Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Impact of Seeing the Forest for the Trees
2. How Enlightenment Thinkers Are Still Influencing The Way You Read The Bible
   1. “Contradictions” and The Two Ditches
   2. How “Contradictions” Can Produce Intimacy with God
3. All Scripture is God-Breathed
4. Progressive Revelation in Church History
5. Did the Lord “Strike Down” the Egyptian Firstborn, or Did Destroying Angels?
6. Ezekiel and Jeremiah Corrected Moses
7. God as a Perfect Father and Perfect Brother
8. God’s Desire for Intimacy over Obedience
9. Conclusion
10. Notes

Introduction: The Impact of Seeing the Forest for the Trees

In 1854, there was a cholera outbreak in London that killed 616 people, and the prevailing theory proposed by experts was that cholera was traveling as noxious air. But one physician, John Snow, wanted to get to the bottom of the issue. He mapped the cases of cholera and noticed a clustering of cholera cases around a specific water pump on Broad Street in Soho, London. Snow decided to look at overall trends of specific cases, and was able to uncover the truth behind these cholera outbreaks: contaminated water from human waste. He was able to convince authorities to shut down the water pump, and saved many lives, and his research pioneered new ground in public health.

In 2008, the housing crisis in the US triggered the “Great Recession” and slowed down half of the world’s economies. In the US, it is estimated that 30 million people lost their jobs and household net worth dropped by 10 trillion dollars.¹ But there was one savvy investor who was able to see the forest for the trees. While everyone in the housing industry was focusing on individual house sales, Michael Burry, a hedge fund manager, analyzed housing market data and identified a growing trend: people defaulting on housing debt. He was able to predict the massive crisis, and “shorted” the housing market and made 100 million bucks!

Like the man who discovered the treasure in a hidden field (Matt. 13:44-46), we can find treasures in Scripture. Most study of Scripture involves hearing various passages and understanding their meaning. This is certainly an indispensable part of Bible study. But like the housing industry focused only on the sales of the house, we often don’t take a step back and make broader connections and identify trends in Scripture.

This study aims to understand apparent theological “contradictions”, that is, understand various passages that seem to contradict themselves theologically. We are going to look at a lot of examples that you may have seen, and many examples you probably have not seen. And the benefits of this study should yield the following results:

1. It will reveal God’s nature and how He inspires His word patiently through imperfect people.
2. It can eliminate some confusion some Christians create when the Old Testament is quoted and taught in a way that implies that it is “on par” with the New Testament.
3. It helps us interpret the Old Testament “christologically”, meaning that we read the Old Testament through the lens of Christ.
4. It lays some of the foundation for understanding how to interpret OT violence, which not only can answer some of our personal questions, but also help address challenging questions about the OT brought up by skeptics.
5. It can provide some helpful data that impacts other complex areas of biblical studies.

The main focus of this study is on “progressive revelation”, which is a biblical trend which reveals that God has slowly revealed Himself with greater and greater clarity over time.

How Enlightenment Thinkers Are Still Influencing The Way You Read The Bible

“Contradictions” and The Two Ditches

We must stay on the path of life when seeing these “contradictions” in Scripture, which I will attempt to show are not really “contradictions”, but should be understood as invitations to intimacy with God. Examples we will study include Scripture saying that God incited David to sin, and a later author saying Satan incited David to sin. We’ll also look at how Ezekiel and Jeremiah essentially corrected a statement about God’s character made by Moses, Paul modifying an OT account, and the teaching of Jesus challenging prior OT law.

On the left side of the path, there is the ditch of Prideful Skepticism: to think God’s word is somehow not reliable if there is a “contradiction”, or rather, “invitation”!. On the right side is the ditch of Blind Certainty, trying to insist that God’s word must comply with modern standards of historiography and the like, and going to great lengths to reconcile logical differences in Scripture to the point of being nearly willing to either bend the truth, or ignore it.

We should ask ourselves, who the heck dug these ditches?

