Lexicon

Every term the board defines, 377 of them, grouped by the system of thought it belongs to. The same definitions appear on hover wherever a term is shown. The groupings below are a way to find a word, not a claim about the standing of the traditions they name: several of them hold that they are not one option among others, and the lexicon takes no side on that. A definition is the term as its own tradition means it. Where another tradition takes the same word differently, that reading is set out under its own name rather than folded into the first. Where a term is set against another, both are named and linked, so a reader can go and read the other side in its own words. The list grows: after each debate Hesychius proposes the terms of art in it, and a moderator decides which are published.

Agnostic1 term

agnosticism: Three published senses. Huxley's original: a normative principle, that "it is wrong to say that one knows or believes that a proposition is true without logically satisfactory evidence". American Atheists': an answer about knowledge, not belief. AHA's: the belief that God's existence "is unknowable". Huxley's is a rule with commitments; the modern psychological sense is a report of one's state. Ask which.

Apologetic method10 terms

classical: An apologetic method that first argues for God from reason, then for the particular faith from evidence.
Set against presuppositionalist
defeater: In epistemology, a further belief or piece of evidence which, once held, removes the warrant a belief previously had, so that continuing to hold it is no longer justified.
evidentialist: An apologetic method that argues from evidence, historical or scientific, on terms the opponent already accepts.
Set against presuppositionalist
god of the gaps: The objection that God is invoked only to fill what science has not yet explained. The criticism is Henry Drummond's, an evangelical Christian, in The Ascent of Man (1894), made against believers: "gaps which they will fill up with God. As if God lived in gaps?" The set phrase "God of the gaps" is usually credited to Coulson (1955), which was not read. The modern naturalist form is a different charge, about fallacious inference.
LPT: The logical problem of the Trinity: the objection that if each of the three persons is God and the persons are not each other, then counting by identity yields three Gods. The Trinitarian answer turns on whether persons are counted the same way gods are.
presuppositionalist: An apologetic method holding that reasoning itself presupposes God, so a debate must begin from first principles rather than neutral evidence; associated with Van Til and Bahnsen.
Set against classical, evidentialist
properly basic: In epistemology, said of a belief a person is entitled to hold without inferring it from any other belief: it lies in the foundation of his web of beliefs and is warranted immediately. The phrase belongs to Alvin Plantinga's Reformed epistemology.
tag: Short for the Transcendental Argument for God: that logic, science, and morality are intelligible only if God exists, so the opponent's own reasoning presupposes what they deny.
TAG: The transcendental argument for God: that the preconditions of intelligibility — logic, induction, moral obligation — cannot be accounted for on a competing worldview, so the argument is run by retorsion against the opponent's position rather than by evidence for one's own.
transcendental argument for god (tag): The argument that logic, science, and morality are intelligible only if God exists, so the opponent's own reasoning presupposes what they deny. Written out in full first; TAG after that.

Assyrian Church of the East4 terms

Assyrian Church of the East: The church of the Persian empire, which receives Nicaea and Constantinople, does not receive Ephesus, and confesses two natures, two qnome and one parsopa in Christ. Not Oriental Orthodox and not in communion with them. Its head is the Catholicos-Patriarch, currently Mar Awa III. Distinguish it from the Ancient Church of the East, which split from it in 1968, and from the Chaldean Catholic Church, which is in communion with Rome.
Church of the East: The church's own preferred name for itself, without the ethnic qualifier. Its own commission notes that the Assyrian people "were only one ethnic group among many others within the Church" and are now "the single surviving cultural grouping".
Interpreter: Theodore of Mopsuestia, so titled in the Assyrian Church of the East's own synod of 596. Condemned by name at the Fifth Council of 553, which the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics receive and the Oriental Orthodox do not.
Nestorian: Of Nestorius: in the usage of his opponents, the doctrine of two persons or two Sons in Christ. The Assyrian Church of the East rejects that doctrine and does not reject the word as its own Fathers used it. The Coptic Holy Synod holds the church Nestorian anyway and says refusing the name is not refusing the doctrine. Both positions are published; give each side its own.

Atheist12 terms

agnostic atheist: On AAI's account, one who "does not believe in any gods but does not claim to know that no gods exist"; belief and knowledge are treated as separate axes. American Atheists: "Atheism is about what you believe. Agnosticism is about what you know." A judge should not let either be used as a softer word for the other.
apistevist: Aron Ra's self-description: "one who rejects faith". His coinage and his stipulation; the definition of faith it rests on is his own and is contested by every theological tradition on this board.
atheism: Two published senses, both legitimate. Psychological: the lack of belief in gods (ACA, American Atheists). Propositional: the proposition that God does not exist (SEP, and the standard sense in philosophy). The ACA says the psychological sense "encompasses what most people call agnosticism"; the SEP says the standard sense excludes anyone who suspends judgment. One per debate.
atheist (modern, "lack of belief"): On the published definitions of American Atheists and Atheist Alliance International, "someone who lacks a belief in gods"; "the answer to one question: Do you believe in gods?" Both organizations present this as a chosen and contested definition, argued for on grounds of inclusiveness. It is a position, not a neutral fact about English.
contemplative atheist: Bacon's term for one who actually holds the proposition, as against one merely branded with the name for dissenting. His own judgment was that the first is rare and the second common: "all that impugn a received religion, or superstition, are by the adverse part branded with the name of atheists."
hard atheism / strong atheism: Atheism plus the further claim that no gods exist. AAI's own term and its own definition: "atheism with the additional conviction that there are no gods anywhere either inside, or outside, of the universe." This is the sense that carries a burden of proof; the lack-of-belief sense is explicitly framed to avoid one.
ignostic / igtheist: Not defined in any organization's own published material reached in this pass, including the AHA's glossary. Require the debater to define it himself. Do not supply one.
non-theist: The SEP's and the AHA's term for "the broader class of people who lack the belief that God exists". The neutral word the debaters often want and rarely use.
presumption of atheism: The claim that unbelief is the default position and the burden lies wholly on the theist. Associated with Antony Flew's 1972 paper of that name, which this pass did not read. The organizations' published wording is quoted instead.
russell's teapot: Russell's 1952 illustration that the burden lies on whoever asserts, aimed specifically at "since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption... to doubt it". An argument about burden, not about probability. Debaters routinely overrun it.
the "one god further" argument: The claim that a monotheist's rejection of all other gods is the same act as the atheist's rejection of his; stated by Dawkins as "we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." Historically well grounded in the ancient cult sense, and in tension with the modern organizations' own definition, which is not per-deity.
the null hypothesis: In Aron Ra's use, "that the new proposition is not true unless indicated by logic or evidence". Borrowed from statistics, where it is a technical device about sampling. Whether it transfers to metaphysics is a live question and not a given.

Buddhism11 terms

buddhavacana: (Buddhist) "The word of the Buddha": the category of what counts as authentic teaching. The contested term. Theravada's test is coherence with the Suttas and Vinaya; Mahayana's is definitive meaning, which admits sutras Theravada rejects entirely.
dhamma / dharma: (Buddhist (and Hindu, Jain, in other senses)) The teaching; also the truth it states. In Hinduism dharma is duty and law; in Jainism dharma is also a technical term for one of the substances. Never carry the sense across.
kangyur / tengyur: (Buddhist (Tibetan)) The translated word of the Buddha, and the translated treatises. The Tibetan canon's two divisions. Not read in this pass.
mahapadesa: (Buddhist) The "four great references" of DN 16 and AN 4.180: a procedure for testing any claim about what the Buddha taught. Older translations render it "great authorities", which reverses its sense; the Access to Insight translators correct this in a note.
nitartha / neyartha: (Buddhist (Mahayana)) Of definitive meaning, and of provisional meaning requiring interpretation. The fourth of the four reliances. The Mahaparinirvana Sutra assigns the sravaka (early canon) teachings to the provisional class and Mahayana to the definitive.
sravaka: (Buddhist) "Hearer": a disciple on the early path, and by extension the early canon and its vehicle. Used by Mahayana texts for what Theravada holds to be the whole of the teaching. Not itself abusive; Hinayana is.
sutta / sutra: (Buddhist) A discourse. Pali sutta, Sanskrit sutra. Not interchangeable in practice: "the sutras" usually means the Mahayana sutras, which are not in the Pali canon.
terma: (Buddhist (Nyingma)) "Treasure": a text held to have been concealed and recovered later by a discoverer. A theory of canonicity with no parallel in Theravada. Not read in this pass.
tipitaka / tripitaka: (Buddhist) The "three baskets": Vinaya (discipline), Sutta (discourses), Abhidhamma (higher doctrine). Theravada's canon in Pali; the Chinese and Tibetan canons are much larger and differently arranged.
upaya: (Buddhist (Mahayana)) "Skilful means": teaching adapted to the hearer's capacity. The Mahayana explanation of why the Buddha taught doctrines it ranks as provisional. Not read from the Lotus Sutra in this pass.
vinaya: (Buddhist) The monastic discipline, and half of what DN 16 names as the Buddha's successor. Shared as a category; the recensions differ between Theravada, East Asian and Tibetan monasticism.

Classical dialectic17 terms

antistrephon: The retorsion: the opponent's own argument taken over and made to serve your side, as in the lawsuit of Protagoras and Euathlus.
aporia: The dead end: the opponent admits he has no way through. Meno said Socrates numbed him like a torpedo fish.
bull by the horns: Defeating a dilemma by breaking one of its horns head-on.
dilemma: The horns: two options offered, and both lose.
distinguo: A distinction drawn that splits an equivocal term and dissolves the point. From the scholastic disputation: "I distinguish."
elenchus: The Socratic cross-examination that catches a contradiction in the interlocutor's own admissions.
enstasis: Aristotle's word in the Prior Analytics and Rhetoric for an objection lodged against a premise rather than against the conclusion: blocking the step instead of following it.
escape between the horns: Defeating a dilemma by finding a third option.
fallacy of many questions: The trap a framework objection refuses: a single question carrying two, so that any single answer concedes something. Have you stopped beating your wife. Aristotle describes it in the Sophistical Refutations as making several questions into one, and tells the answerer to divide the question before answering; plurium interrogationum is the later scholastic name.
framework objection: Pointing out, with reasons, that the opponent's question presupposes what is in dispute between their frameworks, and saying which question must be settled first. Declining to 'go to scripture' until the canon is established is the textbook case. The classical names for the move are nego suppositum, enstasis, and translatio.
Set against dodge
homologia: A concession forced: the opponent grants the point. 1 point. 2 points where what the opponent grants is a ground his own thesis stands on, and the deliverer has said in the debate what that thesis depends on. 3 points where the deliverer also says, before the concession or after it, what this concession does to the opponent's case. Not: a concession the judges can see is damaging but that nobody in the debate has tied to the thesis.
internal critique: Arguing from the opponent's own premises to a conclusion he rejects.
nego suppositum: "I deny the supposition": the scholastic reply that refuses a question's built-in premise rather than answering it. One of the four disputation replies with concedo, nego, and distinguo. The refuser names the premise he denies, and says why.
Set against dodge
peritrope: The turnabout: a claim turned back on its maker so that it refutes itself. Socrates on Protagoras: if every belief is true, so is the belief that Protagoras is wrong.
the question left open: Naming a question that both sides have to answer from where they start, answering it himself, and pressing it on an opponent who cannot.
thrasymachus blush: Withdrawal after refutation: the refuted man stops arguing or leaves, as Thrasymachus blushed in the Republic and Euthyphro remembered an appointment.
translatio: The fourth classical stasis, called metalepsis by Hermogenes: the objection that a question has been put in the wrong form or the wrong forum and cannot be tried as framed. Roman advocates raised it as a praescriptio; its descendant is the courtroom objection that a question assumes facts not in evidence.

