It is not the resurrection and the virgin birth which will be subjected to the first blows of the attack by unbelievers. The devil is not stupid. He knows very well that God’s people will react powerfully to any overt attack that is made upon these anchor truths of Christianity. That is why he first lets loose so cleverly with his burning arrows upon some of the outposts on the periphery which God’s people see as being only of minor importance, and which they therefore can surrender. For this reason the devil often begins his work upon believing Christians who would never surrender their belief in the resurrection, but who will uncritically give in to his attacks upon certain “non-fundamental” parts of the Bible.

In order to weaken the faith God’s people have in the infallibility of Holy Scripture, modern scholarship which is unfaithful to the Scriptures calls attention to the so-called contradictions in the Bible. In the initial stages of this attack, the focus is upon details which at first glance appear to be of little importance.

Before we discuss these “contradictions,” we would do well to keep in mind that the verbal inspiration and infallibility of the Bible do not mean that every person in Scripture speaks or does rightly in every word he says or everything he does. Nor can Scriptural descriptions of events take up everything that took place. The Holy Spirit knows what it will be significant for us to know. No, when we speak of the infallibility of the Bible, we mean that in every detail that Scripture does take up, it is completely correct in what it reports and is without error.

We should also remember the classical definition of a contradiction. A contradiction exists when the same thing both is and is not something at the same time for the same person and in the same circumstances. This can be illustrated by the fact that an elephant when small is larger than a gnat when he is large. It all depends on what we are comparing and how.

If we will but remember these things, most of the so-called contradictions will disappear. It is often said that the resurrection accounts in the four Gospels can never be completely harmonized. Matthew says that an angel spoke to the women; Mark tells us that a young man sat at the right side of the tomb; Luke, that two men stood before the women; while John simply does not report whether angels or men spoke to the women (prior to John 20:12-Tr.). Angels often appear in human likeness. Matthew and Mark do not tell us that there was only one angel. If there was one, there could still have been two, and if there were two there surely could have been only one. Yes, there could even have been three of them, whether the given sentence says two or otherwise. Nor does the Bible state that the women who came to the grave and who reported what they saw, all came as one group at the same moment. It is also possible that some of them stood inside the grave while the others remained outside. There is absolutely nothing in our text which tells us that the same thing happened at the same time and also did not happen at that time to the same persons under the same circumstances, or from the same point of view. Something that is unlikely is no contradiction. Any given evangelist can certainly have dealt with details that another never mentions.

Note: (Dr. Becker is on the faculty of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Seminary in Mequon, Wisconsin. The above was translated from Bibel og Bekjennelse, publication of the Lutheran confessional churches in Norway which are sponsored by the Lutheran Confessional Church of Sweden. Translated by Pastor Edward A. Johnson, Dalton, Nebraska. Reprinted from the July 26 Christian News.)