Description: 24 general objections with the Bible as the subject. This chapter is derived from a BE pamphlet. They are introduced with much the same words of endorsement as "best questions" that Chapter 2 is.

1, 2, 3.

We may now proceed with some comments upon the first three objections of this chapter. The first objection concerns John 14:6.

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Our subject recommends that the "dilemma" this verse causes be "brought into the fray as soon as possible" in all debates, and claims that he has "never encountered a biblicist with a good explanation" because "there is none." [53] The problem, as he sees it [53-4]:

If you must accept Jesus as your savior in order to be saved...(W)hat do you do about the billions of beings who died as fetuses and infants, mental deficients, and people who lived in the New World before missionaries arrived? One should not lost sight of the fact that it says "no man." It doesn't say "some men," "most men" or "a few men."...There are no exceptions and that includes infants and fetuses.

Our subject then proceeds over several pages to critique arguments from various basic apologetics sources in which the same litany is repeated that "the verse allows no exceptions," "no alternative was allowed," [54], "nothing in the Bible allows for an exception," [57] etc.

I passed up comment here earlier because the matter of the fate of those who have not heard the gospel is a complex topic deserving far more attention than this context allows; and my answer is found here. However, I can actually resolve the issue fairly quickly without recourse to detailed analysis of the issue...merely by considering the genre context of John 14:6.

The Gospel of John portrays Jesus as God's divine Wisdom. (For more on this, see this article.) Jesus speaks as Wisdom speaks in the Jewish intertestamental literature and in Proverbs, in long discourses...such as the one in John 14.

This being the case, our admonitions re Proverbial Literature directly apply. Simply because the statement of 14:6 (likewise John 3:18, 3:36, and 1 John 5:12, which is didactic in nature, and therefore also not absolute) is stated in absolute terms does not mean that there are no exceptions. It is simply that, in the genre of wisdom literature, exceptions are not stated. They are intended to be deduced through applied thought. (Beyond that, the phrasing "no one comes to the Father except by me" includes the notion that Jesus determines himself who comes to the Father, and that he may decide to allow someone to come to the Father for other reasons.)

So what "exceptions" might there be to John 14:6? That's what has to be decided, and that's where all of these arguments that our subject simply dismisses (and others not considered by him) come into play. To simply play this variation of the famous skeptical "all means all" argument is not only made without respect to the genre of the wisdom discourse; it is also a "lazy way out" that allows our subject to respond with less than critical care and analysis. He does attempt to analyze the standard presentation from Sproul about Romans 1, which is classically read to indicate that "general revelation" might lead to saving knowledge (though whether anyone has come to salvation thusly is another issue). Our subject decries this as an "apologetic maneuver" [58] and argues that this would allows Jews, Muslims, and other theists to be saved. "If all you have to do is believe in God," he writes, then millions of non-Christians will go to heaven. But this is an extremely simplified distortion of what Sproul is talking about. Our subject has ignored the fact that Paul stresses that general revelation reveals not just the existence of God, but reveals things about God as well. God's character is revealed in creation, and a person who has only general revelation must therefore recognize not only the existence of God, but must also accept the truth about what God is like. Therefore, a mystic, for example, who holds that God is an unconscious force and has never heard the Gospel, is out of luck; for Paul's argument implies that general revelation would teach him otherwise. On the other hand, the animist who is dissatisfied with his beliefs about God, and senses that there is something else that is the truth, is on the way to salvation, and may even possess it. But that's what debates in this arena are all about.

Concerning the second objection: Our subject here misapplies Deut. 24:16 (as well as Exod. 20:5 and Ezekiel 18:19-20) to the question of how we can be punished for the sin of Adam. As we have shown elsewhere, Deut. 24:16 has no application to the issue.

However, Deut. 24:16 is just a small part of a larger argument arguing against the unfairness of "being punished for Adam's sin." Quite frankly, my simple response to this argument is that if there is anyone who has no sins of their own, then they can complain about being "blamed" for those of Adam to their heart's content. Our subject, who dismisses this as a "subtle alteration in blame" [61], doesn't make any claims to qualify on these grounds.

