Is Contradiction the Hallmark of Truth?

Well, do you remember in the Old Testament account when Adam is tested? Adam and Eve are there together, and the serpent comes and invades and intrudes into their idyllic situation. And Satan, we are told at the beginning of the text, is the most subtle of the beasts of the field. The temptation that he brings in the first instance to Adam and Eve is not forthright. It’s not direct. It’s not a head-on assault. But it comes by way of a very clever suggestion.

A question is raised. What was the question? “Hath God said?” Satan comes to Eve and says, “Hath God said that you are not to eat of any of the trees of this garden? (Gen. 3:1). Think about it. Is that true? Is that what God had said? Of course not. Adam knew it—that that wasn’t true. Eve knew that it wasn’t true. And the serpent knew that it wasn’t true. But what’s the hidden agenda there? What’s the unspoken suggestion?

I think of Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existential philosopher, at this point, who wrote in this century. And he’s writing in behalf of the fullness of freedom for mankind, calling man to be autonomous—literally a law unto himself—and Sartre’s complaint is this: If there are any restraints upon man, if man is answerable to a God, or to a church, or to any authority outside of himself, he’s not really free, because freedom isn’t real freedom unless it’s absolute.

That’s the suggestion that is being planted now in the mind of Eve by the serpent. And it’s the suggestion that has worked wonders because it’s the first argument that your children use when you try to deny them something in their lives. I know that. I grew up. It’s the first one I used. I’ve had my own children do it. You tell your kids, they ask you if they’re allowed to do something, you say “Yes.” You tell them fifteen times, “Yes.” And then there’s something that they want to do that you know is harmful for them. And so not to be nasty to them, but to protect them, you say to them, “I’m sorry, son,” or “I’m sorry, daughter, this time I have to say no.” What’s the immediate response? “You never let me do anything.” Deny me that one thing, you might as well deny me everything. And that’s the import of the suggestion of Satan to Eve in which he says, “Hath God said? Did God say that?”

Oh, Eve was valiant at this point. She said, “No, God doesn’t say that.” She said, “God said that we could eat of all of the trees of the garden freely.” And now, the subtlety is exchanged for the direct assault of the diabolical sledgehammer. The lie comes out now forthrightly when Satan looks at her straight in the eye and says, “You will not die, but you shall be as gods.” I’m not tempting you with an apple, a piece of fruit. I’m tempting you with deity. You can be just like God. And the reason why God has forbidden you access to this tree is that He wants to keep that kind of glory and exaltation and status for Himself. He said that you would die, but you will not die.”

And we see, we have a contradiction here. And the issue facing Adam and Eve is, “Who’s telling me the truth? God says if we do A, B will inevitably follow. If we eat of the forbidden fruit, we will die. We will surely die. This serpent comes along and says, ‘If we eat, we will not die.’ ”

One of the most dreadful invasions of the church of Jesus Christ has come from that circle of theology that exalts the contradiction as the actual test of truth. One theologian made famous in our day a kind of irrational approach to theology. It was a blending of Christianity and existential philosophy with this particular slogan, where he said that the contradiction is the hallmark of truth. Doesn’t matter that religious truth may conflict or may contradict each other. We don’t have to seek to harmonize them, to seek a clear understanding of their . . . But we should rejoice in the fact that we find contradictions in Scripture or contradictions in our theology, because they are themselves the very hallmark of truth—because truth is so high, truth is so holy, truth is so lovely, that it goes above and beyond the powers of reason.

Boy, that much is accurate. That much is true. We certainly hold to the case, do we not as Christians, that the truth of God transcends all of the powers of human reason. It does go beyond reason, but it never goes against reason as this theologian would have us believe. Think of it in this setting. Let’s take the principle “Contradiction is the hallmark of truth” and apply it to the temptation of Adam and Eve. Adam, intelligent, in the image of God, a thinking being, he notices the serpent comes, and the serpent says, “You will not die.” And Adam scratches his head and says, “Wait a minute. God says if I eat, I die. The serpent says if I eat, I won’t die. That’s a contradiction.” “Ah,” says Adam, “but if the contradiction is the hallmark of truth, then the serpent must be a bearer of the truth. He’s just uttered a contradiction. It carries with it the full measure of truth. He must be a representative of God.” “So now,” says Adam, “I am not only allowed to eat of the tree, but I must eat of the tree if I’m going to be an obedient servant of God.”

So that you see then the fall is no longer a fall, but it’s a great leap forward for mankind. Dear friends, if we throw away contradiction as a test of truth, then how will we ever know the difference between obedience and disobedience, between godliness and ungodliness, between Christ and anti-Christ? Far from being the hallmark of the truth, biblically, the contradiction is the hallmark of the lie.