Ironically, both these ditches were dug by our modern, scientifically-minded worldview pioneered by the Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century, who had a great impact on Christianity. Their philosophy influenced Christianity enough that the church began to demand that God be an evidence driven, Heavenly Scientist, who must have His Word be a nice and neat, compartmentalized, flawless set of data in order to be trustworthy. God’s word is supposed to look more like a lab with beakers, microscopes, charts, flasks, test tubes, instead of a complex, multi-genre story of God rescuing the world. Jesus is the paradoxical Lion and Lamb not a Heavenly Scientist! Paradox doesn’t really fit into modern standards for historiography. If we demanded God’s word to look like a lab, I have a strong feeling Jesus would start overturning the tables, and wouldn’t mind breaking all of our nice and neat test tubes and beakers.

Both ditches are diametrically opposed to biblical faith and trust. Both ditches hypocritically exalt scientific logic above Scripture as it stands: they both purport to faithfully interpret the data, but also say what data is allowed to be considered, and refuse to make extended inferences about that data, because it has, from a spirit of unbelief, rebelliously defined for everyone (and God) what a “good inference” is (e.g., implying a “contradiction” is impossible, or contradictions disprove God).

“These are what inferences are allowed, and these are not allowed,” Scientific Rationalism says, as it happily digs ditches for us to fall into, and sets up its own territorial equipment like fences and signposts, pointing to what it believes counts as “logical”. But God owns the road, the fence, the property, the dirt, the shovels, the entire world.

How “Contradictions” Can Produce Intimacy with God

I suppose some would find this whole endeavor scary, uncomfortable, or useless to study; what’s the point? “I’m fine with just holding truths in tension, and being ok with mystery.” There is an admirable quality to being ok with mystery, even necessary.

But to the married I say this: how would your spouse feel if every time they did something “apparently contradictory” you just refused to dig deeper because it was scary, uncomfortable, or maybe had no “practical value” and maybe you were just “ok with mystery”? That’s not active love, it’s passive love. Sure, you can’t understand everything there is to know about your spouse, but you should at least try, take a risk! You might end up developing a breakthrough in your marriage, and your spouse would be delighted.

To the pragmatically minded “doers” I would say this: if you had the task of building a business or planting a church, and an expert gave you a manual to follow with all the principles you need for “success”, would you not want to clarify with the expert what they meant when apparent contradictions appeared in this manual? And if the manual tells you to seek wisdom and not to lean on your own understanding (Prov. 3:5-6), shouldn’t you go and talk to the expert? If you did, you might end up developing a breakthrough.

In any case, God is putting out a lure for us to chase Him with these “contradictions”. Seeking God from a pure heart will lead us to the truth that sets us free, launching us into greater intimacy with Him. That is most certainly what this study has done for me. That intimacy is what will transform us into His image, yielding greater confidence and love for Him, that will equip us for true ministry to others.

There is no need to distrust Scripture because it doesn’t fit into our box; we just need to get out of our box, and into His.

All Scripture is God-Breathed

As we continue this study, I want to make it clear that, as an evangelical Christian, I 100% believe that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16), and is the infallible Word of God, which includes the Old Testament. Jesus clearly believed the OT was God’s word. But this simple study will show us that we do not have the right to tell God what “infallible/inerrant” means and that Scripture may not always “behave” as we think it should.

We must let God and His Word decide what “infallible/inerrant” means, and take off our modern, scientifically bent glasses that distort our interpretation of Scripture, and often forces us to narrow-mindedly focus on single passages of Scripture rather than considering the whole of it.

Progressive Revelation in Church History

The idea that God “progressively” revealed Himself over time, and was in some way “hidden” in the OT is not some new idea, but actually has been taught from the church fathers till now.

Justin Martyr and Irenaeus believed that some OT law was given to accommodate people’s hard hearts.² Origen once compared Scripture to a ladder that ends with Christ,³ and that God spoke to ancient Israel the way a parent does with their child or baby, not using “grown-up” language but baby-talk, since their maturity in righteousness presumably demanded it in order for them to hear God.⁴ Basil the Great also taught that God revealed Himself incrementally over time in order to accommodate humanity’s inability to properly hear.⁵

Augustine also followed this line of thought, believing that God adjusts His revelation to fit the current need of its hearers:

The art of medicine remains the same and quite unchanged, but it changes its prescriptions for the sick, since the state of their health changes. So the divine providence remains entirely without change, but comes to the aid of mutable creatures in various ways, and commands or forbids certain things at different times according to the different stages of their disease…⁶

