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If one reads enough about apologetics or simply goes in-depth about studies relevant to Christianity, one will often find that there is a gap between scholarly Christianity and popular Christianity. In tertiary or in secondary doctrines, the views on either side will usually not resemble each other in the least. In primary/essential doctrines, there will often be agreement on general details, but not on specifics. This is epitomized by people like Ray Comfort. We find many basic ideas in their literature that we can agree with, but they often stumble in specifics or in the non-essential doctrines. In the latter case, why should we care at all? We should care simply because truth matters. It will never be a case where if you are wrong about the doctrine as a whole, your salvation would be put into question (like in the case of Christology or Soteriology), but truth still matters whether it has eternal consequences or not. But that’s enough of standing on the soap box. Let’s get down to reviewing the book itself.
If you’re expecting a great apologetic work because of the title The Evidence Bible, you would be sorely disappointed. This book is more about Comfort’s favored mode of evangelism (using the Ten Commandments) than it is about defending the Christian faith. One would be much better served buying The Case for Christ or The Case for Faith. Even if you’re a beginner in apologetic studies, this book would not be right for you. But let’s examine the book according to the purposes outlined on its cover.
Prove God’s existence: Is this accomplished? Actually, it is. He basically relies solely on the teleological argument and he presents some interesting facts in the process. Regrettably, the most effective argument in the teleological category — the Anthropic Principle — only makes cameo appearances in a repeated quote from Stephen Hawking. Regardless, he accomplishes the goal, but not quite with as much finesse and absoluteness as you would get from works of Alvin Platinga, William Lane Craig, or Richard Swinburne.
Answer 100 common objections to Christianity: There’s nothing quite as deep as expounding on Exodus logistics, copyist errors, or a little examination of social science issues here. Most objections are extremely easy to answer. All but maybe a handful could be answered by a beginner apologist (these few having to do with the “Problem of Evil” or, in one case, where it involves God ordering the killing of certain people). The rest include such questions as: Who made God? How can a perfect God be furious? Will people who have never heard about Jesus go to hell? (admittedly, this is a little more difficult) and How can people be happy in heaven, knowing that their unsaved loved ones are suffering in hell? I have chosen from among the most difficult of the remaining and we still don’t see too much that would make the book worth buying.
Another thing I should point out here is that Comfort doesn’t exercise any ability to go against the paradigm in these objections. For example, in the objection that religion has caused more wars than anything, Comfort doesn’t refute this paradigm, he merely takes it for granted and says that those Christians who caused wars were not real Christians [1292]. I guess he didn’t know that the vast majority of all wars have no discernible religious significance. He also works within the paradigm on the idea that this world is “full” of suffering (rather than be like Glenn Miller and refute it (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/gr5part2.html)) [1461] and he doesn’t refute the idea that the Bible is a fairy tale. He simply evades it (while giving the appearance of a good answer) and says to take the objector through the Ten Commandments.
Show the Bible’s supernatural origin. Of course, the Bible would not have to be supernatural or inerrant for it to be true, but does the book succeed in doing this? Though the attempt is spread throughout the book, the one concentrated effort in a note on Psalm 119:105 [790] is rather lacking. It is a case where Justin and Jordan Drake (I have no idea who they are) lay out five evidences that the Bible stands alone (which doesn’t necessarily prove divine origin). These five evidences are: Unique continuity, unique circulation, unique translation, unique survival, and unique durability. The first would be a valid point, but the book as a whole doesn’t do much in proving it, the paragraph devoted to expounding on this is no more than a sound bite. The others are definitely no grounds on which to base a doctrine of divine origin. It is basically up to the reader and their presuppositions to decide if Comfort’s book makes an overall convincing case. (For the issue of “continuity” one would be best served reading articles on this site or on Glenn Miller’s http://www.christian-thinktank.com).
Learn to show the absurdity of evolution. This is outside my personal purview and the purview of this site so I’ll skip it.
Study how to share your faith with your family or at your workplace. Learn how to witness to an atheist. Study how to speak with a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, a Buddhist, a Hindu, and a Moslem. I put these all in one category because they are basically saying the same thing with a few variations. In all these cases, Comfort either allows someone else to speak or he gets on the soap box and speaks about how the “Law method” is a Biblically-backed evangelism method. Sorry, but I’ll have to get on my own soap box again.
In all cases, Comfort talks about “circumnavigating the intellect (the place of argument) and going straight to the conscience (the place of the knowledge of sin).” He also claims that this was done in the Biblical evangelism. Frequent readers of this site will notice a few problems with this.
First, what good would it do to evangelize in this way to those already adhering to another religion? After all, they are convinced that their religion will save them (otherwise they wouldn’t be part of it). Unless we convince them that the Christian way is truer, they won’t bother. This involves appealing to the intellect.
