Core Glossary: 2 John (Full Book)

Curriculum: 2 John Destination language: English Scope: Every load-bearing term identified in analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, covering the entire book (2 John 1:1–13) — the core passage (vv. 4–11) plus the remainder of the single-chapter book (vv. 1–3, 12–13). Terms already recorded in the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json are marked [BASELINE REUSE] and carry their exact recorded rendering and risk tier forward unchanged, per the governing rule that established renderings must be reused exactly. New terms specific to 2 John are assessed using the same three-part risk framework (false-friend drift / denominational contest / obsolescence) the baseline established.

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Glossary Table

#	English Rendering	Original (Greek)	Transliteration	Category	Risk	Verses	Definition	Translation / Cultural Notes
1	truth	ἀλήθεια	alētheia	Faith/Doctrine	Critical	1,2,3,4	The revealed reality of the gospel; a fixed, given reality to be lived in, not personally authored.	Dominant contemporary “your truth”/“live your truth” relativism reframes truth as subjective narrative; must be explicitly distinguished as an objective, shared reality on every substantive use. New term (no baseline entry); assess at same tier as baseline’s Critical false-friend terms.
2	love	ἀγάπη	agapē	Faith/Doctrine	Critical	1,3,5,6	Self-giving love defined operationally as obedience to Christ’s commandments, not sentiment.	Contemporary English “love” is diluted by romantic, commercial, and unconditional-affirmation senses that conflict with 2 John 1:6’s definition of love as obedience; requires explicit correction. New term.
3	elder	πρεσβύτερος	presbyteros	Church/Office	High	1	First-century title of recognized pastoral authority (traditionally the Apostle John’s self-designation), distinct from “apostle.”	Denominational contest: Presbyterian, LDS, and Jehovah’s Witness traditions each have distinct formal “elder” offices readers may wrongly import; other readers may hear only “old man.” State the apostolic-era sense explicitly. New term.
4	elect lady	ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ	eklektē kyria	Church/Address	High	1	Honorific address to a Christian woman (or personified local church) as one among God’s chosen people.	Collision risk with baseline’s Critical “election” entry (Romans 9): this is ordinary corporate “chosen” language, not a proof-text for the predestination debate. κυρία is NOT the baseline’s christological κύριος (“Lord”); must be explicitly distinguished from both baseline entries. New term.
5	children	τέκνα	tekna	Church/Family	Medium	1,4,13	The addressee’s literal children and/or members of her household/congregation under her care.	Interpretive ambiguity (literal family vs. congregation) should be stated, not resolved silently. Related to baseline’s Low-risk “adoption” doctrine but functions as pastoral-affection language here, not soteriological status. New term.
6	grace	χάρις	charis	Salvation	Critical [BASELINE REUSE]	3	Unmerited favor from God.	Reuse baseline rendering and clarification exactly: not physical elegance/poise, not a legal “grace period.”
7	mercy	ἔλεος	eleos	God	Low-Medium	3	Compassionate kindness shown toward those in need/distress; distinct from grace’s emphasis on undeserved favor.	Stable in English; minor risk readers collapse it into a near-synonym of “grace,” losing Greek’s sharper compassion-toward-suffering nuance. New term.
8	peace	εἰρήνη	eirēnē	Salvation	Medium [BASELINE REUSE]	3	Relational, covenantal peace with God.	Reuse baseline rendering and clarification exactly: distinguish from political “world peace” and therapeutic “inner peace.”
9	God	θεός	theos	God	Critical [BASELINE REUSE]	3,9	The one true, personal, triune God.	Reuse baseline rendering exactly.
10	Father	πατήρ	patēr	God	High [BASELINE REUSE]	3,4,9	God as personal Father.	Reuse baseline rendering exactly.
11	Jesus	Ἰησοῦς	Iēsous	Christology	Critical [BASELINE REUSE]	3,7,9	The proper name of the Son of God.	Reuse baseline rendering exactly.
12	Christ / Son of the Father	Χριστός / υἱὸς τοῦ πατρός	Christos / huios tou patros	Christology	Critical [BASELINE REUSE]	3,7,9	The Anointed One; the eternal, unique, co-equal Son.	Reuse baseline “Messiah” and “Son of God” renderings exactly. 2 John 1:3’s specific phrase “Son of the Father” foregrounds the Father-Son relation; preserve that emphasis, not a doctrinally distinct new term.
13	commandment	ἐντολή	entolē	Faith/Obedience	High	4,5,6	The apostolic charge to love, traceable to Christ’s own teaching, not a novel legal demand.	Contemporary autonomy culture is broadly suspicious of “commandment” as external imposition; apply same reasoning as baseline’s High-risk “obedience of faith” doctrine (Romans 1:5, 16:26) — obedience flowing from love, not servility. New term.
14	walk	περιπατέω	peripateō	Faith/Conduct	Medium	4,6	One’s whole manner of life and conduct, oriented toward truth.	English idiom “walk the walk” is a mild asset but risks flattening into generic good behavior rather than a directed, continuous manner of life. New term.
15	deceiver	πλάνος	planos	Sin/False Teaching	Medium	7	One who actively leads others astray from the truth, not merely one who is mistaken.	Risk of flattening into generic “liar,” losing the “leading astray” trajectory sense latent in the Greek root. New term.
