50 Fun Facts About Theology

Which doctrine, named by a word found nowhere in the Bible, is Saint Patrick said to have taught with a shamrock?

The Trinity got its name late: the first writer on record to use the word was Theophilus of Antioch, around AD 180.

Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses attacked the sale of what, promoted near Wittenberg by the preacher Johann Tetzel?

Indulgences were certificates said to reduce the punishment due for sins, and the row over selling them is counted as the start of the Reformation.

Which word for the Christian message comes from Old English for 'good news', translating the Greek euangelion?

Gospel began as godspel, literally 'good spell', when a spell was a story or message. Other Germanic languages later borrowed it with the first half mistaken for 'God'.

Which Oxford don turned a series of wartime BBC radio talks into the popular theology book Mere Christianity?

C. S. Lewis gave the talks between 1941 and 1944, and they first appeared as three slim volumes before he combined them into one book.

Which of the seven deadly sins has Christian tradition long ranked as the worst, the root from which the others grow?

Pride, the fault the ancient Greeks called hubris, heads almost every list of the seven and was thought to breed the other six.

Which flower gives its name to the acronym for the five points of Calvinism, teachings linked with the Canons of Dort?

Tulip is a surprisingly young memory aid for 17th-century ideas: its earliest known use was by the minister Cleland Boyd McAfee around 1905.

Which realm of the afterlife in Catholic teaching did Dante picture as an island mountain ringed by seven terraces?

Purgatory is where souls bound for heaven are said to be purified first, an idea that most Protestant churches do not accept.

The 'Testament' in the names of the Bible's two halves stands for which idea, in Hebrew brit, sealed at Mount Sinai?

Covenant is what the Hebrew brit means. 'Testament' crept in through Greek and Latin words that could also mean a will left after death.

The word 'catholic', first applied to the church by Ignatius of Antioch, comes from a Greek term with which meaning?

Universal is the sense of the Greek katholikos, from a phrase meaning 'on the whole'. In English it first described the undivided ancient Church, not Rome's alone.

Which dogma proclaimed by Pope Pius IX concerns the sinless start of Mary's own life, not the virgin birth of Jesus?

Immaculate Conception was argued over by theologians for centuries, and before 1854 one archbishop warned the pope it could be proved from neither Scripture nor tradition.

Which feast, often called the birthday of the Church, marks the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles?

Pentecost is Greek for 'fiftieth': the disciples were in Jerusalem for the Jewish Feast of Weeks, kept on the fiftieth day after Passover.

Which doctrine, celebrated each year at Christmas, holds that God the Son took on a full human nature?

The Incarnation takes its name from the Latin of John 1:14, where the Word 'was made flesh', though the verb itself never occurs in the Latin Bible.

Which doctrine, closely associated with John Calvin, holds that God has already chosen who will be saved?

Predestination in Calvin's teaching was 'double': God decrees damnation as well as salvation, where Lutherans affirm only an election to salvation.

The title 'Christ' comes from a Greek word translating which Hebrew term, meaning 'anointed one'?

Messiah first described the kings and high priests of Israel, who were installed by being anointed with holy oil.

Which Greek word for selfless love, often rendered 'charity', is the theme of Paul's hymn in 1 Corinthians 13?

Agape also named a meal: early Christians called their shared communal supper an agape, or love feast.

Which North African bishop wrote Confessions, a memoir of his wayward youth, and the vast The City of God?

Augustine began The City of God after the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, answering pagans who blamed the disaster on Christianity.

Which Dominican friar, mocked as the Dumb Ox by fellow students, wrote the vast unfinished Summa Theologica?

Thomas Aquinas was defended by his teacher Albertus Magnus, who predicted that the ox's bellowing would one day be heard throughout the world.

Which book of the Bible is the source of the imago Dei, the teaching that humans are made in God's image?

Genesis 1:27 is the key verse, and theologians still split three ways on what the image is: shared traits such as reason, relationship, or a role representing God.

Which Aramaic word for 'father' does Jesus use while praying in Gethsemane, a word Paul repeats in two letters?

Abba appears just three times in the New Testament, and each time the writer follows it at once with the Greek word for father.

Transubstantiation, a term used by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, is the Catholic teaching about which sacrament?

The Eucharist's bread and wine are held to become Christ's body and blood in substance, while keeping the look, taste and feel of bread and wine.

Which doctrine holds that every human is born sharing a sinful condition inherited from Adam and Eve's fall?

Original sin rests on the story of Eden, yet that story itself never uses the words sin, guilt, transgression or rebellion.

Papal infallibility applies only when a pope speaks 'ex cathedra', Latin words literally meaning from which object?

The chair is the bishop's teaching seat, the cathedra, which also gives a cathedral its name; the dogma itself was proclaimed by Pius IX in 1870.

Which French mathematician argued that believing in God is the rational bet, since the possible gain is infinite?

Blaise Pascal never published the wager himself: it survives in the Pensées, a compilation of his notes that appeared only after his death.

Which founder of Methodism wrote that his heart was strangely warmed at a 1738 meeting in London's Aldersgate Street?

John Wesley was listening to a reading of Martin Luther's preface to one of Paul's letters when it happened, and the evening reshaped his whole ministry.

Which end-times event, popularised by the Left Behind novels, has living believers snatched up to meet Christ?

The Rapture in its modern form was popularised by the 19th-century Bible teacher John Nelson Darby, and most Christian denominations do not teach it.

