In The World, Not of It

I often ask atheists what is the worst contradiction in the Bible. A variety of answers are possible but they tend to fall into one of three broad categories:

1. internal contradictions (e.g. the order of creation in the two Genesis accounts or the moral codes of Leviticus vs. the New Testament),
2. contradicting modern science (e.g. Genesis vs. modern cosmology and biology), and
3. contradicting modern moral sentiment (e.g. the Bible vs. GLAAD).

(One can easily find many lists of Biblical contradictions.)

Before exploring this issue further it's worth noting, in passing that one thing atheists have in common with Christian Fundamentalists is the inclination to read the Bible literally. While there exist a variety of ways to read the Bible, listing contradictions rests entirely upon a literal reading. If, for example, you were to read the Bible as a compilation of literature from various authors over the span of centuries one would hardly be shocked to find them saying different, perhaps even contradicting each other. These would not be contradictions in the logical sense anymore than the collected works of biologists over a comparable period of time.

Of course, logical contradictions are impossible by definition. What we are dealing with are apparent contradictions. And the question, then, is how best to resolve such apparent contradictions. Atheists will insist that the best way to resolve them is to treat the Bible as a work of mythology just as we do those of the Greek, Roman, and other ancient and primitive cultures.

Still, there is something to this idea of contradiction that is worth exploring further. For my money, the most significant contradiction in the Bible is this:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. [John 3:16]

Vs.

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. [1 John 2:15-16]

One the one hand, John is telling us that God loved the world. And, on the other hand, John is telling us that we must not love the world for it is nothing but a den on iniquity.

This apparent contradiction is significant for several reasons. First, it is not Old Testament vs. New Testament or the Bible vs. modern knowledge. It is not one author vs. another author. In both cases, according to Tradition, this is the Apostle John.

But this contradiction is also significant because it touches on one of the main criticisms that atheism levels against Christianity: that it is so concerned with the next life that it ignore and denigrates this life. (Judaism offers a similar criticism.) God may love the world bet we are told to reject it. As John later says:

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. [John 15:19]

Before we dismiss this apparent contradiction as a matter of context, let us note that there is a definite tradition within Christianity of rejecting the world. It is best exemplified by the monastery but has its roots in pre-Christian Jewish society (and ancient society generally), the prophets in sack cloth, the Essenes, even Jesus' own wanderings in the desert.

(I will mention, in passing, that one way to interpret John is to regard the command to reject the world as limited to sin and those who practice sin, the generality of the verse notwithstanding.)

And perhaps the most extreme example of rejecting the world was Gnosticism which held the physical world to be fundamentally flawed, an error, something from which escape is to be sought. The radical dualism of Manichaeism borrowed from Zoroastrianism the idea that good and evil were coequal powers.

Although mainstream Christianity rejected these ideas as heresy, the idea that the world is inherently and unalterable corrupt has survived. Although nobody can literally remove themselves from the world except by suicide, it remains the case that those who distance themselves from it in one way or another are regarded as holier than those who adapt to it, much less those who love the world and indulge in and exploit the things in it.

'Worldly' and 'holy' are practically antonyms.

Ultimately this question of whether to love or reject the world is yet another manifestation of the problem of evil.