Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60100 The teleological argument observes that the natural world bears the marks of design and asks what this implies about the designer. “Teleological” comes from the Greek telos, meaning end or purpose. The claim is that when we examine the universe at every scale, from the calibration of physical constants to the machinery of…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60101 The moral argument begins with something so familiar that it is easily overlooked: human beings make moral judgements and expect them to carry real weight. When we say that torturing children for pleasure is wrong, we do not mean simply that we dislike it, or that our culture happens to disapprove of it….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60102 The ontological argument is the most philosophically demanding of the classical arguments for God’s existence, and probably the most disputed. Unlike the cosmological or teleological arguments, which move from features of the external world to a conclusion about God, the ontological argument attempts to establish God’s existence from the concept of God alone…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60103 This question comes in several forms. Why doesn’t God simply appear in the sky and settle the matter? Why doesn’t He perform an undeniable miracle that removes all reasonable doubt? If He exists and wants people to know Him, why does faith require trusting something invisible when God could simply make Himself obvious?…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 7083 The question sounds simple, but it touches on something of real theological importance. Did the rules change somewhere between Genesis and Acts? Were Old Testament believers saved by keeping the law, by performing sacrifices, or by some arrangement that no longer applies? The way this is answered has profound implications not just for…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 7084 The question is designed to be uncomfortable, and that discomfort is itself theologically informative. By naming the most notorious mass murderer of the modern era, it is really asking something else entirely: is there a limit to grace? Is there a category of human evil so profound that the gospel cannot reach it?…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 7088 The question points to something that genuinely puzzles thoughtful believers. If all sins are forgiven at conversion, why does John write in 1 John 1:9 that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins”? Who is the “we” in that verse if not believers? And if…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 7089 “Born again” is perhaps the most widely used and widely misunderstood phrase in the Christian vocabulary. It has been reduced to a cultural label, adopted as a denominational identifier, and stripped by popular usage of almost all its theological content. Which is unfortunate, because what Jesus actually said to Nicodemus in John 3…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07072 Sanctification is one of those theological terms that gets used in different ways without people always realising it, which can produce genuine confusion about what the Christian life actually involves and what the New Testament expects of believers. The distinction between definitive and progressive sanctification is not academic hairsplitting but a genuinely important…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07075 The word “gospel” appears so frequently in Christian conversation that it can begin to lose its force through familiarity. But the gospel is not a general category of good religious news or a vague sense of divine goodwill toward humanity. It has a specific content, and that content can be stated with considerable…