Paradox and Contradiction in Theology 1032321091, 9781032321097

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
Introduction: At the Limit of Comprehension
1. The Problem of Paradox in Analytic Christology: Some After-Dinner Reflections
2. True Contradictions in Theology
3. What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology?
4. Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology
5. Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology
6. Seeming Is Believing?: An Exploration of Doxastic Responses to the Christological Paradox
7. Dialectical Jesus
8. Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing of Paradoxical Theology
9. Suffering and Flourishing: Ecclesiastes
10. Analogy without Evisceration: Analogical Interpretation as a Solution to Theological Paradox
11. Mystery at the Spandrels
12. Depicting Doctrine: Theological Paradox and Conceptual Iconography
Index

Citation preview

Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology

PARADOX AND CONTRADICTION IN THEOLOGY Edited by Jonathan C. Rutledge

Paradox and Contradiction in Theology

This book explores and expounds upon questions of paradox and contradiction in theology with an emphasis on recent contributions from analytic philosophical theology. It addresses questions such as: What is the place of paradox in theology? Where might different systems of logic (e.g., paraconsistent ones) find a place in theological discourse (e.g., Christology)? What are proper responses to the presence of contradiction(s) in one’s theological theories? Are appeals to analogical language enough to make sense of paradox? Bringing together an impressive line-up of theologians and philosophers, the volume offers a range of fresh perspectives on a central topic. It is valuable reading for scholars of theology and philosophy of religion. Jonathan C. Rutledge is a John and Daria Barry Research Fellow in the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, USA.

Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology

Series editors: James Turner, Thomas McCall and Jordan Wessling Impeccability and Temptation Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will Edited by Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch Forgiveness and Atonement Christ’s Restorative Justice Jonathan C. Rutledge Theological Perspectives on Free Will Compatibility, Christology, and Community Edited by Aku Visala and Olli-Pekka Vainio The Church and the Problem of Divine Hiddenness Derek S. King Theological Perspectives on Free Will Compatibility, Christology, and Community Edited By Aku Visala, Olli-Pekka Vainio Forsaking the Fall Original Sin and the Possibility of a Nonlapsarian Christianity Daniel H. Spencer Identity and Coherence in Christology One Person in Two Natures Paul S. Scott Paradox & Contradiction in Theology Edited by Jonathan C. Rutledge For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studiesin-Analytic-and-Systematic-Theology/book-series/RSAST

Paradox and Contradiction in Theology

Edited by Jonathan C. Rutledge

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Jonathan C. Rutledge; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jonathan C. Rutledge to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781032321097 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032333427 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003319221 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221 Typeset in Sabon by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

To Linda T. Zagzebski and Alan J. Torrance

Contents

Acknowledgments List of Contributors

ix xi

Introduction: At the Limit of Comprehension

1

JONATHAN C. RUTLEDGE

1 The Problem of Paradox in Analytic Christology: Some After-Dinner Reflections

9

SARAH COAKLEY

2 True Contradictions in Theology

17

GREG RESTALL

3 What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology?

33

SEAN C. EBELS-DUGGAN

4 Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology

52

JC BEALL

5 Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology

66

KENNETH BOYCE

6 Seeming Is Believing?: An Exploration of Doxastic Responses to the Christological Paradox

79

JAMES N. ANDERSON

7 Dialectical Jesus

101

ELENA FICARA

8 Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing of Paradoxical Theology ANDREW B. TORRANCE

113

viii Contents 9 Suffering and Flourishing: Ecclesiastes

130

ELEONORE STUMP

10 Analogy without Evisceration: Analogical Interpretation as a Solution to Theological Paradox

154

DAWN ESCHENAUER CHOW

11 Mystery at the Spandrels

173

SPENCER JOHNSTON AND DANIEL MOLTO

12 Depicting Doctrine: Theological Paradox and Conceptual Iconography

191

ERIC YANG

Index

206

Acknowledgments

This volume would not have arisen were it not for Jc Beall’s provocative and important recent work on the relationship between logic and theology. When I first stumbled upon the Journal of Analytic Theology symposium on his early contradictory Christology work, I was immediately captivated by his unshakable commitment to staring hard at the seeming contradiction of Christ—specifically, those various predicates that are both true of Christ and apparently contradictory such as ‘…is mutable’ and ‘…is immutable’—and working out what an affirmation of the truth of such a contradiction might (or might not) entail for theology more broadly. What a pleasant surprise it was, then, when years later (and after getting to know Jc through my time at the University of St Andrews), he approached me with the idea of putting together an edited volume on responses to theological paradoxes more broadly. He, along with the unwaveringly optimistic and kind-hearted Michael DeVito, convinced me that there was an important conversation to be had on these topics, and this volume is the result. I must also highlight that my greatest intellectual debt is without a doubt owed to two people, both of whom satisfy the predicate ‘…is an advisor greater than which none is possible’: namely, my two advisors, Linda Zagzebski and Alan Torrance. Among many things, Linda taught me the importance of reading widely inside and outside of philosophy to fuel the development of disciplinary crosspollination. There aren’t many people who take such advice and pick up recent work on paraconsistent logics, so I doubt she foresaw this book emerging from the wake of that advice. Even so, I am grateful for that encouragement as working on this topic has stretched me in many and various ways. One of Alan’s greatest strengths, in my eyes, has always been his commitment to charitable listening. When I was first at St Andrews, having completed my degree in analytic philosophy and preparing for another Ph.D. in theology, I found it arduous to translate the world of theology and the world of philosophy back and forth (to say the least). I owe so much to Alan, however, for hours of listening, interpreting, and reimagining this translation work with me. Were it not for his encouragement and guidance, far more of the theological world would have remained beyond my grasp, no doubt.

x Acknowledgments Several friends and colleagues deserve mention as well for their role in this book’s development, not least those who kindly agreed to contribute to this endeavor. For it is one thing to ask someone to write on a topic whose rules obey the typical standards of intelligibility, but it is wholly another thing to ask someone to offer their reflections on paradoxes and the possibility of true contradictions. I am beyond fortunate to have friends who are willing to subject themselves to such difficult work on my behalf and beg their pardon for talking them into it. In addition to the contributors, I would like to thank Josh Barthuly, Dennis Bray, Laura Frances Callahan, Brendan Case, Joshua Cockayne, Aaron Cotnoir, Oliver Crisp, Brian Cutter, Steve Evans, Andy Everhart, Amber Griffioen, Layne Hancock, Jeff Hanson, Jane Heath, Grace Hibshman, Derek King, T. J. Lang, Joanna Leidenhag, Dave Lincicum, Christa McKirland, Cris Mihut, Madhavi Nevader, Kevin Nordby, Stephanie Nordby, Katie O’Dell, Meghan Page, Tim Pawl, Mike Rea, Philip-Neri Reese, Katherine Schuessler, Spencer Smith, Mack Sullivan, Alli Thornton, Koert Verhagen, Johnny Waldrop, and Shlomo Zuckier for sharing their wisdom and—just as important for someone like me—their ears with me as I was working through these topics. Additionally, I count myself as extremely blessed to have colleagues with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard who encourage me in my work, as well as personally, each day I enter the office. After living in bonnie Scotland for five years and stopping through the philosophy of religion Mecca that is South Bend, Indiana, one might expect a regression to the mean to be inevitable when it comes to the quality of one’s work friends and environment. To the contrary, my time thus far at Harvard has been rife with academic enrichment and enjoyment that is due entirely to the quality of my colleagues and the outstanding community that Tyler VanderWeele, the program director, has cultivated. Thanks are also due to my parents and in-laws: Curtis & Debbie Rutledge and Dan & Kathleen Naberhaus. Their constant support, reassurance, and love for me and our family have come to be, in many ways, a foundation that I could never do without. It means more to me than this little note can communicate, but, still, thank you. Finally, I simply cannot quantify the debt owed to my family—Bethany, Caspian, Theodore, and Lillian—for the time they have given me each day to delve into the world of strange philosophical and theological ideas. Indeed, it is a paradox in many ways why I should spend so much time at work and away from those people who I hold most dear. Thank y’all for what you’ve sacrificed for me to be able to do what I do. I love you more than words can say. Jonathan Rutledge Cambridge, MA January 3, 2023

Contributors

James N. Anderson is the Carl W. McMurray Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, and an ordained minister in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Jc Beall holds The O’Neill Family Chair in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Beall is a Global Fellow at the University of St Andrews, and an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. Kenneth Boyce is an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri. He specializes in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion, and has an area of competence in philosophy of science. Dawn Eschenauer Chow is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the College of DuPage, USA, and previously held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. Sarah Coakley was Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge until 2018. Since then she has been an Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews and Visiting Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University. She is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, a member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sean C. Ebels-Duggan is a Lecturer in philosophy at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, USA, whose primary research focus is logic and philosophy of mathematics. Elena Ficara is Associate Professor at the University of Paderborn. In 2018– 2019 she was Feodor Lynen Research Fellow at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Spencer Johnston is a College Teaching Associate at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. Daniel Molto is a Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sussex. Greg Restall is Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews.

xii Contributors Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University. She is also Honorary Professor at Wuhan University, the Logos Institute and School of Divinity at St Andrews, and York University. She is also a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University. Andrew B. Torrance is a Senior Lecturer in theology at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account to Human Transformation in Relationships with God (T&T Clark), Accountability to God (Oxford University Press), and co-author with Alan Torrance of Beyond Immanence: The Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and Barth (Eerdmans). Eric Yang is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University.

Introduction At the Limit of Comprehension Jonathan C. Rutledge

Mystery, Paradox, and Contradiction One recent novel by Susanna Clarke (2020)—entitled Piranesi after the main character—opens with the protagonist narrating his many and various attempts to make sense out of the strange, labyrinthine world that he inhabits. His world consists of a series of contiguous chambers each of which contains grand statues, undergoes periodical flooding, and, in some rare cases, houses the unexplained skeletal remains of creatures the reader inevitably assumes must have once been human beings. There is no obvious way out of the labyrinth, and, for all the reader can ascertain, it embodies a sort of magical realism—it is charged with the grandeur of a benevolent higher power—that Piranesi himself praises religiously whenever he, upon venturing into new rooms or corridors, is greeted by the House with a new and glorious gift (i.e., discovery). What the reader is not told at this stage is anything in particular about Piranesi’s past life. We can see that Piranesi is staunchly committed to some form or other of scientific empiricism, albeit tinged with a hefty dose of humbly acknowledged ignorance. But how did he come to embody such a mindset, especially while in such a bizarre, temple-like world? Does he have a family? He is clearly educated, but where in such a place could one expect to find a reasonable education? Indeed, the very fact that no answers are given to such questions, along with the painfully obvious tragedy that Piranesi knows nothing about them himself, creates a chilling mystery that cleverly unfolds to the novel’s end. Piranesi’s world is baffling, and it is so largely because it is entirely foreign, thoroughly unfamiliar to the world—and rules governing the world—that we take ourselves to know. Indeed, following the threads of the mystery stretches one’s cognitive and imaginative capacities well beyond their normal modes of operation. For many of us approaching the study of God, we are struck similarly with a sense of befuddlement when confronted by the theological realm. After all, one of the most gripping aspects of theology is the prevalence of mystery: unanswered questions, even unanswerable ones. Human beings are incurably curious creatures, and the hope that one might unravel the mystery, that one DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-1

2  Jonathan C. Rutledge might follow the breadcrumbs to a satisfying resolution, propels us to investigate. And when the source of that mystery is infinite, incomprehensible to any created mind, the potential to mine endlessly its depths draws the most inquisitive of us in for a lifetime of contemplation. One such picture of mystery—i.e., of the continuous revelation of new propositions to feed our desire for knowledge and understanding—certainly finds a place in theology. When the apostle Paul speaks of the mystērion that has been revealed to him (cf. Ephesians 3), he clearly has this notion in mind.1 And, indeed, many of the ways of God are mysterious in just this sense: namely, that unless God reveals his plans and motives to us—as a divine author of sorts of the world in which we find ourselves—we have no alternative way of coming to know them. Even so, such mysteries are in principle knowable, for were they not knowable, even God would seem unable to reveal them. Yet, there are some mysteries that may resist understanding even after they’ve been revealed. Not only are they unexpected, but they also seem absurd; even contradictory. What happens, then, when one is confronted with such a mystery, that is, what we often call ‘paradox’? ‘Paradox’ is commonly defined as an apparent contradiction. That is to say, the definition of ‘paradox’ comes in two parts: first, it is a sort of appearance. It is about the way things appear to us, independent of how they actually are. And, second, it is an appearance of contradiction. But the notion of a contradiction is not itself entirely perspicuous in all contexts. To get a better understanding of paradox, then, we would do well to answer the question, “What is a contradiction, and what is it about the appearance of contradiction that creates in us a sense of discomfort (not merely intellectual, but also, peculiarly emotional) characteristic of paradox?” ‘Contradiction’ is used in many ways, of course. Sometimes we are accused of acting in contradictory ways—such as when I tell my children to be sure to clean their room while resting my feet on a table I’ve created out of my absurd pile of academic texts. But what accounts for the claim of contradictoriness here is an unfair double standard I have set in place—e.g., of requiring cleanliness for my children and permitting its absence for myself. This is, at best, a very loose sense of ‘contradiction’. We can do better. In analytic philosophy, the notion of a contradiction has been regimented by representing its logical form: a contradiction is any sentence of the form ‘A & ¬A’ (where ‘A’ is a variable ranging over declarative sentences; that is, sentences that can be true or false).2 In other words, whether something is contradictory is a matter of its logical form, and anything other than a sentence that is said to be contradictory—such as a contradictory action or object—will be contradictory in a derivative sense: namely, by being such that a sentence of the form ‘A & ¬A’ is true of it. Let us, then, come full circle back to the notion of paradox, which you’ll recall was defined as an apparent contradiction. In light of the above logical regimentation of a contradiction, a paradox is this: it is an appearance of something in such a way that a sentence of the form ‘A & ¬A’ seems true of it. Some paradoxes are

Introduction 3 visual, such as the well-known Mueller-Lyer illusion in which two lines of equal length appear to be of different lengths to the naked eye when arrow-tip lines are added to them while reaching in opposite directions (see Figure 0.1):

Figure 0.1 

Try as one might, no amount of staring at this illusion removes the appearance that the two lines are different lengths—and this is true even though, as we all know, the lines are identical in length. Because of its appearance, it has an ineliminably paradoxical character. Strictly speaking, though, there is nothing contradictory about such illusions. If someone asks, “Is the Mueller-Lyer a contradictory image?”, the answer is unambiguously, “No”. There is no real contradiction in the image, for the lines are the same length. That is, there’s nothing contradictory in the lines themselves. It is just that there’s something about our perceptual equipment that makes it such that we cannot get the way the lines appear to us to match with how we know they are in reality. Many people think paradoxes are always like the Mueller-Lyer here. That is, they think that no matter how strongly something appears to be contradictory in the real world (whether visually or conceptually), the appearances are always misleading. That is, whatever apparent contradiction we perceive, they think it can be resolved or explained, in principle, by learning more about it. Perhaps we can measure it with a ruler and see that our senses have been deceived. Perhaps we can distinguish senses in which a sentence is true in a first sense but false in a second such that the initial appearance of contradiction is removed. Whatever the procedure for resolving the paradox, however, the one thing we can always count on is that there is no such thing as a true contradiction at bottom. On the Function of Logic and the Possibility of True Contradictions Developments in the philosophy of logic, more recently, have called this idea—i.e., the idea that there are no true contradictions—into question. How one evaluates these developments—as instances of progress or spirals down the rabbit hole of absurdity—hinges, in part, on what one takes logic to be. So, perhaps, a good way to explain this recent development is to take a step back and begin with a primer on what logic is and what it is supposed to do. One helpful way to conceive of formal systems of logic is to treat them as interpreted languages. They include both a syntax3 and a semantics4 that provide an avenue by which someone might communicate or deliberate. Moreover, just as some languages are inadequate to perfectly communicate a given phenomenon— think, for instance, of attempts to describe, in common English, either the experience of viewing a beautiful sunset or the precise color pallet to use in

4  Jonathan C. Rutledge decorating one’s room as an homage to Monet’s The Water Lilies—so different logical systems can be inadequate to represent a given reality. While the examples just given of sunsets and The Water Lilies are probably not incommunicable in principle,5 other phenomena present an obstacle to how one understands the language of ‘truth’ whether in a natural language or a system of logic. We consider two such phenomena here: (i) truth-value gaps—i.e., propositions that are neither true nor false but could be and (ii) truth-value gluts (i.e., propositions that are both true and false).6 To see why someone might deny that every proposition is either true or false (i.e., why someone might allow for truth-value gaps in a logic) consider the familiar sorites paradox. Suppose you are entertaining whether some particular person is bald even though they have but one hair on their head. Is this one, albeit robust, hair sufficient to render it false that they are bald? Most people will think not, even if extremists of the bald-equals-no-hairwhatsoever variety are inevitable. But let us set the extremists aside for the moment and suppose that another person with 30 hairs (and no more)— i.e., a wee patch of fertile ground from which hair faithfully springs— has the good fortune to fall under our baldness-locating scrutiny. Is this patch sufficient to render it false that they are bald? Even without the extremists, disagreement is bound to proliferate. What this illustrates is that, plausibly, there is no such thing as a precise boundary concerning the number of hairs that it takes to move from being bald to non-bald. That is, there are cases that are vague, part of the fringe, in which it seems neither true nor false that the person in question is bald.7 Some readers may be tempted to dismiss the import of such fuzziness or vagueness for our ordinary lives. A difficulty with this response, of course, is that vague predicates are not exactly rare phenomena. And while it might not seem important whether there is a firm cutoff that determines if someone is bald, that question would certainly matter to anyone who was applying for a Bald Students scholarship program promising full funding to the college of the recipient’s choice. The fact is that many of our practical, everyday decisions and actions involve descriptions of the world that depend on vague ways of carving it up. Thus, a system of logic that can offer guidance on how to reason about what to think or do when something is neither true nor false, neither bald nor non-bald, could be very helpful.8 That is to say, the presence of vague predicates in natural languages motivates the utility of systems of logic in which truth-value gaps are permitted. In addition to truth-value gaps such as those involving vague predicates, some logicians have posited that there may be true contradictions, i.e., truthvalue gluts.9 According to this position, some propositions can be both true and false without entailing that every proposition (and its negation) is also true. In classical logic, according to which all propositions are either true or false (and never both), it is easy to derive anything from a contradiction. Once one has a contradiction in the given, one simply assumes the opposite of what one wants to prove in a subproof (as in a reductio), reiterates that

Introduction 5 contradiction within the lines of the subproof, and exits the subproof with a negation introduction. In a typical natural deduction system, the proof looks like the below-given table: 1.

A & ¬A

Given

2.

B

Assume for Reductio

3.

A

&-Elimination (1)

4.

¬A

&-Elimination (1)

5.

⊥

Contradiction (3, 4)

6.

