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Even when we study the Gospels carefully, prayerfully, and attentively, we do not understand everything. And what we do understand, we still do not understand to the very bottom. We remain human and finite, and contami-nated by sin. We remain limited in knowledge. These limitations operate in all our understanding of life, including our understanding of the Bible.

Limitations with Respect to Issues in Harmonization

Most of the issues in harmonization in the Gospels have to do with appar-ent historical discrepancies or differences between two or more accounts in the Gospels. Because the Gospels are God’s words, we ought to believe that each account in each Gospel gives us truth about what happened and its significance. And by God’s wisdom each account contains resources that help us to understand God and to love what we come to understand. We should confidently believe that God knows what he is saying and that he is speaking truthfully at every point when we read the Gospels.

But we sometimes still do not know how it “all fits together.” How do we hold together apparently discrepant accounts? If we knew about the events in massive detail, and if we had direct access to God’s mind or direct answers from God to all the questions we might ask, we could be confident that we would see the solution to many difficulties.

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Things related to God’s infinity—and everything relates to God’s infin-ity—include mystery. We will never become God. We will never understand exhaustively, in the same way that God understands himself. But if we knew enough details and enough of his mind—yet still within the capacity of our finiteness—many of our difficulties would have a clear solution.

We know that God knows all the solutions. Yet we cannot demand a clear solution to all our difficulties right now. We do not have massive informative detail about each episode recorded in the Gospels. We have only what the Gospels themselves choose to tell us. And we have certain bits of extrabiblical knowledge, which are more or less reliable but not infallible. For example, we can find out about Jewish customs of the times, the geography of Palestine, the practices of government in the Roman Empire, and the views of various parties like the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. We try to piece it all together.

God knows all the details about what happened. It all makes sense in his mind. But we have our piecemeal knowledge. We cannot insist before God that he must always give us enough information in order to “solve” or dis-solve all the difficulties that we perceive. He is God. He does as he pleases (Ps. 115:3). He acts according to the infinitude of his wisdom, a wisdom that he has revealed in a wonderful and spectacular way in the mystery of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. He is wise, but we cannot always see that when we want to have more information than the Gospels provide. We must patiently submit to his wisdom in such cases.

This means that we may not always be able to envision a way to explain the events so that we can see (rather than just believe) that the various Gospel accounts are in harmony. Even if we struggle and work hard and research well and pray ardently, we may still have to say, “I don’t know” or “I can’t yet see how they harmonize.” That is the kind of life we are in. We are finite and do not know all there is to know. Nor do we know all we would like to know or all that we think in our wisdom we should know in order to live most effectively as Christians. We must be “content” (Phil. 4:11) to let God be God and not to insist that we have the privilege of looking over his shoulder in order to check out whether he has it right.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother;

like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord

from this time forth and forevermore. (Psalm 131)

But suppose that after careful work and prayer, we do come up with a harmonization. Usually we can only say that our proposed solution is possible or maybe probable. A harmonization fills in details taken from more than one account. And in so filling in, it adds to what the Bible directly says. But there may be other possible ways that the details from multiple accounts could fit together. We should not pretend in this situation to be more confident than we have a right to be.

The Ultimacy of the Gospels

Any one account within one Gospel is still completely true. We can trust what it says. We know something—in fact, a good deal. But we cannot confidently fill in all the details. As we have observed (chap. 6), the accounts within the Gospels, because they are God’s own word, always remain more ultimate than a hypothetical reconstruction that we undertake to provide on the basis of several Gospels, because our reconstruction brings in speculative elements. God chose to present the accounts as they are in the Gospels. We do not need to go behind them to get “the real truth.” We already have the real truth in each Gospel account. But we have the real truth in the context of remaining mysteries concerning details and concerning implications. That is the way it is in listening to God’s Word, not only in the Gospels, but every biblical text. God invites us to come deeper into his Word and to deepen our fellowship with him. Thus we may summarize:

1. Finiteness

Not having all the answers is part of our situation as finite creatures.

2. Having enough

We do not need all the answers. Scripture is a sufficient infallible guide for faith and life.

3. Mystery

We have knowledge through the Gospels in the context of remaining mystery.

We do not have all the details, nor can we always know definitively how the different accounts in the Gospels fit together.

