Theology sometimes uses an old word because an ordinary word is not precise enough. Ousia, anamnesis, and theosis can seem forbidding at first sight; each, however, names a distinction Christians have found worth preserving.
This short dictionary is a doorway, not a substitute for fuller study. It gives the historic Christian use of each term in plain English, with particular attention to Anglican doctrine and worship. Where traditions use a word differently, the definition marks the difference instead of hiding it.
Narrow by subject
Practices or questions regarded as neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture and therefore not, in themselves, necessary to salvation. Calling something adiaphoron does not mean that it is trivial: charity, order, and the Church’s lawful authority may still govern its use.
Word Greek adiaphora, “things indifferent.”
In Anglican use: the category helps explain how ceremonies may vary while the substance of the faith remains constant.
A reading of Scripture that looks toward the final fulfilment of God’s purposes: resurrection, judgment, heaven, and the life of the world to come. Jerusalem, for example, may be read historically as a city and anagogically as the heavenly Jerusalem.
Word Greek anagōgē, “a leading upward.”
Keep in view: the spiritual sense grows from the text’s literal and historical sense; it should not be an excuse to ignore it.
The Church’s liturgical remembrance of Christ’s saving acts, especially his Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, in obedience to “Do this in remembrance of me.” In the Eucharist this remembrance is proclamation and thanksgiving before God, not bare mental recollection.
Word Greek anamnēsis, “remembrance” or “memorial.”
Traditions differ in how they explain sacramental presence, but ancient Eucharistic prayers commonly join anamnesis to offering and thanksgiving.
The central Eucharistic prayer of thanksgiving and consecration. In its developed forms it normally includes praise of God, the Sanctus, the institution narrative, anamnesis, offering, epiclesis, intercessions, and a concluding doxology, though the order and contents vary among rites.
Word Greek anaphora, “offering” or “lifting up.”
Western equivalent: the Roman tradition often calls this prayer the Canon of the Mass; Prayer Books call it the Prayer of Consecration.
Speaking truthfully of God by denying creaturely limits: God is uncreated, infinite, and not changeable as creatures are. It protects divine mystery by insisting that even true names for God never comprehend God’s essence.
Word Greek apophasis, “denial” or “unsaying.”
Not silence alone: Christian apophatic theology stands beside cataphatic theology; revelation gives real knowledge, though never exhaustive mastery.
The final, blessed knowledge of God granted to the redeemed: seeing God “face to face” and enjoying him without the obscurity that belongs to earthly life. It is the fulfilment of humanity’s desire for God, not the absorption of the creature into the Creator.
Word Latin visio beatifica, “blessed-making vision.”
Prayer Book echo: the Epiphany collect asks that we may “have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead.”
Speaking positively of God with names given in revelation and reflected in creation: God is good, wise, just, and loving. Such language is true, but it is analogical rather than a claim that divine goodness is merely a larger instance of creaturely goodness.
Word Greek kataphasis, “affirmation.”
Companion term: apophatic theology reminds us that every true affirmation about God also surpasses our mode of understanding.
The “communication of properties” in Christ: because Jesus Christ is one Person, Scripture and theology may ascribe to that Person what belongs to either his divine or his human nature. Thus the Lord of glory can be said to have been crucified, though suffering belongs to his humanity, not to the divine nature as such.
Word Latin, “communication of attributes.”
It does not mean that the two natures are blended or that one nature becomes the other.
Of one and the same substance or essence. The Nicene Creed confesses the Son as consubstantial with the Father: not a lesser deity or created intermediary, but fully and eternally God with the Father.
Word Greek homoousios, “of the same essence”; Latin consubstantialis.
One letter mattered: homoiousios means “of similar substance” and did not secure the Church’s confession of the Son’s full deity.
Participation by grace in the divine life: the Holy Spirit conforms human beings to Christ so that they share God’s holiness and immortality. It never means that creatures become God by nature or cease to be creatures.
Word Greek theōsis, “making divine”; compare 2 Peter 1:4, “partakers of the divine nature.”
East and West use different accents, but both speak of grace as genuine union with God and transformation into Christ’s likeness.
God’s ordered work in creation and salvation—the way God reveals and gives himself in history. Trinitarian theology often distinguishes the economic Trinity, known through God’s saving acts, from the immanent Trinity, God’s eternal life in himself.
Word Greek oikonomia, “household management” or “dispensation.”
Another use: in Eastern canon law, economy can mean a merciful pastoral relaxation of strict application; the context determines the sense.
An invocation asking God to send the Holy Spirit in a sacramental prayer. In the Eucharist it may ask that the gifts become Christ’s Body and Blood and that those who receive them be sanctified and united in Christ.
