As christians how do we explain contradictions in the Bible?

Specifically I'm referring to verses that portray God one way while other books portray God in a completely different way.

The Bible says the word comes from God and is flawless, yet the books that make up the Bible were chosen by a council of men, men that were all imperfect beings. We have Catholicism which includes many books that the rest of the church does not. The there is the Ethiopian church which included the books of Enoch while the other churches didn't.

Are we to consider everything that Paul and other disciples said as being straight from God? If we consider every book in the Bible to be compatible with all the other books, and that they came from God. How do we reconcile contradictions within the Bible, and there are, I for a long time did not want to believe this or made excuses but I can no longer ignore this issue.

On one hand if we doubt a verse or chalk it up as being influenced by customs of the time rather than God we can reconcile contradictions. But, this leads to another problem which is that if one verse can be doubted, then they all can be doubted. The Bible also warns us not to change the nature of God by accepting only what we want to believe and throwing out things that we don't.

 

By seeing them as they. A collection of books using different vernaculars and perspectives. The bible contains godly words or words of god, but god's indisputable word, is a living word or the tree of life. The evidence for god is manifest in nature.

 

Is Paul asking for his cloak back (cf. 2 Timothy 4:13) inspired by God?

In all seriousness, the issue you bring up about canon, I think, is more important for believers than is supposed contradictions. For people who are not Christians the issue of supposed contradictions are more important. If you had some concrete examples, it'd be easier to answer.

In regards to the OT canon, the Western Church already had in her mind the current Catholic canon by the 4th Century (not that they were creating something new, but ratifying what already existed). The Eastern Orthodox Church did not fully accept Revelation until later in the 4th Century as well.

 

Give it 20 years and another testament will be available. It'll clear most things up and probably allow you to masturbate and have gay relations.

 

What contradictions did you have in mind?

Most seeming contradictions have been addressed in other threads but if you had something specific in mind bring it up and we'll talk about it.

 

Could be, in a way it would be proof that the Bible is about real people and their dealings with God and not as some claim, all made up. How many people would include such mundane details if they were just making up a book about God?

 

The Books of Enoch were held in great reverence by many of the church fathers, including Irenaceus, Origen and Tertullian, and cherished by the early christians up until the 4th century, when under the bann of such religious authorities as Jerome, Hilary and Augustine, (The stone that the builders rejected, has turned out to be the most important stone of all) the words of righteous Enoch, finally passed out of circulation and were thought to be lost for millennia.

The Book of Enoch remains one of the oldest extant mystical documents. It's referred to in the Hebrew Zobar, the epistle of Jude, and is considered by some as a very early draft of the New Testament.

The fact that Jude was allowed in the biblical canon to quote verbatim from the words of righteous Enoch as the word of God, then we also have been given the right to see, and quote from HIS words, as the word of God.

John 3: 13; No man has ascended to heaven except he who came down, even the “Son of Man,” who “IS IN” heaven.

Enoch was the only man to have ascended to heaven, where he was placed before the throne of the Godhead to ”The Most High,” in the creation, which throne was surrounded by glorious creatures, which were the godheads to the earthly bodies that were lower in the creation than the body of Mankind, which is “The Most High in the creation,” which glorious creatures served the Lord God who presides in the heavenly council, who, in the assembly of the gods He gives his decisions. See Psalms 82: 1-2.

From the “Book of the secrets of Enoch,” 22: 8; “And I fell prone and bowed down to the Lord, and the Lord with his lips said to me: ‘Have courage Enoch, do not fear, arise and stand before my face into all eternity.’ “

And the archistratiege Michael lifted me up, and led me before the Lord’s face. And the Lord said to his servants (The glorious creatures) tempting them: ‘Let Enoch stand before my face into eternity,’ and the glorious ones bowed down to the Lord and said, Let Enoch go (Or be released) according to thy word.’
And the Lord said to Michael: Go take Enoch from out of his earthly garments, and anoint him with me sweet ointment (Christ the anointed) and put into the garments of my glory.’ And Michael did thus as the Lord told him. He anointed me, and dressed me, and the appearance of the ointment is more than the great light, and his ointment is like sweet dew, and it’s smell mild, and shining like the sun’s rays, and I looked at myself, and was like one of the glorious ones.

In the body of post-flood mankind, the living spirit of Enoch, ascended to the ends of all things, evolving on the spirits of the body of the Most High in the creation.

Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives were all the direct genetic descendants of the living Enoch, the only man redeemed from the previous world that was destroyed by water as spoken by 2nd Peter 3: 5; as they were all descended through Enoch’s six sons, Methusulah, Rigam, Riman, Urchan, Cherminion, and Giadad.

