Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4070 Pneumatology — the doctrine of the Holy Spirit — cannot be properly understood in isolation from Trinitarian theology, and the reverse is equally true. The two disciplines are so closely intertwined that to study one without the other is to distort both. The Spirit is not an appendix to Christian theology or a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2069 If God knows all things, every event from eternity to eternity and every possible outcome of every unchosen choice, is there anything genuinely new in his experience? Can he be surprised, delighted, or grieved in a way that is real rather than merely theatrical? The question sits at the intersection of omniscience and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04120 Jesus’s words in John 16:8-11 describe the Holy Spirit’s work in relation to the world: “when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement.” This is one of several works the Spirit performs, and it is distinct from His illuminating ministry within believers. Recognising the difference is practically…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04015 The phrase ‘the procession of the Holy Spirit’ sounds abstract enough that most Christians assume it belongs to the world of academic theology and has little to do with their daily experience of God. That impression is understandable but mistaken. What is at stake in this doctrine is the Spirit’s genuine identity as…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2015 Theology has a way of making apparently abstract questions surprisingly practical, and this is one of them. The question is whether the pattern we observe in salvation – the Father planning, the Son dying, the Spirit applying – tells us something permanently true about who God is, or whether these were roles adopted…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 2028 The doctrine of the Trinity is the Christian teaching that the one God eternally exists as three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person is fully and completely God, not a partial expression or a proportion of the divine being. There are not three gods and not one person manifesting in…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 1017 Whether an unbeliever can understand the Bible has direct implications for evangelism, for how we engage with non-Christian friends around Scripture, and for how we understand the Holy Spirit’s work. The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no, and getting the nuance right matters both theologically and practically. What an…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4000 If you have spent any time in theological study, you have almost certainly encountered words ending in -logy: theology, Christology, eschatology. Pneumatology is one of these, and it refers specifically to the systematic study of the Holy Spirit. The word itself comes from the Greek pneuma (πνεῦμα), meaning breath, wind, or spirit, and…