Deconstructing Fundamentalism
Week 2: Biblical Inerrancy and The New Testament
This is week 2 of a series I will do every Wednesday for the next several weeks called “Deconstructing Fundamentalism”. This won’t be an exhaustive approach to deconstructing these harmful teachings. Instead they are my reflections on the things that cracked my cognitive dissonance and helped lead me to a healthier Christian spirituality.
Last week we started where my own unraveling began — with biblical inerrancy. We stayed mostly in the Hebrew scriptures and simply let the text be what it actually is instead of what we were told it had to be. If you felt something shift while reading that, you’re not alone. That’s exactly what happened to me.
This week, I want to step into the New Testament.
Because for many of us, even if we were willing to admit there were “some issues” in the Old Testament, the New Testament felt safer. Closer to Jesus. Surely this part would hold up better.
But it doesn’t behave like an inerrant document either.
And I say that gently. As someone who tried for a long time to make it behave that way.
The Birth Narratives
Let’s start with something familiar: Christmas.
If you place Matthew and Luke side by side and read them slowly — not as a blended nativity scene but as two separate stories — they tell very different accounts of how Jesus entered the world.
And one small but important note before we even get into the details: these gospels were originally anonymous. The names were attached later by church tradition. So when I say “the author of Matthew” or “the author of Luke,” I’m acknowledging that we don’t actually know who wrote them. These are theological storytellers shaping meaning for their communities, not modern biographers signing their work.
When you read the birth narrative in the Gospel we call Matthew, Joseph is the central figure. The angel appears to him in a dream. The child’s name is explained to him. The family appears to already be living in Bethlehem. Wise men — magi — arrive from the East following a star. Herod, threatened by the possibility of a rival king, orders the massacre of young boys. The family flees to Egypt. Later, they return and settle in Nazareth.
That story is thick with echoes of Israel’s past. A threatened infant. A paranoid ruler killing children. A flight into and out of Egypt. Even the way the narrative keeps saying, “This happened to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet,” signals what the author is doing. This isn’t just a birth story. It’s a reintroduction of Israel’s story through Jesus.
The author of Matthew is intentionally framing Jesus as a new Moses. Moses survives Pharaoh’s slaughter of infants. Jesus survives Herod’s. Moses leads Israel out of Egypt. Jesus comes out of Egypt. Moses ascends a mountain to deliver the law. Later in this same gospel, Jesus ascends a mountain to reinterpret it. The parallels are not subtle once you see them.
This is theology through storytelling. It’s saying: everything Israel has longed for is being recapitulated here.
Now read the Gospel we call Luke.
Suddenly the camera angle shifts.
Mary is at the center. The angel appears to her, not Joseph. We’re given her voice, her questions, her consent. She sings the Magnificat — a song about the proud being scattered and the hungry being filled. The family lives in Nazareth and travels to Bethlehem because of a census. The visitors aren’t wealthy magi but shepherds — laborers at the margins of society. There’s no massacre. No flight to Egypt. After the birth, they present Jesus at the temple and then return home quietly.
The tone is different. The texture is different.
The author of Luke centers Mary in a way that would have felt radical in a patriarchal world. She isn’t a silent supporting character; she’s prophetic. She speaks. She sings. She reflects on what’s happening. The whole narrative pulses with concern for the poor, for women, for those on the edges of power.
If Matthew’s birth story feels royal and political, Luke’s feels intimate and socially subversive.
For years I was told these were simply two camera angles on the same event. If something didn’t line up, you harmonized it. You built one big composite timeline where the shepherds and the magi somehow arrived at the same time, where the family both lived in Nazareth and Bethlehem, where the flight to Egypt fit neatly between Luke’s temple presentation and return home.
But that instinct — that need to merge them — is part of what inerrancy trains us to do. It tells us difference must be solved.
What if it doesn’t?
What if the author of Matthew and the author of Luke aren’t attempting to give us identical historical blueprints but theological portraits shaped by distinct communities and questions? One emphasizing Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel’s story, the new Moses. The other emphasizing reversal, mercy, and the dignity of those history overlooks, beginning with Mary herself.
If we call these differences “contradictions,” we’re already playing on fundamentalism’s field (more on this later). A contradiction assumes someone set out to produce a flawless, singular narrative and failed. But the early church didn’t collapse these into one official account. They didn’t say, “This one is correct; discard the other.” They preserved both.
Side by side.
Which suggests they didn’t experience the differences as a threat.
That feels important.
