Glossary
creature: In theology, a technical term meaning “something God created.”
The term designates absolutely everything that has being other than God,
who is not creature but Creator.creed: From credo, “I believe,” the word with which the Latin creeds begin,
it is a verbal formula of Christian faith originally used as a confession of faith
at Baptism. (See Apostle’s Creed.) It was later used as a way of excluding
heretical teaching and included in the regular Sunday liturgy. (See Nicene.)dark night: Term used by John of the Cross to describe the stages in the
soul’s ascent to God when its powers are emptied of all that is not God, like
an eye emptied of light.decrees: In Calvinist theology, the eternal resolution of God’s will to bring
about some speci¿ c thing in time. For Calvinists, all things are ordained
to happen by divine decree, but evil is decreed permissively—allowed
rather than ordained—but in the very act of allowing them to happen God
determines that they shall inevitably happen.Deipassionism: From a Latin phrase meaning “God suffers,” an implication
of the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation, according to which the same
word of God who is “God from God” and eternally begotten of the
Father, is also born of Mary and cruci¿ ed under Pontius Pilate. (Contrast
Patripassionism, which the orthodox deny.)deism: An 18th-century Enlightenment theology in which critiques revealed
religions (including especially Christianity) in light of natural religion,
which is understood to be the religion of reason.dejamiento: Spanish for “letting” or “letting go,” sometimes translated
“abandonment.” This is a key concept among the Alumbrados, which seems
to have inÀ uenced Quietism, that is, the idea that the highest form of spiritual
life consists not in doing anything but in letting God do all things in you.