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Contradictions Debunked Immoral Evidence Silly Debate

Contradictions Debunked Immoral Evidence Silly Debate

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Apolog

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Is anyone good? · Apolog

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ContradictionsReading order 129Bible context 2 min read

Is anyone good?

Mark reserves goodness to God, while other passages explicitly call human beings good or divide people into good and bad.

Textual conflict: Interpretive tension; The passages pull in different directions, but the conflict depends on how their wording, scope, or narrative context is read.
Importance: Foundational; A central claim about origins, salvation, divine justice, or religious authority.

Reserving goodness to God contrasts with calling Joseph good, but absolute divine goodness and ordinary comparative moral praise need not use the same standard.

An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.

PreviousIs Jesus peaceful? NextWhat will happen to Jews when they die?

God alone is good and human righteousness is impure

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Isaiah 64:6

Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)

Read the full chapter:Isaiah 64

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

Mark 10:18

Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)

Read the full chapter:Mark 10

Other passages describe people as good

PreviousIs Jesus peaceful? NextWhat will happen to Jews when they die?

And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he was a good man, and a just:

Luke 23:50

Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)

Read the full chapter:Luke 23

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Matthew 5:45

Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)

Read the full chapter:Matthew 5

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.

Matthew 13:47-48

Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)

Read the full chapter:Matthew 13

So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

Matthew 22:10

Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)

Read the full chapter:Matthew 22

Understanding the contradiction

Mark 10:18 has Jesus ask why he is called good and declare that nobody is good except God. That is an exclusive statement. Isaiah 64:6 uses collective language about impurity and compares the speakers' righteous deeds to filthy rags. Isaiah's confession is rhetorically broad, though its 'we' should not automatically be treated as a technical assertion about every person in every period.

Luke 23:50 supplies a concrete human counterexample to Mark's wording by calling Joseph a good and just man. Matthew 5:45 distinguishes evil people from good people as recipients of sun and rain. Matthew 22:10 likewise describes both bad and good wedding guests. Matthew 13:47-48 uses good and bad fish in an analogy, so that item is less direct evidence about human goodness. The strongest comparison is the absolute exclusion in Mark against Luke's affirmative description of Joseph. The texts do not state different standards of goodness in those sentences, even though their everyday moral classifications differ from Mark's unrestricted formula.

Topics

contradictionIsaiahMarkLukeMatthew

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