Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties

by Trent Horn

Have you ever read something in the Bible and just scratched your head, or been challenged by a skeptic to explain a seemingly scandalous verse?

Trent Horn can help.

In Hard Sayings, Trent looks at dozens of the most confounding passages in Scripture and offers clear, reasonable, and Catholic keys to unlocking their true meaning.

Genres: Catholic, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Faith, Spirituality, Theology

435 pages, Hardcover

First published July 6, 2016

About the author

After his conversion to the Catholic faith, Trent Horn pursued an undergraduate degree in history from Arizona State University. He then earned a graduate degree in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy from Holy Apostles College.

Trent is a regular guest on the radio program Catholic Answers Live, a lecturer who speaks across the country on issues related to the Catholic faith, and the author of two books, Answering Atheism and Persuasive Pro-life.

Reviews

[Amora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever been presented with a Bible verse that is puzzling or even difficult to swallow and you don’t know what to make of it? If so, this book is for you. Catholic apologist Trent Horn offers concise rebuttals to common arguments used against the Bible using extensive research and context. The difficult topics covered range from the Mosaic Laws in Leviticus to the attack on the Canaanites. I do hope Trent Horn’s books attract more popularity!

[Jeff Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever Trent Horn of Catholic Answers releases a new book I am always eager to read it. This time around he writes about Bible difficulties taking a systematic approach to approaching these difficulties and hard sayings.

Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties

I have read some books in this area, but as Trent Horn notes there is generally little by Catholic on the subject in recent times. I read and enjoyed Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars from the late Fr. Most. Still this is an area that continuously needs to be addressed especially as the new atheism takes a fundamentalist jab at scriptural passages.

What I most like about this book is that it builds up a series of rules to use in interpretation and then recaps these 16 rules at the end. This book does not start out at the gate at looking at “campaigns of genocide”, but starts out looking a the Catholic view of scriptural interpretation. This is a necessary start which flows to the rest of the book. Understanding the canon of scripture and how it developed along with the various genres scripture uses.

This book does not attempt to go through every supposed difficulties but develops the rules using many well-known difficulties and the paths to resolve them. As is often the case there often multiple paths in understanding scripture and ways to resolve what at first seem to be stumbling blocks. Using these rules you are provide a template in resolving apparent contradictions. This does not mean that you might personally come up with a solution to such passages that you will perfectly satisfying. But it does help to see more in such paths to understanding.

So I found this book excellent by providing a rule based methodology to understanding Scripture from a Catholic perspective which can aid you into going deeper and building on this with the traditional understanding of the four senses of scripture.

[Julie Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trent Horn addresses questions like the Bible being full of "bad" history, women being portrayed as less valuable than men, or that God is a murderous tyrant. Each chapter breaks down the reason for the questions and shows the Catholic explanations that help shed light on these objections. This book would especially be good for someone who was teaching RCIA or who continually is having the Bible held up as a mass of contradictions.

Horn breaks down the confusing passages into three groups:
- External Difficulties - when the Bible seems at odds with modern knowledge
- Internal Difficulties - when there are contradictions between passages or
- Moral Difficulties - where evil actions seem endorsed by God's commands

As he works through the sections and objections, Horn is also methodically educating the reader about the Bible as literature. This culminates in his Bible-reading rules. These include things like reading passages in context of the larger work, checking your translation against the original language, and that the authors weren't divine stenographers.

I knew many of those concepts, but a few were new when thinking about discussing the Bible. For example, the Bible is allowed to be a sole witness to history, incomplete is not inaccurate, and the burden of proof is on the critic, not the believer.

Hard Answers is an accessible, balanced work that I'll be keeping as a reference. Definitely recommended.

[Gary · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is mistitled. Instead of Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties, it should be titled The Passage Makes Sense if We Assume… : A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties. That phrase — “The passage makes sense if we assume…” — is a quote from the book, and it’s indicative of the whole argument. Time after time, Horn suggests a way of interpreting a troubling passage in the Bible, often without providing any textual justification or extra-textual evidence for that interpretation, then works as if that interpretation is established, accepted, and plainly obvious.

Indeed, he suggests that merely offering possible (not even too concerned with whether or not they are accurate) explanations is enough and that the burden of proof is on the skeptical assertion that two passages contradict:

[I]t is the critic’s burden to prove that there is a contradiction in the Bible because he is the one accusing the text of being contradictory. All the believer has to do is offer one or more reasonable explanations of how the passages could be reconciled, thereby showing that the critic’s evidence is not conclusive (152).

