Genealogies

Just putting these links here:

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=brauningfirst&id=I1
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=DESC&db=nasb&id=I01975

If only I could connect them....

Psalter

A comparison of all the metrical versions of Psalm 6 (that I can find online).

Definitions

Believe, to expect or hope with confidence; to trust (Webster's 1828 Dictionary).

Faith

Faith is a living, joyful, bold trust based on a personal relationship, not an intellectual persuasion, nor an inner feeling.

It is a measure of our response to God's work in us. It appears to observers as a smiling insanity, yet is in fact a glorious gamble with a clear perception both of what the odds appear to be on the surface and what they really are (John White, The Fight).

True faith is a steady and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the gratuitous (free and unwarranted) promise in Christ, revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.2.vii).

The gift of faith (1 Corinthians 12:9) is the ability to see something that needs to be done and to believe that God will effect it even though it seems impossible (Ray Stedman, Body Life, p.43).

Hope

True hope is an expectation mingled with longing, founded not on what is but on what could be; not on appearances, but on trust. With respect to salvation, it is joyful and confident (NT Greek Lexicon).

'What is hope? An expectation of good, which though uncertain has some foundation in what is known?' 'That is one thing that Men call "hope". Amdir we call it, "looking up". But there is another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is "trust". It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being (J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle Earth Volume X: Morgoth's Ring, Part 4).

Love

In the NT, two different Greek words are translated love: Αγαπαο (Agápao), the more common, is used in just as many different ways as we use 'love' today. Φιλεο (Phileo) seems to be restricted to a feeling of personal preference or instinctive friendship.

In English, different aspects of love are often distinguished by different Greek words:

Αγαπη (Agápe) is sacrificial, objective love.

Φιλια (Philia) is true friendship: virtuous, mutual, and familiar.

Ερος (Éros) is intimate, passionate, or sensual love.

Στοργη (Storge) is natural (usually familial) affection.

Φιλαδελφια (Philadelphia) is brotherly kindness – rough & ready.

I think there is yet another kind of love – a feeling of heart-kinship, if not hand-kinship; perhaps partly a longing for one of the other kinds. This may be what Plato meant when he defined friendship as ‘that bond between human beings which is based on the rational apprehension of the virtues of the other’.

The love which we are required to have for our neighbors is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained (C.S. Lewis, Answers to Questions on Christianity #1).

God's love for us is unwarranted, sacrificial, personal, effective, eternal, and unchangeable. Our loves should not (or can not) be all of these.

Mercy is free and undeserved compassion and forgiveness.

Mercy is not treating someone the way they deserve.

Grace is free and undeserved good favor.

Grace is treating someone better than they deserve, in order to make them deserve it.

Grace is used of the merciful kindness by which God, exerting His holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ; keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection; and kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtues (Thayer's Greek Dictionary, Charis).

Forgiveness is primarily an action, not a feeling (Matthew 18:21-35).

True forgiveness consists not in accepting the reparations of the guilty party—it is paying the debt ourselves (Fodale).

Peace "is God's gift to the human race, achieved by him at the cross of Christ" (Boice).

Joy

In Hebrew, joy comes in many guises:

Simchah, shining joy, Masos or Sason, leaping joy, Rinnah, shouting joy, and Gil, dancing joy.

In Greek, the differentiation is between the emotion and its expression:

Χαρά, εὐφροσύνη, and ἀγαλλιάωiς are the nouns joy, exultation, and gladness, while χαίρω, εὐφραίνω, and ἀγαλλιάω, are the verbs rejoice, exult, and be glad.

Joy is associated etymologically with χάρις (charis, grace), εὐχαριστία (eucharistia, thankfulness), and χαίρω (chairō, glad greetings). Joy is said to be brought, filled, and made complete.

Today, joy is commonly equated with pleasure, contentment, satisfaction, happiness, delight, or elation. But in the NT, joy refers to either an assurance that a certain longing will be fulfilled, or to an response to its fulfillment. The difference is that happiness is dependent on what ‘happens’ to one externally while joy is the response of faith. Joy is hope fulfilled in anticipation; it is sehnsucht realized.

Joy proclaims, "You want—I myself am your want of –– something other, outside, not you nor any state of you." The very nature of joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy).

The Glory of God (as the end of all God's works) signifies God's fullness (inherent excellence and great worthiness) and the emanation (diffusion and communication, or outflowing and manifestation) of this fullness (both generally to creation and specifically to us as moral creatures) in the form of his truth and grace. This means that: God communicates his knowledge, by enabling us to know him; his virtue, by enabling us to love him; and his happiness, by enabling us to rejoice in him; all in increasing fullness and perfection and unity, and directly and primarily and inherently abounding to his honor and glory and praise (Jonathan Edwards, The End for which God Created the World).