Second, there is no way this could have been done in Biblical times. As Malina notes in The New Testament World [66], to the ancients, there was no such thing as an individual conscience that made people feel guilty. The negative effect would not be feelings of guilt, but feelings of shame and the conscience as we know it (basically the standard of right and wrong) was outside the individual. It was in the group and what the group thought of you. Trying to appeal to something that wasn’t there would be worthless.
Third, if you read the book and see where he thinks it took place, you will note that Comfort isn’t that good at exegesis. Here are some examples. He thinks that Jesus used it when he was speaking to the woman at the well in John 4:7-26. He says that He uses the Law in verses 16-18 [1347-8]. Here’s what they actually say:
“He told her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back.’ ‘I have no husband,’ she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
Sorry, no use of any of the Ten Commandments here. He says Paul, Timothy and James used it in Romans 3:19-20, 1st Timothy 1:8-11, and James 2:10 respectively [1308]. All are clearly not in evangelistic contexts, but are in letters written to Christians. The only places one could really use for evangelistic contexts are found in the book of Acts. Comfort finds a few instances here as well. Three of these instances are Acts 2:14-41, 7:1-53, and 28:17-28. In the first (Pentecost), the passage directly contradicts his method of speaking to the conscience. The Ten Commandments are never referenced, but we do see references to miracles, the Resurrection, and prophecy fulfillment. In other words, the evangelism was evidentiary in nature. The people were not remorseful because of some guilt brought by the Ten Commandments being applied to their conscience, but because they had put the Messiah to death and also because they wanted to know if there was any way to atone for such a sin. In the second (Stephen’s speech), the Law is referenced once in the last verse of an historical discourse indicting the leader’s for being guilty of the same crimes as their forefathers. In the third (Paul’s last speech in Rome), Paul tries to convince his audience from the Law of God and the Prophets. What more likely happened here is that Paul was performing an historical discourse and using prophecy. This would fit in with the idea of the overarching authority of the OT.
Well, that’s enough standing on the soap box for now.
Discover how to prove the authenticity of the Bible through prophecy. Here, Comfort falls prey to the common misuse of prophecy apologetically. Most prophecies he references (Messianic) tend to be typological in nature. He says that they are direct references to the Messiah, but more often than not, they are simply typological applications (the few exceptions are such prophecies as Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9:24-27). Not many prophecies can be used effectively in apologetics to modern Skeptics because of their typological nature (prophecies in Daniel are exceptions though). For a more informed view of prophecy see here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/typol.html), here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/baduseot.html), and here (http://www.tektonics.org/qt/typola.html). He also makes the mistake of assuming futurism to be true. For a corrective, see here (http://www.tektonics.org/esch/eschatology.html).
See how the Bible is full of eye-opening scientific and medical facts. This beyond the purview, but I will say that some can be rendered suspect because they read poetic literature wrongly (e.g. seeing the Second Law of Thermodynamics in Psalm 33:6 and 102:25-26).
Read fascinating quotes from Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Stephen Hawking, and many other well-known scientists. Read the fearful last words of famous people who died without the Savior. Read incredible quotes about the Bible from presidents and other famous people. These quotes aren’t exactly fascinating, but they are somewhat interesting. However, I think the book could’ve done without these sound bites. Comfort would have been better served getting rid of the quotes from all these people and replacing them with relevant quoting of informed Bible scholars. He spends so much time quoting Charles Haddon Spurgeon (more so than all others combined) and Martin Luther (neither were truly informed Bible scholars [they didn’t have access to relevant anthropological info] and Spurgeon wasn’t a scholar at all) when he could’ve quoted Ben Witherington III, N.T. Wright, James D.G. Dunn, Bruce Malina, or other members of the Context Group or Studorium Novi Testamenti Societas. Fortunately, he does quote actual scholars on a few occasions (like R.C. Sproul and John McRay), but not quite enough in relevant contexts.
Learn how to refute the “contradictions” in the Bible. There isn’t much done here. The number of times he deals with supposed contradictions could probably be counted on two hands. But it is interesting to note Comfort’s note on Mark 15:26 titled: Contradictions in the Bible—Why Are They There? In it, he states that the seeming contradictions were put there by God to “snare” the proud. He also says that God has “hidden” things from the “wise and prudent” and “revealed them to babes” (Luke 10:21), purposely choosing foolish things to confound the wise (1st Corinthians 1:27) [1275]. This of course comes from a view of inspiration that I wouldn’t agree with. Did God purposely include the copyist errors (http://www.tektonics.org/af/copyisterrors.html)? Did He purposely include the anachronisms (http://www.tektonics.org/af/anachronisms.html)? I disagree with the premise here and I would like to make one more note about the “proud and wise”. He doesn’t realize that in both cases, the words were used sarcastically (http://www.tektonics.org/af/follywise.html) and that such would not include those who are truly wise and learned (like the scholars I mentioned earlier). I don’t think the “contradictions” should be blown off so easily and should be dealt with properly.
