Biblical teaching on human nature; created in God’s image, fallen into sin, and redeemable through Christ.
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Is Gender a Biological Reality?
Question 12027 The claim that gender is a social construct, independent of biology and existing on a spectrum, has moved from academic gender theory into mainstream cultural assumption with remarkable ...
What about psychology?
Question 11059 Psychology occupies an enormous place in contemporary culture. Therapeutic language has entered everyday conversation, mental health awareness campaigns shape public policy, and millions of people, including Christians, regularly ...
Can we trust our hearts?
Question 05011 "Follow your heart" has become the governing moral instruction of contemporary culture, offered as wisdom in everything from self-help literature to children's films. The assumption behind it is ...
What does Jeremiah mean that the heart is deceitful?
Question 6019 Jeremiah 17:9 is one of the most searching verses in the Old Testament: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" It ...
Body/soul/spirit: are we two parts or three?
Question 5045 Whether human beings consist of two parts — body and soul/spirit — or three distinct parts — body, soul, and spirit as separate entities — is a question ...
Why did God create humans?
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 ...
Where did Cain’s wife come from?
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 ...
What is Noah’s nakedness? Genesis 9:20–27
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 ...
What is anthropology?
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 ...
What does the Bible teach about human sexuality and gender?
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 ...
What is the relationship between the mind and the brain?
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 ...
Does the Bible support gender identity separate from biological sex?
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 ...
What is biblical masculinity?
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 ...
What is biblical femininity?
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 ...
What does it mean that God created us male and female?
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 ...
When does human life begin?
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 ...
How should Christians view those with disabilities?
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 ...
Why did God create us?
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 ...
How does the imago Dei bear on the Christian’s responsibility toward the environment and the natural world?
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 ...
What does Scripture say about human longevity and ageing — is physical decline simply part of being fallen, or was it built into creation?
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 ...
Does the Bible give any guidance on what distinguishes human consciousness and intelligence from what might be artificially produced?
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 ...
How do we understand the relationship between the physical brain and the immaterial soul — when the brain is diseased, what does that mean for personal identity and accountability?
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 ...
Body/soul/spirit: are we two parts or three? Make the Biblical case for both!
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 ...
What does it mean to be ‘dust’?
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 ...
What will our resurrection bodies be like?
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? ...
What is the breath of life?
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 ...
What is the relationship between body and soul?
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 ...
What is the soul?
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 ...
What does it mean to be made in God’s image?
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 ...
What is the spirit?
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 ...
What is the conscience?
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 ...
What is original sin?
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 ...
Are we born sinners?
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; ...
Do we have free will?
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 ...
What is the purpose of life?
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, ...
What is the difference between ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ in Genesis 1:26?
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 ...
What is total depravity?
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 ...
What happens to babies and young children who die?
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 ...
What is the age of accountability?
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 ...
What does it mean to be ‘a little lower than the angels’?
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 ...
Do animals have souls?
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 ...
What is the difference between human beings and angels?
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 ...
What does it mean that we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’?
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 ...
What is personhood?
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 ...
What is human dignity?
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 ...
What can an unregenerate person perceive spiritually?
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 ...