A lovely two verses, if I do say so myself.  These are often brought up because the writer seems to have a brain fart – in the first verse, he claims one thing but in the very next verse seems to say the exact opposite.  Read on:

Proverbs 26:4-5~ Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.  Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.

An early observation is that the author may be talking about different events.  For example, do not answer the fool this way under ____ circumstance, but rather answer the fool according to his folly under _____ circumstance.  Another conclusion would be to not answer according to his folly (v4), but to [eloquently] expose his folly (v5).

Indeed, I like the latter much better than the former.  Do not answer the fool under his terms of folly, but answer the fool in response to his folly.

Let’s consider verse 4.  We should not answer the fool according to his own folly.

The fool’s folly in argument may be that the he is improperly arguing with tools such as appeals to emotion, ad hominem, etc.  Do not, in turn, resort to these same tactics against him, or you will also be a fool.

Similarly, check for the straw man.  When arguing with a fool, do not answer according to an ignorant set of rules.  For the apologist, this is seen every day.  On debate boards, you will find many agnostics that will claim that they cannot disprove the notion of a god, but they can disprove the God of the Bible by simple logic.

The problem with the above is where it starts:  Humans.  It starts with human definitions of love, mercy, justice, grace, salvation, etc., and human extremes that cannot overlap, ie:  Justice and Mercy.  The young apologist is likely to engage in debate completely neglecting the idea of the divine and ignoring the use of the Bible, thinking that the fight must be fought on the other’s turf, using the other’s rules.  In effect, he is not necessarily defending the straw man his opponent has crafted, but is rather trying to prove the straw man’s existence.  And in the process, he forgets that the straw man’s sole purpose in creation was to be beaten.

Now let’s consider verse 5.  Answer the fool.

Jesus was famous for this.  Several times, the teachers of the law tried to trap Him with questions, and Jesus exposes their motives.

In Luke 20:1-8, Jesus’ authority is questioned.  In effect, the chief priests wanted Jesus to say that He was controlling God’s authority or that He was God.  The obvious response to this, because the people had little idea of Jesus’ divinity and were weary of the Roman rule and religion, would be a sure sway of public opinion against Jesus.  The mob would have taken Him earlier than they were supposed to.  The other answer would be that Jesus did these things by His own authority, which would have discredited Him.

The folly of the questioners was that they did not know who Jesus was.  Jesus turns the question against them, by asking if John’s baptism was from heaven or of men.  This trapped the questioners, because they would look bad if they answered either way, and the people would turn against them.  They knew that Jesus knew the motive behind the question.

Jesus does not answer his questioners on their terms.

So, too, do I hope in this small series of blog posts to not be caught by the fool.

…

As an epilogue…

I got into a small argument today with another man (agnostic) who was claiming that the Gospels were fiction and that Jesus was actually a figurehead of the Essenian movement who died 90 years before we think He was born.  Firstly, he had thrown out all Christian writings on the subject because of bias, including the New Testament and the early church letters and accounts (like Origen, Martyr, Irenaeus, etc.).  He then threw out the works of Josephus (secular) because of Christian interference and manipulation.  He then admitted into evidence small sections of the Talmud (Jewish records) referring to a man fitting the above description, born to a Miriam, healing people, heretically reforming Judaism, hung on the day before passover.  The name was Yeshu ban Pandera (phonetic variations are many), but is included only in the margins.

The date of the oldest known source of this document is in the late 300s and 400s.  And that’s being scholarly generous.

Now.  To be consistent with the verses from Proverbs, you do not answer him according to his straw man.  Do not give in to any of his assumptions.  Stay Biblically consistent, and show that the Bible remains unanimously clear about the subject, and include the early church fathers.  Do not even give in where you claim Jesus was God, but maybe born 120 years earlier than we thought.  Do not argue in his territory.

And answer him according to his folly.  Firstly, expose the historical sources.  If Christian writings are thrown out due to age and bias, then so should the Talmud he is using.  Secondly, expose the argument for what it is – it is an attempt by him to get his foot in the door.  He is trying to establish a foothold of doubt upon which to build his argument.

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