A Taste of Apologetics: Salt

        In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt.5:13), Jesus refers to the possibility that "salt loses its saltiness." How could this be? Table salt, as we know it, is just sodium chloride (NaCl), with a little bit of iodide added. The taste comes from the sodium chloride and if that were removed, there would be nothing left. 

        So in what sense can salt lose its "saltiness"? Once again, we turn to Unger's Bible Dictionary for some guidance. Unger refers to salt and "its power to strengthen food and preserve it from putrefaction and corruption." In a figurative sense, salt symbolizes hospitality; grace in the heart (Mark 9:50); and wisdom or good sense in speech (Col.4:6). Unger also refers to "the belief that salt would, by exposure to the air, lose its virtue." But this is our question—how could sodium chloride lose its savour and still be there? Logically and chemically, this couldn't happen. So what is the explanation?

        For an answer to this we turn to Hard Sayings of the Bible, edited by Kaiser, Davids, Bruce, and Brauch:— “But how can salt lose its saltiness? If it is truly salt, of course, it must remain salt and retain its saltiness. But probably in the ordinary experience of Galilean life, salt was rarely found in a pure state; in practice it was mixed with other substances, various forms of earth. So long as the proportion of salt in the mixture was sufficiently high, the mixture would serve the purpose of true salt. But if, through exposure to damp or some other reason, all the salt in the mixture was leached out, what was left was good for nothing. 

        The Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary has several good comments but we will end by quoting just two of them: 

· Jesus may be alluding to rock formations that contained deposits of sodium chloride. Meat and fish were packed in these rocks to preserve them. After a period of time the salt leached out of the rocks, so the rocks were not good for anything and so thrown out.

· Jesus may be citing a well-known proverbial saying...Jesus may be using this expression to describe an equally impossible characteristic of his disciples. As they go out into the world as salt, the proof of the reality of their profession is in the nature of their lives. True disciples cannot lose what makes them disciples because they have become changed persons, made new by the life of the kingdom of heaven. However, imposter disciples have only an external flavoring. They cannot be made salty again, because they never had that kingdom life in the first place.