“You can’t take the Bible seriously—it’s so full of contradictions!” Perhaps you have heard statements like this. Perhaps you’ve made them. Maybe you’re not sure how to respond. The apparent contradictions in the Bible appear to undermine the reliability of the Christian faith.
It’s an easy jibe. Yet often those who make it can’t actually identify any specific contradictions. They simply assume they are there. The fact is most contradictions in the Bible are more apparent than real. Many numbers are approximated or rounded. What people said is summarised. Quotes are cited freely, not precisely. Writers arrange material thematically rather than chronologically. Figures of speech are used. These are all literary devices used today in biographies without anyone claiming their authors are contradicting themselves.
Dig a bit deeper into the alleged contradictions and most of them disappear. Those that remain do so only because we lack the background information needed to explain them.
In his Gospel, for example, Matthew says Jesus met two blind men outside Jericho while Luke tells us that Jesus met one blind man. Did one of them get it wrong? No. No doubt Jesus met lots of people that day. Luke picks out one and tells us a little bit of his story. It wasn’t that Luke was misinformed, nor is he being misleading. He’s simply chosen to focus on one example of the impact Jesus made on individuals. Dig a bit deeper into the alleged contradictions and most of them disappear. Those that remain do so only because we lack the background information needed to explain them.
But there are more fundamental reasons to trust the Bible.
Let’s suppose there is a God—an eternal being who made all things. That would make him very powerful. Christians believe he’s all-powerful, but “very powerful” will do for now. Let’s suppose this God intends to communicate with humanity. If there’s a very powerful being—more powerful than anything else—then it’s reasonable to assume he will accomplish what he intends to accomplish. So, if he intends to reveal himself, that is what will happen.
And that is what Christians claim has happened. God has revealed himself in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible described Jesus as “the Word of God” or the message of God. Not only that, God has given us a written record of that revelation in the Bible so that we can be clear about, and certain of, his communication to us in Christ. It’s true that God chose to create the Bible through human authors, and those human authors have left the imprint of their distinctive personalities on the text. But God is good at his job. He communicated through human beings in such a way as to ensure his communication was accurate and reliable. God is able to achieve what he intends!
Communication is a relational act. It links two people in a relationship. And so we trust someone’s words to the extent that we trust them. I trust my wife’s words, not because I have scrutinised and investigated everything she says, but because I trust her. She has been faithful and loving towards me over more than 30 years, through good times and bad times.
It’s true that God chose to create the Bible through human authors, and those human authors have left the imprint of their distinctive personalities on the text.
The same is true of the Bible. I think it stands up to scrutiny. But that’s not actually why I trust it. I trust it because I’ve found it to be reliable and life-giving over more than 30 years, through good times and bad times. Ultimately, I trust it because I trust God.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” we sometimes say. That is certainly true of the Bible. Taste and see. Read the Bible for yourself. Perhaps you’ll find it as reliable and life-giving as I have done.
This brings us to what I think is the real issue: will we let God be God?
Are Christians biased, leading us to interpret the evidence in a way that supports our claim that the Bible is free from errors? Yes, we are. We have found the Bible to be reliable and life-giving. So when we meet a supposed contradiction, we are bound to think there must be a good explanation for it.
But we’re not the only ones who are biased! Those who interpret the evidence the other way round are equally biased. They don’t want to accept the Bible as God’s word because that would mean having to submit to it. They don’t want the Bible to challenge their behaviour. They don’t want to let God be God. They chose instead to be gods of their own lives. In Isaiah 66:1-2 God himself says:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest?
All these things my hand has made,
and so all these things came to be,
declares the Lord.
But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.”
Tim Chester is a senior faculty member of Crosslands Training and has written over 40 books. He has a PhD in theology and PgDip in history along with 25 years' experience of pastoral ministry. He is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in rural Derbyshire where he is part of a church plant.