16	world	κόσμος	kosmos	Doctrine	Medium	7	Humanity/the created order organized in opposition to God’s truth (Johannine pejorative sense).	Contemporary English “the world” is either neutral-geographic or vaguely “worldly” (materialistic); neither maps precisely onto John’s sharper moral-spiritual sense. New term.
17	confess	ὁμολογέω	homologeō	Christology/Confession	High	7	Public acknowledgment/declaration of true belief and allegiance regarding Christ’s person.	False-friend risk: dominant contemporary sense of “confess/confession” is admitting guilt or wrongdoing, not positive creedal declaration. Parallels baseline’s Romans 10:9 confession treatment; draw the explicit connection. New term.
18	incarnation (coming in the flesh)	ἐρχόμενον ἐν σαρκί	erchomenon en sarki	Christology	Critical [BASELINE REUSE]	7	The eternal Son’s real, historical assumption of human nature.	Reuse baseline “incarnation” rendering exactly. Curriculum-specific note: 2 John elevates the practical stakes of this doctrine above the baseline’s general Medium doctrine-risk tier, since denial of the incarnation is here the very definition of antichrist/false teaching — treat as functionally High-risk in this curriculum’s context.
19	antichrist	ἀντίχριστος	antichristos	Christology/False Teaching	High	7	A present, ongoing pattern (not a single future figure) of denying Christ’s incarnation.	Contemporary sensationalist end-times fiction and casual political name-calling both distort the term; must be explicitly distinguished from popular-culture usage and restored to its plural, present, doctrinal sense. New term.
20	reward	μισθός	misthos	Faith/Perseverance	Medium	8	Fruit of faithful perseverance in ministry/relationship with God, not a wage earning salvation.	The underlying wage/labor metaphor risks a transactional, merit-earning frame in tension with baseline’s Critical “grace” doctrine; clarify this is reward for perseverance within an already-received relationship, not salvation-by-works. New term.
21	abide	μένω	menō	Faith/Perseverance	Medium	2,9	Continuous, settled, indwelling relationship with the truth/teaching, not occasional agreement.	Obsolescence risk (rare, slightly archaic word) rather than false-friend; concept must be built from scratch for most readers, similar to baseline’s “exhort”/“intercession” pattern. New term.
22	teaching of Christ (doctrine)	διδαχὴ τοῦ Χριστοῦ	didachē tou Christou	Christology/Doctrine	High	9,10	The apostolic testimony about who Christ is (centered on the incarnation) and what he requires.	”Doctrine” carries a negative rigid-dogma connotation in casual contemporary usage, in tension with individually-authored-belief culture; central to the “Perseverance in the Teaching of Christ” doctrine and must be reframed as historically anchored apostolic testimony, not arbitrary institutional rule. New term.
23	receive into the house (hospitality)	λαμβάνειν εἰς οἰκίαν	lambanein eis oikian	Church/Discernment	High	10	Ancient practice of hosting traveling teachers, functioning as material/social endorsement of their ministry.	Genuine live tension with contemporary individualist privacy norms and with contemporary unconditional-inclusivity ethics; must be explicitly distinguished from a general command against hospitality to strangers/the needy — this is refusal of endorsement to specific false teachers, not personal unkindness. New term.
24	greeting	χαίρειν	chairein	Culture/Idiom	Low-Medium	10,11	A standard, quasi-formal Hellenistic greeting formula functioning as public welcome/endorsement.	Obsolescence/cultural-background risk: modern readers may not realize withholding it means withholding formal endorsement, not merely a casual “hello.” New term.
25	shares/participates in	κοινωνέω	koinōneō	Church/Complicity	Medium	11	To have a part in, be a partner in — here, complicity in another’s wrongdoing.	Verbal cognate of baseline’s “fellowship” noun (κοινωνία, Low risk in baseline); used here in a pointedly negative sense (complicity in evil), risking import of “fellowship’s” warm churchy connotation onto a statement about shared guilt. Render as “shares/participates in,” not “fellowships with,” specifically to avoid this baseline collision. New term.
26	evil works	ἔργα πονηρά	erga ponēra	Ethics	Low	11	Wicked deeds, morally worthless actions.	Ordinary ethical vocabulary; minor note on verbal echo to the baseline’s grace-versus-works debate, though not the same technical usage. New term.
27	joy	χαρά	chara	Faith/Fellowship	Medium	12	Settled, complete gladness realized specifically in restored face-to-face relational fellowship within the truth-and-love community.	Popular therapeutic/self-help culture reduces “joy” to a fleeting positive mood or decluttering slogan (“spark joy”), risking loss of the relational, truth-and-love-community-specific sense. New term.
28	sister	ἀδελφή	adelphē	Church/Family	Low-Medium	13	A fellow believer as spiritual kin (or a literal sister), paired with “elect lady” (v.1) as a matched pair.	Minor denominational note: Catholic/Orthodox usage also applies “Sister” as a formal title for a woman religious (a nun), parallel to the baseline’s “Father”/priest-title note. New term.
29	paper and ink / face to face	χάρτης καὶ μέλαν / στόμα πρὸς στόμα	chartēs kai melan / stoma pros stoma	Culture/Idiom	Low	12	Concrete material and idiomatic details confirming the letter’s genuine, personal, occasional epistolary genre.	No doctrinal content; retain briefly as genre-confirming cultural/historical background, consistent with baseline’s idiom-handling approach to figures like Romans 11’s “engrafted” branches. New terms.