This is ridiculous: there is nothing to prove with the contradictions. They’re sitting on the page, as obvious as the sun in the sky. This passage says X; that passage says not X. There — it contradicts itself. It’s the believer’s burden to explain how it only appears to be a contradiction.

But Horn’s approach makes it possible for him to weave his conditional explanations of problems with the Bible and feel that they suffice. And does this book ever have a ton of conditionals! Within 4 pages, we read that “Mark may have referred to him…”, that the “name Jethro appears to be a title on par with ‘your excellency,'” that it “could be that the Midianites…”, that “[o]ne way to resolve this contradiction … is to propose,” that “both are probably referring…”, and that “It could be the case.”

Let’s make a list of those statements:

- may have
- appears to be
- could be
- One way
- to propose
- probably referring
- could be the case

This is an argument of possibilities, all of which are extra-Biblical and simply endeavor to save the Bible for people who want it saved. These explanations are just ways of explaining away obvious problems, and these types of “arguments” will only appeal to those who have already accepted the conclusion. In other words, another possible subtitle could be “Begging the Question.”

In the introduction to Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties, Trent Horn quotes Dan Barker’s succinct point about the Bible: “An omnipotent, omniscient deity should have made his all-important message unmistakably clear to everyone, everywhere, at all times.” By this, Barker of course means that a god who is all the things the Christian god is supposed to be would send a message that couldn’t be so easily misunderstood, so easily used to justify so many conflicting ideas, as the Bible is.

There would be no difficult scriptures. For example, from the Catholic point of view, references to the “brother of Jesus” are troubling because Mary was, according to the Catholic Church, always a virgin. There was no way then that Jesus had brothers. How do we explain this, then? Well, in Aramaic, there is no term for “cousin.” Everyone is a “brother.” So that’s what the passage means. The only problem is that, although Jesus and his disciples would have been speaking Aramaic, the Gospels were written in Greek, a language that does have a word for cousin. In that case, why didn’t the Christian god inspire the gospel writers to say “cousin” and avoid all this confusion?

Horn responds to Barker’s claim most curiously:

I agree with Barker that God should provide an opportunity for all people to be saved since 1 Timothy 2:4 says God wants all to be saved. But that is not the same thing as saying that the Bible should be easily understood by anyone who reads it. Perhaps God has given people a way to know him outside of the written word? For example, St. Paul taught that God could make his moral demands known on the hearts of those who never received written revelation (Rom. 2:14-16). The Church likewise teaches that salvation is possible for those who, through no fault of their own, don’t know Christ or his Church.

Yet Barker never said anything about salvation. It’s not that Barker’s argument is that this god is doing a bad job of getting his salvific message out, but that’s what Horn’s response suggests. “No, no!” says Horn, “it’s not that people might lose their salvation over a confusing book. God also, according to St. Paul, communicates directly with people’s hearts.” In Horn’s strawman argument, Barker accepts that there is a god who wants everyone to be saved but just feels that this deity could be doing a better job of communicating that plan. But Barker is arguing the opposite: the massive amount of confusion stemming from this book suggests that it has a most decidedly human origin with no divine influence whatsoever. He’s arguing from the book to the hypothetical god that would have created it and saying that there is a significant incongruity between that hypothetical god and the Christian god.

Not only that, but Horn is quoting the Bible (Rom. 2:14-16) to provide evidence of his rebuttal (that God provides other means of salvation rather than through the knowledge gleaned from his book) when in fact it’s the Bible’s validity itself that’s at stake.

The problem is that for Horn, it’s impossible to see how someone could not accept the Bible as divinely inspired. He’s working with that presupposition so firmly in his mind that he doesn’t even realize when it causes him to go question-begging as he does in this response.

Horn intends to clear up any issues one might have with the Bible, but he seems to misunderstand the basic argument skeptics make when pointing out the contradictions, the immorality, and the Bronze-Age silliness that's in the Bible. Horn appears to think that these difficult passages create theological difficulties, and that these theological difficulties undermine Christianity. That's not why skeptics so often point out the horrible passages of scripture. The argument is simple:

1. Christians believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God.
2. An inerrant word of a god would not look like a document with human origins.
3. The contradictions, cruelty, and evil of the Bible, all firmly rooted in the culture of the human authors' time, suggest that it has distinctly and obviously human origins.

Yet, throughout the book, Horn seems oblivious of the actual argument and instead creates strawmen to counter. He tries to show that the contradictions aren't contradictions, that the cruelty is not cruelty, that the evil is not evil. He does this by continually suggesting interpretations that explain how these passages reflect the culture and time of their human authors and that we are therefore being anachronistic in applying twenty-first-century morals on an ancient document. But that's exactly the point: if this were the product of an omnipotent god, the text would be universal, beyond all cultures, reflecting the perfect standard of its perfect author.