Augustine attempted to reconcile the New and Old Testaments in terms of sonship. He reasoned that those who try to teach (heretically) that Old and New Testaments can’t come from the same God

…cannot deny that it would be perfectly just and possible for one father of a family to lay one set of commandments upon those for whom he judged a harsher servitude would be useful, and a different set on those whom he deigned to adopt into the position of sons.⁷

Augustine is most likely teaching this from Galatians 4:1-6 where Paul framed OT law in terms of a guardian for a child, until the time had fully come to be released from the guardian. One ancient Rabbi even cites this scripture to teach that God gave OT law to Israel to teach them the basics of obedience as a father would his son because of their ancient “ignorance.”⁸

Thomas Aquinas also believed that “…the things of God should be revealed to mankind only in proportion to their capacity; otherwise, they might despise what was beyond their grasp, with disastrous consequences. It was, therefore, better for the divine mysteries to be conveyed to an uncultured people as it were veiled by means of figures…”⁹

Even the greate Reformer John Calvin also refused to see apparent “contradictions” as impossible, because God cannot contradict Himself.¹⁰ Calvin also believed that God needed to in some ways “descend far beneath his loftiness” and speak to us like a nurse does to a baby in order for us to comprehend.¹¹ Calvin and other contemporaries also tried to explain why the Bible at some points seems to be at odds with science by saying that people spoke about things the way they saw them, rather than trying to teach science through what they wrote.¹²

Not only in Christianity, but ancient Rabbis also affirmed the concept of “progressive revelation” and the closely related concept of “divine accommodation”. One 3rd century Rabbi, who was probably representative of one of two major lines of the first 5 centuries of Rabbinic thought,¹³ even said this:

The Holy One appeared to Israel with a stern face, with an equanimous face, with a friendly face, with a joyous face: with a severe face appropriate for the teaching of Scripture…Therefore the Holy One said to them: Though you see Me in all these guises, [I am still the one]---I am the Lord thy God.¹⁴

So the concept of “progressive revelation” should not be considered some sort of new theology. But, as we will see, it is firmly rooted in Scripture.

Did the Lord “Strike Down” the Egyptian Firstborn, or Did Destroying Angels?

In the Exodus narrative, Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go free from slavery, despite numerous devastating plagues. Due to Pharoah’s stubborness, God sees a need for the most devastating plauge: killing the firstborn of every Egyptian family.

Scripture says that God will personally “strike down” the firstborn: “…the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians…” (Ex. 12:23). The “plain sense” of this Scripture leads us to an uncomfortable picture of God walking around killing people, which seems quite the opposite of Jesus, who lays down His life for sinners. How should we understand the “plain sense” of the Exodus passage?

Let’s let Scripture interpret Scripture, for we have commentary on this exact event from the Psalms:

He unleashed against them his hot anger,
    his wrath, indignation and hostility—
    a band of destroying angels.
He prepared a path for his anger;
    he did not spare them from death
    but gave them over to the plague.
He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt…
(Ps. 78:49-51)

Note that Exodus 12:23 says that it is God who will personally strike down the firstborn children in Egypt, but the writer of this Psalm thinks the destroying angels did it! So who “struck down” the firstborn? God and “destroying angels” cannot be striking children down at the same time; there must be a more nuanced way to understand this event. The narrative tells us that God’s wrath, indignation, and hostility came not by directly “striking down” the firstborn of Egypt, but rather by allowing “a band of destroying angels” to kill the firstborn.

I’ve covered this in detail elsewhere but English translations often miss the references to ancient gods other than Yahweh; in other words, demonic forces. For example, the Red Sea was seen as a hostile force that convulsed and writhed like a snake at Yahweh’s power (Hab. 3:15, Ps. 77:16-19), and the Hebrew word translated as “waters” is the name of Canaanite god (Yam). Other ancient near-Eastern cultures associated the “waters” with this god. As theologian Greg Boyd points out,

…these menacing deities are closely associated with aspects of nature and are frequently depicted as acting violently through these aspects of nature against various people or against other deities. Without additional research, readers who must rely on English translations of the OT cannot discern how prevalent these and other deities are in the OT since their names are almost uniformly translated as personified nouns (e.g., “Yam” = “sea”, “Mot” = “death”, “Resheph” = “plague,” “fire”).¹⁵