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Risk Summary for 2 John

Risk Tier	Count	Terms
Critical	6	truth, love, grace*, God*, Jesus*, Christ/Son of the Father*, incarnation* (7 if incarnation counted separately — see note)
High	8	elder, elect lady, Father*, commandment, confess, antichrist, teaching of Christ, receive into the house
Medium	10	children, mercy, peace*, walk, deceiver, world, reward, abide, shares/participates in, joy
Low / Low-Medium	5	greeting, evil works, sister, paper and ink, face to face

* = baseline reuse; risk tier carried forward unchanged from bible_term_registry.json/doctrine_risk_registry.json.

Note on incarnation’s tier: the baseline term-level registry rates “incarnation” Critical, while the baseline doctrine-level registry rates the “Incarnation” doctrine Medium. Both are reused unchanged here per the governing rule against baseline contradiction; this glossary additionally flags (see item 18 above and 07_semantic_analysis.md) that 2 John’s specific use of incarnation-denial as the definition of antichrist raises the practical stakes of the doctrine within this curriculum above its general Romans-context Medium tier, warranting High-tier review routing in Phase 2 for this curriculum specifically, without altering the baseline registry itself.

Human theologian review required (Critical/High, consistent with baseline routing rules): truth, love, elder, elect lady, commandment, confess, antichrist, teaching of Christ, receive into the house, plus all baseline-reused Critical/High terms (grace, God, Jesus, Christ/Son of the Father, Father, incarnation).

Native speaker review recommended (Medium): children, mercy, walk, deceiver, world, reward, abide, shares/participates in, joy, plus baseline-reused peace (Medium).

Automated review sufficient (Low): greeting, evil works, sister, paper and ink, face to face.

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Critical Risk Terms

Grace

Approved rendering: grace
Transliteration: grace
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: elegance/poise (the dominant secular sense, e.g. ‘she moved with such grace’), a grace period (the dominant legal/financial sense, an extension of time, not unmerited favor)
Original: χάρις
Category: Salvation

CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: ‘grace’ in ordinary contemporary English overwhelmingly means physical elegance or poise, or, in contracts and billing, a ‘grace period’ (a delay before a penalty applies) — a completely secularized sense with no theological content. CRITICAL DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST: English-speaking Christian traditions themselves disagree sharply on grace’s relationship to works and human cooperation (Reformed ‘grace alone’ vs. Wesleyan/Arminian synergism vs. Catholic sacramental ‘means of grace’ theology); this curriculum must state its own reading of Romans’ ‘apart from works’ argument (4:4-5, 11:5-6) explicitly rather than assume all English-speaking Christian readers already agree. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE. Appears in 2 John 1:3’s triadic salutation (grace, mercy, peace); apply this exact clarification on first substantive use in any 2 John study document, and additionally distinguish grace (favor toward the undeserving) from mercy (compassion toward the suffering) in that triad — see the new ‘mercy’ entry below.

