Expert: Mr. McClellan - 1/19/2006

Question
I know you've been studying the Bible for an awful long time so what's your take on the topic of "contradictions?"  How many contradictions are in the Bible and what types of contradictions are they?  You don't have to be exact or anything I just want to know the truth about the Bible.  I know that there are contradictions but not contradictions dealing with principles necessarily(to my knowledge).  I've seen contradictions dealing with numbers.  The reason I ask is because if scripture is infallible then the mistakes we see now should not be so great as to have been from the original autographs themselves but to have been made during transmission.  This actually bothers me because if there are many contradictions then that causes me to doubt God and his ability to inspire.

I think you were busy when I asked you this but it's a question about the resurrection accounts.  It was that question about the seeming discrepancy in Mary Magdalene's actions.  At first she sees an angel and runs away from the scene in fear and great joy.  Then she tells the disciples basically "I don't know where they put his body."  I am beginning to think more and more that Mary saw Jesus (according to John's account) apart from the other Mary and Salome.  So really that is the only thing I'm bothered about in the resurrection accounts harmony wise.  So my question is how can Mary M. be filled with great joy and then the next instant think Jesus wasn't risen and that those angels or someone else took his body?

Do you have any advice about presuppositions before entering God's word?  That is could you tell me the most important lessons you've learned from being a student of the Bible?  Thanks for your time!

-Andrew Schaeffer

Answer
Hellow Andrew,
1. I can't think of any contradictions that I have ever discovered that would have any bearing on the doctrines (teachings) in the Bible and believe me, I have looked.

I too only want to know the truth and I believe that I have finally discovered what it is. It was much easier than I ever imagined when I first began my quest for it. When I finally realized what it was and how to discover it, I recognized that it was a problem of not seeing the forest for the trees as the saying goes. The truth is really in plain sight but our prejudices have blined us to it. I have carefully examined it from every angle. I have carefully and thoughtfully read virtually all of the arguments both pro and con and I have examined every concept to see if any mistakes have been made in the reasoning used to reach the conclusions. Life is too short to spend it believing stuff that isn't true especially when it involves life and death matters. We simply cannot know the absolute truth about every little thing because there is simply too much to know. However, it only makes sense that in order for God to justly punish anyone, both his existence and his will for humans would have to be knowable and humans would have to be capable of doing what God requires. Right? Otherwise, God would be a cruel tyrant wouldn't he? Well, the Bible clearly claims that God is perfectly just meaning that he has to be completely fair with us. He cannot justly require of us things that he has not clearly revealed and that we cannot obey. The writers of the Bible recognized this fact and made it clear that the reason for the miracles that they said took place was specifically to prove exactly what I have just pointed out. If miracles actually happened as described, and for the reasons given, then the Bible is true. Keep in mind this fact; that if any of the miracles were such that they could have been faked, then they could not have been used as proof for God's existence or for the truthfullness of the messages of his prophets even if people thought that they were real. It is clear that this is true for two very good reasons. One, the Bible warns believers not to fall for false miracles and two, because it would mean that the prophets lied and were only deceiving people themselves. I will come back to this later.

2. There is nothing in the resurrection accounts that can be proven contradictory. There are simply too many possible sound explanations. Even you have thought of some possible ones. The only way a contradiction can be shown is if there simply is no other possible explanation. Just because you can't make the accounts line up perfectly is not proof of a contradiction. A contradiction would be for one writer to say, for example, that Jesus was resurrected and another writer to say that he had not been resurrected. Or, for one writer to say that the women had gone to the tomb and for another one to say that they had not gone to the tomb. However, this is not the case. True, no one seems to have come up with an absolutely provable answer to the differences in the resurrection accounts, but there is no proof at all that it is because they are contradictory. I hope I am making this clear. Your answer to the question of whether of not the Bible is fallible is not to be found in the resurrection accounts. You cannot prove, nor can anyone else, that there is a contradiction there simply because there is room for possible real explanations. Only if there were no possible real explanations, even if we can't say with certainty which explanation is correct, could you legitimately claim that a contradiction had occurred.