 

Adam was commanded to gain dominion over the world and to subdue it. The Ancestral spirit that dwelt behind the veil to the inner most sanctuary of his earthly tent/tabernacle, which was Adam, was the compilation of all the animal and pre-animal spirit/information that had been gathered from the first organic molecule that had developed within the slimy primeval pools of inorganic material, in the evolution/development, or creation of Adam.

And the sin of Adam, who was the personality of Godhead to the pre-flood body of mankind, was that he refused to bow to the will of his in dwelling immediate past animal ancestor.

When the seventh from Adam, "Enoch" was carried to the throne of the Godhead to the most high in the creation, he was 365, this is the number of days in a calendar year, which is the age of the unblemished Lamb of God.

Enoch, as I am sure you will know, was the only exception of all mankind, who is recorded in the word of God, as having been taken to God, see Genesis 5: 23; and in Hebrew 11: 5; you will see that he was translated in order that he should never experience death. To translate something, you change it from one form to another. Is there a greater man recorded in the Bible than Enoch?

It is written, that when Enoch was carried up to the throne of the Godhead to the most high in the creation, which most high, is the body of mankind, the Lord of creatures and the prototype of the Lord of Spirits, who is the invisible Godhead to the body of man, and Lord to the invisible godheads of the species that are lower than mankind on the ladder of creation, which spiritual godheads dwell in a higher time dimension than this three dimensional world, an invisible dimension that actually co-exists within this visible world. (For the Kingdom of God is within you.)

Psalms 82:1; "Our God presides in the heavenly council; in the assembly of the gods he gives His decisions."

When Adam was condemned, all who he becomes was condemned also. Enoch was placed before the heavenly throne, that was surrounded by the brilliant godheads to the earthly species, and the Lord, who held the ransom blood of righteous Abel, which could save only one man, said to the glorious ones tempting them, "This is the one I have chosen, it is my will that Enoch should stand before my face into all eternity.

Then the glorious creatures bowed down and replied, he will be released, according to your will, Enoch was then stripped of his earthly garment and anointed with the sweet smelling ointment of God, which shone with the brilliance of the sun, and behold, he was as one of the glorious ones. Enoch is the one who was anointed as the heir to the throne of the Godhead to the most high in the creation.

The body in which Adam was the supreme personality of Godhead, was submerged in the baptismal waters of the earth and the new personality of Godhead, "Enoch" arose from those waters. It is He, the only exception of all mankind to have ascended to the highest heaven, within the body of post- flood mankind, evolving on the spirits of man, who evolved to become the Great Simulacrum, the body of Light, which is the blue print for the new species that will dwell on earth among mankind, "The Son of Man," that higher species that comes from the body of man, to whose will, mankind must submit or die.

It is He who IS in heaven, who came down as spirit/Mind and said to Abraham the tenth from Noah, "In blessing, I will bless you, and in multiplying, I will multiply you.

Jesus was the first fruits to be harvested from the body of mankind, the first of many brothers, (144,000 in all) to be raised from the supposed dead past of The Son of Man, the great Simulacrum, who dies in the process of involution for our salvation.

He chose Jesus, as the first fruits, as Jesus was in the direct line of descent from Abraham, in who was the living spirit of the evolving Enoch, to which spirit, none from the line of "the blessing of first born," had been gathered at the time of Abraham's birth as all his ten ancestors were alive at that time. And it was to the living evolving spirit of Enoch in the bosom of Abraham, to who was gathered, the spirits of all the good people who had fallen asleep in righteousness after paying the blood price for their inherited sin, which righteous blood, was the ransom for the life of Jesus, who was the compilation of all that ancestral spirit. Jesus, the obedient servant to his indwelling living Father Enoch, was who Enoch had become, or had evolve to at that point in time.

And Like our brother Jesus, who is the chosen heir to Enoch: the chosen ones, who will rule beneath him, will be born Son's of God as he was, not by blood, nor by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man, but by the spirit that desended upon him in the form of a dove, as he rose from the baptismal waters, which were symbolic of the waters in which the new Godhead succeded the old Godhead "Adam," as the heavenly voice was heard to say, "You are my beloved in whom I am pleased, THIS DAY I have begotten thee."

See the more ancient authorities of Luke 3:22; before it was changed by the church of Constantine.

In Luke 3: 22; In place of "Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" the following authorities of the second, third, and fourth centuries read, "This Day I Have begotten thee," vouched for by Codex D, and the most ancient copies of the old Latin (a, b, c, ff. I), by Justin Martyr (AD 140), Clemens Alex (AD. 190), Methodius (AD. 290), among the Greeks. And among the Latins, Lactatius (AD. 300), Hilary (AD,) Juvencus (AD. 330), Faustus (AD, 400) and Augustine. All these oldest manuscripts were changed completely. They now read, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased." Whereas the original variant was, "Thou art my Son. THIS DAY I have begotten thee."

