Appendix C
Plain-English Definitions of Every Key Term in This Book
This glossary collects the technical words you will meet across the chapters of Grace After Death. Each entry gives a plain-English definition and a link to the chapter where the idea is developed. If a word stopped you in your tracks while reading, this is the place to come back to. Hard ideas deserve easy sentences, and that holds for a glossary most of all.
The entries are listed in alphabetical order. Greek and Hebrew terms are given in their transliterated form and then briefly in their original script where it helps.
Note: How to use this glossary. Each entry names the chapter or appendix that develops the idea most fully. A quick link takes you there. If you want the full argument, follow the link. If you just need a handle on the word, the definition here should be enough to keep reading.
Three words that sit at the center of the debate about whether hell lasts forever.
Olam (עולם) is the Hebrew word often translated “forever” or “everlasting” in the Old Testament. But its range is wider than that English word suggests. It can mean a long age, an indefinite stretch of time, or simply “as far as the eye can see.” When Jonah prayed from the belly of the great fish, he said the bars closed on him “forever” (olam), yet God brought him out alive three days later (Jonah 2:6). The word points to a span whose end is hidden, not necessarily to a span that has no end at all.
Aiōn (αἰών) is the Greek word behind the English “age” or “eon.” It can refer to a specific period of time (“this present age”), to the age to come, or to a quality of life that belongs to that coming age. The adjective form, aiōnios (αἰώνιος), is the word translated “eternal” in most English Bibles.
The debate matters because Jesus sets “eternal punishment” and “eternal life” in parallel in Matthew 25:46. If aiōnios means “lasting forever” in both cases, then punishment and life are equally endless. But scholars have long noted other possibilities.
First, aiōnios may describe something that belongs to the age to come, pointing to quality more than duration. Eternal life, on this reading, is the kind of life that comes from God. Eternal punishment is the kind of judgment that comes from God. Neither phrase, by itself, settles how long the experience lasts.
Second, the theologian William Barclay argued that aiōnios “is the word of deity as contrasted with humanity,” a word that “can be properly applied to no one other than God.”1 On this view, eternal punishment is punishment that has its source in the eternal God. It may last a long time. It may not. The word itself does not decide.
Third, the philosopher R. Zachary Manis offers a reading that fits the divine presence model of hell. He takes aiōnios to denote a divine quality. For the blessed, the presence of God is aiōnios life. For the lost, that same presence is experienced as punishment. The word does not measure duration; it names the source. The fire and the glory are the same reality, God Himself, met by different hearts.2
Fourth, the philosopher Thomas Talbott argues that even the English words “eternal” and “forever” sometimes point to intensity rather than literal duration. He notes Jonah’s prayer as a biblical precedent. And he suggests that the New Testament use of aiōnios carries no fixed implication of endless time at all.3
This book treats the aiōnios question as genuinely open. The word alone does not settle whether hell lasts forever, ends in destruction, or yields to God’s restoring love. Other passages, other arguments, and other commitments must do that work. The fuller discussion appears in Chapter 27.
A Greek word (ἀποκατάστασις) meaning “restoration of all things.” In theology, it refers to the belief that God will eventually restore every created being to a right relationship with Himself, including the lost and, in some versions, even the fallen angels. The early church father Origen is most closely linked to the idea. Some modern theologians, such as Thomas Talbott and Robin Parry, defend versions of it. This book does not require apokatastasis, but it does leave the door open to it. See Chapter 28.
A view in the philosophy of time that says the passage of time is real. The present moment is objectively “now,” and time genuinely flows from past to future. On this view, God’s actions happen in time. He really pursues, really responds, really waits. The alternative, the B-theory, says all moments exist equally and that the flow of time is an illusion. This book works within an A-theory framework because it pictures God acting in genuine sequence, at the deathbed, in Hades, and at the judgment. See Appendix F.
The direct, face-to-face experience of God that the redeemed will enjoy in the age to come. Thomas Aquinas taught that this vision is seen not with the eyes but with the mind, an intellectual seeing of God’s very essence. In this book, the beatific vision is the positive side of the coin. The same unveiled presence of God that is joy for the willing heart is torment for the unwilling one. See Chapter 21 and Chapter 27.