¬B

¬-introduction (2–5)

Notice that in the above proof, we could have begun with anything at line 2. For instance, we could have inserted ‘¬B’ instead of ‘B’ at line 2 and derived ‘B’ at line 6.10 That is, from the same contradiction, we can derive any proposition as well as its negation if the rules of classical logic are in play. From this, then, it (classically) follows that everything is true: apples are oranges, my favorite color is periwinkle, God exists, the moon is made out of green cheese, and so on and so on. But, of course, we simply cannot have such a situation, for if everything is true, then nothing is informative. If every sentence is true (and false), then all explanation will have fallen apart. And if explanation is rendered impossible by a theory-specific logic, then that very system has undermined itself. What good, after all, is a theory-specific logic that precludes explanation? This logical phenomenon—ex contradiction quodlibet—accounts for why so many people have been allergic to the idea that there might be true contradictions. On classical logic, true contradictions render a theory explanatorily useless, and if one assumes that classical logic governs all true theories, then contradictions in any part of reality explode our explanatory resources into futility. So, how might someone alter the rules of classical logic to avoid this issue? One possibility is to remove derivation rules from the system (e.g., modus ponens/tollens) that would otherwise make the inference to triviality valid. And this is eminently reasonable for the proponent of a glutty logic, for on such an account, they envision a larger space of possible truth-values than those imagined by the proponent of classical logic: namely, a space that includes truth, falsity, and both. Such an increase in the space of possible truthvalue assignments entails an increase in potential counterexamples to any classically valid inference; thus, it is hardly surprising that they’d deny the validity of some classically-sanctioned derivations.11 One might reasonably ask, of course, “Is there any need to accommodate the possibility of true contradictions (i.e., gluts)?” Presumably there would be a need to allow for the possibility of gluts only if there were plausible examples of truth-value gluts that one encounters in either ordinary language or reality itself.

6  Jonathan C. Rutledge In recent work at the convergence of philosophical logic and theology, Jc Beall has argued that there are, in fact, true bona fide contradictions in Christian doctrine. That is to say, within the theological tradition, Beall thinks Christian theology is committed to the truth (and falsity) of certain propositions. Take, for example, the classic Chalcedonian Christology according to which both of the following claims are true: 1 Christ is mutable. 2 Christ is immutable. If both (1) and (2) are true—i.e., if Christ is both mutable and immutable—then we seem to be committed to a contradiction, for at the level of the logic, (1) and (2) compose, when conjoined, a sentence of the form ‘A & ¬A’. In other words, according to Beall, assenting to both (1) and (2) means affirming that Christ both is mutable and is not mutable, in the same respect, at the same time, etc.12 This contradiction—and the many others that follow from Christ’s divine and human natures—presents what has been called the fundamental problem of Christology: that is, the problem of how it is defensible to affirm such a blatantly contradictory claim. For many theorists, such contradictions cannot be tolerated, even in the theological realm where the failure of our cognitive reach would be entirely fitting. And as a result of this intolerance, theorists have devised many routes to consistentizing (i.e., making consistent) the apparently contradictory claims found in (1) and (2). Pawl (2016), for instance, suggests that when we attend to the satisfaction conditions of predicates such as ‘…is immutable’, we can see that in the conciliar contexts, such predicates are true of something whenever it has a nature that cannot change. And, likewise, the predicate ‘…is mutable’ is true of something whenever it has a nature that can change. Since Christ has two natures—viz., a divine and a human nature— Pawl can affirm the truth of both (1) and (2) without committing to the truth of an actual contradiction. That is, once one sees what it means for Jesus to be (im)mutable—to have a nature that can(not) change—the appearance of contradiction entirely dissolves.13 Whatever one’s assessment of consistentizing strategies such as Pawl’s, Beall is unimpressed. For, on his view, such consistentizing strategies would be motivated only if we had an independent reason to think that the apparently contradictory Christological claims represented an underlying theological impossibility. Given that gluts cannot be ruled out by logic, however, Beall’s solution to the fundamental problem of Christology is to deny that it is a problem. Instead, he treats it as a feature and encourages us to embrace the contradiction as true rather than to tinker with the claims being made in (1) and (2) to avoid any real contradiction underneath. The problem, he thinks, is not in logic itself, but rather, in the assumption that contradictions cannot be true without trivializing all of theology. That assumption belongs,

Introduction 7 thinks Beall, to the received version of classical logic; i.e., an understanding of logic with which neither theology nor any of our true theories should be burdened without independent argument.14 Looking Ahead It is not the purpose of this introduction to defend the plausibility (or otherwise) of including true contradictions in theology. Neither is it the purpose of this introduction to defend the plausibility (or otherwise) of truth-value gaps in theology. For this volume, on the whole, is not primarily about gaps and gluts, even if they play a significant role in recent discussions. Rather, this volume is about the place and nature of the various mysteries of theology and of faith. While many of the questions surrounding these mysteries indeed involve discussions of truth, falsity, gaps, and gluts, others involve us in questions of even more obvious practical significance. How might one distinguish between those paradoxes that are ultimately non-contradictory—like the Mueller-Lyer—from those for which, no matter how one stretches one’s language, apparent contradiction seems inescapable? When faced with such recalcitrant appearances of contradiction, what should we say? Is God really best described as contradictory? Is contradiction fundamental to the life of God or should we opt for a more apophatic understanding of divine reality? What about doctrines of analogy according to which all language is at best only analogically true of God? Do such approaches to mystery permit us to write off contradictions as mere reflections of our own creaturely linguistic and epistemic limitations? Is it possible that the very process of wrestling with such theological paradoxes might help us understand what it is to be human, even to flourish as a human? All of these questions and more will be tackled in the pages that come in the hopes that a fuller understanding of the place of mystery, paradox, and contradiction in theology might emerge, even if we gaze upon them as if through a glass darkly.15 Notes 1 What was revealed to him was the fact that the Gentiles would be grafted into a covenant, something that was not expected prior to the revelation. 2 There are various further technical specifications one might wish to give to the kinds of sentences that are relevant here, but enough has been specified to get the relevant ideas rolling. 3 Logical operators such as ‘&’, ‘∨’, ‘¬’, and ‘→’ can be used to create complex sentences out of the atomic sentences represented by uppercase Roman letters (e.g., if ‘A’ is a sentence and ‘B’ is a sentence, then both ‘¬A’ and ‘A & B’ are sentences, and so on for each operator). 4 ‘A & B’ is true iff A is true and B is true; ‘A ∨ B’ is true iff A is true or B is true; ‘¬A’ is true iff A is false; ‘A → B’ is true iff A is false or B is true. 5 For instance, if you’re having trouble describing the color pallet you have in mind to your spouse, you can always find something that exactly matches the colors you are attempting to describe (e.g., a jpg of The Water Lilies).

8  Jonathan C. Rutledge 6 The terminology of a ‘truth-value glut’ derives from Fine (1975). 7 Clearly, this is not anything like a fully satisfactory analysis of sorites paradoxes. That is beyond the scope of this introduction. However, for interested readers, see Bergmann (2008), Bacon (2018), and Fine (2020). 8 See Bergmann (2008, 7–10) for several relevant fuzzy technologies. 9 For helpful introductions to non-classical approaches to logic, see Beall and Logan (2017) or Priest (2008). 10 Technically, ‘¬ ¬B’ would be written as line 6 in this case. One would then use a double-negation rule to simplify ‘¬ ¬B’ to its equivalent: namely ‘B’. 11 For one such counterexample, notice that according to classical logic, modus ponens (i.e., A; A → B ⊢ B) is valid. If one allows gluts, however, a counterexample immediately arises. Just let ‘A’ be both true and false while ‘B’ is just false. This gets both ‘A’ and ‘A → B’ to come out true—i.e., since the former is at least true and the conditional’s antecedent is at least false (though, admittedly, also true)—while the conclusion, ‘B’, comes out as just false. 12 Technical point: for Beall (2021), the claim that Christ is immutable entails that it is false that Christ is mutable, and it is with this latter claim that the contradiction is to be found. While many readers might be inclined to think both claims—viz., that Christ is immutable and that it is not the case that Christ is mutable—amount to essentially the same thing, some theorists, such as Timothy Pawl, would demur. 13 Though Beall (2021) finds much to like in Pawl’s project, he finds it wanting because there seems to be a shift of subject going on in Pawl’s account. That is, rather than focusing on the person of Christ, Pawl has us focus on the natures when affirming or denying the conciliar pronouncements. 14 Beall (2021) points out that classical logic was developed largely as a way to represent arithmetic and other forms of classical mathematics. Theories such as these, then, can plausibly be argued to need to follow classical logic, but it doesn’t follow from this that all theories share that feature. 15 Thanks are due to Dale Parker, Matthew Rose, John William Waldrop, and Alfredo Watkins for their comments on an earlier version of this essay.

Bibliography Bacon, Andrew. 2018. Vagueness and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beall, Jc. 2021. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beall, Jc, and Shay Allen Logan. 2017. Logic: The Basics. New York: Routledge. Bergmann, Merrie. 2008. An Introduction to Many-Valued and Fuzzy Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clarke, Susanna. 2020. Piranesi. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing. Fine, Kit. 1975. “Vagueness, Truth and Logic.” Synthese 30: 265–300.  . 2020. Vagueness: A Global Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pawl, Timothy. 2016. In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Priest, Graham. 2008. An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: from If to Is. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williamson, Timothy. 1994. Vagueness. London: Routledge.

1

The Problem of Paradox in Analytic Christology Some After-Dinner Reflections Sarah Coakley

The following after-dinner speech was delivered by Sarah Coakley at the Logos Conference, which was held at the University of St Andrews on June 3, 2017. The purpose of this address, as originally prompted by then director of the Logos Institute Alan Torrance, was to ask pointed, provocative questions with the hope that other scholars present at the dinner might be moved to serious and direct dialogue concerning those things about which they disagreed. The speech precedes the other papers in this volume because it anticipates a wide array of the points of contention that have risen to primacy in recent debates in the philosophy of religion and philosophy of logic. Reading this brief address provides a conceptual map of sorts that shows how various topics featured in later chapters—e.g., biblical interpretation, historical theology, the study of paradox and contradiction, analytic philosophical method, etc.— relate to each other, and it nicely sets before us many of the most fundamental conceptual obstacles with which we must deal if we, as philosophers and theologians, are to offer an accurate, even if paradoxical, articulation of the tenets of the Christian faith. (Jonathan C. Rutledge, editor)

I am most grateful to Alan Torrance for the honor of this invitation to address you in this “after dinner” mode, and I know I speak for us all in expressing our gratitude to him more generally for all the work that has gone into the organization of this event, and for the splendid hospitality shown to us at this Logos conference. When Alan first asked me to do this slot, I had it in mind to make just one hilarious joke (such as is suitable to the after-dinner genre), and leave it at that—the drinking and general conviviality could then happily go on. The problem was that the serious matter of the “hypostatic union” did not seem to me to lend itself obviously to the limerick, or the clerihew, or other standard gimmick traditionally useful for this slot; and moreover, it gradually became obvious that actually Alan wanted a bit more from me, anyway. But fear not, however, this will be a short reflection. In fact, I have taken it as my “brief” merely to throw down some gauntlets in what follows in a way which may generate further discussion, and get to the heart of what we’re DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-2

10  Sarah Coakley about in this conference in trying to pull exegetical, systematic, and philosophical work together in relation to the incarnation. Only three points follow, then, but they are contrapuntally related: the first historical, the second philosophical, the third and last systematic—albeit in the suitably chastened and philosophical style of “analytic theology”. But in preparation for these points, let me provide an introductory reminiscence. Those of us over a certain age in Britain can remember the furor produced by the publication of a book edited by John Hick called The Myth of God Incarnate (in 1977).1 In retrospect, this collection represented a sort of nadir of a particular kind of British theological liberalism, and for me in particular (a convinced liberal too at the time) it ultimately had a kind of purgative effect, as I reflected a little later on the philosophical lessons of it.2 (I don’t, however, say this from the perspective of either an assumed, or righteous, “orthodoxy”; nor have I completely abandoned the project of “liberalism”, in what I regard as its best sense of intentional, and spiritually motivated, open-mindedness.) But what the publication of this book brought into the stark light of day were two fundamental objections beloved of modernist liberals against classical incarnationalism, both of which turned out on closer inspection to be distracting “category mistakes”. The first was the supposition that whatever the historical-critical work of the New Testament scholars could provide, it could never work up enough evidence to justify the claims of classic incarnational Christology that Jesus was God. (Stephen Evans has already had a good go at this mistakenly parsed problem,3 and I largely agree with his position; but I’m a tad worried that a ghost of this kind of Lockean evidentialism still hangs around the world of New Testament scholarship, especially in Britain, and also in some systematic reflections on incarnational Christology more generally.) Second, The Myth of God Incarnate also rehearsed and exposed the other great modernistic objection to incarnationalism, viz., that it is intrinsically and logically “incoherent”, that—to put it in the words of Hick himself—it is approximately equivalent to saying that “a circle is a square”.4 (This has come to be called “The Fundamental Problem” in more recent analytic Christology.5) Not only does this objection assume that we know in advance what “divinity” and “humanity” connote, of course, but it mistakenly perceives these two sets of characteristics as necessarily in competition. More of that anon. Now we’ve come a long way since then as biblical and theological and philosophical scholars, but arguably not far enough. Indeed, my fear is that, despite ourselves, we are still somewhat haunted by these two modernistic ghosts, as I’ll explain in the following. The immediate popular riposte volume to The Myth of God Incarnate, entitled The Truth of God Incarnate,6 contributed more heat than light to the debate and presented a jumble of conservative responses which by no means consistently nailed the underlying philosophical problems. Later, in the more stringent philosophical climes of Notre Dame, Thomas V. Morris produced another riposte, The Logic of God Incarnate (1986),7 which was to

The Problem of Paradox in Analytic Christology  11 set the (so-called) “abstract” tone for much succeeding analytic philosophy of religion in defense of the doctrine of the incarnation according to a “twominds” model. Maurice Wiles (one of the chief Myth of God Incarnate contributors), reviewing Morris in the Journal of Theological Studies (which he edited at the time), could scarcely bear to give the book even one paragraph of comment, and noted with uncharacteristic snideness that Morris’s inability to spell “Apollinarianism” correctly throughout the book was in itself a sign of his disabling “literalism” and “unhistorical” abstraction from the really pressing issues.8 The battle lines were drawn: analytic Christology became, at least for the meantime, the scourge of New Testament scholars and theological systematicians alike. Now with this seemingly now remote—yet still somewhat relevant— backcloth in mind, let me press my three brief after-dinner comments for this illustrious gathering. 1.1  Historical Issues Let me put this point boldly, even provocatively. As we come together as exegetes, theologians, and analytic philosophers to learn from each other and think afresh about the problems of incarnationalism, is there sometimes still a danger for the exegetes, first, in thinking that their work can deliver all the goods, that is, that they can precisely provide all the “evidences” that inform and sustain incarnational faith? It is characteristic, I fear, of a certain kind of exegetical discussion, even now (and we have witnessed this here in this conference), to assume that metaphysical reflections on the issue of incarnation are somehow “abstract”, or obfuscating, philosophical speculations about the nature of God or Christ, as if we could well do without these and simply substitute a biblically informed “narrative” theology of some sort. I am bound to ask: does the historic project of Adolf von Harnack even now still haunt the New Testament stage in some new form here? Is there, in other words, a still-lurking presumption among the exegetes that either a historical reconstruction of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and teaching and/or an account of the more richly varied early New Testament responses to him, can do the christological trick better than the supposed complications of later “Greek” philosophical thinking? And this is a particularly pressing question because, in contrast to the period of The Myth of God Incarnate, most contemporary New Testament scholars are now quite at ease with the idea of an “early high Christology”9 in the New Testament, and therefore tend to assume the obviousness of a Nicaean, as opposed to an Arian, outcome to the fourth-century debates.10 And yet that outcome is, it seems to me, by no means obvious simply by taking exegetical or historical-critical thought.11 Not only are certain very basic philosophical decisions and choices at stake in the matter of incarnation—notably about the presumed nature of God and how God relates to the world (it surely cannot be that it is a matter of indifference whether God is “simple” or “atemporal”, for instance?); but there is

12  Sarah Coakley also the underlying epistemological issue about how we claim to know what we say we know about Jesus, his “Father” and the Spirit (and indeed about how such claims might be appropriately disconfirmed). In other words, even though I personally take it as read that there is a duty for systematic (or “analytic”) theology to reflect attentively to the deliverances of New Testament scholarship when doing Christology (a presumption that certainly has not always been shared by all theologians),12 I am not at all certain that that compliment is reciprocated. Is there still a presumption abroad, then, “evidentialist” in propulsion or not, that New Testament work can in principle supply all the christological goods, and leave the philosophers out of it? This should certainly be at least a point of vital contestation, and a matter to be clarified most importantly between the academic “guilds”. 1.2  Philosophical Issues Here, I can afford to be sharper still, since I am criticizing my own guild. Issues of philosophical coherence obviously grip the concerns of philosophers and analytic theologians more than they do the exegetes, and the concern to fight off the “square/circle” jibe in Christology has rightly animated a good deal of analytic work on incarnationalism from Thomas Morris onwards. But there have also been other problems—two, in particular, that I can think of (which are ironically related in their basic propulsion). This basic propulsion lies in the continuing unease in analytic circles about the prima facie logical incompatibility of the lists of characteristics of divinity, and the list of characteristics of humanity, and the problem therefore of how to conjoin them “hypostatically” in any account of the incarnation; or whether indeed to dispense with some of the divine ones in an (alternative) “kenotic” account of incarnation. The first variant here has been the tendency to concoct new thought experiments in analytic Christology, such as in the distinctly uneasy “divided mind” model, that are unhappily fed by the idea of these two sets of characteristics competing, so to speak, for the same space. This can result in weird statements from scholars such as Richard Swinburne, for instance (e.g., in his The Christian God), that “the Freudian account [of the divided mind] helps us to see the logical possibility of an individual for good reason with conscious intention keeping a lesser belief system separate from his main belief system, and simultaneously doing different actions guided by different set of beliefs of which he is consciously aware”.13 What is missing here, in comparison (for instance) with someone as sophisticated in expounding developed conciliar Christology as Thomas Aquinas, is the idea of a wholly transcendent divine entity, the “supposit” of the Son, uniquely taking on—“assuming”— humanity in a form which is necessarily different in one crucial respect from other human persons (because in this instance the human body and soul and conjoined to a “higher” entity, the Logos), but in a way that in no sense competes, logically, with that humanity because it is of a completely different

