Difficulties and Alleged Errors and Contradictions in the Bible

Tuts book does not attempt to take up in detail every conceivable difficulty that could be found in the Bible. It would take many volumes to do that. I have simply taken up those objections of which the modern infidel makes the most, and which are most puzzling to many Christians. In going around the world, I have given people in many lands an opportunity to ask questions concerning matters that puzzle them. Everywhere I go, the questions are largely the same; and in this book I have taken up the questions which have been most frequently put to me, or which apparently present the greatest difficulty.

In regard to the questions which I have not fraahed upon, one can easily see that if so many difficulties are answered which he had supposed were unanswerable, the overwhelming probability is that all the other difficulties could be answered also if there were time and space to take them up.

Every careful student and every thoughtful reader of the Bible finds that the words of the Apostle Peter concerning the Scriptures, that there are some things in them hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest unto their own destruction (II Peter 3:16), are abundantly true. Who is there of ms who has not found things in the Bible that have puzzled us, yes, that in our early Christian experience have led us to question whether the Bible was, after all, the Word of God. We find some things in the Bible which it seems impossible for us to reconcile with other things in the Bible. We find some things which seem incompatible with the thought that the whole Bible is of Divine origin and absolutely inerrant. It is not wise to attempt to conceal the fact that these difficulties exist. It is the part of wisdom, as well as of honesty, to frankly face them and consider them. What shall we say concerning these difficulties that every thoughtful student will sooner or later encounter?

1. The first thing we have to say about these difficulties in the Bible is, that, from the very nature of the case, difficulties are to be expected. Some people are surprised and staggered because there are difficulties in the Bible. For my part, I would be more surprised - and staggered if there were not. What is the Bible? It is a revelation of the mind and will and character and being of an infinitely great, perfectly wise, and absolutely holy God. God Himself is the Author of this revelation, But to whom is the revelation made? To men, to finite beings, to men who are imperfect in intellectual development and consequently in knowledge, and who are also imperfect in character and consequently in spiritual discernment. The wisest man measured on the scale of eternity is only a babe, and the holiest man compared with God only an infant in moral development. There must then, from the very necessities of the case, be difficulties in such a revelation, from such a source, made to such persons. When the finite tries to understand the infinite, there is bound to be difficulty. When the ignorant contemplate the utterances of one perfect in knowledge, there must be many things hard to be understood, and some things which to their immature and inaccurate minds appear absurd. When beings, whose moral judgments as to the hatefulness of sin and as to the awfulness of the penalty that it demands are blunted by their own sinfulness, listen to the demands of an absolutely holy Being, they are bound to be staggered at some of His demands, and when they consider His dealings, they are bound to be staggered at some of His dealings. These dealings will appear too severe, too stern, too harsh, too terrific.

It is plain that there must be difficulties for us in such a revelation as the Bible has been proven to be.2 If someone should hand me a book that was as simple to me as the multiplication table, and say, “This is the Word of God. In it He has revealed His whole will and wisdom,” I should shake my head and say, “I cannot believe it; that is too easy to be a perfect revelation of infinite wisdom.” There must be in any complete revelation of God’s mind and will and character and being, things hard for the beginner to understand, and the wisest and best of us are but beginners.

2. The second thing to be said about these difficulties, is, that, a difficulty in a doctrine, or a grave

1The proof that the Bible is the Word of God is given in the author’s book, ‘‘The Bible and Its Christ.’’

A GENERAL STATEMENT aly

objection to a doctrine, does not, in any wise, prove the doctrine to be untrue. Many thoughtless people fancy that it does. If they come across some difficulty in the way of believing in the Divine origin and absolute inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, they at once conclude that the doctrine is exploded. That is very illogical. Stop a moment and think, and learn to be Teasonable and fair. There is scarcely a doctrine in science generally believed to-day that has not had some great difficulty in the way of its acceptance. When “the Copernican theory,” now so universally accepted, was first proclaimed, it encountered a very grave difficulty. If this theory were true, the planet Venus should have phases as the moon has, but no phases could be discovered by the best glass then in existence; but the positive argument for the theory was so strong that it was accepted in spite of this apparently unanswerable objection. When a more powerful glass was made, it was found that Venus had phases, after all. The whole difficulty arose, as most all of those in the Bible arise, from man’s ignorance of some of the facts in the case. The nebular hypothesis is commonly accepted in the scientific world to-day. But when this theory was first announced, and for a long time afterward, the movements of the planet Uranus could not be reconciled with the theory. Uranus seemed to move in just the opposite direction from that in which it was thought it ought to move in accordance with the demands of the theory, but the positive arguments for the theory were so strong that it was accepted in spite of the inexplicable movements of Uranus. If we apply to Bible study the common sense logic recognized in every department of science (with the exception of Biblical criticism, if that be a science), then we must demand that if the positive proof of a theory is conclusive, it must be believed by rational men, in spite of any number of difficulties in minor details. He is a very shallow thinker indeed who gives up a well-attested truth because there are some apparent facts which he cannot reconcile with that truth. And he is a very shallow Bible scholar, who gives up his belief in the Divine origin and inerrancy of the Bible because there are some supposed facts that he cannot reconcile with that doctrine. There are in the theological world to-day many shallow thinkers of that kind.

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