Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 02030 James 1:13 states it plainly: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” That sounds straightforward enough. Yet the same New Testament that gives us that verse also tells us that Jesus was tempted…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 02038 The word omniscience comes from the Latin omnis (all) and scientia (knowledge). Applied to God, it means that His knowledge is complete, perfect, and without limit. He knows all things that are, all things that were, all things that will be, and all things that could have been under different circumstances. Nothing escapes…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3066 This question assumes something that is not quite accurate, namely that Jesus, as God, ceased to exist or ceased to function during His death. To answer properly, we need to understand what happened when Jesus died and how His divine and human natures relate to one another. The answer reveals something wonderful about…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 01197 The letter to the Hebrews is anonymous. That is simply a fact. Unlike Paul’s letters, which consistently identify their author in the opening verse, Hebrews begins without naming anyone. The question of authorship has been debated since the earliest centuries of the church, and the honest answer is that no one can state…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3075 The verse in question is Hebrews 5:8: “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” At first reading, this can seem confusing. If Jesus is God, and God is perfect, how could He “learn” anything? Was there a time when He was disobedient and had to learn to be…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6010 In Psalm 19, David prays, “Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me!” (Psalm 19:13). This suggests there is a category of sin that is particularly dangerous, something beyond the ordinary sins we all commit. What are presumptuous sins, and why should they concern us? Understanding…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 — between the view that human beings consist of two elements (body and soul/spirit) and the view that they consist of three (body, soul, and…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 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 in almost every age. The ancient Greek world tended to regard the body as a prison, the soul as the real person temporarily trapped in…
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 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 that commends right action and condemns wrong, the sense of guilt after doing what we knew was wrong and of quiet satisfaction after doing what…