So in the above Psalm, “plague” and “hail” or “hailstones” are probably references to ancient gods (demons), similar to how they are more clearly presented as personalities later by the prophet Habakkuk:

Plague went before him; pestilence followed his steps.
(Hab. 3:5)

“Plague” and “pestilence” are the English translations for the two ancient near-Eastern gods “Deber” and “Rephesh” (in Hebrew). Scholars point out that the names for these demons can sometimes carry a metaphorical and/or physical meaning, but given Habbakuk’s personification of “plaugue” and “pestilence” and Ps. 78:49’s reference to “the plague” and “destroying angels”,¹⁶ it’s nearly certain that these Hebrew names were references to ancient near-Eastern “gods”, or, in NT terms, demons.

This is a fascinating example of how the OT itself nuances the meaning of an earlier narrative.

Ezekiel and Jeremiah Corrected Moses

Jeremiah says of the Lord, “…he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone” (Lam. 3:33). And the Lord said through Ezekiel, “…I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11).

But Moses thought differently.

When Moses warns of the penalty for the Israelites’ disobedience, he makes this statement:

Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you.
(Deut. 28:63)

Who’s right, Moses, or Jeremiah and Ezekiel who wrote around 600-700 years after Moses?¹⁷

Attempts to reconcile these statements will certainly prove to be difficult; for Moses compares this pleasure being the same pleasure God took in prospering them; that is, the type of pleasure Moses is talking about is a positive delight.

This is none other than a sadistic, twisted form of pleasure in the death of the wicked. If we read any other story and found a deity taking genuine delight in destroying humans, we would rightly understand that the deity to be evil and/or demonic. Moses’ statement reveals the ancient Israelites’ understanding of God could at times be tainted. Why else would God later inspire Ezekiel and Jeremiah to essentially reverse Moses’ egregious representation of God’s character?

This is even more obvious in light of Jesus. Rather than thinking that God would find sadistic delight in destroying Jews who remained unfaithful, Jesus, as God, actually wept over the Jewish people’s unfaithfulness (Lk. 19:41-44). To me, then, it is no wonder why Augustine and Calvin both would teach that God would indeed adopt various strategies to accommodate the immaturity of his people in different stages of God’s relationship to the world.

Ezekiel and Jeremiah correcting Moses provides a crystal clear example of how we cannot always take an OT statement about God at face value without first letting other Scripture speak into it. From this example we can see that we need to let later OT authors influence our understanding of earlier OT authors. It also shows us God’s patience and character, to let Moses, who would become arguably the most revered prophet in all Israel, misrepresent his character.

God as a Perfect Father and Perfect Brother

God is willing to identify Himself with people who misrepresent him, as a loving Father would. This can certainly be seen in how the Lord is not ashamed to identify with people like us who fail consistently to measure up to godly standards, and call us his own siblings (Heb. 2:11-14). The Lord of all creation was willing to call someone His friend whom he knew would deny Him 3 times (Jn. 15:15, Lk. 22:54-62). Note that Jesus’ reason for calling the disciples His friends is not because of their religious performance or their own inherent worth, but rather Him volunteering all He knew from the Father to them (Jn. 15:15). Jesus defined relational intimacy as Him sharing His heart and mind with them.

On this definition of intimacy, the mere fact that the God, against all odds, has preserved an exhaustive record of His life by preserving Scripture, is itself an act of divine self-disclosure. The fact that Scripture exists is an act of God, and therefore is a plea to humanity for intimacy. It opens the door for anyone to become His intimate friend (see also Rev. 3:20). The fact the Bible exists is like God saying to the world, “Anyone can know me and become my friend; here’s my whole heart.” Friendship is based on choice, not on mutual benefits.

The Lord doesn’t make friends like the world, where friends are made and maintained for selfish reasons, but rather based on love and the Lord’s affectionate longing for us (Phil. 1:11, James 4:5). This is the love that covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8).

God’s Desire for Intimacy over Obedience

God’s desire for intimacy should be apparent to us, but God packages mystery into His plea for intimacy by allowing His word to challenge us. We need interpret the OT with the care of a surgeon, and not diagnose an apparent issue to hastily, like sub-par doctors can sometimes do.