He who was born of the flesh as are all human beings, was born the first of the Son's of God, not by blood, nor by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man, but by the spirit of our Lord God and saviour, who chose his sons even before they were born. The false teaching of the virgin birth is totally unbiblical.

 

I think the Bible represents an effort by humans at different points in time to understand the incomprehensible nature of God, much like the proverbial three blind men trying to understand an elephant--one thinking it like a tree trunk, another a snake, the third a rope, depending on which part of the animal they came into contact with. Naturally, there will be inconsistencies. But there are also profound truths, if we open our hearts and minds to them.

 

DeadAsDreams wrote.....The Bible says the word comes from God and is flawless, yet the books that make up the Bible were chosen by a council of men, men that were all imperfect beings.

If the Christian believes that our indwelling Father used imperfect beings, (For all men are imperfect,) who were under his mental controll to record his words, then they must also believe that the men who the Lord chose to compile the biblical canon, could choose no other books than those that they were meant to choose.

 

Applying the same logic, folks in the Middle Ages settled legal controversies by ordeals--fire, poison, immersion, etc., with confidence that God would see to it that the righteous survived. If "the Christian" studied the early Christian councils and saw what absurd things they regarded as having life or death importance, "the Christian" might be less convinced that God was guiding the member's thoughts. For example, does the Holy Spirit proceed from both the Father and the Son or from the Father only? How would anyone proceed to answer such a question, let alone be confident that they had the only right answer. Yet that issue divided the Greek and Roman wings of early Christendom, as it still does today.

 

it's time Christians cut the hocus pocus and admit that these are nice stories that have a moral that one should live their life around. I can't see voting for a politician whom believes in:
a talking snake
the world being created in 6 days (if god is all powerful why did he need a rest?)
the earth being about 6000 years old (FOSSILS?????????)

These were nice stories passed down orally for a couple hundred years. maybe they got altered a bit?

 

So what belief must a politicion hold before you will vote for them, and how do you make a politicion reveal to you an honest answer pertaining to they belief, for if any politicion tells you one thing, can never be sure you have received an honest answer?

 

The Alpha becomes the Omega
The Father becomes the Son
The beginning becomes the end
And the first become the last my friend.

The spirit that is developing/evolving behind the veil to the inner most sanctuary of the Most High in the creation, which is the body of mankind, and evolving from the spirits of man who fall asleep in righteousness after paying the blood price for their inherited sin and any mistakes they had made in life, is the Gatherering of the spirits of our ancestors to the living spirit of our Father, who will be born as the Son of Man, into the higher invisible dimensional that co-exists within this visible three dimensional world, when the umbilical cord that binds him to this physical body, with the death of the body of mankind as the supreme spiritual Godhead to have evolved within this world.

The First become the Last
The Beginning becomes the End
The Alpha becomes the Omega
The Father becomes the Son

Because my friend the two are one, who encompass the life spand of man, in which time span between the two who are one, we dwell, even though he dwells in each and everyone of us.

 

Maybe. But as for the "inspiration" of the men who put together the Canon in such a way that it contained exactly what God meant it to contain, here's my take. God is the author of natural law. His preferred method of operation is evolution by process of natural selection. Memes, units of religious and cultural information, are fundamental to the process, whose survival is an evolutionary imperative--even at the expense of the living organisms who serve as their hosts. After the death of Jesus, persons claiming to be Christians developed a variety of conflicting views about Him and set them down in a variety of scriptures which were accepted as inspired by different Christian communities: the Nasorenes and Ebionites, who adhered to Jewish law while claiming Jesus as Messiah; the Marcionites who rejected the God of the Jews and the humanity of Jesus,: the Gnostics, who viewed humans as prisoners in a world of illusion, and Jesus as the emissary who would make them aware of their true nature and reality; and the proto-orthodox, who accepted the basics of the religion we know as Christianity today. Church fathers like Irenaeus saw this as a major problem and moved to impose a degree of unity on the doctrine and organization of the church. Four gospels were accepted, others rejected, creeds were developed, and those who refused to accept them were denounced as heretics and persecuted. The particulars were worked out in various sausage factories called church councils. The faction strongest in Rome, possessing superior hierarchcal organization, and providing doctrines that were acceptable to the greatest number, regardless of "inconsistencies, prevailed. The result might not be entirely "true" in an ideal sense, but it got the job done in a way that the competitors were not equipped to do. The Nasorean/Ebionite insistence that Christians become circumcised, keep kosher, and observe other Jewish law had little appeal to Gentiles, while the Marcionite rejection of the Old Testament deprived them of a potent link to an ancient tradition. The Gnostics were entirely too esoteric in belief and inattentive to organization to go over with the masses. The triumph of proto-Orthodox Christianity resulted in the most successful belief-system in the world today (from the standpoint of meme survival and propagation, in terms of numbers of adherents). It's possible that it is true, or contains seeds of truth that might be fruitful in further evolutionary developments.

