Answering Common Objections

The Apostle Peter commanded believers to "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15). The word translated "answer" is the Greek apologia — a reasoned defense, a thoughtful reply. Christianity does not retreat from hard questions; it engages them honestly and thoroughly. Every generation raises objections against the Christian faith. Some are sincere questions from honest seekers. Others are rhetorical shields designed to avoid the conviction of the Holy Spirit. In either case, the believer must be prepared. Not every objection requires a lengthy philosophical treatise — sometimes the most powerful response is a simple, clear statement of truth combined with a humble spirit. But the Christian who has thought carefully about the common challenges to the faith will be better equipped to remove obstacles and point men toward the Saviour. This lesson addresses four of the most frequent objections raised against Christianity: the problem of evil and suffering, the alleged conflict between science and faith, the claim that the Bible contains contradictions, and the question of those who have never heard the gospel. For each, we will examine what the Bible teaches and how the objection, upon examination, actually strengthens rather than weakens the case for the Christian worldview.

This is perhaps the most emotionally powerful objection to the Christian faith. The argument is typically stated: if God is all-powerful, He could prevent evil; if God is all-good, He would want to prevent evil; evil exists; therefore, either God is not all-powerful, not all-good, or He does not exist. But this argument, upon careful examination, actually presupposes the existence of God. To call something "evil" is to appeal to an objective moral standard — a standard of goodness against which evil is measured. But as we saw in the first lesson of this course, objective moral standards require a transcendent Moral Lawgiver. The atheist who argues against God on the basis of evil must borrow from the Christian worldview to make his case. Without God, there is no objective evil — only atoms in motion, doing what atoms do. The Bible addresses the problem of evil directly. Evil entered the world through the free choices of moral agents — first Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12-15, Ezekiel 28:13-17), then Adam and Eve (Genesis 3). God created beings with genuine free will, and genuine free will includes the possibility of choosing wrongly. A world of free beings who can choose good but are incapable of choosing evil is a logical impossibility — it would be a world of puppets, not persons. The consequences of the Fall are vast. Sin corrupted human nature, fractured relationships, and brought death, disease, and decay into the created order. "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). The suffering we see in the world is not evidence against God — it is evidence of the Fall, exactly as Scripture describes it. Moreover, the existence of suffering does not mean that God has no purpose in permitting it. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). God's purposes are often beyond our immediate comprehension, but the Bible assures us that He is sovereign, that He is good, and that He works even through suffering to accomplish His redemptive purposes. The cross itself is the supreme example: the greatest evil ever committed — the murder of the sinless Son of God — became the means of the greatest good ever accomplished — the salvation of the world.

The claim that science has disproven God is one of the most widespread and least examined assumptions of modern culture. It sounds authoritative. It feels progressive. And it is entirely without foundation. Science is a method — a powerful and valuable method for investigating the natural world through observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and repetition. But science, by its very nature, is limited to the study of natural, material, repeatable phenomena. It cannot, in principle, address questions about the existence of a supernatural Being, the purpose of the universe, or the meaning of human life. These are philosophical and theological questions, not scientific ones. To say "science disproves God" is a category error — like saying "a metal detector disproves the existence of music." Indeed, modern science was born out of the Christian worldview. The scientific revolution was overwhelmingly the work of men who believed in a rational Creator who had made an orderly universe governed by consistent laws — laws that could be discovered by rational minds because those minds were created in the image of a rational God. Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Maxwell, Pasteur, Kelvin — the giants of modern science were, with very few exceptions, men of deep Christian conviction. They did not see science and faith as enemies; they saw science as the study of God's creation. A crucial distinction must be made between operational science and origin science. Operational science studies how the natural world works in the present — it is repeatable, testable, and observable. Origin science attempts to reconstruct what happened in the unrepeatable past — the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of species. These are fundamentally different enterprises. We can observe how a cell works today; we cannot observe how the first cell came into being. Claims about origins necessarily involve philosophical assumptions that go beyond the evidence. When the evidence is examined honestly, science does not point away from God — it points toward Him. The fine-tuning of the universe, the information content of DNA, the irreducible complexity of molecular machines, the sudden appearance of complex life forms in the Cambrian Explosion — all of these scientific discoveries are more naturally explained by intelligent design than by unguided natural processes. The more we learn about the natural world, the more clearly we see the fingerprints of the Creator. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead" (Romans 1:20). True science and true faith are not in conflict. They cannot be — for the God of the Bible is also the God of creation, and all truth is His truth.