So how are we to view the divine authorship of the Bible while, as Horn constantly does, grounding the text firmly in the culture of its time? Simple: you pull a verbal trick:

Does the traditional interpretation of Dei Verbum mean that everything written in the Bible is without error? No, because Dei Verbum makes a crucial distinction between what is written and what is asserted in Scripture. As it says, "everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit." If I say, "It's raining cats and dogs outside" or "I have a million things to do today," the average listener will know that I am asserting a message that differs from what my words literally mean.

The problem with Horn's example here is that it consists of idioms, which are metaphorical. They are not meant to be taken literally. It's problematic because much of scripture, according to apologists, is to be taken literally. When taken literally, we come find the problems that the book is supposed to solve. Simply suggesting (and obliquely at that) that some parts are literal and some parts figurative, or as Horn words it, some parts "assert" something different than what they say, does not solve the problem because we have no metric for determining that.

"Oh, but we do!" would counter Catholic Horn. It's the church itself. When speaking of how we can be sure that the Bible is authoritative, he speaks of Karl Keating’s argument for scriptural inspiration, saying “when taken as just a reliable human document, the Bible shows that Christ not only rose from the dead, but that he established a Church built on the apostles.” These apostles “were then able to authoritatively declare the Bible to be the word of God.” So the Bible proves the church and the church proves the veracity of the Bible. That’s called circular reasoning, isn’t it? Horn doesn’t think so.

This is not a circular argument, in which an inspired Bible is used to prove the Church’s authority and the Church’s authority is used to prove that the Bible is inspired. Instead, as Keating says, it is a “spiral argument,” in which the Bible is assumed to be a merely human document that records the creation of a divinely instituted Church. This Church then had the authority to pronounce which human writings also had God as their author.

The level of cognitive dissonance in this statement is absolutely astounding. He can assert that calling it a “spiral argument” somehow removes the circularity of the argument, but in essence, he is still using the Bible to prove the Church to prove the Bible.

No Christian ever regards the Bible as “a merely human document.” People regard the Bible as authoritative because they see it as divinely authored. I get that this is a distinctly Catholic explanation of things, but no Catholic ever sees the Bible this way, either. It is, defacto, divinely inspired in their eyes. The so-called divine nature of the Catholic church is in no way illustrated in the pages of the Bible, and we still have the basic problem of Biblical error: how are we to know that that particular portion of the Bible detailing the founding of the church is accurate? In short, we don’t. We have to take that on faith. And who is the one explaining all of this? The Church. So the Church says the Bible is just a humanly written document that proves the Church is divinely inspired, which then proves the Bible is not just a humanly-written document.

This is the essential Catholic move, one not open to Protestants: the Catholic Church claims that it is the only interpretative authority and that what it says is the only legitimate interpretation. Horn argues this when he closes one chapter with a quote from Karl Keating:

The Bible appears to be full of contradictions only if you approach it in the wrong way. If you think it is supposed to be a listing of theological propositions, you won’t make heads or tails of it. If you think it is written in literary forms you’re familiar with, you’ll go astray in interpreting it. Your only safe bet is to read it with the mind of the Church, which affirms the Bible’s inerrancy. If you do that, you’ll see that it contains no fundamental contradictions because, being God’s word inspired, it’s wholly true and can’t be anything else.

There are so many issues with this that it's difficult to know where to begin.

First, critical readers should take umbrage with the assertion that there are only three options for approaching the Bible:

- reading it as “a listing of theological propositions”
- reading it assuming “it is written in literary forms you’re familiar with”
- “read[ing] it with the mind of the Church”

None of these approaches accurately describe how a skeptic reads it. Skeptics read it understanding believers' claim that it is the word of a god and then asking what kind of god appears in its pages. When we do, objective, critical readers find seemingly countless problems with the Bible. What Keating (and by quoting him, Horn) is suggesting is that we first assume that the Bible is the word of the Christian god, read and interpret the Bible as the Catholic church instructs, and that will clear up all our difficulties. I’ve never seen such an obvious, almost-celebrated example of begging the question in my life.

