CONTRADICTIONS: What About Alleged Discrepancies In The Four Gospels?

(FOUR-MINUTE VIEW) — There may be no greater mistake when working on Capitol Hill than including a contradiction of logic or fact in a one-pager making the case for a legislative proposal, composing a position paper on a bill scheduled for a vote on the floor, or drafting remarks for your boss when she speaks to an important group this weekend back home in the district.

There are people working for Congress who eat, sleep and live detecting, exposing and criticizing contradictions among political opponents, as well as journalists, lobbyists and talking heads doing the same, so it’s no wonder aides to senators and representatives tend to be hyper-sensitive about consistency.

Maybe that’s also why “the Bible is full of contractions, so why should I believe it’s the revealed word of God” is among the most common objections I’ve heard posed by critics of Jesus Christ’s claim to be God.

A more precise variation of the contradictions objection is that the four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which tell us about the life, death and resurrection of Christ — contradict one another on important points.

J. Warner Wallace, the cold-case detective of NBC’s “Dateline” news show fame, dealt with this objection in a recent installment of his superb “Think Like a Detective” series of videos.

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Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on HillFaith on May 18, 2019. It is re-posted here in full.