How to Face Apparent Contradictions in the Gospels
By Michael J Kruger, TGC.
Does the Census Account in Luke 2 Contain Errors?
“It is clear to me that the writings of the Christians are a lie.”
Such were the words of the pagan philosopher Celsus, written around AD 170. This was just the beginning. His full-scale assault was something to behold. Jesus was a bastard child born of an adulterous relationship. Mary was a poor Jewish spinster with no significant lineage. Jesus was a magician/sorcerer (due to his time in Egypt) who tricked and deceived people. His disciples were a band of depraved, uneducated robbers. Jesus was a poor teacher who stole material from Plato.
While such provocative claims filled Celsus’s On the True Doctrine, his core complaint was always centered on the Gospels themselves. They were “fables”—a “monstrous fiction” filled with “contradictions.”
His attacks disturbed the growing Christian movement. They were so influential that the third-century intellectual giant Origen felt compelled to write a line-by-line rebuttal. Origen was clear about what was at stake: “If the discrepancy between the Gospels is not solved, we must give up our trust in the Gospels, as being true and written by a divine spirit, or as records worthy of credence, for both these characters are held to belong to these works.”
One can almost feel Origen’s “anxiety” over this issue. For him, and for later theologians like Augustine, the fate of the Christian religion seemed to hang on our ability to resolve these apparent contradictions.
Such anxiety hasn’t dissipated after 2,000 years. The ghost of Celsus lives on as critics seem as fervent as ever about problems in the Gospels. The subtitle of Bart Ehrman’s 2009 book Jesus Interrupted [my review] hardly seems designed to quell people’s concerns: “Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them).”
So how should Christians handle this sort of “contradiction anxiety”? Are we able to trust the Gospels even if there are unresolved challenges? Here are a few principles to consider, followed by a specific (and recent) example.
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