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: 3 minutesQuestion 05019 The question of whether animals have souls is one that comes up more often in pastoral contexts than in academic ones. It tends to surface when someone has lost a beloved pet, or when a child asks whether their dog will be in heaven. But it is also a question with genuine theological…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 05020 Angels and human beings are both creatures made by God, and both appear throughout Scripture as conscious, personal beings who respond to him. But the differences between them go considerably deeper than the obvious observation that one is usually visible and the other is not. Understanding what sets human beings apart from angels…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 05021 Psalm 139 is one of the most intimate passages in all of Scripture. From beginning to end, David is meditating on what it means to be completely and personally known by God. By verse 13 he moves from the general truth of God’s omniscience to its application to his own individual life, and…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 05023 Personhood is one of the most consequential questions in ethics, because the answer determines who is protected, who is excluded, and on what basis. It is also a question where the biblical account and the dominant contemporary accounts diverge in ways that have immediate practical consequences. The disagreement is not merely about timing…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 05022 Human dignity is one of those phrases that appears constantly in public debate, appealed to by people across very different ethical traditions, and meaning rather different things depending on who is using it. For that reason it is worth being precise about what the phrase means in a biblical framework, and why it…