Eastern Orthodox7 terms

anagignoskomena

Greek for “the things that are read”: the Orthodox name for the Old Testament books received beyond the Hebrew Bible. The Orthodox list is wider than the Roman Catholic one, adding 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, 3 Maccabees and, usually in an appendix, 4 Maccabees. Orthodoxy has never dogmatically closed its Old Testament canon: the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 listed these books, but it was a regional council whose decrees bind only where they are received, and no pan-Orthodox acceptance has followed, though Orthodox Bibles print them.

Roman Catholic: largely the same books, called deuterocanonical and fixed by Trent, minus the four the Orthodox add
Protestant: the Apocrypha: edifying, not inspired, and printed apart or not at all

Set against apocrypha, deuterocanon

Confession of Dositheus

The eighteen decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672, held at Bethlehem under Dositheos II Notaras, Patriarch of Jerusalem, against the Calvinist confession published in 1629 under the name of Cyril Lucaris. A regional synod, not an ecumenical council: the whole Church has not received it, parts of it have been set aside, and Orthodox writers read it in the light of Tradition as a whole. Cite it as the Synod of Jerusalem said, never as what the Orthodox Church has defined.

Eastern Orthodox

The communion of the churches in union with the ancient patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, holding the faith of the seven ecumenical councils and reading Scripture within the Church's Tradition. It counts itself the Church, not a denomination, and it does not close the age of the Fathers: Palamas in the fourteenth century and Mark of Ephesus in the fifteenth are Fathers to it. Infallibility rests in Scripture and in the doctrinal definitions of the ecumenical councils; everything else binds only as the whole Church receives it.

Set against Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, Roman Catholic

essence-energies distinction

The Eastern Orthodox teaching, formulated by Gregory Palamas and defined by the Council of Constantinople of 1351, that God's essence is imparticipable and unknowable while his energies, his uncreated activities, are truly participated in; the usual Eastern Orthodox reply to absolute divine simplicity. The Synodal Tomos of that council (PG 151, 717-762) settles six questions in six chapters: that essence and energy are distinguished in God; that the energy is uncreated; that the distinction introduces no composition, the divine simplicity being preserved with it; that the name divinity is set upon the energy no less than upon the essence; that the essence is imparticipable and the grace and energy participable; and that God, inconceivable in his essence, is participable by the worthy in his deifying energy. The council grounded this on the Sixth Ecumenical Council's definition of the two energies and two wills of Christ. Its chapters entered the Synodikon of Orthodoxy in 1352 and are read every year on the Sunday of Orthodoxy.

Roman Catholic: Rome has defined nothing under this name; the collision is at the beatific vision. Benedict XII, quoted at CCC 1023, defines that the blessed "have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature", and Vatican I's Dei Filius ch. 1 calls God "completely simple". Deification itself is not in dispute: CCC 460 keeps "the Son of God became man so that we might become God".

Set against absolute divine simplicity

holy tradition

The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic principle that scripture is read within the tradition of the Church that received it. Jeremias II gave the operative test in his First Answer to the Lutherans (1576): the Fathers who bind are those "whom the Catholic Church of Christ has received by unanimous consent"; tradition is a criterion, not an archive, and its remedy for error is corporate, "to walk in step with the holy Synods, and to follow the canons of the Apostles."

Roman Catholic: Agreed, in the same words: CCC 80 has Scripture and Tradition "flowing out from the same divine well-spring", CCC 113 tells the reader to read Scripture "within 'the living Tradition of the whole Church'". The difference is the criterion, not the principle: where the Orthodox test is what the Church has received by unanimous consent, CCC 85 locates authentic interpretation in one organ, the bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome.

Set against right of private judgment, sola scriptura

spiritual delusion

Prelest (plani): in Orthodox ascetic teaching, a false spiritual state in which a person takes his own imagination, emotion, or a demonic influence for the working of grace. Guarding against it is a standard reason Orthodox writers distrust private religious experience as a proof. The primary Greek text is Diadochos of Photike, One Hundred Chapters 36 and 40 (Philokalia, Astir vol. A, pp. 244-246): the inner sense of grace is "not to be doubted", but any shaped appearance, "a light, or some fiery shape, or a voice", is "a manifest deceit of the enemy" and is to be refused outright, and refusing a true vision costs nothing (ch. 38). The refusal is of form, not of experience. Nikodemos, in the Philokalia’s own preface, answers the charge that the prayer breeds delusion: the cause is "not following the Fathers’ teaching exactly", "not the work itself, far from it; for it is holy, and it is rather through it that we need to be freed from every delusion".

Roman Catholic: The Catechism has no direct equivalent — neither "delusion" nor "discernment of spirits" occurs in it. The nearest are institutional: CCC 2690 on spiritual direction, warning with St John of the Cross against a director with no experience of the spiritual life, and CCC 801, that "discernment of charisms is always necessary" and none is exempt from submission to the Church's shepherds. The developed Roman Catholic apparatus is Ignatius's Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, which the Catechism does not cite for this.

synergism

The teaching that salvation involves a co-operation (synergeia) between God’s grace and the free response of the human will, grace always having the initiative. The fifth-century text is Mark the Monk, On those who think they are justified by works 61 (Philokalia, Astir vol. A, p. 118 ff.): "Grace has been given mystically to those baptised in Christ; but it works in proportion to the keeping of the commandments. Secretly grace never ceases to help us; but it lies with us to do the good according to our power." Both halves stand in one author, in a work written against justification by works.

Roman Catholic: Agreed in substance, without the Greek word. CCC 1993: "Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom", and, quoting Trent, "man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God's grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice". Grace keeps the initiative absolutely: "the preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace" (CCC 2001). Trent Session VI canon 4 anathematises denying that co-operation.

Set against monergism

Empiricist15 terms

absence of evidence: Sagan: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", offered as the corrective to the appeal to ignorance. Sagan classes the appeal to ignorance as a fallacy in both directions, "and vice versa".
baloney detection kit: Sagan's list of tools for sceptical thinking, The Demon-Haunted World ch. 12. Includes "in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts", which binds the naturalist's own appeals to consensus.
conventionalist stratagem: Popper's name for rescuing a falsified theory "by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption", at "the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status". Applies to any theory, and a judge should be willing to name it on either side.
evidentialism: The view that entitlement to believe depends on the evidence and nothing else. Clifford's form: "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Clifford's argument for it is moral, not epistemic, and his own system admits testimony under three conditions.
falsifiability: Popper: "the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability." It sorts scientific from non-scientific. Popper holds untestable theories to be "metaphysical" and "not meaningless", and never claimed the criterion tracked truth.
hitchens' razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" (Slate, 2003). It says can also be, a permission, not an obligation, and it says nothing about the claim being false.
methodological naturalism: Two different theses share the name. In philosophy (Papineau's sense): the view that "philosophy and science are engaged in essentially the same enterprise". In philosophy of religion: "the view that religious commitments have no relevance within science". The SEP names both and hands the second to philosophers of religion, most of whom hold it while denying that it entails atheism. Never let the two be swapped mid-debate.
peer review: Nature Portfolio: it "is designed to select technically valid research of significant interest"; referees "identify flaws, suggest improvements and assess novelty". The same policy says editors "do not expect peer review to ferret out cleverly concealed, deliberate deceptions", that decisions are "not a matter of counting votes", and that heterodox papers "bear a far greater burden of proof".
risky prediction: Popper: confirmations count "only if they are the result of risky predictions", where without the theory "we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory". The real test; a confirmation that was not risky is not, on Popper's rule, evidence for anything.
sagan standard: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." The phrase is not in The Demon-Haunted World; verified absent. Cite it as Hitchens has it, or find the Cosmos page.
science stopper: Kenneth Miller's phrase, quoted in Kitzmiller: "attributing unsolved problems about nature to causes and forces that lie outside the natural world". A pragmatic objection about research practice, not a claim that supernatural explanations are false; the same opinion says ID "may be true".
scientific consensus: The state of agreement among researchers in a field. No source read here treats it as an authority. Sagan denies there are authorities in science; Clifford's rule requires whoever appeals to it to say who did the knowing.
scientism: The thesis that science is the only route to knowledge. Not asserted by any document read for this pass, and the Amsterdam Declaration says the opposite: "while science provides the means, human values must define the ends". Do not attribute it without a quotation.
the dragon in the garage: Sagan's parable, The Demon-Haunted World ch. 10, about a claim insulated from every test. Its point is testability, not burden: "Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true."
the ethics of belief: The question of whether believing is subject to moral duty at all; Clifford's essay of that name is the founding text on this side. Clifford says belief is never "a private matter which concerns himself alone". Opponents of evidentialism, chiefly William James, answered him; James was not read for this pass.

