I love Twitter, and at the moment am having conversations about theology with various young people. I make lists of metaphors from various areas (nautical: veer, a different tack etc.), but I've never done theology. Do we wonder why we say "It was providential!" or (100 years ago) "You little perisher!"? When you look up the Christian theology, it turns out to be pretty complicated, not to say weird. "Providence" is something about God intervening in the world (and I thought he couldn't?). Perisher?
We are as the beasts that perish, says Psalm 49, more or less.
I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. (Ecclesiastes 3:18)
And dualism (the idea that the world consists of matter and spirit) is baked into the language. Scroll down...
acolyte
angel: You’re an angel!
anointed (people often just mean “appointed”)
atone for your misdeeds
blessed (used in the place of “damned”). Every blessed thing is going wrong today!
canon: the canon of Western literature
catechism: Subjected him to a catechism
commune with...
Depravity is a word used to describe the corruption of human beings by sin. When Adam rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden, sin affected every area of his life - his body, mind, emotions and heart. Adam’s descendants have inherited a sinful nature from him, so that we too are corrupted in every way from the day we are born (Psalm 51:3-5, Romans 5:12). This is not to say that we are ‘as sinful as we can be’, but rather that as sin has infected every area of our lives, we are totally unable to please God by any apparently ‘good’ actions we might do (Titus 1:15-16, Romans 8:8). This depravity also limits human beings in their ability to know God or understand the truth about Him (Romans 1:28). It is because we are so depraved that we are in such great need of a Saviour, a second ‘Adam’ - Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:22) - through whom we can know God, be cleansed from sin and given new life. Wordatwork.org.uk
destiny
devil
disciple
doctrine
dogma
epistle (I hope, when you have perused my epistle, you will understand the tangled web of circumstances that etc etc)
evangelise, proselytise
fortune
glory
Gods: the powers that be
Gospels: It’s the gospel truth!
heathen
Hell
heresy hunting (A lot of it about in 2026.)
hymns: singing from the same hymn sheet
iconic
inspiration
justification
manifestation
martyr: He was a martyr to the cause/to heartburn etc.
mediation
miracle
mission statement
orthodox, unorthodox
pantheon
parable
perishing: You little perisher!
propitiation
providence: providentially
Purgatory
redeem, redemption
repent, repentance: He repented of his decision.
resurrection: Shall we resurrect the old plan?
Revelation: It was a revelation!
sacrifice: She was sacrificed on the altar of her mother's ambition.
salvation: It was the saving of him.
soul: heart and soul, She was the soul of kindness.
transcend, transcendent, transcendental
visionary
wisdom: It's better than knowledge.
worship
Dualism, or “unexamined vitalism”, as somebody put it. It’s built into the language.
animation, animated, inanimate: “Anima” is Latin for soul.
better half, other half
biological essentialism: ignoring the soul, spirit etc.
calling, vocation: Who called?
consciousness: mind, spirit, psyche, soul, energy
élan vital: spirit, psyche, soul, energy, mind
emergent property: more than the sum of its parts
energy: psyche, soul, spirit, mind, essence
essence: energy, mind, spirit, soul, psyche
ghost in the machine: There’s a book with that title, it must refer to something real. (The author was Arthur Koestler.)
holism, holistic: including the spirit (rather than “including the social context” or “taking into account the economic and political situation”)
inspiration: breathing in the spirit that gives you the idea for a novel or painting
insight: What therapy is supposed to evoke as the all-knowing subconscious sends your conscious mind messages, sometimes in code. (How could such a system evolve?)
intuition, insight
It must have been meant: Who meant it?
life-force
mind: spirit, psyche, soul, consciousness, self. Separate from the brain.
new paradigm: worldview that includes the spirit, which isn’t subject to the laws of physics (In the 70s, it was going to take over from the scientific paradigm any day now.)
reductionist, reductive: no spirit (The opposite is “complex”.)
self: mind, spirit, psyche, soul, consciousness
soul mate: boyfriend, girlfriend
spiritual home
subconscious: self, energy, soul, psyche, spirit, mind
the collective unconscious: energy, spirit, soul
the spirit of the law
the unconscious: mind, spirit, psyche, soul, energy, self
the universe: God
vision: not the kind you need glasses for
We had to: Who told you to? (People often mean "force of circumstances", but didn't you have a choice?)
More in my book Boo & Hooray: Dysphemisms and Euphemisms.
