Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams and N.T. Wright himself!
I had never seen this one before, though it is obvious and apparently well known. Even Pope Benedict mentions this prima facie contradiction in the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth. Compare these two accounts of St. Paul’s conversion in Acts:
Acts 9:7: The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.
Acts 22:9: Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me.
Oops!
Yet, as we all know, Acts had widespread acceptance early on in the Church. Surely Luke (and Paul) and all the early Christians who read and accepted this book, were not so dull as to not detect this apparent contradiction. Yet it was written as it was written and preserved by scribes without alteration.
Are there explanations? Sure. My Ignatius Bible gives one: that the “voice” in the first passage was more like a rumbling “sound” while the second passage is using “hear” to mean “could not understand” what the voice said.
This site appeared first in my google search and lists several possible explanations, including the one above as well as a completely different one by none other than N.T. Wright himself(!) and his fellow New Perspective on Paul colleague, E.P. Sanders: “Luke’s following a hellenistic convention of style according to which variation in a narrative lends interest.”
The point is that we as Christians believe that God inspired the Scriptures and so what the authors wrote was breathed by God. God cannot lie, so the Bible is inerrant. This means that we seek to find ways to reconcile these passages, to harmonize them in spite of their apparent contradictory statements. The truth is that we accept the book of Acts based on the authority of God’s Church, whom He protected from error in her discernment of the canon, and we then use our intellect and heart to seek understanding for our faith.
You may remember this popular post from a while back that pointed out other “contradictions” in books that both Protestants and Catholics accept as inspired. This is another example to add to those. And this comment from Bradley Cochran was spot on about the problem then that Protestant apologists run into by pointing out “contradictions” in the deuterocanonicals.
This photo almost made me have a seizure.
I knew there would be much joy in your heart from this photo. Though, I think the trifecta would be even better, requiring the addition of Alister McGrath.
LoL!
Actually the parallel goes further. Protestants need to process the “contradictions” in church teaching the same way they process “contradictions” in scripture. Someone writes a book on 100 biblical contradictions and no protestant is surprised or shaken. Yet they can’t understand why very similar problems with Sacred Tradition are not show stoppers to becoming Catholic. It comes down to charity. If you want to give the church a chance you will find you don’t have to deny the law of non-contradiction to do it. Same with atheists and the bible. Problems like this one do not mean Christians have to become non-thinkers.
It is my sincere suspicion that if the Protestant scholars were to take the same critical skills whereby they resolve (at least to their own satisfaction) every contradiction in the Protestant canon and apply the same synthetic skills to the Deuterocanonical books, they could easily resolve every historical, logical, or canonical contradiction (at least to their own satisfaction). In other words, it’s the sheer power of will that makes the difference (as can also be seen by what is implied in my previous comments that Devin has created a link to in the post).
In this regard, I think it’s fair to say “Where there is a will, there is a way [to resolve apparent contradictions of any kind]” or at least by faith believe that they are not ultimate contradictions even if they “appear” to be until one’s dying breath.
Good point. I’ve thought the same thing myself. And yes, the argument does do service against Protestants attack on tradition and church teach as was pointed out.
The only thing that we would want to be careful about is denying that things can actually contradict and that it matters when they do. We don’t want to go to the other extreme and say that contradictions either can’t exist between two propositions or that they simply don’t matter. True contradictions can exist and they do matter. Logic still holds.
Anyways, just adding to the discussion!
Brantly,
I agree there is such a thing as a contradiction. But what do you think a Christian should do if she finds an apparent contradiction in her faith (e.g. the Bible, in Tradition, etc.) and after a sincere attempt to find a resolution, discovers that she can find no such resolution? I am wondering what the import of your “contradictions are important and still matter” would be in such a case.
Bradley
i asked my e free pastor that same question.
and he said, scripture is perfect. and you interpret scripture w scripture. if we cant reconcile a contradiction the way we understand it is flawed.
I discovered recently that when the Catholic Church teaches the Bible is inerrant, that doesn’t necessarily mean, that the literal meaning is true. No one would suspect that prophetic passages and Jesus’s parables are literally true, but most evangelical believe historical passages like the story of the fall is literal. Not so, according to the catechism.
CCC 390: The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.264 Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.
After reading this, I went back and re-read Genesis 3, and I can’t tell what is so figurative about the language. I believe many evangelicals would have difficulty with this understanding the Bible. How does one know what verses are meant literally and what verses are meant figuratively?
Brent,
Their answer would be “because the Holy Spirit tells me”. So if they have the spirit guiding them, why is there a need for a “man made fallible institution” to tell them what is the correct interpretation? It’s a hard concept to grasp by Protestants that the words they read can have non-literal meanings. The Word is clear and so a day is a day and so forth.
they dont really, it is ALL literal.
unless Jesus is saying cut out your eye.