Covenant, Hebrew בּרית (beriyt), Greek διαθήκη (diatheke).

Both breiyt in the HOT and diatheke in the LXX and GNT properly mean disposition or setting in order.

[The Greek word συνθήκη (sunthēkē) meaning a two-way covenant or compact is never used.]

God's covenant is neither a compact between two parties in such a sense that one party would be at liberty to reject the terms proposed, nor is it a testament or will, as if God had left a legacy to man. The simple idea is that God has made an 'arrangement' by which his worship may be celebrated and souls saved. (Barnes' Notes on the Bible).

Law

Mosaic Law, institutional law, or the law of the conscience.

To Sin is to miss the mark, or to stray from the right path. The word sin comprehends

An act, contrary to God's revealed will, whether by commission or omission.

A state, or a lifestyle contravening God's law. Sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4).

A nature, our disposition to evil. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:8).

A power, enslaving and consuming. It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me (Rom 7:17).

Original sin, the guilt and perversion that everyone inherits from Adam.

Shame is feeling bad about what you are. The answer to shame is hiding or covering.

Guilt is feeling bad about what you do. The answer to guilt is forgiveness or pardon.

Holy, morally whole.

Holy is primarily used to describe God or that which is particularly God's; it is sometimes specifically morally pure and righteous, or consecrated (of places). There are different Greek words translated holy:

Αγιος (Hagios) means morally pure and righteous: "Be holy for I am holy", 1 Peter 1:16 (most common).

Οσιος (Hosios) is God's or Godlike (notably in 1 Tim. 2:8, Titus 1:8, and Rev. 15:4 "You alone are holy").

Διχαιος (Dikaios) means just or right by human standards (usually translated righteous).

Ιερος (Hieros) means formally consecrated or hallowed (as in the temple or the scriptures).

                Cf. Strong's Dictionary, G3741.

The holy ones are the saints, God's elect.

The Holy One is Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, the third person of the trinity.

Righteous

Morally, to be righteous is to be just, or to always deal rightly with others.

Legally, it is a right standing before God and His law, without stain or fault.

In the New Testament, righteousness is often specifically the result of justification.

Justification is being declared righteous.

A man is justified in God's sight who is both reckoned righteous in God's judgment and accepted on the basis of that righteousness. Christ was justified by his works; we are justified by the remission of our sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness. (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III. xi. 2).

Imputation is setting to one's account before God.

Atonement is being made 'at one' – reconciliation.

In the Old Testament, offerings were given to Lord so as to make atonement for their souls (Ex 30:16).

By the atonement of Christ we generally mean his work by which he expiated our sins. But in New Testament usage it denotes the reconciliation itself, and not the means by which it is effected. In general, Christ's satisfaction is his vicarious suffering and obedience, given to satisfy the justice of God on our behalf. Our guilt is expiated by the punishment which our vicar bore, and thus God is rendered propitious, i.e., it is now consistent with his justice to love transgressors. Christ's mediatorial work and sufferings are the ground or efficient cause of our reconciliation with God. The reconciliation is mutual, both of sinners toward God, and preeminently of God toward sinners, as effected by the sin-offering he himself provided, so that consistent with his entire character his love might flow forth in all its fullness of blessing to men (Easton's Bible Dictionary).

Expiation is the covering made for sin when Christ took our place and bore our punishment.

Propitiation is an atoning sacrifice: 'making favorable' by the shedding of blood.

Propitiation is God's act of satisfying His own just wrath by imputing responsibility and punishment for believers' guilt to Jesus. It is the solution for sin, not the sinful nature.

Sanctification is the act of making holy.

Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in setting apart a person for God which continues throughout his life.

Sanctification is a continuous re-orienting ourselves to our justification (Tim Keller Interview).

Regeneration is new birth.

Regeneration is God's gift of a new nature, as the first-fruits of His renewal of all things. (It is only found explicitly in Matt. 19:28 and Titus 3:5.)

Redemption is buying back what has been given up.

Christ, by paying the price our sins required before God, redeemed us by His blood.

The day of redemption is the culmination and confirmation of his story, when God will reclaim the earth and all His people on the basis of Christ's death.

Wisdom is the possession of a coherent and relevant worldview, and the perspicuity and proclivity to apply it to one’s own life. In Proverbs, this worldview is specifically the fear of the Lord.