Word Greek epiklēsis, “calling upon” or “invocation.”
In the 1928 American rite: the Prayer of Consecration explicitly asks God to bless and sanctify the gifts “with thy Word and Holy Spirit.”
The final fulfilment toward which creation moves: Christ’s return, resurrection, judgment, and the renewal of all things. Christian hope is eschatological because it is directed not merely to life after death, but to God’s completed kingdom.
Word Greek eschaton, “the last thing” or “the end.”
Related words: eschatology is the doctrine of the last things; parousia names Christ’s coming.
A sacrament’s validity and objective gift rest on Christ’s institution and promise, not on the minister’s personal holiness. The phrase rejects the idea that an unworthy priest makes Christ’s sacrament cease to be Christ’s.
Word Latin, “from the work performed.”
Not magic: the phrase does not make faith, repentance, or worthy reception unnecessary; it identifies the giver and ground of the sacrament.
The words “and the Son” in the Western form of the Nicene Creed, which says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Eastern churches retain the creed’s earlier wording, “from the Father,” and object both to the theology of the addition and to its unilateral insertion into an ecumenical creed.
Word Latin filioque, “and from the Son.”
Ecumenical care: modern dialogue distinguishes the Father as the single source within the Trinity from the Spirit’s eternal relation to the Son, seeking language faithful to both traditions.
The Eastern Christian tradition of interior stillness, watchfulness, and unceasing prayer, especially associated with the Jesus Prayer. Its mature theology is linked with Gregory Palamas and his account of communion with God through the uncreated divine energies.
Word Greek hēsychia, “quiet” or “stillness.”
Practice and doctrine belong together: hesychasm is not a breathing technique detached from repentance, sacramental life, and obedience.
A concrete, individual subsistence. In the mature Trinitarian vocabulary, God is one ousia in three hypostases—one divine essence in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In Christology, the eternal hypostasis of the Son is the one Person of the incarnate Christ.
Word Greek hypostasis, literally “that which stands under.”
Historical warning: early writers did not all use hypostasis, ousia, “substance,” and “person” in the later settled sense.
The union of complete divine and human natures in the one Person, or hypostasis, of Jesus Christ. The natures remain without confusion or change, yet Christ is not divided into two persons.
Word From Greek hypostasis, “person” or “individual subsistence.”
Chalcedonian grammar: one and the same Son is acknowledged in two natures, “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”
The teaching that God is not overcome, altered, or made to suffer involuntarily by forces outside himself. It safeguards divine freedom and constancy; it does not mean that God is indifferent or incapable of love.
Word Latin impassibilis, “not subject to suffering.”
Christological distinction: the Son truly suffered and died in the human nature he assumed; the divine nature did not thereby cease to be divine.
The self-emptying of the eternal Son described in Philippians 2:7: taking the form of a servant and becoming obedient unto death. Classical Christology understands this not as surrendering deity, but as the divine Son’s free assumption of humble human life.
Word Greek kenōsis, “emptying.”
For Christian life: the hymn presents Christ’s downward path as the pattern of humility and self-giving love.
The Church’s public proclamation that Jesus Christ died, is risen, reigns as Lord, and calls all people to repentance, faith, and baptism. The word often names the core apostolic message visible in the sermons of Acts and the summaries in Paul’s letters.
Word Greek kērygma, “proclamation”; a kēryx is a herald.
Distinction: kerygma emphasizes proclamation; didache emphasizes teaching. The Church needs both.
“The law of prayer [is] the law of belief”: the Church’s received worship expresses, forms, and bears witness to her doctrine. What Christians repeatedly pray shapes how they understand God and the life of faith.
Word A shortened form of a fifth-century maxim associated with Prosper of Aquitaine.
Not a blank cheque: the maxim does not make every local custom infallible; worship itself is tested by Scripture and the apostolic faith.
The Christological language preferred by the Oriental Orthodox churches: after the Incarnation, Christ is confessed as one united nature of the Word incarnate, fully divine and fully human. The term intends union without mixture or loss.
Word Greek mia physis, “one united nature.”
Do not casually substitute “Monophysite.” Modern ecumenical dialogue has shown that Miaphysite churches reject the idea that Christ’s humanity was swallowed up by his divinity.
Instruction that leads the baptized more deeply into the Church’s mysteries, especially by explaining the rites they have received. In the ancient catechumenate, mystagogical teaching commonly followed Baptism and first Communion during Easter week.
Word Greek mystagōgia, “leading into the mysteries.”
Method: mystagogy reads the Church’s signs, prayers, and sacraments from within a life of worship rather than treating them as detached information.
