(1) "If I bear witness of myself, My witness is not true." (John 5:31) (NKJV)
(2) Jesus answered and said to them, "Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true, for I know where I come from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from and where I am going." (John 8:14) (NKJV)

These two verses appear to form a logical contradiction. Evaluating these statements as a purely binary logical propositions, where A means "I bear witness of myself" and B means "My testimony is true", we have   (A->~B^A->B) eq (~Av~B)^(~AvB) eq ~Av(B^~B) eq ~A. Then both of Jesus' statements would be logically true if and only if Jesus is not bearing witness of Himself. But it seems that Jesus is talking about who He is, hence the apparent contradiction.

But first we need to see what Jesus probably meant in each of these situations by "bearing witness of Himself" in the context in which he said it.

Statement (1) occurs in the context of Jesus defending His relationship with the Father (God). A few verses earlier, in the same passage, Jesus said, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what he sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner." (vs. 19). In the verse before statement (1), vs 30, Jesus says, "I can do nothing of Myself."

Jesus is obviously not saying that if He says something about Himself then He is telling a lie.

In that passage Jesus makes many other outstanding claims about who He is and how important it is to believe in Him. So it is not unreasonable to interpret Jesus' statement (1) as:

"If I am making all these claims about myself simply 'of myself' or because it is my own idea - if the Father is not speaking through me in these claims - then what I am saying isn't true." But Jesus has just claimed that everything He says and does is "of the Father". He is saying that the Father is speaking through Him, telling the hearers who Jesus is.

Statement (2) - "Even if I bear witness of Myself, my witness is true" in John 8:14 is in a different context. Here the Pharisees have just said, "You bear witness of yourself. Your witness is not true." The Pharisees have possibly misunderstood Jesus' earlier statement in John 5, and are trying to use it against Him to discredit Him. But the Pharisees have not understood what Jesus meant in John 5:17 about "of Himself". The Pharisees are thinking in terms of the need in Jewish law for more than one witness to establish a fact. Jesus' reply can be interpreted fairly as follows.

"Even if I talk about who I am, what I am saying is true, because I know where I came from and where I am going, but you don't know these things."

Jesus is saying he is better qualified to say who He is than the Pharisees are. He is not saying that He is the only witness to His authority. But He is saying He knows more about Himself than the Pharisees know about Him, and is therefore more qualified to talk about Himself. He says that the Father bears witness to Him. He says that John the Baptist bore witness to Him, the miracles He does bear witness and that even the Father does (John 5:32-37). Thus Jesus is not just some crazy fanatic that has made outrageous claims for himself with no real supporting evidence.

The contradiction thus vanishes because the phrase "If I bear witness of Myself" has different meanings in the different passages. In John 5:31, Jesus is not bearing witness of Himself - or with no Divine inspiration. In John 8:14, Jesus is not the only one saying who He is. There is no contradiction, and one should look to the evidence to consider this all-important question, "Is Jesus really who He claimed to be?"

Michael Fackerell