How can you debate about whether there are contradictions in the Bible if you don’t agree on what contradictions are?  In this Anniversary POst #8, taken from April 2019, I deal with this issue.  At the time we were doing a blog fundraiser involving a debate between me and an Oxford-trained theologian named Matthew Firth, who insisted the Gospels have no contradictions of any kind.  I, well, disagreed with this view.  What ensued was a multi-post back and forth that you can still see (either go posts from o April 2019 or do a word search for Firth).

Here is my preliminary post about the issue of “contradictions,” exploring what the term means and does not mean, in my view.

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As many of you know, Rev. Matthew Firth, an Anglican rector trained in theology at Oxford, will soon be participating on the blog in a fund-raising event, for which many of you, bless your souls, have already donated.  This will entail a debate with me over whether there are contradictions in the Gospels.

The debate will start soon, but I thought I should lay a little bit of groundwork.  I hadn’t planned on doing this originally, and haven’t told Rev. Firth that I’m going to do it now – but I’ll show this post to him and allow him to respond if he feels inclined, prior to my opening gambit when I mention several points in the Gospels that appear to me to be contradictory to one another.

I do not plan or intend anything in this post to be controversial, but in case Rev. Firth does want to respond, he’s certainly welcome to do so.  Otherwise, we can just get on with the debate.   But I did want to say a few words about why we are limiting ourselves to the Gospels and what I consider a contradiction to be.  Again, this seems fairly straightforward to me, but maybe I’m wrong about that!

I’ve been asked several times why we’re limiting ourselves to the Gospels.  That was Rev. Firth’s idea and I’m completely happy with it.  There are indeed other possible passages we could look at – for example, possible contradictions between the Gospels and the book of Acts (e.g., connected with the death of Judas) or between Acts and the letters of Paul (did Paul go to Jerusalem to meet the disciples of Jesus immediately after leaving Damascus or not), etc. etc.   I would argue that when looked at in detail, these various accounts do have contradictions; Rev. Firth almost certainly (I’m surmising) would argue they do not.  But we’re not going there.  And why?

For me, it’s simply a question of focus.  We could spend months arguing about all the passages of the Bible that appear contradictory.  But his contention is that there are not *any* contradictions in the Gospels, and so I don’t need to point to contradictions anywhere else.  It’s a very good idea to limit what we consider, not from twenty-seven books but just from four.  Plus, at the end of the day, most people interested in the issue of contradictions are indeed interested in the Gospels, since if they are contradictory in what they say about the life of Jesus – then how can we know what he really said and did?  Obviously that’s a hugely important issue, not just for Christians but for anyone interested in the human past, at least in our part of the world.

But what counts as a contradiction?   I hope Rev. Firth and I don’t disagree on that, though if we do the debate will take on a different tenor.

I have a pretty commonsensical and direct understanding of a contradiction, that it entails two statements that cannot, at the same time, both be literally true.  But I need to stress that some people have a very broad understanding of “contradiction,” others a more narrow, specific understanding.

Suppose your next door neighbor tells you:  “This past Wednesday I saw a red Toyota run into that telephone pole.”   Later you hear her tell someone else:  “This past Thursday I saw a red Toyota run into that telephone pole.”  And then you later hear her tell someone else: “This past Friday I saw a red Toyota run into that telephone pole.”  Are these contradictory statements?

Most people would say yes.  It was one day or the other.  Others would say, “Well, strictly speaking, it’s not contradictory, because she could have seen the same thing happen on three days in a row.”

At this point “contradiction” becomes not a matter of pure semantic logic, but of sensibility.   How likely is it she’s talking about three different incidents, all of them exactly the same, happening on subsequent days?  The chances in this particular case are maybe something like one in a billion.  But HEY, it’s possible.   Like in the movie Dumb and Dumber: “So what you’re saying to me is that there is a *chance*!”

(The statements *would* be contradictory if the neighbor had said “This past Wednesday / Thursday / Friday I saw a red Toyota run into that telephone pole, killing Nancy Drew.”  Since Nancy Drew died only once, that could not happen on three separate days.  Unless you argue that she had two Near Death Experiences, coming back from the dead on Wednesday and then again on Thursday Friday.  Groundhog Day!  See!  You can avoid nearly any contradiction if you really want to!)

My point: there may be contradictions like that in the Gospels with one person saying, “No, it’s not actually a contradiction,” and others saying, “Of course it is.”  Neither will convince the other.  That means there’s not a whole lot to argue about, other than who is being sensible and who isn’t.   Lots of arguments about possible contradictions end of being this sort of thing.

Other parts of the Bible do not actually entail contradictions because they are not statements that stand at odds with one another.  Here I’ll just take some examples from the Gospels.   Matthew and Luke clearly state that Jesus was born of a virgin.  Mark doesn’t say so; John doesn’t say so.  Many people claim this is a contradiction.  But it’s not.  Neither Mark nor John actually says that Jesus was NOT born of a virgin, so they don’t contradict Matthew and Luke.  Someone might argue that Mark and John presuppose that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but a contradiction doesn’t have to do with (hard to discern) presuppositions but (outright) statements, both of which cannot be literally true.

So too, e.g., with the startling saying of Jesus in John’s Gospel, where he appears to be claiming, during his public ministry, to be (in some sense) equal with God, leading his Jewish opponents to attempt to stone him.  You don’t find these public claims in the other three Gospels.  Is it a contradiction?

Some will say yes.  He either said it (in public) or not.  Others will say no, arguing that the other three Gospel writers simply decided not to record these sayings found in John.  The question would then arise, “If Jesus called himself God in public, is it conceivable that three authors decided not to mention that little fact?”   This will be a persuasive argument to some people, that in fact the idea that Jesus claimed (in some sense) to be God during his public ministry is a “later” tradition, not an “original” one (that happened in his actual life).  Others won’t be persuaded.  But from a purely logical point of view, it’s not actually a contradiction.  It *would* be a contradiction if the author of Luke said something like “Never in Jesus’ public ministry did he claim that he was in some sense divine so that Jews took up stones to stone him.”

So I completely understand that different people will have different standards of what a contradiction entails and different criteria of evaluation.  You will need to decide what your own standards and criteria are.

Almost everyone who thinks the Bible has no errors also thinks the Bible is inspired by God.  But a lot of people who think the Bible is inspired also think it has errors in it; and there is not a *necessary* connection between a “book with no errors” and “divine inspiration.”  Lots and lots of other (non-inspired!) books are written without error or contradiction.  And so our question will NOT be about whether the Bible is inspired, but about whether it (or the Gospel part of it) has contradictions — statements that are at odds with one another, on any sensible reading of them.  The debate may end up being over what is sensible.