Core Glossary
Core Glossary — 1 Corinthians
This glossary consolidates every load-bearing term identified in 07_semantic_analysis.md, spanning the entire book (chapters 1–16). Terms already present in the baseline Romans translation_memory.json are marked Reused and carry their baseline rendering and risk tier unchanged, per pipeline requirement. Terms new to this curriculum are marked New and carry a risk tier freshly assigned using the identical three-category framework (false-friend drift / denominational contest / obsolescence).
Risk tiers: Critical (human theologian review required) / High (human theologian review required) / Medium (native speaker review recommended) / Low (automated review sufficient).
A. Terms Reused Exactly from the Baseline Romans Translation Memory
| Term | Rendering | Risk (per baseline) | Doctrine | Chapters Present | Reuse Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gospel | gospel | Medium | Gospel | 1, 4, 9, 15 | Rendering and risk unchanged from baseline. |
| grace | grace | Critical | Grace | 1, 3, 15, 16 | Rendering and risk unchanged; 15:10 supplies a key grace-and-effort text worth cross-referencing with Romans 4:4-5/11:5-6. |
| faith | faith | High | Faith | 2, 3, 12, 13, 15, 16 | Rendering and risk unchanged; 13:2/13:13 pair faith with love and hope. |
| righteousness | righteousness | High | Salvation | 1 | Rendering and risk unchanged (1:30). |
| justification | justification (as “justified”) | Critical | Salvation | 6 | Rendering and risk unchanged (6:11 triad: washed, sanctified, justified). |
| salvation | salvation (as “saved”) | Critical | Salvation | 1, 15 | Rendering and risk unchanged; 15:2’s present-tense “are being saved” directly engages the baseline’s documented event-vs-process denominational contest. |
| apostle | apostle | Medium | Apostleship | 1, 4, 9, 12, 15 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| called / calling | called / calling | High | Divine Calling | 1, 7 | Rendering and risk unchanged; ch. 7’s marriage/singleness “calling” language should not be confused with secular career-vocation drift already documented in baseline. |
| holy | holy | Medium | Sanctification | 1, 3, 7, 16 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| saints | saints | High | Sainthood | 1 | Rendering and risk unchanged (1:2). |
| sanctification | sanctification | Medium | Sanctification | 1, 6 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| resurrection | resurrection | High | Resurrection of Christ | 15 (core doctrine of this curriculum) | Rendering and risk unchanged; note this curriculum elevates the doctrine’s practical centrality even though the term’s own risk tier remains as documented. |
| Lord | Lord | Critical | Lordship of Christ | throughout, esp. 8:6, 12:3, 15:57-58, 16:22-23 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| son of God | Son of God | Medium | Sonship of Christ | 15 (implicit, v.28 “the Son”) | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| incarnation | incarnation | Medium | Incarnation | (background to 15:3-4) | Rendering and risk unchanged; not a Pauline term itself but relevant background doctrine. |
| peace | peace | Medium | Peace with God | 1, 7, 14, 16 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| spiritual gifts | spiritual gifts | Medium | Spiritual Gifts | 7, 12, 14 | Rendering and risk unchanged; core doctrine of this curriculum. |
| thanksgiving | thanksgiving | Low | Thanksgiving | 1, 14 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| fellowship | fellowship | Medium | Christian Fellowship | 1, 10 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| church | church | Critical | Church as God’s People | throughout, esp. 1:2, 12:28, 15:9, 16:19 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| kingdom of God | kingdom of God | Medium | Kingdom Mission | 4, 6, 15 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| law | law | Medium | (Covenant background) | 9, 14, 15 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| sin | sin | High | Universal Human Accountability | 6, 7, 15 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| gentiles | Gentiles | Medium | Unity of Jews and Gentiles | 1, 10, 12 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| glory | glory | Medium | Deity of Christ | 2, 10, 11, 15 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| power of God | power of God | Medium | Power of God for Salvation | 1, 2, 6 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| messiah / Christ | Messiah / Christ | Medium | Messianic Promise | throughout | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| prophet / prophecy | prophet / prophecy | Medium | Fulfillment of Prophecy | 12, 13, 14 | Rendering and risk unchanged; note ch.14’s contemporary cessationist/charismatic contest is tracked separately under the new term “tongues,” to which prophecy is closely paired. |
| covenant | covenant | High | Davidic Covenant / New Covenant | 11 | Rendering and risk unchanged (11:25, “new covenant”). |
| israel | Israel | Medium | Unity of Jews and Gentiles | 10 | Rendering and risk unchanged (10:18). |
| jesus | Jesus | Medium | Lordship of Christ | throughout | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| god | God | Medium | Deity of Christ | throughout | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| holy spirit | Holy Spirit | Medium | Sanctification | 2, 3, 6, 12, 14 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| father | Father | Medium | Adoption into God’s Family | 1, 8, 15 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
| exhort | exhort | Low | Mutual Edification | 1, 4, 14, 16 | Rendering and risk unchanged. |
B. Terms New to This Curriculum
| Term | Original | Transliteration | Rendering | Risk | Category of Risk | Doctrine | Chapters | Grounded Reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| wisdom | σοφία | sophia | wisdom | High | Cultural erosion | The Cross as Wisdom and Power | 1, 2, 3 | Trivialized to self-help/practical advice in contemporary usage, inverting Paul’s paradox of wisdom hidden in the cross’s apparent foolishness. |
| foolishness / folly | μωρία | mōria | foolishness | Medium | Cultural erosion | The Cross as Wisdom and Power | 1 | Contemporary “foolish” is comparatively mild; the deliberate, scandalous absurdity Paul intends needs active restoration. |
| cross | σταυρός | stauros | cross | High | False-friend drift | The Cross as Wisdom and Power | 1 | Survives chiefly as jewelry/fashion or the idiom “everyone has their cross to bear” for any generic hardship, draining the specific, shameful execution-instrument referent. |
| boasting | καύχησις | kauchēsis | boasting | Medium | Cultural erosion | Christian Unity versus Factionalism | 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 13, 15 | Read as mere social bragging rather than the deeper problem of self-derived confidence before God. |
| divisions / factions | σχίσμα / ἔρις | schisma / eris | divisions, factions | Medium-High | Cultural erosion | Christian Unity versus Factionalism | 1, 3, 11 | Contemporary normalized political “factionalism” blunts Paul’s treatment of this as sin requiring repentance. |
| signs | σημεῖον | sēmeion | signs | Low | — | The Cross as Wisdom and Power | 1 | Minor risk; generally intelligible. |
| mystery | μυστήριον | mystērion | mystery | High | False-friend drift | The Cross as Wisdom and Power | 2, 4, 13, 14, 15 | Contemporary “mystery” implies an unsolved puzzle, nearly opposite Paul’s sense of a once-hidden truth now definitively revealed. |
| spiritual / natural person | πνευματικός / ψυχικός | pneumatikos / psychikos | spiritual person / natural (unspiritual) person | High | False-friend drift | Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ | 2 | Collides with vague “spiritual but not religious” self-identification untethered to the Holy Spirit. |
| mind of Christ | νοῦς Χριστοῦ | nous Christou | mind of Christ | Low-Medium | — | The Cross as Wisdom and Power | 2 | Minor risk. |
| rulers of this age | ἄρχοντες τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου | archontes tou aiōnos toutou | rulers of this age | Medium | Cultural erosion | The Cross as Wisdom and Power | 2 | Readers may default to purely political rulers, missing the spiritual-power dimension. |
