Three Ways People Read the End of the Story
Glossary
Already/not yet. The recurring pattern this book traces across the kingdom, Satan's judgment, the resurrection, the second coming, the new creation, and the final judgment: something genuinely, decisively begun, and something genuinely, still-future, remaining ahead.
Aevum. A category from medieval theology (Aquinas, drawing on Boethius): existence with real succession — genuine sequence, before and after — but without entropy, the decay that governs bodies still living inside ordinary time. This book uses it to describe the resurrection body.
Coram Deo. Latin for "before the face of God" — the awareness of living every moment, including the ordinary and unwatched ones, in the presence of God.
Dispensationalism. The view, originating with John Nelson Darby in the 1830s and popularized through the Scofield Reference Bible, that God relates to Israel and the church as two distinct peoples with two distinct destinies, and that most New Testament prophecy describes a still-future, literal sequence: rapture, tribulation, and a literal thousand-year earthly kingdom.
Divine council. The assembly of heavenly beings described in Job 38, Psalm 82, and Deuteronomy 32:8, given delegated authority under God to govern aspects of creation.
Full preterism. The view that every New Testament prophecy, without exception — including the bodily resurrection and the final judgment — was fulfilled by AD 70. For everyone born since, this view locates each believer's own personal judgment and glorification at the moment of their death, rather than in any further corporate event still to come.
Gehenna. The New Testament's word for final judgment, drawn from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a site associated with covenant betrayal and child sacrifice. Distinct from Sheol and Hades.
Hades. The Greek Old Testament's term for the realm of the dead, corresponding to the Hebrew Sheol — a temporary condition, not the final word on anyone's state.
Historic premillennialism. The ancient expectation, held by a number of early post-apostolic writers, of a future earthly reign of Christ. Distinct from modern dispensationalism, which adds a sharp Israel/church distinction and, in its classic form, a secret pretribulational rapture that historic premillennialism does not require.
Intermediate state. The condition of a believer between death and the future bodily resurrection — conscious, personal presence with Christ, not yet the resurrection body itself.
Millennium. The "thousand years" of Revelation 20. Read literally and futurely by dispensationalism; read by partial preterism, following Augustine, as a symbolic description of the whole present age between Christ's first and second comings; read by full preterism as a symbolic description of the period between the resurrection and AD 70.
Partial preterism. One of the three views this book compares: some New Testament prophecies, especially those tied to Jerusalem and its temple, were fulfilled in AD 70, while others — the bodily resurrection, the visible second coming, the new creation, and the final judgment — remain genuinely future.
Poverty of spirit. The permanent, governing posture Matthew 5:3 describes: empty hands, knowing that whatever has been given, in doctrine or insight, was given and can curdle into pride the moment it is treated as earned.
Preterist / preterism. From the Latin praeteritus, "gone by." A reading that understands a given prophecy as already fulfilled rather than still future.
Progressive dispensationalism. A modern refinement of dispensationalism holding that Christ's Davidic reign is already, in some real sense, inaugurated, while its full earthly, Israel-centered expression remains future.
Rapture. In dispensationalist theology, the sudden removal of living believers to meet Christ in the air, understood as a distinct event from His visible, public return.
Sheol. The Hebrew Old Testament's term for the condition of death and the grave — not primarily a location, and not, in itself, a description of final judgment.
Theosis. Participation in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) — not moral improvement alone, but genuine, gift-given sharing in what belongs, by nature, only to God.
Tribulation. In dispensationalist theology, a future seven-year period of intense distress on the earth, preceding Christ's visible return.