Anthropology (Humanity)

Question 02055 Why are we here? The question underlies much of the anxiety that drives people towards both religion and its alternatives. Scripture addresses it not as an abstract puzzle ...

Question 60093 This question has been posed as a sceptical challenge to the historical reliability of Genesis since at least the seventeenth century, when Archbishop James Ussher was reportedly confronted ...

Question 13012 The episode in Genesis 9 following the flood is brief, strange, and deeply uncomfortable. Noah becomes drunk, lies uncovered in his tent, his son Ham "sees the nakedness ...

Question 5000 The word anthropology appears intimidating at first glance, but it points to one of the most practical questions theology addresses: what, exactly, is a human being? Not in ...

Question 5001 Few questions sit at a more genuinely interesting intersection of science and Scripture than this one. Neuroscience has made extraordinary advances in mapping brain function, tracing the neural ...

Question 5002 The Bible does not approach human sexuality and gender as peripheral matters of private preference or cultural convention. From the opening chapters of Genesis they are woven into ...

Question 5003 Contemporary gender theory has introduced a distinction that previous generations had no framework for: the idea that a person's felt sense of their gender may differ from, and ...

Question 5004 The question of masculinity has become genuinely contested in contemporary Western culture. From one direction comes the insistence that traditional masculine virtues are inherently problematic, expressions of privilege ...

Question 5005 To speak of biblical femininity in the current cultural moment is to invite immediate suspicion that what follows will be a list of restrictions, a theological justification of ...

Question 05006 Genesis 1:27 is one of the most foundational statements in all of Scripture, and in the current cultural moment it is also one of the most contested. When ...

Question 05007 Few questions in ethics carry more weight than this one. When does a human life begin? It is the question underlying every discussion of abortion, every debate about ...

Question 05010 The way any community treats its most vulnerable members reveals something fundamental about its values. For the church, the question of how Christians should view and relate to ...

Question 05039 Why did God create us? It is the question that underlies every other question about human existence. Before asking what we ought to do with our lives, or ...

Question 05041 Environmental responsibility is a genuinely contested area in contemporary Christianity. Some believers treat ecological concern as a form of baptised secularism — politics dressed in religious language. Others ...

Question 05042 The Bible's early chapters record lifespans that strike modern readers as extraordinary: Methuselah lived 969 years, Adam 930, Noah 950. Within a few generations of the flood, those ...

Question 05043 Artificial intelligence is no longer a theoretical concern for the future; it is a present reality reshaping how people work, communicate, and think. The questions it raises are ...

Question 05044 Few pastoral situations press harder on theological convictions than watching someone disappear behind advancing dementia. The face is familiar; the body is present; and yet something that once ...

Question 05045 Few theological questions about human nature have generated more sustained discussion than how many genuinely distinct elements make up a human person. The debate between dichotomy and trichotomy ...

Question 5024 Something notable happens when the biblical story of humanity begins. Before the breath, before the garden, before the command, there is the ground. "The LORD God formed the ...

Question 5026 Few questions excite and perplex people in equal measure as this one. What exactly will the resurrection body be? Will it be physical? Will it look the same? ...

Question 5025 There is a single verse in Genesis that contains one of the most remarkable statements in all of Scripture about what human beings are. "Then the LORD God ...

Question 5028 The relationship between the body and the soul is one of the oldest questions in human thought, and one that Christianity answers very differently from the surrounding culture ...

Question 05030 Few words are used more freely in religious conversation, and understood less precisely. "Soul" appears in hymns, in everyday speech, in philosophical debates about consciousness and identity, and ...

Question 5029 The opening chapter of Genesis moves through the days of creation with a recurring pattern: God speaks, things exist, God declares them good. But when the creation of ...

Question 05031 When the Bible speaks of the human spirit, it is pointing to something distinct from the soul, though the two are closely related. The spirit is the God-ward ...

Question 05033 Every person is familiar with the experience of conscience, even if they have never thought carefully about what it is or where it comes from. That inner voice ...

Question 06074 The doctrine of original sin addresses one of the most basic questions in human experience: why do all people sin, and why is the world in the condition ...

Question 05035 The question of whether human beings are born sinners goes to the heart of what we are and what we need. It is not an abstract theological puzzle; ...

Question 05037 The question of free will is one of the oldest and most contested in both philosophy and theology. It matters enormously, because the answer shapes how we understand ...

Question 05038 No question matters more than this one. Every person, at some point, has looked at their own existence and wondered what it is for. Philosophy, religion, popular culture, ...

Question 05017 Genesis 1:26 contains one of the most theologically loaded sentences in all of Scripture: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." The presence of two ...

Question 06075 "Total depravity" is a term that has generated enormous confusion, largely because the word "total" sounds as if it means human beings are incapable of any good at ...

Question 05013 When a baby or young child dies, the grief is unlike any other. Parents, grandparents, and those who love them carry questions that do not resolve easily, and ...

Question 05012 The phrase "age of accountability" does not appear in Scripture, and yet the question it represents is one of the most pastorally urgent a minister ever faces. What ...

Question 05018 Psalm 8:5 contains one of Scripture's most arresting descriptions of the human condition: "Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him ...

Question 05019 The question of whether animals have souls is one that comes up more often in pastoral contexts than in academic ones. It tends to surface when someone has ...

Question 05020 Angels and human beings are both creatures made by God, and both appear throughout Scripture as conscious, personal beings who respond to him. But the differences between them ...

Question 05021 Psalm 139 is one of the most intimate passages in all of Scripture. From beginning to end, David is meditating on what it means to be completely and ...

Question 05023 Personhood is one of the most consequential questions in ethics, because the answer determines who is protected, who is excluded, and on what basis. It is also a ...

Question 05022 Human dignity is one of those phrases that appears constantly in public debate, appealed to by people across very different ethical traditions, and meaning rather different things depending ...

Question 05008 The doctrine of total depravity is one of the most misunderstood in the whole of Christian theology. The popular caricature holds that it means every unregenerate person is ...