Appendix G
A Plain-Language Guide to the Book's Core Vocabulary
This glossary collects the terms that carry the most weight in this book. Each entry is written in plain language, and each one points you to the chapter or appendix where the idea is developed more fully. If a term shows up in a chapter and you are not sure what it means, come back here.
The terms are listed in alphabetical order. Greek and Hebrew words appear with their English meaning first, followed by the original-language term in parentheses.
The Greek noun aiōn means "age" or "era." It refers to a stretch of time, not necessarily to forever. The adjective aiōnios describes something that belongs to an age, or that carries the quality of the age to come. In many English Bibles aiōnios is translated "eternal" or "everlasting," but those translations can be misleading. The word can mean "lasting," "age-long," or "belonging to God's age," depending on context. How we translate it shapes what we think the Bible teaches about the length of punishment and the reach of God's saving work.
→ Developed in Appendix B.
The belief that only those who receive Christ are given unending life. Those who finally refuse God are not tormented forever. Instead, they cease to exist. On this view, the soul is not automatically immortal; God grants eternal life as a gift, and those who reject the gift are destroyed. The author of this book holds conditional immortality as his working position, joined to the belief that God's saving offer continues at death and beyond.
→ Introduced in Chapter 1. See also Appendix C.
A Greek word meaning "restoration of all things." It comes from Acts 3:21, where Peter speaks of the time when God will restore everything he promised through the prophets. In the early church, many theologians used this term for the belief that God will one day bring every created being back into a right relationship with himself. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Clement of Alexandria all taught some form of it. The term is closely tied to the hope of universal reconciliation.
→ Developed in Chapter 25 and Appendix B.
The ancient Christian belief that after his death on the cross, Christ went down to the realm of the dead. There he proclaimed his victory. The Apostles' Creed states, "He descended to the dead." The key biblical texts are 1 Peter 3:18–20, 1 Peter 4:6, and Ephesians 4:8–10. The "harrowing of hell" is the popular name for the tradition that Christ led captive souls out of the place of the dead. This belief is one of the clearest biblical anchors for the claim that God's saving work reaches people after death.
→ Developed in Appendix A.
A way of understanding hell that places God at the center, not at a distance. On this model, hell is not a place where God is absent. It is the place where God is fully present, and his presence is experienced differently by different people. For the saved, God's unveiled presence is joy and peace. For those who refuse his love, that same presence feels like torment. Heaven and hell are not two separate locations; they are two responses to the same holy God. This model draws on the Eastern Orthodox "river of fire" tradition and has been developed by R. Zachary Manis.
→ Developed in Appendix C. Applied in Chapter 12.
The traditional view that those who die without saving faith will suffer conscious punishment in hell forever, with no end. On this view, the damned remain alive and aware in torment for all eternity. The author does not hold this position. But the book is written so that a reader who holds ECT can still accept its central claim: God's saving offer continues at the deathbed, through the intermediate state, and up to the final judgment.
→ Discussed throughout. See the three-views framework in Chapter 1 and Appendix C.
A Greek word borrowed from the Hebrew Ge Hinnom, meaning "Valley of Hinnom." This was a real valley outside Jerusalem. Child sacrifices had once been offered there, and trash was later burned in it. Jesus used "Gehenna" as an image for the fire of God's final judgment. It is not the same place as Hades, the temporary waiting-place of the dead. Gehenna points to the final state, not to where the dead go between death and judgment.
→ Developed in Appendix C.
The Greek name for the realm of the dead in the New Testament. Hades is a temporary holding place, not the final destination of anyone. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31), both men are in Hades after death, though they experience it very differently. At the final judgment, Hades itself is thrown into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14). So the experience of the dead in Hades is not the last word. The New Testament makes Hades the setting for the intermediate state between death and judgment.
→ Developed in Appendix C. Applied especially in Chapter 3.
The period between a person's death and the final judgment. During this time, the dead are conscious and aware in Hades. The saved are at rest with Christ (Paul calls this being "away from the body and at home with the Lord," 2 Corinthians 5:8). The unsaved are in a state of distress, but they have not yet faced the last judgment. This is a waiting room, not a final courtroom. The book argues that God's saving offer continues through this period.
→ Developed in Appendix C.
Two Greek words for punishment that carry very different flavors. Kolasis (used in Matthew 25:46, "eternal punishment") most naturally means corrective or remedial punishment, the kind that aims to fix the person being punished. Timōria means retributive punishment, the kind that aims only to pay back. Ancient Greek writers, including Aristotle, drew a clear line between the two. Jesus chose kolasis, the corrective word. This matters for the debate about whether God's judgment aims at restoration or only at payback.
→ Developed in Appendix B and Chapter 16.
