Young suggested that we must labor to come to a settled position on attempts to reconcile apparent contradictions in Scripture; however, if while doing so, we find that we cannot come to an absolutely certain conclusion about how to reconcile those seeming contradictions, we should rest content in the fact that we know there is a solution though we have not been able to reach it. 

When addressing the subject of the inerrancy of Scripture in light of difficulties with which we are confronted in Scripture, E.J. Young would teach his students the following truth: “The believer,” he said “will labor to reconcile seemingly contradictory details we encounter in various portions of Scripture. The unbeliever automatically insists that they are errors.” Young suggested that we must labor to come to a settled position on attempts to reconcile apparent contradictions in Scripture; however, if while doing so, we find that we cannot come to an absolutely certain conclusion about how to reconcile those seeming contradictions, we should rest content in the fact that we know there is a solution though we have not been able to reach it. In short, we need to labor to know God’s word as accurately as possible; but, in the end, we need to rest content that we will never know it exhaustively. Young developed this classroom advice in his important work on inerrancy, Thy Word is Truth, where he wrote:

“There are good Christian people who would like to believe in the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, yet who hesitate because they are convinced that there are mistakes in the Scripture. With such people we have great sympathy. In serious Bible study one often encounters difficulties, and the solution of these difficulties is not always readily apparent. Foolish indeed is the man who thinks that he has the answer to every problem in the Bible…If, however, it is rash to profess to solve all of the problems which the study of the Bible brings upon us, it is yet more rash to make the dogmatic assertion that there are actual errors in the Bible.”

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