As for the actual attempts to clear up these "supposed contractions" (as Horn would call them), they rely heavily, as earlier mentioned, on possible explanations. It's rare that Horn says, "No, this interpretation is wrong" and then provides an alternative explanation with substantial textual evidence. Instead, the explanations tend to suggest that such-and-such might have been the case at the time of the text's writing, therefore this possibility should color our interpretation of the passage in this given way. That such-and-such was the case remains unproven; that such-and-such necessitates this given interpretation remains unsubstantiated. It's simply a list of possible ways to explain away the pesky issues of the Bible.

Some specific explanations, though, were simply jaw-dropping. For example, he tries to explain how Lot's suggestion in Genesis 19 that the mob should take Lot's "two daughters who have never slept with a man" so they can "do what [they] like with them" instead of harming Lot's angelic guests is not as horrifically barbaric as one might think. It's a tough question: How can Lot be considered righteous when he offered his daughters up to be raped?

Trent explained it, in part, thusly:

Lot’s righteousness is also seen in his hospitality toward strangers, which was a sacred duty in ancient Mesopotamia. In a time when you couldn’t go to a department store for clothes or check in at a motel when you needed shelter, the kindness of strangers could mean the difference between life and death. Lot understood that anyone who slept outside in Sodom was in grave danger of being attacked. Therefore, he offered the city’s visitor’s shelter and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

That, I admit, is at least somewhat reasonable. It seems to be the bare minimum as far as morality goes, but it’s at least a step in a good direction. But what about Lot’s offer to give the crowd his daughters to be raped? How can that be justified? Surely it can’t.But that doesn’t stop Horn from trying. The very next sentence:

Even Lot’s misguided decision to offer his daughters to the mob can be seen as an act of hospitality meant to protect the guests dwelling under his roof.

Go back and reread that sentence.

It’s unlikely you’ve ever read apologetics so preposterous. Lot offers his daughters up to be gang-raped, probably to death, and this is, according to Horn, merely a "misguided decision"? It's clear from that explanation that Horn's secondary tactic for dealing with Biblical difficulties is to suggest, directly and indirectly, that the barbaric passages of the Bible aren't quite so bad. He does this when dealing with slavery in the Bible, using the old canard that Christians love in suggesting that Biblical slavery is qualitatively different from the chattel slavery of the 19th century. It was debt slavery, and so it wasn't so bad -- in fact, it helped people! Such preposterous apologetics can only come from someone who is determined not just to defend the Bible in its entirety but also to suggest that even in its seemingly-barbaric passages it is in fact a highly moral book.

In the end, it's a question of audience. This book is not intended to convince skeptics that the Bible's contradictions, evil, and cruelty are not contradictions, evil, and cruelty. Skeptics will point out the same things I do. Horn wrote this book for Christians to do one thing: provide a "reasonable" explanation for the problematic passages of the Bible. It's intended to keep the sheep in the fold. It provides doubting Christians who want to put aside those doubts with possible explanations of challenging passages of scripture. In doing so, Horn is leaning heavily on his shared assumptions with his audience. He knows that they, at one point or another, at least gave lip service to the proposition that the Bible is inerrant. He’s just calling them back to that notion. He even once admitted that he’s not trying to answer these objections but simply to show that there are possible answers out there. Well, sure, there are possible answers out there, but they’re not terribly convincing — unless you’re a believer starting to feel pulled under by doubt, then they’re a lifeline.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

When it comes to Christianity, one of the most common complaints atheists, agnostics, and sometimes even Christians have is the Bible. People like to make claims that it contradicts itself, or that God is ruthless and bloodthirsty in the Old Testament. Trent Horn, in his latest book Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties, takes a look at some of the toughest passages in Scripture. He then presents the Catholic perspective on them to help with understanding and acceptance.

The book begins with an introductory chapter on the Catholic view of Scripture. Such topics covered in this chapter include inspiration, canon, interpretation, and inerrancy. The remainder of the book is composed of 23 chapters divided into the following three sections - External Difficulties, Internal Difficulties, and Moral Difficulties. Such chapter titles include "Darwin Refutes Genesis?", "1001 Bible Contradictions"?, and "Bizarre Laws and Cruel Punishments?". Each chapter begins with a claim that people make against Christianity. One such example says, "A modern person cannot trust what is written in a two-thousand-year old book whose authors were illiterate shepherds who thought the earth was flat." Trent Horn then refutes the claim with clear, well-thought out arguments that easily dissolve the erroneous claim. The book then closes with 60 pages of endnotes, in case you want to dive even deeper into the arguments.