The image used in Revelation 20 for the final state of the condemned after the last judgment. It is not the same as Hades, which is temporary. On the divine-presence model, the Lake of Fire is God's full, unfiltered presence experienced as consuming fire by those who refuse his love. On conditional immortality, those who refuse God even here cease to exist. On universal reconciliation, the fire purifies all and every soul eventually turns to God. Whatever one's view, the Lake of Fire belongs to the final state, not to the intermediate period.
→ Developed in Appendix C.
God's knowledge of what every person would freely choose in any situation God might place them in. The idea was developed by the sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina. If God has this knowledge, he can arrange each person's saving encounter to give the best possible appeal, without forcing the choice. This applies to life on earth and to the encounter at death and beyond. A reader who rejects Molinism can still accept this book's central claim about grace at death and beyond; the idea enriches the case but does not carry it alone.
A Greek word meaning "destruction" or "ruin." It appears in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, where Paul writes of those who will suffer "eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord." The word does not require the meaning "conscious torment forever." It fits with annihilation (the destroyed person ceases to exist) or with ruin (the person is broken by their own refusal of God). The phrase "from the presence of the Lord" can mean that God's presence is the source of the destruction, not that the person is sent away from God.
→ Developed in Chapter 12.
The idea that God does not offer the gospel in a generic, one-size-fits-all way. Instead, he presents his love to each person in the way most likely to win a free "yes," without force. What would convince one person might push another away, so God tailors the appeal. Jerry Walls coined the term and describes it as "deeply personal and individual." Optimal grace means that God is not content with giving each person some bare minimum chance. He gives the best possible chance, fitted to that person's heart, across the whole window of the offer.
→ Introduced in Chapter 1. Applied in Chapter 5. See also Chapter 7.
The saving meeting with God that this book argues comes around the moment of dying, before biological death is complete. "Peri-" means "around," so "perimortem" means "around the time of death." A dying person who has not yet biologically died is still alive, still conscious, and still able to respond to God. This encounter is the opening movement of God's pursuit. Older defenses of postmortem hope started in the afterlife; this book starts at the deathbed. The thief on the cross (Luke 23:39–43) is the clearest biblical portrait of such an encounter.
→ Introduced in Chapter 1. Fully portrayed in Chapter 24. Each verse-chapter carries a Perimortem callout asking whether the objection even reaches the dying moment.
The belief that God's offer of salvation continues after physical death. People who die without saving faith are not beyond reach. God continues to pursue them in the intermediate state (Hades) and at the final judgment. This is the older and broader claim that the book carries forward, adding the perimortem encounter as an earlier front. The case rests on God's character, the descent of Christ to the dead, and the absence of any biblical text that explicitly closes the door at death.
→ Introduced in Chapter 1. Defended throughout. See also Appendix A.
People who have heard the name of Jesus but have never truly heard the gospel. Their experience of Christianity was so distorted, so tangled with abuse, hypocrisy, or cultural violence, that they never received a real chance to respond. James Beilby coined the term. His examples include a person enslaved by people who preached Christianity while practicing cruelty, a survivor of spiritual abuse, and someone whose journey toward faith was cut short by an untimely death. The author argues that God's saving offer extends to these people just as much as to those who never heard the gospel at all.
→ Introduced in Chapter 1. See the full case in James Beilby's discussion referenced throughout.
The Hebrew word for the realm of the dead in the Old Testament. Sheol is dim, shadowy, and undeveloped in the earlier texts. The dead go there regardless of whether they were righteous or wicked. It is not a place of fiery punishment; it is more like a quiet, gray holding ground. Over time, the concept developed, and by the New Testament period, the Greek word "Hades" carried a more detailed picture with distinct regions for the righteous and the unrighteous. Sheol is the Old Testament ancestor of the Hades concept.
→ Developed in Appendix C and Chapter 22.
The view that a human person is made of two parts: a physical body and a nonphysical soul. When the body dies, the soul survives, conscious and aware. This matters for the book's argument because if the soul is still alive and aware after the body fails, then a dying person remains a real person who can respond to God even as the body shuts down. The alternative view, called physicalism, holds that a person is entirely physical and that consciousness depends entirely on a working brain. The author defends substance dualism, drawing in part on his own research into near-death experiences.
→ Developed in Appendix C.
The hope that God's love will one day win a free "yes" from every created being, so that all will be saved and none will be lost forever. On this view, hell is real but not permanent; it purifies and corrects until every soul freely turns to God. The author of this book holds genuine openness to universal reconciliation but does not claim it as a certainty. Freedom is real, and a real "yes" requires a possible "no." The book's central claim, that the offer of grace continues through death to the final judgment, is compatible with UR, with conditional immortality, and even with eternal conscious torment.
→ Introduced in Chapter 1. Historical roots in Chapter 25. See also Appendix B and Appendix D.