In the book of Ephesians, Paul quotes Psalm 68:18 as saying, “When He ascended on high, He took captives, and gave gifts to His people” (Eph 4:8). However, the original Hebrew of Psalm 68:18 reads, “You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men.” This seems to be a contradiction, since giving and receiving are opposites. However, the Hebrew (laqakh) word translated “receive” here can mean “fetch” or “take in order to give.” It is clearly used this way in Genesis 18:5: “Let me fetch you something to eat.” Psalm 68:18 speaks of God as a conqueror being victorious in battle and receiving the spoils of war, which He would have then distributed to His troops. The apostle Paul applies this verse to Jesus, God Incarnate, who, after conquering the powers of evil, distributes the spiritual benefits resulting from that victory to His people, the Church. While the wording of Paul’s quote here is somewhat different from the original Hebrew, he is not at all contradicting the original text’s meaning.
There are numerous instances in which two Gospels record the same saying of Jesus, but with variations. This can only be considered a contradiction, though, if we assume that the Gospels were always intending to quote the exact, precise words of Jesus. If the Gospels were instead intending to accurately record the teachings of Jesus, which could allow for paraphrasing His teachings or expressing them with different wording, then there is no problem with the sayings of Jesus having some variation in different Gospels. It is also likely that, over the course of years of public ministry, Jesus Himself repeated His key teachings with variations on different occasions. Different Gospels may thus contain similar sayings of Jesus that He spoke on different occasions.
In the Gospel of John, the incident of Jesus cleansing the temple appears at the beginning of His ministry (John 2:13-25), while in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), it appears near the end of His ministry (Matt 21:12-13, Mark 11:12-25, Luk 19:45-46). At first glance, this appears to be a contradiction. However, it is possible that there were actually two incidents in which Jesus cleansed the temple, one at the beginning of his ministry and one near the end; John recounts the first incident, while the Synoptics recount the second. Another possibility is that there was only one incident near the end of Jesus’s ministry, which John places out of chronological order in His Gospel. This would not be an example of a historical error in John, since the Gospels were not necessarily intending to give a chronologically precise biography of Jesus’s life; they were intending to convey the theological significance of who Jesus is and what He did. So, sometimes, the Gospels arrange material about Jesus’s life and ministry thematically, rather than chronologically.
It is sometimes argued that the depictions of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John as a whole contradict one another. It is true that there are significant differences between the Synoptics and John. In the Synoptics, Jesus frequently speaks about the Kingdom of God, exorcizes many demons, and typically teaches using parables. In John, Jesus rarely mentions the Kingdom of God, never exorcizes any demons, and never teaches using parables. However, there is no good reason to see this as a direct contradiction. Rather, the depiction of Jesus in John is complementary to that of the Synoptics.
There is good reason to think that John assumes his readers are familiar with the content of the Synoptic Gospels (Almost all scholars believe John to be the last Gospel written). At one point in John, someone objects to the idea that Jesus is the Messiah by saying, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” (John 7:41-42). But John never mentions anywhere in his Gospel that Jesus was in fact born in Bethlehem; John must have assumed that his readers knew from Matthew and Luke that Jesus was born there. John also includes an extended discourse in his Gospel in which Jesus tells people they must eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have eternal life (John 6:25-70). But, unlike the Synoptics, John does not include Jesus’s institution of the Lord’s Supper at His Last Supper with His disciples; John must have assumed that his readers knew about this from the Synoptics so they could understand what Jesus was talking about in this discourse.
Since the similar Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were already written, and John assumed his readers were already familiar with their content, he did not want to rehash what they had already said. So, he deliberately focused his Gospel on the content of Jesus’s ministry that was not already written down in the Synoptics. John’s Gospel provides a complementary depiction of Jesus to that of the Synoptics, not a contradictory one.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Judas returned the money the chief priests had given him to betray Jesus, then went out and hanged himself. The chief priests took this blood money and bought a field to be a burial place for strangers, which then became known as the Field of Blood (Matt 27:3-8). But according to the book of Acts, Judas “acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. . . so that the field was called. . . Field of Blood” (Acts 1:18-19). At first glance, this seems like a contradiction. However, it is possible that, when Judas hanged himself, the rope or tree branch broke, causing him to fall and burst open. In a sense, Judas did indirectly acquire the field, through the chief priests to whom he gave the money. Matthew and Acts give two different reasons for why this field was called the Field of Blood, but there is no reason that they could not both be true, with these two separate reasons reinforcing the nickname.
The apostle Paul teaches that Christians are justified and saved by faith and not by works (Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16; Eph 2:8-9). But James teaches that “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 3:24). Many have claimed that this is a direct contradiction, and that Paul and James were in fundamental disagreement about the role of faith and works in salvation.
However, this is a superficial reading of the theology of both Paul and James. It is very clear that, for Paul, “faith” does not mean mere intellectual assent to certain doctrinal propositions. Rather, for Paul, faith means personally trusting in Christ to save you from your sins and reorienting your entire life around the truth of the gospel. Paul repeatedly teaches that those who live lives of sin will never inherit the Kingdom of God, while those who live righteously will. For Paul, good works are necessary, not as the basis for one’s justification, but as the evidence that one is truly in Christ and is being saved by Him.
When James says that a person is not justified by faith alone without works, he is not criticizing Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith; he is criticizing a bogus “faith” that is mere intellectual assent without genuine personal trust in Christ. His point is that a “faith” that does not produce good works is obviously not a genuine, saving faith. So, a person is shown to be truly justified by the good works that are the fruit of their faith. With this, Paul would be in complete agreement. The theology of Paul and James is fundamentally in harmony.