Greek philosophy24 terms

act and potency: Aristotle's distinction between what a thing is actually and what it can become; the engine of change, and of Thomist arguments for God as pure act.
apologia / apologist: A reasoned public defense, and the second-century Christian writers who wrote them: Justin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Minucius Felix. Their books are addressed to emperors and educated pagans, so they answer the charge as it was actually made, which is why they are the best evidence for what it was.
aristotelian: Aristotle's metaphysics: substances composed of form and matter, changing by the actualisation of potency, known through their causes.
asebeia: Impiety: the failure to render the gods what worship owes them. This, not atheism, is the name of the Athenian offence. The crime is asebeia; atheos is what the defendant is called. A debater who says Socrates was tried for atheism has named the insult rather than the charge.
atheos: "Without gods", godless: a- privative on theos. In classical use an insult and a legal characterisation, not the name of a philosophical school. Both a cult sense and an existence sense are attested. Socrates puts the existence sense to Meletus at Apology 26c; the indictment as sworn uses the cult sense.
atheotes: Godlessness; the noun Cassius Dio uses for the charge on which Flavius Clemens was executed in 95. It fell on people who "drifted into Jewish ways", so it cannot have meant denying that any god exists.
daimonia: Spiritual beings, divinities; the "new divinities" Socrates was accused of introducing, and the "demons" the Christian apologists identify the pagan gods with. The apologists' claim that the pagan gods are real demons has no counterpart in modern atheism, and is what makes their "atheism" a change of allegiance rather than a denial.
diagoras of melos: The classical byword for a real atheist, condemned at Athens; the apologists concede he deserved the name. Athenagoras' account gives four charges against him and only the last, "openly declared that there was no God at all", is about existence.
epicureanism: The school of Epicurus, which held that gods exist, are blessed and immortal, and take no interest in human affairs. Routinely called atheist, and grouped with Christians in Alexander's liturgy. Epicurus' own reversal, the impious man is the one who "affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them", is the move the Christian apologists later reuse.
eusebeia: Piety, the opposite of asebeia: right observance toward gods, parents and city. Athenagoras diagnoses his accusers as those "who measure piety by the rule of sacrifices", which is his own account of the criterion behind the charge.
euthyna: The audit every Athenian magistrate submitted to on leaving office, before the euthynoi: an accounting of what he had done with what was entrusted to him. From euthyno, to straighten. Here, the reckoning for a stream that aired with no opponent in the room — the advocate answers its claims afterwards, against the sources.
hylomorphism: Aristotle's account of things as compounds of matter and form.
metaphysics: What a debater takes to be fundamentally real, and how things are what they are; the unstated ground much of the arguing stands on.
neoplatonism: The late-antique development of Plato, from Plotinus onward: all things emanate from and participate in the One; the shared background of much patristic theology.
nomizein: To acknowledge, hold in customary honour, practise the usage of; usually translated "believe in". The verb in the indictment of Socrates. It carries observance as much as assent, which is why "does not believe in the gods of the state" is a charge about worship.
odium humani generis: "Hatred against mankind": what Tacitus says the Christians were convicted of after the fire of 64. Not a doctrinal charge. It names withdrawal from the sacrifices, games, feasts and oaths that constituted public life.
ostrakon: The potsherd Athenians voted with to exile a citizen for ten years; the mark of the Demagogue tier here.
participation: The Platonic and Neoplatonic idea that things have their qualities by sharing in a higher reality.
platonic realism: The view that universals such as justice or humanity exist in themselves, and particular things participate in them.
Set against nominalism
protagoras of abdera: Sophist whose book began "As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist." Athens expelled him and burnt his books. The nearest ancient statement to the modern agnostic-atheist position, punished exactly as denial would have been. The ancient category had no room for the distinction.
superstitio: An unauthorized, foreign or excessive cult; always pejorative in Roman use. Tacitus and Suetonius both apply it to the Christians. It is the Roman category the charge actually sat in, and it is about practice.
the sacrifice test: The procedure Pliny describes and Trajan confirms: invoke the gods in a dictated form of words, offer incense and wine to the emperor's image, curse Christ. Performing it discharged the defendant. The single best evidence that the Roman charge was about acts. Nothing in the modern definition of atheism can be discharged by an act.
theodorus of cyrene: Cyrenaic philosopher, nicknamed "the atheist" and later "god"; expelled from Athens. Diogenes Laertius says he "utterly rejected the current belief in the gods", and the occasion of his near-prosecution was a cult offence about the mysteries.
thyestean feasts / œdipodean intercourse: Cannibalism and incest, the two charges that travel with atheism in every source. Worth naming: the atheism charge was filed beside these as a public scandal, not as a philosophical position.

Hinduism9 terms

apaurusheya: (Hindu) "Not of human authorship": the Mimamsa doctrine that the Veda has no author and so cannot carry an author's error. Not read from a source in this pass; see section 7.
guru / satguru: (Hindu, Sikh) A teacher; in Sikhi, capitalised, one of the ten Gurus or the Guru Granth Sahib itself. Sikhi denies there can be a living human Guru now; the Hindu movements all require one. The same word, opposite doctrines.
parampara: (Hindu) The chain of teachers by which knowledge is transmitted (Gita IV.2). Central for Gaudiya Vaishnavas, who hold that an interpretation outside the chain is not authorized.
pramana: (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain) A valid means of knowledge. The list differs by school and by religion: Jainism counts five kinds of knowledge as pramana and excludes everything else (Tattvartha 1.10); Ramanuja argues from "perception and the other instruments of right knowledge"; Shankara holds Brahman is not available to perception or inference.
prasthanatrayi: (Hindu) The three starting points a Vedanta school must comment on: the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras. Shared. Which commentary you accept is what makes you Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita or Gaudiya.
sampradaya: (Hindu) A school with a founding commentary and a line of teachers; the unit that actually has a doctrine. Ask which one before saying what a Hindu holds.
shastra: (Hindu) Authoritative teaching; the word the Gita uses at XVI.24 for the standard a person must judge by. Its extent is the dispute. Madhva defines it narrowly and calls other works "wrong (crooked) ways (paths)".
shruti: (Hindu) "That which is heard": revelation held to be authorless and eternal, meaning the Vedas including the Upanishads. Manu II.10 puts it beyond question. Which texts stand near it differs: the Saiva position is that the Agamas are "equally revealed".
smriti: (Hindu) "That which is remembered": human-authored and subordinate, the law books, the epics, the Puranas. The Gita is smriti and is treated as shruti in practice by every Vedanta school. Manu allows conflicting shruti texts both to stand (II.14).

Islam40 terms

ahad: A solitary report, transmitted by one or few; probable rather than certain, so by the majority view it cannot by itself establish doctrine. Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others hold that ahad can yield certain knowledge. Almost every hadith in the Sahihayn is ahad.
ahl al-sunna wa'l-jama'a: The people of the sunna and the community: the Sunni self-designation. Claimed by Ash'aris, Maturidis and Atharis alike, so it identifies a debater as Sunni and tells you nothing about which school.
ahruf: The seven modes in which the Qur'an was revealed, "so recite of it whichever is easier for you" (Bukhari 4992). Shared as a hadith; the tradition disagrees internally about what an harf is.
aqida: Creed, the articles of belief, as distinct from fiqh, the law. A man's madhhab and his aqida school are separate questions. Twelver aqida includes the imamate and the infallibility of the Imams as fundamentals.
Ash'ari: The three Sunni schools of theology: two that use kalam and differ over the scope of reason, and one that refuses systematic kalam. Twelver theology is its own, closer to the Mu'tazila on the created Qur'an and on divine justice.
Athari: The three Sunni schools of theology: two that use kalam and differ over the scope of reason, and one that refuses systematic kalam. Twelver theology is its own, closer to the Mu'tazila on the created Qur'an and on divine justice.
bid'a: Innovation in religion; Bukhari 2697, "If somebody innovates something which is not in harmony with the principles of our religion, that thing is rejected." Shared as a category, and its boundary is one of the sharpest intra-Sunni disputes.
da'if: Weak: a defect in the chain or in the reporters. Several weak reports on one matter can be raised to hasan li ghayrihi.
fatwa: A qualified scholar's answer to a question of law, which is his judgment and not an act of the community. Both traditions agree the mujtahid can err; al-Nasafi's creed makes it an article: "The Mujtahid sometimes errs and sometimes hits the mark."
hadith: A single report of the sunna, chain plus text.
hasan: Good: above weak and below sound, because a reporter's memory is a degree less reliable.
ijma: Consensus of the qualified scholars of a generation, the third source, and once established it turns a probable ruling into a binding one. Sunni: consensus of the mujtahids, in practice most securely that of the Companions; Maliki usage narrows it to the consensus of Madina. Twelver: consensus matters only as evidence that it discloses the view of an infallible Imam.
ijtihad: The qualified scholar's own exertion to derive a ruling from the sources; al-Shafi'i treats it as another word for qiyas. Twelvers require a living mujtahid and hold ijtihad continuously open; the Sunni schools debate the qualifications, not the openness.
isnad: The chain of transmitters attached to a report, and the thing the whole science grades.
kalam: Systematic speculative theology. Practised by Ash'aris, Maturidis and Twelvers; refused in principle by the Atharis.
khabar al-wahid: A solitary report, transmitted by one or few; probable rather than certain, so by the majority view it cannot by itself establish doctrine. Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others hold that ahad can yield certain knowledge. Almost every hadith in the Sahihayn is ahad.
madhhab: A school of law, preserved and extended by its founder's students; four survive among Sunnis. The Twelver school is the Ja'fari, named for the sixth Imam, and is not one of the four.
marja': The senior living jurist a Twelver follows, and the institution of such following. Twelver only. There is no Sunni equivalent, and calling a Sunni scholar a marja' is a category error.
marja'iyya: The senior living jurist a Twelver follows, and the institution of such following. Twelver only. There is no Sunni equivalent, and calling a Sunni scholar a marja' is a category error.
matn: The text of a report as distinct from its chain.
Maturidi: The three Sunni schools of theology: two that use kalam and differ over the scope of reason, and one that refuses systematic kalam. Twelver theology is its own, closer to the Mu'tazila on the created Qur'an and on divine justice.
mawdu': Fabricated. The bottom of the scale, and a distinct verdict from weak.
mujtahid: A scholar qualified to derive rulings directly from the sources. Twelver: must be living to be followed, and the most learned available.
muqallid: One who follows a mujtahid without knowing the evidence.
mushaf: A written copy of the Qur'an, as against the recited text; the Uthmanic mushaf is the fixed consonantal skeleton.
mutawatir: Transmitted by so many at every stage that collusion in a lie is inconceivable, and therefore yielding certain knowledge. Shared as a concept. Applied differently: Sunnis call the seven and ten qira'at mutawatir; Twelvers apply it to reports from the Imams as well as the Prophet.
qira'at: The canonical variant readings, seven by Ibn Mujahid's reckoning and ten as usually extended; Hafs from 'Asim and Warsh from Nafi' are the two in common use. islamqa.info 178120 calls them mutawatir by consensus; islamqa.info 5142 calls the number seven Ibn Mujahid's ijtihad and identifying ahruf with qira'at "a mistake".
qiyas: Analogy, the fourth source: extending a ruling from a case the texts settle to one they do not, on a shared effective cause. Rejected by the Zahiris and by the Akhbari Twelvers; the Usuli Twelvers accept only the narrow forms where the cause is stated in the text.
sahih: Sound: a continuous chain of trustworthy, retentive reporters, free of irregularity in the text and defect in the chain (Ibn al-Salah). The Twelver grading scheme is different in kind, and turns on whether the reporters are Imami, so a Twelver "sahih" is not a Sunni "sahih".
Sahihayn: The two Sahihs, of al-Bukhari and Muslim, whose agreement is the highest Sunni grade. No Twelver equivalent; the Four Books were never held sahih in their entirety by the mainstream.
Six Books: The six Sunni collections that head the corpus: al-Bukhari, Muslim, al-Nasa'i, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah. The Twelver equivalent is the Four Books: al-Kafi, Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih, Tahdhib al-Ahkam, al-Istibsar.
sunna: The Prophet's example, word and approval, the second source, carried in the hadith. Twelvers extend the sunna to the words and acts of the twelve Imams.
ta'wil: Interpreting a text away from its apparent sense, above all the divine attributes. Allowed by Ash'aris and Maturidis within limits; forbidden by Ibn Taymiyya's Wasitiyya, which requires belief "without tahrif, nor ta'til, nor takyif, nor tamthil".
tahrif: Distortion of scripture, in two forms the tradition distinguishes: tahrif al-nass, of the text, and tahrif al-ma'na, of the meaning. Applied by Muslims to the Bible. Twelvers are accused of applying it to the Qur'an, and al-Saduq's creed denies it: "he who asserts that we say that it is greater in extent than this is a liar."
taqiyya: Prudential concealment of belief under threat. A Twelver doctrine with a chapter of its own in al-Saduq's creed; a much narrower and disputed concept among Sunnis, and routinely misdescribed by opponents as licence to lie.
taqlid: Following a qualified scholar's ruling without knowing its evidence. Sunni: contested, from "not obligatory to follow any particular madhhab" (islamqa.info) to "everyone else's obligation is taqlid" (Ibn Rajab). Twelver: obligatory in law for a non-mujtahid, and forbidden in the fundamentals of religion.
thaqalayn: The two weighty things the Prophet left, in the hadith both traditions cite. Sahih Muslim 2408a has the Book held fast to and the household commended; the Twelver form puts the Book and the household on a level. Name the collection.
Twelve Imams: The twelve successors Twelvers hold to be divinely appointed, infallible, and the continuing authority after the Prophet. Twelver only. Sunnis honour the Prophet's household and hold no imamate doctrine.
usul al-din: The fundamentals of religion, as against the branches. Twelver: taqlid is forbidden here and belief must rest on personal insight (al-Sistani, Ruling 1).
usul al-fiqh: The science of the roots of law: what the sources of a ruling are and in what order they are consulted. Twelver usul has four sources but replaces qiyas with 'aql, reason.