| fleshly / carnal | σαρκικός | sarkikos | fleshly, carnal | Medium | False-friend drift | Christian Unity versus Factionalism | 3 | ”Carnal” survives mainly via “carnal knowledge,” narrowing the term to sexual matters and obscuring the broader sense. |
| temple | ναός | naos | temple | Medium | Cultural erosion | Church Discipline and Holiness | 3, 6 | Evokes distant/foreign religious buildings or loose wellness-branding metaphors, obscuring the exclusive indwelling-presence claim. |
| reward / wages | μισθός | misthos | reward | Medium | Cultural erosion | Christian Unity versus Factionalism | 3 | Gamified loyalty-point connotations trivialize a serious final ministry accounting. |
| steward | οἰκονόμος | oikonomos | steward | Low-Medium | Obsolescence | Christian Unity versus Factionalism | 4, 9 | Survives mainly as an airline job title, losing household-accountability weight. |
| judge / judgment | κρίνω | krinō | judge | High | Cultural erosion | Church Discipline and Holiness | 4, 5, 6 | Collides with strong “don’t judge” therapeutic-culture aversion; needs distinguishing from ch.5’s insistence the church must judge some matters. |
| sexual immorality | πορνεία | porneia | sexual immorality | High | False-friend drift / cultural erosion | Church Discipline and Holiness | 5, 6, 7, 10 | Contemporary sexual-ethics pluralism treats most consensual adult relationships as beyond communal judgment, softening a specific named category into vague prudishness. |
| leaven | ζύμη | zymē | leaven | Low | Obsolescence | Church Discipline and Holiness | 5 | Agricultural metaphor unfamiliar to urban readers; needs brief explanation, not active correction. |
| hand over to Satan | παραδοῦναι τῷ Σατανᾷ | paradounai tō Satana | hand over to Satan | Medium | Obsolescence / cultural distance | Church Discipline and Holiness | 5 | Reads either as an archaic curse or an over-softened “removal from membership”; disciplinary-restorative purpose needs stating. |
| body | σῶμα | sōma | body | High | Cultural erosion | Church Discipline and Holiness | 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15 | Contemporary body-as-biological/aesthetic-project/autonomy framing cuts against Paul’s sacred, Spirit-indwelt, communal, resurrection-destined body. |
| washed | ἀπολούω | apolouō | washed | Low-Medium | — | Church Discipline and Holiness | 6 | Minor risk. |
| bought with a price / redeemed | ἠγοράσθητε τιμῆς | ēgorasthēte timēs | bought with a price, redeemed | High | False-friend drift | Church Discipline and Holiness | 6 | ”Redeem” in contemporary English chiefly means cashing in a coupon/loyalty points — a trivial consumer sense inverting Paul’s costly slave-liberation image. |
| joined / one flesh | ἓν σῶμα / κολλώμενος | hen sōma / kollōmenos | joined, one flesh | Medium | — | Church Discipline and Holiness | 6 | Moderate risk of being read as merely symbolic rather than a real formative union. |
| marriage | γάμος | gamos | marriage | High | Denominational/cultural contest | Marriage and Singleness | 7 | Live, contested contemporary definitional and legal terrain requires the curriculum to state its assumed understanding plainly. |
| virgin | παρθένος | parthenos | virgin | Medium-High | Cultural erosion | Marriage and Singleness | 7 | Contemporary usage mocks the term (teen-comedy tropes) or narrows it to a religious title, undermining Paul’s dignified sense. |
| gift (of singleness/marriage) | χάρισμα | charisma | gift | Medium | — | Marriage and Singleness | 7 | Distinct nuance (state of life vs. ministry ability) needs distinguishing from ch.12/14 usage. |
| idol | εἴδωλον | eidōlon | idol | High | False-friend drift | Christian Liberty and Idol Meat | 8, 10, 12 | ”Idol” overwhelmingly means a celebrity/fan favorite in contemporary usage — an entertainment sense with no worship or rival-allegiance content. |
| knowledge | γνῶσις | gnōsis | knowledge | Medium | Cultural erosion | Christian Liberty and Idol Meat | 8, 12, 13 | Contemporary culture treats knowledge as an unambiguous good, obscuring Paul’s warning that knowledge without love is spiritually dangerous. |
| conscience | συνείδησις | syneidēsis | conscience | Medium | Cultural erosion | Christian Liberty and Idol Meat | 8, 10 | Individualist “trust your gut/your truth” culture treats conscience as self-validating, obscuring Paul’s other-directed concern for another’s conscience. |
| liberty / rights | ἐξουσία | exousia | liberty, rights | High | Cultural erosion | Christian Liberty and Idol Meat | 8, 9 | Rights-maximizing Western culture treats asserting one’s rights as an unquestioned good, the opposite of Paul’s voluntary self-limitation for love’s sake. |
| stumbling block | σκάνδαλον / πρόσκομμα | skandalon / proskomma | stumbling block | Medium-High | False-friend drift | Christian Liberty and Idol Meat | 8, 10 | ”Scandal” now means a publicly exposed controversy, quite different from privately causing another’s spiritual fall. |
| crown / prize | στέφανος / βραβεῖον | stephanos / brabeion | crown, prize | Low | Cultural distance | Christian Liberty and Idol Meat | 9 | Ancient-games background needed but athletic metaphor remains broadly intelligible. |
| all things to all people | πᾶσι πάντα | pasi panta | all things to all people | Medium | Cultural erosion | Christian Liberty and Idol Meat | 9 | Risk of being misread as relativistic compromise rather than principled, gospel-motivated flexibility. |
| testing / temptation | πειρασμός | peirasmos | temptation, testing | Medium | Cultural erosion | Christian Liberty and Idol Meat | 10 | Casual “resisting temptation” (dessert, minor indulgence) trivializes the serious covenant-loyalty stakes in Paul’s examples. |
| cup of blessing / table of the Lord | ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας / τράπεζα κυρίου | potērion tēs eulogias / trapeza kyriou | cup of blessing, table of the Lord | Critical | Denominational contest | The Lord’s Supper | 10 | Shares the Lord’s Supper’s deep denominational-contest profile (see ch.11 entry below). |
| types / example | τύπος | typos | example, type | Low-Medium | Obsolescence | (Background to multiple doctrines) | 10 | Technical hermeneutical term unfamiliar outside seminary contexts; needs a brief gloss. |
| head | κεφαλή | kephalē | head | Critical | Denominational contest | Order in Worship | 11 | Sharply contested between complementarian (hierarchical authority) and egalitarian (source/origin) readings among English-speaking Christians; requires transparent statement of the curriculum’s own reading and acknowledgment of other views. |
| Lord’s Supper | κυριακὸν δεῖπνον | kyriakon deipnon | the Lord’s Supper | Critical | Denominational contest | The Lord’s Supper | 11 | Perhaps the deepest denominational-contest term in the curriculum: transubstantiation, real presence, spiritual presence, and memorial views all differ sharply among English-speaking traditions. |
| remembrance | ἀνάμνησις | anamnesis | remembrance | Medium-High | Cultural erosion | The Lord’s Supper | 11 | Contemporary “remembrance” leans toward passive commemoration, under-conveying the participatory sense some traditions find here. |
| discern / examine | διακρίνω | diakrinō | discern, examine | Medium | Cultural erosion | The Lord’s Supper | 11 | Popular “discernment” language is vaguely intuitive; Paul intends a specific, serious act of self-examination with real consequences. |
| baptized (into one body) | ἐβαπτίσθημεν | ebaptisthēmen | baptized | High | Denominational contest | Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ | 12 | Genuine live contest over mode and subjects of baptism among English-speaking Christian traditions. |
| members | μέλη | melē | members | Medium | Cultural erosion | Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ | 12 | Contemporary “member” evokes transactional club/gym enrollment, obscuring Paul’s organic, mutually-dependent bodily sense. |
| manifestation (of the Spirit) | φανέρωσις τοῦ πνεύματος | phanerōsis tou pneumatos | manifestation of the Spirit | Low-Medium | — | Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ | 12 | Minor risk. |
| love | ἀγάπη | agapē | love | Critical | False-friend drift | Love as the Greater Way | 13 | Contemporary “love” overwhelmingly denotes romantic feeling or strong personal liking, an emotion-centered sense nearly opposite Paul’s willed, self-giving, action-defined agapē; requires the most active, sustained reframing in this glossary. |