Find out why the Dead Sea Scrolls are relevant to the Bible. Here, Comfort does show that he is informed about the DSS and knows that they are not the materials that conspiracy theorists think they are. He shows that they are relevant to showing the preservation of the OT (they are basically scrolls of OT copies and a few other works). However, he doesn’t make a similar note about the preservation of the NT (it has been preserved even better than the OT). Sorry, no Bruce Metzger quotes here.
Here are some miscellaneous notes about the book.
For a book with such a title and of such longevity (even though most of it is taken up by Scripture), you would expect a good bibliography. Unfortunately, it is only about a page-and-a-third long. Many of the sources are scientific (and those actually written by true scientists), but the rest isn’t really impressive if he was planning on doing anything other than a young-earth creationist apologetic. Of those remaining, the most scholarly sources are Norman Geisler, D. James Kennedy, and C.S. Lewis. The rest of the unimpressive list includes such names as: Bill Bright (he’s not too bad, but he still wasn’t a first-rate scholar), Ray Comfort (he cited another book of his titled Scientific Facts in The Bible), Grant Jeffrey, Ben Jennings, Josh McDowell, R.A. Torrey, and Phillip Yancey. (I have no idea where he got the Sproul and McRay quotes).
Comfort is proud to say that our faith is not an intellectual one, but an experiential one. In a note on John 17:3 [1382], he tells an anecdote about how Dr. Paul Tillich made a speech refuting the Resurrection. An old preacher responded to this by admitting his ignorance on the literature Tillich quoted, but noted that Tillich could not tell him how the apple he was eating tasted and could neither have “tasted” his Jesus. The auditorium of 1,000-plus then erupted in cheers. At the end, Comfort notes that it has been said, “The man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument.” No wonder popular Christianity is such an intellectual cesspool! Tell me, is the man who has never experienced ice right if another man tells him there is such a thing as ice? I can’t believe Comfort is actually glad that the Resurrection wasn’t properly defended, but instead that experience was elevated! No wonder there are so many apostates! A Christianity that can’t properly defend itself against attackers will be at their mercy. This is important because consequences are eternal. In the beginning, when the Church was confronted with arguments of Jews or of heretical sects, we don’t see the Apostles saying, “You have Jesus living in your heart, you have experienced Him, and He is your friend who you personally know.” Rather, we see them make proper arguments against these sects in their Epistles.
Comfort also makes the bogus assumption that we can personally know God [1381] (rather than simply having knowledge of Him) and that He is our friend rather than that He is our patron (http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatfaith.html) (see about a quarter of the way down).
In a note on Psalm 131:1 [799], Comfort says, “Beware of ‘intellectual Christianity.’ It is easy to become puffed up with a theology that forgets ‘the simplicity that is in Christ’ (2nd Corinthians 11:3). The measure of the quality of our Christian theology will be evidenced by the depth of our concern for the lost.” The scholars I mentioned earlier as well as those who quote them extensively (like J.P. Holding and Glenn Miller) all belong to intellectual Christianity. None of them are haughty. As for the whole quote about the simplicity in Christ, I guess he never read Hebrews 5:12-14 which chastises certain people for still being babes and needing to be taught elementary truths again.
Comfort also frequently makes the widespread mistake of thinking that Hell is a place of torture. See here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/gr5part2.html) for a more informed view of Hell (it starts about an eighth of the way down).
Comfort (and Spurgeon, who he pervasively quotes) makes the Western mistake of assuming that what was so bad about the crucifixion was the pain involved. While that was a bad thing about it, the real focus of the ancients was the shame involved. You will not see one passage of Scripture say anything about the pain, but you will see some talk about the shame. See here (www.tektonics.org/uz/2muchshame.html).
Comfort and Spurgeon also paint a picture that practically says that if we don’t have a heavy heart and aren’t constantly crying over the fact that the lost are going to Hell, then we are not concerned for them. Of course, essential to this is that Hell is a place of torture, which it is not. Many do show concern, but we aren’t in a state of such depression over it because we are not quite so given over to emotional swaying.
There are more common errors present in Comfort’s book (e.g. misunderstanding of prayer (http://www.tektonics.org/lp/prayfor.html), the idea that Satan is behind everything wrong), but I think that’s enough. Don’t get me wrong, Comfort does often present agreeable ideas (pointing out the bad “wonderful plan” evangelism method, indicting American Christianity for under-evangelization, and chastising many churches for not teaching properly on sin). However, there is still too much wrong and not enough right to warrant buying this book. It is right to indict the Church (specifically the American branch) for under-evangelization as a whole, but it simply contributes to the related problem of under-defending.
Beginners would be better served purchasing Strobel’s compilations and reading Holding’s and Miller’s materials. After you get your feet wet, you should continue reading Holding’s and Miller’s stuff, but also, if you can afford to, start reading up on the materials they cite (as an 18-year old, I personally can’t afford too much at this point). But whatever you do, don’t waste your money on this book.
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