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Limitations in Apologetics

What do we do in addressing unbelievers? In apologetic dialogues with unbelievers, we must simply do the best we can. We must remain consis-tent with our commitment to being followers of Christ, consisconsis-tent with our understanding of the folly of unbelief, and consistent with the compassion that we should have toward people who are on average no better or worse than we would be apart from the grace of God.

It is not easy. We are tempted either to become unrighteously irritated at the folly of unbelievers or to sympathize so much with their folly that we no longer consider it folly. We compromise with unbelief by sliding past its sinfulness and too easily agreeing. Or we compromise by adopting a pretended neutral approach. When we have a dialogue with people who inhabit an unbelieving context, we have to be discerning about what is folly and what is a grain of truth—perhaps even a truth that we ourselves have not yet acknowledged. Apologetics is hard, and there is much to be said.

With respect to the Gospels and their harmonization, we must avoid expecting too much or promising too much. We cannot guarantee that we can solve all harmonization problems even to our own satisfaction, much less to the satisfaction of an unbeliever. It is part of our finiteness that we have to say, “I do not know.” Sometimes, of course, unbelievers have a specific problem with one or two passages. And sometimes we may be able to help by offering a possible harmonization. But we should admit that our harmoniza-tion is only a possibility. We do not know it to be the definitive explanaharmoniza-tion.

At other times an unbeliever’s objections may be more far-reaching. He wants to “check out” everything and have all problems solved before he seriously considers changing his life. Does this “checking out” include the principle of autonomous thought underneath? Many times it does. Then the checking out can never lead to faith, because the underlying attitude already rebels against submitting to God’s ways. As opportunity offers, we may still explain how we deal with apparent discrepancies. But we may also find an occasion to indicate gently and firmly that the deepest problem lies elsewhere. Unless an unbeliever sees the problems of his own life and his own would-be autonomy as more life-threatening than the alleged problems in the Gospels, on a human plane he is unlikely to warm up to the mystery of the gospel.

Moreover, we should readily acknowledge to unbelievers that we have placed our faith in Christ and have trusted in the Gospels and their accounts because they are God’s word. We have given this trust and this commit-ment before we have “solved all the problems.” That is part of what it means to reject autonomy in thought. We reject the serpent’s invitation to Eve to

judge for herself—independent of God’s word. That is part of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. If this kind of topic comes up for discussion in apologetics—and of course it may not—it is just as well that an unbeliever know something about the cost of discipleship (Luke 14:26–33).

Dialogue with Fellow Christians Who Are Not Sure

Analogous principles apply when we are in dialogue with fellow believers who have doubts. We have already spoken about doubts. They are of many kinds. We should not deal with other people’s doubts in a way that suggests that we are immune from doubts ourselves, including doubts that embody sinful attitudes. We are saved by grace. That is a good principle never to forget, but rather to apply to the whole Christian life, not just its beginning.

We may address doubts about the claims of the Gospels on several levels:

by offering evidence for their being the word of God, by offering possible harmonizations that address alleged discrepancies, and by talking about general principles for addressing difficulties, more or less as we are doing in this book. Much depends on the person we are addressing. People have a variety of struggles and doubts. Some people are more troubled emotionally.

Others are more troubled intellectually. Not all of the doubts are necessarily sinful. Some are trials, in which Satan and his agents assail a believer, but the believer has not yet given in.

It is never wrong to be honest before God about where we are in our struggles. It is sometimes not wise to reveal too much of our struggles to a fellow believer who has little understanding or sympathy. Or a fellow believer may be prone to weakness in this area and fall into temptation himself rather than helping us out. But we can often find help from the body of Christ, which God gave us for our edification. Especially godly pastors, scholars, and wise people from previous generations may help.

Responding to the Bible, as we have already indicated, involves ethical responsibility. We have responsibility before God. So matters of doubt need to be addressed ethically, using the normative, situational, and existential perspectives. Some people may be helped by emphasis on the norms, such as God’s truthfulness and our obligation to trust him. Others may be helped by emphasis on the situation, which includes a modern cultural atmosphere of autonomy, the finiteness of our knowledge, and our vulnerability to temp-tation. Others may be helped by emphasis on the existential aspect. With them we may talk about attitudes of autonomy and pride, or submission and humility, or distress and comfort, or doubt and confidence. All these

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are open to God’s inspection, even when human beings do not fully know what is going on in their hearts.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and dis-cerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Heb. 4:12–13)

This same holy God has compassion and mercy in Christ, even when he looks on the ugliness and unholiness of sinful attitudes. “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

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