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Truth

Approved rendering: truth
Transliteration: truth
Doctrine: Walking in Truth and Love
Rejected alternatives: your truth / personal truth / living your truth (the dominant contemporary relativizing idiom, reframing truth as a subjective personal narrative validated by authenticity rather than a shared, given, external reality), factual accuracy alone (too thin; misses the distinctively Johannine sense of truth as a quasi-personal reality identified with God’s own self-revelation in Christ)
Original: ἀλήθεια
Category: Faith

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT specific to this curriculum: 2 John’s entire opening argument (1:1-6) presupposes that truth is a fixed reality one can be ‘in’ or can ‘depart from,’ the direct inverse of the dominant contemporary ‘your truth’ idiom. Requires explicit, repeated clarification on the same tier as the baseline’s Critical false-friend terms (justification, election, grace). Must be taught as a linked pair with ‘love’ (see below), since 2 John 1:6 defines each in terms of the other.

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Love

Approved rendering: love
Transliteration: love
Doctrine: Walking in Truth and Love
Rejected alternatives: unconditional non-judgmental affirmation (the dominant contemporary therapeutic-culture sense, directly in tension with 2 John 1:6’s definition of love as obedience to Christ’s commandments), romantic/erotic love, casual enthusiasm (‘I love this song’), marketing usage (dominant everyday senses with no bearing on this text)
Original: ἀγάπη
Category: Faith

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: 2 John 1:6 gives the letter’s tightest definition of love as obedience to Christ’s commandments, not sentiment or unconditional approval — this runs directly against the dominant contemporary cultural equation of love with unconditional, non-judgmental acceptance. Must be actively and explicitly distinguished on every substantive use; do not gloss ‘love’ independently of the truth-love-commandment linkage established in vv.4-6.

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High Risk Terms

Elder

Approved rendering: elder
Transliteration: elder
Doctrine: Apostolic Pastoral Authority (the Elder)
Rejected alternatives: Presbyterian ruling/teaching elder (a specific modern denominational church-government office), LDS ‘Elder [Surname]’ missionary/priesthood title (a distinct modern institutional office), Jehovah’s Witness congregational elder (a distinct modern institutional office), simply ‘an old man’ (too generic, loses the claim to recognized apostolic-era pastoral authority)
Original: πρεσβύτερος
Category: Church

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST: readers from traditions with a formal, structured ‘elder’ office (Presbyterian, LDS, Jehovah’s Witness) will likely import their own tradition’s institutional structure onto this self-designation (traditionally identified with the Apostle John); readers from traditions without formal eldership may read it as merely ‘an old man.’ State the first-century apostolic-era pastoral-authority sense explicitly rather than assuming any single later denominational structure.

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Elect Lady

Approved rendering: elect lady
Transliteration: elect lady
Doctrine: Corporate Election and Chosen Identity
Rejected alternatives: president-elect-style political officeholder (the dominant everyday false-friend sense of ‘elect’ as adjective), a proof text for the Reformed/Arminian predestination debate (an overcorrection risk specific to readers of the Romans baseline), chosen woman / the church (paraphrases that silently resolve the genuine, unresolved scholarly ambiguity over individual addressee vs. personified congregation)
Original: ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ
Category: Church

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. DOUBLE COLLISION RISK WITH BASELINE VOCABULARY: (1) readers freshly taught to distinguish Romans 9’s ‘election’ from the political-voting false friend may overcorrect and read this ordinary corporate ‘elect/chosen’ address as reopening the predestination debate — state explicitly this is the same ordinary corporate sense as the baseline’s ‘saints’ doctrine (cf. 1 Peter 1:1’s ‘elect exiles’), not a systematic-theology proof text. (2) ‘Lady’ (kyria) shares a root with the baseline’s Critical christological ‘Lord’ (kyrios) but carries no divine-authority content — it is an ordinary respectful address for a woman, structurally parallel to addressing a man as ‘sir.’ Both distinctions are mandatory. Retain the traditional phrase rather than paraphrasing; the individual-woman-vs-personified-church question is a live, legitimate scholarly ambiguity to state, not resolve silently. Echoed at 1:13 as ‘elect sister’ (see ‘sister’ entry).

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Commandment

Approved rendering: commandment
Transliteration: commandment
Doctrine: Walking in Truth and Love
Rejected alternatives: blind obedience / just following orders (negative idioms reflecting contemporary Western suspicion of obedience as servility or complicity, e.g. historical wrongdoing), a new rule (misses the deliberate paradox of vv.5-6: ‘not a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning’)
Original: ἐντολή
Category: Faith

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. Contemporary Western autonomy culture is broadly suspicious of ‘commandment’ language as external, imposed, non-negotiable authority in tension with individual self-determination. Apply the same reasoning the baseline uses for its High-risk ‘obedience of faith’ doctrine (Romans 1:5, 16:26): this is obedience flowing from love and relationship, not servile compliance. Preserve the ‘new… yet from the beginning’ paradox rather than flattening it into a single unqualified claim.

