Bible Contradiction? Should you answer a fool according to his folly?

Note: The reason why I’m refuting this particular contradiction today is because a few days ago some troll said I was “lying” for not having an answer to this alleged Bible contradiction because I didn’t get back to him right away (and his second comment made me not wiling to respond).  I personally think this is not the unanswerable alleged contradiction as the troll think it is!  It is actually an incredibly low-grade example for an online troll to pick as a challenge for Christians to answer.

For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: Should you answer a fool according to his folly?

Here are the answers which the skeptic believes indicate a Bible contradiction:

Yes.

“5 Answer a fool as his foolishness deserves, So that he will not be wise in his own eyes.” (Proverbs 26:5)

No.

“Do not answer a fool according to his foolishness, Or you will also be like him.” (Proverbs 26:4)

(All Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible)

Here’s a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:

1. When dealing with skeptics’ claim of Bible contradictions it seems one can never be reminded enough of what exactly is a contradiction.  A contradiction occurs when two or more claims conflict with one another so that they cannot simultaneously be true in the same sense and at the same time.  To put it another way, a Bible contradiction exists when there are claims within the Bible that are mutually exclusive in the same sense and at the same time.
2. One should be skeptical of whether this is a Bible contradiction given the Skeptic Annotated Bible’s track record of inaccurately handling the Bible.  See the many examples of their error which we have responded to in this post: Collection of Posts Responding to Bible Contradictions.  Of course that does not take away the need to respond to this claim of a contradiction, which is what the remainder of this post will do.  But this observation should caution us to slow down and look more closely at the passages cited by the Skeptic Annotated Bible to see if they interpreted the passages properly to support their conclusion that it is a Bible contradiction.
3. The skeptic tries to pit Proverbs 26:5 as affirming the claim “You should answer a fool according to his folly” against Proverbs 26:4 as affirming “You should not answer a fool according to his folly.”
4. The proximity of these two verses next to each other lead me to think its unlikely two contradictory statements after all it would be too obvious.  Something deeper is going on.
5. I don’t think Proverbs 26:5 conflict with Proverbs 26:4.  The key I think is the Hebrew conjunction פֵן.  It is translated as “lest.”  I would translate that as “otherwise.”  For an example see Genesis 11:4 this word is translated as “otherwise:” “And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of all the earth.””  The conjunction is thus functioning to indicate the reason why and why not one should do something.  So when Proverbs 26:4 and Proverbs 26:5 tells us why we should and should not answer a fool the two verses don’t have to be mutually exclusive; there can be a right and wrong reason for why we answer a fool, just as there are right and wrong reason to get married but discussing those reason don’t mean its a contradiction; nor should it be implied that one shouldn’t get married!
6.  A further reason why we don’t see there’s a contradiction here is that the causal clause has two different referents.  For Proverbs 26:4 after the Hebrew conjunction פֵן the clause then focus on the second person masculine singular which the author is addressing while in Proverbs 26:5 after the Hebrew conjunction פֵן the clause then focus on the third person masculine singular in reference to the fool.  The different referent should alert us that there’s not a contradiction.
   1. To logically contradict with Proverbs 26:5’s assertion that the reason to answer the fool is so “he will not be wise in his own eyes” the claim in Proverbs 26:4 would have to be “don’t answer the fool even if he is wise in his own eyes” or “never answer the fool in any circumstances.”  But Proverbs 26:4 doesn’t say that.  It doesn’t even focus on the fool but instead it switches away from the third person singular pronoun to the second person singular pronoun referring to the person reading Proverbs 26.
   2. To logically contradict with Proverbs 26:4’s assertion that the reason not to answer the fool is so “you will also be like him” the claim in Proverbs 26:5 would have to be “answer the fool even if you will also be like him” or “always answer the fool no matter the circumstances.”  But Proverbs 26:5 doesn’t say that.  It doesn’t even focus on the reader but instead it switches away to the third person singular pronoun referring to fool.
7. One way one can see Proverbs 26:4-5 can both be true can be seen in Presuppositional Apologetics methodology.  The Christian apologist defending the faith must not be similar to unbelievers in their unbelieving presuppositions (starting point), and so in obeying Proverbs 26:4 the apologist doesn’t have the same presuppositions as the unbeliever.  Yet that doesn’t mean the apologist stop here.  He must also respond to the unbeliever lest the unbeliever think he’s wise in his own eyes in light of his own presuppositions and so in obeying Proverbs 26:5 the apologist answer the unbeliever using their own presuppositions and worldview and offer an internal critique to show how it is foolish, lest the unbeliever thinks he’s wise in rejecting Christianity.
8. Alan Kearns in summarizing this said “It appears to me that these verses are opposite sides of the same coin, meaning that there is no Contradiction. A believer or unbeliever with an understanding of English grammar can see this clearly! It is about when/how to answer a fool or not to answer at all.”
9. There is no contradiction here.  Seems the skeptic needs to learn of How to Handle Bible Contradictions.
10. We shouldn’t miss that worldviews are at play even with the skeptic’s objection to Christianity.  The worldview of the author of the Skeptic Annotated Bible actually doesn’t even allow for such a thing as the law of non-contradiction to be meaningful and intelligible.  In other words for him to try to disprove the Bible by pointing out that there’s a Bible contradiction doesn’t even make sense within his own worldview.  Check out our post “Skeptic Annotated Bible Author’s Self-Defeating Worldview.”