Everyone knows that contradictions are bad. If you can find a statement I make in this chapter which disagrees with something I've already said, you'll feel justified in rejecting both. Even though one may be right. Even though they both may be. Why?

We have Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) to thank, or blame. In his desire to compile all knowledge into an organized system, he devised laws of logic as organizational tools. One of them is called the "law of contradiction": A cannot equal B and at the same time not equal B. A fish cannot also be a mammal, if a biologist like Aristotle is going to classify it.

From then to now, we Westerners have adopted Aristotle's law as the basis for determining all truth. If we can find a contradiction in the Bible, we think we have reason to dismiss its veracity. But before we decide we're right, let's think about Aristotle's laws some more.

His approach is necessary in the physical sciences. We want our doctors to diagnose ailments by Aristotelian logic. If your knee is hurting, you don't want your orthopedist to suggest that it might be cancer and torn cartilage, so let's treat it for both and see what happens. You want a non-contradictory medical response.

The trouble with Aristotle's law comes when we apply it outside its intended context. Aristotle wanted to classify all empirical knowledge, and needed his laws of logic to do so. But he didn't use them outside the physical realm. When we apply them in this way, problems quickly emerge.

Relational experience is seldom logical and non-contradictory. It may appear contradictory to claim that you love your children and yet sometimes wish they'd never been born. But if you're a typical parent, both are sometimes true. Jesus claimed to be fully God and fully man; God is three and yet one; the Bible is divinely inspired but humanly written; God knows the future but we have freedom to choose. Inside every essential Christian doctrine there is a paradox, an apparent contradiction.

This is as it should be. If you and I could understand fully the nature of God, either he wouldn't be God or we would be. Mark Twain once remarked that if he could understand everything in the Bible, he wouldn't believe that God wrote it. We should expect paradox and rational tensions within our finite, fallen understanding of the omnipotent God of the universe.

Many of the so-called contradictions in the Bible fit into such spiritual or relational categories. For instance, the Bible teaches that "God is love" (1 Jn 4:8). Yet it also states clearly, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness" (Ro 1:18). And it warns, "For those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger" (Ro 2:8). How can God both love and hate? Don't ask Aristotle. But you can ask any parent.

Not all truth fits into test tubes. My seventh-grade geometry teacher claimed that parallel lives never intersect. But to prove it, he'd have to draw them forever. Black and white are not the only crayons in the box.