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Confess

Approved rendering: confess
Transliteration: confess
Doctrine: Warning against Deceivers Denying the Incarnation
Rejected alternatives: admit / confess wrongdoing (the dominant contemporary guilt-admission sense, nearly opposite in valence to John’s positive, public creedal declaration), acknowledge (a softer gloss that under-translates the public, declarative, allegiance-bearing force of the Greek)
Original: ὁμολογέω
Category: Christology

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent, but directly parallel to the baseline’s treatment of confession language at Romans 10:9 and must be explicitly cross-referenced to it. FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: dominant contemporary English usage of ‘confess/confession’ overwhelmingly means admitting guilt (‘I have a confession to make,’ a criminal confession), not a positive creedal declaration. Readers may unconsciously import a guilt-admission frame onto 1:7, which is actually about public, glad acknowledgment of Christ’s incarnation. Ranked the single highest-risk term in this letter (see analysis/06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md §4) because the false sense is nearly opposite in valence, not merely different.

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Antichrist

Approved rendering: antichrist
Transliteration: antichrist
Doctrine: Warning against Deceivers Denying the Incarnation
Rejected alternatives: a single future end-times supervillain (the dominant apocalyptic-thriller-fiction sense), casual political hyperbole, e.g. ‘so-and-so is the antichrist’ (empties the term of doctrinal content)
Original: ἀντίχριστος
Category: Christology

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. In 1-2 John, a present, plural, ongoing pattern of denying Christ’s incarnation active already among first-century false teachers (1:7) — not a single future individual. Retain the transliterated term (do not paraphrase away as ‘false teacher’ alone, which would lose the letter’s own established vocabulary and hinder cross-reference to 1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3); pair every occurrence with explicit restoration of its plural, present, doctrinal sense. Must not be repurposed as interfaith polemic against Judaism or Islam, both of which deny the incarnation as settled theological conviction rather than first-century Gnostic-docetic deception within the Christian community — 2 John’s actual target.

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Teaching Of Christ

Approved rendering: teaching of Christ
Transliteration: teaching of Christ
Doctrine: Perseverance in the Teaching of Christ
Rejected alternatives: doctrine as rigid, impersonal institutional dogma (the dominant negative casual connotation, e.g. ‘doctrinaire,’ ‘just following doctrine’), generic ethical instruction only (under-represents the letter’s christological center, v.7)
Original: διδαχὴ τοῦ Χριστοῦ
Category: Christology

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. The whole body of apostolic testimony about who Christ is — centered on the incarnation (1:7) — and what he requires; the content one must ‘abide in’ to have both the Father and the Son (1:9). Note the genitive (‘teaching of Christ’) is genuinely ambiguous between ‘teaching about Christ’s person’ and ‘teaching Christ himself gave’; state this ambiguity explicitly per the baseline’s Ambiguity Handling rule rather than silently resolving it, while foregrounding the ‘about Christ’s person’ sense given the letter’s context. Must be actively reframed against the negative rigid-dogma connotation as historically anchored apostolic testimony, not arbitrary institutional rule.

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Receive Into The House

Approved rendering: receive into the house
Transliteration: receive into the house
Doctrine: Hospitality and Doctrinal Discernment
Rejected alternatives: a general rule against hospitality to strangers or the needy (explicitly NOT what this instruction means; contrast Romans 12:13 and 3 John 5-8, which command hospitality), mere household etiquette (the individualist-privacy-norm flattening that misses the doctrinal-endorsement stakes)
Original: λαμβάνειν εἰς οἰκίαν
Category: Church

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. The ancient Mediterranean hospitality practice of hosting traveling teachers, functioning as material and social endorsement of their ministry (1:10). Two contemporary cultural currents cut against the plain sense: Western individualist/privacy norms (flattening this into quaint etiquette) and a strong contemporary ethic of unconditional hospitality/non-judgmental inclusivity (making the instruction feel harsh or ‘unloving,’ in apparent tension with 1:5-6’s own love command). Must state explicitly, every time this passage is taught, that this is refusal of doctrinal endorsement to specific incarnation-denying teachers, not personal unkindness or a general anti-hospitality policy.

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Medium Risk Terms

Peace

Approved rendering: peace
Transliteration: peace
Doctrine: Peace with God
Rejected alternatives: world peace / inner peace (the dominant secular senses: political non-conflict or psychological calm)
Original: εἰρήνη
Category: Salvation

‘Peace’ is heavily used in political (‘world peace’) and therapeutic/wellness (‘inner peace,’ ‘peace of mind’) senses in contemporary English. Romans 5:1’s specific relational, judicial peace with God secured through justification must be distinguished from both the geopolitical and the merely psychological senses. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE. Appears in 2 John 1:3’s triadic salutation alongside grace and mercy; the relational-wellbeing sense (the resulting state after grace and mercy) should be foregrounded in that triad.