| hope | ἐλπίς | elpis | hope | High | False-friend drift | (Background to Love as the Greater Way; Resurrection) | 13, 15 | ”I hope so” expresses uncertain wishing; Paul intends confident, promise-grounded expectation — nearly opposite senses. |
| love’s behavioral list (patient, kind, not envious, etc.) | (various) | — | patient, kind, etc. | Low | — | Love as the Greater Way | 13 | Individually low risk; collectively reinforce the correction of “love” as an action-list, not a feeling. |
| tongues | γλῶσσαι | glōssai | tongues | Critical | Denominational contest | Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ; Order in Worship | 12, 13, 14 | Sharp live contest between charismatic/Pentecostal (normative, still active) and cessationist (ceased or rare) English-speaking Christian traditions. |
| interpretation | ἑρμηνεία | hermēneia | interpretation | Low-Medium | — | Order in Worship | 12, 14 | Minor risk. |
| decently and in order | εὐσχημόνως καὶ κατὰ τάξιν | euschēmonōs kai kata taxin | decently and in order | Medium | Cultural erosion | Order in Worship | 14 | Risk of over-reading as rigid formality or under-reading as mere stylistic preference. |
| firstfruits | ἀπαρχή | aparchē | firstfruits | Medium | Obsolescence | The Resurrection of Christ and Believers | 15 | Agricultural harvest imagery unfamiliar to contemporary urban readers; needs brief explanation. |
| the last Adam / the first Adam | ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδάμ / ὁ πρῶτος Ἄνθρωπος Ἀδάμ | ho eschatos Adam / ho prōtos anthrōpos Adam | the last Adam, the first Adam | Medium-High | Cultural erosion | The Resurrection of Christ and Believers | 15 | Secular readings often treat Adam as purely mythological, potentially undercutting Paul’s representative-headship argument. |
| imperishable / incorruptible | ἄφθαρτος | aphthartos | imperishable, incorruptible | Medium | Obsolescence | The Resurrection of Christ and Believers | 15 | ”Incorruptible” now mainly describes moral character, not physical decay-resistance; senses should be distinguished. |
| spiritual body | σῶμα πνευματικόν | sōma pneumatikon | spiritual body | Critical | Post-Christian cultural erosion | The Resurrection of Christ and Believers | 15 | Contemporary dualistic “ghost/soul” afterlife imagination will very naturally misread this core-doctrine term as immaterial rather than a real, transformed, physical body; requires unusually explicit correction. |
| sting of death / victory | τὸ κέντρον τοῦ θανάτου / νῖκος | to kentron tou thanatou / nikos | sting of death, victory | Low | — | The Resurrection of Christ and Believers | 15 | Minor risk. |
| the collection | ἡ λογία | hē logia | the collection | Low | — | (Christian Fellowship, background) | 16 | Minor risk. |
| holy kiss | φίλημα ἅγιον | philēma hagion | holy kiss | Medium | Cultural distance | Christian Fellowship (background) | 16 | Contemporary personal-space and touch-consent norms create real distance from this ancient greeting practice. |
| Maranatha | Μαράνα θά | Marana tha | Maranatha | Medium | Obsolescence | (Eschatological hope, background) | 16 | Untranslated Aramaic exclamation parallel to “Abba”; should be preserved in transliteration with explicit gloss. |
| anathema / accursed | ἀνάθεμα | anathema | anathema, accursed | Medium-High | Cultural erosion | Church Discipline and Holiness (background) | 16 | Softened in contemporary English to “strongly disliked,” obscuring the solemn covenantal curse Paul intends. |
C. Risk Summary for This Curriculum
| Risk Tier | Reused (Baseline) Terms | New Terms | Total | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | 6 (grace, salvation, justification, Lord, church, — with 15:2’s salvation-tense issue) | 5 (Lord’s Supper / cup of blessing-table of the Lord, head, tongues, love, spiritual body) | 11 | Human theologian |
| High | 7 (faith, righteousness, called, calling, saints, resurrection, sin, covenant) | 12 (wisdom, cross, mystery, spiritual/natural person, judge/judgment, sexual immorality, body, bought with a price/redeemed, marriage, liberty/rights, baptized, hope) | 19 | Human theologian |
| Medium | remaining reused Medium-tier terms (~15) | ~20 (boasting, divisions/factions, fleshly/carnal, temple, reward, steward, leaven, hand over to Satan, joined/one flesh, virgin, gift, knowledge, conscience, stumbling block, all things to all people, testing/temptation, types/example, remembrance, discern/examine, members, decently and in order, firstfruits, last/first Adam, imperishable, holy kiss, Maranatha, anathema) | ~35 | Native speaker |
| Low | thanksgiving, exhort | signs, crown/prize, mind of Christ, washed, love’s behavioral list, interpretation, manifestation, sting of death/victory, the collection | ~11 | Automated |
Note on escalation: Per the baseline’s escalation rules, any segment touching Critical terms (grace, salvation, Lord, church, Lord’s Supper, head, tongues, love, spiritual body) or live denominational-contest terms (baptism, marriage, head, Lord’s Supper, tongues) must be routed to human theologian review and must not be marked approved without explicit denominational-transparency language, consistent with 12_ai_translation_requirements.md’s Escalation Rules for Human Review.
Critical Risk Terms
Grace
Approved rendering: grace
Transliteration: grace
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: elegance/poise (dominant secular sense), a grace period (dominant legal/financial sense)
Original: χάρις
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. CRITICAL false-friend drift and denominational contest unchanged. In 1 Corinthians 15:10 (‘by the grace of God I am what I am… I worked harder than any of them… yet not I but the grace of God’), grace-empowered effort must be explicitly distinguished from grace-excluding effort, guarding against contemporary ‘hyper-grace’ media strands that wrongly treat grace and strenuous effort as opposites.
Justification
Approved rendering: justification
Transliteration: justification
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: justifying your answer / justifying an action (dominant everyday sense)
Original: δικαίωσις
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. In 1 Corinthians 6:11’s triad ‘washed, sanctified, justified,’ the forensic declared-righteous sense must be kept distinct from the everyday sense of giving a reason or excuse for an action already taken.
Salvation
Approved rendering: salvation
Transliteration: salvation
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: being saved (contested denominational shorthand), rescue (too generic a gloss alone)
Original: σωτηρία
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 15:2’s present-tense ‘you are being saved’ directly supplies fresh material for the baseline’s documented event-vs-process denominational contest and must be flagged explicitly as an ongoing reality contingent on continued holding-fast, not merely a single past transaction.
Lord
Approved rendering: Lord
Transliteration: Lord
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: boss / master, a British Lord (aristocratic title)
Original: κύριος
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 12:3 (‘no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit’) and 16:22’s severe closing warning both depend on the word retaining real, felt, total-allegiance weight; must be actively restored, not passively repeated.
Church
Approved rendering: church
Transliteration: church
Doctrine: Church as God’s People
Original: ἐκκλησία
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17’s temple imagery and ch.12’s body imagery are the book’s fullest development of this doctrine, directly countering both institutional-decline associations and the Corinthians’ own factionalism; 15:9’s ‘church of God’ Paul once persecuted grounds the doctrine in a concrete, historical, vulnerable community, not an abstraction or a modern building.
Cup Of Blessing Table Of The Lord
Approved rendering: cup of blessing / table of the Lord
Transliteration: poterion tes eulogias / trapeza kyriou
Doctrine: The Lord’s Supper
Original: ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας / τράπεζα κυρίου
Category: The Lord’s Supper
New to this curriculum. The shared communal meal that unites participants with Christ and one another, in exclusive contrast to idol feasts (10:16-21); shares the Lord’s Supper’s deep denominational-contest profile (see ‘lords_supper’ entry) and directly anticipates ch.11’s fuller treatment.
