Truth is Incarnate

Truth Incarnate

Whenever people talk about “contradictions” in the Bible, the assumption is that the problem must be in the text itself. We want to believe the Scriptures are a messy room that just needs to be tidied up. So, we dump hydrogen peroxide on the Bible in order to cleanse and sanitize everything until we are left with the “naked text”, ready to be dissected and splain out.

But that’s not how God gave His Word. The Bible isn’t a flat set of data points waiting for a scientist. It’s a story, a drama, God’s covenant Word spoken into real history, given to a particular people in a particular time. Language is truth incarnate. There is no such thing as a "timeless eternal truth", because all truth is incarnate. Truth has a name, and His name is Jesus. So when we come to the Bible, the Word of God, we must remember that the words on the page are not conveying timeless eternal truths floating up in the air which are purely rational. The words are alive.

Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Native Speakers and Enfleshed Words

Think about the way a native speaker reads a story. He doesn’t pause every line to dissect grammar or to fret about potential inconsistencies. He lives in the language. He feels the words as they move. He instinctively knows when a phrase is poetry, when a line is irony, when a repetition is meant to drive the point home. He feels the impact of the words, they move him, shape him, and play games with him. All of this happens because he has been swimming in these words his entire life. He has a relationship to them, a history that goes back years.

By contrast, a non-native speaker often has to come to the text like its a code to be cracked. He has to pull out a dictionary to decipher what a word means. But the problem with a dictionary is that it can only give you sanitized "glosses". It can't convey the impact of word-choice because it's only meant to give you a rough idea of the concept being communicated.

Our danger, as Christians influenced by the Enlightenment, is that we approach Scripture as non-native speakers seeking the timeless eternal truths which we suppose are contained therein. All we have to do is open our dictionaries and the code will be cracked. We approach God’s living Word with all the elegance of a 5th grader opening a frog.

The Real Problem

So where is the real problem? Why do we get antsy when we find so-called "contradictions" in the text? Because we don't want to admit that the problem is in us. The problem must be in the Scriptures themselves, or its in the translators, or its a corruption of the text during the process of copying. But the real problem is us. Our eyes are dim, our hearts are dull, and our dictionaries are dry bones. Without faith, all our exegesis is in vain.

We need new eyes so we can see clearly. We need new hearts so we can believe what we read. We need new minds so we can apply the incarnate truth of Christ to our own stories. And where does this faith come from? It comes by hearing the Word preached (Romans 10). Submit yourself to the sword of the Word, let it cut you, dividing your soul. Let it search you and expose your thoughts and desires. Let it have its way with you, for by giving yourself over to the Word, you will find Him.