Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09105 Few verses in the New Testament generate as much heat as 1 Timothy 2:12. Paul’s statement that he does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man has been dismissed by some as culturally irrelevant and weaponised by others as a blanket prohibition on women doing anything at…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 009112 Paul uses the word “mystery” in a very specific and technical sense that differs from its ordinary usage. When we speak of mysteries today, we typically mean something puzzling or unknown. Paul’s use of the Greek musterion means something different: not a riddle to be solved by clever reasoning, but a divine secret…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60098 The claim that Peter and Paul preached fundamentally different gospels is associated with a strand of dispensational teaching sometimes called ultra-dispensationalism or hyper-dispensationalism. In its more extreme forms, this teaching argues that only Paul’s letters, sometimes only his prison epistles, constitute the relevant Scripture for the church today, since Peter was preaching a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60043 The resurrection of Jesus is not a blind leap of faith but a claim about history that can be examined. When we look at the evidence, we find that the resurrection is the best explanation for the facts that virtually all scholars, Christian and non-Christian alike, accept. Let’s consider what those facts are…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 06076 The question of what Paul’s thorn actually was has occupied readers for centuries, partly because Paul is deliberately vague and partly because the passage sits within one of the most extraordinary sections of personal disclosure in the entire New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul describes having been caught up into the third…
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…