DAY 157

CHALLENGE

“The Bible says people aren’t conscious after death. It describes the dead as being asleep (Ps. 13:3; Dan. 12:2; Matt. 9:24; John 11:11) and says that ‘the dead know nothing’ (Eccles. 9:5; cf. Ps. 6:5, 88:10–12, 115:17).”

DEFENSE

These passages are explained by several factors.

One factor is euphemism—substituting a more pleasant term for an un- pleasant reality. Describing death as sleep is euphemism. People refer to death by many euphemisms (“passing on,” “going home,” “no longer with us”), and even those who believe in a conscious afterlife use sleep as a euphemi…

DAY 156

CHALLENGE

“Scripture is inaccurate when it says the mustard seed is the smallest seed. It is larger than a poppy seed, for example. Also, it does not grow into a tree.”

DEFENSE

This objection presses the text beyond its intended limits.

Jesus tells this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mus- tard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” (Matt. 13:31–32; cf. Mark 4:30–32, Luke 13:18–19).

Th…

DAY 155

CHALLENGE

“If John’s Gospel is reliable, why is it different from the others?”

DEFENSE

Every author has his own style, and John was supplementing the other Gospels.

Differences between John and the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are often exaggerated. They tell the same basic story, referring to many of the same incidents in Jesus’ life (the Baptism by John, early preaching in Galilee, feeding the 5,000, later ministry in Judaea, the triumphal entry, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and Resurrection).

The differences are principally of two types: (1) matters of st…

DAY 154

CHALLENGE

“In his discourse about the destruction of the temple, Jesus said, ‘The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken’ (Mark 13:24–25). Those things never happened, so Jesus prophesied falsely.”

DEFENSE

The imagery Jesus used does not imply the end of the world.

Some understand the imagery as familiar phenomena: a solar eclipse (sun darkening), a lunar eclipse (moon not giving light), a meteor shower (stars falling). If Jesus merely meant these would occur before the …

DAY 153

CHALLENGE

“Why should we reject the gods and goddesses that are worshipped by many cultures? Why should the Christian God be the only one?”

DEFENSE

Divine revelation makes clear there is a single God who created the world.

God is infinite and uncreated, but there are also finite, created spirits known as angels (CCC 328–29). They are God’s servants and messengers (the word “angel”—Hebrew, mal’akh, Greek, angelos—means “messenger”). Some serve God but others have fallen and oppose him (CCC 391–93).

The Christian faith thus envisions a heavenly hierarchy with the in-finite, unc…

DAY 152

CHALLENGE

“Herod’s slaughter of Bethlehem’s baby boys (Matt. 2:16) is a myth. We have no historical record of this actually happening.”

DEFENSE

We do have a record of it, and the act is entirely in keeping with the character of Herod the Great.

The Gospel of Matthew is itself a record. It cannot simply be set aside on a “false until proven true” principle. Scholars do not reflexively reject what ancient sources say, particularly when it fits with known facts.

Although we don’t have a non-Christian record of this event, we would not expect to. Bethlehem was small (Micah 5:2), an…

DAY 151

CHALLENGE

“An all-good, all-powerful God would not tolerate evil; thus, God either is not all-good or not all-powerful.”

DEFENSE

This presupposes that God cannot have good reasons to tolerate evil, but he does. One is that he values free will.

The abuse of free will is the definition of moral evil. Nobody sins except by misusing his free will. Sin, in turn, can produce suffer- ing, as when one person unjustly harms another. Moral evil thus can cause physical evil, and free will can produce both. This is important because we have a good idea why God allows free will: to allow …

DAY 150

CHALLENGE

“The Catholic practice of asking dead saints for their intercession is wrong. The Bible forbids necromancy.”

DEFENSE

Asking the saints for intercession is not necromancy.

Necromancy is an attempt to gain information by conjuring the dead. The term is derived from the Greek words nekros (“dead person”) and manteia (“oracle, divination”). This practice, which was common in the ancient world, is forbidden in the Old Testament: “There shall not be found among you . . . a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer” (Deut. 18:10–11).

The fact that necromancy was for purposes of …

DAY 149

CHALLENGE

“Luke says Jesus was born during a census (Luke 2:1–5), but he is wrong about its nature. It wouldn’t have been empire-wide, Joseph wouldn’t have gone to Bethlehem, and Mary wouldn’t have accompanied him.”

DEFENSE

There are solutions to each challenge.

Augustus was emperor from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14, and he began the practice of empire-wide census taking: “Every five years, the Romans enumerated citizens and their property to determine their liabilities. This practice was extended to include the entire Roman Empire in 5 B.C.” (“Census,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2016 ed…

DAY 148

CHALLENGE

“The historical sources that mention Jesus are all dependent on what they’ve heard from Christians. Why should we believe what they say?”

DEFENSE

The extent to which they are dependent on Christians for their information is questionable, and even if they derived all of it from Christian sources that would not make them unreliable.

The sources we cited probably have different degrees of dependence on Christian sources for their information about Jesus:

Suetonius is not known to have interviewed any Christians. He did have access to the official Roman archives when wri…