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Ezekiel 18:19–20
[Bible Verses]A passage in which God declared through Ezekiel during the Babylonian exile that "the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." It is a key text for the principle that each person is accountable for his or her own sin, and it is frequently cited in discussions of original sin and the doctrine of generational curses.
Filioque
[Doctrine & Theology]Filioque is a Latin term meaning "and from the Son." It is a phrase that the Western church added to the Nicene Creed, confessing that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. It is one of the principal doctrinal issues dividing the Eastern and Western churches.
Names of God
[Bible]The names of God are the proper name and the various titles by which God is called in the Bible. In Scripture a name is regarded not merely as a form of address but as a revelation of the character and authority of the one who bears it.
Substitutionary Atonement of Christ
[Doctrine & Theology]The substitutionary atonement of Christ is the Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ, by dying on the cross, paid in humanity's place the price of sin that people owed and delivered them from sin and death. It is often called simply substitutionary atonement.
Blasphemy
[Bible]Blasphemy is the dishonoring of God's name and majesty by word or deed. The Old Testament law punished it with death, and in the Gospels Jesus is accused of this offense.
Textus Receptus
[Bible]The Textus Receptus (Latin for "received text") is the name given to the printed editions of the Greek New Testament produced during the Reformation era of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It served as the basis for the New Testament in the King James Version and other early Protestant translations.
Wisdom Literature
[Bible]Wisdom literature is the body of biblical writings that addresses the principles governing life, suffering, and the meaning of human existence within a faith grounded in the fear of God. In the Old Testament the term refers chiefly to Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
Ekron
[Bible]Ekron was one of the five principal cities of the Philistines in the Old Testament. The ark of God was sent there, and 2 Kings refers to it as the city of "Baalzebub the god of Ekron."
Redemption
[Doctrine & Theology]Redemption is the act of paying a price to release a slave or captive and set that person free. In Christianity, it refers to the teaching that Christ paid the price through his death on the cross and thereby set people free from sin and death.
Birthright
[Bible]The birthright is the firstborn son's right of precedence in inheritance and in representing the family, received from his father. It is best known from Genesis, where Esau sold his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for a bowl of stew.
Joshua 14
[Bible]Joshua 14 opens the distribution of the land west of the Jordan. It sets out the principle by which Eleazar and Joshua divide the land by lot among the nine and a half tribes. It also records how Caleb, at eighty-five, claims the hill country promised to him and receives Hebron as his inheritance.
Agape
[Bible]Agape (Greek ἀγάπη) is the principal New Testament word for "love." It denotes both God's love for human beings and the love that those who have received that love show toward God and their neighbors.
Biblical Hermeneutics
[Doctrine & Theology]Biblical hermeneutics is the field of theology concerned with the principles and methods by which the meaning of the biblical text is determined and applied to faith and life today.
Ittai
[People]Ittai the Gittite was a foreign commander from the Philistine city of Gath who remained with David to the end when the king fled during Absalom's rebellion. He appears in 2 Samuel as the commander of one-third of David's army.
Nicene Creed
[Doctrine & Theology]The Nicene Creed is a confession of faith first drafted at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and expanded at the Council of Constantinople in 381. It summarizes the Trinitarian faith and is one of the principal ecumenical creeds, accepted by the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and Protestant churches alike.
Creation and Evolution
[Controversies]The debate over how to understand the creation account in Genesis together with the explanations of modern science. The principal positions are young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, and theistic evolution (evolutionary creation).
Ananias and Sapphira
[People]Ananias and Sapphira were a married couple in the early church at Jerusalem whose story is told in Acts 5. After selling a piece of land, they kept back part of the price while pretending to have given all of it. Rebuked by Peter, they died one after the other.
Old Testament Sacrifices
[Bible]The Old Testament sacrifices were the system, established by the Mosaic Law, through which Israel presented offerings to God at the tabernacle and the temple. The principal sacrifices are the burnt offering, grain offering, peace offering, sin offering, and trespass offering described in Leviticus 1–7.
Twelve Tribes of Israel
[Bible]The Twelve Tribes of Israel are the twelve divisions of the people of Israel descended from the twelve sons of Jacob (Israel). In the Old Testament they were the units by which the land was allotted and the people organized; in the New Testament they serve as a symbol of the whole people of God.
Shekel
[Bible]The shekel was a unit of weight used in ancient Israel and also a unit of value reckoned by that weight of silver. It later became the name of a silver coin. The shekel appears frequently in the Bible, notably in the half-shekel temple tax and the thirty pieces of silver.