A proposal by the Catholic theologian Ladislaus Boros (1927–1981) that every person makes a final, definitive decision for or against God at the moment of death. In that moment, Boros argued, the soul achieves a clarity it never had in life. It sees itself, sees God, and freely chooses. Boros drew on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Karl Rahner, among others. This book embraces Boros’s core insight (that something decisive happens at death) while extending the offer beyond that single moment, through the intermediate state and on to the final judgment. See Chapter 11.
The view that human beings are not inherently immortal. God alone has immortality (1 Timothy 6:16), and He grants it to those who receive Christ. Those who finally and freely refuse Christ are not kept alive forever in torment. Instead, they are destroyed and cease to exist. This is sometimes called “annihilationism,” though that word can mislead. The destruction is not an act of divine cruelty. On this book’s reading, it is the natural result of standing in God’s holy presence while refusing the love that surrounds you. Once the fire has burned away the evil and nothing willing remains, there is simply nothing left. This is the author’s working view, held with genuine openness to universal restoration. See Chapter 24.
This book’s distinctive extension of optimal grace. A perfectly loving God does not merely give each person the best single moment of appeal. He composes the best possible sequence of moments, stretching across the whole offer window. For one soul the deathbed encounter may be enough. For a harder soul, the best approach may require the deathbed and the long pursuit through Hades and the final unveiling at the judgment. God orders the whole arc. For some, the sequence opens not with light but with felt darkness or distance, before the meeting comes. See Chapter 23.
Truths about what a free person would freely do in a given set of circumstances, even if those circumstances never actually arise. For example: “If David had stayed in Keilah, the men of the city would have handed him over to Saul” (1 Samuel 23:11–13). God told David what would happen. David left, and it never did. Molinists hold that God knows all such truths. This knowledge is what makes it possible for God to compose the best possible approach for each soul. See Chapter 23.
A visual or sensory experience reported by dying persons, often in the final hours or days of life. They may see deceased relatives, a being of light, or landscapes not present in the physical room. Deathbed visions differ from full near-death experiences in that the dying person has not yet been resuscitated; they are on the threshold. Hospice nurses and researchers such as Maggie Callanan and J. Steve Miller have documented these extensively. In this book, deathbed visions are part of the evidence that something real happens at the boundary of death. See Chapter 5.
The teaching that between His death and resurrection, Christ went to the realm of the dead. The Apostles’ Creed says He “descended into hell” (or “to the dead,” descendit ad inferos). The key New Testament texts are 1 Peter 3:18–22, 1 Peter 4:6, and Ephesians 4:8–10. In these passages, Christ goes to the imprisoned spirits, preaches, and “led captivity captive.” This book reads the descent as a real event that changed the nature of Hades. Christ visited the dead, preached the gospel, and transferred the Old Testament righteous to heaven. After the resurrection, Hades is no longer a sealed prison but a place of continued divine presence and pursuit. See Chapter 14, Chapter 15, and Chapter 16.
A way of thinking about hell that says the fire is not a place far away from God. It is God. The philosopher R. Zachary Manis argues that heaven and hell are not two locations but two experiences of the same reality: God’s full, unveiled presence. The love of God is warmth and glory to the willing heart. That same love is torment to the unwilling one. Hell, on this reading, is “a separation, not from God’s presence but from communion with Him.”4 The theologian Sharon Baker develops a similar picture from the biblical fire imagery. This book embraces the central insight and builds its view of the lake of fire on it. See Chapter 21 and Chapter 26.
The view that God experiences time as genuinely passing. God is not frozen in a timeless “eternal now” where past, present, and future are all equally real. Instead, He acts in sequence. He pursues, responds, waits, and meets souls as they move through dying, the intermediate state, and the judgment. This does not mean God is trapped in clock-time the way we are. He transcends creaturely time. But His experience is genuinely temporal; things happen to Him in order. This matters for the book because a truly timeless God could not engage a dying person in the interactive, relational way the encounter demands. See Chapter 9 and Appendix F.
