DAY 127

CHALLENGE

“Doesn’t the star of Bethlehem imply the practice of astrology?”

DEFENSE

The fact that the Magi recognized the star’s significance implies that they practiced astrology, but it doesn’t imply we should.

The ancients did not know what the stars really are, and many regarded them as divinities that ruled the fates of men. Thus the sun, moon, and wandering stars (planets) had the names of deities: Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The names varied from culture to culture, but in paganism they were worshipped as deities.

This practice was explicitly conde…

DAY 126

CHALLENGE

“The Church has a superstitious understanding of the sacraments, believing that performing them will bring about their effects ex opere operato (‘by reason of the work having been performed’).”

DEFENSE

The Church doesn’t hold that merely performing the external actions of the sacraments will bring about their effects.

Suppose a group of actors put on a play in which one character is baptized. Though water may be applied with the correct words (Matt. 28:19), the actor playing that character is not truly baptized. The reason is the actor baptizing him is just pretending…

DAY 125

CHALLENGE

“How can Christians be so arrogant as to think they alone have the truth?”

DEFENSE

Nobody has a monopoly on the truth. Almost every perspective— religious and otherwise—has elements of truth in it. If it didn’t, then nobody would believe it. All human beings possess the gift of reason, and we all use it to discover aspects of the truth.

“The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in [other] religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones…

DAY 124

CHALLENGE

“The Gospels contain error since they describe different people performing the same action. Matthew says a centurion approached Jesus about healing his servant, but Luke says Jewish elders did this (Matt. 8:5–13; Luke 7:1–10). Mark says James and John made a request, but Matthew says their mother made it (Mark 10:35–45; Matt. 20:20–28).”

DEFENSE

The biblical authors had liberty to describe events in terms of the principals or their agents.

More than one person can be involved in an action. The person on whose behalf the action is performed is known as the principal, w…

DAY 123

CHALLENGE

If Matthew’s exceptive clauses on divorce don’t mean you can get remarried (see Day 122), what do they mean?

DEFENSE

There are a number of possibilities.

In Matthew 5:32, Jesus states: “Every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Social conditions in the ancient world pressured divorced women to remarry, so to divorce a woman was, in effect, to make her an adulteress—unless she already was one. Matthew may mean that a husband could divorce an adulterous wife wit…

DAY 122

CHALLENGE

“Matthew contains passages where Jesus indicates that it’s possible to get remarried after a divorce for reasons of ‘unchastity.’”

DEFENSE

Jesus nowhere says that you can remarry after such a divorce. The exceptive clauses do not imply this.

In Matthew 5:32, Jesus says: “Every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (cf. Matt. 19:9).

The phrase “except on the ground of unchastity” is not found anywhere else that the New Testament treats this subject. All other instan…

DAY 121

CHALLENGE

“Catholic apologists say we must not use ‘private judgment,’ but we can’t avoid it. The point of apologetics is to convince someone to use his private judgment to accept a position.”

DEFENSE

This misunderstands the role that our exercise of reason plays.

It should be pointed out that, whatever happens in apologetic discussions, the theme of “private judgment” is remarkably rare in Church documents. The phrase does not appear at all in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and when it does appear in Church documents, it does not reject the role of the intellect in th…

DAY 120

CHALLENGE

“The early Christians did not take Jesus’ words ‘This is my body’ and ‘This is my blood literally.’ They saw them as symbols.”

DEFENSE

The record shows that the Church Fathers interpreted these passages literally.

On the Fathers of the first and second centuries, Protestant patristics expert J.N.D. Kelly writes:

Ignatius roundly declares that . . . the bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup his blood. Clearly he intends this realism to be taken strictly, for he makes it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ denial of the reality of Christ’s body. . . . Irenae…

DAY 119

CHALLENGE

“Jesus was clearly speaking symbolically when he said, ‘This is my body’ and ‘This is my blood.’ His body and blood are not literally present in the Eucharist.”

DEFENSE

Other passages make it clear that Jesus was speaking literally.

We live in an age that is biased against miracles. It’s easy for us to interpret things as symbols rather than miracles. When faced with this decision, we need to check our instincts by making a careful reading of the text. Sometimes it will indicate what we are reading is symbolic, but sometimes it will indicate what we are reading is m…

DAY 118

CHALLENGE

“Christianity is irrational, for it requires faith, and faith is opposed to reason.”

DEFENSE

On the contrary, “faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” (Fides et Ratio 1).

From the perspective of faith, reason is a gift from God. He gave us intellects, and he expects us to use them. There is thus no opposition between faith and reason. Both have a role to play.

Certain questions in life can be investigated by reason without invoking the tenets of faith—for example, various truths of mathematics and science.

How…