Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 2070. Divine repentance is the term theologians use for those startling verses where God is said to have ‘repented’ or ‘relented’ of something, most famously Genesis 6:6, where the LORD ‘regretted that he had made man on the earth’ (Genesis 6:6). At first glance it looks like a straightforward contradiction of God’s unchanging character,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2069. God’s experience is not static in the way a statue is static, even though His character never shifts an inch. Scripture is full of language describing God rejoicing, grieving, being moved with compassion and, at least on the face of it, responding to what creatures do, and I do not think we should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2068. God’s silence is one of the hardest experiences a believer can walk through, that stretch of praying into what feels like an empty room when heaven simply does not answer. I have sat with people in that place, and I have been there myself, and I want to say plainly that this experience…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2067. Divine eternity is the doctrine underneath one of the most fascinating questions in all of theology, and one with genuinely practical consequences for how I read Scripture’s prophetic material. When we speak of God knowing the future, we naturally reach for spatial metaphors. God looks ahead. He foresees events. He knows in advance…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2066. The names of God in the Old Testament form one of the richest veins of theological material in all of Scripture, and I never tire of returning to them. These are not arbitrary labels attached to God the way a nickname might be attached to a person. Each one emerged from a specific…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 2065. Genuine human freedom sits at the very centre of one of the oldest and hardest questions in theology. Could God have created a world where genuine human freedom existed but evil never entered it? The question deserves more than a quick answer, because it touches the nature of freedom itself, why God chose…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 2064. God’s providence raises one of the hardest pastoral questions I ever get asked. If God’s providence extends over everything that happens, does that mean He permits, or even in some sense stands behind, terrible evils like abuse, assault or murder? How can I say that nothing touches your life outside of God’s providence…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2063. God is Spirit. When Jesus told the Samaritan woman this in John 4:24, He was making one of the most consequential theological statements in the whole of Scripture, and it is worth slowing down to see exactly why. This simple declaration reshapes how I understand God’s nature, how I approach worship, and what…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2062. God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. Those words from 1 John 1:5 are among the most compact and striking theological statements in all of Scripture. They arrive without qualification, without hedging, and without any parallel phrase to soften them. I want to work through what John actually…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2060. Why hell exists is one of the hardest questions people bring to me, and it deserves a careful, honest answer rather than either a dismissive dodge or a callous shrug. The difficulty most people feel is reconciling the love of God with the reality of eternal punishment. So let me walk through what…