The study of last things: death, the intermediate state, the resurrection of the body, the final judgment, heaven, and hell. The word comes from the Greek eschatos, meaning “last.” This book is a work of eschatology. It asks what happens to the soul between death and the final judgment, and it argues that God’s saving pursuit continues across the whole span. The author’s eschatological position is conditional immortality with postmortem opportunity, open to universal restoration and rejecting eternal conscious torment.
The traditional view that those who die without Christ are kept alive forever in conscious suffering. This has been the majority position in Western Christianity since at least the fifth century. The author of this book does not hold this view and regards it as the least satisfying of the three major options. But the book’s mechanism (the offer that runs from the deathbed to the end of the judgment) is compatible with it. A reader who holds ECT can still accept this book’s central claim about the span and timeline of the offer. See Chapter 24.
The view that a genuinely free choice is one that is not caused or determined by anything outside the person. When you choose freely, you really could have chosen otherwise. Nothing forces the outcome: not your genes, not your upbringing, not even God’s knowledge of what you will do. This book holds that human beings keep this kind of freedom even after death, even in God’s full presence. That is why the offer can be maximally persuasive without being coercive, and why some may still freely refuse. See Chapter 22 and Chapter 23.
The word Jesus used most often for what we call “hell.” It comes from the Hebrew ge-hinnom, the Valley of Hinnom, a ravine south of Jerusalem. In Old Testament times, child sacrifices were offered to the god Molech there (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31). By Jesus’s day, the name had become a symbol for divine judgment and destruction. When Jesus spoke of Gehenna, He was not pointing to a literal valley. He was using a loaded image that every hearer would have recognized: the worst place imaginable, the place of fire and ruin. How that image relates to the lake of fire in Revelation is part of the discussion in Chapter 25.
God’s self-disclosure through creation, conscience, and the moral order, available to all people everywhere, regardless of whether they have heard the gospel. Romans 1:19–20 and Romans 2:14–15 are the key texts. General revelation tells people that God exists and that they are morally accountable. But this book argues that general revelation alone is not enough to save. Salvation requires a personal encounter with Christ, which is exactly what the postmortem offer provides for those who never received it in life. See Chapter 4 and Chapter 31.
The image in Revelation 20:11–15 of God seated on a great white throne at the final judgment. The dead, great and small, stand before it. Books are opened. This book reads the Great White Throne judgment not merely as a sentencing hearing but as the last, fullest, most intense offer of Christ. Every remaining soul stands in God’s unveiled presence. The end of this judgment is the one true deadline. See Chapter 27.
The Greek name for the realm of the dead. In the New Testament, Hades is the waiting place where souls exist between death and the final resurrection. It is not the same as the lake of fire, and it is not the same as Gehenna. In Luke 16:19–31, the rich man is in Hades: conscious, suffering, and able to see Abraham and Lazarus across a chasm. This book reads Hades after Christ’s descent as a dynamic place. It is no longer a sealed prison. God’s presence is there. And the soul that refused the deathbed encounter is still being pursued. See Chapter 8 and Chapter 18.
The view that people can be saved by Christ even if they have never heard the name of Jesus. On this reading, God’s grace can reach people through general revelation, conscience, or other means, even without an explicit knowledge of the gospel. The inclusivist says that Christ is the only Savior, but that a person need not know about Christ to benefit from His saving work. This book goes further than inclusivism. It agrees that no one is saved apart from Christ, but it argues that every person will in fact meet Christ, personally and explicitly, at or after death. The issue is not whether explicit knowledge is needed (it is), but whether it must come before the grave (it need not). See Chapter 4 and Chapter 31.
The period between a person’s death and the final resurrection. During this time, the soul exists consciously, either in God’s presence (for the redeemed) or in Hades (for those who have not yet yielded). The intermediate state is not the final state. The body has not been raised. The judgment has not yet come. This book argues that the intermediate state is not a holding cell where nothing happens. It is where God keeps pursuing the soul that did not respond at the deathbed. See Chapter 8.
