Key Terms

• Afterlife - What Christian’s beleive follows life on earth.
• Ascension - The event, 40 days after the resurrection, when Jesus returned to god the father in heaven.
• Atonement - Restoring the relationship between people and god through the life, death and resurrections of Jesus.
• Omnibenevolent - All-loving (a quality of God).
• Blasphemy - A religious offence which claims to be god.
• Catholic - A branch of Christianity based in Rome and led by the pope.
• Creation - The act by which god brought the universe into being.
• Crucifixion - 1. Roman method of execution by which a criminal is fixed to a cross. 2. The execution of Jesus on good Friday.
• Day of judgement - A time when the world will end and every soul will be judged by God and rewarded or punished.
• Denomination - A distinct group within the Christian faith, with its own organisation and traditions.
• Forgiveness - Showing grace and mercy and pardoning someone for what they have done wrong.
• God - The supreme being.
• Grace - A quality of God which god shows to humans by proving love and support which they do not need to earn.
• Heaven - A state of eternal happiness in the presence of God ; the place of eternal peace ruled over by god.
• Hell - The place of eternal suffering or the state of being without God.
• Holy - Separate and set apart for religious purpose by god.
• Holy spirit - The third person of the trinity who Christians believe is the inspiring presence of God in the world.
• Incarnation - Becoming flesh, taking human form (THE incarnation refers to God taking human form as Jesus).
• Justice - Bring about what is right and fair, according to the law, or making up for a wrong that has been committed.
• Mass - Ceremony, also called the Eucharist, in which the sacrifical death of Jesus is celebrated using bread and wine.
• Monotheistic - A religion that believes in only one god.
• Omnipotent - All powerful.
• Original sin - the idea that humans are born with a sinful nature and are therefore unable to achieve salvation and everyone is born with a built in urge to do bad things and disobey god.
• Orthodox- A branch of Christianity mainly but not entirely practised in Eastern Europe.
• Protestant - A branch of Christianity.
• Purgatory - The intermediate state between heaven and hell where should are cleansed in order to enter heaven.
• Resurrection - 1. Rising from the dead. 2. Jesus rising from the dead on Easter. An event re ordered in all four of the gospels.
• Salvation - Saving of soul, deliverance from sin and admission to heaven brought about by Jesus’ sacrifice.
• Satan - Name for the devil, the power and source of all evil.
• Sin - 1. Any action or thought that separates human beings from God. 2. Behaviour which is against god’s laws and wishes against the principles of morality.
• Son of God - A title used for Jesus, the second person of the trinity and it shows the special relationship between Jesus and god the father.
• Trinity - The belief that there are three persons in the one god; the father, the son and the holy spirit are separate but are also one being.
• The word - Term used for Jesus at the beginning of john’s gospel to refer to God the son.