I think the title is somewhat click-baity. Williams seems to be saying that these are actually paradoxes--merely apparent contradictions--that Jesus actually uttered (if one puts different parts of his teaching side by side) and that a Gospel author like John may have deliberately included them in order to make his readers sit up and take notice.
I think the presentation of "deliberately including contradictions" (which has been picked up on by Sean McDowell) is a little unfortunate rhetorically because it could be interpreted and used in a way that Williams doesn't intend it.
I'm also not sure that John did that deliberately--selecting different sayings of Jesus uttered in different settings partly because, put together, they create a paradox. It's rather conjectural.
I think the title is somewhat click-baity. Williams seems to be saying that these are actually paradoxes--merely apparent contradictions--that Jesus actually uttered (if one puts different parts of his teaching side by side) and that a Gospel author like John may have deliberately included them in order to make his readers sit up and take notice.
ReplyDeleteI think the presentation of "deliberately including contradictions" (which has been picked up on by Sean McDowell) is a little unfortunate rhetorically because it could be interpreted and used in a way that Williams doesn't intend it.
I'm also not sure that John did that deliberately--selecting different sayings of Jesus uttered in different settings partly because, put together, they create a paradox. It's rather conjectural.
I mean the title of the article you're linking, not your title. Sean McDowell's similar post also has a rather click-baity title.
ReplyDeletehttps://seanmcdowell.org/blog/do-gospel-writers-intentionally-include-contradictions