Daily Defense Podcast

DAY 291 CHALLENGE “Christian appeals to natural law are futile. In nature we see animals committing all kinds of acts—such as rape, homosexuality, and purposeless killing—that Christianity considers immoral.” DEFENSE This misunderstands the concept of natural law. Confusion on this point is understandable. We see many “laws” in operation in nature. Some of these are studied by sciences such as phy...

DAY 290 CHALLENGE “Genesis 1–11 contains many things that don’t correspond to the modern, scientific understanding of the world (such as talking snakes, a universal flood, and so on).” DEFENSE These chapters pertain to history in a true sense, but they are written according to a set of literary conventions that conveys truth using more symbolism than later passages. The Magisterium has indicated t...

DAY 289 CHALLENGE “Christians can’t lose salvation. Scripture says, ‘He who believes in the Son has eternal life’ (John 3:36a), and if life is eternal, it can’t end.” DEFENSE This fails to understand both the biblical concept of eternal life and other things Scripture says. A basic truth of linguistics is that you can’t define a term simply by looking at its parts; you must look at how it’s used i...

DAY 288 CHALLENGE “Jesus and the authors of the New Testament never quote from the deuterocanonical books, so they do not belong in the Bible.” DEFENSE The absence of a quotation does not prove that a book is noncanonical. Jesus and the authors of the New Testament sometimes introduce quotations in a way that makes it clear they regarded the source as a book of Scripture. This is indicated when th...

DAY 287 CHALLENGE “The idea we’re born again or regenerated in baptism is an invention of men that the early Christians would never have heard of.” DEFENSE The writings of the Church Fathers reveal that they believed in baptismal regeneration. We elsewhere cover the scriptural basis for this teaching (see Day 286), and the writings of the Church Fathers confirm that they believed it too. In fact,...

DAY 286 CHALLENGE “People don’t need to be baptized, just born again.” DEFENSE Scripture teaches people are born again in baptism. The phrase translated “born again” occurs in John 3:3, where Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (KJV). In Greek the phrase involves a pun. The word for “again” is anōthen, which can mean either “again” or “from above....

DAY 285 CHALLENGE “Science has progressively explained more and more of the world, leaving less room for God. Why can’t science one day explain everything, eliminating the need for (and possibility of) God?” DEFENSE This objection makes several mistakes. First, it commits the fallacy of “God of the gaps” thinking by supposing that scientific explanations somehow take something away from God. They...

DAY 284 CHALLENGE “James says we’re justified by faith and works (James 2:24), but that contradicts Paul, who says we’re justified by faith without works (Rom. 3:28, Gal. 2:16).” DEFENSE A careful examination shows the two are using key terms— faith, works, and justification—in different senses. James uses faith to refer to intellectual assent to the truths of faith. Thus he says, “You believe tha...

DAY 283 CHALLENGE “Religion is a destructive force that harms people.” DEFENSE This is not supported by the evidence. Every institution—churches, hospitals, schools, governments—makes mistakes and harms people on occasion. However, to claim an institution is fundamentally harmful, one needs to provide evidence it does more harm than good. Further, one would need to show not just that individual ex...

DAY 282 CHALLENGE “Peter can’t be the rock that Jesus refers to in Matthew 16:18. He uses the word petros (small stone) for ‘Peter’ but petra (large rock) for ‘rock.’ Why would he change the word if he was referring to Peter both times?” DEFENSE This challenge has several problems and does not prove its case. Protestant scholar D.A. Carson notes: Although it is true that petros and petra can mean...

DAY 281 CHALLENGE “Why can’t I, as a Christian, simply choose the beliefs I think are right? Why should anybody else tell me what I should believe?” DEFENSE This may be an attractive proposition in our individualistic age, but it wasn’t Jesus’ view. If you’re going to be a Christian, that means listening to Jesus Christ, and he set up a Church, not a cafeteria. We aren’t allowed to pick and choose...

DAY 280 CHALLENGE “Why should I care about the Church Fathers? They aren’t inspired like the New Testament authors.” DEFENSE The Church Fathers were writers in the early centuries who were notable for their holiness and soundness of teaching. They are important for a number of reasons. First, they were closer in time and in culture to the New Testament authors, and their writings provide context n...

DAY 279 CHALLENGE “What difference does it make if Mary remained a virgin? Couldn’t God have continued Jesus’ mission if she had other children?” DEFENSE God is omnipotent and can do anything he chooses, but this doesn’t mean his choices are arbitrary. This objection is a subcase of a broader one: Why should Mary be a virgin in the first place? Couldn’t God’s Son be born of a woman who wasn’t a vi...