Passing by arguments about Adam as federal head of humanity, a true point which our subject quotes, but does not respond to, a position that understands that Adam's actual role is that of one who passed on a propensity to sin. This view understands not that it is the act of Adam's sin that we pay for, but that all have sinned in Adam in the typological sense that Adam set the pattern (see Rom. 5:12). Both views can be found in first-century Judaism, and Paul does not specify which one he holds. Other than offering the usual misapplication of Ps. 51:5 and 58:3, however, our subject has absolutely no response to this.

Concerning the third objection [61]:

...God created Adam, so Adam must have been perfect. How then could Adam have sinned? Regardless of how much free will he had, if he chose to sin he was not perfect.

This involves a confusion of categories. Furthermore, if this is how "perfection" is to be defined, then no, Adam was not created perfect -- God created Adam "imperfect". Consider this: God is perfect. Yet does God have free will? No, for God cannot lie (Heb. 6:18), for example. He is not free to lie because His nature forbids it. So if this is how "perfection" is to be defined, then Adam wasn't created "perfect." Freedom implies, indeed, a lack of "perfection" if that is how we define the word.

In between objections 3 and 4 comes a comment worthy of note, in which our subject presents his version of the primitive "all means all" argument. He advises his disciples:

Try to stay with absolutes as much as possible. The Bible digs itself into a hole when it makes statements dealing with "all," "each," "never," "every," "none," and other statements that allow no exceptions. We have all taken exams and been confronted with true or false answers. Experienced test takers will tell you that statements containing absolute terms are nearly always false.

This naive piece of advice is much equal to our subject's advice to read the Bible "like a newspaper", only here it is implied that we should read it like a true-false test! If the Bible digs this sort of hole for itself, then so likewise has every piece of proverbial or didactic literature from around the globe throughout history. The Bible is neither a newspaper nor a pop quiz, but a complex document with a rich history, derived from a specific literary genre. Once again our subject must impose his anachronistic views upon the text in order to find error where it does not exist.

vs.

Now answered here.

5. Now answered here. Our subject proudly offers with this cite -- which involves a copyist error -- a story of how he confounded a Church of Christ minister on a radio show with this question. I doubt if a textual critic like Bruce Metzger or Emmanuel Tov would have been similarly confounded; more likely they would reach immediately for the Hayseed Spray.

6. Now answered here.

vs.

Now answered here.

Used to ask how Moses could have written the Pentateuch. See Glenn Miller's work on the authorship of the Pentateuech.

9. Now answered here and here.

10. Objection that Jesus' resurrection was not unique. See Selling Snake Oil<.A>.

11. Now answered here, here, and here.

12. Now answered here.

13. Now answered here.

14. Matt. 27:9-10. See response here.

Now answered here.

A criticism of these verses. In response to the answer that these verses were not in the original manuscripts, our subject offers the same blithe counters of text-critical principles that we have recounted in our Foundation piece on Copyist Errors. (I.e., he says, in response to the point that the passages are not in two early key manuscripts: "Why this would jeopardize their validity one can only speculate, since much of the Bible is absent from one or another key manuscript." [67] Indeed: One who is grossly out of touch concerning the principles of textual criticism can only speculate, because they don't care about the hard data and are satisfied with broad, generalized, and non-specific arguments like, "much of the Bible is absent from one or another key manuscript." How does our subject define much and key? Chances are he wouldn't know the John Bodmer papyri from a sheet of toilet paper!) For the matter of evidence on these verses, look here.

17. A criticism of the supposed conflict between Jesus and Paul regarding the criteria for salvation, with Matt. 19:16-18 (the rich young ruler story) as a focus point versus Paul's salvation by faith. For further details on this issue, and a point on how OT saints and others living before Jesus were saved, see our responses to this issue.

18. Now answered here.

19. Now answered here.

Deemed "offensive" - to which we say, what of it? Life in a besieged city was harsh in ancient times; does our subject think that the Israelites ordered pizza delivered? This is the first of many places, at any rate, where our subject imposes his own personal post-Victorian values on ANE culture. Such objections hardly need any response; but see our essay on this topic.

21. Is. 45:7 and Lam. 3:38. See our reply here.

vs.

Now answered here.

23. Asks how a finite number of sins results in infinite condemnation. We do not agree with this paradigm now; see here.