The Problem of Paradox in Analytic Christology  13 order.14 Does this way of parsing incarnation involve seemingly discomforting paradoxical thinking of some sort? It seems so, and I’ll come back to that; and this is doubtless, underlyingly, what leads unsympathetic exponents such as Richard Cross to insist that really Thomas is just a Monophysite in disguise, or else simply confused and inconsistent.15 But, overall, and up till now (note), it has tended to be assumed by analytic thinkers that any appeal to “paradox” must be avoided at all costs. And hence the alternative and second major evasion tactic, that of “kenosis”, often rendered in analytic discussion as an actual divestment of all the divine characteristics which are incompatible with the human at the moment of incarnation. (I remember long debates with Steve Davies during Stephen Evans’s project on Exploring Kenotic Christology, as to whether Davies had not mistakenly and unconsciously construed John 1:14—“the Word became flesh”—as the Word “turned into flesh”.16) Of course, the very ontological mechanics of kenosis, thus understood, come with enormous extra metaphysical costs, and the presumptions involved are in no way how the patristic and scholastic eras read Philippians 2.17 But the contemporary analytic assumption seems to be that these difficulties are preferable to the recourse to any acknowledged paradox. 1.3  Systematic Conclusions You will see by now where this brief argument has been leading me. The attempted erasure—or at least easing—of paradox, on the assumption that it is simply a false baptism of incoherence, has been a striking feature of analytic philosophy of religion’s approach to Christology in recent decades. But this has been on the assumption that what paradox invariably connotes philosophically is a (sometimes hidden) actual contradiction. But, in fact, the primary definition as given in most dictionaries is the opposite: “a statement that is seemingly contradictory but is perhaps true”, rather than “a selfcontradictory statement that at first seems true”.18 And if that were granted, I could count, for instance, Tim Pawl’s wonderful recent defense of Thomas’s “reduplicative strategy” in Christology (in his In Defense of Conciliar Christology),19 as precisely that—a celebration of “paradoxical” thinking in the best possible sense, although I suspect Tim would prefer that I did not call it such. What’s in a name, then? At the end of the day, I may not be able to persuade analytic theologians to re-embrace this positive new meaning of “paradox” with joy. But what I do urge on the discourse is a patient and discerning continuing analysis of the crucial “mystery” points of the great patristic and scholastic christologians of the tradition, supremely those in the East and West who conjoin all the complexities of the full conciliar tradition. Are these mystery points mere obfuscations, or are they necessary points of analogical stretching from the known to the unique and unknown—seeming surds, yet on closer inspection capable of a full philosophical defense? Such is uncomfortable territory for

14  Sarah Coakley the analytic thinker, to be sure; but there is nothing wrong with being analytically clear about the limits of one’s analytical clarity. I think Thomas Aquinas himself would have signed on to that proposal! Perhaps then the challenges that emerge from these after-dinner obiter dicta are twofold, and both go back to those intellectual developments of the modern period that might seem to threaten the viability of a classic incarnational approach such as Thomas’s from the outset. First, one has to surmount the challenge of modern historical-critical approaches to the biblical Jesus, yet also acknowledge that metaphysical discussions of the person of Christ need not be accounted incompatible with these, but seen as two (non-competing and necessarily complementary) perspectives on the same reality. If one drives a wedge between them it is exceedingly difficult to recover any convincing Christology in the orthodox tradition at all—or so I have suggested here. Second, the essentially paradoxical idea (in my, positive, sense) of a divine Son who takes on a fully authentic and vulnerable human nature (with characteristics necessarily incompatible with those of divinity) has to be confronted and given some rigorously convincing philosophical explication without fear of essential points of mysterious uniqueness and even elements of “apophatic” nescience:20 these are not failures in christological discourse, as the great classic exemplars of the faith teach us. If one falls at either or both of these two modern fences (historiographical, philosophical), however, I think the classic incarnational game is up, and certain profound negative soteriological implications inexorably accrue. This has not been a classic “after dinner speech”, I must admit. It didn’t start with a humorous quip such as, “There was a young man from Nazareth ….” But of course there was a “young man from Nazareth”; and many of us here assembled have staked our lives on his witness and reality, precisely as the Son of God. The more interesting question, then, for us biblical scholars, theologians, and (analytic) philosophers as we gather once more to reflect on him, is whether we can say what we need to say about him without recourse to a newly understood and refined comprehension of the importance of “paradox” for the enunciation of the theological truth of the incarnation. Notes 1 See Hick (1977). 2 See Coakley (1988, esp. 103–135, 188–197); and more recently, my latest and more considered reflections on the task of Christology in relation to both metaphysical speculation and historical study may be found in Coakley (2023, forthcoming), esp. the “Prologue”. 3 See Evans (1996). 4 Hick (1977, 178) from the chapter entitled “Jesus and the World Religions”: “For to say … that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was also God is as devoid of meaning as to say that this circle drawn with a pencil on paper is also a square”. 5 For an account of this problem see, e.g., Cross (2008, 453). 6 See Green (1977).

The Problem of Paradox in Analytic Christology  15 7 See (Morris 1986). 8 Wiles (1987, 272). 9 Ironically, the shift in New Testament scholarship in this direction happened just before the publication of The Myth of God Incarnate, and it was a harbinger of a scholarly trend that has continued up to this day: see esp., for that important moment of new direction, (Hengel 1975 [1976]). 10 Of course, that conclusion does not necessarily follow, given the metaphysical complexities of the Arian dispute: it was possible to hold a “high” Christology in New Testament terms and still make a subordinating distinction between the Father’s divinity and the Son’s. 11 The issue here is, again (see n. 2, above) whether historical-critical evidence, alone, can resolve what is an essentially metaphysical decision. 12 In the late modern period, one thinks especially of the important existentialist views of Rudolf Bultmann, who precisely denied such a supposition. But much remains to be discussed about how exactly historical deliverances from the New Testament should be utilized: see my own The Broken Body (n. 2, above), for an argument about the essentially “apophatic” or “negative” importance of the “historian’s Jesus” as a resistance to idolatrous renditions of the reality of the risen Christ. 13 See Swinburne (1994, 201). 14 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3a, q 2, 5. 15 See Cross (1996, 171–202) and Cross (2002, 51–64). For my own response to Cross on behalf of Thomas, see Coakley (2016, 230–232). 16 See Coakley (2006, esp. 260–264). 17 See ibid.: in this essay, I examine three important and influential patristic renditions of Phil 2, none of which involves any loss of divine characteristics in the incarnation. 18 The Merriam-Webster definition of “paradox” actually runs thus: “1: a tenet contrary to received opinion; 2a: a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true; b: a self-contradictory statement that at first seems true; c: an argument that apparently derives self-contradictory conclusions by valid deduction from acceptable premises; definitions of course leaves plenty of room for further philosophical discussion and disagreement. I am focusing here on the importance of classical Christology of 2a, above. 19 See Pawl (2016). 20 I discuss the importance of various forms of “apophaticism” in Christology in detail in The Broken Body (n. 2), “Prologue”.

Bibliography Coakley, Sarah. 1988. Christ Without Absolutes: A Study of the Christology of Ernst Troeltsch. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2006. “Does Kenosis Rest on a Mistake? Three Kenotic Models in Patristic Exegesis.” In Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying God, edited by C. Stephen Evans, 246–64. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2016. “The Person of Christ.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Summa Theologiae, edited by Denys Turner and Philip McCosker, 222–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  . 2023. The Broken Body: Israel, Christ and Fragmentation. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Cross, Richard. 1996. “Aquinas on Nature, Hypostasis, and the Metaphysics of the Incarnation.” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 60 (2): 171–202.

16  Sarah Coakley  . 2002. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2008. “Incarnation.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, edited by P. Flint Thomas and Rea Michael, 452–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, C. Stephen. 1996. The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.  . 2009. Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing. Green, Michael. 1977. The Truth of God Incarnate. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Hengel, Martin. 1975 [1976]. The Song of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion (original in German). London: SCM Press. Hick, John. 1977. The Myth of God Incarnate. London: SCM Press. Morris, Thomas V. 1986. The Logic of God Incarnate. Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers. Pawl, Timothy. 2016. In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swinburne, Richard. 1994. The Christian God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wiles, Maurice F. 1987. “Review: The Logic of God Incarnate.” The Journal of Theological Studies 38 (1): 272.

2

True Contradictions in Theology Greg Restall

2.1 Introduction In his groundbreaking monograph, The Contradictory Christ, Jc Beall (2021) uses the tools of paraconsistent logic to address central issues in Christology. He argues that the central claims of Christology can all be true despite their seemingly contradictory surface grammar. We can maintain their truth not by arguing away the seeming contradictions but, rather, by coming to terms with the fact that on occasions, contradictory pairs of sentences can both be true—at the same time remain contradictory. Here is an example of Beall’s reasoning. Since Jesus Christ is human, and all humans can sin, “Christ is peccable” is true. On the other hand, since Jesus Christ is divine, and God cannot sin, “Christ is impeccable” is also true. According to Beall, instead of wiggling our way out of the contradiction, we should embrace it. Both claims are true, with no change of subject matter or ambiguity of meaning of any term involved. Since to say that Christ is impeccable is to say that Christ is not peccable, these two claims are contradictory, and so, for Beall, the conjunction “Christ is peccable and Christ is not peccable” is a true contradiction. This is a radical and original view of the incarnation and a revisionary view of what is permissible for theological reasoning. Of course, like any other view on these issues, it is not without its critics. In this chapter, I attempt to further the discussion of true contradictions in theology not by considering the merits of the particular theological claims endorsed by Beall but by attending more closely to the notion of “contradiction” that plays such a central role in the account. I will argue that in Beall’s own logical framework, our everyday concept of contradiction has two distinct, but related, senses. Two claims are negation-contradictions if one is (or is equivalent to) the negation of the other. Two claims are satisfiabilitycontradictions if there is no way for both to be true (that is, they are jointly unsatisfiable) and, no matter how things go, either one or other is true. On the traditional picture of logic, negation-contradictory pairs of claims are satisfiability-contradictions, and vice versa.1 Beall’s conception of logic (and any paraconsistent logic) allows for negation-contradictory pairs of claims that are not satisfiability-contradictions since in any paraconsistent DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-3

18  Greg Restall logic, we may have circumstances in which a claim and its negation are both true, and hence, they are jointly satisfiable and the negation-contradictory pair of claims are not satisfiability-contradictions. In the rest of this chapter, I will show that while accepting a paraconsistent logic takes the pressure off consistency maintenance, when it comes to negation-contradictions, the specter of satisfiability-contradictions remains and is as much of an issue as before. Along the way, I hope to clarify some of the connections between logical concepts (such as contradiction and proposition, assertion and denial, truth and untruth, entailment and theory) and the task of theological reflection. 2.2  Setting the Scene Jc Beall’s contradictory Christology is an exciting and novel intervention in analytic philosophy of religion. Its significance doesn’t stop there: Beall’s application of paraconsistent logic to questions in Christology is not just a radical departure of the status quo in the philosophy of religion. It also marks a significant development in philosophical logic by systematically applying the tools of non-classical logic to an area well outside its “home turf”. Defenders of paraconsistent logic have spilled much ink considering the logical and semantic paradoxes (see Beall 2009; Priest 2006, among many others), and there is a longstanding literature on applying these concepts to issues in the metaphysics of ultimate reality, especially in Hindu and Buddhist philosophical traditions (see, for example, Garfield and Priest 2003; Hoffman 1982; Matilal 1975; Westerhoff 2006), but the application of these techniques to issues in Christology is another thing entirely. Here, Beall takes the time to develop a novel non-classical account of meaningful but contradictory theological claims (backed by his paraconsistent logic), and then he sets himself the task of attempting to account for how this approach compares to the extant range of positions in Christology that attempt to avoid inconsistency. This careful work gives us an opportunity to take a new perspective on the costs and benefits in applying a non-classical logical analysis to profound issues in theology, metaphysics, and language. One of the apparent costs of Beall’s contradictory Christology is that it is an account that simply accepts contradictions, without apology. Furthermore, it does not do this under dark cover of mystery or in the veiled half-light of modesty concerning the meanings and significance of the concepts at our disposal. No, Beall’s contradictory Christology accepts contradictions under the harsh glare of formal logic, with the sharp edges of precisely defined notions like the logician’s conjunction, negation, and entailment playing a central role. With the friends of mystery and paradox, Beall agrees that there are contradictory pairs of statements—such as Christ is peccable and Christ is impeccable—for which we should not prefer one side over the other or attempt to dissolve the inconsistency by some strategy that posits some equivocation or metaphysical differentiation in being. The contradictory theologian does not

True Contradictions in Theology 19 merely say that Christ is peccable in some sense and impeccable in another, nor do they say that Christ is peccable qua human nature and impeccable qua divine nature. Beall sits with the contradiction, endorsing both claims, while holding that one claim is indeed the negation of the other. However, Beall’s route to his contradictory conclusion does not go by way of any appeal to epistemic humility (“these matters are beyond our ken, contradicting ourselves is the best we can do to approximate truth”) or to the idea that our concepts work differently when applied beyond our mundane everyday reality. No, for the project of Beall’s Contradictory Christ, the inference to a true contradiction is the rational upshot of the data of conciliar statements concerning the incarnation. The contradictions of Christology are not hinted at, dimly, in shadows. Instead, they are fully on display, visible to us in the harsh light of formal theories and deductive logic. This means that there is a clash of style and method between the conceptual fluidity of the poet theologian who grasps for words to articulate ideas that seem beyond our capacity for description but who lands at something contradictory and paradoxical to point to what is beyond our grasp, and the precise and clipped vocabulary of the logician in possession of a formal language in which every sentence is given explicitly defined truth conditions. For Beall’s contradictory Christology, the language of theological theorizing—at least insofar as it is represented in models of his favored logic, first degree entailment (FDE)—is free from ambiguity and indeterminacy. Notions such as metaphor and analogy play no role in this particular analysis of how contradictions can play a role in theology and neither does a richly differentiated ontology in which there is a distinction between different kinds of being, substance or property. Here, Beall’s contradictory Christology is a new thing, unlike other approaches in philosophical theology, and so, it deserves sympathetic and critical attention. For all that difference, I do not think that the alien and innovative character of this work is sufficient to explain the frequency with which it receives incredulous stares2 and bafflement from its audience. Given the radical nature of the view, it is not surprising that few have responded by way of a wholehearted endorsement. However, many struggle to understand the position as Beall has staked it out, let alone see that it is a view worth considering. I will attempt to clarify why this is the case. I will show that while there is a sense in which Beall has explained what it is for a theorist to accept a truly inconsistent theory as true and in so doing he has opened up new options for theology or for any systematic theorizing, there is more to be done to make that option truly workable. Adopting a paraconsistent logic to show how these problems of inconsistency need not be solved but rather accepted does not mean that the underlying problems of consistency and contradiction disappear. Beall has shown us how a contradictory theology is possible for one sense of contradiction, but by his own lights, inconsistency in the other sense is to be rejected, and furthermore, the task of rendering a Christology that is free from contradiction in that sense is a pressing task for Beall or for any

20  Greg Restall proponent of a truly contradictory Christology. So, I will attempt to explain. To make this case, I must reintroduce some of the core notions of The Contradictory Christ so that we can see how the everyday notion of contradiction has two distinct senses in Beall’s framework. 2.3  Basic Concepts To start, we will need to clarify some terms and pay attention to some basic assumptions at work when we use logical concepts in our everyday reflection on the claims we make when we are attempting to give a systematic account of some field, whether that be theology or anything else. Our focus will not be on the world of logic as the logicians see it (so I will attempt to keep technicalities to an absolute minimum3), but rather, we will look at some of the conceptual landscape around the notion of a contradiction, so we can understand its significance and, particularly, the concept of contradiction. Thankfully, we do not need to concern ourselves with most of the technical details necessary for a full account of the logic of FDE and the other concepts that Beall puts to use in his positive proposal. We would do well, however, to attend to some of the key ideas in play, to establish some common ground as we attempt to understand the ramifications of Beall’s proposal, and more broadly, we attempt to come to grips with contradiction and paradox in theology or—for that matter—in any field of inquiry. 2.3.1 Propositions

What kinds of items are the things that are said to be contradictory? One key example in the current discussion is the contradictory pair of claims, “Christ is peccable” and “Christ is impeccable”. These two claims contradict one another, and, for Beall, both are true. It is important for the following discussion that we say a little more about what we are talking about here. The claims contradict one another and not just the sentences. We do not need to say very much about what distinguishes claims from sentences other than to say that we can make different claims by way of the same sentences and that different sentences can be used to make the same claim. So-called indexical vocabulary provides a ready example. If I utter the sentence “I am sitting”, I make a claim about me, whereas if you utter that very same sentence, you make a different claim, one about yourself. If you wanted to echo the claim I make, you need to use a different form of words, such as “Greg is sitting” (in a context in which it’s clear that “Greg” means me), “you are sitting” (if you are addressing me), or “he is sitting” (if you are talking about me to someone else). The two sentences “I am sitting” and “I am not sitting” do not necessarily contradict one another because one could be about me and the other about you, while the two sentences “I am sitting” and “he is not sitting” may well explicitly contradict one another if the target of the claims is the same.