Head
Approved rendering: head
Transliteration: kephale
Doctrine: Order in Worship: Gender and Head Covering
Original: κεφαλή
Category: Order in Worship
New to this curriculum. 11:3’s ‘the head of Christ is God, the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband’ is sharply contested between complementarian (hierarchical authority) and egalitarian (source/origin) English-speaking Christian readings. This curriculum must state which reading it presents and transparently note that other English-speaking Christian traditions read this term differently, per the baseline’s denominational-transparency rule.
Lords Supper
Approved rendering: Lord’s Supper
Transliteration: kyriakon deipnon
Doctrine: The Lord’s Supper
Original: κυριακὸν δεῖπνον
Category: The Lord’s Supper
New to this curriculum. Perhaps the single deepest denominational-contest term in this curriculum: transubstantiation (Catholic), sacramental real presence (Lutheran), spiritual/pneumatic presence (Reformed), and memorial/symbolic view (much of Evangelical/Baptist tradition) all differ sharply. This curriculum must state plainly which reading it presents and explicitly, respectfully note the range of other English-speaking Christian views (11:23-26).
Love
Approved rendering: love
Transliteration: agape
Doctrine: Love as the Greater Way
Rejected alternatives: I love pizza / falling in love / love at first sight (dominant contemporary romantic/preference sense), charity (KJV’s now-obsolete rendering, drifted to mean almsgiving)
Original: ἀγάπη
Category: Love
New to this curriculum. THE single most diluted word in contemporary English for this curriculum: ‘love’ overwhelmingly denotes romantic feeling or strong personal liking, an emotion-centered, often involuntary sense nearly opposite Paul’s willed, self-giving, action-defined agape (13:1-13), defined by a behavioral list (13:4-7), not a feeling. Requires the most active, sustained reframing of any term in this registry. Do not quote KJV’s ‘charity’ without flagging its own drifted modern sense (almsgiving).
Tongues
Approved rendering: tongues
Transliteration: glossai
Doctrine: Tongues, Prophecy, and the Question of Cessation
Original: γλῶσσαι
Category: Order in Worship
New to this curriculum. Spirit-given speech Paul deliberately subordinates to intelligible, church-edifying prophecy unless interpreted (12:10,28-30; 13:1,8; 14:1-40); one of the sharpest live denominational-contest terms between Pentecostal/charismatic (normative, still active) and cessationist (ceased or rare) English-speaking Christian traditions. State this curriculum’s own reading transparently and note the range of views respectfully. Do not echo Passion-Translation-style amplification toward either pole (see 05_translation_landscape.md §2).
Spiritual Body
Approved rendering: spiritual body
Transliteration: soma pneumatikon
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ and Believers
Rejected alternatives: a ghost / disembodied soul / immaterial spirit (the confident, precisely inverted misreading this term must guard against), spirit body (implies immateriality, avoided)
Original: σῶμα πνευματικόν
Category: Eschatology
New to this curriculum. THE highest-priority correction in the whole curriculum: contemporary dualistic ‘soul goes to heaven, body left behind’ pop-afterlife imagination will very naturally and wrongly read ‘spiritual body’ as immaterial or ghost-like, the near-precise opposite of Paul’s insistence on a real, transformed, physical body (15:42-49). Always pair with an explicit negation (‘not a ghost, not a disembodied soul’) before any positive definition; also guard against Christian Science’s dematerialized reading and Watchtower’s two-class resurrection scheme (see 05_translation_landscape.md §3).
High Risk Terms
Faith
Approved rendering: faith
Transliteration: faith
Doctrine: Faith
Rejected alternatives: faith in humanity / a leap of faith (secularized generic optimism)
Original: πίστις
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package. In 1 Corinthians 15:2, 11, 14, and 17, ‘believed’ is repeatedly tied to the specific historical content of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection (vv.3-5); must be anchored explicitly to that content each time, not left as generic private opinion.
Righteousness
Approved rendering: righteousness
Transliteration: righteousness
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: self-righteous / holier-than-thou (dominant negative connotation)
Original: δικαιοσύνη
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. Appears at 1 Corinthians 1:30 (‘Christ Jesus, who became for us… righteousness’) as part of a redemption cluster; the given, not achieved, status must be restated in this new context.
Called
Approved rendering: called
Transliteration: called
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Original: κλητός
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. In 1 Corinthians 1, all three baseline senses (apostleship 1:1, sainthood 1:2/1:9, effectual calling to salvation 1:24/1:26) appear within a single chapter and must be disambiguated by context on each occurrence.
Calling
Approved rendering: calling
Transliteration: calling
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: finding your calling (dominant contemporary secular career-vocation sense)
Original: κλῆσις
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 7:15-24 adds a THIRD distinct sense beyond the baseline’s two (apostleship; salvation): calling applied to one’s state in life at conversion (married, single, slave, free). This must not collapse into the self-actualization ‘find your calling’ career drift the baseline documents; God’s summons, not self-selection, stays central.
Saints
Approved rendering: saints
Transliteration: saints
Doctrine: Sainthood
Original: ἅγιοι
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 1:2 addresses this term to the entire, notoriously flawed and factious Corinthian church, a pointed test case that ‘saints’ means all believers corporately, not a canonized few, directly relevant to the baseline’s documented Catholic/Orthodox contest.
Resurrection
Approved rendering: resurrection
Transliteration: resurrection
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ and Believers
Rejected alternatives: Easter (commercialized cultural holiday sense)
Original: ἀνάστασις
Category: Eschatology
Inherited from Romans package. This curriculum’s core doctrine (1 Corinthians 15) elevates the term’s practical centrality beyond Romans even though its own risk tier remains as documented; must be stated as historical, bodily fact, not myth or metaphor, and extended explicitly to believers’ own future resurrection (15:20-23), not only Christ’s.
Sin
Approved rendering: sin
Transliteration: sin
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: sinfully delicious / my one sin (trivialized marketing usage)
Original: ἁμαρτία
Category: Sin
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 15:3’s ‘Christ died for our sins’ and ch.5’s insistence on formal church discipline for named sin both require restoring real moral guilt before a personal God against both trivializing marketing usage and non-judgmental therapeutic culture.
Covenant
Approved rendering: covenant
Transliteration: covenant
Doctrine: The Lord’s Supper
Rejected alternatives: a restrictive covenant (dominant contemporary real-estate/contract legal sense)
Original: διαθήκη
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Applied in 11:25 to ‘the new covenant… in my blood’ at the Lord’s Supper institution; the relational, promissory bond must be actively distinguished from the property-deed legal sense.
Wisdom
Approved rendering: wisdom
Transliteration: wisdom (sophia)
Doctrine: The Cross as Wisdom and Power
Rejected alternatives: self-help advice / practical savvy (dominant contemporary trivialized sense)
Original: σοφία
Category: Wisdom and the Cross
New to this curriculum. Contemporary English trivializes ‘wisdom’ into self-help advice, folk sayings, or shrewd practical competence, categories fundamentally opposed to Paul’s paradox of wisdom hidden in apparent foolishness and weakness (the cross), 1:18-2:16.
Cross
Approved rendering: cross
Transliteration: cross (stauros)
Doctrine: The Cross as Wisdom and Power
Rejected alternatives: everyone has their cross to bear (diluted idiom for generic hardship), jewelry/fashion symbol
Original: σταυρός
Category: Wisdom and the Cross
New to this curriculum. Survives chiefly as jewelry, brand imagery, or the diluted idiom ‘everyone has their cross to bear,’ draining away the specific, shameful, Roman-execution referent central to Paul’s paradox in 1:17-18.