Now back to the first part as I promised. Let me ask you a question. Can you, or anyone, be justly punished for refusing to believe something that cannot be proved true, something that when all is said and done is only hearsay? Be careful and don't answer this too quickly. Take your time and think about it very carefully.
While you are thinking about it, I'll let you in on a little secret that shouldn't be a secret. The way the vast majority of people, even the supposed experts on the Bible, use the term "faith" is not at all the way the writers of the Bible used it when speaking of what is pleasing to God. Because of this fact, very few, if any, ever interpret the Bible the way the writers of the Bible clearly intended to be understood. "Faith" is not a synonym for prejudice, credulity, or your best guess. However, it is often used the same way that we use the word "hope" which is to desire something for which you may or may not have good reason to expect. In such instances, God does not punish a person for hoping for something that does not take place. The only time that God punishes people is when he has proven his existence and presented his will with absolute proof of its trustworthyness through the working of miracles, real miracles that no honest person can deny. This is why the kind of miracles described in the Bible could not be faked. Take a good look at any of them that you want. For example, lets consider the raising of Lazerus. The whole community knew that he had died, was embalmed, was buried and had been dead for days. Jesus even waited, it says, until he had been dead long enough that no one could claim that raising him was a trick, or magic. Then, just by calling out to Lazerus, Lazerus immediately comes out of his tomb evidently in great shape. There were no days of recovery, there was no recouperation time at all. He was immediately resurrected to good health. This is the way that all the miracles in the Bible are described. Nothing done today that is called a miracle even comes close to being like this. There simply is no possible rational explanation for how a person that has been dead and embalmed for several days in a hot dry region could be immediately brought back to life and good health simply by calling out his name, none at all. No scientific knowledge has yet been discovered to explain this kind of thing. The only possible explanation is that the same power that brought the cosmos into existence and created life in the first place did what only it could do and that no human power, or magic trick, could ever duplicate. It was because of such things that those people, the ones that witnessed these things, would have had no legetimate excuse for rejecting what Jesus said was true. Sure, many people did reject Jesus but it was in spite of the proof that he offered in the midst of the people for all to see. Perhaps you will notice that virtually all of the miracles Jesus was said to have done were such that they could be varified by many onlookers standing near at hand and to people that were known by many in the community to actually be in need of a cure. Jesus did not bring in strangers that he could use with fake maladies to fool the crowds. It was for this reason that Jesus condemned unbelievers for blasphemy and said that they could not be forgiven for having rejected him and his claims in the face of such obvious proof. Most certainly, they would have been justified for not believing had Jesus not offered solid proof that honest people could not deny. John specifically says that if Jesus had not worked miracles that those people could not have been guilty of sin. Think about this, this is very important. Unless real miracles took place specifically to prove that God was delivering a message that he expected people to clearly understand, there would have been no reason for anyone to be expected to believe the prophets, Jesus, or his apostles. No one, not one single person on earth, could be justly held accountable by God for disobedience. These miracles were done to make it possible for people to have perfectly sound reason for putting their faith in Jeus and so that God could justly punish unbelievers. You see, unless they and solid proof for believing, God could not justly punish them for unbelief. This was a main point being made in the account of Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal presented in 1Kings 18. Elijah was proving which God was the real one so that no one could justly stand in the way of the just execution of the prophets of the false god, Baal. Now, read the account of Naaman in 2Kings 5. Notice that Naaman only came to really believe in the God of Israel as the true God after he was cured of leprosy. Before that, he only had the hope given him by his little Jewish slave girl that Elijah might be able to do something for him. It is quite clear that Naaman was grasping at straws, so to speak. He had no actual proof that Elijah could help him.  