On its surface, the book looks to be intimidating. After all, it is a 400+ page hardcover book. However, the old adage about judging a book by its cover rings true here. The claims that Trent Horn refutes in his book are not scholarly arguments the average person would be unfamiliar with, but instead everyday arguments that you probably here from co-workers, friends, and maybe even family. What I really like about this book, is that you don't have to read it in order. Instead, find some arguments that you are used to hearing and read those chapters first. Then, take the time to work your way through the rest of the book at a steady pace. This is the type of book that belongs in every Catholic's home and parish library, and I cannot recommend it enough.

[Jamie Banewicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty ok. Mostly good arguments, but some were "meh." Still a pretty good resource when questions arise.

[Sergio Velazquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trent tiene un gran libro. Resume muy bien como uno puede moverse a través de las páginas de la Biblia. Los problemas que se pueden encontrar ahí es porque estamos buscando algo que no es o porque creemos que es un libro científico o histórico (aunque no quiero decir que no tenga partes históricas). Lo mejor que uno puede hacer es confiar que es la Palabra de Dios y si algo que no podamos resolver, no decir que la Biblia está en error. Así como Dios se fue poco a poco revelando a su Pueblo, así puede que en el futuro estas dificultades que nos podamos encontrar, ya no lo sean porque se halló el sentido de las palabras.

[Ashlyn Gayk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good book. Very educational! Definitely a 4-4.5 stars.

[Marilynn Dillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trent Horn clarifies with an intelligent and common sense approach to explain biblical passages that appear to be in contradiction of one another. If you have ever been confused after studying the Bible this book will help you understand some of the scriptures that we find very confusing.

[John Marcogliese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent explanation of Catholic view of the bible

Many group Christians as all the same. The fundamentalistd are very different. This book explains the Bible from the Catholic view. With some protestants it is only faith . The Catholic Church picked the books of the Bible due to authentic witnesses and inspired prophets . The Bible was written by humans. It needs the church to interpret it. By using reason through archaeology, history etc the difficult passages make sense. Green houses are not green . They do something special. Context needs to be provided always . This book tackles all this. It needs a lot research and tradition . Often the attacks against the Bible are not new. Never disagree without understanding. Many attacks are senseless. Many are legitimate that need careful analysis to get the answers right .

[Aleksandar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit to my shame that without this book I would have never known about the existence of the Didache or The Shepherd of Hermas; that , alone is worth reading it. While I'm an Eastern Orthodox, and certainly not sufficiently well versed in theology to give any opinions on Doctrine, I found many interesting points to research after reading this book. Further research led me to find the Second Epistle of Clement, rediscovered in a Greek Orthodox Monastery in the 1850-ies, and now I am slowly discovering how many incredible documents have been preserved from the deep past, and how important it is to study history.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trent Horn always does a wonderful job in my opinion. I had to take these books in small segments because there was quite a bit of information packed in each chapter. I appreciated that the style did not change when approaching each difficulty and the summary at the end of the bible rules he covered throughout the book. You can tell he did a lot of research and a great job compiling it in a succinct fashion.

If you cannot tell, I am a Trent Horn fan.

[Treon · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are plenty of things that could not be addressed, because the Bible is chalk full of evil verses that support crimes against humanity. One of his arguments was that God created everything, therefore he can do what he will with his creation. I found that extremely off putting, a terrible argument.

[David Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catholic apologetics

I've read a few books by Trent Horn he usually has good points to be made. This is another book that makes sense but it also leaves you with more questions. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

[Pat aka Tygyr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great reference book. Ever been asked why the Bible says ......? You can look it up in this book. The answers are clear. A good book to keep next to your Bible when you are reading or studying it.

[ariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal, eye-opening book. I keep it well-bookmarked for quick reference.

[Charles Reimler · Rating 5 out of 5]

✅Able Digest Materials As A 🤔Lay Person; Author ✍️ Explanations Logical & Presentation Outstanding! ♦️

[Laura Fidler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent read and reference for anyone who’s ever been asked tough questions about the Bible.

[mary e wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and readable

Trent Horn is able to succinctly explain how we best can interpret hard sayings of the scriptures with copious footnotes and references.

[Argum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trent Horn sets out to address from a solid Catholic theological viewpoint some common issues people have with the Bible - God killed innocents, it contradicts itself, etc. Each chapter tackles another common hard saying. Throughout rules are developed and deployed to help guide the Catholic reader dispel these issues or answer questions when someone asks them. Very digestable and could easily read a chapter at a time. Engaging style and solid theology along with excellent endnotes.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is valuable and explains a lot of issues. However, it feels like it could be more concise.

[Leslie Moellering · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author does a good job of laying out the evidence for various interpretations and reasons for misunderstanding parts of the Bible.