Q 01/05

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

A) The Resurrection

B) The Ascension

C) The Trinity

D) The Second Coming

Answer · why

C) 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 02/05

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

A) Indulgences

B) Sacred relics

C) Benefices

D) Dispensations

Answer · why

A) 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 03/05

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

A) Sermon

B) Gospel

C) Epistle

D) Parable

Answer · why

B) 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 m...

Q 04/05

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

A) G. K. Chesterton

B) J. R. R. Tolkien

C) Dorothy L. Sayers

D) C. S. Lewis

Answer · why

D) 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 05/05

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

A) Sloth

B) Pride

C) Envy

D) Wrath

Answer · why

B) Pride

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