Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8000. Angels and demons are two of the most talked about subjects in our culture and two of the least carefully studied in our churches, which is a strange combination when you think about it. Angelology is the study of angels, and demonology is the study of the fallen angels who followed Satan into…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 53. A statement of faith and a systematic theology serve genuinely different purposes even though both attempt to summarise Christian doctrine, and confusing the two leads to unrealistic expectations of documents that were never designed to do the other one’s job. It is deliberately brief, functioning as a boundary marker defining who belongs within…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07053 The elementary doctrines of Christ are listed in Hebrews 6:1-3, and the passage has puzzled readers for a long time. The writer tells his readers to leave these teachings behind and press on to maturity, which sounds alarmingly like an instruction to move beyond the basics of the faith. That cannot be what…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 07052 Saving faith is the hinge on which everything in the Christian life turns, and it is also the thing people most commonly misunderstand. Some treat it as a leap in the dark. Some treat it as a feeling they have to work up. Some treat it as agreeing with a list of propositions…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07011. Soteriology is the theological name for the doctrine of salvation, and it is the part of Christian teaching that answers the question every one of us eventually has to face: how can a guilty person be made right with a holy God? The word comes from the Greek soteria, meaning rescue or deliverance,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 50. Systematic theology organises the whole teaching of Scripture topically, gathering everything the Bible says about a given subject, the doctrine of God, the person of Christ, the nature of salvation, into a single coherent, logically arranged treatment. It asks, what does the whole of Scripture teach about this particular subject, drawing together texts…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 19. Why are so many Christians still spiritual infants after years of faith? It troubles me, and I suspect it troubles you, that so many believers remain spiritual infants long after they should have grown up. They have been in church for a decade or more, they love the Lord in their way, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1031. biblical sufficiency is the settled conviction that Scripture provides everything a believer genuinely needs for faith and godly living, and I want to be precise about exactly what that claim covers, because it is regularly misunderstood in both directions at once. Some treat biblical sufficiency as though the Bible should directly answer every…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 0034 When people ask me what resources will help their doctrinal growth, I always start in the same place, because the answer matters more than any book list. The single most important resource for doctrinal growth is the Bible itself, read carefully, prayerfully and often. Every other tool is a servant of that one,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 0033 If you long for an appetite for doctrine that you do not yet feel, take heart, because that very longing is already a seed of the thing you want. Nobody is born hungry for theology. I was not. The desire to know God deeply is something the Spirit grows in a believer over…