DAY 34 CHALLENGE “On various occasions in the Gospels, Jesus prays (e.g., Matt. 26:36; Luke 3:21; John 11:41). If Jesus was God, this makes no sense. How could he pray to himself?” DEFENSE He wasn’t praying to himself. He was praying to his Father. People do talk to themselves from time to time, but this is not what Jesus was doing. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each God, but they are distinct, divine persons. The doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God in three persons. Consequently, it was natural for Jesus as one divine person to speak to his Father as anothe…

DAY 33 CHALLENGE “John the Baptist was the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah. When the disciples ask Jesus why the scribes say that Elijah must come before the Messiah, Jesus says he already had come. ‘Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist’ (Matt. 17:13). Also, Luke says John the Baptist will have the spirit of Elijah (Luke 1:17).” DEFENSE John the Baptist functioned symbolically as a new Elijah, but he denied actually being Elijah in person (John 1:21). The New Testament repeatedly states that we will be resurrected, not reincarn…

DAY 32 CHALLENGE “Catholics shouldn’t call priests ‘Father.’ Jesus said, ‘Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven’ (Matt. 23:9).” DEFENSE Jesus was using hyperbole. Other passages in the New Testament indicate that Christ’s ministers have a form of spiritual fatherhood. Hyperbole is exaggeration to make a point. It is a common feature of biblical speech, as when Jesus says his disciples must “hate” their family members (Luke 14:26; a non-hyperbolic paraphrase of this passage is given in Matt. 10:37). Jesus does not literally m…

DAY 31 CHALLENGE “If you admit non-literal accounts into the Bible, how do you know that it isn’t all non-literal?” DEFENSE Just because the Bible contains one kind of material doesn’t mean it can’t contain other kinds, or that we can’t tell the difference. It would be the fallacy of hasty generalization to conclude that just because some passages are non-literal, they all must be. We don’t make this kind of mistake with other literature. For example, if you walk into a library and notice that it has fiction shelves, you don’t thereby conclude that all the books in the library must b…

DAY 30 CHALLENGE “Even if we admit that Peter was leader of the Twelve, and thus of the Church in Jesus’ absence, there’s no reason to infer that his office would be passed on in future generations.” DEFENSE The biblical background to Peter’s office—as well as common sense—indicate his leadership function would continue. When Jesus conferred Peter’s leadership function on him in Matthew 16:18, he said he would give him the keys of the kingdom. This invokes an Old Testament background that informs the nature of Peter’s office. Evangelical scholar F.F. Bruce writes: And what about the “k…

DAY 29 CHALLENGE “It is enough to simply be spiritual. There is no need to be religious or to belong to an organized religion.” DEFENSE This presupposes that we don’t know which religion is true. If we knew little about the supernatural world—perhaps simply that it exists—it might make sense to hold to only a general spirituality. How- ever, if we know more, the situation changes. The more we know, the more we are obligated to believe. If we know enough to show that a particular religion is true, we are obligated by our knowledge of the truth to embrace that religion. And if the reli…

DAY 28 CHALLENGE “The Holy Spirit is not a person. Instead, it is the active power that God uses to accomplish his will. It’s an impersonal force—like radio waves.” DEFENSE Contrary to this view of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scripture indicates that the Holy Spirit is a person, not an impersonal force. Impersonal forces don’t know things or make choices, but the Holy Spirit does both. He knows the thoughts of God (1 Cor. 2:11), and he chooses how spiritual gifts will be distributed (1 Cor. 12:11). The Holy Spirit thus has the personal attributes of intellect and will. Scripture ref…

DAY 27 CHALLENGE “The deuterocanonical books don’t belong in Scripture. They are not written in Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament.” DEFENSE The language that a book was written in doesn’t determine whether it’s Scripture. Hebrew was the national language of the Israelites for much of their history, and many Old Testament books were written in it, but the Israelites’ language changed over time. Sometimes it changed through the incorporation of loanwords from other languages. Thus we find Egyptian, Akkadian, and Persian loanwords in books of Scripture written when the…

DAY 26 CHALLENGE “Acts is not a reliable account of the history of the early Church. It is a work of ideology.” DEFENSE Acts is an extremely reliable history. Every historian has a point of view, and the fact that Luke was writing from a Christian point of view does not mean he was inaccurate. The book of Acts is based on the evidence of eyewitnesses, like Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1:2). It is easy to tell who the eyewitnesses in Acts were: Peter is a ma- jor source for chapters 1 to 12, Paul for chapters 13 to 28, Philip for chapter 8, and Priscilla and Aquila for chapter 18. Luke himself w…

DAY 25 CHALLENGE “The Church covered up Jesus’s marriage to Mary Magdalene. The Gospel of Philip says they were married, and Jewish men didn’t stay unmarried in Jesus’ day, so he wouldn’t have been celibate.” DEFENSE There were celibate Jewish men in Jesus’ day, and the evidence shows that Jesus stayed unmarried. The Gospel of Philip is a second- or third-century writing in the Coptic language. It does not contain reliable history, and it does not describe Mary as Jesus’ wife but as a companion, which she was, along with others (see Luke 8:1–3). There are several women named Mary in th…

