, viz. that Jesus was a created being and not of the same substance as the Father, that he was created and not begotten.

What I don't understand and never have is what that has to do with white supremacists.

On a tangent, does anyone know what the name is for the heresy found in "Paradise Lost?" Milton has God create all things out of himself rather than ex nihilo, and declares Jesus to be his son and chief of them all. It's similar to the Arian heresy except that in this case Jesus is of the same substance as the Father, but so is everyone and everything else.