Jainism9 terms

agama: (Jain (also Hindu, in a different sense)) The Jain canonical scriptures. Svetambaras hold them valid; Digambaras hold the originals lost. In Saiva Hinduism Agama means something else entirely, a class of scripture the Himalayan Academy calls "equally revealed" with the Veda. False friend.
anekantavada: (Jain) "Not-one-sidedness": reality has infinitely many aspects, so any single assertion states one of them. Grounded in Tattvartha 5.32. Not relativism: pramana is "comprehensive and absolute", naya "partial and relative".
digambara / svetambara: (Jain) "Sky-clad" and "white-clad": the two great Jain communities. They differ on the canon, on whether a woman can attain liberation in this life, on whether an omniscient being eats, and on the biography of Mahavira, but Jainworld's own summary says "there are no fundamental doctrinal differences between the two sects".
kevalajnana: (Jain) Omniscience, the highest of the five kinds of knowledge. The real warrant for Jain doctrine, which is why the loss of the Agamas did not end the Digambara tradition.
naya: (Jain) A standpoint: a deliberately partial view of a substance, of which seven are named at Tattvartha 1.33. Require a Jain debater to name which one he is using.
saptabhangi: (Jain) The sevenfold predication: is; is not; is and is not; is indeterminate; and the three combinations. The formal shape of syadvada.
syadvada: (Jain) "The doctrine of maybe": every assertion is qualified by syat, "from a certain point of view". An unnamed syat is an evasion by the tradition's own rules, since a naya has a name and a defined scope.
tattvartha sutra: (Jain) Umasvati's summary of Jain doctrine, "the most authoritative sacred text of all Jainas". Accepted by both sects. The one Jain authority quotable against any Jain.
tirthankara: (Jain) A "ford-maker": one of the twenty-four omniscient teachers of an age, of whom Mahavira is the twenty-fourth. Shared.

Judaism49 terms

"defiles the hands": The Mishnah's criterion of canonicity: a book that renders the hands ritually impure is holy Scripture (Yadayim 3:5). Shared. The criterion is ritual, not doctrinal, and it is the closest thing to a Jewish canon test.
aggadah: Everything in the rabbinic corpus that is not law: narrative, ethics, theology, exegesis. Shared as a category. Aggadah does not bind as law, which is the standard Jewish reply when a hostile quotation from the Talmud turns out to be aggadic.
Ani Ma'amin: "I believe": the liturgical form of the Thirteen Principles, printed in the Ashkenazi prayer book after the morning service. The reason the principles function as a creed in Orthodox practice rather than as one philosopher's list.
avodah zarah: Foreign worship, idolatry; also the name of the Talmudic tractate on it. Shared as a category. Whether Christianity falls under it for a gentile is the shituf question above.
baraita: A tannaitic teaching from the Mishnah's period that was not included in the Mishnah, quoted in the Talmud as "the Sages taught".
da'as Torah: The doctrine that the judgment of the great living Torah sages binds beyond strictly legal questions. Haredi. Modern Orthodoxy is cooler toward it, and Conservative and Reform do not hold it. Not read from a Haredi source in this pass.
Emet Ve-Emunah: "Truth and Faith": the Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism, 1988. The movement's only platform document. Neither the Rabbinical Assembly nor United Synagogue currently serves it; it survives in the Internet Archive.
eved: The figure of Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Rashi and Ibn Ezra read Israel; Targum Jonathan reads the Messiah at 52:13 and reassigns the suffering; the Christian reading is Jesus. Three readings, two of them Jewish.
Gemara: The rabbinic discussion of the Mishnah, which together with it makes a Talmud.
ger toshav: "Resident alien": a gentile who formally accepts the seven Noahide laws before three Torah scholars. Maimonides' term; the status has no practical application without a Jewish polity.
halakha: Jewish law: the norms that say how one lives as a Jew, derived from Scripture, the Talmud, the codes and the responsa. Orthodox: binding and immutable in its Torah core. Conservative: binding, and its authority attaches "to the body of the law, not to each law separately", changeable by rabbinic decision. Reform: mitzvot are real obligations that address the individual, not a binding legal system. Reconstructionist: a set of folkways to be reconstructed.
Haredi: Strictly traditionalist Orthodoxy, often called ultra-Orthodox by outsiders; its own account of authority is *da'as Torah*, the binding judgment of the leading living sages. Publishes no platform, so a Haredi debater will have no document to be held to. Ask which posek he follows.
ikkar: A fundamental of belief. Whether Judaism has ikkarim at all is the argument between Maimonides and Mendelssohn, and both are inside the tradition.
Karaite: A Jew who accepts the Tanakh and rejects the Oral Torah, placing interpretation on the individual. The one Jewish position with no second tier at all, and the reason "the Bible alone" is a real Jewish option and not only a Christian import.
mara d'atra: The local rabbinic authority, literally "master of the place", whose ruling governs his own community. The CJLS names this explicitly to say its own teshuvot do not override a congregational rabbi. Orthodoxy uses the same concept.
Mashiach: The Messiah: a human king of the line of David who restores the kingdom, builds the Temple and gathers the exiles. Maimonides' twelfth principle for Orthodoxy. Reform 1885 replaced him with "Israel's great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men".
Masoretic Text: The received Hebrew text of the Tanakh, with vowels, accents and marginal notes fixed by the Masoretes between roughly the seventh and tenth centuries. Shared by all Jewish movements as the text. The tradition's own account of how it was fixed involves choosing a majority reading among differing scrolls, and the Talmud says later generations could no longer count the letters.
Masorti: The name Conservative Judaism uses outside North America. Same movement, and the Rabbinical Assembly uses both names.
midrash: Rabbinic interpretation of Scripture; *midrash halakha* derives law, *midrash aggadah* derives everything else. Also the name of the collections, Bereshit Rabbah, the Mekhilta, Sifra, Sifre. Shared as a corpus. What weight it carries against a plain-sense reading is exactly what a Jewish-Christian debate about a proof text is arguing over.
Mishnah: The first written statement of the Oral Torah, compiled by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi about 200 CE in six orders.
Mishneh Torah: Maimonides' code (c. 1180), the whole Oral Law stated as settled law without its arguments. Authoritative for Orthodox and Conservative alike as a code, and it carries the Ra'avad's dissent in its own margins.
Modern Orthodox: Orthodoxy that holds the halakha binding and engages secular learning and civil society; in North America the Rabbinical Council of America is its rabbinic body. Has a published platform, the RCA Core Principles, and can be held to it.
Noahide laws: The seven commandments Maimonides says bind all humanity: no idolatry, no blasphemy, no murder, no sexual immorality, no theft, no eating flesh from a living animal, and the duty to establish courts. Shared list. Maimonides attaches a condition all movements do not press equally: a gentile who keeps them out of reason rather than because God commanded them through Moses is not counted among "the pious among the gentiles".
Oral Torah: The explanation of the Written Torah, held to have been given with it at Sinai and transmitted by word of mouth until written down as the Mishnah and Talmud. Accepted by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform in different senses; rejected outright by Karaites, which is what defines them.
peshat / derash: The plain sense of a verse, and the interpreted sense. Shared. Rashi is the classical master of both and says which he is doing; a debater who cites Rashi should say which.
pl. *ikkarim: A fundamental of belief. Whether Judaism has ikkarim at all is the argument between Maimonides and Mendelssohn, and both are inside the tradition.
pl. *marei d'atra: The local rabbinic authority, literally "master of the place", whose ruling governs his own community. The CJLS names this explicitly to say its own teshuvot do not override a congregational rabbi. Orthodoxy uses the same concept.
pl. *poskim: A decisor: a rabbi qualified to rule on questions of halakha. Orthodox and Conservative both have poskim. Reform and Reconstructionist do not use the office in the same sense. No posek is infallible in any movement.
pl. *teshuvot: A responsum; also, unrelatedly, repentance. Context decides. In Conservative usage, a paper voted on by the CJLS; six of twenty-five votes make it an official position.
posek: A decisor: a rabbi qualified to rule on questions of halakha. Orthodox and Conservative both have poskim. Reform and Reconstructionist do not use the office in the same sense. No posek is infallible in any movement.
Rema: Rabbi Moses Isserles (d. 1572), whose glosses to the Shulchan Aruch supply Ashkenazi practice; his gloss is called the *mappah*, the tablecloth on Karo's set table. The Rema's gloss at Orach Chayim 156:1 is the classical source for shituf.
responsa: Written answers to specific legal questions; the case law of halakha, running from the Geonim to the present. Orthodox responsa are individual. Conservative *teshuvot* are voted on by the CJLS, and six votes of twenty-five make a position official, so more than one may stand at once. Reform responsa are advisory by their own account.
Sanhedrin: The supreme court of seventy-one in Jerusalem, "the essence of the Oral Law" (Maimonides), which alone could decide for all Israel. Defunct since antiquity in every movement's view. Its absence is why Judaism has no organ that can define, which is a structural fact and not a defect.
sefarim hitzonim: "External books": the works excluded from the canon, the nearest Jewish term to the Christian apocrypha. Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1 says one who reads them has no share in the World to Come. Shared exclusion. The Mishnah does not list which books, and there is no Jewish conciliar act closing the canon.
she'elot u-teshuvot: Written answers to specific legal questions; the case law of halakha, running from the Geonim to the present. Orthodox responsa are individual. Conservative *teshuvot* are voted on by the CJLS, and six votes of twenty-five make a position official, so more than one may stand at once. Reform responsa are advisory by their own account.
sheva mitzvot benei Noach: The seven commandments Maimonides says bind all humanity: no idolatry, no blasphemy, no murder, no sexual immorality, no theft, no eating flesh from a living animal, and the duty to establish courts. Shared list. Maimonides attaches a condition all movements do not press equally: a gentile who keeps them out of reason rather than because God commanded them through Moses is not counted among "the pious among the gentiles".
shituf: "Association": worshipping the true God together with something else. The Rema's gloss holds that gentiles "are not warned against shituf", which is why Christian worship is not idolatry for a gentile in Ashkenazi practice. It remains forbidden for a Jew, and Sephardi authorities are not uniformly with the Rema.
Shloshah Asar Ikkarim: Maimonides' thirteen foundations of Jewish belief, from his Commentary on the Mishnah at Sanhedrin 10, whose denial he says puts a man outside Israel. Orthodoxy treats them as binding and recites the Ani Ma'amin form of them daily. Mendelssohn denied Judaism has dogmas at all. Reform and Reconstructionist do not use them as a test.
Shulchan Aruch: Joseph Karo's code (1565), the standard statement of Jewish law in force, printed with the Rema's glosses. Karo rules for Sephardim, the Rema for Ashkenazim, and the two are printed as one text.
soferim: Scribes; in Kiddushin 30a, "those who count", because they counted the letters of the Torah. Also, in a different sense, the early sages whose ordinances are "words of the scribes".
Talmud: Mishnah plus Gemara; there are two, the Babylonian (*Bavli*, c. 500) and the Jerusalem (*Yerushalmi*, c. 400). The Babylonian outranks the Jerusalem where they conflict, and Maimonides says only the Babylonian binds all Israel.
Tanakh: The Hebrew Bible, an acronym for its three divisions, Torah, Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings), twenty-four books in the Jewish counting. Shared by every movement including Karaites. The same books as the Protestant Old Testament in different order and counting, and fewer than the Roman Catholic or Orthodox.
Targum: An ancient Aramaic translation and paraphrase of Scripture, read in synagogue; Targum Onkelos on the Torah, Targum Jonathan on the Prophets. Shared, and older than any commentator. Targum Jonathan calls the servant of Isaiah 52:13 "my servant the messiah", which both sides of the Isaiah 53 debate need.
teshuvah: A responsum; also, unrelatedly, repentance. Context decides. In Conservative usage, a paper voted on by the CJLS; six of twenty-five votes make it an official position.
the servant: The figure of Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Rashi and Ibn Ezra read Israel; Targum Jonathan reads the Messiah at 52:13 and reassigns the suffering; the Christian reading is Jesus. Three readings, two of them Jewish.
Thirteen Principles: Maimonides' thirteen foundations of Jewish belief, from his Commentary on the Mishnah at Sanhedrin 10, whose denial he says puts a man outside Israel. Orthodoxy treats them as binding and recites the Ani Ma'amin form of them daily. Mendelssohn denied Judaism has dogmas at all. Reform and Reconstructionist do not use them as a test.
Torah: The five books of Moses; and, in wider use, the whole of Jewish teaching, written and oral. Orthodoxy holds it dictated to Moses; Conservative *Emet Ve-Emunah* affirms revelation while rejecting "fundamentalism and literalism, which do not admit a human component"; Reform 1937 calls it "Israel's ever-growing consciousness of God".
Torah min ha-shamayim: "Torah from Heaven": the doctrine that the Torah is God's, Maimonides' eighth principle. Orthodox: dictated. Conservative: revelation with a human component, and *Emet Ve-Emunah* records more than one view inside the movement. Reform 1937: continuous revelation, "confined to no one group and to no one age".
Torah she-be'al peh: The explanation of the Written Torah, held to have been given with it at Sinai and transmitted by word of mouth until written down as the Mishnah and Talmud. Accepted by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform in different senses; rejected outright by Karaites, which is what defines them.