DAY 278 CHALLENGE “Doesn’t Paul’s statement that we are saved ‘not because of works, lest any man should boast’ (Eph. 2:9) show he teaches justification by ‘faith alone’?” DEFENSE This misunderstands the kind of boasting in question. Paul never uses the phrase “faith alone,” and we elsewhere cover how the context of this passage shows it’s about the Jewish-Gentile question found elsewhere in Paul’...

DAY 277  CHALLENGE “Scripture says that the Jews were ‘entrusted with the oracles of God’ (Rom. 3:2), so we should look to them for the Old Testament canon. They reject the deuterocanonicals, and so should we.” DEFENSE There are multiple problems with this argument. First, not all Jewish people have the same canon. Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) have a canon including deuterocanonical books. It was rab...

DAY 276 CHALLENGE “During the Last Supper, the apostles argued over who was the greatest (Luke 22:24). Jesus shamed them, indicating that none of them was the greatest—not even Peter.” DEFENSE This misreads the text. Jesus gives a threefold response indicating that Peter was the disciples’ leader. Responding to the dispute, Jesus says three things. These form a single, continuous quotation of Jesu...

DAY 275 CHALLENGE “The Gospels say that Jesus was crucified between two robbers (Matt. 27:38; Mark 15:27), but this is inaccurate. We know that the ancient Romans only crucified people who committed acts of rebellion.” DEFENSE Romans did crucify robbers, but these two were likely rebels. Robbery isn’t the same as theft. Theft is taking someone’s property, but robbery is taking it by force. There’s...

DAY 274 CHALLENGE “Catholics misunderstand James 2. When James talks about faith, he’s referring to dead faith, and when he talks about justification, he’s referring to justification before men.” DEFENSE This isn’t supported by a careful reading of James 2. James says “faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26), but it does not follow from this that he is talking about “dead faith.” Read the pas...

DAY 273 CHALLENGE “Why should we think the deuterocanonicals are Scripture?” DEFENSE Multiple lines of evidence support this conclusion. The deuterocanonicals are seven books (Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Sirach, Wisdom, 1–2 Maccabees) and parts of two others (Daniel, Esther) considered canonical in the Catholic Church and many Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian Churches but not in the Protest...

DAY 272 CHALLENGE “Catholics use statues and pictures, but the Ten Commandments prohibit such religious images (Exod. 20:4–6; Deut. 5:8–10).” DEFENSE The Ten Commandments prohibit making idols, not religious images. Idols are manufactured objects that people falsely believe to be deities. Their use was commonplace in paganism, and God rightly prohibited the Israelites from making them. However, no...

DAY 271 CHALLENGE “Peter can’t be the rock in Matthew 16:18 because Scripture says God is the rock (Isa. 51:1). Further, Peter describes Jesus as a stone (1 Pet. 2:4–8). Therefore, Jesus must be the rock.” DEFENSE This challenge does not understand the way metaphors work. Although Isaiah does refer to God as “the rock from which you were hewn,” there is nothing about this passage indicating that o...

DAY 270 CHALLENGE             “Catholic apologists misrepresent the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (‘Scripture alone’). It merely means that Scripture contains everything necessary for salvation.” DEFENSE This is not how the teaching is understood by most Protestants, who apply it to all Christian doctrine. Salvation-based explanations of sola scriptura are sometimes...

DAY 269 CHALLENGE “Christians shouldn’t criticize others’ lifestyles or actions. Didn’t Jesus say not to judge?” DEFENSE Jesus didn’t tell us that we should close our eyes to moral evil in the world. The exhortation not to judge is found in Jesus’ major ethical discourse (Matt. 5:1–7:29, Luke 6:17–49). The point of the discourse is to give moral instruction. In it, Jesus discusses what conduct cou...

DAY 268 CHALLENGE “Catholics shouldn’t pray to the saints. Prayer is an act of worship, which is due only to God.” DEFENSE This involves a confusion of terms based on how the English language developed. In contemporary American English, “pray” indicates an act of worshipping God. However, Catholics do not give divine worship to the saints. The root of the confusion lies in the fact that the Englis...

DAY 267 CHALLENGE “People should be baptized only by immersion: (1) In Greek the word for “baptize” (baptizein) means ‘to dip’; (2) immersion better fits the symbolism of Jesus’ burial (Rom. 6:1–4; Col. 2:12); and (3) when Jesus was baptized, he ‘came up out of the water’ (Mark 1:10) and the Ethiopian eunuch ‘went down into the water’ (Acts 8:38).” DEFENSE These arguments do not show immersion is...