Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10025 The Bible is a large, complex, ancient document. It contains poetry, prophecy, law, history, biography, letters, and apocalyptic vision. It was written across fifteen hundred years in three languages, addressed to people in vastly different cultural and historical situations. Christians claim it is the word of God for all people in all ages….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10026 Many Christians treat the Old Testament as a kind of backstory — useful for context, but not particularly necessary once you have the New Testament in hand. Others approach both Testaments as though they are essentially interchangeable, applying Old Testament promises and warnings with little attention to the differences between the covenants they…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01142 God has not left Himself without witness. From the intricacy of a living cell to the voice of conscience that will not be entirely silenced, something of God presses in on human awareness at every turn. Yet that universal witness does not, in itself, bring anyone to saving knowledge of God. Understanding why…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60089 The claim that all truth is relative has moved from university philosophy departments into everyday conversation, social media, and church life. “That may be true for you but not for me” sounds tolerant and open-minded, but it carries significant implications for anyone who believes that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead and…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60090 The assumption that faith and reason are opposed to each other is deeply embedded in popular culture, and it has done significant damage to Christian witness. The image of the credulous believer who parks their brain at the church door, set against the sharp-minded rationalist who has outgrown any need for religion, is…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01148 One of the most practically significant questions in contemporary Christianity concerns the difference between the Holy Spirit opening a person’s mind to understand what Scripture already says, and the claim that the Spirit provides fresh revelation that goes beyond or supplements the biblical text. Getting this distinction right matters enormously for how Christians…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01149 There is a beautiful coherence to the doctrine of Scripture that is sometimes missed in debates about inspiration and interpretation. The same Holy Spirit who oversaw the production of the biblical text is the Spirit who opens the minds of believers to receive it. The Spirit who breathed out the words is the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01150 The claim that personal experience overrides biblical teaching is one of the most pastoral challenges the church faces today, precisely because it is often made by sincere believers who have genuinely experienced something real and who interpret Scripture’s silence or apparent tension as permission to place their experience in the driving seat. Understanding…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01146 The claim that the Bible has been corrupted through centuries of copying and translation is perhaps one of the most commonly heard objections to biblical authority. It sounds plausible to people who know that ancient documents were copied by hand, that translations involve interpretive choices, and that errors can accumulate over time. A…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01147 The doctrine of Scripture’s sufficiency touches something that matters deeply in practice. It is the difference between the church that looks to the Bible as its final word on everything that matters, and the church that treats Scripture as one voice among several, to be supplemented by tradition, contemporary experience, or ecclesiastical authority….