3. Definitions

Below are some key definitions of some technical or ambiguous words used in this thesis.

Essence/Nature:

  • The irreducible essential properties a thing must possess to be what it is. Without these properties, it would cease to be what it is and become something else.

Personhood:

  • The essence of Personhood in a being is self-awareness, the capacity for reasoning, the ability to experience emotion, and possession of actual agency (the ability to make decisions). These core attributes collectively define a "Person" who is capable of conscious thought, feeling, and intentional responsible action.

Theosis:

  • The process of becoming like God through union with God, achieved through divine grace received through Christ and through human participation in the Holy Spirit of God. We become by grace what Christ is by nature, actual children of God - holy, loving and righteous. He the only begotten son of the Father co-eternal with the Him, we children by adoption bought by the blood of Christ, and realized in time by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us.

Perichoresis:

  • The concept that the 3 persons of the Trinity dwell within or interpenetrate one another while remaining distinct. This concept can be applied to the Holy Spirits relationship with the Christian, who's person dwells within our own when born again of God, yet remains distinct from us. Yet in the Spirit is both the person of the Father and the Son, as the divine nature they all share includes the property of omnipresence (being everywhere at once).

Repentance:

  • A definitive point of turning away from sin and forsaking the practice of it, turning to Jesus to love and obey Him and do righteousness. To start do good by loving God and obeying all Jesus instructed, and loving all other people by treating them as you would like to be treated. Repentance isn't merely an apology, though it includes an apology, its a resolving to forsake sin forever, and to yield our lives to God.
  • Here's Gods definition of repentance:

Ezekiel 33:11-20 ESV
[11] Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? [12] “And you, son of man, say to your people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins. [13] Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die. [14] Again, though I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ yet if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right, [15] if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has taken by robbery, and walks in the statutes of life, not doing injustice, he shall surely live; he shall not die. [16] None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live. [17] “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just,’ when it is their own way that is not just. [18] When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it. [19] And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this. [20] Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways.”

Faith:

  • Faith isn't mere mental acknowledgement of a fact in history, rather a dependant trust in the person and work of Jesus, for both forgiveness due to His death on the cross for our sins and resurrection, and for power from on high to be presently made into His likeness. This power is the promised person of the Holy Spirit who abides in all Christians who have come to Jesus Christ in repentant faith.
  • Trust is the best synonym for faith.