 

The bible was written in such a way as to force you to look outside of the canon, to understand the canon. i.e, Genesis 11; 10-12; "When Shem was 100 years old, he had a son, Arpachshad, who was the father of Shelah etc." 1st Chronicles 1: 17-18; Arpachshad the son of Shem, was the Father of Shelah, etc."

Now we go to Luke 3: 35-36; "Shelah the son of Cainan, the Son of Arpachshad." you will never find out who this "Cainan" is, unless you go outside of the canon.

The Book of Jubilees 8: 1; In the twenty ninth jubilee, in the first week, in the beginning thereof, Arpachshad took to himself a wife and her name was Rasueja, the daughter of Susan, the daughter of Elam, and she bare him a son in the third year in this week, and he called his name Kainam/Cainan--------------------And in the thirtieth jubilee, in the second week, in the first year thereof, he (Kainam/Cainan) took himself a wife and her name was Melka, the daughter of Madai, the son of Japheth, and in the fourth year, he begat a son, and called his name "Shelah."

And again, 1st Chronicles 2: 10; The family line from Hezon to Nahshon, is Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon. Here we have two ancestor to Nahshon after Hezron, whereas in Luke 3: 32-33; Nahshon the son of Amminadab, the son af Admin, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, here we see that Nahshon has three ancestors after Hezron, and yet Chronicles and Luke are both correct. How?

Only by going outside the canon can you uderstand the messages hidden threin.

Universe after universe is like an interminable succession of wheels forever coming into view, forever rolling onwards, disappearing and reappearing; forever passing from being to non being, and again from non being to being. In short, the constant revolving of the wheel of life in one eternal cycle, according to fixed and immutable laws, is perhaps after all the sum and substance of the philosophy of Buddhism. And this eternal wheel has so to speak, six spokes representing six forms of existence.” ---- Mon. Williams, Buddhism, pp. 229, 122.

The days and nights of Brahma are called Manvantara or the cycle of manifestation, ‘The Great Day,’ which is a period of universal activity, that is preceded, and also followed by ‘Pralaya,’ a dark period, which to our finite minds seems as an eternity. ‘Manvantara,’ is a creative day as seen in the six days of creation in Genesis, ‘Pralaya,’ is the evening that proceeds the next creative day. The six periods of Creation and the seventh day of rest in which we now exist are referred to in the book of Genesis as the generations of the universe.

The English word “Generation,” is translated from the Hebrew “toledoth” which is used in the Old Testament in every instance as ‘births,’ or ‘descendants,’ such as “These are the generations of Adam,” or “these are the generations of Abraham, and Genesis 2: 4; These are the generations of the Universe or the heavens and earth, etc. And the ‘Great Day’ in which the seven generations of the universe are eternally repeated, is the eternal cosmic period, or the eighth eternal day in which those who attain to perfection are allowed to enter, where they shall be surrounded by great light and they shall experience eternal peace, while those who do not attain to perfection are cast back into the refining fires of the seven physical cycles that perpetually revolve within the eighth eternal cosmic cycle.

A series of worlds following one upon the other,-- each world rising a step higher than the previous world, so that every later world brings to ripeness the seeds that were imbedded in the former, and itself then prepares the seed for the universe that will follow it. Every universe from the first to the last, from the smallest to the greatest, which have been created throughout the aeons of eternity, still exist in their independent Space-Time positions within the eternal and boundless cosmos.

The New international Version, the Scofield Referrence Bible, and the Companion Bible, all note that the phase in Genesis 1: 2; The earth was formless and void (Having neither shape or mass) should be correctly translated, “The earth became without form and void.” The Hebrew word “Hayah” translated “was,” means “To become, occur, come to pass, Be.” (Vines Complete Expository of Old and New Testament Words, 1985. “To Be.”)

 

If God is trying to communicate with us, why would he make it so complicated?

 

This is a common view of the "a la carte Christian", the big problem I see with it is, why even call yourself a Christian or take the Bible into consideration at all? If nothing in the Bible is for certain, then that would mean that even though Jesus was a historical person, if we are to believe secular sources, we have no way of knowing if he left any teachings, let alone the teachings in the Bible. And then that begs the question, if there is so much doubt about the Bible, then is there any reason to consider even a part of it a message from God?

As to the inspiration of those who "put the canon together", no I don't believe they were inspired but I do believe that if God wanted a certain book to be his message to mankind, then God would certainly have the ability to make it contain what he wants it to contain, in spite of any attempts to control or change what it says on the part of others.

Now I know some will bring up slight differences that can be found but those differences do not change the concepts and principles that are found there and are unerring.