What about the name of God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
The next big contradiction is with the name of God in Exodus 6. Was the name of God known? In this chapter, I really see no interaction with what is meant by a name. For example, it would not make sense to say that Moses is to say to the Israelites “YHWH has sent me to save you” if they’re going to be left asking “Who is that?”
But how was God’s name known in a unique way by the Israelites in Egypt? Surely, God had been known to provide salvation, as Jacob himself thought when God delivered him from Laban and from his brother Esau. Also, God had done miracles already in the case of the miraculous birth of Isaac and of the provision of sheep for Jacob. We can’t rule out judgment as the flood had come, the languages had been confused at Babel, and Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed.
So what is new? It is that all of these are now combined together and God is acting on another nation in a salvific way to fulfill the covenant promise that had been made to Abraham centuries ago. God wasn’t just working for the good of certain individuals. God was using His power now to rescue a whole people that had never experienced God in this way. Most other gods were thought to be limited to the nations they were in, but now God would prove Himself to be sovereign over even the gods of Egypt.
What about saying the name would now be fully known. This does not mean that they would have a full and complete knowledge of God. We got a far deeper knowledge of God in the incarnation, but even after that, no one will ever have a full knowledge of God. Even in eternity, we will never be able to know God exhaustively for if we could do that, He wouldn’t really be God.
What I take this to mean is a sort of way of saying “Now I’m going to show that I’m the real deal and make my power truly known to them.” It wouldn’t make sense for the writer of the work, or as Kapr would think, an editor, to say that they had perfect theology as it doesn’t take long in the narrative of Exodus before we find the Israelites grumbling and complaining, hardly fitting for a people who have a perfect theology.
So once again, while I appreciate that Kapr does seem to spend a lot of time on certain contradictions instead of just doing the usual activity that many skeptics do which is to present a whole list of 101 Bible contradictions without any digging into them whatsoever, I still do not think Kapr’s case is sufficient. Even if it was, the most that would be needed would be to change a doctrine of inerrancy. Christianity would still be safe entirely as Jesus would have still risen from the dead.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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