Creationism: The Bible Says No!

I first encountered the difficulties inherent within the belief that the Bible is inerrant when I was a young Bible College student studying to enter the ministry with the Assemblies of God.  I remember particularly well one course I took which covered the historical backgrounds of the New Testament.  In that course, many references were made to particular events spoken of in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and how they related to historical events spoken of in non-Biblical sources.  The four gospels, as most people know, basically tell the same story of Jesus’ life, death by crucifixion, and subsequent resurrection, but in different ways.  Many times in class, the same story was referenced in two different gospels, and comparisons were made with each.  Suddenly, in the middle of a long lecture, I wondered why no one had yet taken all four of these accounts and woven them together into a single, coherent narrative.  I’d found “parallel gospels,” which placed the different accounts in columns alongside one another, but no one had yet actually combined all four.5  It seemed incredibly odd that no one else had thought of doing this before.  So, I set about to working on the project right away.

It didn’t take long before this project began to gain some attention from my dormitory neighbors, who wondered why I was sitting for hours at a time clacking away on my computer keyboard while keeping my nose in my Bible.  When I told them what I was up to, they became interested in obtaining a copy of it when I was done.  Of course, I obligingly promised to provide copies, but it was a promise I was unable to keep.  This was not because of any laziness or dishonesty on my part.  It was because the gospels were far too contradictory to be woven together into a single narrative!

At first I was in complete denial.  I couldn’t – no, I wouldn’t – believe what was right before my very eyes!  “There are no contradictions in the Bible!”  I’d been taught that simplistic phrase over and over again my whole life by extremely wise men, women, ministers and teachers.  How could they all be wrong?  How could all their ministers and teachers all have been wrong!?  How could a first-year Bible College student find something so obvious which everybody else had overlooked?  Could nearly two millennia of doctrine go up in smoke that easily?  No, I must have missed something, I reasoned to myself.  Somewhere, somehow, there must be a rational explanation for this that didn’t entail scripture being relegated as less than 100% reliable!

But there wasn’t one.  And yes, nearly two millennia of doctrine could go up in smoke that easily.  And yes again, it was simple enough for any first-year Bible College student to find.  I was certainly not the first one to do so.

I asked my professors and teachers about it.  Far from denying what I’d found, they openly admitted to the contradictions being there, and even showed me where there were more.  (One even pointed out a book in the college library where I could find a listing of them!)  It was important for a minister to know about these seeming inconsistencies, they told me.  After all, a good minister must be familiar with them and know the explanations for them, they said.  And oh, they were always willing to give explanations!  But the more explanations I heard, the more incredulous they seemed.  Finally, it dawned on me that what my instructors were doing wasn’t dealing with scripture directly, but rather were trying to do alter it using one of three basic editorializing errors: 

1.         Adding to scripture.

2.         Subtracting from scripture. 

3.         Doctoring scripture’s meaning. 

Nearly all arguments on why the Bible has no errors entail one or more of these three basic editorializing errors, and the person adept at seeing them will always unhorse a biblical literalist who tries to use them. 

Of course, one can forgive the religious for trying to dance around scripture in this way.  The presence of errors in the Bible has very serious implications to those who regard the stories in Genesis as literal histories.  After all, if the Bible can be wrong in one area, it could be wrong in another area, right?  Ministers are willing to go to great lengths to keep people from reaching that conclusion!  Fortunately