Contradictions in Scripture

Tozer is more than willing to accept contradictions within Scripture. And, I must admit, that when Scripture deals with the spirit world, I am accepting of that. When humanity has an area in which they have very little information about, there are seeming contradictions that cause us to doubt the whole project—such as the controversy about the make up of matter and quantum theory. The contradictions are so stark, that they seem impossible, yet somehow, we know that matter exists and that certain evidence exists and so it must all work together somehow. That is how it is with the spirit world. We have enough evidence to say it exists, but what actually goes on there is difficult for us to judge. We just don’t know.

But other contradictions in Scripture are harder to determine. First of all, I accept that there are some contradictions in fact within Scripture. In fact, Jesus insists upon it. He points out a number of things that He disagrees with the Hebrew Scriptures, and He corrects them. Paul does the same thing, pointing out that Jesus’ death creates a new realm and the old path doesn’t apply anymore. Also, we have some seeming contradictions within books—for instance, I Cor 14 saying that women should be silent in the churches, but I Cor. 11 saying that women can prophecy in church if they have a head covering. Also Genesis 1 saying that plants were created before humanity and Genesis 2 saying that plants were created after humanity—a clear contradiction. Also we can find contradictions between different authors, such as the famous difficulty that Jesus says that judgment is based on what we do and Paul saying that our salvation is not based on works. Long theologies have been written to reconcile these positions. Another one along these lines is someone recently pointed out to me that government in Paul (Rom 13) is instituted by God, but in Revelation (13) it is instituted by Satan.

There are a few principles I use to work on this. First of all, I think that we can create a single, unifying philosophy/theology from the canon of Scripture. But, on the other hand, there are clear contradictions. How can we do this? First of all, we need to clearly determine what is a contradiction and what is not. For instance, although Jesus and Paul seem to have an opposite viewpoint of “good works”, if we understand that Paul is only speaking about good works outside of Jesus, then we have a clearer understanding. Paul, in fact, states the same as Jesus, that we will all be judged according to what we do (Romans 2:5-6), and that we need to live according to love (Romans 13). Also, Revelation does say that Satan creates empire (not all government), but this is done under God’s direction, until after Satan is thrown out of heaven after the death of Jesus, so this is not necessarily a contradiction as well.

Right now, there is a tendency in theology to focus on the differences in the theology of the writers. This is a good thing. But to take that as a principle—there are things that can’t be reconciled between writers—without a counter principle—we refuse to accept something as a controversy without examining it carefully—is foolish. You end up with a one-sided analysis of a person’s point of view. Because the fact is, we all make statements that seem contradictory on the surface until they are examined carefully. I believe that all war is wrong and I believe that government has the responsibility, under God, to do war. That statement is seemingly contradictory unless one cares to examine my theology and find out how it works together. People may not care about my theology as much as Paul’s, Jesus’ or Genesis’, and so they may not examine my statement, but we should give that extra care for Scripture’s to find out what they are saying, without assuming contradiction.

But sometimes the contradiction stands past examination, like Genesis 1 and 2. If that is the case, then we must accept the contradiction. And that contradiction probably means—like when they both exist in the same book—that the issue just isn’t significant to the author. The timing of creation clearly isn’t interesting to the editor of the two accounts in Genesis. But this allows us to focus on what is important to the editor—the fact that God is the creator and that He has a special plan for creation and for humanity. Contradictions sometimes can help us to set aside the unimportant details to focus on other more important facts.

But sometimes contradictions are there to point out important issues about theology, such as the differences between the Hebrew scriptures and the NT. It is clear in the NT that God has not changed between the testaments, but, with Jesus, God’s plan is clearly different. God hasn’t changed, but the agent of God has changed. Instead of being led by Moses, the people of God are now led by Jesus and this means a difference in law, a difference in theological focus, a difference in people and so many other things. This is less contradiction as it is progression. But with this, we cannot just use the Hebrew Scriptures to justify any kind of theology or ethic we find pleasing to us. Rather, we must center all of our Biblical understanding on Jesus. Jesus doesn’t reconcile all the contradictions—heck, He actually causes some of them. But Jesus gives us a focus to help us see what is significant and what is dross. What we should keep in our philosophy of life and what we shouldn’t. We have Jesus as a focus only because we are followers of Jesus, believers in Jesus. If we weren’t then we can make any old philosophy we wanted from the Scriptures—make a truly good mess of them. But if we are followers of Jesus, then we can disagree with some other parts of Scripture, hold it as the word of a different agent of God, but keep Jesus’ word as single and true.