The image in Revelation 20:14–15 and 21:8 for the final fate of the wicked. Death and Hades themselves are thrown into the lake of fire, along with anyone whose name is not found in the book of life. Revelation calls it “the second death.” This book, drawing on the divine presence model, reads the lake of fire not as a torture chamber far from God but as God’s full, unfiltered presence and love. For the saved, that presence is heaven. For the unrepentant, the same holy presence is experienced as agony. The fire purifies. For those who yield, it leads to salvation. For those who refuse even then, on the conditional-immortality view, the fire consumes what remains. See Chapter 26.
A common feature of near-death experiences in which the person relives key moments from their life. They often see and feel the effects of their actions on other people. Many NDE accounts describe the review as happening in the presence of a being of light or love. It is not presented as a legal sentencing but as a gentle, total knowing. This book treats the life review as part of the peri-mortem encounter, a cleansing disclosure that helps the soul see itself clearly before making a free response to Christ. See Chapter 13.
God’s knowledge of what every free person would freely do in any possible set of circumstances. It sits logically between two other kinds of divine knowledge. God’s natural knowledge tells Him what is possible. His free knowledge tells Him what will actually happen in the world He chose to create. In between is middle knowledge: His knowledge of what would happen in every possible world, given every possible arrangement of free choices. This knowledge is logically prior to God’s decision about which world to create. That means God can use it to select a world in which His purposes are best achieved through free choices He neither forces nor overrides. See Molinism below and Chapter 23.
A theological framework named after the sixteenth-century Jesuit Luis de Molina. Its central claim is that God possesses middle knowledge. He knows what every free creature would freely do in any circumstance. By choosing which circumstances to bring about, God can direct history without overriding anyone’s freedom. In this book, Molinism provides the architecture for the threefold offer. God knows exactly which approach, in which sequence, would most likely win a free “yes” from each soul. He composes the encounter accordingly. See Chapter 23.
A term coined by the philosopher Timothy A. Stratton to describe Molinism in its simplest, most ecumenical form. It rests on just two pillars: (1) human beings sometimes possess libertarian free will, and (2) God possesses middle knowledge of those free choices logically prior to His creative decree. These two commitments are modest enough that Christians across many traditions, including some Reformed theologians, can affirm them. Stratton’s point is that you do not have to adopt an entire Jesuit theology to accept the core of what Molina was saying. See Chapter 23.
An experience reported by people who have come close to death or been declared clinically dead and then revived. Common features include a sense of leaving the body, moving through a tunnel, meeting a being of overwhelming light or love, a life review, and reaching a boundary or point of no return. NDEs have been documented across cultures and across centuries. Not all are pleasant; some are distressing or “hellish.” This book draws on NDE research not to build doctrine on it but to take seriously the evidence that something real happens at the boundary of death. See Chapter 5, Chapter 6, and Chapter 10.
A pattern of behavior and communication observed in dying patients during the final days or hours of life. Hospice nurses such as Maggie Callanan have described patients reaching toward unseen persons, speaking to deceased loved ones, or describing places of extraordinary beauty. Unlike NDEs, nearing-death awareness occurs before clinical death, while the person is still alive and often still conscious. It overlaps with what this book calls the peri-mortem encounter. See Chapter 5.
A concept developed by the philosopher Jerry Walls. It means that a perfectly loving God does not offer the gospel in a generic, one-size-fits-all way. He gives each person the best possible opportunity to respond freely, an opportunity “deeply personal and individual,” fitted to that particular heart, presented in the most favorable circumstances love can arrange. If there is some measure of grace to which a person will respond, God gives that measure. A chance calibrated merely to justify condemnation is not optimal. It is not even loving. This book extends Walls’s concept across the whole offer window: the “best possible approach” is not a single best moment but the single best sequence of moments, stretching from the deathbed through Hades to the judgment. See Chapter 23.
The encounter with Christ that this book argues takes place in and around the process of dying. The prefix peri- means “around,” so peri-mortem means “around death.” It refers to the window during which the body is shutting down but the soul is still present. This is the first stage of the threefold offer. The encounter may include a vision of overwhelming light or love, a meeting with Christ, a life review, and a free opportunity to respond. Time may run differently in this experience than it does on the clock, so a few seconds of dying may hold a long and unhurried meeting. See Chapter 5, Chapter 11, and Chapter 12.
