Resolving Apparent Contradictions in Scripture
RESOLVING APPARENT CONTRADICTIONS IN SCRIPTURE
Virgil Warren, PhD
Resolving apparent contradictions in scripture calls for methods of interpretation. The approach assumes the inerrancy of scripture; brain teasers often become paradoxes in wording rather than contradictions in reality. The approach also assumes that scripture is divine in such a way that makes it harmonious throughout. The mechanisms available for harmonizing scriptures with each other and with experience amount to the same things as the mechanisms used for properly interpreting human language. The same things we do to clear up ambiguities we do to resolve difficulties. Apparent difficulties normally arise because either or both sides of the dilemma are unclear, but people do not realize that at the time they sense a problem with the text. The following list is a summary of mechanisms for resolving discrepancies.
1. Is there a textual problem in one of the verses? English Bibles often give marginal notations where significant textual issues occur.
2. Is there a translation problem in any of the references? Checking different translations can be helpful.
3. Is there a difference between the meanings of terms? Sometimes a shift has occurred in the English word at two points as evidenced by a difference in Greek or Hebrew words. Comparing translations may help identify this problem.
4. Is there a literal-figurative variable that is responsible for the tension between texts? The literal-figurative distinction relates to the genre issue, whether there may be exaggeration for emphasis, and the like.
5. Is there a technical-non-technical variable in the terms?
6. Could there be a restrictive-non-restrictive variable in the wording?
7. Do the contexts have a different frame of reference? Are they addressing the same topic in both places?
8. Are there different intended contrasts?
9. Is allegorizing the comparison what sets up a problem with other scriptures?
10. What possibility exists for confusing sequence of presentation and sequence in the referent—whether of chronological order, logical order (importance, conditions), etc.
11. Can an inappropriate model be the source of the difficulty?
12. Is there a difference in idiom between biblical languages and modern English, which then creates an unconscious misunderstanding of one of the passages? Words of particular importance here include all, is, can(not), necessary, forever, prophecy, fulfill, give, nature, judge. There could also be linguistic interchange of nature, state, and action terms.
13. If the issue is over something to be done, there may be an advice-commandment distinction at work.
14. What difference would a permissive-prescriptive and/or direct-indirect variable bring to the texts?
15. A general vs. absolute variable may be at work, with one statement being a generality and another that deals with an exception assumed in the generality statement. Implied cultural limitation applies to this point. Perhaps one context is addressing a specific unusual situation that is an exception to the rule, or generality, stated by the other. One may be a negligible matter of degree that the other overlooks.
16. Is relative negative possible in one of the references?
17. Is a different audience/circumstance envisioned? The point includes dispensational distinctions.
18. Sometimes it helps to compare translations, and commentaries and specialized treatments are useful in seeing through paradoxes.
On problem passages, we do well to work out more than one solution. (1) Sometimes the various solutions we can come up with are aspects of one larger answer. (2) Later we may discover that one solution does not work for reasons we did not realize at the time we made it. We still have the others to fall back on if we have seen more than one way of handling it. That increases our confidence in the text. Besides, (3) it gives us a sense of objectivity if more than one option is available in ambiguous cases.
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