The Cross Through Four Lenses
The crucifixion accounts carry the same kind of texture as the birth narratives. They are clearly telling the same story — Jesus arrested, tried, executed under Rome — and yet when you slow down and sit with each one on its own, the tone and details shift in ways that are hard to ignore.
And I don’t mean that in a threatening way. I mean it in an honest way.
Start with the Gospel we call Mark, which most scholars believe was written first. In Mark, everything feels exposed. The disciples scatter. Peter denies. The sky darkens. And from the cross, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” There’s no tidy resolution in that moment. It’s a quotation from Psalm 22, but in Mark’s telling it lands like anguish. Abandonment. Silence. The story ends with fear and confusion at the tomb.
Mark’s Jesus suffers openly. He feels the weight of it.
Now sit with the Gospel we call Matthew. Much of Matthew’s crucifixion narrative overlaps with Mark, but there are dramatic additions. The earth shakes. Rocks split. Tombs open. The temple curtain tears from top to bottom. There’s apocalyptic imagery layered into the scene. The death of Jesus isn’t just tragic; it’s cosmic. Something in the structure of reality is shifting. Matthew’s account feels like history colliding with divine upheaval.
Then read Luke.
In Luke, the tone softens. Jesus is still crucified, still mocked, still executed by empire. But his words are different. Instead of the anguished cry from Psalm 22, Luke gives us, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And at the end, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” The emphasis is trust. Mercy. Composure. Even in death, Jesus is forgiving and entrusting himself to God. The thief beside him is promised paradise. The scene carries sorrow, but it also carries calm.
Now turn to the Gospel we call John.
John’s crucifixion account feels different again. Jesus is not portrayed as overwhelmed. He is deliberate. When soldiers come to arrest him earlier in the story, they fall back at his words. On the cross, instead of crying out in abandonment, he says, “It is finished.” Not “I am finished.” It is finished. There’s a sense of completion, almost sovereignty. John’s Jesus appears in control even in suffering. His death feels like fulfillment rather than defeat.
Same event.
Four tellings.
Different last words. Different emotional tones. Different theological emphases.
If these were courtroom transcripts, we’d start comparing inconsistencies. But that assumes the gospels are trying to function like court transcripts. They aren’t. They are theological testimonies shaped by communities wrestling with what the death of Jesus meant.
The author of Mark presents a suffering Messiah who enters fully into human anguish. The author of Matthew frames the crucifixion as an earth-shattering fulfillment of Israel’s story. The author of Luke emphasizes forgiveness and trust. The author of John portrays Jesus as completing his mission with clarity and authority.
They aren’t competing accounts so much as interpretive lenses.
For a long time, I was taught to harmonize these. To mentally stack the sayings on the cross into one seamless sequence, as though someone had recorded every word in order and we just needed to piece them together properly. But that instinct again comes from inerrancy — the need to make everything line up cleanly so nothing feels unstable.
What if we don’t need to force that?
What if each author is shaping the scene to speak to their community’s questions? What if Mark’s audience needed to know that their suffering didn’t mean God had abandoned them? What if Luke’s community needed to see forgiveness in the face of violence? What if John’s readers needed assurance that Rome did not ultimately win?
When we allow each account to stand on its own, something deeper happens. The cross becomes larger, not smaller. More layered, not less true.
And again, the early church could have standardized the wording. They could have edited the last words into uniformity. They could have chosen one version and discarded the rest.
They didn’t.
They preserved all four.
Not because they were careless. Not because they didn’t notice the differences. But because they understood that truth about something as profound as the death of Jesus might not fit inside a single voice.
Difference wasn’t something to erase.
It was something to hold.
The Resurrection Stories
The resurrection narratives are just as layered.
And this is where many of us feel the most protective. The cross matters. The resurrection feels like everything. So when we notice differences here, it can feel less like curiosity and more like panic.
But instead of defending or dismissing, let’s just look carefully.
In the Gospel we call Mark — in its earliest ending — Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to the tomb. The stone is already rolled away. Inside is a young man in white who tells them Jesus has been raised and that the disciples should go to Galilee. The women flee in fear and say nothing to anyone, because they are afraid.
And that’s where the story stops.
No appearance of Jesus. No reunion scene. Just silence and trembling.
Now read the Gospel we call Matthew.
Here it’s Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary.” There’s an earthquake. An angel descends and rolls the stone away. Guards shake with fear. The women are told to go to Galilee — and on their way, Jesus meets them. They grasp his feet. He speaks to them directly.