Understanding is the faculty to observe and identify relevance and meaning in one’s surroundings and oneself.

Knowledge is the accumulation and organization of data about something.

Pride is thinking that you are greater than God.

Selfishness is thinking you are God.

Jealousy is wanting someone else not to have something.

Envy is wanting to have something that someone else has.

The object of jealousy is a scarce resource. The object of envy is not.

Compassion is to enter into another's emotions and try to share them with him.

Pity is to enter into another's emotions and try to remedy them for him.

Benevolence is a generous disposition.

Beneficence is a generous deed.

Benefaction is a generous gift.

Amen means so be it.

Selah is a presentational note of unknown meaning.

Saints are holy ones.

Apostle, Greek ἀπόστολος (apóstolos), one who is sent forth as a messenger.

In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Revelation, the apostles are the twelve disciples.

In Acts and in Paul’s epistles, apostles are those who have seen the risen Lord and who minister in his name, 1 Corinthians 9:1.

Those specifically named as apostles (other than the twelve) include one who ‘is sent’ (John 13:16), Matthias (Acts 1:26), Barnabas (Acts 14:14), Paul (Romans 1:1) Andronicus and Junia (Romans 16:7), Apollos (1 Corinthians 4:6,9), the brothers of the Lord (1 Corinthians 9:5), Jesus (Hebrews 3:1), Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25), Silas and Timothy (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2:6).

There are also false apostles, workers of deceit, 2 Corinthians 11:13.

Prophet

The Hebrew words chôzeh, ro-eh', nebı̂y', and nâbı̂y' are variously translated as seer or prophet. Apparently the meanings of these words changed and merged over time (1 Samuel 9:9), making context necessary to determine what is meant in each case. Three of them are used as distinct appellations in 1 Chronicles 29:29. Possible meanings include:

One who has the ear of God, Genesis 20:7; Amos 3:7.

The spokesman of God, Exodus 7:1; 1Kings 22:8.

One who receives words or visions from God, Numbers 12:6; 2 Kings 6:8-10.

One who can obtain answers from God, 1 Samuel 9:6; 1 Kings 14:1-5.

A musician or singer devoted to God, 1 Samuel 10:5; 1 Chronicles 25:1-3.

One who experiences the Spirit of God in a dramatic way, 1 Samuel 19:23-24; Numbers 11:25.

One who pretends to do one of the above, 1 Kings 22:10-12; Jeremiah 14:14.

One who raves and cries out to false gods, 1 Kings 18:29.

In Greek …

Miracle, literally power (dunamis), wonders (terata), works (erga), or signs (semeion).

A miracle is an act of God (sometimes by the agency of man) whereby a phenomenon out of the normal course of nature is subsumed by and becomes part of history. When given as a sign, it authenticates the commission and message of the sign giver (Easton's Bible Dictionary).

Miracles have two purposes. They either prepare us for faith or they confirm us in faith (John Calvin, Commentary on John 11:45). We must remember that Satan has his (anti-)miracles too.

The simple and grand truth that the universe is not under the exclusive control of physical forces, but that everywhere and always there is above, separate from, and superior to all else, an infinite personal will, not superseding, but directing and controlling all physical causes, acting with or without them (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology I. xii. 1.).

God, in ordinary providence making use of means, yet is free to work without, above, or against them at pleasure (Westminster Confession).

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Some are reminders and others prophecies (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, Miracles).

"I'm exactly in the position of the man who said, 'I can believe the impossible, but not the improbable.' ... It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand" (Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton, The Curse of the Golden Cross).

Personalities

It is very important to understand that different people have different personality types. But the most common method (Myers-Briggs), was devised by two female INFPs, and thus is not adequate for people like me today. 1. It was completely binary. 2. It refused to make any value judgments. 3. It was very limited in scope.

It seems the point of all personality tests is to define how people think, act, and interact; specifically to make broad predictions based on a few traits/distinctions. I find it easier to spend less time on complicated tests required to focus in on a few 'fundamental' traits with (supposedly) broad application, and more time on asking simple questions about a wide variety of points. You cover more ground, more simply. For example, what personality test's primary types predict whether you are likely to hold a grudge or take offense? But it's an important question, so I just ask it. Obviously my test only works on people who know themselves, or at least are trying to do so. But I don't see that as a problem.

Big five:

These are the most fundamental personality traits, simplified down to two opposing tendencies. They should be obvious to anyone who has lived with you for a day with them in mind.

