Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11078 Few sayings of Jesus have generated more theological confusion, or more outright misuse, than His statement about speaking to mountains. Prosperity preachers have turned it into a spiritual technique. Sceptics have treated it as evidence of failed promises. Neither response does justice to what Jesus was actually saying, or the rich background from…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 02059 The question of whether the persons of the Trinity share one consciousness or possess three distinct consciousnesses takes us to the very frontier of what can be known about God — and, it turns out, to the frontier of what the word “consciousness” is even equipped to mean when applied to a divine…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04121 The sight of someone placing their hands on a sick person and praying for healing can provoke a range of reactions in evangelical circles, from warm affirmation to deep suspicion. For some, the practice conjures images of televangelist excess and manufactured spectacle. For others, it represents a sincere and scripturally grounded act of…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3058 The Gospels tell us about Jesus’ birth, his presentation at the Temple, the visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt, and his family’s return to Nazareth. Then there is silence. Luke alone records a brief glimpse of Jesus at age twelve in the Temple. After that, nothing until his baptism at around…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 05010 The way any community treats its most vulnerable members reveals something fundamental about its values. For the church, the question of how Christians should view and relate to people with disabilities is not a peripheral social concern; it goes to the heart of what the gospel says about human worth, the nature of…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 7006 Few passages in Scripture have caused more anxiety among believers than Jesus’ solemn warning about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. People have come to me over the years, sometimes in tears, convinced they have committed this sin and are beyond hope. Before we even begin to unpack what this sin actually is, let…
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 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 03079 The account of Jesus walking on the water tends to provoke one of two responses: either straightforward acceptance as a miraculous act by the Son of God, or a search for a naturalistic explanation that preserves the story whilst removing its supernatural content. What the text actually says, and what it means theologically,…