Divisions Factions
Approved rendering: divisions / factions
Transliteration: schisma / eris
Doctrine: Christian Unity versus Factionalism
Rejected alternatives: tribes / tribalism (carries its own contested contemporary identity-discourse connotations, should not be used as a synonym)
New to this curriculum. Contemporary normalized political ‘factionalism’ and partisanship risks blunting Paul’s treatment of church divisions (1:10-13; 3:1-9; 11:18-19) as serious sin requiring repentance, not an unavoidable feature of group life.
Mystery
Approved rendering: mystery
Transliteration: mystery (mysterion)
Doctrine: The Cross as Wisdom and Power
Rejected alternatives: an unsolved puzzle (dominant contemporary sense, nearly inverted from Paul’s meaning)
Original: μυστήριον
Category: Wisdom and the Cross
New to this curriculum. Contemporary ‘mystery’ (detective novels, ‘mysteries of the universe’) implies something still unknown or unsolvable, nearly the reverse of Paul’s sense of a once-hidden truth now definitively revealed (2:7; 4:1; 13:2; 14:2; 15:51).
Spiritual Natural Person
Approved rendering: spiritual person / natural (unspiritual) person
Transliteration: pneumatikos / psychikos
Doctrine: The Cross as Wisdom and Power
Rejected alternatives: spiritual but not religious (contemporary self-defined personal category untethered to the Holy Spirit)
Original: πνευματικός / ψυχικός
Category: Spiritual Gifts
New to this curriculum. Distinguishes those who receive and discern spiritual truth by the Holy Spirit from those who evaluate it merely by ordinary human capacities (2:14-15); must be actively distinguished from vague ‘spiritual but not religious’ self-identification.
Judge Judgment
Approved rendering: judge / judgment
Transliteration: krino
Doctrine: Church Discipline and Holiness
Original: κρίνω
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Used both of premature human judgment Paul forbids regarding ministers (4:3-5) and of the church’s necessary internal discipline (5:12-13; 6:1-6); collides with strong contemporary ‘don’t judge’ therapeutic-culture aversion. These two distinct Pauline uses must never be flattened into one undifferentiated rule.
Sexual Immorality
Approved rendering: sexual immorality
Transliteration: porneia
Doctrine: Church Discipline and Holiness
Rejected alternatives: generic prudish disapproval (under-specific contemporary hearing)
Original: πορνεία
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Names a specific category of conduct requiring corporate church response (5:1-13; 6:12-20; 10:8); contemporary Western sexual-ethics pluralism treats most consensual adult relationships as private and beyond communal judgment, so the specific named conduct per passage must be stated, not left as vague moral disapproval.
Body
Approved rendering: body
Transliteration: soma
Doctrine: Church Discipline and Holiness / Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ
Rejected alternatives: body image / body goals (aesthetic-project sense), my body my choice (contested private-autonomy framing)
Original: σῶμα
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Denotes both the individual physical body as a temple of the Holy Spirit destined for resurrection (6:19-20) and the corporate body of Christ (12:12-27); per occurrence, specify which sense is meant, since both recur across the letter.
Bought With A Price
Approved rendering: bought with a price / redeemed
Transliteration: egorasthete times
Doctrine: Church Discipline and Holiness
Rejected alternatives: redeem a coupon / redeem loyalty points (dominant contemporary consumer-transactional sense)
Original: ἠγοράσθητε τιμῆς
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Believers belong to God because he purchased them at the immense cost of Christ’s death (6:20); contemporary English ‘redeem’ almost exclusively means cashing in a coupon or points, a trivial sense inverting the costly, once-for-all, slave-liberating purchase Paul intends.
Marriage
Approved rendering: marriage
Transliteration: gamos
Doctrine: Marriage and Singleness
Original: γάμος
Category: Marriage and Singleness
New to this curriculum. A live, actively contested term in contemporary Western culture and law (definitional debates, cohabitation, divorce-rate-shaped expectations); state plainly which understanding (covenantal union of husband and wife, ch.7) this curriculum assumes rather than presume cultural consensus.
Virgin
Approved rendering: virgin
Transliteration: parthenos
Doctrine: Marriage and Singleness
Rejected alternatives: teen-comedy mocking-punchline sense, the Virgin Mary (narrows to a devotional title)
Original: παρθένος
Category: Marriage and Singleness
New to this curriculum. Paul’s counsel to ‘the virgins’ (7:25-38) treats sexual abstinence outside marriage as a valued, dignified state; contemporary popular culture mocks the term or narrows it to a religious title, requiring active restoration of Paul’s positive, dignified sense.
Idol
Approved rendering: idol
Transliteration: eidolon
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Rejected alternatives: teen idol / American Idol / pop idol (dominant contemporary entertainment-fandom sense)
Original: εἴδωλον
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. A false god’s image, having no real power in itself but posing genuine spiritual danger through worship-practice (8:1-13; 10:14-22; 12:2); ‘idol’ overwhelmingly means a celebrity or fan favorite in contemporary media, a near-total lexical takeover with zero worship-rivalry content.
Liberty Rights
Approved rendering: liberty / rights
Transliteration: exousia
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Rejected alternatives: unquestioned rights-assertion (contemporary Western rights-maximizing default)
Original: ἐξουσία
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. Christians have a genuine right to eat idol meat, yet Paul argues this right should be voluntarily limited for love’s sake (8:9,13; 9:1-18); contemporary rights-discourse treats asserting one’s rights as an unquestioned good, the near opposite of Paul’s countercultural voluntary self-limitation.
Stumbling Block
Approved rendering: stumbling block
Transliteration: skandalon / proskomma
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Rejected alternatives: scandal (dominant contemporary publicly-exposed-controversy sense)
Original: σκάνδαλον / πρόσκομμα
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. Careless exercise of Christian liberty can cause a weaker believer to fall back into sin (8:9-13; 10:32); the cognate noun ‘scandal’ now means a publicly exposed controversy, quite different from Paul’s sense of privately causing another’s spiritual fall — actively fence the two apart.
Remembrance
Approved rendering: remembrance
Transliteration: anamnesis
Doctrine: The Lord’s Supper
Rejected alternatives: Remembrance Day-style passive commemoration (under-conveys the participatory sense some traditions find here)
Original: ἀνάμνησις
Category: The Lord’s Supper
New to this curriculum. ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ (11:24-25); contemporary English ‘remembrance’ leans toward passive commemoration, which may under-convey the more participatory sense some English-speaking Christian traditions find in this term — directly relevant to the memorial-vs-real-presence contest.
Baptized Into One Body
Approved rendering: baptized (into one body)
Transliteration: ebaptisthemen
Doctrine: Baptism into Christ’s Body
Original: ἐβαπτίσθημεν
Category: Spiritual Gifts
New to this curriculum. ‘By one Spirit we were all baptized into one body’ (12:13); baptism is a genuine, live denominational-contest term (mode: immersion vs. sprinkling/pouring; subjects: believers only vs. households/infants; relationship of water baptism to Spirit baptism) — note the range of views while presenting a clear reading of this verse’s Spirit-wrought unity point.
Hope
Approved rendering: hope
Transliteration: elpis
Doctrine: Love as the Greater Way
Rejected alternatives: I hope so / hopefully (dominant contemporary uncertain-wishing sense)
Original: ἐλπίς
Category: Love
New to this curriculum. A settled, confident expectation grounded in God’s character and promises (13:13), tied directly to the resurrection’s reality (15:19); contemporary English ‘hope’ typically expresses uncertain, wishful desire — nearly the opposite sense — and must be flagged wherever it appears.