But his hope for a cure drove him to take action and seek out the prophet he had been told about just in case what he had been told was true. Once he finally did what he had at first thought was pure foolishness, he truly had sound reason to put his faith in the God of Israel for only the creator of the universe could cure leprosy so quickly, so completely, and so easily. You see, Naaman thought that it was the water that was supposed to heal him and it was that idea that he thought was rediculous. He did not realize that bathing in the Jordan was just God's way of helping Naaman to learn that if God was going to be able to help him, he was going to have to do what God said to do no matter how rediculous it seemed to Naaman. Naaman had to learn that he had no right to try to tell God how to do his business. If Naaman knew so much, why didn't he just heal himself? He certainly seemed to think that he knew the kind of thing that God should require of him in order to have his leprosy cured. People who refuse to be baptized today for the reason given in the scriptures are just like Naaman. They go to the Bible with a preconceived idea of what they think God should require of them in order to be forgiven and this makes them misinterpret what the Bible says so that they actually wind up disobeying God and putting themselves in his place so that Jesus is not really Lord at all, they are. Could God have cured Naaman without having him bathe seven times in the Jordan? Most certainly he could have but Naaman needed to learn to listen to God and do what he said no matter how rediculous it sounded to Naaman. After all, why seek out the prophet if he was not going to take his advice? This is where presuppositions get us into trouble. We tend to go to the Bible with our own ideas of what it should say just like Naaman went to Elijah with preconceived ideas of what God ought to require of him. Naaman did not realize, until it was pointed out by Elijah's servant, that he was trying to tell God how to do his business. We do that when we read our ideas into the text, looking for passages that seem to support our ideas, that are actully false, that we have deceived ourselves into believing are true. In doing that, we rip statements right out of context and misinterpret words in order to make the scriptures mean what we have already decided that they should mean. Then, when they don't make sense we think that they are wrong or contradictory and simply fail to seriously consider the very real possibility that we have misinterpreted them. I found this to be a main problem with the supposed great thinkers, philosophers, that give reasons for not believing in God. They all base their rejection of God on their ideas of God obtained from false and misleading interpretations of the Bible to begin with. They don't reject the true God, they reject the false gods that they have mistaken for the true one just as nearly everyone does. Their arguments are completely invalid because their assumptions about God are invalid. This they never seem to seriously consider. They just assume that because their ideas about God don't make sense that God does not exist. They are, as the saying goes, fighting a straw man.
Now, let me ask you this. Can you justly be held accountable for refusing to believe something that is very reasonable? Let me put it another way. Would it be reasonable for a policeman to fine you for doing a hundred miles an hour on a residential street even if the speed limit is not marked? Certainly it would. No one should have to see a speed limit sign to reasonably believe that he should not be going so fast in a residential area. The same is true concerning God. The cosmos came from somewhere and by some power greater than humans. That is obvious and that power can correctly be defined as God, the first cause. Now, would you be delighted to learn that someone was out to murder you? Of course you wouldn't and neither would any rational person no matter where on earth they lived. This proves that there are certain values that are universal and absolute contrary to what many people are saying these days. It proves that, just as the apostle Paul said in Romans 1, that we all know right from wrong because we were created to be able to inherently recognize it. None of us enjoy being lied about, stolen from, or having our loved ones be unfaithful to us. This is how we know that these things are wrong. It is how we know that Jesus was telling the truth when he told a certain man that the way to live the life God intended for us to live was to respect God without reserve and that if we did, we would treat others the way we would want them to treat us. This truth is to be the guide in how we think and behave about everything every day all day. This is the true meaning of the concept of worship. It is to give yourself totally to thinking and behaving with this motive. Is it reasonable to believe that Jesus was who he claimed to be? There are no credible witnesses to say that he wasn't. Is it reasonable to believe that the power that created the cosmos brought Jesus back to life? Surely it is. It caused life to begin with and no one yet knows how it took place. There is no proof that it took millions of years. It is reasonable that one minute there was no life and the next minute there was and no one has proved that it wasn't just as the Bible describes. Even the theory of evolution holds that life suddenly appeared. It is not something that could have happened gradually. You see, the theory of evolution still requires that you just assume some things to be true that have not been proved and yet, evolutionists hypocritically criticize others for believing things that they cannot "prove" absolutely true. They still insist that they be the only ones to be considered to have the truth. How absurd, how much more hypocritical, self-righteous, egotistical, and tyrannical can people be?
Well, enough of my rambling. I've said more than I intended.
Hope it helps.
Sincerely,
Mr. McClellan