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God

Approved rendering: God
Transliteration: God
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: a higher power (a common, deliberately vague contemporary substitute, e.g. in recovery-program language), the universe (a New-Age-influenced impersonal substitute, e.g. ‘the universe has a plan for you’)
Original: θεός
Category: God

Contemporary spiritual-but-not-religious culture often substitutes deliberately vague or impersonal alternatives (‘a higher power,’ ‘the universe’) for a personal, specific, self-revealing God. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE. Appears in 2 John 1:3 and 1:9, where ‘does not have God… has both the Father and the Son’ explicitly ties right relationship with God to correct belief about Christ’s person (the incarnation); do not soften this claim for readers uncomfortable with doctrine-conditioned relationship with God.

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Father

Approved rendering: Father
Transliteration: Father
Doctrine: Adoption into God’s Family
Original: πατήρ
Category: God

Minor denominational note: in Catholic usage ‘Father’ is also the standard form of address for a priest, which could create ambiguity in mixed-denomination reading groups; also worth noting that for readers with painful or absent human father figures, ‘Father’ as a name for God may carry unintended negative emotional weight requiring pastoral sensitivity, not just doctrinal explanation. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE. Appears in 2 John 1:3, 1:4, and 1:9; 1:3’s specific phrase ‘the Son of the Father’ foregrounds the Father-Son relation explicitly — preserve that relational emphasis.

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Jesus

Approved rendering: Jesus
Transliteration: Jesus
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: Jesus (as a casual interjection/expletive, entirely secularized and disrespectful usage)
Original: Ἰησοῦς
Category: Christology

Widely used as a casual interjection or mild expletive in secular speech, a use this curriculum’s register should obviously avoid; otherwise the name itself is stable, though popular ‘historical Jesus’ framings (a wise moral teacher, a social reformer) often quietly strip out the divine claims made about him. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE. Appears in 2 John 1:3 and, critically, 1:7 (in the incarnation-denial context that defines the deceiver/antichrist).

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Messiah

Approved rendering: Messiah
Transliteration: Messiah
Doctrine: Messianic Promise
Rejected alternatives: a messiah complex (a pop-psychology pejorative term for grandiose self-importance)
Original: Χριστός
Category: Christology

‘A messiah complex’ is a common pop-psychology term of mild clinical mockery for main-character grandiosity; the term’s specific, positive, Jewish-messianic-fulfillment sense should be actively restated. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE. Appears in 2 John as ‘Christ’ in 1:3, 1:7, and 1:9 (‘the teaching of Christ’); note that 1:9’s genitive phrase is itself genuinely ambiguous between ‘teaching about Christ’s person’ and ‘teaching Christ himself gave’ — state this ambiguity rather than silently resolving it (see ‘teaching_of_christ’ entry below).

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Son Of God

Approved rendering: Son of God
Transliteration: Son of God
Doctrine: Sonship of Christ
Original: υἱὸς τοῦ πατρός
Category: Christology

Comparatively stable phrase, but contemporary secular ‘historical Jesus’ popular narratives can quietly strip theological content from the phrase even when the words themselves are retained; the eternal, unique, divine sense must be actively taught. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE. 2 John 1:3’s specific phrase ‘the Son of the Father’ foregrounds the Father-Son relation explicitly; preserve this relational emphasis without treating it as a doctrinally distinct new term. Also relevant at 1:9 (‘has both the Father and the Son’).

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Incarnation

Approved rendering: incarnation
Transliteration: incarnation
Doctrine: Incarnation
Original: ἐρχόμενον ἐν σαρκί
Category: Christology

Comparatively stable and mostly encountered in explicitly Christian (especially Christmas-season) contexts. Minor risk: loose secular metaphorical usage (‘the incarnation of evil,’ ‘a previous incarnation of this company’) can dilute the doctrine’s uniqueness. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, rendering unchanged. CURRICULUM-SPECIFIC ESCALATION: 2 John 1:7 uses denial of the incarnation (‘coming in the flesh’) as the very definition of the deceiver and the antichrist, and 1:9-10’s hospitality restriction depends on readers correctly grasping what is being denied. Route this term at functionally HIGH risk for review purposes within this curriculum specifically, without altering the baseline registry’s general Medium doctrine-risk tier for Incarnation in the Romans context. Must never be rendered with a term for a deity’s temporary or repeatable descent/appearance (guard against Hindu avatar or Buddhist nirmanakaya comparisons being treated as equivalent).