True Contradictions in Theology 21 Indexicals provide one way that what is said by way of a sentence may differ even though the sentence used to express these different claims do not. Ambiguity provides another source of variation: “The bank is down the road” means one thing if talking about a financial institution and another if it is about the riverbank. Similarly, poetic license, non-literal speech, and other figures of speech can provide examples of forms of words that may say one thing in one given interpretive context and another thing in some other context. The important concern for us, when it comes to theological reasoning and matters of consistency and contradiction, is that it is the claims we can make4—rather than merely the sentences used to express those claims—that are the proper target of evaluation for consistency, contradiction, and other logical notions. Another word for “claim” is “proposition”, and occasionally in what follows, I will also use this word, though this is a term of art which comes with a great deal of baggage, and we will not need to adopt any particular theory of what counts as a proposition beyond the fact that declarative sentences (as used in a given context) express propositions. 2.3.2  Mind and Language

To speak metaphorically for a moment, where are these propositions located? Are they items in the minds of thinkers, or are they to be found “out there” in public view? For the present discussion, it will not help to focus on the individual and to think of propositions as only located in the mind of the individual thinker. The considerations before us, claims like “Christ is fully God” and “Christ is fully human”, are public, credal statements, the upshot of argument and debate, and offered up as proper statements to structure not only individual Christian thinking but also public communication. These claims are essentially the kinds of things that we can agree or disagree on, that we can assent or dissent to, and that we can ponder, question, and debate. Claims—perhaps all claims or perhaps merely many of them—are at least potentially public, sharable, and communicable. There is a methodological divide in philosophy between whether we should think of these public claims as externalized thought or whether we should think of thought as internalized speech. We need not take sides on this debate here, other than to fix our attention on speech and its content, without worrying about what comes first in the order of explanation of how it is that human thought and language find meaning.5 2.3.3  Assertion and Denial

If we think of language as a communicative practice, one way to begin to see some of the force of claims is to consider how our claims relate to each other. When we make a claim, whether it is a prosaic one, such as “the maximum temperature in Dundee was 5°C today”, or a profound one, like “Jesus is Lord”, we are putting something “out there”, which has a public significance,

22  Greg Restall however tenuous or significant. To make a claim is to represent “how things are” in some way or other and to do so in such a way that others can join in (by agreeing with what has been said) or not. We make claims as to how things are in all sorts of forms of communication in different ways. Of course, we can do so sincerely, by presenting how we take things to really be, or insincerely, making claims we take to be untrue in order to deceive others, or in a hopeful manner, saying what we would like to be true, but fear may not be the case. Religious communities may recite creeds, in which many claims are asserted by the group in an act of worship and community formation. We can also assert by answering yes/no questions. If I ask “was the maximum temperature in Dundee 5°C today?” and you answer “yes”, that can count as you making the claim that the maximum temperature in Dundee was indeed 5°C today. Since asserting is putting something out there for public consumption, that invitation may sometimes be refused. What can be asserted may also be denied. To deny a claim is to take the opposite stand on the issue it raises. If someone else had said “no” when I had asked the question concerning the maximum temperature, then you and that person disagree, by taking opposite stands on the issue of the temperature at Dundee.6 You would be advising me to go in two different, opposing ways. Whatever a proposition is, it presents an issue upon which one can, at least potentially, take different sides.7 The important issue for us as we inch toward understanding the significance of contradictions is that if two people take opposing sides on the one issue, there is no shared position incorporating both answers. Whenever we say “yes and no” to a “yes/ no” question, we are at least implicitly pointing to there being two different issues: one that can be answered in the affirmative and another in the negative. What happens in the public world of speech and language when we assert and deny has parallels in the internal world of the mind. What we assert in public, we can accept in private. What we deny in words, we can reject in our thoughts. 2.3.4  Truth and Untruth

But beyond our thought and our talk, what we think and say points to something in some sense beyond us. When I accept a claim, I am thereby taking that claim to be true. (Of course, just as we can tentatively assert something without confidence, we can accept something for the sake of the argument or merely as an hypothesis to consider. In either case, we thereby consider some state of the world.) To accept the proposition Jesus is Lord is to take it that Jesus is Lord. For a claim to be true is something concerning whatever it is that the proposition is about. Truth, for a proposition, is a kind of standard of endorsement. And just as propositions can meet that standard, they can also fail to meet it. A proposition is untrue if it fails to be true.8 If I assert p, then in an important sense, I succeed when p turns out to be true. In some sense, assertion aims at truth. This is not to say that assertion doesn’t also aim elsewhere. Perhaps, when I assert something, I aim to convince you, or

True Contradictions in Theology 23 even to deceive you, if I lie. Similarly, this is not to say that an assertion of p might in some sense be inappropriate, even when p turns out to be true. For example, I might make a lucky guess that a particular horse will win the next race and confidently assert this. If you ask me for the basis of my hunch, I won’t be able to supply any, and you would be well within your rights to discount my guess as an unfounded speculation. Be that as it may, if my guess is vindicated, there is a clear sense in which we would be well within our rights to say that my original claim was correct, even though it was unfounded. Just as assertion aims at truth, denial (in the strong sense, described above) aims at untruth. To strongly deny some claim is to answer the corresponding yes/ no question with a no, and it is to rule the truth of the proposition out. It can only succeed if that claim fails to be true (since if the claim were true, the “yes” answer would have been apt). On the other hand, if claim does fail to be true (that is, if it is untrue), then denying it, in the sense of ruling out its assertion, does succeed in at least the analogous sense that asserting a truth succeeds. All of these claims I take to be platitudinous, but they are worth repeating, to find enough shared logical vocabulary, even when true contradictions are on the table. For nothing I have said so far is incompatible with Beall’s dialetheism, according to which some statements are neither true nor false (truth-value gaps) and others are both true and false (truth-value gluts). If some statement, such as “this color patch is red” (describing some borderline case of the color red), is neither true nor false, then since it is not true, the correct answer to the question “is this color patch red?” is no since the claim fails to be true. Of course, given that the claim is neither true nor false, if falsity is the negation of truth, the correct answer to the question “is this color patch not red?” is also a no since that claim is also untrue. Similarly, when we take some statement like “Christ is peccable”, which for Beall is both true and false, the correct answer to the question “is Christ peccable?” is yes since for Beall the claim is, indeed, true. The paradoxicality of the claim arises because the correct answer to the corresponding question about its negation “is Christ impeccable?” is also yes since the negation of the claim is also true. The dialetheist does not deny the claim “Christ is peccable” when they assert its negation “Christ is impeccable”. To deny a claim is to call for it to be rejected, to present it as untrue, and the dialetheist claims that there are some propositions where they and their negations are both true. They assert the claim and its negation, they accept both, reject neither, and deny neither. It is important, not merely logically but also theologically to find a place for both assertion and denial, for the theological task is not only to find ways to coherently understand how particular claims can be true. It is also important to understand how other claims might fail to be true. The Athanasian Creed provides a very stark statement of this: Thus the Father is God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit God; and yet there are not three Gods, but there is one God. Thus the Father is Lord, the Son, Lord, the Holy Spirit, Lord; and yet there are not three Lords, but

24  Greg Restall there is one Lord. Because just as we are obliged by Christian truth to acknowledge each person separately both God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the Catholic religion to speak of three Gods or Lords. (Leith 1973, 705) This creed not only supplies us with things to accept or to assert but also enjoins us to reject and to deny other claims. If one asserts that there are three Gods, this, according to the Athanasian Creed, places one outside the bounds of orthodoxy. It is not enough to assert the negative claim “there are not three Gods”. We must reject the claim “there are three Gods”. On this understanding of Christian orthodoxy, some claims are ruled in, while others are ruled out. 2.3.5  Logical Consequence or Entailment

Standard, classical logic is founded on the idea that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories, and one might think that if we were to go around asserting contradictory pairs of statements, logical anarchy would be loosed on the world. Not quite. As Beall carefully shows, there is a well-behaved notion of logical consequence that can still govern propositions if we think of the space of propositions as governed by truth and falsity which allows for truth and falsity to overlap (at truth value gluts) or for some propositions to fail to receive either value (at truth value gaps). We do not need to rehearse the details of the notion of logical consequence known as FDE9 since a very high-level overview of just a couple of details will suffice to isolate the key notions for understanding the different ways to understand the key notion of contradiction. The key notion of logical consequence, or, more generally, entailment, codifies a very general sense of how claims relate to each other. The two claims: Sócrates is a footballer All footballers are bipeds together bear a very significant relationship to the claim Sócrates is a biped We can cast this connection in the language of truth: if it is true that Sócrates is a footballer (it is) and it were also true that all footballers are bipeds (it isn’t, but let’s imagine that it were, for the moment), then it would also, invariably, be true that Sócrates is a biped.10 Or, we could state the same connection in the language of assertion and denial. If someone were to assert that Sócrates is a footballer and assert that all footballers are bipeds, but then to deny that Sócrates is a biped, then they would be digging the ground out from under themselves, in just the same way that they would be double

True Contradictions in Theology 25 minded if they were to both assert and deny the one claim. A collection of premises (here, Sócrates is a footballer and all footballers are bipeds) entails a conclusion (here, Sócrates is a biped) when and only when in any possibility at all in which the premises are true, so is the conclusion. This corresponds to saying that there is no coherent position in which the premises are accepted and the conclusion is rejected.11 For Beall’s FDE, a possibility is given by assigning each basic proposition a value from among t (true only), f (false only), b (both true and false), and n (neither true nor false)12 and then each complex proposition is given one of these four truth values using a system of rules determined by the meanings of the concepts use to construct those propositions. The details need not concern us, except for noting that for Beall, if a proposition either has the value t or the value b according to this possibility, it counts as (at least) true, otherwise, it is untrue (either f or n), and if a proposition receives the value b, its negation also receives the value b. These are the claims that the possibility takes to be both true and false. For Beall, given a system of possibilities like this, a set of premises entails a conclusion if and only if in every possibility in which the premises are all (at least) true, so is the conclusion. That is, there is no possibility in which the premises are true and the conclusion is untrue. If we have two propositions such that the first entails the second, and vice versa, it follows that they are (at least) true in exactly the same possibilities. If the negation of the first entails the negation of the second, then it follows that they are (at least) false in exactly the same possibilities, too. If both hold, we say that the two propositions are equivalent because as far as the possibilities go, there is no way to distinguish them.13 Now that we have reached entailment and equivalence, we have enough basic concepts to be going on with to distinguish two kinds of contradiction, so it is to this that we turn. 2.4  From True Contradictions to Two Kinds of Contradiction As Beall characterizes matters in The Contradictory Christ, we can think of a theological theory, like any other theory, as specifying a family of possibilities—the ways things would be if things were as the theory describes. A claim is ruled in according to the theory if and only if in each of these possibilities that claim is (at least) true. Something is ruled out according to that theory if and only if in none of these possibilities is the proposition (at least) true. 2.4.1  Negation Contradictories

Two claims are said to be negation contradictories if one is (equivalent to) the negation of the other. So, the statements “Christ is peccable” and “Christ is impeccable” are negation contradictories since “Christ is impeccable” is equivalent to “It’s not the case that Christ is peccable”.

26  Greg Restall Now, on the classical picture of logic, two statements are negation contradictories if and only if they are satisfiability contradictories. 2.4.2  Satisfiability Contradictories

Two claims are said to be satisfiability contradictories if and only if in every possibility either one or the other is true, but not both. Given what we have seen so far, we can quickly see that these must be different notions for Beall and for any paraconsistent logician. For him, we can have two negation inconsistent claims which nonetheless jointly hold and, hence, are jointly satisfiable: there is a possibility in which both are true. On the classical perspective, to be negation contradictory just is to be satisfiability contradictory. That—on the classical perspective—is the problem with contradictory pairs of statements: they cannot both be true. The non-classical perspective of FDE liberates negation so as to no longer form satisfiability contradictories, in the presence of gluts or gaps. In the rest of this chapter, though, I will explain why the concept of satisfiability-contradiction has been left behind untouched, and it is as problematic as it ever was. For the argument we will embark upon, it will help to stand back from the notion of contradictories (for which, one or other but not both are true) to the weaker notion of contraries (for which we cannot have both true but can have both false). 2.4.3  Satisfiability Contraries

Two claims are said to be satisfiability contraries if and only if in every possibility at most one or the other holds true, but never both. With satisfiability contraries, so comes negation contraries. 2.4.4  Negation Contraries

Two claims are said to be negation contraries if one entails the negation of the other. Here is why these notions are particularly salient. Consider the canonical case of a Christological contradiction, for Beall, “Christ is peccable” and its negation, “Christ is impeccable”. There are some grounds, some background commitments which have led us to the claim that Christ is impeccable. When I rehearsed this, above, it was the general reasoning that Christ is divine, and God cannot sin. Whatever these background commitments are that lead us to the claim that Christ is impeccable, call these our premises. The idea is that the premises together entail the claim that Christ is impeccable. That is, in all possibilities in which the premises hold true, the conclusion “Christ is impeccable” also holds true. In other words, the claim that Christ is peccable (the negation of which is “Christ is impeccable”) is a negation contrary of our premises.

True Contradictions in Theology 27 However, when we consider the reasons we might have for concluding that Christ is impeccable, we see, on reflection, that these seem perilously close to reasons for thinking that the claim “Christ is peccable” is a satisfiability contrary to our background premises. Our reasons for asserting that Christ is impeccable, incapable of sinning, because he is God, are not merely reasons for asserting the sentence “Christ cannot sin” in isolation. It surely must have some bearing on the truth of the claim it negates: “Christ can sin”. In particular, any reason for thinking that Christ can sin seems to be very good reason for ruling out the idea that Christ cannot sin. This connection is what is split apart in accepting contradictions: we do not treat the evidence of the claim “Christ can sin” as in any way decisive evidence against the claim “Christ cannot sin”, or vice versa. In other words, in holding to the joint claims “Christ can sin” and “Christ cannot sin”, the dialetheist is thereby committed to saying that these claims are not satisfiability contraries. Impeccability, whatever it is, does not clash with peccability enough to rule peccability out. If impeccability is jointly satisfiable with peccability, then it is very difficult to understand what we have gained when we learn that something is impeccable, if we later learn that this is compatible with peccability. This, I take it, is where the stare in response to true contradictions is its most incredulous. The issue, in a nutshell, is that we have—at least until we have been convinced to take true contradictions seriously—taken contradictoriness and contrariness to involve joint unsatisfiability; once we split negation-contradiction from satisfiability-contradictions, we become unmoored and we are no longer quite so sure about what this concept of negation (or of falsity) might mean if it no longer plays the role of exclusion. In the remaining sections, I will spell out how this results in not only an incredulous stare but also some unfinished business for the proponent of any contradictory Christology. 2.5  How to Resolve the Satisfiability-Contradictions? Let’s shift from the discussion of peccability and impeccability to another pair of concepts: mutability and immutability. Since any human is mutable, Christ is mutable. Since divinity entails immutability, Christ is immutable. This is another true Christological contradiction for the dialetheist (Beall 2021, 3). Let’s grant that the tension between mutability and immutability, understood as negation-contradictions is lessened by accepting the treatment of negation in FDE. Consider what this does to the tension concerning mutability, divinity, and humanity when re-cast in the key of satisfiability contraries. After all, in our reasoning, we have granted this: Divinity entails immutability. That is, mutability is a negation contrary of divinity. Why have we granted this? (For too many reasons to rehearse here, let us take it as read, for the sake of the argument.) Consider, though, is there any reason for the claim

28  Greg Restall that divinity entails immutability that is not also a reason for the claim according to which divinity and mutability are satisfiability contraries? That is, suppose we—for the sake of the argument—grant that there is some possibility in which God is mutable. This seems very much to be a reason to reject the claim that divinity entails immutability because in this circumstance, God is, contrary to our conception, mutable. That is not a knock-down objection to the dialetheist Christology, of course, because according to FDE, the move from granting that in some possibility God is mutable does not clash with maintaining that divinity entails immutability since they have already granted that immutability is compatible with mutability. However, the dialectical tension remains. When the contradictory theologian said that they were giving equal time to both horns of the seeming contradiction between mutability and immutability, that claim is correct when it comes to the negation contradictory terms “mutability” and “immutability” (and similarly “peccable” and “impeccable”), but it is not correct for what we thought to be satisfiability contraries. We had thought, before this logical revision, that mutability and immutability were incompatible, and we learned that they were not. So, “immutability” is a weaker notion for the dialetheist theologian than it is according to a traditional logical conception. They have traded in a concept that was taken to rule out mutability for a weaker one, which does not. Once we realize that negation works in this more relaxed way, however, we must revisit our original reasoning. If Christ is divine and Christ is mutable, then it turns out that divinity is not (as we might have otherwise thought) incompatible with mutability. Mutability and divinity are met in the person of Jesus Christ. The theologian who wishes to accept true contradictions must at least grant this. So, the sense in which divinity entails immutability must thereby be weakened, at least to the degree that here, immutability does not clash with mutability. But what, then, remains of immutability? In what sense does divinity entail immutability? Given that the original reasons to adopt the entailment from divinity to immutability were reasons to take divinity and mutability to be jointly unsatisfiable, it seems that the more reasonable course of action is to concede that despite our first thoughts, divinity does not entail immutability since divinity is compatible with mutability. To make the point sharper still, let’s not talk of immutability (a negative term) but let’s introduce the term of art constancy (a positive one, not defined in terms of negation). Constancy is here understood as a not merely contingent feature but a necessary one. That 2 + 2 = 4 is constant since it not only happens to be always true but is necessarily so. On the traditional picture, divinity entails constancy, but humanity entails mutability, and constancy and mutability are jointly unsatisfiable. Any circumstance where something is mutable is one where it fails to be constant, and any possibility in which something is constant, it fails to be mutable. To assert that something is constant is thereby (at least implicitly) to deny that it is mutable. To assert that something is mutable is thereby (at least implicitly) to deny that it is constant.

True Contradictions in Theology 29 Or so the traditional idea goes. Now, we have a trilemma, in that we cannot grant all three claims, if Christ is both divine and human.

• Divinity entails constancy. • Humanity entails mutability. • Constancy and mutability are jointly unsatisfiable. If Christ is both divine and human, one of these three must be rejected. This has nothing to do with negation as such, and the tension must somewhere be resolved. Either constancy and mutability are jointly satisfiable (in the person of Jesus Christ), contrary to prior appearances, or if not, given that Christ is both divine and human, one of the entailments must be rejected. Any reasoning we give here will at last in part involve revisiting the concepts of constancy and mutability and their relationship with divinity and humanity. The parallel response to the case of Beall’s explicitly contradictory Christology would be to reject the last claim, to say that constancy and mutability might nonetheless be compatible. But to say this in and of itself is not enough to direct our understanding of what suffices for constancy (in the light of the possibility of change) or what counts as mutability (if whatever it is that might mutate is nonetheless constant). More work must be done, whether this work involves distinguishing natures (Christ is mutable in his humanity and constant in his divinity) or the predicates (Christ—the one undivided Christ—is mutable-qua-human and constant-qua-divine), or in some other way which gives sense to the notions of constancy and mutability which were previously given sense in terms of their joint unsatisfiability. Whatever move we make, some conceptual revisions are required in order to make sense of what we are saying. What goes here for this rendering of the argument without negation also goes for the original arguments involving negation. In the light of this example, we see that the same issues arise when we might assert that Christ is impeccable as well as peccable. What counts as peccability for one who is at the same time impeccable? What does it mean for one to be impeccable, who we have granted at the same time to be peccable? Given that in this case we have shifted the concept of negation around to make room for true contradictions, we deserve some further explanation for how to marshall the concepts of peccability and impeccability, or mutability and immutability, so as to grasp their significance. To understand how a concept applies, we need not only to know how it represents the world but also what it rules out. What are we ruling out when we say that something is impeccable, if not ruling out its peccability? I cannot imagine any way of spelling out the contradictory concepts of peccability and impeccability, and mutability and immutability, in such a way as to help us understand how they might each apply in the case of Jesus

30  Greg Restall Christ, that does not at least begin to look much more like the standard Christological moves, even though the theory might be couched in the more radical language of a theologian who is prepared to contradict themselves. However, this is, no doubt, a failure of my imagination, and the defenders (and opponents) of contradictory Christology will have more options to explore, to further articulate their position, and help us make sense of their contradictory Christ.14 Notes 1 On the traditional picture, there is no circumstance in which A and ¬A are both true, so negation-contradictory claims are satisfiability-contradictions. On the other hand, if A and B are satisfiability-contradictions, then the claim B is true in all and only the circumstances in which A fails to be true. On the traditional picture, this is exactly what it means for B is equivalent to the negation of A, and so, they are negation-contradictions. 2 “Incredulous stare” is how the American philosopher, David Lewis, described reactions to his modal realism, the view that each possible world in the vast plurality of possibility exists in exactly the same sense that this actual world exists (Lewis 1986, 133). 3 That minimum is not quite zero because some of my audience might know some formal logic, so some formalities will be confined to footnotes, for those who speak that foreign language. The use of formulas when talking about issues in logic is both a blessing and a curse. Formality is a blessing when it helps us grasp patterns in our everyday thought and talk that we would otherwise find hard to grasp. (In this way, formulas stand to thought and to talk as musical notation stands to embodied musical performance.) Formality is a curse when it is taken to mean that logical issues are mere calculation or when it leads us to think that our thoughts or our claims have a degree of precision that they do not possess. 4 It is important here to remember that when we talk about claims we are not just thinking about the upshot of careful theorizing. Claims can be merely hypothesized, wondered about, questioned, or pondered. They can also be held lightly rather than asserted confidently. 5 The first chapter of Robert Brandom’s Articulating Reasons (2000) gives a good introduction to many of the conceptual issues arising for how we might understand the relationship between thought and talk. 6 That is, you disagree provided you are giving yes and no answers to the same issue. If it turns out that one of you is talking about Dundee, Scotland, and the other is talking about the locality of Dundee in rural New South Wales (Australia), in which the maximum temperature is almost always much higher than 5°C, then you are not disagreeing but merely talking past one another. 7 It is important to distinguish denial in this strong sense with weaker kinds of denial. A famous case goes as follows. On election day, I assert “Candidate 1 will win”, and you respond—thinking that I’ve misjudged the closeness of the race and that I should be more circumspect—“No: either Candidate 1 or Candidate 2 will win”. Here, you and I are not taking opposing sides on the issue of whether Candidate 1 will win. (If that were the case, you’d simply conclude that Candidate 2 will win, if you thought Candidate 1 won’t.) You are opposing my confidence in making the claim, offering a more prudent substitute, and not taking an opposing stand on the issue of Candidate 1’s prospects. See Laurence Horn’s extended discussion (Horn 2001, sec. 6.2.2 and 6.5.2) for more detail.