Last Adam First Adam
Approved rendering: the last Adam / the first Adam
Transliteration: ho eschatos Adam / ho protos anthropos Adam
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ and Believers
Rejected alternatives: the second Adam (acceptable variant gloss)
Original: ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδάμ / ὁ πρῶτος Ἄνθρωπος Ἀδάμ
Category: Eschatology
New to this curriculum. Typological contrast between humanity’s original representative head (Adam, source of death) and its new representative head (Christ, source of resurrection life), 15:22,45-49; contemporary secular readings often treat ‘Adam’ as purely mythological, which the curriculum should note without letting it undercut Paul’s representative-headship argument, which depends on the pattern regardless of a reader’s view of Genesis’ historicity.
Medium Risk Terms
Gospel
Approved rendering: gospel
Transliteration: gospel
Doctrine: Gospel
Rejected alternatives: good news (acceptable as an explanatory gloss, but should not fully replace ‘gospel’)
Original: εὐαγγέλιον
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. Main risk remains confusing ‘the Gospels’ (the four books) with ‘the gospel’ (the message). In 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 the gospel is explicitly framed as fixed, received creedal tradition, which reinforces rather than undermines its authoritative weight.
Apostle
Approved rendering: apostle
Transliteration: apostle
Doctrine: Apostleship
Original: ἀπόστολος
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 15:9’s ‘least of the apostles’ and Paul’s ch.9 self-defense reinforce the specific, foundational, non-repeatable nature of the office against loose secular usage (‘an apostle of free trade’).
Holy
Approved rendering: holy
Transliteration: holy
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: holier-than-thou, holy cow / holy moly
Original: ἅγιος
Category: Sanctification
Inherited from Romans package. Reinforced in 1 Corinthians 3, 7, and 16 (‘holy kiss’); must be actively re-taught rather than assumed familiar.
Sanctification
Approved rendering: sanctification
Transliteration: sanctification
Doctrine: Sanctification
Original: ἁγιασμός
Category: Sanctification
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 6:11’s washed/sanctified/justified triad is the clearest full statement of this doctrine in the book; remains chiefly an obsolescence risk rather than a false-friend risk.
Son Of God
Approved rendering: Son of God
Transliteration: Son of God
Doctrine: Sonship of Christ
Original: υἱὸς θεοῦ / ὁ υἱός
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 15:24-28’s description of the Son subjecting all things to the Father so God may be ‘all in all’ must not be misread as denying Christ’s eternal deity; describes the mediatorial kingdom’s culmination, not a diminishment of nature. This nuance is also directly relevant to the Jehovah’s Witnesses/Watchtower non-Trinitarian misuse of this passage documented in 05_translation_landscape.md.
Incarnation
Approved rendering: incarnation
Transliteration: incarnation
Doctrine: Incarnation
Original: ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package. Background doctrine to 1 Corinthians 15:3-4’s real, historical death and burial; not itself a Pauline term in this letter.
Peace
Approved rendering: peace
Transliteration: peace
Doctrine: Peace with God
Rejected alternatives: world peace / inner peace
Original: εἰρήνη
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. Appears in greeting and closing formulas (1:3, 16:11) and in the ‘God of peace’ background to worship order (14:33); distinguish from political and therapeutic senses.
Spiritual Gifts
Approved rendering: spiritual gifts
Transliteration: spiritual gifts
Doctrine: Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ
Rejected alternatives: gifted (dominant secular sense: innate talent/academic aptitude)
Original: χαρίσματα
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Core doctrine of this curriculum (chs. 7, 12, 14). Must distinguish ch.7’s distinct sense of a state of life (marriage/singleness) from ch.12/14’s sense of a corporate ministry ability given the same underlying Greek term (charisma); never confuse the two senses silently.
Fellowship
Approved rendering: fellowship
Transliteration: fellowship
Doctrine: Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: a fellowship (dominant contemporary academic/professional grant sense)
Original: κοινωνία
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Reinforced in 1 Corinthians 10:16-20’s ‘participation’ (koinonia) language at the Lord’s table and ch.16’s concrete practices (the collection, the holy kiss), which give fellowship tangible, costly, physical expression beyond the academic-grant sense.
Kingdom Of God
Approved rendering: kingdom of God
Transliteration: kingdom of God
Doctrine: Kingdom Mission
Rejected alternatives: a fantasy kingdom (contemporary media associations)
Original: βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ
Category: Kingdom
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 15:24’s climactic ‘he will hand over the kingdom to God the Father’ presents the kingdom’s final, cosmic consummation; distinguish this real, historical, culminating event from a fantasy-fiction realm’s ending.
Law
Approved rendering: law
Transliteration: law
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy (background)
Original: νόμος
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Appears in Paul’s ministry-adaptation argument (9:20) and death’s defeat (15:56, ‘the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law’).
Gentiles
Approved rendering: Gentiles
Transliteration: Gentiles
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Rejected alternatives: non-believers (common but incorrect modern gloss)
Original: ἔθνη
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Appears in the ethnic-unity argument of 1:22-24, 10:32, and 12:13; low-frequency word requiring the specific rhetorical stakes (not merely ‘non-believer’) to be supplied.
Glory
Approved rendering: glory
Transliteration: glory
Doctrine: Deity and Sonship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: glory days (nostalgic secular usage), a glory hound (pejorative)
Original: δόξα
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 2:7-8 (‘the Lord of glory’) and 11:7, 15 (gendered glory language) both require distinguishing from nostalgic or self-seeking secular usage.
Power Of God
Approved rendering: power of God
Transliteration: power of God
Doctrine: Power of God for Salvation
Original: δύναμις θεοῦ
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 1:18, 24’s ‘power of God’ revealed specifically in the foolishness of the cross should be distinguished from the largely negative secular power-abuse discourse.
Messiah
Approved rendering: Messiah
Transliteration: Messiah
Doctrine: Messianic Promise
Rejected alternatives: a messiah complex (pop-psychology pejorative)
Original: Χριστός
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package. Rendered throughout this letter chiefly as ‘Christ’; the specific, positive, Jewish-messianic-fulfillment sense should be actively restated wherever the title carries doctrinal weight (e.g., 1:23, 15:3).
Prophet
Approved rendering: prophet
Transliteration: prophet
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy (background)
Rejected alternatives: a tech prophet / prophet of doom (secular usage)
Original: προφήτης
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. In this book, distinguish the ch.12/14 corporate spiritual-gift sense (one who prophesies in worship) from the Old Testament prophetic office.
Prophecy
Approved rendering: prophecy
Transliteration: prophecy
Doctrine: Tongues, Prophecy, and the Question of Cessation
Rejected alternatives: a self-fulfilling prophecy (secular psychological idiom)
Original: προφητεία
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. In 1 Corinthians 12-14, prophecy is a Spirit-given corporate worship gift Paul ranks above uninterpreted tongues for intelligibility; distinct from astrological/fortune-telling prediction and from the self-fulfilling-prophecy idiom.
Israel
Approved rendering: Israel
Transliteration: Israel
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Original: Ἰσραήλ
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Cited at 10:18 as a wilderness-generation warning example; note the modern nation-state’s contemporary political salience distinct from this covenant-historical usage.
Jesus
Approved rendering: Jesus
Transliteration: Jesus
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: Jesus (as a casual interjection/expletive)
Original: Ἰησοῦς
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package. Popular ‘historical Jesus’ framings that reduce him to a wise teacher must be guarded against, especially given this book’s high concentration of deity/lordship claims (8:6, 12:3, 15:24-28).
God
Approved rendering: God
Transliteration: God
Doctrine: Deity and Sonship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: a higher power (recovery-program language), the universe (New-Age-influenced substitute)
Original: θεός
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 8:5-6’s ‘one God, the Father… one Lord, Jesus Christ’ is a live proof-text battleground for subordinationist (Jehovah’s Witnesses/Watchtower) misreadings; must be presented as Paul restating Jewish monotheism inclusive of Christ’s lordship, not subordinating Christ ontologically.
