Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09006 The Lord’s Supper is the second of the two ordinances Jesus gave to His church. It is practised in virtually every Christian tradition, yet the meaning attached to it varies enormously. Roman Catholics believe the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ. Lutherans hold that Christ is physically present…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09077 The rapid growth of online church services, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, has raised a question that would have been inconceivable for most of church history: can watching a church service on a screen constitute genuine church involvement in the biblical sense? The question is not whether online ministry has any value. It…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09098 Many churches, particularly in the Baptist tradition, ask members to sign a church covenant: a written statement of mutual commitment describing how the members intend to live together, care for one another, and uphold the life of the congregation. The practice is widespread enough that some assume it is biblically mandated. Others view…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07073 One of the most liberating and yet most misunderstood aspects of the Christian life involves the relationship between who the believer already is in Christ and who they are still becoming in daily experience. The New Testament holds these two realities in constant and deliberate tension, and failing to distinguish them produces either…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07074 The question of whether a Christian can reach a state of sinless perfection in this life has been debated with considerable energy across church history, and it continues to be a live issue in certain theological traditions. The claim is made with evident sincerity and spiritual earnestness, which is part of what makes…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60013 Hinduism is the world’s third-largest religion, with over one billion adherents, the vast majority in India and Nepal. It is also one of the oldest, with roots stretching back thousands of years. For many Western Christians, Hinduism is the most unfamiliar of the major world religions, because its assumptions about reality, the nature…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60065 The practice of praying to Mary and the saints is one of the most visible differences between Roman Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism. For many Catholics, asking Mary or a canonised saint to intercede on their behalf is as natural and unremarkable as asking a friend to pray for them. For evangelicals, the practice…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60052 String theory is one of the most ambitious attempts in modern physics to construct a unified description of the fundamental forces of the universe. It proposes that the most basic constituents of reality are not point-like particles but tiny, vibrating strings of energy whose different modes of vibration produce the different particles observed…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60062 This is a question that requires both honesty and care. Millions of Roman Catholics around the world hold a sincere faith in Jesus Christ, attend Mass, pray, give sacrificially, and seek to live according to their understanding of God’s will. At the same time, the official doctrinal positions of the Roman Catholic Church,…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 60108 Reincarnation is one of the most widely held beliefs in the world, central to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and increasingly popular in Western culture, where surveys consistently show that a significant minority of people who identify as Christian also say they believe in some form of rebirth. The question of whether it…