Logic and fallacy42 terms

ad hominem: Attacking the person in place of answering the argument, where the attack is beside the point or backed by nothing specific. A jab alongside a real answer is not one; nor is pointing at a speaker's record when his claim rests on it.
appeal to authority: Citing someone's standing as proof when the standing does not bear on the question, or no reason for his view is given.
appeal to emotion: Letting a feeling carry a conclusion that no reason has been given for.
appeal to popularity: Treating a claim as true because many believe it.
argument from ignorance: Treating a claim as true because it has not been proven false, or the reverse.
authority for argument: Citing someone's standing as proof when the standing does not bear on the question, or no reason for his view is given.
bare assertion: A contested claim stated as settled fact with nothing offered for it, then leaned on.
begging the question: Assuming the conclusion in the premises; arguing in a circle.
burden of proof: The rule that the one who asserts must support the assertion. Sagan: "The burden of proof surely rests on the shoulders of those who advance such claims." Aron Ra grounds it in the null hypothesis, and states his own premise: it works "if both sides already accept that we have a natural world of material energy".
counterexample: Refuting a general claim with a single clear case it does not survive.
equivocation: Using one word in two senses within an argument so the conclusion seems to follow.
false cause: Taking one thing to have caused another because it came first or came with it.
false dilemma: Presenting two options as the only ones when others exist.
false equivalence: Treating two things as alike when they differ in the respect the argument depends on.
genetic fallacy: Judging a claim by where it came from rather than by its merits.
gish gallop: Flooding the exchange with more claims than can be answered, then treating the unanswered ones as won.
hasty generalisation: Drawing a broad conclusion from too few cases.
hasty generalization: Drawing a broad conclusion from too few cases.
loaded question: A question that cannot be answered without granting something in dispute.
misrepresentation: Stating that the opponent said something the transcript shows they did not.
motte-and-bailey: Advancing a bold claim, then retreating to a modest one when challenged as if they were the same.
moving the goalposts: Changing what would count as proof after the original standard has been met.
no true scotsman: Rescuing a generalization from a counter-example by redefining the group.
non sequitur: A conclusion that does not follow from what came before it.
obscurum per obscurius: The obscure by the more obscure: language that asserts nothing on the question, delivered as though it settled it, and answered, when asked what it means, with more of the same. Quintilian's obscuritas: he tells of a teacher whose word to his pupils was "skotison", make it dark, and of pupils who praised what they could not understand (Institutio Oratoria 8.2.18).
poisoning the well: Attacking the person in place of answering the argument, where the attack is beside the point or backed by nothing specific. A jab alongside a real answer is not one; nor is pointing at a speaker's record when his claim rests on it.
proof text: Citing a source's words for a position the source, read in context, does not hold. Of Scripture, it is proof texting.
proof texting: Citing a source's words for a position the source, read in context, does not hold. Of Scripture, it is proof texting.
quote mine: Citing a source's words for a position the source, read in context, does not hold. Of Scripture, it is proof texting.
quote mined: Citing a source's words for a position the source, read in context, does not hold. Of Scripture, it is proof texting.
quote mining: Citing a source's words for a position the source, read in context, does not hold. Of Scripture, it is proof texting.
red herring: Changing the subject to something that sounds related but does not bear on the question.
self-contradiction: Contradicting one's own earlier claim or recorded position without acknowledging it.
shifting the burden: Answering a demand for reasons by demanding that the opponent disprove the claim instead.
slippery slope: Claiming one step leads inevitably to a chain of bad ones, without showing why.
special pleading: Holding the opponent to a standard while exempting one's own like case, with no relevant difference given.
straw man: Restating the opponent's position as something weaker or more extreme than what they said, then attacking that.
tu quoque: "You too": answering a charge by pointing at the accuser, or at someone else, doing the same, instead of addressing it.
unsupported assertion: A contested claim stated as settled fact with nothing offered for it, then leaned on.
unsupported claim: A contested claim stated as settled fact with nothing offered for it, then leaned on.
unsupported slippery slope: Claiming one step leads inevitably to a chain of bad ones, without showing why.
whataboutism: "You too": answering a charge by pointing at the accuser, or at someone else, doing the same, instead of addressing it.

Materialist3 terms

causal closure of the physical: The doctrine "according to which all physical effects have fully physical causes" (SEP), which is the main argument for ontological naturalism. The SEP dates it to the mid-twentieth century, not to Newton, and says mechanism's fall meant "science ceased to raise any objections to dualism".
naturalism: The view that reality is exhausted by nature; the Stanford Encyclopedia opens by saying the word "has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy" and declines to fix one. Deliberately unfixed by the position's own reference work. Ask a debater which component he holds.
ontological naturalism: The component "concerned with the contents of reality, asserting that reality has no place for 'supernatural' or other 'spooky' kinds of entity" (SEP). Also called metaphysical or philosophical naturalism. This one carries a burden of proof; the methodological component does not.

Objectivist1 term

UPB: Universally preferable behaviour: Stefan Molyneux's attempt at a secular ethics, arguing that any moral rule must be capable of being held by everyone at once, and that rules failing that test refute themselves.

Oriental Orthodox28 terms

81 books: The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon, 46 Old Testament and 35 New Testament by the church's own count, the widest in Christendom. Includes Jubilees and Enoch in the Old Testament and eight books past Revelation in the New, among them Sirate Tsion, the book of Clement and the Didascalia.
anaphora: The eucharistic prayer; in the Ethiopian rite there are fourteen, and the church argues doctrine out of them. Named as a doctrinal authority in the Ethiopian church's own dogmatic exposition, including an Anaphora of St Dioscorus.
Catholicos: The title of the head of a church of the East, older than and distinct from Patriarch. Used by the Armenians (of All Armenians, and of the Great House of Cilicia), by the Malankara Orthodox, and by the Assyrian Church of the East, whose head is Catholicos-Patriarch. It does not mean the same rank in each.
Chalcedon: The council of 451 whose definition says Christ is made known in two natures, and the point of division for the Oriental Orthodox. Fourth ecumenical council for the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics; not received by the Oriental Orthodox; treated by the Assyrian Church of the East as a canonical Western synod, more warmly than Ephesus.
Christotokos: Christ-bearer, the alternative title associated with Nestorius. Named on the Coptic official site as Nestorius's substitution; the Assyrian Church's own formula is closer to this than to Theotokos, though it adds "our God and Saviour".
dyophysite: Two natures: the Chalcedonian doctrine that Christ is made known in two natures, divine and human, in one hypostasis. Held by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and most Protestants. The Ethiopian church's own page uses "Dyophysites" for them without hostility.
Fetha Negast: "The Law of the Kings", the Ge'ez law book named among the Ethiopian church's books of church administration. Named on the church's own site; not read.
Haymanote Abew: "The Faith of the Fathers", the Ethiopian patristic collection, named by the church as the first of its theological books. Named on the church's own site; not read.
Holy Synod: The assembly of a church's bishops, which is where a question is actually settled in every church in this file. For the Armenians the supreme body is instead the National Ecclesiastical Assembly, which elects the Catholicos and adopts the constitution.
hypostasis: The concrete individual subsisting thing; in Christology, the person of the Word who is the one subject of everything Christ does. Oriental Orthodox usage treats physis and hypostasis as interchangeable when speaking of Christ, which is why "two natures" reads to them as "two hypostases". Chalcedonian usage keeps them apart. Say which usage is in play.
Jacobite: A name for the Syriac Orthodox, from Jacob Baradaeus. Rejected by the Syriac Orthodox Church as "a name used by the adversaries of the church", but used of themselves by Syriac Orthodox Christians in India. Never use it of the Syriac Orthodox of Antioch; it is not an insult in Kerala.
Malankara: The Syriac Christian tradition of Kerala, India. Splits into the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, whose Catholicos of the East at Kottayam is "The Supreme Head of the Church", and the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church under the Patriarch of Antioch. Name which one.
mia physis tou Theou Logou sesarkomene: Cyril of Alexandria's formula, "the one incarnate nature of God the Word", the whole basis of Oriental Orthodox Christology. The 1989 agreed statement says both families own the formula; the 1990 statement says the Eastern Orthodox "also use this terminology". The dispute is over what it licenses, not over whether Cyril said it.
miaphysite: From Greek mia, one as a composite unity: the doctrine that after the union there is one incarnate nature of God the Word, composed of divinity and humanity, neither absorbed. The Oriental Orthodox word for themselves. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics accept it as an accurate label without accepting the doctrine.
monophysite: From Greek monos, one alone: the doctrine, ascribed to Eutyches, that Christ has one nature only, the human absorbed by the divine. Rejected by all six churches as a description of themselves and as a heresy. The Ethiopians and Syriacs reject the word; Pope Shenouda III used it of the Coptic Church while saying it had been misread. It is a reading from outside, never a definition.
non-Chalcedonian: The neutral label the Ethiopian church asks for: "these churches are best referred to as the non-Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches". Acceptable to all six. Safer than monophysite in every case.
Oriental Orthodox: The Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Malankara churches: a communion of its own since it declined the definition of Chalcedon in 451, each of its churches holding itself to be the Church. Its Christology is miaphysite, one united nature of the incarnate Word in St Cyril's phrase. Monophysite is its opponents' word, and it rejects it.
Set against Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic
parsopa: The Syriac word standing where Greek has prosopon, person. The Assyrian Church of the East confesses one parsopa, which is why it denies teaching two Sons.
Peshitta: The standard Syriac Bible, the authoritative text for the Syriac Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Maronites, the Chaldeans and the Syriac Catholics. Its New Testament has 22 books, lacking 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation; Revelation "is never read in the Syriac Orthodox Church". A Protestant arguing 27 books is arguing a different canon.
Peshitto: The standard Syriac Bible, the authoritative text for the Syriac Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Maronites, the Chaldeans and the Syriac Catholics. Its New Testament has 22 books, lacking 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation; Revelation "is never read in the Syriac Orthodox Church". A Protestant arguing 27 books is arguing a different canon.
physis: Nature. For the Oriental Orthodox, "when it is used with reference to Christ means only hypostasis, or a concrete being" (Malankara). For the Chalcedonians it is the abstract what-it-is, and two of them can subsist in one hypostasis.
qnoma: The Syriac word standing where Greek has hypostasis. The Assyrian Church of the East confesses two qnome in Christ; the Syriac Orthodox, using the same Syriac word, confess one. The word alone settles nothing; ask which church.
Qurbana Qaddisha: "Holy Offering", the Assyrian Church of the East's eucharistic liturgy, attributed to the Apostles Addai and Mari. Its anaphora famously has no explicit institution narrative, which is a live point in that church's dialogue with Rome. unchecked as to how the church itself states that.
Tewahedo: Ge'ez for "made one": the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches' own name for the union of divinity and humanity in Christ, and part of their official titles. Not disputed, but often dropped in English; "Ethiopian Orthodox Church" without Tewahedo omits the church's own confession from its own name.
Tewahido: Ge'ez for "made one": the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches' own name for the union of divinity and humanity in Christ, and part of their official titles. Not disputed, but often dropped in English; "Ethiopian Orthodox Church" without Tewahedo omits the church's own confession from its own name.
theoria mone: "In thought alone": the 1990 agreed statement's formula for how the two natures are distinguished after the union. The Oriental Orthodox accept the two-natures formula only on this condition; the Eastern Orthodox accept it as their own meaning. Whether it does the work asked of it is contested.
Theotokos: God-bearer, the title of the Virgin defined at Ephesus in 431. Confessed by all six Oriental Orthodox churches and by the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics. The Assyrian Church of the East says "Mother of Christ our God and Saviour" instead; Rome accepted that in 1994, the Coptic Holy Synod did not.
Tome of Leo: Pope Leo I's letter of 449, received at Chalcedon. Not reached in any Oriental Orthodox source this pass; listed here because a debate will reach for it and the board has nothing on it. unchecked.