Holy Spirit
Approved rendering: Holy Spirit
Transliteration: Holy Spirit
Doctrine: Sanctification / Spiritual Gifts
Rejected alternatives: good vibes / positive energy (vague contemporary spiritual substitutes)
Original: πνεῦμα ἅγιον
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Indwells believers individually (6:19) and corporately (3:16) and distributes spiritual gifts (ch.12); the personal, Trinitarian sense must be actively taught against both wellness-culture vagueness and Oneness-Pentecostal modalist collapsing of person-distinctions.
Father
Approved rendering: Father
Transliteration: Father
Doctrine: Deity and Sonship of Christ
Original: πατήρ
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Appears at 8:6 and 15:24 in Trinitarian and eschatological-consummation contexts respectively; minor denominational note on ‘Father’ as a Catholic priestly title remains applicable.
Foolishness
Approved rendering: foolishness
Transliteration: foolishness (moria)
Doctrine: The Cross as Wisdom and Power
Rejected alternatives: silliness (too mild a contemporary equivalent)
Original: μωρία
Category: Wisdom and the Cross
New to this curriculum. Casual English ‘foolish’ is comparatively mild; Paul’s deliberate, scandalous absurdity (a crucified criminal as the answer to humanity’s deepest need) needs active restoration of its shock value. 1:18-25.
Boasting
Approved rendering: boasting
Transliteration: boasting (kauchesis)
Doctrine: Christian Unity versus Factionalism
Rejected alternatives: bragging (too mild a contemporary equivalent)
Original: καύχησις
Category: Christian Unity
New to this curriculum. Contemporary English hears ‘boasting’ mainly as a social faux pas rather than Paul’s deeper target: self-derived confidence before God that fueled Corinthian factionalism (1:29,31; 3:21; 4:7).
Rulers Of This Age
Approved rendering: rulers of this age
Transliteration: archontes tou aionos toutou
Doctrine: The Cross as Wisdom and Power
Original: ἄρχοντες τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου
Category: Wisdom and the Cross
New to this curriculum. Likely includes both human authorities and hostile spiritual powers who unwittingly accomplished their own defeat by crucifying Christ (2:6,8); contemporary secular readers may default to purely political rulers, missing the spiritual-power dimension.
Fleshly Carnal
Approved rendering: fleshly / carnal
Transliteration: sarkikos
Doctrine: Christian Unity versus Factionalism
Rejected alternatives: carnal knowledge (narrow contemporary legal-euphemistic sexual sense)
Original: σαρκικός
Category: Christian Unity
New to this curriculum. ‘Carnal’ survives mainly via ‘carnal knowledge,’ narrowing the term to sexual matters and obscuring Paul’s broader sense of unredeemed, Spirit-resistant thinking and behavior evidenced by the Corinthians’ own factionalism (3:1-3).
Temple
Approved rendering: temple
Transliteration: naos
Doctrine: Church as God’s People / Church Discipline and Holiness
Rejected alternatives: temple of the body (wellness-branding metaphor divorced from the exclusive indwelling-presence claim)
Original: ναός
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Applied by Paul to the church corporately (3:16-17) and to the individual believer’s body (6:19); contemporary usage evokes distant/foreign religious buildings or loose wellness metaphors, obscuring the exclusive, indwelling-presence claim of the one true God.
Reward Wages
Approved rendering: reward
Transliteration: misthos
Doctrine: Christian Unity versus Factionalism
Rejected alternatives: loyalty points / gamified incentive (trivializing contemporary association)
Original: μισθός
Category: Christian Unity
New to this curriculum. Believers’ ministry works will be tested by fire and rewarded or lost, though salvation itself is not at stake for the person so tested (3:12-15); contemporary gamified-incentive associations trivialize this serious final accounting.
Steward
Approved rendering: steward
Transliteration: oikonomos
Doctrine: Christian Unity versus Factionalism / Apostleship
Rejected alternatives: flight steward (dominant contemporary job-title sense)
Original: οἰκονόμος
Category: Christian Unity
New to this curriculum. Apostles are entrusted managers of God’s mysteries, accountable to their master, not independent authorities (4:1-2, 9:17); ‘steward’ survives mainly as an airline job title, losing the household-accountability weight Paul intends.
Hand Over To Satan
Approved rendering: hand over to Satan
Transliteration: paradounai to Satana
Doctrine: Church Discipline and Holiness
Rejected alternatives: removal from membership (over-softened administrative gloss)
Original: παραδοῦναι τῷ Σατανᾷ
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Formal expulsion of a persistently unrepentant member from the church’s protective community with a restorative aim (5:5); risk of being read either as an archaic curse or an over-softened bureaucratic action. Both the disciplinary and restorative purposes must be stated explicitly.
Joined One Flesh
Approved rendering: joined / one flesh
Transliteration: hen soma / kollomenos
Doctrine: Church Discipline and Holiness
Original: ἓν σῶμα / κολλώμενος
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Sexual union creates a real, spiritually significant bond (6:16-17), not a merely symbolic or emotional association, grounding Paul’s argument for treating sexual sin with theological seriousness.
Gift Of Singleness Marriage
Approved rendering: gift (of singleness/marriage)
Transliteration: charisma
Doctrine: Marriage and Singleness
Original: χάρισμα
Category: Marriage and Singleness
New to this curriculum. Frames both singleness and marriage as Spirit-given states suited to different people (7:7), not a hierarchy of holiness; must be flagged as a distinct sense from ch.12/14’s ministry-ability sense of the same underlying Greek term (charisma).
Knowledge
Approved rendering: knowledge
Transliteration: gnosis
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Original: γνῶσις
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. Correct theological understanding that nonetheless ‘puffs up’ and can become prideful if not tempered by love (8:1-3; 13:2); contemporary culture treats knowledge as an unambiguous good, obscuring this warning.
Conscience
Approved rendering: conscience
Transliteration: syneidesis
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Rejected alternatives: trust your gut / your own truth (contemporary self-validating individualist sense)
Original: συνείδησις
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. A weaker believer’s conscience must be respected and protected even if factually mistaken about idols (8:7-12; 10:23-29); Paul’s concern is for how one’s liberty affects ANOTHER’s conscience, a communal, other-directed application distinct from individualist self-validation.
All Things To All People
Approved rendering: all things to all people
Transliteration: pasi panta
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Rejected alternatives: people-pleasing / relativistic compromise (misreadings to actively rule out)
Original: πᾶσι πάντα
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. Paul’s principled cultural/social adaptability for the sake of gospel effectiveness without compromising gospel content (9:19-23); must not be misread as relativistic compromise or manipulative people-pleasing.
Testing Temptation
Approved rendering: testing / temptation
Transliteration: peirasmos
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Rejected alternatives: resisting the temptation of dessert (trivializing casual usage)
Original: πειρασμός
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. God’s faithfulness to provide a way of escape from testing (10:13), given in the specific context of temptation to idolatry drawn from Israel’s wilderness failures; casual contemporary usage trivializes ‘temptation’ into minor willpower struggles.
Types Example
Approved rendering: types / example
Transliteration: typos
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Original: τύπος
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. Israel’s wilderness failures recorded as instructive patterns/warnings for the Corinthian church (10:6,11); ‘type/typology’ is unfamiliar outside seminary contexts and needs a brief gloss, though plain-English ‘example’ carries little risk on its own.
Discern Examine
Approved rendering: discern / examine
Transliteration: diakrino
Doctrine: The Lord’s Supper
Rejected alternatives: vague intuitive spiritual discernment (contemporary self-help sense)
Original: διακρίνω
Category: The Lord’s Supper
New to this curriculum. Careful self-examination before partaking of the Lord’s Supper regarding ‘the body’ (11:28-29); popular ‘discernment’ language tends toward a vague, intuitive personal sense, whereas Paul intends a specific, serious act with real consequences.