The tone feels public. Dramatic. Charged with fulfillment.
In the Gospel we call Luke, a group of women — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others — go to the tomb. They encounter two men in dazzling clothes. They do tell the disciples, but the men dismiss their words as nonsense. Later, Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus, walking alongside two confused disciples who don’t recognize him until he breaks bread. Then he appears in Jerusalem, eats fish in front of them, and opens their minds to understand what has happened.
Luke keeps resurrection anchored in Jerusalem. Recognition happens in shared meals and scripture opened.
Then there’s the Gospel we call John.
Mary Magdalene goes alone at first. She finds the stone moved and runs to tell Peter and the beloved disciple. After they leave, she remains at the tomb weeping. She sees two angels. She turns and sees Jesus but mistakes him for the gardener. Recognition happens when he speaks her name. Later he appears in a locked room. Later still, by the sea in Galilee, where breakfast is cooking over a charcoal fire.
John lingers in intimacy.
If you map these accounts side by side, the details don’t snap into a neat grid. The number of women differs. The number of heavenly figures differs. The geography shifts. The emotional tone shifts. In one telling, fear dominates. In another, recognition unfolds slowly. In another, there is cosmic drama. In another, there is quiet grief turning to joy in a garden.
When I first noticed this, I felt that old reflex rise up — the need to solve it. To diagram it. To explain how each detail could technically fit together if arranged in the right order. But that reflex was shaped by inerrancy. It assumed that the primary goal of these stories was precision.
What if that’s not the goal?
The resurrection isn’t described like a laboratory event. It’s described like something that overwhelmed language. Fear. Confusion. Joy. Doubt. Recognition. These accounts don’t read like polished summaries. They read like communities trying to put words around something that overturned their expectations.
Unlike the crucifixion accounts, where the focus narrows to a single moment, the resurrection stories feel expansive. They stretch outward — into gardens, along dusty roads, inside locked rooms, around breakfast fires. They carry different emotional needs. Mark leaves readers suspended in awe and uncertainty. Matthew emphasizes vindication and authority. Luke highlights embodied presence and understanding. John emphasizes personal encounter.
For the early church, resurrection was simply too big for one story.
It wasn’t just a claim about what happened to a body. It was a claim about what God was doing in the world. About death not having the final word. About shame being overturned. About empire’s verdict not being ultimate.
And here’s something that took me a long time to say out loud: the power of these stories doesn’t collapse if someone wrestles with how they understand resurrection itself.
Some people read these accounts as literal, physical events that unfolded exactly as described. Others read them as theological testimony — language shaped by grief and hope, expressing an encounter with the living presence of Christ that could not be contained in ordinary categories. Some hold both mystery and materiality together. Some sit somewhere in between.
But even if someone reads resurrection through a metaphorical lens — as the early disciples’ experience of Jesus’ life and message continuing beyond execution, as the birth of a movement that refused to die, as hope rising where despair was expected — the beauty and meaning do not disappear.
The empty tomb still proclaims that violence does not get the last word. The garden recognition still whispers that love calls us by name. The Emmaus road still tells us that despair can turn into burning hearts when meaning breaks open in front of us. The breakfast by the sea still insists that restoration is possible after failure.
Whether one sees resurrection as historical miracle, transformative spiritual encounter, or sacred metaphor, the core confession remains the same: what Rome tried to end could not be ended.
And maybe that’s why the early church held all these accounts together. Resurrection wasn’t a single data point to defend. It was an experience so overwhelming that it required poetry, narrative, symbolism, memory, proclamation — all of it at once.
When I stopped demanding that resurrection function as a perfectly aligned historical diagram, I found that it became something deeper. Not smaller. Not weaker. Deeper. It became a story about God’s life refusing to be extinguished. About hope surfacing where death seemed final. About communities choosing to live as if love really is stronger than fear.
And that kind of resurrection — however someone understands it — is still unfolding.
Are These Contradictions?
This is where I want to slow down and gently push back on the word contradiction. Because that word carries more weight than we often realize.
When we call these differences contradictions, we’re already assuming a particular framework… one that says the Bible set out to be a single, airtight, internally seamless document and somehow failed to meet its own standard. But the Bible never actually claims that about itself. The gospels don’t open with, “What follows is a perfectly harmonized biography.” The letters don’t introduce themselves with, “This will form a comprehensive and consistent theological system for all time.”
Those expectations came later.
