Theology

In the opening scene of The Good Place, celestial being Michael (Ted Danson) explains that most world religions and philosophies get their respective understandings of the afterlife only about five per cent right.

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is the oldest continuously-used church building in the world. It dates from the fourth century, when Roman Emperor Constantine’s mother visited the Holy Lands to identify locations from the life of Jesus for pilgrimage destinations and church sites. From a distance, the point of entry to the church is not obvious, particularly when the area is...

I’m sure you’ve heard the statement: “I’m all about Jesus, but I’m not interested in church.” I’ve heard this many times and have even found myself saying it during certain periods of my life.

“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me” (Habakkuk 2:1).

Jesus's words could not have been foreign to the Jewish people of His day. In an eminently oral culture, narratives, stories, parables and metaphors occupied an important place.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

This is the part of the story most people know: Eric Liddell, a conscientious Christian athlete, refused to run in the heats for the 100-metre sprint at the 1924 Paris Olympics because they were held on a Sunday. Instead, he switched to the 400 metres, an event he had hardly trained for, and won the gold medal for Britain. The story of his...

Without ever looking for doubt I often welcomed it with interest and gratitude. I did not run away from it, nor did I treat it with indifference. I rather sought to tone it down.

Traces of the ancient kingdom of Israel occasionally emerge from the dust of the Holy Land. These discoveries are immediately and inevitably followed by fierce controversies among archaeologists. As amateur spectators, Christians are eyewitnesses to these debates and, in one way or another, their faith is shaped by them.

I still remember it like it was yesterday: the brightness of the sun on my skin, the chill of the water, the crowds of cheering people. We had gathered that Saturday afternoon on the shores of Lake Jindabyne, a half-hour drive from Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s tallest mountain.

In a society with a pragmatic mindset, any kind of belief is subject only to practical judgments. Effectiveness, usefulness, and utility are the basic criteria by which actions, deeds or beliefs are valued.

One of today's dilemmas disputes, dialectically, the complex reality of the Bible and the secular way of looking at the "terror of history": Is God a source of morality superior to humanism, or not?

While the historic churches remained at least disinterested in millenarianism, the Apocalypse, and the Parousia—that is to say, when they were not hostile to them—Protestant pluralism allowed for both reluctance[1] and increasingly significant preoccupations with the research and publication of the themes regarding the end of the world.

What do you imagine heaven will be like? American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov famously said, “For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” Although I love Jesus, I think I am a bit afraid of getting bored there too. There’s a prevailing picture of heaven as being some sort of suspended animation, which may play into this.

In those times when grief accompanies us and we find ourselves alone in the middle of the night, does God shed tears with us?