Members
Approved rendering: members
Transliteration: mele
Doctrine: Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ
Rejected alternatives: gym membership / club membership (dominant contemporary transactional-enrollment sense)
Original: μέλη
Category: Spiritual Gifts
New to this curriculum. Individually indispensable body parts of Christ’s one body, regardless of perceived prominence (12:14-27); contemporary ‘member’ evokes dues-paying institutional enrollment, obscuring Paul’s organic, mutually-dependent bodily sense.
Decently And In Order
Approved rendering: decently and in order
Transliteration: euschemonos kai kata taxin
Doctrine: Tongues, Prophecy, and the Question of Cessation
Rejected alternatives: rigid, joyless formality (over-reading), mere stylistic preference (under-reading)
Original: εὐσχημόνως καὶ κατὰ τάξιν
Category: Order in Worship
New to this curriculum. Paul’s governing principle for regulating tongues, prophecy, and worship generally (14:40); Paul’s actual concern (intelligibility and edification of the whole gathered church) must be kept central rather than either extreme.
Firstfruits
Approved rendering: firstfruits
Transliteration: aparche
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ and Believers
Original: ἀπαρχή
Category: Eschatology
New to this curriculum. Christ’s resurrection (15:20,23) is the initial installment guaranteeing believers’ own future bodily resurrection; agricultural harvest imagery is unfamiliar to contemporary urban readers (obsolescence risk), needs brief explanation, but the underlying guarantee/down-payment logic maps reasonably well onto familiar modern financial-guarantee concepts if bridged carefully.
Imperishable Incorruptible
Approved rendering: imperishable / incorruptible
Transliteration: aphthartos
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ and Believers
Rejected alternatives: an incorruptible official (contemporary ethical-character sense, to be distinguished)
Original: ἄφθαρτος
Category: Eschatology
New to this curriculum. The resurrection body is permanently free from decay, ruin, or death (15:42,52-54); ‘incorruptible’ now survives chiefly as a description of moral character, not physical durability — the physical sense intended here must be distinguished.
Holy Kiss
Approved rendering: holy kiss
Transliteration: philema hagion
Doctrine: Christian Fellowship
Original: φίλημα ἅγιον
Category: Church
New to this curriculum. A conventional ancient Mediterranean greeting of familial affection, adapted as a distinctively Christian greeting of belonging (16:20); contemporary Western personal-space and touch-consent norms create real cultural distance, and most contemporary churches substitute a handshake or embrace, an adaptation that should be explained.
Maranatha
Approved rendering: Maranatha
Transliteration: Marana tha
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: translating away the Aramaic (rejected; must be preserved in transliteration, parallel to the baseline’s treatment of ‘Abba’)
Original: Μαράνα θά
Category: Eschatology
New to this curriculum. An urgent Aramaic prayer/exclamation, ‘Our Lord, come!’ (16:22), preserved untranslated in the source text; per the baseline’s precedent for ‘Abba,’ retain in transliteration with an explicit gloss rather than silently paraphrasing it away.
Anathema Accursed
Approved rendering: anathema / accursed
Transliteration: anathema
Doctrine: Church Discipline and Holiness
Rejected alternatives: that idea is anathema to me (contemporary softened literary sense: something strongly disliked)
Original: ἀνάθεμα
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. A solemn curse of exclusion invoked on those who reject or have no love for Christ (16:22), underscoring that genuine love for the Lord, not merely gifts or knowledge, is the non-negotiable mark of belonging to Christ (echoing ch.13); contemporary English retains ‘anathema’ mainly as a formal word for something strongly disliked, softening what is, in Paul’s usage, a solemn covenantal curse formula.
Low Risk Terms
Thanksgiving
Approved rendering: thanksgiving
Transliteration: thanksgiving
Doctrine: Thanksgiving
Original: εὐχαριστία
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package. 1 Corinthians 15:57’s climactic ‘thanks be to God, who gives us the victory’ is a clear doxological use with minimal risk of confusion with the secular national holiday sense.
Exhort
Approved rendering: exhort
Transliteration: exhort
Doctrine: Mutual Edification
Original: παρακαλέω
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package. Used of Paul’s appeals for unity (1:10) and instruction (4:16; 16:15-18); obsolescence risk only, no competing secular meaning.
Signs
Approved rendering: signs
Transliteration: signs (sēmeion)
Doctrine: The Cross as Wisdom and Power
Original: σημεῖον
Category: Wisdom and the Cross
New to this curriculum. The Jewish demand for confirming signs (1:22), contrasted with Greek demand for wisdom, both answered unexpectedly by the cross; minimal competing modern usage.
Mind Of Christ
Approved rendering: mind of Christ
Transliteration: nous Christou
Doctrine: The Cross as Wisdom and Power
Original: νοῦς Χριστοῦ
Category: Wisdom and the Cross
New to this curriculum. Believers, taught by the Spirit, share in Christ’s own perspective on reality (2:16); minimal competing usage.
Leaven
Approved rendering: leaven
Transliteration: zyme
Doctrine: Church Discipline and Holiness
Original: ζύμη
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Tolerated sin spreads and corrupts the whole community as yeast permeates dough (5:6-8); agricultural metaphor unfamiliar to many contemporary urban readers, needs brief explanation rather than active correction.
Washed
Approved rendering: washed
Transliteration: apolouo
Doctrine: Sanctification
Original: ἀπολούω
Category: Church Discipline
New to this curriculum. Part of the triad ‘washed, sanctified, justified’ (6:11) describing a complete, decisive change of status and life at conversion; minimal competing modern usage.
Crown Prize
Approved rendering: crown / prize
Transliteration: stephanos / brabeion
Doctrine: Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
Original: στέφανος / βραβεῖον
Category: Christian Liberty
New to this curriculum. Ancient-games imagery for disciplined ministry aimed at an imperishable reward (9:24-27); minor cultural-distance risk only, since the athletic metaphor remains broadly intelligible in contemporary sports culture.
Manifestation Of The Spirit
Approved rendering: manifestation (of the Spirit)
Transliteration: phanerosis tou pneumatos
Doctrine: Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ
Original: φανέρωσις τοῦ πνεύματος
Category: Spiritual Gifts
New to this curriculum. Each gift is a visible sign of the Spirit’s presence given for the common good, not personal prestige (12:7); minimal competing secular meaning.
Loves Behavioral List
Approved rendering: love’s behavioral list (patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, keeps no record of wrongs, etc.)
Transliteration: various (13:4-7)
Doctrine: Love as the Greater Way
Original: various (13:4-7)
Category: Love
New to this curriculum. Paul defines agape by concrete, willed actions and restraints, deliberately resisting reduction to sentiment; individually low risk, but collectively must be presented as Paul’s actual operational DEFINITION of love, not mere illustrations of a feeling.
Interpretation
Approved rendering: interpretation
Transliteration: hermeneia
Doctrine: Tongues, Prophecy, and the Question of Cessation
Original: ἑρμηνεία
Category: Order in Worship
New to this curriculum. The Spirit-given ability to render tongues-speech intelligible to the gathered church (12:10, 14:5,13,27-28); minimal competing secular meaning once paired with ‘tongues’ in context.
Sting Of Death Victory
Approved rendering: sting of death / victory
Transliteration: to kentron tou thanatou / nikos
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ and Believers
Original: τὸ κέντρον τοῦ θανάτου / νῖκος
Category: Eschatology
New to this curriculum. Death personified as a defeated, disarmed enemy (15:54-57); minor risk, triumphant tone broadly intelligible without correction.
The Collection
Approved rendering: the collection
Transliteration: he logia
Doctrine: The Collection and Christian Generosity
Original: ἡ λογία
Category: Church
New to this curriculum. Organized gathering of funds for the relief of the Jerusalem church (16:1-4), modeling cross-congregational Christian generosity and the unity theme of chs. 1, 3, 12; minimal risk, broadly intelligible in contemporary church practice.
Referenced passages