The mind or spiritual intellect considered as the human capacity for direct attention to God. In patristic and Eastern spiritual writing, the nous is not merely discursive reasoning; it is the inward eye that must be purified and gathered in prayer.
Word Greek nous, “mind,” “intellect,” or “understanding.”
Translation varies: depending on the writer, “mind,” “heart,” and “intellect” can overlap without being exact synonyms.
Essence or substance: what something is. Nicene theology says that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three hypostases sharing one undivided divine ousia, rather than three beings of the same kind.
Word Greek ousia, “being,” “essence,” or “substance.”
In the Creed: homoousios confesses the Son to be of the same ousia as the Father.
The coming and royal presence of Jesus Christ in glory at the end of the age, when the dead are raised and God’s kingdom is openly fulfilled. The New Testament can also use the ordinary Greek word for a person’s arrival or presence; context matters.
Word Greek parousia, “presence” or “arrival.”
Christian expectation: the Creed’s “he shall come again, with glory” is the Church’s concise confession of the Parousia.
The mutual indwelling of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: each divine Person is in the others without losing personal distinction. The term expresses the perfect communion and undivided action of the three who are one God.
Word Greek perichōrēsis, often rendered “mutual indwelling” or “interpenetration.”
Popular image, used carefully: “divine dance” can suggest joy and relation, but it is not the word’s literal derivation and should not replace its doctrinal meaning.
The doctrine of the Holy Spirit: his eternal Person and procession, his work in creation and inspiration, and his mission in Christ, the Church, the sacraments, sanctification, and the life to come.
Word Greek pneuma, “spirit” or “breath,” and logos, “account” or “study.”
More than a list of gifts: Christian pneumatology begins with the Spirit as Lord and giver of life, worshipped with the Father and the Son.
God’s grace going before human willing and action: awakening, enabling, and drawing a person toward faith and obedience. Christian traditions describe the relation of this prior grace to human response in different ways, but the term denies that salvation begins with unaided human initiative.
Word Latin praevenire, “to come before.”
Prayer Book language: “Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings” asks God to precede and guide us, not to obstruct us.
The patristic account of salvation in which Christ, the new Adam, gathers humanity’s story into himself, lives it rightly, and reverses Adam’s disobedience by his obedience. The theme is especially associated with Irenaeus and Ephesians 1:10.
Word Latin recapitulare, “to sum up again,” translating Greek anakephalaiōsis.
Atonement as a whole life: recapitulation holds together Incarnation, obedience, Cross, Resurrection, and the renewal of human nature.
The doctrine of salvation: the saving work of Christ and its application by the Holy Spirit, including grace, atonement, justification, sanctification, perseverance, resurrection, and glorification.
Word Greek sōtēria, “salvation,” and logos, “account” or “study.”
Question it answers: how does the triune God rescue creatures from sin and death and bring them into communion with himself?
An attempt to show that belief in God’s goodness, justice, and power is coherent in the face of evil and suffering. A theodicy may appeal to creaturely freedom, soul-making, the order of creation, final judgment, or other considerations.
Word Greek theos, “God,” and dikē, “justice”; coined as a technical term by Leibniz.
Pastoral caution: an intellectual account of evil is not the same thing as accompanying a sufferer; lament and compassion are not failed arguments.
A manifestation of God perceptible to human beings, often through created signs such as fire, cloud, glory, or an angelic figure. The burning bush and the glory at Sinai are classic biblical theophanies; the Baptism and Transfiguration of Christ disclose the Trinity in a distinctively Christian way.
Word Greek theophaneia, “appearance of God.”
Distinction: a theophany is a real divine self-manifestation, but not a claim that God’s invisible essence has become an object among other objects.
“God-bearer” or “Mother of God,” the title affirmed for the Virgin Mary at the Council of Ephesus. Its primary purpose is Christological: the one born of Mary is the eternal Son in the human nature he truly assumed, not a separate human person later joined to God.
Word Greek theos, “God,” and tokos, “childbearing” or “one who gives birth.”
The title does not mean that Mary is the source of the divine nature or existed before God.
Reading persons, events, and institutions in the Old Testament as providential patterns fulfilled in Christ and the life of the Church. Adam is a type of Christ, the Flood of Baptism, and the Passover of Christ’s saving death and the Eucharist.
Word Greek typos, “mark,” “pattern,” or “figure.”
Not free association: sound typology respects the Old Testament event in its own setting and follows patterns warranted by Scripture and the Church’s rule of faith.
Holy Communion given to a Christian near death as sacramental food for the final passage from this life. The word places dying within the baptized person’s pilgrimage toward the promised resurrection.
Word Latin viaticum, provisions for a journey.
Pastoral setting: viaticum is normally joined to confession, absolution, prayer, and the Church’s commendation of the dying person to God.
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