True Contradictions in Theology 31 8 The word “untruth” is ugly, and you might wonder why I use this word instead of the simpler “falsity”. In this context, where true contradictions are on the table, to identify falsity with untruth would be to beg the question against Beall since Beall identifies the falsity of a proposition p with the truth of its negation, ¬p, and he takes it that some propositions p are such that p and ¬p are both true, and hence, p is both true and false. He does not, however, take it that in this case p is both true and untrue, where untruth is mere failure of truth. Untruth describes whatever propositions is left over when we have set aside all the true propositions, including those paradoxical ones that are both true and false. To use the terminology of The Contradictory Christ, the untruths are those statements that bear the value f (just-false) or n (neither true-nor-false). 9 For the details of first degree entailment, Chapter 2 of The Contradictory Christ (Beall 2021) is admirably brisk. For more details, the canonical exposition is Graham Priest’s An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic, Chapter 8 (Priest 2008). 10 Of course, we must state the standard disclaimer that there is no equivocation between concepts used in the three claims. We are talking about the same Sócrates, and “footballer” and “biped” are used in the same sense in each case. 11 There is a deep conceptual connection between these two ways of understanding the underlying notion of entailment. You can start with the norms governing accepting and rejecting (or assertion and denial) and then conceive of the possibilities as reifications of available positions. Or you could start by treating the space of possibilities as given and treat the availability of combinations of assertions and denials in terms of whether there are any possibilities (antecedently given) which they describe. The paper “Truth Values and Proof Theory” (Restall 2009) makes this conceptual connection precise for a few different notions of logical consequence. Furthermore, this connection should make clear that there are different ways to understand the notion of possibility in play here. They do not need to be understood as metaphysically possible worlds. If they are reifications of all the different consistent positions, there may be “possibilities” in this broad conceptual sense, in which the metaphysical possibilities are different. 12 This assignment of truth values might need to satisfy some other constraints, given the meaning rules for the terminology in the theory being modelled. The details need not concern us here. 13 Here is an example of equivalence, in first degree entailment: any proposition p is equivalent to the negation of its negation, ¬¬p. For a slightly more complex equivalence, the negation of a disjunction ¬(p ∨ q) is equivalent to the conjunction of negations ¬p and ¬q. 14 Thanks, of course, are due to Jc Beall for many conversations about these and many other issues over the years. Thanks, too, to Franz Berto, Aaron Cotnoir, Alexander Douglas, Jade Fletcher, Margaret Hampson, Graham Priest, Sharon Southwell, Andrew Torrance, and an audience at the Philosophy Department at the University of St Andrews for conversations and feedback on many of the ideas discussed herein.

Bibliography Beall, Jc. 2009. Spandrels of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2021. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brandom, Robert B. 2000. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Garfield, Jay L., and Graham Priest. 2003. “Nāgārjuna and the Limits of Thought.” Philosophy East & West 53 (1): 1–21.

32  Greg Restall Hoffman, F. J. 1982. “Rationality in Early Buddhist Four Fold Logic.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 10 (4): 309–37. Horn, Laurence R. 2001. A Natural History of Negation. Stanford, CA: CSLI Press. Leith, John H., ed. 1973. Creeds of the Churches: A Reader in Christian Doctrine from the Bible to the Present. Richmond, VA: John Knox Press. Lewis, David K. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell. Matilal, B. 1975. “Mysticism and Reality: Ineffability.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 3 (3): 217–52. Priest, Graham. 2006. In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent. Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2008. An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Restall, Greg. 2009. “Truth Values and Proof Theory.” Studia Logica 92 (2): 241–64. Westerhoff, J. 2006. “Nāgārjuna’s Catuṣkoṭi.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 34 (4): 367–95.

3

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? Sean C. Ebels-Duggan

3.1 Introduction Christian theology is a prolonged stare at what cannot be and yet is. God cannot become part of creation, let alone the specific part that is a particular human being. And yet… Part of the prolonged stare is asking how “the facts”—what is—can contradict “the rules”—which tell us what cannot be. The consistentizing strategy claims the contradiction is only apparent, arising from blind spots in our capacities to know and understand. Careful attention to these blind spots shows how contradictions arise. Had we perfect vision, says this view, we would see no conflict between the facts and the rules. The development of glutty logics—those where propositions can be both true and false—allows for an alternative, contradictory strategy which doesn’t avoid, or explain away, contradictions. This view, exemplified in this essay by Beall (2021)’s “contradictory Christology”, affirms certain contradictions as the best account of the confounding reality within our vision. Our reluctance to accept these contradictions stems from unspoken logical, rather than theological, dogma equating contradiction with absurdity. Jettison the dogma, and one can accept, without qualification, what apparently follows from the assertions of the ecumenical councils: that the individual, Christ, has the essential properties of both human and divine natures. As such: 1 Christ is human; therefore Christ is mutable. 2 Christ is divine; therefore Christ is immutable. The result is apparent, and real, contradiction, but not absurdity. It is simply the jarring fact that contrary properties apply to that single, confounding individual, the Christ, the son of God, the son of Mary. Accept the contradictions, and you get “the full truth, contradictory as it is” (Beall 2021, 50), without the jiggery-pokery that comes with explaining them away. Call this argument the Full Truth Argument (FTA). I think the matter is a lot more complicated. To explain why, I’ll first lay out the FTA in greater detail (Section 1). Section 2 observes that theories DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-4

34  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan can be equally true but unequally preferable—in the sciences, this often is because one confers a kind of understanding the other does not. Of course, the Incarnation is a mystery. But maybe a Christology should deliver understanding modulo blind spots. Section 3 presents a “hidden variable” model that aims to elaborate this. And so, we get an argument, supported by some logical considerations (Section 4), that contradictory Christology cannot support this kind of understanding. But the tables turn in Section 5. Conciliar Christology’s main goals were not understanding, but devotional truths that enable a certain relationship with God. That is the rod for measuring contradictory Christology. So measured, things are not much better. Glutty logics undermine the task of conciliar pronouncements (Section 6), and the same features inhibiting understanding in Christology also inhibit devotional advances (Section 7). Still, my judgment is not all negative. I’m skeptical the contradictory strategy will advance Christology’s goals, but I could be wrong—and it can play a role in a somewhat different approach to mystery that I suggest in Section 8. 3.2  The Full Truth Argument The FTA starts by saying that contradictions are not absurd. This may seem shocking since contradictions are, it is thought, incapable of truth. This untutored view gets support from classical logic, according to which everything follows from a contradiction. As such, any theory that holds a contradiction to be true is trivial—every sentence is included in it. And to believe such a trivial theory is indeed to believe absurdly. But there are paraconsistent logics where contradictions don’t trivialize theories. Indeed, the one favored by Beall, First Degree Entailment (FDE), is easy to construct. As in classical logic, there are two truth-values. In classical logic, sentences take exactly one truth-value. However, logic should accommodate all possibilities, which include sentences having both truth-values (gluts), or neither (gaps).1 Add this adjustment to the usual rules of classical logic, and one gets FDE. And now not everything follows from a contradiction. If p is a glut and unrelated q just false, then p ∧ ¬p is true (and false) while q isn’t true. So, q doesn’t follow from p ∧ ¬p. So, logic doesn’t require that contradictions are absurd. Instead, we determine certain propositions to be absurd for topic-specific reasons: a contradiction in theology is absurd if it is absurd for theological (not logical) reasons. And these are discovered rationally in the course of theological inquiry, just as we determine the chemical absurdities in the course of doing chemistry. For Beall, the situation in Christology is this: we have, through revelation and the Spirit’s guidance of the ecumenical councils, an account of Christ which appears to entail that contradictory properties hold of him. Consistentizing efforts have had a long run with little success, introducing baroque metaphysical constructions with concepts foreign to the revelation recorded in the New Testament. The contradictory strategy, by contrast, allows full

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 35 acceptance of everything entailed (on the simplest understanding) by the conciliar statements (no metaphysics required!). Christ has two natures, such that “the property of each nature is preserved and concurs together into one person and hypostasis”—even those that contradict those of the other nature. The simplest reading of the Chalcedonian Definition holds that Christ has contradictory properties. So the benefit of the contradictory strategy is that we can accept all the extraordinary truths concerning the extraordinary reality of the incarnation. By my lights, the project of giving the full truth of reality—in this case, the full theological truth—is the goal… Given that reality itself is contradictory— that there is a contradictory being in reality—the true account of reality is itself contradictory, and thereby false in addition to being true…. I suggest that we … accept the full truth, contradictory as it is (Beall 2021, 49–50). This, of course, is the argument of one already convinced: to those unconvinced, the “because the reality is contradictory” reasoning simply begs the question. I’m not out to call the argument nasty names, just to make its form clear: it is an argument for conversion, and not a bad one as such arguments go. “Ye wearied and heavy-laden, how your burden would ease on the contradictory strategy! Come see in a new way: accepting contradictions will be no concession, but a celebration of the mind-exceeding God!” 3.3  Truth Isn’t Everything Examination of the FTA highlights the dependence of truth in a theory on the framing of that theory. Classical logic admits no contradictions, so a Christology set therein admits none also. Contradictory Christology has no such limit—and to Beall’s mind, this is an advantage. More generally, the available truths in a theory of X vary with what I’m calling the theory’s framing—the language and the logic used to make statements concerning X. Consider this toy classical framing for color: use classical logic, and omit words for shades between blue and purple. Accordingly, for every x on the blue-purple spectrum, “x is blue or x is not blue” is true while “x is blue and x is not blue” is not. But on a gappy framing for the same language, “x is blue or x is not blue” will not be a truth when “x is blue” has no truth-value. On a glutty framing, “x is blue and x is not blue” will be true when “x is blue” is both true and false. And if instead the language includes “indigo” for colors between blue and purple, then in this enhanced classical framing, some xs will feature in truths not immediately available in the original language, such as “x is indigo”. These toy frames are too simple for good theorizing about color, but they point to an ambiguity in “the full truth concerning X”. The enhanced framing can access truths about indigo, invisible to its unenhanced progenitors. So, the former tells a “fuller” truth, in the sense of “more complete”. But there are other ways to think about “full truth”. Consider two framings of biological evolution, both set in classical logic. The coarse account describes

36  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan species, their distinguishing characteristics, and the relation between them, descends from. It suffices for a complete family tree of Galapagos finches, characterizing species and their morphological differences: for example, that the woodpecker finch, large with a long beak, descends from the smaller, short-beaked primordial Galapagos finch. This family tree is the full truth in that framing: no truth of descent is omitted. And yet, something is missing. Simply having the family tree does not tell us how morphologically diverse species could descend from a single, uniform species. Darwin’s genius was to give a finer framing, with language adequate to describe natural selection processes: how variation within a single population can give rise to varied distinct populations. It enables us to tell the “full truth” in a different sense: it states the facts of descent, and confers understanding where the coarse account leaves only unstatable puzzles. What makes truth in the fine account “fuller”? Here the question gets hard. There are answers we can give referencing “reality”: the fine account describes more of, or corresponds more closely to, or better represents, the reality of finch-descent. These, however, assume a notoriously opaque notion of correspondence between truths and reality. Correspondence might be what it is for a theory to capture the full reality, but we can’t use it in evaluating our theories.2 We can evaluate theories only by their accessible features. The accessible feature distinguishing the fine account is: it enables greater understanding of the phenomena. Its language tracks specific features and articulates difference-making relations between those features. This articulation is what imparts understanding: the mystery of how “descent” can obtain between different species is solved by discerning how traits confer survival advantages in dynamic environments. So the fine account gives a fuller truth, even though the coarse account gives us the full truth for its framing. In this case theory choice relies on a factor besides completeness. But why this factor, understanding? I have no worked-out account, but it seems enough for our purposes to observe that it has something to do with the goals of the inquiry involved. The fine account is preferable because it achieves a goal of scientific inquiry—enabling a certain kind of understanding. A similar observation can be made regarding color predicates. We do fairly well with the usual language of ROY G BIV hues for our typical needs: avoiding poisonous snakes (“Red on yellow can kill a fellow”) or identifying friends in a crowd (“I’m wearing a blue-green jacket”). But for other purposes, the fuller, better, truths make finer discriminations: to determine chemical composition from light spectra, we need to discriminate very finely between blue-green shades. Here, in fact, we distinguish color as finely as possible: by correlating it with wavelength. All of this is to say that it is far from clear that contradictory Christology’s “full truth” is suitable to the inquiry’s goals. Understanding was the goal in the ordinary case of natural selection, where we explain a mystery (descent and species variation) in terms of something (relatively) well-understood

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 37 (traits and advantage). But what are the goals when we are asking about the extraordinary? 3.4  Understanding and Mystery “Well-understood” the incarnation is not. Nor should it be. It is mystery to power of mystery: a transcendent God of inscrutable ways initiates a saving intervention in our history. It joins the seemingly opposite divine and human natures in a single individual, who must live without sin, endure a cruel execution, and reclaim his life from the clutches of death. The hows and the whys are baffling. The who is more baffling still. Were it not for this cloud of unknowing, one would be tempted to criticize contradictory Christology because it fails to give full, understanding— imparting truth in the way Darwinian theory does. This, of course, would be to expect that all inquiries have the same goals. This section addresses an attenuated version of this expectation. It suggests that Christological inquiry is like scientific inquiry: in both cases, our aim is as much understanding as possible. The difference is that in theology, less is possible. Obscure elements are left as blank boxes, with the space around them filled in full detail. To see how this might work, consider another example where a paradoxical opposition is realized. Exoplanet GJ436b is a “hot ice” world. Its surface temperature exceeds 800K, well higher than the 373K boiling-point for water. And yet the water on its surface is solid. So we might say: its surface is both boiling and freezing. This has an air of paradox because boiling and freezing seem incompatible: water vapor (the result of boiling) is on the opposite end of the states-of-matter spectrum from ice (the result of freezing). The mystery unravels with high-school science and a helpful diagram. The typical use of “boiling” and “freezing” concern the states of water under ordinary, terrestrial conditions—at the surface of earth. Under these conditions, indeed, water cannot assume a solid state above 373K. But, high-school science: the states of matter are a function of temperature and a second variable, atmospheric pressure. Worlds both boiling and freezing are mysterious because these ordinary concepts suppress the atmospheric pressure variable. We ignore pressure because it matters to experience only in exceptional cases (e.g., high altitude cooking). Omitting this variable creates the apparent paradox. Attending to it, we can look up a helpful phase diagram,3 which shows that water can be solid at >800K if under pressure hundreds of thousands of times that of earth. Now imagine we lacked the very concept of atmospheric pressure, and nothing in our experience suggested that phase depends on a variable besides temperature (e.g., we’ve never tried cooking on a mountain top). Then, the natural way to accept the tale of GJ436b would be to posit a hidden variable, to hypothesize something else at play. Our concepts of freezing and boiling are opposites under terrestrial conditions. But we overlook a condition (perhaps, we reason, because it is stable on earth) that, when varied, affects the

38  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan phase of H2O. So we come upon the truth that the phase of water is a function of two variables, but one of the variables is unknown to us. We can apply the same thinking to the claims of the incarnation. What characterizes humanity? In part: mutability. The content of this attribution is conditioned by our experience of ourselves. What is God like? Not like us, not in our mutability. Under ordinary conditions, negation suits to characterize what is not like us in our mutability. And so we apply to God the concept of immutability.4 But so much about God is unknown and unknowable; we cannot assume our concepts apply as in the ordinary circumstances to which our minds are suited. Recognize the hidden variable and one might see the incompatibility, of how we are and how God is, depends on holding that variable constant at the ordinary. Like atmospheric pressure in the above bit of make-believe, it is a variable we haven’t the means to understand or access. 3.5  Inferential Inertness If this is how Christological inquiry should go, then we can complain: “Theories should give us articulating understanding up to our point of ignorance. Ignorance of atmospheric pressure should not keep us from studying the phases of water and its relation to temperature, and it would be an advance in understanding if hot ice worlds showed us we are missing something. Just so with Christology.5 We say all that we can, carefully, about, e.g., mutability and immutability. Conceptual limitations make contradictions inevitable, but accepting them gets us nowhere toward understanding. Inquiry instead demands refining our concepts, and locating hidden variables”. I don’t endorse this complaint, but there are logical considerations favoring some of its thinking. In the context of (propositional) FDE,6 we may distinguish ordinary from extraordinary propositions. As in classical propositional logic, every proposition in FDE has a (functional) equivalent in disjunctive normal form (DNF): a disjunction of conjunctions of sentence letters and sentence letter negations.7 In FDE, of course, contradictions can appear nontrivially in the DNFs of propositions. We’ll say that extraordinary propositions are those in which contradictions appear in all of their DNFs; ordinary propositions have only DNFs lacking contradictions. Thus, (p ∧ ¬p ∧ q) ∨ (q ∧ ¬q ∧ p) is extraordinary, while (p ∧ ¬q) ∨ ¬r is ordinary. Supporting the complaint is the fact that extraordinary propositions are inferentially inert. This means: if an extraordinary proposition entails (in FDE) an ordinary one, the contradictions in the former didn’t “do any work” in requiring the latter. The contradiction, as it were, was extraneous. More technically and accurately, what we have is an interpolation result: If ϕ ⊢FDE ψ with ϕ extraordinary and ψ ordinary, then there is an ordinary ϕ′ containing all the sentence letters of ϕ that interpolates between ϕ and ψ: ϕ ⊢FDE ϕ′ ⊢ ψ.8 The ordinary interpolant ϕ′ is the non-contradictory proposition doing “the work” of ensuring the truth of ψ. So, while contradictory

