-
Why Did Paul Tell Women to Cover Their Heads? (11 of 12)
The passage argues from nature and then seems to contradict itself. One striking proposal about a single Greek word, and what is worth keeping from it.
-
What Was Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh? (9 of 12)
Everyone assumes an illness. The phrase comes from the Old Testament and there it always means people, and Paul calls it a messenger rather than a condition.
-
Does Paul Forbid Women to Teach or Preach? (10 of 12)
One verse set against a great deal of counter-evidence in the same author. What Ephesus was, what the rare Greek verb means, and why the setting matters.
-
Why Does Acts Not Record Paul’s Death? (12 of 12)
The book ends with him alive under house arrest, and the silence is itself evidence. What it implies about when Acts was written, and about Luke’s Gospel.
-
Constantine and the Council of Nicaea (8 of 8)
Two accounts of the vision that do not match, one contested Greek word, and a council that settled less than people think. What Nicaea decided and left open.
-
What Was Diocletian’s Great Persecution? (7 of 8)
Forty years of open growth, then the worst persecution the church faced. It ended with an exhausted emperor conceding the policy failed, and a lasting schism.
-
The Decian Persecution and the Lapsed (6 of 8)
The edict was a loyalty oath, not an anti-Christian measure, and it lasted eighteen months. The fight over what to do with those who broke lasted far longer.
-
Tertullian, Perpetua, and Origen Explained (5 of 8)
The man who gave the West its trinitarian vocabulary and then left the church, a prison diary by a young mother, and the most brilliant scholar of the age.
-
Who Was Irenaeus and Against Heresies? (4 of 8)
A bishop wrote five books because a friend asked how to answer the Valentinians. The three public answers he gave, and the one argument he got badly wrong.
-
Who Were the Gnostics and What Did They Teach? (3 of 8)
Not a rival religion but a reinterpretation from inside, claiming to be the real Christianity. Marcion, Valentinus, Montanus, and what each one actually taught.