The view that a human being is entirely physical: there is no immaterial soul that can exist apart from the body. When the body dies, the person ceases to exist until God resurrects them at the last day. Christian physicalists such as Joel Green and Nancey Murphy hold this view. This book argues against it. If there is no soul, then no one is conscious between death and the resurrection, which means no one can meet Christ at the deathbed, persist through Hades, or stand at the judgment. The whole threefold offer requires that the person is someone between death and resurrection. Substance dualism provides that someone. See Chapter 7.
The belief that God offers people a real chance to receive Christ after death, not only before it. This is the central claim of Grace After Death. The book argues that the offer opens at the deathbed, continues through the conscious intermediate state (Hades), and reaches its climax at the final judgment. Postmortem opportunity is a claim about the span of the offer, not about the outcome. It does not, by itself, mean that everyone is saved. It means that no one is denied a genuine, informed, free opportunity to say yes to Christ. See Chapter 1 and every chapter that follows.
A term used by the theologian James Beilby for people who have technically heard the gospel but in a form so distorted, so culturally alien, or so bound up with injustice that it was not a genuine hearing. A man enslaved by people who claimed to be Christians did not receive a fair presentation of Jesus. A woman raised in a cult was taught a version of God that bears little resemblance to the real one. These people are not, in any meaningful sense, “evangelized.” They sit between the unevangelized (who never heard at all) and the fully evangelized (who heard clearly and freely). If God is fair, they deserve a genuine chance, and this book argues they get one. See Chapter 4 and Chapter 31.
In Roman Catholic teaching, the state after death in which those who have died in God’s grace are purified of remaining sin before entering heaven. Purgatory is not hell; it is for the saved, not the lost. This book is not arguing for purgatory. But the idea shares some DNA with what this book proposes: both hold that something important happens to the soul between death and the final state. The difference is that purgatory is for the already-saved; this book’s offer is for the not-yet-saved. The philosopher Jerry Walls has reframed purgatory in broadly Protestant terms as a process of sanctification after death. See Chapter 32.
The Hebrew name for the realm of the dead. In the Old Testament, Sheol is where all the dead go, righteous and wicked alike. It is pictured as a shadowy, quiet place beneath the earth. The Psalmist cries, “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there” (Psalm 139:8). Sheol is roughly equivalent to the Greek Hades. It is not the same as Gehenna or the lake of fire. This book distinguishes these terms carefully, because confusing them has caused centuries of theological confusion. See Chapter 25.
The view that a human being is made of two distinct things: an immaterial soul and a material body. The soul is not just a function of the brain. It is a real, non-physical entity that can exist apart from the body. When the body dies, the soul survives. This is the historic Christian position, and it is essential to this book’s argument. If there is no soul, there is no one to meet Christ at the deathbed, no one to persist through the intermediate state, and no one to stand before the throne at the judgment. The philosopher John Cooper and others have defended this view against modern physicalist alternatives. See Chapter 6 and Chapter 7.
The unexpected return of mental clarity in a dying person whose brain has been severely damaged by disease, whether Alzheimer’s, brain tumors, or other conditions. Patients who have not spoken or recognized their families for years sometimes wake up in the final hours, hold coherent conversations, and then die. This poses a sharp problem for the view that the mind is simply what the brain does. If the brain is destroyed, where does the clarity come from? This book sees terminal lucidity as evidence for substance dualism: the soul is not the brain, and in the process of dying, it may begin to operate independently of the failing organ. See Chapter 5 and Chapter 30.
The central thesis of this book. God’s saving offer of Christ does not end at death. It opens at the deathbed (the peri-mortem encounter), continues through the conscious intermediate state (Hades), and reaches its fullest form at the final judgment (the Great White Throne). These three stages form a single, sequential pursuit. If a person refuses at one stage, God does not give up. He keeps drawing the soul forward to the next. The end of the final judgment is the one true deadline. See Chapter 1.
