Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 humanity approaches, something different happens. The narrative slows, and God speaks in the plural: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 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 with glory and honour.” The phrase reappears in Hebrews 2, where the writer applies it to Jesus with a precision that opens the text in…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3078 Revelation 13:8 is one of those verses that stops you in your tracks when you read it carefully. Depending on which translation you pick up, it can sound as though Jesus was actually crucified before the world was even made. That’s a staggering claim — and it raises real questions about what John…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 13011 Gnosticism was not a single, tidy system but a collection of interconnected religious ideas that shared enough common assumptions to pose a recognisable and serious threat to the apostolic gospel. Its appeal lay in what it claimed to offer: a deeper, hidden knowledge of spiritual reality available to those initiated into it. In…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 03084 The question is partly historical and partly a matter of honest comparison, and both dimensions deserve a direct response. But behind it lies a theological concern that is even more important than either: what exactly did Jesus submit Himself to, and how seriously should we take it? The answer to that question is…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 03085 The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle of Jesus, apart from the resurrection, that appears in all four Gospels. Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:1-15 each record it, with John providing the most developed theological reflection on its significance. That level of independent attestation across all four…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 03082 The Gospels record Jesus displaying clear anger on more than one occasion. The cleansing of the temple is the most dramatic instance, but it is not the only one. The question of whether that anger was sinful cuts to something important about the nature of sin itself, and about what genuine, unsullied human…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 03080 Nobody asks this question expecting a straightforward list of recorded occasions. The Gospels do not preserve a catalogue of Jesus’ lighter moments. But the question behind the question is genuinely important: was Jesus fully human in the way that includes the full register of human experience — including joy, humour, and laughter? The…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 03081 At first glance, Jesus cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit looks like an overreaction to a piece of vegetation. It is one of those Gospel episodes that, taken in isolation, sits awkwardly. But when it is read in context and against the background of how the fig tree functions throughout the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 03003 When people say “Jesus Christ,” they are almost always using a familiar phrase without pausing to ask what “Christ” actually means. Most assume it functions something like a surname, in the way we would say “John Smith.” It is not. The word carries a specific theological meaning that, once understood, changes how Christians…