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Fellowship

Approved rendering: fellowship
Transliteration: fellowship
Doctrine: Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: a fellowship (the dominant contemporary secular sense: an academic, research, or professional grant/appointment, e.g. ‘a postdoctoral fellowship’)
Original: κοινωνία
Category: Church

In contemporary English, ‘a fellowship’ is more likely to be encountered as an academic or professional grant/appointment than as shared Christian communal life. INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, for the noun form only. CRITICAL DISAMBIGUATION FOR THIS CURRICULUM: 2 John 1:11 uses the verbal cognate koinoneo in a pointedly negative sense (complicity in another’s evil works). Never render 2 John 1:11 with fellowship-adjacent language (‘fellowships with’); use the separate ‘shares_participates_in’ entry below specifically to prevent this term’s warm, positive connotation from bleeding into a statement about shared guilt.

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Children

Approved rendering: children
Transliteration: children
Doctrine: Corporate Election and Chosen Identity
Original: τέκνα
Category: Church

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. Refers to the addressee’s literal children and/or the members of her household or congregation under her pastoral care (1:1, 1:4, 1:13). Interpretive ambiguity between literal family and congregational membership should be stated explicitly, not silently resolved. Loosely related to the baseline’s Low-risk ‘adoption’ doctrine in root sense, but functions here as pastoral-affection language for a specific relationship, not soteriological status language.

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Mercy

Approved rendering: mercy
Transliteration: mercy
Doctrine: Grace, Mercy, and Peace from God
Rejected alternatives: a near-synonym of grace (loses the Greek’s sharper distinction: mercy as compassion toward the suffering/needy, distinct from grace as favor toward the undeserving as such)
Original: ἔλεος
Category: God

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. Contemporary English ‘mercy’ survives with reasonably stable meaning (courtroom clemency, ‘have mercy’); the main risk is that English tends to treat grace, mercy, and peace as near-synonyms in 2 John 1:3’s triadic greeting, flattening the Greek’s sharper distinctions. Supply a brief triadic gloss the first time 1:3 is taught rather than glossing any one term in isolation.

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Walk

Approved rendering: walk
Transliteration: walk
Doctrine: Walking in Truth and Love
Rejected alternatives: behaving well / good behavior (too generic, loses the holistic, directed, continuous manner-of-life sense oriented toward a person, not just a rule)
Original: περιπατέω
Category: Faith

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. A Hebraic/Johannine metaphor for one’s whole habitual manner of life, appearing at 1:4 and 1:6. English idiom ‘walk the walk’ is a mild asset preserving lived-out conduct, but risks flattening into generic good behavior; supply the gloss ‘one’s whole manner of life’ on first use per document.

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Deceiver

Approved rendering: deceiver
Transliteration: deceiver
Doctrine: Warning against Deceivers Denying the Incarnation
Rejected alternatives: liar (too generic, loses the ‘leading others astray’ trajectory sense latent in the Greek root’s kinship with ‘wandering,’ which reinforces by contrast the letter’s own walking-in-truth imagery)
Original: πλάνος
Category: Sin

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. One who actively leads others astray from the truth (1:7), not merely one who is personally mistaken.

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World

Approved rendering: world
Transliteration: world
Doctrine: The World in Opposition to God’s Truth
Rejected alternatives: the globe / all nations (the dominant neutral geographic sense), worldly = materialistic (the vague secular pejorative sense)
Original: κόσμος
Category: Doctrine

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. Humanity/the created order organized in active opposition to God’s truth (the Johannine pejorative sense used at 1:7), distinct from kosmos’s neutral sense elsewhere. Neither the neutral-geographic nor the vaguely-‘worldly’ contemporary English sense maps precisely onto this sharper moral-spiritual sense; context must make it explicit.

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Reward

Approved rendering: reward
Transliteration: reward
Doctrine: Reward for Perseverance
Rejected alternatives: a wage earning salvation itself (a transactional, merit-earning frame in tension with the baseline’s Critical grace doctrine, Romans 4:4-5, 11:5-6), material/financial prosperity (a prosperity-gospel-adjacent misreading to avoid)
Original: μισθός
Category: Faith

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. The underlying wage/labor metaphor (1:8) risks importing a transactional frame; clarify explicitly that this reward is fruit of faithful perseverance within an already-received relationship with God, not a wage that earns salvation (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 for a comparable pattern).