The doctrine of inerrancy, at least as many of us inherited it, is a modern framework placed onto ancient texts. It assumes the Bible should function like a precision instrument… consistent in detail, uniform in voice, free from tension. But the texts themselves don’t present that kind of self-understanding. They present something else entirely: communities remembering, interpreting, arguing, grieving, proclaiming, and trying to make sense of God in real time.
That’s different.
When we panic over differences, we’re often defending an expectation the text never set. We’re trying to protect a version of the Bible that was shaped more by modern anxieties than by ancient intention.
And that matters because fundamentalism quietly taught us something powerful: that perfection equals authority. That if the Bible isn’t flawless in a modern sense, it can’t be trusted. That certainty is the foundation of faith.
But what if authority doesn’t come from precision?
What if it comes from testimony?
What if it comes from communities who refused to erase tension because the tension itself told the truth about their experience? What if it comes from the courage to preserve multiple voices rather than silencing the ones that complicate the narrative?
We’ve mostly stayed in the gospels here, and we didn’t even have time to wade deeply into the Pauline letters, which carry their own complexities. Letters written to specific communities in specific crises. Moments where Paul sounds expansive and moments where he sounds restrictive. Passages that scholars debate as later additions. The tone shifts, the emphasis shifts, sometimes even the logic shifts depending on the situation he’s addressing.
And again, the letters themselves don’t claim to be a timeless systematic theology textbook. They are correspondence. They are pastoral. They are reactive. They are deeply human.
To label every tension or development as a contradiction assumes stasis… as though faith should never grow, language should never evolve, and communities should never wrestle.
But that’s not how life works. And it’s not how scripture reads.
The Bible presents itself as a collection of writings shaped across centuries by people encountering God within history — within exile and empire, within persecution and hope, within disagreement and devotion. It feels less like a monologue and more like a conversation carried across generations.
And the early church had every opportunity to simplify that conversation. They could have chosen one gospel. They could have edited the letters into a tighter theological package. They could have erased rough edges to avoid confusion.
They didn’t.
They canonized a library.
They canonized a conversation.
That doesn’t feel like fragility. It feels like confidence. It feels like a community secure enough to say, “This is our story — layered, textured, sometimes tense — and we trust that God is not threatened by that.”
Maybe the real issue isn’t whether differences exist.
Maybe the question is whether we can allow them to exist without fear.
Because once we release the assumption that faith requires flawless uniformity, something changes. Scripture becomes less about defending perfection and more about entering into an ongoing story. It becomes less about control and more about participation.
And that kind of authority, rooted in witness rather than precision, feels sturdier than the brittle certainty I once tried so hard to maintain.
Letting the Text Be Human
Seeing the New Testament this way didn’t weaken my faith in Jesus. It made him more real. It reminded me that the story of Christ spread through ordinary people trying to articulate something that had shattered and reshaped their lives. Of course their language would differ. Of course their emphases would shift. They weren’t producing a textbook. They were bearing witness.
And once again I had to face the same question that started this journey: do I need the Bible to be perfect in order for it to be sacred?
Slowly, the answer became no.
The humanity of the text draws me in. It feels less like a brittle artifact that might crack under scrutiny and more like a living library shaped by memory, disagreement, trauma, hope, and faith. It feels alive.
That shift didn’t happen overnight. It took years of unlearning the fear that complexity equals collapse. It took learning how to sit with multiple voices without rushing to harmonize them. It took trusting that God is not threatened by our questions.
I hope that you don’t read or see this as a crisis. Instead I hope you see this for what it is: An invitation.
An invitation to read slower. To let Matthew be Matthew and Luke be Luke. To let Mark’s anguish stand next to John’s confidence. To let Paul develop instead of systematize him.
Fundamentalism told us certainty was the foundation.
What I’m learning is that honesty might be.
Where We’re Headed Next
Up to this point, we’ve mostly been talking about the text itself. But the reason this mattered so much to me wasn’t academic. It was theological. Once inerrancy began to loosen, other beliefs I had inherited started to wobble too.
Next week we’ll begin stepping into some of those.
We’ll start with hell.
Because once you stop reading the Bible as a flat, uniform manual, the theology of eternal conscious torment doesn’t sit as neatly as we were told it does. The verses used to construct it start looking less like a single doctrine and more like a collage of metaphors pulled from different genres, contexts, and centuries.
And for me, that realization literally changed everything.
But for now, maybe it’s enough to sit here. To notice that the New Testament, just like the Hebrew scriptures, was born in community, shaped by perspective, and preserved with its differences intact.
And maybe that’s not something to defend against.
Maybe it’s something to receive.