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 39 propositions entail both ordinary and extraordinary propositions, their contradictoriness is essential only to their extraordinary consequences. The ordinary consequences aren’t making use of the contradiction. Take, for an example, a very simple entailment from a contradiction:

((p ∨ q) ∧ r) ∧ ¬((p ∨ q) ∧ r) FDE ¬q ∨ r

Here we have an extraordinary proposition—a contradiction, in fact— entailing the ordinary proposition ¬q ∨ r. One of the interpolants that can be obtained9 is (¬p ∧ ¬q ∧ r) ∨ (p ∧ r) ∨ (q ∧ r), which is equivalent in FDE to (¬p ∧ ¬q ∧ r) ∨ ((p ∨ q) ∧ r). Notice this is the disjunction of two ordinary propositions, each a consequence of one of the conjuncts in the contradiction. As in this trite example, in general, we aren’t making use of the full contradiction. Even if the extraordinary proposition is exceedingly complex, we never use the full contradiction to get the entailed ordinary proposition— even if we iterate by drawing conclusions from prior conclusions. This at least suggests that contradictions cannot impart understanding as described above. Understanding this model involves moving from the relatively mysterious to the relatively well-articulated. The interpolation result suggests this can’t be done. We would hope that the mysterious—the contradiction that is the incarnation—could be articulated with well-understood ordinary propositions. But to the extent that we can get ordinary consequences, none are essentially tied to the extraordinary premises. So it looks like there can’t be the kind of articulation we would hope for. Much more can be said on this, and admittedly, the foregoing all depends on insinuations that can be challenged: the connections between extraordinariness and mystery, and between ordinariness and articulation, to name just two. I find this criticism neither irresistible nor devoid of merit. There is an added dimension worth mentioning. Contradictions seem to be inferential dead ends—quite unlike Frege’s hope for definitions, that they contain conclusions “as plants are contained in their seeds” (Frege 1980, §88). We are urged simply to accept the contradictions, and not to treat them as putting pressure on the concepts involved. If we don’t need to explain the contradiction, and can’t elucidate it, they appear not to further inquiry. It seems, additionally, that the contradictions appear at exactly the blind spots predicted by a consistentizing strategy. But maybe most of this is beside the point. 3.6  The Goals of Christology The foregoing presumes the goal of Christology is understanding and concedes that it must work with a “hidden variable” model. But even with logical support, something is amiss: the hidden variable model makes our limitations too local. God is the transcendent creator, and so is utterly unlike us or anything we encounter. So, there is trouble in saying that any of our

40  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan concepts apply to God so as to deliver scientific-type understanding, because all our concepts are attuned to the ordinary, which God is certainly not.10 This little argument is hardly conclusive as given, but it motivates looking elsewhere for ways to evaluate contradictory Christology. So far we’ve seen that the goals of an inquiry affect how its theories should be evaluated. Because theology is an inquiry into mystery, there are reasons not to measure contradictory Christology by the yardstick of natural science. The goal of natural science—to speak exceedingly broadly—is to understand the natural world via articulation, so as to formulate lawlike principles that predict and explain the empirical phenomena. This seems a mischaracterization applied to theology. We aren’t seeking the laws of God’s behavior or intentions, nor can we understand him by articulating the relations within his mind. “Laws” governing behavior are imperfect enough when applied to human persons. This is true as well of the conciliar theologians, whose work was not in the service of a science of God, as we know science: The impression that the theologians of the fourth century…were attempting to rationalize away the mysteries of God is also completely mistaken. In fact, they were trying to protect the mystery of the gospel and the God of the gospel from false rationalization. … [The heretics] were attempting to make Christian belief … too intelligible to human intellect … Exactly how [the Trinity] could be is not fully intelligible to human minds, and heresies reduced the mystery to something mundane and comprehensible and in the process robbed it of its majesty and glory. (Olson 1999, 174) (Further, their vigor in enforcing or condemning certain formulations seems excessive if the goal were to unfurl theories of God’s action that are like theories of how a watch tells time.) So, what is Christology for? Much more than I can say. But one concern of the councils was to ensure proper communication of Christ’s work and its bearing on our salvation. It was important to the Church to discern and indicate both correct and misleading conclusions concerning believers’ salvation and the God they worship. Their work was thus the declaration of dogma with the narrative of salvation as a guide;11 working out an understanding of the doctrines, but not “understanding” as an articulation of underlying structure, as in the sciences. It is an articulation of what God’s action—documented in the Gospels—had to be in order to secure our redemption. The life, death, and resurrection of the Nazarene preacher Jesus, his relation to the person he called “my Father”, and to the Spirit he sent to guide and animate the community of his followers, according to the Epistles, established the path to salvation. Trying to understand this, and what we are to do in light of it, depends on who these Persons are, and how God’s actions (completed and ongoing) bear on our salvation.

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 41 This explains, to some degree, why the doctrine was so important in the conciliar period. Christ’s work was the salvation of the world. In it, we are invited to a life of contemplating and recognizing (at least in part) God’s work on our behalf. What we believe affects what constitutes that life. This attitude appears in Athanasius’s treatment of the Trinity. Why can faith through false doctrine leave one “without God, worse than an unbeliever, and anything rather than a Christian” (Epistle to Serapion I.30)?12 Because such belief negatively alters one’s relation to God. Consider a more mundane example. If I believe my trustworthy friend is trustworthy, then belief and fact jointly constitute a relation between us: deserved trust. But if I distrust her, belief and fact constitute a different relation: misplaced trust. How beliefs relate to facts affects the nature of the relationship. Different things are true of us taken together, and the things we can do and be, together, are different. Particular false doctrines affect the divine-human relation in particular ways: one who believes in the Spirit as a creature, for example, has “not that which is ‘in all’”; consequently lacks hope for being united to God (Athanasius 1951, I.29).13 Out hope in God is one part of our relation to him. The nature of our hope depends on what we believe about that in which we hope. Similar reasoning is found throughout the letter,14 with Athanasius reasoning from what God’s saving relation to us must be to what God must be like in effecting that salvation. Pettersen summarizes the overall outlook: Athanasius’ concern is not just right beliefs. His concern includes right beliefs, but also right relationships…. what is at stake is not just a theological theory but people’s salvation. (Pettersen 1995, 187) That there is one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not mere academic matter, but that which permits and enables a person’s’ living a godly life. (Ibid., 189)15 Having certain relationships with God, and being able to live in certain ways, depend (to some degree) on having certain attitudes concerning God’s action and nature.16 Distortions of Christ’s person and work (or of the Trinity) can distort our relationship to God. They can make our worship idolatrous, and our discipleship perverse. What we believe about the incarnation affects our devotional attitudes toward the Incarnate Lord, and those attitudes are (partly) determinative of the relationship we have with him. Athanasius is hardly unique in this; the connection between the confessional and the relational is ubiquitous in discussions of right doctrine.17 Or so it seems to my haphazard and very amateur eye. Granted, it is a vexed question how accurate our theology must be to enable a Christian life, or a

42  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan relationship with God more generally; I rather suspect Athanasius would find my own thinking too lax. But my point is that theological inquiry is directed toward something besides scientific understanding. It is successful when it enables certain relations with the author of our salvation. If this is right, then the FTA distorts the choice we face. It isn’t merely that one should be persuaded of Christological strategy because it’s an elegant means to many truths. Were Christology a science, we would also want understanding. It isn’t a science, it’s theology: so we want it to influence, vitalize, and deepen our practice of the Christian life. The contradictory strategy shouldn’t be evaluated only on the truths it enables us to affirm. It should be judged by what affirming those truths enables. So how well does the contradictory strategy fare along this axis? 3.7  FDE Is Not Dogmatic (and Why That’s Bad) We’ve seen now that Christology can be done to enable certain kinds of relationships with God. How was this done by the councils? By formulating doctrines to include certain claims about the incarnation, and to exclude others. Theology’s dogmatic pronouncements aim to keep our beliefs from disrupting the relationships in which we stand with God. The contradictory strategy, at least as implemented by Beall, has difficulty accounting for how Christology could guide belief away from error. This is because of a peculiar feature of FDE, the logic Beall favors. Let T be the True Christology—it will be the set of true sentences in the language L of Christology. If Beall is right, we should think of the logic of L— and of everything—as FDE. Now T may contain contradictions, but as Beall notes, this doesn’t mean that every sentence is in T: “Christ is immutable” and “Christ is mutable” are in T, and so is “Christ is not two persons”, but “Christ is two persons” is not. The sentences excluded from T—those not true—are excluded not by logic but by theology.18 But here is the odd thing. For any non-trivial theory, in FDE we can add the negations of arbitrarily many propositions of that theory without, in general, trivializing the theory.19 In our example, we can add “Christ is two persons” to T (which already contains its negation) without trivializing the resulting theory, T′. The upshot: propositions can be ruled in to an FDE theory, but nothing can be ruled out. At least not by logic. Now give ear to the contradictory Christologist: “So what? I’ve been saying all along: it isn’t logic that rules out Christ being two persons. It’s theology”. But here’s the catch: how are the conciliar theologians to communicate that “Christ is two persons” should not be a part of T? They can’t accomplish this by including its negation in T. Perhaps they expect us to compare T and T′, and see the theological reasons favoring the former. But the point of their pronouncements is to tell us which theories are acceptable according to theological reasoning. It is hard to see how this dogmatic task could be accomplished with FDE as the background logic. The creeds can

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 43 insist up and down that Christ is not two persons. We might still not get the theological memo, adding that Christ also is two persons. Perhaps then the theologians should just beat us with sticks.20 3.8  Inertness Again A more acute worry, though, is that the problem of inertness arises again. How are our devotional goals fostered by a contradictory Christology? Beall’s remarks suggest selective focus: In practice, Christians often find times when they rely on the truth of Christ’s divine properties while resting on the falsity of Christ’s human properties; and at other times Christians rely on the falsity of Christ’s divine properties while resting on the truth of Christ’s human properties. (Beall 2021, 46)21 In living out their faith, Christians alternate between parts of the contradictions. When one needs assurance that our intercessor will not abandon us and will not fail, we put on the divine-tinted glasses, that allow focus on Christ’s immutablity. When we need to identify Christ’s suffering with ours or need to emphasize that Christ’s relationship is as a brother or a lover, put on the human-tinted glasses, and focus on his mutability. More generally: whether in belief or developing our devotion, we don’t embrace the whole contradictory theory, but, rather, judiciously choose consistent fragments of it in order to move forward. The uncharitable way to view this is that we alternate between two theologies that proceed in parallel, with no interaction. This isn’t promising for orthodox theology, whatever its goal.22 The more charitable reading is that we can get some devotional mileage from the contradiction via the “chunk and permeate” model advocated by Priest and others.23 Learn A from one consistent fragment F, now add A consistently to another consistent fragment G (which is inconsistent with F) to get B. Now permeate B elsewhere to get more conclusions and insights we could not get from any consistent part. And this brings us back to the inertness of contradictions in propositional FDE: no matter what fragments you use to obtain a non-contradictory insight, the sum of those fragments will be consistent. So even if one takes the alternating strategy, one still isn’t using the contradictions. One could respond—in both cases—that while contradictions are logically inert, they aren’t topically inert: topic-specific consequence relations could escape the interpolation result without trivializing their theories. Indeed, they could. But do they? The underlying model of theological inquiry needs to be spelled out.24 The lump gets bigger the more you chew. The foregoing suggests that the insight gained from the now-this/now-that strategy can be gained just by reasoning from a consistent fragment of the apparently contradictory doctrine. But it is even further from a proof than the

44  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan theoretical argument from inertness, with its tenuous association of understanding with ordinary propositions. Here, the connection is also tenuous: only ordinary propositions are devotionally usable.25 This assumption seems, even to me, evidently false. Many mystics of various traditions, including Christian ones, have had profound, transforming experiences through the apparent affirmation of certain contradictions. But we must treat these with care. Beall’s program in Christology is explicitly nonmystical: even where the goals are (according to me) devotional, the way to these benefits is the enunciation of truths. So, the question is whether truths fostering Christian devotion can come through accepting Christological contradictions. That such truths would be “ordinary” seems more plausible in this context. Here it is worth contrasting the role of contradictions in N¯ag¯arjuna’s Mu¯lamadhyamakak¯arik¯a (MMK) and its various receptions—or at least the account of it given by Garfield and Priest. Na¯g¯arjuna’s doctrine is the contradiction: the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth [(Priest 1995, 263) quoting from Siderits]. But this is proposed in soteriological service: it enables “the relinquishing of all views” (MMK XXVII.30),26 a state of mind from which the “entire mass of suffering … thereby completely ceases” (MMK XXVI.12). That’s Garfield’s reading of the Tibetan reception of the MMK; the practical import is even more evident in the Zen reception: affirming the contradiction is a “Great Death” from which one can “awaken”. It is one thing to realize there are no ultimate truths, it is another to trust this, to “give up the need for foundations” (Garfield and Priest 2009, 74). Once one internalizes the contradiction—trusts the emptiness (non-ultimateness) of all things—one sees that emptiness “has canceled itself” (Ibid., 78). This is the achievement the contradiction enables: a state of seeing “as the buddha does”, free from a certain ignorance (Ibid., 81). The truth sought is one that reframes the act of truth-seeking. Some mystical Christian traditions might say similar things, but theirs is a different approach to theology than Beall’s, whose aims are emphatically non-mystical (Beall 2021, 46). Christology’s aim is the true theory of the Incarnation, whether to better understand or better adore Christ. It isn’t clear, then, that contradiction has a use in this kind of Christian theology. 3.9  Conclusion: What Then? One may easily get the impression from my critical comments that I am a friend of consistentizing, and an enemy of contradiction. In fact, I am neither, or maybe both. My criticisms are motivated largely by what we stand to lose by embracing contradiction without proper consideration. Contradictions are inferential dead ends if accepted simply as the full truth—they leave nonmystical theology nowhere to go. Beall (and others)27 deserve credit for making us face the losses and gains of each strategy. And I do think we can stand to gain, both theoretically

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 45 and devotionally, by tolerating theological contradictions. It would be strange if not: contradictory reasoning has had heuristic benefit even in the sciences.28 Still, tolerating contradictions is different from endorsing them. I’m pessimistic, based on the considerations I’ve offered, on the benefits of the latter, but I’d be pleased to be proven wrong—I’m even less an oracle than I am a theologian. I’m less pessimistic about a more general paraconsistent—not contradictory—strategy. Paraconsistent logics like FDE need not be interpreted as Beall does, as admissive of gluts. One can get exactly FDE’s consequence relation without mentioning gluts or gaps.29 So, we can deny that contradictions entailed by the conciliar pronouncements are absurd or trivializing, but refrain from saying “Christ is mutable” is both true and false. But what then, and to what end? If there is no progress by affirming the glut, where is it? My remarks above divulge my inclinations toward “epistemic mystery” strategy Beall surveys in Beall (2021, §5.7): inferential dead ends can indicate exactly the blind spots we should expect, given our limitations.30 But then if we want to make progress, the question remains: what then? There seem to be two options. The first is to offer refined concepts in hope of filling in the blind spots, much as we add “indigo” to increase our capacities to talk about blue-purple shades. I don’t know if this can be carried out in a way that avoids the problem, though: if the Incarnation, as so much else about God, is a mystery, then we do not get appreciably closer with greater specificity, even if the enhanced scheme is in some ways “better”. But further, the track record isn’t great, in that such conceptual refinements have come as metaphysical speculations. With these (Beall 2021, 145) and I are alike uneasy. The other option is just to keep quiet. In many moods this is my answer, but it admittedly isn’t a forward path theologically, even if it is devotionally. Anselm also asks “What then?”, then suggests a cryptic third answer: “we signify through some other thing what we are either unwilling or unable to express properly, as when we speak in riddles” (Anselm 2007, Monologion LXV).31 Concepts work differently in the context of a riddle. In both Beall’s contradictory approach, and consistentizing speculations, concepts whether new or old are inflexible: there are rules for, e.g., mutability that something abides or doesn’t. But, as Cora Diamond notes, to untangle a riddle requires willingness to treat and apply concepts in new and unexpected ways: [I]n the riddle-phrase we have something that looks like a description, but what it is for that ‘description’ to fit something has not been settled. (Diamond 1995, 273–274) Diamond here is speaking of what might be termed “found” riddles, as opposed to “curated” ones. A curated riddle is one where someone has cleverlyshifted meanings so the solution is hard to find. A found riddle—following Wittgenstein, Diamond thinks some mathematical questions count—is one

46  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan where it seems such a solution should exist even if it isn’t clear the solution has an intending mind behind it. In either case, we search for ways the words can mean that will make sense of the riddle-phrase. Unsolved riddles have “promissory meaning” only, they are “no more than the outer surface of what will be a true proposition”—when solved, when we determine an apt answer (Diamond 1995, 283). Great riddles are ever unsolved: they have the promise of meaning but “‘allude’ to a language whose full transparency to us is ruled out” (Ibid., 282). We might, in light of this, regard the doctrine of the Incarnation as a great riddle, wherein its full meaning is ever beyond us, but the puzzling over which constitutes some sort of progress nevertheless. What kind of progress? Let’s turn back to Anselm. The transcendence of God is already lodged in the background of Monologion’s “What then?”, so it is fitting that Proslogion, at least as Walz (2010) narrates it, does not solve the riddle as might be traditionally expected.32 It rather invites the reader to follow Anselm’s faith-seeking-understanding thinking patterns (Ibid., 132). These will please (and give rest to) her heart “in the way that Anselm himself had been pleased … [as by] achieving a difficult good” (Ibid., 137). The kind of riddle-reflection Proslogion invites involves the mind but does not present a solution that can be obtained absent the form of thought Anselm demonstrates. And so, the theological gain from the exercise could be communicable only by leading another through that very exercise. I think it should be neither above nor below us to think of such truth-seeking contemplation as a part of theological inquiry. This is inadequate as an account of how to do theology in light of paradox, but I hope it hints at an attitude that appreciates the ineliminability of contradiction from Christology, but avoids the concerns I’ve tried to elucidate. Contradictions—at least in the context of holy mysteries—should deeply unsettle us. Beall likely agrees, but would isolate the disquiet from the inputs of logic. Perhaps the Anselmian vision I’ve (barely) sketched offers a less compartmentalized, and more conceptually flexible, way of proceeding.33 Notes 1 This is a moment for protest, though not the one I will raise here. 2 This is, of necessity, a grossly oversimplified dismissal of the correspondence question. 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water (data page). 4 This, of course, brackets concerns about whether we can make any positive attributions to God. Hidden variable thinking appears to accommodate this; the argument would be that to say God is immutable is simply to say that he is not mutable in the way we are. I’m leaving these complications aside because I ultimately don’t think the hidden variable model is effective, for reasons given in §5. 5 One might object to the analogy, since mutability for humanity and immutability for divinity are essential properties, while boiling and freezing are superficial. Perhaps then the analogy fails as essential properties admit less epistemic slack than superficial ones. I’ll put this question aside since I don’t endorse the hidden variable model in the end.