Paul and his interpreters1 term

New Perspective on Paul: The reading of Paul that E. P. Sanders opened with Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) and James Dunn and N. T. Wright defended, named by Wright in a 1978 lecture: that the Judaism of Paul's time was not a religion of earning salvation, and that by "works of the law" Paul meant the works of the Torah that marked a Jew off from a Gentile, circumcision, Sabbath and the food laws, not good works or human effort in general. Sanders, Dunn and Wright differ on why Paul set the works aside; ask which a debater means (Thomas, Paul's 'Works of the Law', pp. 3, 52 and 59-60).

Protestant28 terms

Anglican

The Church of England and its communion, of the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. Scripture "containeth all things necessary to salvation" (Article VI), the three creeds are received (VIII), and general councils "may err, and sometimes have erred" (XXI). Anglicans differ among themselves on the Fathers and the councils more sharply than any other family: ask which Anglican, and from which century.

Set against Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, Roman Catholic

apocrypha

The Protestant name for the Old Testament books printed in the Septuagint and the Vulgate but held to be edifying rather than inspired.

Roman Catholic: a different set entirely: the books no tradition receives, which Protestants call pseudepigrapha
Eastern Orthodox: usage is not settled; some writers use it as Catholics do, others of the longer canon itself

Set against anagignoskomena, deuterocanon, longer canon, pseudepigrapha

Baptist

The churches of believers' baptism, from the Second London Confession of 1689, which receives no creed, to the Southern Baptist Convention, whose Baptist Faith and Message makes confessions "only guides in interpretation, having no authority over the conscience".

Set against Reformed

election

In Reformed teaching, God's eternal choice, made in Christ before the foundation of the world and not on the basis of anything foreseen in the person, of those whom he will save.

Set against reprobation

evangelical

The broad Protestant movement of conversion, Scripture and mission, mostly without a confession. The Lausanne Covenant of 1974 calls Scripture "the only infallible rule of faith and practice", and the Chicago Statement of 1978 declines creedal weight in its own preface. Most Protestant debaters on YouTube stand here; ask what more they hold.

Set against Pentecostal, Reformed

fallible collection of infallible books

A formula associated with R. C. Sproul, granting that the church's historical act of recognising which books are Scripture was not itself an infallible act, while the books so recognised are the infallible word of God.

federal headship

The Reformed doctrine that one man can stand as covenant representative of a whole people, so that what he does is reckoned to them: Adam for the human race in his fall, Christ for the elect in his death and resurrection.

Roman Catholic: Both heads affirmed, the covenantal mechanism refused. CCC 402 has "by one man's disobedience many … were made sinners" and CCC 615 the substitution of Christ's obedience. But CCC 404 makes the transmission propagation of a nature rather than the reckoning of a representative's act — original sin is "transmitted by propagation", called sin "only in an analogical sense", "'contracted' and not 'committed' - a state and not an act" — and CCC 405 that "human nature has not been totally corrupted". Trent Session VI canon 11 anathematises justification "by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ".

five point calvinism

Adherence to the five heads of doctrine set out by the Synod of Dort (1618-19) and summarised as total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints, held as the scriptural account of how God saves.

five point calvinist

A Protestant who holds all five doctrines summarised by the acronym TULIP: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. These were framed at the Synod of Dort in answer to the Arminian articles.

Roman Catholic: Each point refused or qualified. Total depravity: CCC 405, nature "wounded", "not totally corrupted". Unconditional election: CCC 600, God's plan of predestination "includes in it each person's free response to his grace", and Trent Session VI canon 17 anathematises teaching that any are "by the divine power, predestined unto evil". Limited atonement: CCC 605, "Christ died for all men without exception". Irresistible grace: Trent VI canon 4, against the will that "cannot refuse its consent, if it would". Assurance: CCC 2005, "we cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved".

inscripturation

The committing of God's revelation to writing. On this view what is inspired in the strict sense is what God intended to be written down as Scripture, so that other workings of the Spirit, in prophecy or in councils, are not thereby part of the canon.

internal testimony of the holy spirit

The Spirit's inward witness in the believer by which he is persuaded that the Scriptures are the word of God, a certainty given directly rather than reached by argument or conferred by an ecclesiastical judgment.

limited atonement

The Calvinist doctrine that Christ’s death on the cross actually paid the sin debt of the elect alone. Also called particular or definite redemption.

Roman Catholic: Contradicted in one sentence. CCC 605 reads the "many" of Mt 20:28 as "not restrictive" and quotes the Council of Quiercy (853): "There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer." CCC 616 grounds this in the person rather than a decree: the divine person of the Son "at once surpasses and embraces all human persons", constituting himself "Head of all mankind".

Set against universalism, unlimited atonement

Lutheran

The churches of the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and the Book of Concord of 1580. Scripture alone is judge; the three creeds are pledged to; the confessions are received as witnesses, "not judges, as are the Holy Scriptures, but only a testimony and declaration of the faith" (Formula of Concord, Epitome, Rule and Norm).

Set against Anglican, Reformed

Methodist

The churches of Wesley's movement, on the Articles of Religion of 1784, which keep the Anglican article on the sufficiency of Scripture and drop the Anglican articles on the creeds and the councils; the United Methodist Church adds a stated method, Scripture read with tradition, experience and reason, Scripture primary.

Set against Anglican

monergism

The Reformed teaching that regeneration and salvation are the work of God alone, the sinner being made willing by sovereign grace and contributing nothing to his own new birth.

Set against synergism

penal substitutionary atonement

The view that on the cross Christ took the legal punishment due to sinners, satisfying divine justice in their place, so that their debt of guilt is cancelled.

Roman Catholic: Substitution and satisfaction yes, transferred punishment no. CCC 615 has Jesus accomplish "the substitution of the suffering Servant" and "made satisfaction for our sins to the Father", and Trent Session VI ch. 7 says he "made satisfaction for us unto God the Father". But CCC 603 refuses the penal frame outright — "Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned" — and CCC 616 makes the value of the sacrifice its love, not the quantity of punishment borne: "it is love 'to the end' that confers on Christ's sacrifice its value as redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction."

Set against christus victor

Pentecostal

The Assemblies of God, the Church of God and the churches of the twentieth-century revivals, holding Scripture inspired and inerrant while also holding that God still speaks in prophecy, which they rank below it: "No prophecies today carry the authority or weight of Scripture" (Assemblies of God).

Set against evangelical

Protestant

Not one body but a family of them, from the sixteenth-century Reformation onward: Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Restorationist, and the non-denominational evangelicals. Every confession among them makes the same move: Scripture is the one infallible rule, and creeds, confessions, councils and Fathers are real but subordinate authorities. Where they part is on how much that second tier binds, from the Lutheran who subscribes to his confession because it agrees with Scripture to the Churches of Christ, who hold no creed at all. Ask a Protestant debater which he is.

Set against Eastern Orthodox, Restorationist, Roman Catholic

PSA

Penal substitutionary atonement: that Christ bore the punishment due to sinners, satisfying divine justice. Held widely by the Reformed and contested by the Eastern Orthodox, who read the atonement as victory over death rather than the discharge of a penalty.

Reformed

The Presbyterian and Continental Reformed churches of the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort. Scripture is the supreme judge of controversies; councils "may err, and many have erred", and are "to be used as a help in both" faith and practice, not made the rule of either (Westminster Confession 31).

Set against Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, evangelical

regenerate

Born again: having received the new spiritual life that God gives, so that one is able to believe and to understand spiritual things. Calvinists hold that regeneration is a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit which precedes faith.

Roman Catholic: The new birth is affirmed and located in a sacrament. CCC 1213 calls baptism "the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word" and CCC 1992 has justification "conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith". Grace's priority is granted — "the preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace" (CCC 2001), and the Spirit "precedes and preserves his assent" (CCC 1993) — but a sovereign regeneration detached from baptism and made the cause of faith is not what Rome means by the word.

reprobate

In Calvinist usage, a person not among the elect, left by God in sin and destined for condemnation. The corresponding doctrine is reprobation, the negative side of predestination.

