4b) Continued
i. A Biblical Contradiction?
There are some very interesting texts in the Bible, which seem to be obvious contradictions. If this is truly the Word of God, how can it contain contradictions? If we begin to discredit the Biblical accounts, when do we stop and start to believe it? I believe that everything in the Bible has a logical interpretation that enables it to fit into the true Big Picture of what is really happening. There is one truth out there and all the pieces we find either written in the Bible or in the geological records, etc must fit the same truth. I'd like to take a moment to explore a few Biblical texts that surely seem to contradict themselves, and then see if we can make sense of them in terms of our Big Picture model.
Look up these verses:
1 John 4:12 No one has seen God
1 Tim 6:16 No one has seen or can see God
John 6:46 No one has seen the Father except the One Who is from God
John 1: 18 No one has seen God, but God the One and Only, Who is at the
Father's side has
made Him known.
All these texts tell us that no one can, ever has, or ever will see God.
Then over in Exodus 33:20-23, Moses sees the back of God. The Israelites saw the pillars of smoke and fire; the Apostles saw Christ, and in Matthew 5:8 we read, "Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God. Aren't these contradictory? Can we see God or not? Many well-meaning Christians would thus discount the Bible as fact and only refer to it as social wisdom. This puts the Bible on a par with Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, Confucius Says, and Witty Words of Wisdom.
Rather than to accept nominal Christianity, let's try to make sense out of these apparently contradictory texts. Our Big Picture model says that God the Creator is the Thinker and everything else is a thought in His mind. We illustrated that there are exactly three Persons in God, just as there are in every thinking person. Because the Thinker is separated from His thoughts by a dimensional gap, it is indeed true that no thought in God's mind can ever see the Thinker. Hence, the four passages above agree with the fact that no human or angel has ever or will ever see the Father/Creator God face-to-face.
God has no outside that He can put these created beings into, so they might look at His face.
However, God still wants to be with His created beings. So, He thinks of Himself in His thoughts just as we sometimes do. Now when they see that Image of God in their world, they have indeed seen God (John 14:9). So, everyone (angels and humans alike) who have seen God, have actually seen the Image of God in their world. Yet both of these Persons of the Godhead are God. No contradiction after all.
August 22, 2001
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