Theology
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50 free Theology trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Theology has a reputation for being dense, yet much of it turns on questions anyone can follow. Who is Jesus? What went wrong with the world, and how is it put right? What happens at the end? Christians have argued over the answers for two thousand years, in councils, in sermons and now and then in exile. This quiz covers the ground a good introductory course would. It starts with the big doctrines and the vocabulary that goes with them, including a few Greek and Latin terms that are easier than they look. It moves on to the people: bishops, friars, reformers and modern writers whose ideas still fill pulpits and seminar rooms. It also visits the disputes that forced the church to say what it believed, and the teachings that divide Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians today. The questions suit a Bible study group, a confirmation or seminary class, or anyone who enjoys church history. Most can be reasoned out from a clue in the question, and the later ones are a fair test for readers who know their heresies. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which doctrine, named by a word found nowhere in the Bible, is Saint Patrick said to have taught with a shamrock?
The Trinity
The Trinity got its name late: the first writer on record to use the word was Theophilus of Antioch, around AD 180.
Q 02Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses attacked the sale of what, promoted near Wittenberg by the preacher Johann Tetzel?
Indulgences
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.
Q 03Which word for the Christian message comes from Old English for 'good news', translating the Greek euangelion?
Gospel
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'.
Q 04Which Oxford don turned a series of wartime BBC radio talks into the popular theology book Mere Christianity?
C. S. Lewis
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.
Q 05Which of the seven deadly sins has Christian tradition long ranked as the worst, the root from which the others grow?
Pride
Pride, the fault the ancient Greeks called hubris, heads almost every list of the seven and was thought to breed the other six.
Q 06Which flower gives its name to the acronym for the five points of Calvinism, teachings linked with the Canons of Dort?
Tulip
Tulip is a surprisingly young memory aid for 17th-century ideas: its earliest known use was by the minister Cleland Boyd McAfee around 1905.
Q 07Which realm of the afterlife in Catholic teaching did Dante picture as an island mountain ringed by seven terraces?
Purgatory
Purgatory is where souls bound for heaven are said to be purified first, an idea that most Protestant churches do not accept.
Q 08The 'Testament' in the names of the Bible's two halves stands for which idea, in Hebrew brit, sealed at Mount Sinai?
Covenant
Covenant is what the Hebrew brit means. 'Testament' crept in through Greek and Latin words that could also mean a will left after death.
Q 09The word 'catholic', first applied to the church by Ignatius of Antioch, comes from a Greek term with which meaning?
Universal
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.
Q 10Which dogma proclaimed by Pope Pius IX concerns the sinless start of Mary's own life, not the virgin birth of Jesus?
Immaculate Conception
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.
Q 11Which feast, often called the birthday of the Church, marks the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles?
Pentecost
Pentecost is Greek for 'fiftieth': the disciples were in Jerusalem for the Jewish Feast of Weeks, kept on the fiftieth day after Passover.
Q 12Which doctrine, celebrated each year at Christmas, holds that God the Son took on a full human nature?
The Incarnation
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.
Q 13Which doctrine, closely associated with John Calvin, holds that God has already chosen who will be saved?
Predestination
Q 21Which doctrine holds that every human is born sharing a sinful condition inherited from Adam and Eve's fall?
Original sin
Original sin rests on the story of Eden, yet that story itself never uses the words sin, guilt, transgression or rebellion.
Q 22Papal infallibility applies only when a pope speaks 'ex cathedra', Latin words literally meaning from which object?
The chair
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.
Q 23Which French mathematician argued that believing in God is the rational bet, since the possible gain is infinite?
Blaise Pascal
Predestination in Calvin's teaching was 'double': God decrees damnation as well as salvation, where Lutherans affirm only an election to salvation.
Q 14The title 'Christ' comes from a Greek word translating which Hebrew term, meaning 'anointed one'?
Messiah
Messiah first described the kings and high priests of Israel, who were installed by being anointed with holy oil.
Q 15Which Greek word for selfless love, often rendered 'charity', is the theme of Paul's hymn in 1 Corinthians 13?
Agape
Agape also named a meal: early Christians called their shared communal supper an agape, or love feast.
Q 16Which North African bishop wrote Confessions, a memoir of his wayward youth, and the vast The City of God?
Augustine
Augustine began The City of God after the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, answering pagans who blamed the disaster on Christianity.
Q 17Which Dominican friar, mocked as the Dumb Ox by fellow students, wrote the vast unfinished Summa Theologica?
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas was defended by his teacher Albertus Magnus, who predicted that the ox's bellowing would one day be heard throughout the world.
Q 18Which book of the Bible is the source of the imago Dei, the teaching that humans are made in God's image?
Genesis
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.
Q 19Which Aramaic word for 'father' does Jesus use while praying in Gethsemane, a word Paul repeats in two letters?
Abba
Abba appears just three times in the New Testament, and each time the writer follows it at once with the Greek word for father.
Q 20Transubstantiation, a term used by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, is the Catholic teaching about which sacrament?
Eucharist
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.
Blaise Pascal never published the wager himself: it survives in the Pensées, a compilation of his notes that appeared only after his death.
Q 24Which founder of Methodism wrote that his heart was strangely warmed at a 1738 meeting in London's Aldersgate Street?
John Wesley
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.
Q 25Which end-times event, popularised by the Left Behind novels, has living believers snatched up to meet Christ?
The Rapture
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.
Q 26Which German pastor, author of The Cost of Discipleship, was hanged in April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer used that book to attack what he called cheap grace, meaning forgiveness preached without requiring repentance.
Q 27Which belief, widespread in the Age of Enlightenment, holds that a creator made the universe but never intervenes?
Deism
Deism influenced Jefferson, who used a razor and glue to make his own edition of the Gospels with every miracle of Jesus cut out.
Q 28In which Swiss city did John Calvin lead the Reformation and found an academy that later became a university?
Geneva
Geneva sheltered Protestant exiles, who formed their own church there under John Knox and carried Calvin's ideas back to England and Scotland.
Q 29Which statement of faith, recited in churches worldwide, grew out of a council Emperor Constantine convened in 325?
Nicene Creed
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.
Q 30Which branch of theology, named from the Greek for a speech in defence, argues the reasoned case for Christian belief?
Apologetics
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.