BIBLE CONTRADICTIONS: GENESIS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT

Here are two more supposed biblical contradictions taken from the American Atheist homepage, this time contrasting Genesis passages with statements in the NT:

Circumcision

“This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.” — Genesis 17:10

“…if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” — Galatians 5:2

As most of you probably realize immediately, the passage in Genesis applies to the biological descendants of Abraham, i.e. the Jewish people. By contrast, the whole of the Letter to the Galatians is addressed to a Gentile audience. If anyone doubts that latter fact, just look at the whole sentence in Gal. 5:2 as expressed in the NRSV – “Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourself be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.” It is illogical to think that Paul is addressing Jews since they would have already been circumcised as infants. How in the world could they have prevented that from happening? It is only in the archaic KJV (“if you be”) that one could get the idea that Paul's words applied to Jews who were already circumcised.

This solution above is so simple that it is impossible that the atheist who proposed it in the first place didn't immediately recognize it. And the fact websites such as American Atheists still cynically post it anyway confirms in my mind that many atheists have little interest in the truth but persist in spreading what they know full well are either out-and-out lies or purposely misleading statements in pursuit of their twisted goals. I guess I shouldn't be at all surprised since without a belief in God there is really no firm basis for any sort of morality. Therefore the ends justify the means.

Seeing God

“… I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” — Genesis 32:30

“No man hath seen God at any time…”– John 1:18

In contrast to the previous rather cynical example, the seeming contradiction between these two passages may have been offered in good faith and certainly deserves an answer. But to do so and at the same time possibly run the risk of complicating the situation even more, a number of similar statements in the Bible need to be considered also.

Starting with the Genesis 32 passage mentioned above, a few facts need to be pointed out. In the first place we need to be reminded that these words come from the lips of the patriarch Jacob just as he had finished wrestling with a mysterious “man” and prevailed. But as v. 31 informs us, the sun had not yet risen at that point, and so Jacob could not have actually seen him. In addition, the only indications that the “man” was actually God come from Jacob's own opinion (expressed in v. 30) and from the “man's” own lips in v. 28 when he says that Jacob had “striven with God and with humans.” In place of that phrase, NRSV offers the alternative translation of “strives with divine and human beings.”

A very close parallel to this account actually occurred earlier in Genesis 16 where Sarai has a face-to-face encounter with “the angel of the LORD.” After that, she asks in v. 13, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” Carr expresses the opinion that therefore in at least this case “the angel of the LORD is not a heavenly being subordinate to God but the LORD (Yahweh) in earthly manifestation.” One can certainly take that approach, or alternatively state that there is no reason we should accept Sarai's personal opinion at face value any more than we should take Jacob's interpretation of the events as actual fact.

It is because of passages such as these two in Genesis that causes scholars to feel that “the angel of the LORD” may describe (1) any heavenly representative of God such as an angelic being, (2) God the Father veiling himself in a human manifestation which is acceptable for humans to safely view, or (3) another name for the pre-incarnate Christ. And these last two possibilities may be one and the same.

The Oneness between the earthly Jesus and God the Father is continually asserted in John's Gospel at the same time the two are also portrayed as separate personages. Witness the following:

John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory...”

John 6:46 “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.”

John 10:30 “The Father and I are one.”

John 14:7 “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

John 14:9 “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

Note especially the close correspondence in John 14:7 between the concepts of “seeing” and “knowing.” This is also stressed throughout the Gospels and opens the door to the possibility that some of the references in the OT and NT to “seeing” God should more properly be interpreted as more closely comprehending God and who He is. A possible example of this phenomenon is found in the Book of Job.

God speaks to Job from a whirlwind in chapters 38-41 but there is absolutely no mention of a visual manifestation of His person. And yet Job proclaims in 42:4, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” In this case, “seeing” clearly has the connotation of comprehending at first hand the greatness and holiness of God and contrasting it with his own personal inadequacies.

There is one additional important reference to a human being “seeing” God, and that is when Moses is on Mt. Sinai to receive the tablets of the law. Exodus 33:20-23 describes this encounter in which God states that no one can see his face and live. But God allows Moses to glimpse enough of His glory from the back that Moses' face becomes transfigured for some time to come.

One final reference to seeing God's face is found in Revelation 22:3 in which we are given a vision of the Heavenly City: “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” (vv. 3-4) Note the seeming confusion in this verse between singular and plural nouns and pronouns. There is only one throne, one person being worshiped, one face to be seen and one name on the saints' foreheads. And yet all of this applies to two different people, God and the Lamb. The most obvious way to reconcile these differences is to evoke the theological concept of the Trinity in which the triune God is One at the same time.