DAY 147

CHALLENGE

“If Jesus existed, why isn’t he mentioned by non-Christian sources?”

DEFENSE

Jesus was mentioned by multiple non-Christian historians within a century of his ministry.

The Roman historian Suetonius (died c. 122) appears to refer to Jesus when he records that the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in A.D. 49 “since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus” (The Twelve Caesars, “Claudius” 25). “Chrestus” is just one vowel different than the Latin word for “Christ”— Christus. Many scholars think this refers to the disturbances that…

DAY 146

CHALLENGE

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are made-up names.”

DEFENSE

The names themselves provide evidence they are authentic.

Ancient writers sometimes attributed their works to long-dead authors to increase the prestige of their works, but that wouldn’t have applied to the Gospels. Not only were their names being used in the first century (see Day 109), when the authors lived, they also weren’t the people you’d pick to add prestige to the documents. Their names may be prestigious today, but that is because of their Gospels. At the time, things were different.

Mark and Luke we…

DAY 145

CHALLENGE

“Some popes in history have been very bad. They could not be the leaders of God’s people, therefore the papacy is false.”

DEFENSE

All Church leaders are sinful to one degree or another, but the sinfulness of a particular leader says nothing about whether or not the office he occupies was instituted by God.

This argument runs the risk of proving too much. If being a sinner prevented you from being a leader, then every Christian community would be leaderless. Yet God insituted leaders in the Church (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:11–12; 1 Thess. 5:12–13; Heb. 13:17).

Sinfulness doesn…

DAY 144

CHALLENGE

“The Bible can’t be the word of God. It has passages where God commands the Israelites to exterminate whole populations when they entered the promised land (Deut. 7:1–2, 20:16–17).”

DEFENSE

The response still depends on whether the passages are meant literally.

Yesterday we considered the view that they are literal. Here we consider the view that they are non-literal. According to this view, God did not literally expect the Israelites to exterminate certain peoples.

Moses is conventionally referred to as the Pentateuch’s author be- cause he is the principal leader it …

DAY 143

CHALLENGE

“How can you believe the Bible when it contains passages in which God commands the extermination of whole peoples (Deut. 7:1–2, 20:16–17)?”

DEFENSE

The answer depends on whether or not those passages are meant to be taken literally.

Tomorrow we will consider the view that the commands are non-literal. Here we will consider the view that they are meant literally.

According to this view, God expected the Israelites to kill certain peoples for two reasons.

First, “according to what is attested in the Bible, the Canaanites are seen by God as guilty of very s…

DAY 142

CHALLENGE

“The Gospels don’t reliably convey the teachings of Jesus. The evangelists invented material based on their own views and the needs of their communities.”

DEFENSE

The evidence shows the Gospels are reliable.

Perhaps the greatest controversy in the early Church was whether Gentiles had to be circumcized and become Jews to be saved. This controversy is mentioned multiple times in Acts (10:1–11:18, 15:1–31, 21:25), and it dominates Paul’s epistles of Romans and Galatians. If there was ever a controversy to tempt people to make up a saying of Jesus to settle the matter, i…

DAY 141

CHALLENGE

“How can Catholics say Mary was sinless when Scripture teaches clearly that ‘all have sinned’ (Rom. 3:23)?”

DEFENSE

The passage doesn’t prove that Mary sinned.

Romans 3:23 occurs in a section where Paul is arguing that both Jews and Gentiles need salvation through Jesus Christ and that this is not achieved through the Law of Moses. This is the major thrust of Romans 1–4.

Thus he writes: “For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. . .…

DAY 140

CHALLENGE

“Monks and nuns are unbiblical. We don’t see them in Scripture.”

DEFENSE

Yes, we do. In both testaments we see people who take vows to specially consecrate themselves to God.

In the Old Testament, we read about Nazirites. The Hebrew term nazir means “consecrated” or “separated,” and the Nazirites were those consecrated to God by a special vow (Num. 6:2). As a result, they were not to drink wine or use any grape products (6:3–4), they were not to cut their hair but let it grow long (6:5), and they were to abstain from contact with dead bodies, even of their own relativ…

DAY 139

CHALLENGE

“The Real Presence can’t be true—Jesus would be commanding cannibalism! The Bible also tells us that we are not allowed to consume blood (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:14; Deut. 12:23).”

DEFENSE

The Real Presence does not imply cannibalism.

Cannibalism involves chewing another person’s flesh, swallowing it, and extracting nutrients from it by digestion. None of that happens to Jesus’ flesh when a person receives the Eucharist. Jesus’ body and blood remain whole and undigested under the appearances of bread and wine.

Only the appearances are altered by consumption, and when they…

DAY 138

CHALLENGE

“There is no reason we should trust Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They were selected because they supported a particular agenda, and there were dozens of other gospels in existence at the time.”

DEFENSE

The canonical Gospels were selected because they are the earliest and most reliable accounts of Jesus’ life.

Even skeptical scholars acknowledge the four canonical Gospels were written in the first century, while others are from the second and third centuries or later.

The four Gospels were authored either by eyewitnesses of Jesus (Matthew and John) or close associate…