The claim that the Bible contains contradictions is perhaps the most frequently asserted and least frequently examined objection to Scripture. When pressed for specific examples, most people who make this claim can cite few or none. When specific alleged contradictions are examined, they almost invariably fall into one of several categories, all of which have satisfying resolutions. Differences in perspective, not contradictions. The Gospels, for example, sometimes report the same event with different details — one Gospel mentions one angel at the tomb, another mentions two. But saying there was one angel does not deny there were two; it simply focuses on the one who spoke. Four eyewitnesses to a car accident will emphasize different details without contradicting each other. Perfect verbal agreement would actually suggest collusion, not independent testimony. Failure to read in context. Many alleged contradictions arise from reading a verse in isolation rather than in its literary, historical, and theological context. For example, James says "a man is justified by works, and not by faith only" (James 2:24), which seems to contradict Paul's statement that "a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (Romans 3:28). But Paul is speaking of justification before God — how a sinner is declared righteous — while James is speaking of the evidence of genuine faith in a person's life. Paul is saying faith saves; James is saying saving faith works. There is no contradiction — they are addressing different aspects of the same truth. Misunderstanding ancient literary conventions. Ancient writers used approximation, paraphrase, topical arrangement (rather than strict chronology), and other literary conventions that differ from modern Western expectations. These are not errors — they are legitimate features of the literary culture in which the Bible was written. Copyist variations. A small number of numerical discrepancies in the Old Testament (such as differing numbers in parallel accounts in Kings and Chronicles) likely arose from copying errors in the transmission of Hebrew numerals, which were easily confused. These affect no doctrine and are frankly acknowledged by conservative scholars. The Bible has withstood two thousand years of the most intense scrutiny any book has ever received. Alleged contradictions have been catalogued and answered repeatedly. Works such as John Haley's Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible (1874) and Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties address hundreds of such claims in detail. The honest inquirer who investigates these objections will find that the Bible's internal consistency is not a weakness but one of its most remarkable strengths.

This question is often raised as a moral objection: how can a just God condemn people who never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ? The question reveals a genuine pastoral concern, but it also rests on several misunderstandings that must be addressed. First, the Bible teaches that no one is condemned for rejecting a gospel they never heard. Men are condemned because they are sinners. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Every human being — whether in first-century Jerusalem or a remote village untouched by missionaries — is a sinner by nature and by choice, guilty before a holy God. The question is not "Why would God condemn those who never heard?" but "Why would a holy God save any sinner at all?" Salvation is an act of undeserved grace, not an obligation. Second, the Bible affirms that God has not left Himself without witness among any people. Romans 1:19-20 declares that the knowledge of God is evident to all men through creation: "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen." Every person who has ever lived has had access to the revelation of God in nature and in conscience (Romans 2:14-15). This general revelation is sufficient to leave men "without excuse" but also sufficient to prompt those with honest hearts to seek the God who made them. Third, the Bible teaches that God, in His sovereignty, has ordained the times and boundaries of every nation "that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him" (Acts 17:26-27). God is actively working in human history to bring the gospel to those who will receive it. The story of Cornelius in Acts 10 illustrates this: Cornelius, a Gentile who feared God and responded to the light he had, was providentially brought into contact with Peter, who preached the gospel to him. God knows the heart of every person and is able to bring His Word to anyone who genuinely seeks Him. Fourth, we must trust the character of God. Abraham asked, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). The answer is yes — always. God is perfectly just and perfectly merciful. He will not condemn anyone unjustly, nor will He acquit the guilty without atonement. The details of how God deals with every individual heart are, in many cases, beyond our knowledge — but they are not beyond His wisdom. The proper response to this question is not to lower our confidence in the gospel but to increase our urgency in proclaiming it. "How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:14). If the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, then the task of every believer is to ensure that as many as possible hear it.

The purpose of apologetics is not to win arguments but to win souls. Peter's instruction to give a reason for the hope that is in us comes with a qualifier: "with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15). The believer who answers objections with arrogance or contempt has already lost the encounter, regardless of how sound his reasoning may be. Truth must be spoken in love (Ephesians 4:15). It is also important to recognize that intellectual objections are often symptoms of deeper spiritual resistance. The problem is not always in the head; it is often in the heart. Jesus said, "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19). Some objections are genuine barriers to faith that can be removed with careful reasoning. Others are smoke screens thrown up by a will that does not want to submit to God. The apologist must be discerning, patient, and dependent on the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, no argument can save a soul. Salvation is the work of God. "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him" (John 6:44). But God uses means — including reasoned arguments, answered questions, and the faithful testimony of believers — to draw sinners to Himself. The apologist plants and waters; God gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6). The Christian faith is not fragile. It does not crumble under scrutiny. Every objection that has been raised against it for two thousand years has been answered — not always to the satisfaction of every skeptic, but with sufficient force to demonstrate that faith in Christ is intellectually credible, historically grounded, and existentially satisfying. The believer who studies apologetics does not do so out of insecurity but out of obedience — prepared to give an answer, ready to remove stumbling blocks, and eager to commend the gospel to every honest seeker who asks, "Why do you believe?"