Roman Catholic: Denied as a doctrine. CCC 1037: "God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end." Trent Session VI canon 17 anathematises anyone who says the rest "are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil". Hell and predestination are both affirmed; positive reprobation is the piece that is not.

reprobation

In Reformed teaching, the other side of God's eternal decree: his passing by of those he has not chosen, leaving them in their sin and to its just punishment. The adjective "reprobate" also carries the scriptural sense of a mind given over to error.

Set against election

Restorationist

The Churches of Christ, the Disciples of Christ and the independent Christian Churches, from Thomas Campbell's Declaration and Address of 1809 and his rule, "where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent". The one Protestant family whose second tier is empty on principle: "Does the church of Christ have a creed? No."

Set against Protestant

right of private judgment

The Protestant principle that each believer may and must read and interpret Scripture for himself, under the Holy Spirit, without an ecclesiastical authority whose interpretation binds the conscience.

Eastern Orthodox: From the epilogue of Jeremias II’s First Answer to the Tübingen Lutherans (1576): "it is not permitted to us, trusting our own explanation, to understand, to consider, or to interpret any saying of divine Scripture otherwise than as it seemed good to those Theologians whom the holy Synods have approved and received; lest … the thought of our mind be carried this way and that like Proteus." The objection is not that private reading is disobedient but that it does not stay still.
Roman Catholic: Refused as stated, with the reading itself encouraged. Vatican I, Dei Filius ch. 2: "that meaning of holy scripture must be held to be the true one, which holy mother church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of holy scripture." CCC 85 gives authentic interpretation to the teaching office alone and CCC 119 subjects even the exegetes to "the judgement of the Church", closing with Augustine: "But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me."

Set against consensus of the fathers, holy tradition

sola fide

"By faith alone": the Reformation doctrine that a sinner is declared righteous before God through faith in Christ alone, apart from any merit of works, though works follow as the fruit of that faith.

Roman Catholic: Condemned at Trent in the sense Trent had before it, and partly reconciled in 1999. Trent Session VI ch. 8 keeps faith as "the beginning of human salvation, the foundation, and the root of all Justification", while canon 9 anathematises "faith alone" taken to mean nothing else is required and canon 11 justification "by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ". The 1999 Joint Declaration confesses with the Lutherans "By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God" (JD 15) and finds at JD 41 that the Lutheran teaching there set out "does not fall under the condemnations from the Council of Trent" — while JD 42 keeps those condemnations as "salutary warnings" and the 1998 Roman Catholic Response says "we cannot yet speak of a consensus such as would eliminate every difference".

sola scriptura

The Protestant principle that scripture alone is the final authority. The canon question asks how the list of scripture is itself known.

Eastern Orthodox: Answering the Augsburg Confession, Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople opened his First Answer to the Tübingen Lutherans (1576) by promising to bring forward "nothing of our own, but out of the holy seven Ecumenical Synods and out of the mind of the holy Doctors, the interpreters of the divinely inspired Scripture, whom the Catholic Church of Christ has received by unanimous consent." Scripture's inspiration was on the agreed list; what he denies is that it arrives without the Church that reads it, "according to the good and holy tradition of the Fathers, both written and unwritten." A patriarch's letters, not a council.
Roman Catholic: Rome denies the "alone". CCC 82, quoting Dei Verbum 9, holds that the Church "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence", and CCC 97 makes the two "a single sacred deposit of the Word of God". Authentic interpretation belongs to "the living teaching office of the Church alone" (CCC 85), which CCC 86 at once calls "not superior to the Word of God, but its servant".

Set against holy tradition, inerrancy

westminster confession

The doctrinal statement produced by the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s, the standard confession of Presbyterian and much of Reformed Protestantism. It sets out Scripture, predestination and the sacraments in the form most Calvinists appeal to as their subordinate standard.

Roman Catholic: No magisterial document names it. What Rome contradicts has to be taken doctrine by doctrine: its canon of Scripture against Trent Session IV, which anathematises anyone not receiving the disputed books "entire with all their parts"; its assurance against Trent Session VI ch. 9, "no one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God", and CCC 2005; its decree of reprobation against Trent VI canon 17 and CCC 1037.

Rhetoric and debate11 terms

clarification: Asking for a definition or a distinction instead of assuming one.
concession: Giving up a claim one had made, in reply to the opponent, and not taking it back.
correcting the record: Setting right something the opponent stated as fact, by saying what the record has, where the record bears him out.
direct answer: Answering the question that was actually asked.
dodge: A direct question asked twice and still not answered. Refusing to argue on the opponent's terms, when those terms are the thing in dispute and the speaker says so, is a framework objection, not a dodge.
Set against framework objection, nego suppositum
even if: Granting the opponent's claim for the sake of argument and showing his conclusion fails anyway.
evidence: Distinguishing a claim from what supports it, and citing something checkable.
explicit argument: Premises and conclusion stated plainly, so the reasoning can be checked.
fallacy spotted: Correctly naming a fallacy the opponent just committed.
steelman: Restating the opponent's position, with the reason he gave for it, well enough that he lets it stand, before answering it.
weighing: Saying which contested point decides the question, and giving a reason why it outweighs the rest.

Roman Catholic4 terms

CDF

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Roman dicastery that judges doctrine, renamed a Dicastery in 2022 and descended from the Roman Inquisition of 1542.

deuterocanon

The Roman Catholic name for the Old Testament books received as Scripture but absent from the Hebrew Bible: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additions to Esther and Daniel. The name means “second canon”, coined by Sixtus of Siena in 1566 to mark books acknowledged later in the Church’s history than the protocanonical ones; the Council of Trent affirmed them in 1546.

Eastern Orthodox: received, but under other names and in a wider list, and never dogmatically numbered
Protestant: the Apocrypha, and the word itself a later coinage rather than an ancient category

Set against anagignoskomena, apocrypha, protocanonical

protocanonical

The books whose place in Scripture was never in dispute, received from the beginning. The word exists to mark them off from the deuterocanonical books, which were acknowledged later.

Set against deuterocanon

Roman Catholic

The communion of the churches in union with the bishop of Rome, Latin and Eastern alike, holding Scripture and Tradition to be one deposit of the word of God served by a teaching office, the Magisterium, which alone can define. Called Roman Catholic on this board and never bare Catholic, because catholic is a word of the Creed that every ancient communion claims for itself. The question in a debate is never whether Rome teaches a thing but at what level: defined, held definitively, or taught with authority short of that.

Set against Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant

Scholastic and Thomist4 terms

absolute divine simplicity

The doctrine that God has no parts, so that his essence, existence, and attributes are identical; central to Thomism and contested by Eastern Orthodox theology.

Roman Catholic: Simplicity is defined, the Thomist elaboration is not. Lateran IV, quoted at CCC 202: "three persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature entirely simple"; Vatican I, Dei Filius ch. 1: God is "one, singular, completely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance". CCC 43 grants that our language is "unable to express him in his infinite simplicity". The identification of essence with existence and attributes is Thomas's theology, not a conciliar formula.

Set against essence-energies distinction

analogy of being

The Thomist teaching that 'being' is said of God and creatures neither in the same sense nor in wholly different senses, but analogically.

Roman Catholic: The doctrine without the phrase. CCC 43 quotes Lateran IV, "between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude", and Vatican I's Dei Filius ch. 4 lets reason reach the mysteries "by analogy from what it knows naturally" while never penetrating them as it does its proper object. Do not confuse this with the Catechism's own term of art, the "analogy of faith" (CCC 114), which is the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves.

nominalism

The view that universals are names only, with no reality beyond the particulars; associated with Ockham and with much later Protestant thought.

Roman Catholic: No magisterial text read here names it. The fences: Vatican I, Dei Filius ch. 2 canon 1 anathematises denying that God "can be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason", and CCC 41 has us "name God by taking his creatures' perfections as our starting point" — which asks more of a universal than a name.

Set against platonic realism

thomism

The system of Thomas Aquinas: Aristotelian metaphysics in service of Christian theology, with God as pure act, absolute divine simplicity, and the analogy of being.

Roman Catholic: The Church has made Thomas "the guide and model for theological studies", and in the same breath said this was "not in order to take a position on properly philosophical questions nor to demand adherence to particular theses" (Fides et Ratio 78; cf. 43, and Optatam Totius 16, "under the guidance of St. Thomas"). A Roman Catholic may therefore reject a Thomist thesis without rejecting anything defined.

Scripture and canon16 terms

antilegomena

"Spoken against": books whose canonicity was disputed in the early Church. Eusebius names James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and files Revelation on both sides. Modern Lutheran theology keeps the category and holds these books canonical with a caveat; the Peshitta simply lacks the same five.

Apocrypha

Protestant term for the same books, plus 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which Trent does not list. Belgic 6 and Article VI both appoint them to be read and both refuse them as proof of doctrine; Westminster 1.3 allows them no more than "other human writings". To Roman Catholics and the Orthodox the word means the pseudepigrapha instead, so the same word names different books on either side of the table.

canon

The list of books received as divinely inspired Scripture and so as the rule of faith. Traditions differ both over which books belong to it and over what settles the question, and over whether the list is dogmatically closed.

Set against inerrancy

cheirographon

The Greek word in Colossians 2:14, meaning a handwritten bond or IOU of legal indebtedness, which Paul says was blotted out and nailed to the cross. What the bond is taken to be — the law's written charge against the sinner, or the record of death held over Adam — decides how the verse is read.

defiles the hands

The rabbinic test of a holy book: handling it renders the hands ritually impure, so it is not stored with food. The test is Jewish only, and Yadayim 3:5 applies it to two contested books rather than to the whole canon.

deuterocanonical

Roman Catholic term for the Old Testament books Protestants exclude, meaning received into the canon at a second stage, not at a second rank. The word is NOT in Trent's decree, which lists the books in one series. The Orthodox do not use it; the Ethiopian church does not need it.

exegesis

The drawing out of a passage of what it actually says, by attention to its words, grammar, immediate context and historical setting.

hermeneutics

The principles and rules by which a text is interpreted; in theological dispute, the assumptions a reader brings to Scripture that decide what a passage is taken to mean.

homologoumena

"Agreed on": the books Eusebius says were universally accepted. Shared as a category; the contents shift with the witness.

inerrancy

That Scripture, being inspired by God ("every scripture is inspired by God", 2 Timothy 3:16), is without error in what it affirms. The word is modern; the conviction is old. Augustine, writing to Jerome about 405, said of the canonical books alone "do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error", and that where a text seems wrong the manuscript, the translator or the reader is at fault. As a defined doctrine it is Protestant and recent: the Princeton theologians Hodge and Warfield in 1881, then the Chicago Statement of 1978, which distinguishes infallible, Scripture "true and reliable in all the matters it addresses", from inerrant, Scripture in its entirety "free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit", not "limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science", while allowing round numbers, free citations and the language of appearances. Ask a speaker which of the two he means, and whether he extends the word beyond Scripture: in the Slick debate the pair "inspired and inerrant" was put to the Orthodox side as a question about the ecumenical councils.