Which German pastor, author of The Cost of Discipleship, was hanged in April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer used that book to attack what he called cheap grace, meaning forgiveness preached without requiring repentance.

Which belief, widespread in the Age of Enlightenment, holds that a creator made the universe but never intervenes?

Deism influenced Jefferson, who used a razor and glue to make his own edition of the Gospels with every miracle of Jesus cut out.

In which Swiss city did John Calvin lead the Reformation and found an academy that later became a university?

Geneva sheltered Protestant exiles, who formed their own church there under John Knox and carried Calvin's ideas back to England and Scotland.

Which statement of faith, recited in churches worldwide, grew out of a council Emperor Constantine convened in 325?

The Nicene Creed was amended at Constantinople in 381, and it is the one such text accepted by Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches alike.

Which branch of theology, named from the Greek for a speech in defence, argues the reasoned case for Christian belief?

Apologetics keeps the old Greek sense of apologia, a formal courtroom defence like the one Plato records for Socrates; it has nothing to do with saying sorry.

Which branch of theology studies the 'four last things': death, judgement, heaven and hell?

Eschatology deals above all with the Second Coming of Christ; a painting attributed to Hieronymus Bosch shows the four last things as discs around the seven deadly sins.

Which Greek term, usually translated 'Word', does the opening verse of John use for the pre-existent Christ?

Logos had long been a philosopher's word: Heraclitus used it for a principle of order and knowledge, and the Stoics for the generative principle of the cosmos.

Which term for Christ's saving work on the cross was formed in English from two short words, not taken from Latin?

Atonement first meant 'at-one-ment', the state of being at one, or in harmony, with someone; the word entered English in the 1510s.

Which letter, the longest of the thirteen attributed to Paul, did Martin Luther credit with his breakthrough on faith?

Romans 1:17, on the just living by faith, was the verse; Luther said that grasping it felt like being born again and entering paradise.

Which term, coined by the philosopher Leibniz in 1710, names an attempt to explain why a good God permits evil?

Theodicy was the title of Leibniz's book arguing that this is the best of all possible worlds, the optimism Voltaire mocked through Professor Pangloss in Candide.

Which movement, named by Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, reads the Bible from the side of Latin America's poor?

Liberation theology takes its name from his 1971 book; in the mid-1980s its reliance on Marxism drew an admonition from the Vatican's doctrinal office.

Which Danish thinker, called the father of existentialism, is linked with the idea of faith as a leap beyond reason?

Søren Kierkegaard never used the phrase 'leap of faith' that is pinned on him; he wrote instead of a qualitative leap.

Which New England preacher of the Great Awakening delivered the 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?

Jonathan Edwards could not finish it at Enfield, Connecticut: an eyewitness recorded such moaning and crying out through the whole house that the minister had to stop.

Which ancient Greek thinker did medieval scholastic theologians refer to simply as 'the Philosopher'?

Aristotle was 'the First Teacher' to medieval Muslim scholars, and one of them, Averroes, became known in the West as 'the Commentator' for explaining him.

Which council, meeting on and off from 1545 to 1563, gave the Catholic Church's doctrinal answer to the Reformation?

Trent was the last ecumenical council the Catholic Church held outside Rome, and Martin Luther himself had appealed for a general council back in 1520.

Which early movement taught that the material world is corrupt and that salvation comes through secret inner knowledge?

Gnosticism's own writings resurfaced in 1945, when a farmer near Nag Hammadi in Egypt found a dozen papyrus books buried in a sealed jar.

Which Alexandrian priest taught that the Son of God was created and so had a beginning, a view condemned in 325?

Arius argued that if the Father begat the Son, there must have been a time when the Son was not; his own bishop in Alexandria had him exiled.

Which archbishop of Canterbury is credited with devising the ontological argument for the existence of God?

Anselm also changed how the cross was explained: he described human sin as defrauding God of the honour he is due, and rejected the idea of a debt owed to the devil.

Which Swiss Reformed theologian, author of Church Dogmatics, wrote most of the Barmen Declaration of 1934?

Karl Barth worked on the Dogmatics from 1932 until he died in 1968, by which time it ran to six million words and was still unfinished.

Which Greek title did the Council of Ephesus affirm for the mother of Jesus in 431, against the wishes of Nestorius?

Theotokos means 'God-bearer'. Nestorius, who preferred Christotokos, had asked for the council himself, hoping it would clear him, and it condemned his teaching instead.

Which council of 451 declared Christ to be truly God and truly man, acknowledged in two natures without confusion?

Chalcedon split the church: the Oriental Orthodox churches rejected its formula, and opponents nicknamed the council 'the Ominous'.

Which early heresy, named from a Greek verb meaning 'to seem', held that Christ's human body was only an illusion?

Docetism's followers were first called Dokētai, 'Illusionists', in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch, who met the idea in a book circulating under Peter's name.

Which teacher from Pontus set Christ against the God of the Old Testament and codified the first Christian canon?

Marcion's scriptures ran to just eleven books: a shortened Luke and ten letters of Paul, themselves trimmed.

Which Greek term, drawn from Philippians 2, names Christ's 'self-emptying' in taking human form?

Kenosis comes from the verb in Philippians 2:7; some read it as Christ voluntarily limiting the use of his divine powers in order to live a truly mortal life.

Which New Testament word for hell was the name of a real valley on the edge of Jerusalem?

Gehenna was the Valley of Hinnom, where the Book of Jeremiah says children were burned as offerings, a history that made it a byword for punishment.