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 47 6 These results hold for simple logics like FDE; it is unclear to what extent they hold for more complex paraconsistent logics, (for example, the dual of intuitionistic logic). 7 Two sentences are inferentially equivalent if each is a consequence of the other, and functionally equivalent if their truth-table columns are identical. These are coextensive in classical logic, but distinct in FDE. In FDE every sentence has a functional equivalent in DNF. The proof, however, is the same for both logics, though in the latter contradictions and sentences of the form p ∨ ¬p are not eliminated. The proofs rely on facts common to classical logic and FDE: double negations, DeMorgan alternates, and distributions of conjunctions over disjunctions preserve functional equivalence. A thorough (syntactic) proof for the classical case can be found in (Button 2013, section 3.3); its adaptation to FDE would also require altering Lemma 2.2 to concern substitution of functional equivalents. 8 With ϕ ⊢FDE ψ, form the DNF in FDE of each, call them ϕDNF and ψDNF. Now ϕDNF is of the form D1 ∨ . . . ∨ Dn, with each Dι a conjunction of what we will call literals: sentence-letters and negations of sentence-letters. Without loss of generality we may assume ϕDNF is in reduced form: if X and Y are disjoint proper subsets of {D1,. . . , Den}, VX ⊬FDE VY. (Every formula has an inferentially equivalent formula in reduced DNF, since in general if θ ⊢FDE θ′ then θ ∨ θ′ ⊣⊢FDE θ′.) Thus, for each i there is an evaluation eat making exactly Di true. Thus, since ϕ ⊢FDE ψ, for each disjunct Di of ϕDNF, there will be disjuncts Dil,. . . , Dik of ψDNF, each of which is a conjunction of a subset of literals appearing in Di. To form the j interpolant ϕ′: for each Di and each sentence letter p, if exactly one of p and ¬p j j appears in Di, conjoin it to Di , and call the result (Di )+. If both p and ¬p appear j in Di and neither appears in Di , pick one of them (it doesn’t matter which) and j j conjoin it to (Di )+; call the result (Di )++. Finally, disjoin all of the resulting conj junctions to get our ordinary interpolant ϕ′, which is Vin=1 (Vjk=1(Di )++). 9 As in the proof (see fn8), and clearing redundancies. 10 Cotnoir raises a similar concern, but draws a slightly different lesson: we should not presume that “the correct consequence relation for human theorizing about God is the consequence relation that God uses in his own mental life.” (Cotnoir 2019, 521). 11 This was, of course, only one guiding light: there were other theological motivations, as well as countless regrettable political intrigues. 12 Quotations are from Athanasius (1951). 13 I’m of course eliding the role deification plays in salvation in conciliar thought, and in Eastern Christianity more generally. 14 Another good example (Athanasius 1951, I.30) concerns the bearing of Trinitarian belief on faith and the baptismal rite: It is “faith in the Triad”—God as threein-one—that “joins us to God”; heterodox rites are thus “ineffective”. See also Shapland’s fn2 (Ibid., 139) 15 Olson likewise remarks in explaining Athansius’s stubbornness: confessing [heresy] means “rejecting our own salvation and teaching a false gospel” (Olson 1999, 172). Similarly, the concern motivating the Council of Chalcedon was “to explain as far as possible for human minds what Christians mean when they confess the man Jesus to be both God and human at the same time in order to protect the gospel of salvation” (Ibid., 199). 16 So, did the relationship of Christians before the conciliar creeds suffer because of this? Not necessarily. The claim is that understanding the work in certain ways enables certain relationships, and that understanding the work in other ways inhibits those relationships. It doesn’t mean that those relationships can only be had by such understandings. 17 The thread of thought seems to go back at least to the first epistle of John. Practical concerns predominate for three chapters until the practical and creedal converge

48  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan at verse 3:24. The assurance of God’s presence (a practical matter) is manifest by a spirit confessing “that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh”. Only those who know God—who can exhibit Christian love—accept the testimony to the incarnation (4:5–6); indeed, “God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God” [4:15 NRSV (Updated Edition)]. The right confession is coextensive with the possibility of God’s abiding presence [as well as “abiding in love” (4:16b)]. 18 It is a fair question how this works. Beall has made several non-committal suggestions (see Beall (2021), §4.1.4); the one that seems most compelling is that topicspecific reasoning is the process of making choices between contradictions. For whatever the topic, if q is a topic-specific consequence of p, then q ∨ (p ∧ ¬p) is a logical consequence of p. So, when we infer q from p in our topic-specific way, we are in effect choosing, for topical reasons, to accept q rather than the contradiction p ∧ ¬p. 19 Meaning, in a reasonably robust theory, there will be sentences ¬p in T such T plus p is non-trivial. There are, of course, exceptions: if our (propositional) language L contains just p, and T contains just the consequences of ¬p in L, then naturally adding p will trivialize T. But this does not happen in general. The result can be proved in several (tedious) ways, but why it is so is demonstrated by example. Take the ordinary proposition from (3) above, (p ∧ q) ∨ r. Each line of a truth table starts with an evaluation—assignment of truth-values to sentence-letters—and proceeds to compute the truth-values of more complex sentences. Listed below is one of the five classical evaluations on which (3) is true: p

q

r

p ∧ ¬q

¬r

(p ∧ ¬q) ∨ ¬r

t

t

f

f

t

t

However, we can add the opposite truth-value to any entry in the left three columns without making the right-most entry untrue, for the status either remains having only the value t, or changes to having both truth-values. Here are just three such alterations: p

Q

r

p ∧ ¬q

¬r

(p ∧ ¬q) ∨ ¬r

t

t

t, f

f

t, f

t, f

t

t, f

t, f

t, f

t, f

t, f

t, f

t

f

f

t

t

By adding the other truth-value, we never lose truth in the right column (though we might add falsehood). To ensure that the expanded theory isn’t trivialized, we simply avoid adding the extra truth-value to all letters in L. 20 This is somewhat related to (Page 2021)’s concern that because FDE has no detachable conditional (a connective → such that p, p → q ⊢FDE q) we are hobbled in our theological reasoning. Beall replies that detachable conditionals aren’t excluded from the full story of Christ (Beall 2021, §4.1.4.2–3), they just don’t appear where they would cause trouble. The concern paralleling the one given here is how to distinguish the uses of differing conditionals and consequence relations. I expect Beall will say this is done, as always, by the hard work of topicspecific inquiry. These are questions for another time, but I think all sides face a hard road explaining how inquiry can discern these things.

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 49 21 Beall’s remark is not made directly toward the devotional question, but it applies here without distortion. 22 It is also worth noting that Beall’s statement is stronger than necessary, and worrisome for that reason. Reasoning from “Christ is divine” with no judgment about his humanity is one thing. Reasoning from “Christ is divine and Christ is not human”, without any affirmation of “Christ is human”, is hardly Chalcedonian orthodoxy! It would be troublesome indeed if orthodoxy is simply the practice of alternating heresies! 23 Here, one reasons (classically) within consistent “chunks” of an inconsistent theory to obtain conclusions that then “flow” or “permeate” to another consistent chunk for further reasoning. See Brown and Priest (2015), Brown and Priest (2004), and Benham, Mortensen, and Priest (2014). Chunk and permeate, of course, is a model for scientific reasoning, which we have been at pains to differentiate from theological reasoning. But one could imagine applying it toward conclusions along the devotional axis. 24 To be fair, there are models of inquiry, both broad (Harman 1986) and specific [(Brown and Priest 2015), (Brown and Priest 2004), (Benham, Mortensen, and Priest 2014), (Mortensen 1995), (Weber 2010), and (Weber 2021)] that describe reasoning from contradictions, though in other domains. I have my quibbles which (for now) I will keep to myself. 25 There is also the added complication that devotional insights might be in a different language from the creedal premises, transformed as they may be by the detour through the salvation narrative. 26 Quotations are from Garfield (1995). 27 See Beall and Cotnoir (2017), Cotnoir (2018), and Weber (2019). 28 There are several examples, among them Newton’s “evanescent quantities” [see Brown and Priest (2004) and Walsh and Button (2018)], Heaviside’s logically dodgy algebraic treatment of differential operators [(Wilson 2006), (Maddy 2007), and (Davey 2003)], and Dirac’s δ function [(Benham, Mortensen, and Priest 2014), (Davey 2003)]. More generally, see Maddy (2007), Wilson (2006), Davey (2014), Mortensen (1995), and Weber (2021). 29 See Anderson and Belnap (1962, 13), which shows A ⊢FDE B holds iff A tautologically entails B—the latter being a property involving classical consequence among specially selected formulæ. More generally for the history of FDE and its characterizations, see Omori and Wansing (2017). 30 An interesting correlate can be found in Franks’s articulation of an interesting logic from the Talmudic tradition, wherein certain inference patterns cannot be iterated when concerning “the realm of the sacred” (Franks 2012). It is worth noting that this logic is not articulated semantically at all. 31 Worth noting: Anselm’s contemplation at the outset of Proslogion I is, like Augustine’s in Confessions I, plagued by riddles: “Lord, if you are not here, where shall I seek you, since you are absent? But if you are everywhere, why do I not see you, since you are present?” (Anselm 2007). 32 The riddle in Proslogion, of course, isn’t the Incarnation, but “that than which nothing greater can be thought”. But the lesson is the same. 33 Thanks for helpful comments, discussion, and inspiring correspondence to Mark Alznauer, Jc Beall, Ryan Davis, Curtis Franks, Meghan Page, Jonathan Rutledge (especially for the discussion of trust and that in endnote 5), and Leon Sommer-Simpson; the last of whom also provided research assistance funded by the Northwestern University Undergraduate Research Assistance Program grant. Kyla Ebels-Duggan formulated the point Petterson attributes to Athanasius long before either of us read (Pettersen 1995); I’m grateful for her insight, influence, and further discussion (and much more). Mistakes, oversimplifications, and anything else embarrassing are completely original to me.

50  Sean C. Ebels-Duggan Bibliography Anderson, Alan Ross, and Nuel Belnap. 1962. “Tautological Entailments.” Philosophical Studies 13: 9–24. Anselm. 2007. Basic Writings. Translated by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Athanasius. 1951. The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit. London: The Epworth Press. Beall, Jc. 2021. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beall, Jc, and A. J. Cotnoir. 2017. “God of the Gaps: A Neglected Reply to God’s Stone Problem.” Analysis 77 (4): 681–89. Benham, Richard, Chris Mortensen, and Graham Priest. 2014. “Chunk and Permeate III: The Dirac Delta Function.” Synthese 191 (13): 3057–62. Brown, M. Bryson, and Graham Priest. 2004. “Chunk and Permeate, a Paraconsistent Inference Strategy. Part I: The Infinitesimal Calculus.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 33 (4): 379–88.  . 2015. “Chunk and Permeate II: Bohr’s Hydrogen Atom.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 5 (3): 297–314. Button, Tim. Metatheory. 2018. http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytbu/Metatheory.pdf Cotnoir, A. J. 2018. “Theism and Dialetheism.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (3): 592–609.  . 2019. “On the Role of Logic in Analytic Theology: Exploring the Wider Context of Beall’s Philosophy of Logic.” Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (4): 508–28. Davey, Kevin. 2003. “Is Mathematical Rigor Necessary in Physics?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54 (3): 439–63.  . 2014. “Can Good Science Be Logically Inconsistent?” Synthese 191 (13): 3009–26. Diamond, Cora. 1995. The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind. London: MIT Press, London. Franks, Curtis. 2012. “The Realm of the Sacred, Wherein We May Not Draw an Inference From Something Which Itself Has Been Inferred: A Reading of Talmud Bavli Zevachim Folio 50.” History and Philosophy of Logic 33 (1): 69–86. Frege, Gottlob. 1980. The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number. Translated by John Langshaw Austin, 2nd edition. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Garfield, Jay L. 1995. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhya-Makakarika. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garfield, Jay L., and Graham Priest. 2009. “Mountains Are Just Mountains.” In Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism, Logic, Analytic Philosophy, edited by Jay L. Garfield, Tom J. F. Tillemans, and D’Amato Mario, 71–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harman, Gilbert. 1986. Change in View: Principles of Reasoning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Maddy, Penelope. 2007. Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mortensen, Chris. 1995. Inconsistent Mathematics. Dordrecht: Springer

What Is the Aim of (Contradictory) Christology? 51 Olson, Roger. 1999. The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Omori, Hitoshi, and Heinrich Wansing. 2017. “40 Years of FDE.” Studia Logica 105: 1021–49. Page, Meghan D. 2021. “Detachment Issues: A Dilemma for Beall’s Contradictory Christology.” Journal of Analytic Theology 9: 201–4. Pettersen, Alvyn. 1995. Athanasius. Outstanding Christian Thinkers. London: Geoffrey Chapman. Priest, Graham. 1995. Beyond the Limits of Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walsh, Sean, and Tim Button. 2018. Philosophy and Model Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walz, Matthew D. 2010. “The ‘Logic’ of Faith Seeking Understanding: A Propaedeutic for Anselm’s Proslogion.” Dionysius 28: 131–66. Weber, Zach. 2010. “A Paraconsistent Model of Vagueness.” Mind 119 (476): 1025–45.  . 2019. “Atheism and Dialetheism; or, ‘Why I Am Not A (Paraconsistent) Christian.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (2): 401–7.  . 2021. Paradoxes and Inconsistent Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, Mark. 2006. Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4

Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology Jc Beall

4.1 Terminology A (truth-value) glut—dual to the familiar (truth-value) gap—is a sentence (or proposition or claim or whathaveyou) that’s both truth and false, that is, it’s a truth whose logical negation (viz., it is false that…) is also true.1 A glut-theoretic account of a given phenomenon is one that involves gluts: the true theory of the given phenomenon contains gluts. If, as I shall henceforth assume, contradictions are sentences (or propositions or claims or whathaveyou) that entail sentences (or etc.) of the form It is true that…and it is false that… then a glut-theoretic account of some phenomenon is one that involves contradictions: the true theory of the given phenomenon contains contradictions. ** Parenthetical note on further terminology. One other small terminological point: Some might wonder about the neologism, coined by Graham Priest and Richard Sylvan (formerly Routley), ‘dialethism’. This is one specific ‘ism’ in the broader family of glut-theoretic accounts of reality; it’s an ‘ism’ that, as discussed elsewhere (Beall 2022), is fueled by various views about metalanguages and the like. I used to use the term without noting the distinctions but have since found it unhelpful. One can obviously be a glut theorist (i.e., accept that some true theories contain gluts or are contradictory) without having specific views about languages or metalanguages. Indeed, accepting that there are gluts—true contradictions—isn’t itself some ‘ism’ any more than accepting that there are true conjunctions (or untrue disjunctions) is an ‘ism’. For these reasons, I use the simpler and older terminology of gluts and gaps—with ‘gluts’ being coined in print in the 70s by Kit Fine and used by Mike Dunn and others. In general, a ‘dialethic’ account of something is a glut-theoretic one; however, there are many glut-theoretic accounts of phenomena that don’t involve the ‘ism’s of ‘dialethism’. (In addition, see the work of Elena Ficara (2023: this volume) for yet further distinctions in the glut-theoretic family.) ** End note. DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-5

Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology 53 4.2  Theology and Contradiction Gluts appear to be rare, and much of reality appears to be fully and truly described without them.2 But that most phenomena are truly described without gluts—that is, truly described without logical (i.e., negation-) inconsistency— does not imply that all phenomena are as such. Traditional monotheism and the omni properties standardly involved therein have long carried the appearance of contradiction. (Witness the infamous ‘stone problem’ of omnipotence, the ‘this sentence is unknowable by God’ problem for omniscience, etc.) A natural glut-theoretic account of God’s given omni properties takes at least some of them to be glutty: the given predicates are both true of and false of God. A more concrete example of contradictory theology arises in specifically christian theology, centering on the incarnation and, in turn, trinitarian reality. On standard christian theology, God incarnate is one person, divine and human. The GodMan appears very much on the surface to be contradictory— having all the limitlessness of God while firmly bound by the limitations common to us and essential to human nature. Predicates such as ‘knows all truths’ appear to be both true of and false of the incarnate god. Such apparent contradictions have long fueled a quest to consistentize the incarnation in christian theology—a quest to give a full but logically (i.e., negation-) consistent account of God incarnate. And the routes towards consistentizing the incarnation (similarly, trinity) generally proceed by metaphysical construction (e.g., the metaphysics is more complicated than we thought) or semantical construction (e.g., the predicates like ‘knows all truths’ mean something other than what we thought) or epistemological construction (e.g., our limited epistemic state is forced to see apparent but non-veridical contradiction in the incarnation) or all of the above (Adams 2006; Anderson 2007; Crisp 2009; Crisp and Rea 2009; Cross 2002, 2011, 2019; McCall 2015; Pawl 2016, 2019, 2020; Williams 1968). A glut-theoretic account of the target GodMan (the incarnation per standard christian doctrine) is not only natural but also simpler than any of the known routes towards consistency (Beall 2021). In a nutshell, the incarnation strongly appears to be contradictory because the reality is contradictory; at least some predicates are both true of and false of the target incarnate god. Along these lines, getting around the given contradiction results in lost truths. The reality of incarnation (similarly, trinity) is contradictory; there are more truths of the given reality than any logically consistent account can contain. Another virtue of a glut-theoretic approach to specifically christian theology is that the longstanding apparent contradictions involved in both the incarnation and trinity enjoy a unified treatment: namely, that divine reality is contradictory—its full truth involves contradiction (Beall 2023). By my lights, the simplicity and naturalness of a suitable contradictory christian theology, especially in comparison with would-be consistent accounts, make contradictory theology the front-running approach. The

54  Jc Beall question is whether there are serious objections or problems that eventually remove contradictory theology from the field of viable candidates. 4.3  Ten Objections In what follows, I address ten common objections to contradictory theology. Objections to glut theory in general are sufficiently answered in a variety of places (Beall 2009; Priest 2005); I focus only on objections to contradictory theology in particular. A few of the target ten objections are addressed elsewhere (Beall 2021, 2023), but they are so common as to merit repeating. The following objections are in no special order, except that the last two deal with slightly more technical issues around logic and theology. 4.3.1  Contradiction and Methodological Rules of Inquiry

Objection. Contradictory theology completely undermines standard methods of inquiry that guide the search for truth. Jettisoning standard methods of inquiry resigns the pursuit of truth to an arbitrary process, unmoored from standards that have successfully guided theologians since the beginning. Accordingly, contradictory theologies come at the cost of giving up the very methods and standards on which theological truth is found. Reply. The objection would undermine contradictory theology were it correct in its principal claim, namely, that standard methods of truth-seeking inquiry must be abandoned. That’s just not so. In fact, quite the opposite: the very same methodological rules of thumb that have so successfully guided the pursuit of true theories remain exactly as they are now and as they always have been.3 There are three traditional and very salient methodological rules of thumb that guide truth-seeking inquiry—guide the pursuit of true theories. The three methodological rules of thumb are familiar.