Day 24 CHALLENGE “Why shouldn’t I believe in scientific materialism—the view that only physical matter and energy exist and that science is the key to all knowledge?” DEFENSE Because morality points us beyond the purely material and beyond what science is capable of establishing. Moral values are real. Some things are objectively right and some are objectively wrong. Showing compassion for the poor and the weak is good; torturing babies for fun is evil. Belief in moral values is a human universal that exists in all cultures. It is built into human nature, and it cannot be suppressed. Even thos…

Day 23 CHALLENGE “Matthew and Luke contradict each other. Matthew says that the Jewish priests bought the field of blood (Matt. 27:7–8), whereas Luke says that Judas Iscariot did (Acts 1:18–19).” DEFENSE Matthew and Luke are in fundamental agreement, and there are many ways the different attributions can be explained. Both authors agree that Judas Iscariot’s betrayal led to a field in the area of Jerusalem becoming known as the field of blood. Both also say that this field was paid for with the money that the chief priests had given Judas to betray Jesus. Both are thus agreed about the basic …

Day 22 CHALLENGE “Catholics should not regard Mary as the “Queen of Heaven.” The Bible speaks of devotion to the Queen of Heaven and condemns it in unequivocal terms (Jer. 7:18, 44:17–19, 25).” DEFENSE The “Queen of Heaven” that Jeremiah refers to is not Mary. Therefore, he was not condemning Marian devotion. The fact that Jeremiah was not referring to Mary is obvious, since he was writing around 600 B.C., not the first century A.D. In his day, the title “Queen of Heaven” was used to refer to various pagan deities. There were many such deities, as every pagan pantheon had a major, ruling deit…

DAY 21 CHALLENGE The Gospel of John is not historically reliable. It was written in the A.D. 90s and is markedly different in style and substance from the other Gospels.” DEFENSE Actually, the Gospel of John is very historically reliable. Arguments to the contrary do not prove their case. Even if John were written in the A.D. 90s, that’s within sixty years of the events it records. Historically speaking, that is quite close to them, and it poses no barrier to the accuracy of John. But John likely was written earlier. It refers to architecture in Jerusalem as still standing (5:2), but Jerusale…

Day 20 CHALLENGE “Baptism is not needed for salvation. It is a symbolic ritual that represents an inward change that has already taken place.” DEFENSE The New Testament links baptism to salvation. Baptism is not just a ritual. It communicates God’s graces, such as the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thus Peter told the crowd on the day of Pentecost: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Similarly, when he was converted to the Faith, Paul was to…

Day 19 CHALLENGE “Peter was not the first pope. Even if Jesus appointed Peter as leader of the apostles, he would have been disqualified later by his sins—particularly when he denied Jesus.“ DEFENSE Jesus foresaw Peter’s denial, took it into account, and afterward confirmed him in his office. Peter’s denial was very grave. According to John, he denied being a disciple of Jesus (John 18:25). That was a public denial of the Faith (albeit an insincere one, since Peter did not abandon the Christian movement). Despite this, Jesus had foreseen Peter’s denial and told him in advance to take a pastora…

DAY 18 CHALLENGE “Early Christians believed that the world would end shortly after Jesus’ ministry. It didn’t. Therefore, Christianity is false.” DEFENSE This overestimates belief in an imminent end. It also confuses hope and expectation with assertion. The idea that the early Christians believed in an imminent end of the world has been exaggerated due to a misreading of key texts in the teaching of Jesus (see Days 69, 104, 154, and 167). Having said that, some did hope for or even expect an early end. Thus in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, Paul refers to “we who are alive” at the end, suggesti…

DAY 17 CHALLENGE “Catholics shouldn’t oppose abortion. The Bible never says anything about abortion or when we get our souls.” DEFENSE This objection supposes that we need the Bible to address the subject. We don’t. First, reason alone is capable of establishing that the unborn are innocent human beings and thus have a right to life (see Days 70, 88, 185, 191, and 202). Second, Catholics are not Protestants and do not have to verify everything from Scripture alone (see Day 5; cf. CCC 2270–75). Third, Scripture contains principles that apply to the question of abortion. The most fundame…

DAY 16 CHALLENGE “God wants us to determine our theology by Scripture alone. Every Christian should read the Bible and decide for himself what’s true.” DEFENSE This is a view that couldn’t have been entertained until the early 1500s. Until then, multiple practical problems prevented it. Among the problems are these: If every Christian is to read the Bible for himself and do the kind of study needed to decide delicate theological questions, then he must first have a Bible. But before the invention of the printing press (in the mid-1400s), Bibles had to be hand copied, and so they were …

DAY 15 CHALLENGE “The sacrament of the anointing of the sick has no biblical basis; it is a human invention.” DEFENSE The anointing of the sick is recorded in the Bible. The practice of anointing the sick as a means of miraculous healing was already part of the Christian movement during the earthly ministry of Christ. Jesus performed many exorcisms and healings, and he commissioned the apostles to continue this miraculous ministry, us- ing anointing as one of their methods. Thus in Mark we read how Jesus sent the Twelve on a preaching and miracle-working mission and “they cast out many…