Because of God’s revelation in Christ, we cannot judge God’s character too hastily from the OT, in the same way that we cannot judge, say, a tumultuous marriage in overly-simplistic terms; marriage is messy and someone on the outside looking in often lacks important context into that conflict. Their isolated snapshot or soundbyte may seem to suggest one thing, when context can make all the difference.

It is akin to our the news industry that revolves around isolated sound bytes and makes grand-conclusions, leaving out extremely important context. Context can sometimes make the difference in inciting a fear-based view of the world, vs. an accurate picture of current events. In the same way, the fact that Scripture critques itself and reveals a “progress” of revelation over time means that we are no longer allowed to isolate various passages of Scripture and teach it “plain and simple”; it is unfaithful to the whole of Scripture to do so.

Following the analogy of the husband and wife relationship, the Lord Himself compared His relationship with the people of Israel as a husband-wife relationship, and describes His own feelings towards that relationship in no uncertain terms, and this husband-wife relationship is gloriously extended to all humanity:

“In that day,” declares the Lord,
        “you will call me ‘my husband’;
        you will no longer call me ‘my master.’
    I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
        no longer will their names be invoked.
    In that day I will make a covenant for them
        with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
        and the creatures that move along the ground.
    Bow and sword and battle
        I will abolish from the land,
        so that all may lie down in safety.
    I will betroth you to me forever;
        I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
        in love and compassion.
    I will betroth you in faithfulness,
        and you will acknowledge the Lord.

“In that day I will respond,”
        declares the Lord—
    “I will respond to the skies,
        and they will respond to the earth;
    and the earth will respond to the grain,
        the new wine and the olive oil,
        and they will respond to Jezreel.
    I will plant her for myself in the land;
        I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’
    I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’;
        and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”
(Hos. 2:16-23)

Paul teaches us that the meaning of “Not my people” is the whole world (Rom. 9:24)!

What might it mean here, if Hosea is clearly saying that God wants the world to no longer call Him “my master”, even though the Exodus narratives clearly depict God approving of a slave-master relationship? Ancient Near Eastern people groups generally assumed that whatever god they served desired a slave-master relationship.¹⁸ And Yahweh was willing to appear this way especially in the giving of the law on Mount Sinai where he approved of the Israelites’ slave-master attitude, when they feared to even talk to him.¹⁹

But there is even more evidence that God was appearing in a way that accommodated their fallen, culturally conditioned view of the world: The Law given on Mount Sinai has a striking similarity to “The Code of Hammurabi” —a set of laws given by the ancient Babylonian king Hammurabi in the 18th century BC—and also a striking correspondence to other ancient near-Eastern laws.²⁰ It is also evident from the biblical record that the Israelites were consistently tempted to abandon Yahweh for the gods of surrounding nations.

I submit that if God later in the biblical record revealed His desire for a husband-wife relationship, but still approved of a slave-master relationship, there must be a good reason why.

If God gave Israel laws similar to surrounding nations, approved of a slave-master relationship even though it was not His deepest desire, and even accommodated their desire for a human king (1 Sam. 8:4-22), couldn’t “pasture them like lambs in a meadow” because “the Israelites are stubborn” (Hos. 4:16), and had to resort to testing and refining the Israelites because of their sin (Jer. 9:7), should we really be surprised to think that God appeared to be a certain way in order to reach an ancient people? This is probably why Christian leaders like Augustine and Calvin believed that God had to talk to us the way adults talk to babies who cannot understand them. We don’t think that when an adult uses exaggerated facial expressions and/or simple speech when speaking to a baby or toddler that those facial expressions and simple speech reflect the true nature of the adult.

Conclusion

This article surveyed various ways where the OT critiques itself and reveals fascinating inner-biblical conflict. The biblical data we have surveyed so far has shown us the following data points:

1. OT authors can correct earlier OT authors.
2. OT authors can add in extra details OT authors left out.
3. Some OT authors didn’t mind equating God and the forces of darkness with the same activity (e.g., striking down the Egyptian firstborn children).
4. OT authors depicted God as approving of a slave-master relationship, even though that was not God’s ultimate desire.

Part 2 of this series reveals even stronger evidence that this is the case in some fascinating examples, such as a later OT author substituting Satan for God in a narrative, how God’s original intention was for Israelites to take the promised land without violence, and how Paul distanced God from violence in an OT narrative.

Read part 2 here.

Notes