Theology

Any religion’s popularity depends on the rewards it promises. While people are interested in the immediate benefits of this life, they are mostly interested in the future, the hope their religion brings, and how solid it is.

Courage is not the opposite of fear, nor of caution. True courage is what you do right in the midst of fear.

“The Christ of Nicea is obviously a far cry from the historical Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant apocalyptic preacher in the backwaters of rural Galilee, who offended the authorities and was unceremoniously crucified for crimes against the state. Whatever he may have been in real life, Jesus had now become fully God.”

In The Legacy of John Calvin, David W. Hall divides leaders into two categories. Some predict the future, and others change it. Calvin, Hall said, is in the second category.

Europe is more divided than ever. What does that mean for our reading of biblical prophecy?

As soon as the tourists leave the land of the silent agony of Gethsemane, their lives return to normal, and the garden where the Son of God sobbed in indescribable pain, misunderstood and unsupported even by His closest disciples, sinks back into oblivion.

Much of the Bible was written by prophets, so it is full of prophetic revelation. Most of these revelations are about mysteries of the past and present that we would not otherwise have access to.

When I was at high school, I played basketball a lot—most days at school, then team training sessions and often two or three games each week. At university, I played on the best team I have been part of. We trained and competed regularly over two years, and twice won our league championship.

Aurelius Augustine (354-430) is known for the stirring Christian experience he described in his Confessions and for the seminal theological thought that has shaped theology to this day.

As a book editor who works in a Christian publishing house, I know prayer works from a sales perspective. Books on the topic of prayer are consistently among our best sellers. It seems that many of our customers and readers—mostly people of faith, but including people who are interested but uncertain about faith—are keen to be reassured that prayer works and to find...

Few things can pierce a parent’s heart as painfully as their children’s decision to walk away from God. Pain, guilt, shame and the feeling of failure are the crushing burdens which parents of prodigal sons carry, while still wavering between hope and discouragement.

Virtually every civilization has been characterised by religious beliefs about the end of all things, not least about the timing and the conditions that precede the end, and signs of its imminence. There are many differences between these beliefs across civilisations, but many similarities too.

The smell of burning food filled my tiny kitchen. “What's that smell?” I asked a friend who was sharing my house for the week. Every young man knows the smell, familiar from an early age—your first acquaintance comes from burnt toast and camping trips where, after burning everything you tried to cook, you end up eating your baked beans straight from the can.

Far more terrifying than persecution, ideologies, and militant atheism put together may be the hidden force behind the seemingly innocuous statement: "You don't need God!"

The idea of hell takes up a dark corner in most of our minds, whether we think about it or not.