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Abide

Approved rendering: abide
Transliteration: abide
Doctrine: Perseverance in the Teaching of Christ
Rejected alternatives: stay / remain / continue (plain-English substitutes that under-convey the settled, relational, permanent-indwelling sense of the Greek menō)
Original: μένω
Category: Faith

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. OBSOLESCENCE RISK rather than false-friend risk, comparable to the baseline’s ‘exhort’ and ‘intercession’: ‘abide’ is rare and archaic-sounding in ordinary contemporary speech, so most readers need the distinctively Johannine concept of settled, continuous indwelling relationship (cf. John 15) built from scratch rather than a wrong prior definition corrected. Retain the word; do not substitute a modern synonym that loses the relational weight. Appears at 1:2 (truth abiding in believers) and 1:9 (abiding in the teaching of Christ).

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Shares Participates In

Approved rendering: shares/participates in
Transliteration: shares/participates in
Doctrine: Complicity in False Teaching
Rejected alternatives: fellowships with (would wrongly import the baseline’s warm, positive ‘fellowship’ noun connotation onto a statement about complicity in evil works)
Original: κοινωνέω
Category: Church

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. Verbal cognate of koinōnia (the baseline’s Low-risk, warmly relational ‘fellowship’ noun), used at 1:11 in a pointedly negative sense — complicity in another’s evil works. COLLISION WITH BASELINE VOCABULARY: fixed rendering is ‘shares/participates in,’ never ‘fellowships with,’ specifically to prevent the noun’s positive churchy connotation from bleeding into this verse’s statement of shared guilt.

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Joy

Approved rendering: joy
Transliteration: joy
Doctrine: Fulfilled Joy in Relational Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: a fleeting positive mood / ‘does it spark joy?’ decluttering slogan (the dominant contemporary therapeutic/self-help sense, achievable independently of relationship or right belief)
Original: χαρά
Category: Faith

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. Settled, complete gladness realized specifically in restored face-to-face relational fellowship within the truth-and-love community (1:12; cf. John 15:11, 1 John 1:4). Popular therapeutic culture reduces ‘joy’ to a generic mood-boost; must be tied explicitly to relational completeness within right belief and love, not an independently-achievable feeling.

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Low Risk Terms

Greeting

Approved rendering: greeting
Transliteration: greeting
Doctrine: Hospitality and Doctrinal Discernment
Rejected alternatives: a casual ‘hello’ (loses the formal, quasi-official Hellenistic public-welcome/endorsement force of the term)
Original: χαίρειν
Category: Culture

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. A standard, quasi-formal Hellenistic epistolary/verbal greeting formula (1:10-11), functioning as public welcome and implicit endorsement, not primarily an expression of personal joy in this idiomatic use. Mainly an obsolescence/cultural-background risk; needs a brief cultural note, not heavy doctrinal correction.

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Evil Works

Approved rendering: evil works
Transliteration: evil works
Doctrine: Complicity in False Teaching
Original: ἔργα πονηρά
Category: Ethics

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. Wicked deeds, morally worthless actions (1:11) — here, the doctrinal and social harm caused by a teacher denying the incarnation. Reasonably stable ordinary ethical vocabulary; minor note on the verbal echo to the baseline’s grace-versus-works debate (Romans 4:4-5), though this is not the same technical usage.

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Sister

Approved rendering: sister
Transliteration: sister
Doctrine: Corporate Election and Chosen Identity
Rejected alternatives: Sister as a formal title for a woman religious/nun (the Catholic/Orthodox denominational-title sense, parallel to the baseline’s note on ‘Father’)
Original: ἀδελφή
Category: Church

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. A fellow believer as spiritual kin (or a literal sister), paired with ‘elect lady’ (1:1) as a matched literary pair via the repeated adjective ‘elect’ at 1:13. Minor denominational note worth a brief mention, not active correction.

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Paper And Ink

Approved rendering: paper and ink
Transliteration: paper and ink
Doctrine: Epistolary Genre and the Value of Personal Presence
Original: χάρτης καὶ μέλαν
Category: Culture

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. Concrete material detail (1:12) confirming 2 John’s genre as a genuine, personally-delivered ancient letter rather than a theological treatise; purely cultural/historical background with no doctrinal content.

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Face To Face

Approved rendering: face to face
Transliteration: face to face
Doctrine: Epistolary Genre and the Value of Personal Presence
Rejected alternatives: mouth to mouth (the overly literal rendering of the underlying Hebraic idiom, cf. Numbers 12:8; retained only as a brief background note, not the default rendering)
Original: στόμα πρὸς στόμα
Category: Culture

NEW TERM, no baseline precedent. A Hebraic idiom meaning direct, personal, face-to-face speech as opposed to a written letter (1:12); an idiom-handling case, not a doctrinal risk, consistent with the baseline’s handling of figures like Romans 11’s ‘engrafted’ olive branches.