I have sometimes been surprised that people more learned and cleverer than me read some Bible texts so differently from the way I do.
Our assumptions or presuppositions make a big difference.
A huge question is whether we are inclined to read a text in its canonical context (that is, as Holy Scripture) and whether we assume it is in harmony with the rest of the Bible and the Christian tradition of not. If this is the Word of God, we should look for unity in it, whilst acknowledging its rich variety.
It is obvious that no two texts are exactly the same. If they were there might be little point in having them both. Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, John and Mark all have distinctive things to say in their different voices.
But do we assume that Paul got Jesus wrong?
That Peter and Paul couldn't agree?
That Paul and James had a different gospel?
Or that John contradicts Mark?
And that is before we try to bring Old and New Testaments together.
In my experience, biblical scholars are sometimes especially prone to make a difference into a contradiction unnecessarily. But is a reasonable harmonisation possible? If so, why not embrace it?
A difference of emphasis need not be a repudiation of substance.
Someone obviously thought that these texts could be read coherently together as they collected them up.
The great tradition knew about the law of non-contradiction and has affirmed all these texts as infallible. The differences are not a new discovery and were not thought an insurmountable problem or a barrier to affirming all these texts as true.
Augustine and Aquinas may have erred in many ways, but we should take their sense that the Bible's many voices constitute the voice of God to us seriously. Our Anglican formularies commit us to such a view. The human Scriptures are the Word of God to us - and God does not contradict himself.
Each bible text enriches our understanding. It qualifies but it does not cross out the other texts.
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