Protestant: The Chicago sense: Scripture entire is inerrant in all it asserts, history and science included; infallibility and inerrancy "may be distinguished, but not separated". Many mainline Protestants and some evangelicals hold infallibility in faith and practice and decline the stronger word.
Roman Catholic: Held, and stated by the Church. Leo XIII in 1893 called it "absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred". Vatican II, Dei Verbum 11, says the books teach "solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation", a clause whose reach Roman Catholics themselves dispute.
Eastern Orthodox: No defined doctrine under that name. Scripture is inspired and is read within the Church and its Tradition, with the Fathers’ confidence that the canonical books do not err. The word is borrowed when Orthodox apologists call the definitions of the ecumenical councils "inspired and inerrant", and an opponent may fairly ask what that claim rests on.

Set against canon, infallibility, inspiration, perspicuity, sola scriptura, sufficiency of scripture

KJV

The King James Version of 1611, the English translation made for the Church of England from the Masoretic Hebrew and the Textus Receptus Greek. Its Old Testament follows the Hebrew order and numbering, not the Septuagint's.

muhaymin

Qur'an 5:48, of the Qur'an in relation to the previous scriptures: "a criterion over it", the guardian and judge of what they now say. The Muslim answer to a canon question is not a list of books but a later revelation set over the earlier ones.

pseudepigrapha

Writings attributed to a figure who did not write them, such as 1 Enoch or the Apocalypse of Baruch. No major tradition receives them as Scripture; Catholic writers commonly call them apocrypha.

Set against apocrypha

Septuagint

The Greek Old Testament, traditionally by seventy translators, carrying books and additions the Hebrew does not. The Orthodox Old Testament follows it; the Ethiopian church says its version "was made from the Septuagint"; Protestant confessions follow the Hebrew, and Article VI appeals to Jerome, who did the same.

Tewahedo canon

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's canon of 81 books, 46 Old Testament and 35 New. The only Christian canon containing 1 Enoch and Jubilees, and the only New Testament with more than 27 books.

Vulgate

Jerome's Latin Bible, declared "authentic" for public use by Trent Session IV. Trent's own list omits three books the Vulgate carries; and Jerome himself, whom Article VI cites, distinguished the Hebrew canon from the church-read books.

Secular humanist3 terms

humanism: AHA: "a progressive, non-theistic belief system"; Manifesto III: "a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives". A stronger commitment than atheism on every published definition, and a humanist may be held to it.
humanist manifesto: Three documents, 1933, 1973 and 2003, published by the American Humanist Association. Only the third was read for this pass. Manifesto III says it states "not what we must believe but a consensus of what we do believe". Cite by number and year, as the movement's positions changed between them.
the amsterdam declaration: The statement of principles of Humanists International, first agreed 1952, revised 2002 and 2022, which the body calls "our definitive guiding principles". The strongest claim to authority any document on this side makes, and it says of itself that "our particular opinions are not based on revelations fixed for all time".

Sikhism11 terms

akal takht: (Sikh) The throne at Amritsar, "the seat of supreme temporal authority for Sikhs"; it authorized the Rehat Maryada and hears appeals against a local congregation's decision. Its warrant in the code is narrow and appellate. A jathedar is its appointed custodian, and his personal pronouncements are argued about inside Sikhi.
ang: (Sikh) "Limb": a page of the Guru Granth Sahib, used instead of "page" out of respect. Citation is exact; ask a debater for the ang.
bhagat: (Sikh) A devotee whose compositions are included in the Guru Granth Sahib though he was not a Sikh Guru, Kabir, Ravidas, Namdev, the Muslim Farid and others. Their verses are scripture at full rank, which complicates any claim that Sikhi and its neighbours share nothing.
dasam granth: (Sikh) The collection attributed to Guru Gobind Singh; three of its compositions (Jaapu, the Ten Sawayyas, the Benti Chaupai) are prescribed in the daily rule. Not the Guru, since no book may be installed "at par with the Guru Granth"; not rejected either. Its authorship is disputed inside Sikhi and was not researched here.
gurbani / bani: (Sikh) The revealed utterance contained in the Guru Granth Sahib. "Gurbani is Guru and Guru is Gurbani" (SGPC), which is why no living human Guru is possible.
gurmatta: (Sikh) A "holy resolution" of the Panth, binding, and permitted only on the fundamentals listed in Rehat Maryada XXVI. Everything else is a matta, an ordinary resolution. Debaters call both a gurmatta.
guru granth sahib: (Sikh) The Sikh scripture, and the living Guru: 1430 identical pages in every copy, cited by ang (page). The identification is stated inside the scripture (ang 982) and by the SGPC. Not "the Sikh Bible".
hukam / hukamnama: (Sikh) In the Rehat Maryada, the daily reading of the hymn at the top of the left-hand page of the Guru Granth Sahib. Also used for an edict issued from a Takht. Two senses, routinely conflated. Make the speaker say which.
panth / khalsa panth: (Sikh) The corporate body of committed baptized Sikhs, invested with Guruhood by the tenth Guru. Half of a twofold Guruship: the Word is "permanent", the Panth "progressive" (SGPC).
rag mala: (Sikh) The index of musical measures at the end of the Guru Granth Sahib. The one textual dispute the code names: the Panth disagrees whether it is part of the text, and no copy may be printed without it.
rehat maryada: (Sikh) "The Code of Sikh Conduct and Conventions", produced by the SGPC's Dharm Parchar Committee and the only version authorized by the Akal Takht. The one document a Sikh debater can be held to line by line.

Terms of this board7 terms

alētheia: The ledger of claims of fact found wrong in substance: false, misquoted, misread or unsupported, or a source made to bear what it does not. Kept apart from Philosopher and Sophist, and never netted against them.
demagogue: Standing under 30%: the Athenian remedy was the ostrakon.
dialectician: Standing for a share of 60% to 75%.
philosopher: Standing for a Philosopher share of 75% or more: sound reasoning far outweighs sophistry. Also the name of the ledger that rewards it.
rhetorician: Standing for a share of 45% to 60%: roughly as much rhetoric as reasoning.
sophist: Standing for a share of 30% to 45%, and the name of the ledger that marks fallacies, dodges, and misrepresentation.
unranked: Fewer than 10 points in total; one debate cannot crown or condemn anyone.

The Church Fathers10 terms

apostolic succession

The claim that the bishops of the Church stand in an unbroken line of ordination and teaching handed down from the apostles, and that this line is what secures their authority to teach and to govern.

Roman Catholic: Agreed, with a condition added. Lumen Gentium 20: "bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles"; LG 21 has episcopal consecration confer "the fullness of the sacrament of Orders", but teaching and governing "can be exercised only in hierarchical communion with the head and the members of the college" (CCC 861-862, 880-896). The CDF's 2007 Responses apply the test outward: the communities born of the Reformation "do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church".

baptismal regeneration

The teaching that in baptism God actually gives new birth and the forgiveness of sins. The Creed of 381 confesses “one baptism for the remission of sins”. Mark the Monk, On those who think they are justified by works 61 (Philokalia, Astir vol. A): "Grace has been given mystically (μυστικῶς) to those baptised in Christ; but it works in proportion to the keeping of the commandments." Nikodemos’s preface says the same of baptism: the grace of the Spirit is sown in the heart "like a divine seed" at baptism, and can be buried by the passions until it is in danger of going out.

Roman Catholic: Agreed, flatly. CCC 1213 calls baptism "the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word", CCC 1215 says it "actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit", and CCC 1263 that by it "all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin". Trent Session V canon 5 anathematises saying the guilt is "only rased, or not imputed". CCC 1257 adds that God "has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments".

Set against symbolic baptism

catholicity

The wholeness or universality of the Church: its being one and complete across all places and times, as confessed in the phrase "one holy catholic and apostolic Church". Used this way it is not a reference to the Roman Catholic Church in particular.

Roman Catholic: Agreed on the sense of the word, refused as tradition-neutral usage. CCC 830 gives the same double sense, "according to the totality" and "in keeping with the whole", and CCC 831 the mission to the whole race. But Lumen Gentium 8 has the Church of Christ subsist in "the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter", the CDF's 2007 Responses gloss subsistit in as "full identity", and CCC 834 makes particular Churches "fully catholic through their communion with … the Church of Rome".

christus victor

The understanding of the atonement in which Christ’s death and resurrection are a victory over death, the devil and corruption, liberating humanity from bondage. It is the reading Orthodox writers find in the Fathers.

Roman Catholic: Held, and held alongside the rest rather than instead of them. CCC 635-636 has Christ by his death "conquer death and the devil 'who has the power of death'" and free those held in "lifelong bondage"; but within CCC 601-623 the same text keeps ransom (601, 622), Paschal and covenant sacrifice (613-614), the substitution of obedience (615), "redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction" (616) and Trent's merit (617), with no ranking among them.

Set against penal substitutionary atonement

communicatio idiomatum

The "communication of properties": because the divine and human natures are united in the one person of Christ, what belongs to either nature may be said of the one Christ, so that one may say God was crucified or the man is worshipped.

Roman Catholic: Agreed; the rule is stated, the Latin phrase never used. CCC 468, citing Constantinople II: "everything in Christ's human nature is to be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles but also his sufferings and even his death: 'He who was crucified in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God, Lord of glory, and one of the Holy Trinity.'" CCC 469 quotes the Roman Liturgy and then the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom saying the same.

consensus of the fathers

The agreement of the Church Fathers on a doctrine, taken as a mark of what the Church has always taught and therefore as a rule for interpreting Scripture. Where the Fathers agree, that agreement is held to be binding; where they differ, individual opinions are not.

Roman Catholic: Agreed that it binds, as a limit rather than an organ. Vatican I, Dei Filius ch. 2, renewing Trent Session IV: "it is not permissible for anyone to interpret holy scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers." CCC 78 makes "the sayings of the holy Fathers" a witness to Tradition. Where the Fathers do not agree, Rome has a body that can decide (CCC 85), so the consensus fences interpretation without ever being by itself the last word.

Set against right of private judgment

ecumenical council

A council (synod) of bishops drawn from the whole Church, whose doctrinal decrees are received as binding on all Christians. Orthodox and Catholics recognise a fixed set of such councils (the Orthodox counting seven) and regard their dogmatic definitions as guided by the Holy Spirit.

Roman Catholic: Agreed on what a council is, with the condition that divides the communions. CCC 884: "the college of bishops exercises power over the universal Church in a solemn manner in an ecumenical council. But 'there never is an ecumenical council which is not confirmed or at least recognized as such by Peter's successor.'" Lumen Gentium 22 adds that convoking, presiding at and confirming councils is the Roman Pontiff's prerogative. Reception by the whole Church is not the criterion here.

hypostatic union

The union of the divine and human natures in the single person (hypostasis) of Jesus Christ, as defined at Chalcedon: the two natures are joined without confusion, change, division or separation.

Roman Catholic: Agreed, from the same council. CCC 467 quotes Chalcedon entire — "in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation … as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis" — and CCC 468 adds Constantinople II's "there is but one hypostasis [or person], which is our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Trinity". The phrase "hypostatic union" itself appears nowhere in the Catechism.

sacrilegium

Sacrilege, and treason against the emperor's majesty. Tertullian names both as the charges arising from not sacrificing. These, not "atheism", are the Latin legal terms a Roman prosecution would use.

universalism

The teaching that all men will finally be saved and none eternally lost; in patristic discussion the same view is treated under the Greek name apokatastasis, the restoration of all things.

Set against limited atonement