The widely reported phenomenon in which a near-death experiencer feels that their experience lasted far longer than the clock would suggest. A cardiac arrest that lasts three minutes by the clock may feel like hours or days from the inside. Some experiencers describe a sense of timelessness altogether. This matters for the peri-mortem encounter: if subjective time can stretch far beyond clock time, then even a brief dying interval can hold a long, unhurried meeting with Christ. See Chapter 9 and Appendix F.
A concept from the philosopher William Lane Craig, building on Alvin Plantinga’s earlier idea of “transworld depravity.” A person suffers from transworld damnation if, in every possible world where that person exists, they would freely reject God’s grace. No matter what circumstances God places them in, no matter what approach He uses, they will say no. Craig uses this idea to explain why some are lost: God cannot save them without overriding their freedom, because there is no world in which they freely say yes. Critics argue that this strains belief, especially for people who never heard the gospel. See Chapter 23.
The mirror image of transworld damnation, developed by the philosopher Andrew Hronich. A person has transworld sanctity if, in every possible world where that person exists and faces a free moral choice, they eventually and freely accept God’s grace. No matter the circumstances, they will say yes. Hronich argues that if some people suffer from transworld damnation (they always refuse), God can simply choose not to create them and instead fill the world with those who have transworld sanctity (they always accept). This pushes the Molinist framework in a universalist direction, though Hronich is careful about how far to take it. See Chapter 23.
This book’s reading of the biblical data on the realm of the dead, dividing it into two periods. Before Christ: Hades (or Sheol) had two chambers, a place of comfort for the righteous dead (Abraham’s bosom, in Luke 16) and a place of distress for the unrighteous. After Christ’s death and descent: Jesus visited the dead, preached, and led the Old Testament righteous out (“led captivity captive,” Ephesians 4:8). From the resurrection onward, every dying person meets Christ at the threshold. Hades is no longer a sealed prison. God’s presence is there. This two-stage framework is necessary to read Luke 16, 1 Peter 3, and Ephesians 4 responsibly. See Chapter 14.
The belief that God’s saving love will eventually bring every created being, without exception, to a free and willing acceptance of Christ. No one is lost forever. The theologians Thomas Talbott and Robin Parry defend versions of this view. This book does not claim universal restoration as certain, because freedom is real and a real “yes” requires a possible “no.” But the author holds genuine openness to it. If universal restoration is true, it would be the greatest news in the universe. The book leaves the door open and explains why. See Chapter 24 and Chapter 28.
God’s genuine desire for every person to be saved. The key texts are 1 Timothy 2:4 (“God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”), 2 Peter 3:9 (“not wishing that any should perish”), and Ezekiel 33:11 (“I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked”). This book takes the word “all” at face value. The threefold offer is the mechanism by which God’s universal saving will reaches every soul, regardless of when or where they lived, whether they heard the gospel in life, or what their cognitive capacity was. See Chapter 2 and Chapter 4.
A near-death experience in which the person reports details, seen or heard while they were clinically dead or under deep anesthesia, that are later confirmed by independent evidence. The surgeon Michael Sabom documented the landmark case of Pam Reynolds. She described the specific bone saw used in her surgery and a remark about her femoral vessels. She had no ordinary way of knowing these things: her eyes were taped shut, her ears were plugged with speakers, and her brain showed no electrical activity.5 Veridical NDEs matter to this book because they provide empirical evidence that consciousness can operate apart from a functioning brain. This supports substance dualism. See Chapter 6 and Appendix B.
↑ 1. William Barclay, New Testament Words (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1974). See also Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), who develops the Barclay reading at length.
↑ 2. R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), appendix. Manis writes that the divine presence model “simply takes the term to denote a divine quality, and thus to refer to God. For the blessed, the presence of God is aiōnios life, whereas the damned experience the presence of God as punishment.”
↑ 3. Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014). Talbott argues that aiōnios in New Testament usage carries no fixed implication of temporal duration and that even the English words “eternal” and “forever” sometimes indicate the intensity or quality of an experience rather than its literal length.
↑ 4. Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, appendix.
↑ 5. Michael B. Sabom, Light and Death: One Doctor’s Fascinating Account of Near-Death Experiences (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), ch. 3. Sabom describes the full clinical facts: the 60°F core temperature, the drained blood, the silent EEG, and the absent brain-stem responses.