Openness to experience

• Inventive/curious
• Consistent/cautious

Conscientiousness

• Efficient/organized
• Easy-going/careless

Extraversion

• Outgoing/energetic
• Solitary/reserved

Agreeableness

• Friendly/compassionate
• Cold/unkind

Neuroticism

• Sensitive/nervous
• Secure/confident

Love language:

What makes you feel most loved?

• Quality time
• Acts of service
• Physical touch
• Words of affirmation
• Gifts

Enneagram:

Natural role

• Reformer
• Helper
• Achiever
• Individualist
• Investigator
• Loyalist
• Enthusiast
• Challenger
• Peacemaker

Temptation/personal sin you're blind to

• Resentment/criticism
• Manipulation/flattery
• Driving oneself too hard/vanity
• Melancholy/fantasizing
• Idealization/stinginess
• Worrying/indecision-doubt-need for reassurance
• Anticipation/thinking fulfillment is elsewhere
• Vengeance/belief in one's self-sufficiency
• Avoiding conflicts and self-assertion/indolence

Basic desire/Basic fear

• Integrity/Corruption
• Feeling loved/Feeling unloved
• Feeling valued/Feeling worthless
• Being uniquely oneself/Being insignificant or without identity
• Mastery/Helplessness or incompetence
• Guidance or support/Being without this
• Satisfaction/Being trapped in pain and loss
• Self-sufficiency/Being harmed or violated
• Wholeness/Loss or separation

Virtue you over-value in yourself/Vice you over-despise in others

• Peaceableness/Anger
• Humility/Pride
• Truthfulness or authenticity/Deceit
• Equanimity/Envy
• Independence/Avarice
• Courage/Fear
• Sobriety/Gluttony
• Innocence/Lust
• Action/Sloth

[Most of the facets below are a continuum, and it is permissible to say you are between or display aspects of two of the names I have used.]

People focus

How you prefer to interact with others/how do you appear to others.

Personability

• Reclusive
• Shy
• Companionable
• Outgoing
• Bubbly

Extraversion (one's propensity for frequency and duration of other's society)

• Quiet
• Sociable
• Party-hardy

Desire for intimacy

• Intimate conversation with one or two others
• Variety and distraction of larger groups

Submissiveness

• Rebellious
• Objective
• People follower
• Clown

Obsequiousness

[Does this have to do with how people act or how they think?]

• Cynic (everything is wrong)
• Faultfinder (looks for faults)
• Lackey (true to person or cause)
• Sycophant (tries to please everyone)

Selfishness/God-focus

• Incurvatus in se (care most about what you think about yourself)
• Horizontal (care most about what others think of you)
• Vertical (care most about what God thinks of you)

Default mode of interacting with the world

• Active life
• Contemplative life

Modus operandi

[I did not think it necessary to add 'visionary' until I met one. They almost bring the list a full circle back to doer, as they do not analyze what they do, but assume that their dreams are so great they must come true.]

• Envisioning
• Thinking
• Feeling
• Talking
• Experimenting
• Doing

Point-of-reference

[This might be a simplified version of the modus operandi.]

• Facts
• Ideas

How you learn

• Visual
• Aural
• Read
• Write
• Kinesthetic (physical/hands-on)
• Social vs solitary

How you plan

[Might not apply to those who don't plan.]

• Pragmatist (this is what works so do it)
• Realist (this is the way it is so deal with it)
• Idealist (this is how it ought to be so oops)

Do you think out loud?

• Verbal processor
• Internal processor

Sanguinity

[Optimists have a cynical tendency to label people as pessimists. In my usage of the terms they are quite close together.]

• Negativist
• Pessimist
• Optimist
• Pollyanna

Legalism

• Pharisee (sets up laws for others but does not follow them oneself)
• Legalist (likes having known and agreed-on laws)
• Liberal (dislikes laws)
• Amoralist (defies laws)

Temporal focus

• Past
• Present
• Future

Spacial focus

• Details first
• Big picture first

Order

[Not directly related to cleanliness.]

• Neat (organization is obvious to you and others)
• Ordered (organization is obvious to you)
• Cluttered (looks unordered to others)
• Dump (there is no order)

Decisiveness

• Likes planning
• Likes decisions made by others
• Likes open ends (alternatives)
• Likes uncertainty
• Hates possibilities becoming actualities

Adaptability

[Something about how well you adapt to different personalities or changing circumstances.]

[Something about holding a grudge/taking offense/forgiving easily/not noticing wrongs – humility?]

[When you talking about doing something, is it because you want others to do it, you want encouragement to do it, you wish you could do it, or because you've already done it in all but fact?]

Aspects that are likely to change as you age

Anxiety levels

Friendliness

Eagerness for novel experiences