• Seek complete theories! In short, one should seek a logically complete

description of the target phenomenon. In other words, the theory affirms (i.e., contains) either A or its logical negation ¬A for every sentence A in the language of the target theory.4 The practical upshot: avoid gaps in true theories. • Seek consistent theories! In short, one should seek a logically consistent description of the target phenomenon. In other words, for no A in the language of the theory does the theory affirm (i.e., contain) both A and its logical negation ¬A. The practical upshot: avoid gluts in true theories. • Seek simple, natural theories! In short, seek the simplest and most natural theory of a given phenomenon!5 Such methodological rules are not only familiar but also they’re directly active in the pursuit of true theories, be they in natural science or philosophy or

Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology 55 theology or mathematics, etc. Such methodological rules are not logical rules; they’re simply practical rules that guide the construction of true theories. Reality, of course, doesn’t always bend to the trio of methodological rules. Sometimes, one needs to sacrifice simplicity and naturalness in order to accommodate consistency and completeness. Sometimes, one must sacrifice completeness in order to accommodate consistency and simplicity/naturalness. Sometimes, as is the case if some contradictory theology is true, one needs to sacrifice consistency in order to accommodate completeness and simplicity/naturalness. The trio of methodological rules strongly governs the construction of true theories; however, when reality is recalcitrant, one does the best one can. Were there a simple rule or algorithm that tells a seeker of truth which of the trio to sacrifice in the face of recalcitrant or otherwise highly perplexing data, the pursuit of true theories would be much, much, much, much, much, much, much easier than it actually is. Alas, such is the pursuit—hard. Very hard. In the end, the running objection that contradictory theology requires abandoning fundamental rules of truth-seeking inquiry should be rejected. The rules are the same now as they’ve always been. The pursuit of truth is as difficult as it has always been. Theology is not special in that respect. 4.3.2  Conciliar Writers and Contradiction

Objection. The patristic writers who informed the conciliar documents that at least partially define target christian theological doctrines (e.g., incarnation and trinity) were entirely unaware of suitable subclassical accounts of logical consequence that make sense of gluts or contradictory theories generally. In turn, the conciliar fathers who wrote target doctrinal texts were obviously not thinking of such accounts of logical consequence—and hence were not thinking about or otherwise entertaining would-be true contradictions in theology. Hence, any contradictory christian theology is either conspicuously detached from the intentions of conciliar writers or simply getting such intentions wrong. Either way, any would-be contradictory christian theology should be rejected. Reply. There are at least four immediate points of reply. 1 Some scholars argue that at least some patristic writers advanced contradictory theologies. In particular, Basil Lourié argues that Byzantine patristics advanced contradictory theologies similar to ones advanced more recently (Lourié 2019a, 2019b). If Lourié is correct, then perhaps Byzantine patristics advanced a contradictory theology absent a fully explicit account of logic that would ground it. Whether Lourié is correct is entirely beyond my competence. I leave Lourié’s theses—which I assume to be fairly controversial—for proper experts to adjudicate. I mention them here only to flag that at least some scholars—based on historical scholarship— reject the jump from ‘no suitably precise subclassical logic’ to ‘no contradictory theology’.

56  Jc Beall 2 There are other reasons, beyond actual historical scholarship (e.g., Lourié’s said work), for rejecting the inference from no suitably precise subclassical logic to no contradictory theology. For example, the patristics certainly did not have the explicit tools for logic or entailment relations that we enjoy today; however, that alone only makes the truth of apparently contradictory doctrines (e.g., divine and human, trinity, etc.) hard to understand; it doesn’t imply that such writers had at hand clearly consistent, non-contradictory accounts of what follows from their explicitly written fundamental truths.6 3 Another reason to reject said inference concerns divine inspiration and the intentions of conciliar fathers. Divine inspiration, usually considered to be active in official conciliar documents, can obviously result in a written record that may be at odds with the very intentions of the given writers. A divinely inspired writer may write something that she intends to be read one way but the truth, divinely inspired as it is, goes against such intentions. While I am not herein arguing that this possibility was realized in the actual conciliar documents, the possibility is not wildly remote; it’s a possibility that at least slows if not arrests the otherwise quick step from an author’s historically bound intentions to the actual divinely inspired truth in the document. 4 Finally (for present purposes), there’s a very natural alternative way of thinking about the core doctrines and conciliar texts, one that diminishes the weight of the going objection. As I see the matter, such writers, divinely inspired, were as puzzled as the rest of us by what they wrote. It’s not a case of magically moving pens (e.g., as in Harry Potter’s discovery of Tom Riddle’s schoolboy diary); it’s a case of hard thinking and reflection leading, via divine inspiration, to apparently contradictory claims. The situation is very common, particularly in theology. The writers recognized that, for example, saying only that Christ is human leaves important truths out, but, on the other hand, saying only that Christ is divine leaves important truths out—and so, divinely inspired, they said both, even if the result is an apparently contradictory being (viz., incarnate god) whose true description is thereby apparently very difficult to understand. The situation is a common one: namely, writing what is true without understanding exactly why or how it is true. This may be especially common when divine inspiration intervenes in otherwise very parochial intentions and beliefs of historically constrained writers. For (at least) the foregoing reasons, the objection from the historical home of target doctrinal writers does not undermine or diminish contradictory theologies. 4.3.3  Perfection Precludes Contradiction

Objection. Contradiction is a blemish. At the very least, perfection precludes contradiction; hence, any theology according to which God is perfect is not a contradictory theology.

Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology 57 Reply. Suppose that the full truth of reality involves truths that are also false—that is, involves gluts. If that’s the way reality is, that’s the way reality is; hence, removing the contradictions removes truths of reality. How is that a blemish? But focus, as the objection does, on perfect aspects of reality—for example, God. Does this change the matter? Not as far as I see. Suppose, as a contradictory theology has it, that the full truth of God involves not just the axiomatic perfection of God but also some glut—whether it be about God’s omni properties or, in christian-theological work, the incarnation or triune nature of God or so on. There is no blemish. According to the theology, God is perfect—and axiomatically so. Given that, according to said theology, God is also a contradictory being (i.e., a being of whom some contradiction is true), divine perfection is clearly compatible with—because realized with—contradiction. The objection, which is categorical, has a comparative cousin: namely, that while perfection mightn’t preclude contradiction, a non-contradictory being is more perfect (so to speak) than a contradictory being who is alike in all respects to the non-contradictory duplicate except for a lone contradiction. But the weight of this objection is no heavier than the original version. Why think that because there are more truths (viz., some falsehoods) of the otherwise duplicate that said duplicate is ‘less perfect’? Argument is required. Pending such argument, the objection, be it in the original categorical version or the comparative version, fails to undermine or diminish contradictory theology. 4.3.4  Analogy and Metaphor against Contradictory Theology

Objection. Contradictory theology is unmotivated given that apparent contradiction in theology is adequately explained as merely linguistic—as inevitable, linguistic-only tangles in the face of God’s transcendence. Given God’s transcendence, our language, used analogically—for example, Chow (2018)—or sometimes metaphorically, only approximates the truth of God. There may be apparent contradictions, but the reality beyond the appearance is not contradictory. Reply. The objection reflects a not-uncommon position towards theological theories. The idea is that while apparent contradiction may well emerge— perhaps even inevitably emerge—in theological language, the explanation is not a contradictory being in divine reality but rather a transcendent being who somehow is ‘overly beyond’ the reach of our truth-aspiring language. Such a position, by my lights, either

• rejects that theology is a truth-seeking endeavor, or • lands in contradiction all the same, or • is arbitrary. Take each ‘horn’ in turn.

• Theology, on my view, aims to truly describe reality in the same sense

that all truth-seeking activities aim: to truly and fully describe the target reality. In biology, the aim is to give the full truth of biological reality;

58  Jc Beall in mathematics, mathematical reality; and in theology, theological—divine—reality. That divine reality may exceed what is achievable in theological theories is entirely compatible with the aim of truly describing all of divine reality—as far as possible. To my knowledge, there’s no particular claim about God that is supposed to be beyond true expression; there’s instead a claim about God’s full reality going beyond true description. But where? What facet? Without exact details, a gesture towards ‘transcendence’ as an explanation of why theology can’t truly describe God is unfounded. Of course, if theology has no way of truly describing God, then any would-be contradictions fail to be true of God. That’s clear. But rejecting that theology truly describes God is rejecting a critical component of serious theological inquiry. At the very least, argument is required for so rejecting. • Claiming that God’s transcendence implies that theological language is untrue of God is itself contradictory. After all, ‘is transcendent’ is true of God, and hence, theological language is true of God. • Finally, responding to the two “horns” above, the position according to which ‘is transcendent’ is alone true of God is arbitrary. Why that predicate? Why not others? (And the position may well be unviable since ‘is transcendent’ will entail other predicates each of which, given that they’re entailed, is also true of God, etc.) While the objection reflects a not-uncommon position towards theological theories, the position should be rejected in the face of foregoing problems. Accordingly, the objection does not undermine or diminish contradictory theology. 4.3.5  God Is Free of Tension

Objection. The very meaning of ‘contradiction’ demands tension or opposition or worse. But any true theology, at least within standard christian tradition, is one according to which God is free of tension or opposition. Hence, ‘contradictory theology’ is at best a recipe for theology that pits opposition within God—and therefore is a theology cut away from the traditions in which it purports to reside. Reply. While the etymology of the term may demand as much,7 the term, as used in the present context, is tied to its logical usage. In particular, a contradiction, per Section 4.1, is any sentence that entails a sentence of the form It is true that…and it is false that… where the two truth/falsity operators are logical vocabulary (viz., so-called logical nullation and logical negation) and where the ellipses are replaced by the same sentence. A glut, as above, is a true-and-false sentence, which is something that entails a contradiction understood in said logical sense. But,

Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology 59 then, there’s nothing in ‘the very meaning’ of ‘contradiction’ that demands tension or opposition. A true contradiction simply entails a conjunction of two truths, one of which is the logical negation of the other. There’s no interesting or notable opposition involved in an arbitrary true contradiction any more than there’s interesting or notable opposition in an arbitrary conjunction. Thinking of contradiction as invariably tied to opposition or tension might well explain why contradictory theology, despite its fairly clear virtues, has been neglected. But once ‘contradiction’ is clarified in its logical sense, there’s no good reason to tie contradictory theology to opposition— and hence, contrary to the objection, no good reason to tie contradictory theology to would-be opposition or tension in God. 4.3.6  Scripture and the Absence of Explicit Contradiction

Objection. Contradictory theology confronts a devastating problem if it purports to stand in holy-book traditions. For example, in relevant christian theological tradition, where christian scripture is taken to record special divine revelation on which much christian theology is based, the breathtakingly fundamental claim that God is contradictory would—one would reasonably expect—be explicitly given in said text. The absence of any such explicit claim of contradiction is very telling. Reply. The appearance of contradiction is rooted in all such sacred texts. For present purposes, stick to christian scriptures.8 Inasmuch as such scriptures support—as conciliar documents officially declare—that Jesus is not just ‘the Christ’ but divine and hence God, the scriptures scream out contradiction. After all, Jesus’ ignorance is explicit in said scriptures (e.g., ‘I know not the time’), ignorance that contradicts the essential omniscience of being God.9 Indeed, as non-christian thinkers reflect in such scriptures, the only way to fully square Jesus’ recorded actions (including otherwise blasphemous claims such as ‘I and the Father are one’) is an apparently contradictory one—an interpretation that appeared as ‘nonsense’ and/or ‘folly’ to such non-christian thinkers. But put exact exegetical matters aside. In the end, at least christian theology is partially defined by the doctrines that are supposed to be christianscripture-based. The standard appearance of contradiction comes directly from such doctrines as explicitly given (e.g., that Christ is divine and Christ is human). Ultimately, then, the apparent contradictions are grounded directly in target scriptures. 4.3.7  Theology and Logic

Objection. The appearance of contradiction in theology largely rests on apparent entailments from doctrinal claims (i.e., from ‘theological axioms’). But such entailments are only a threat if true theology is bound by logic or bound by some entailment relation or other. But theology—being directed

60  Jc Beall at the boundless reality of transcendent God—is bound by logic or other entailment relations at its own peril. The peril, in short, is the very apparent contradiction that otherwise arises. The solution is not to accept that true theology is contradictory (and thereby accept that God is a contradictory being); the solution is to jettison the demands of logic or other entailment relations that might otherwise constrain theological claims.10 Reply. The objection reflects a position according to which theological claims are detached from whatever they may otherwise entail. In particular, while the doctrinal claims (i.e., ‘theological axioms’) of a particular theology might in fact entail a contradiction, such entailments don’t affect theology because theology is not ‘closed under’ any entailment relation—certainly not under logical entailment. Theology is somehow unique among truth-seeking theories in being cut free from the demands of logical consequence (or even extra-logical consequence governing the predicates of true theories). Such a position, in my view, should be rejected from the start. Theology may be unique in a variety of ways, but its uniqueness is not a willy-nilly arbitrariness—shirking the demands of logic and other entailment relations. Such a position not only gives up serious and systematic truth seeking but it also sanctions the arbitrary, no-rhyme-nor-reason game of theory construction, where any old set of claims is entirely free from the consequences of the given claims.11 4.3.8 Contradiction, Paradox, and Mystery

Objection. Much of traditional monotheism, and especially christian theology, is explicitly entwined with central mysteries. The Catholic Church, for example, maintains that trinitarian reality is a fundamental mystery. Such phenomena often appear to be contradictory, but they are thereby just ‘paradoxes’—just apparent contradictions—and not actually contradictory (Anderson 2007). Accordingly, motivation for contradictory theology is entirely undermined when one accepts instead that target apparent contradictions are pointers towards divine mysteries, not towards actual divine contradiction. Reply. There are various elements of reply. I highlight just two.12 1 If theological contradiction is strongly apparent—as it is, even by the objection’s lights—the question arises: why not simply accept that the reality is contradictory? If the response is that all theological contradictions must be rejected, the response requires argument. 2 The existence of mystery and the appearance of contradiction are very different things, sometimes related, sometimes unrelated. Unless there’s very good reason to think that apparent theological contradiction and theological mystery are correlated one-to-one (so to speak), the position according to which apparent contradiction is just a pointer to noncontradictory theological mystery is wanting.

Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology 61 In the end, the existence of divine mystery neither undermines nor diminishes contradictory theology. 4.3.9  Contradictory Theology and Modality

Objection. A suitable subclassical (non-classical) account of logical consequence, underwriting glut-theoretic accounts of theological reality, complicates modality since now some possibilities are glutty, some gappy (at least on some target contradictory theologies), and not just the usual ‘classically constrained’ possibilities. But modality (e.g., alethic, deontic, and more) is essential to true theology (e.g., orthodox necessity of God’s virtues and the obligation to honor God). Ergo, target contradictory theologies are apparently more complicated than consistent ones in that modalities in contradictory theology are more complicated.13 If nothing else, contradictory theologies carry the burden of dispelling said apparent complications. Reply. The objection correctly claims that various modalities are central to target theologies, contradictory ones or otherwise. If contradictory theology, in virtue of an underlying subclassical (non-classical) account of logic, were to complicate target modalities in any significant way, then this complication might weigh against the otherwise conspicuous simplicity of contradictory theology. Agreed. As it turns out, target modalities are neither simpler nor more complicated in target logical (notably, subclassical) frameworks. To be sure, the entailments from a given modal claim might differ in the presence of ‘glutty possibilities’ and/or ‘gappy possibilities’, but that’s to be expected and certainly not objectionable on its own. But the standard truth and falsity conditions for standard modalities (e.g., necessity, possibility, and obligation) are exactly the same. In particular, in the standard gap-free and glut-free settings, the truth and falsity conditions for a typical necessity operator ‘□’ are these:

• □A is true at a possibility (or ‘possible world’, etc.) if and only if A is true at every relevant possibility.14 • □A is false at a possibility (or ‘possible world’, etc.) if and only if A is false at some relevant possibility.

And the standard truth and falsity conditions for the ‘dual’ possibility operator ‘◊’ are these:

• ◊A is true at a possibility (or ‘possible world’, etc.) if and only if A is true at some relevant possibility.

• ◊A is false at a possibility (or ‘possible world’, etc.) if and only if A is false at all relevant possibilities.

Moreover, let the standard account of entailment or consequence remain intact (viz., no possibility in any model in which all ‘premises’ true but

62  Jc Beall conclusion untrue). None of this changes in the face of target subclassical (target non-classical) logical frameworks. The difference is only in what follows from such claims, and even there many consequences remain. For example, if every possibility (in any relevant model) counts as a ‘relevant possibility’—in effect, ‘reflexivity’ constrains the familiar relative-possibility relation—then typical release behavior applies to necessity (viz., A follows from □A) and, conversely, typical capture behavior applies to possibility (viz., ◊A follows from A), and so on. Of course, differences show up in expected places, such as, assuming that every possibility is a ‘relevant possibility’, if A is a glut at possibility w, then □A is false at w even if true. (And if □A is true at said w, then □A is a glut at w too, just like A.) But, again, this is just as expected; it’s not in any fashion a complication. Enough has been said by way of reply to show that the given objection is incorrect in its assumption that either gluts or gaps complicate modal matters in theology. 4.3.10  Contradictory Theology and “Detachment Issues”

Objection. A suitable subclassical (non-classical) account of logical consequence, underwriting glut-theoretic accounts of theological reality, encounters general problems with detachment or ‘modus ponens’ behavior. In particular, the very familiar material conditional no longer detaches logically: materialconditional modus ponens is logically invalid in the target theologies. But, then, important claims like the following christian-theological claim, S. If you follow Christ you will be saved. fail to entail that you’ll be saved—no matter how perfectly you follow Christ. This is surely counter to what should follow in such theologies. Hence, contradictory theology, at least in the vicinities explicitly advanced so far, should be rejected because they fail to deliver central theological implications.15 Reply. A full reply is given elsewhere (Beall 2021). The very short reply is that while material-conditional modus ponens is logically invalid, and also invalid according to any contradictory theology,16 the target ‘lost implications’ are in fact not lost; they’re implications either directly from the theology’s consequence relation or via some non-material conditional and modus ponens. I briefly (very briefly) elaborate.

• The direct implication: the theology might (in fact, probably does) have a

consequence (entailment) relation according to which ‘you will be saved’ is entailed by ‘you follow Christ’ directly—some fundamental implication built directly into the target theology’s consequence relation. The effect is that if ‘you follow Christ’ is in the theory (i.e., true according to the theology), so too with ‘you are saved’. No need for a detachable conditional.

Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology 63

• A different (extra-logical) conditional: if there’s some fundamental condi-

tional claim in the theology (such as the one highlighted in the objection), such a claim is very likely to be made not by logic’s material conditional but rather by some stronger, perhaps ‘intensional’ conditional. One simple such conditional, which is perfectly natural in the language of theology, is a typical all-worlds-looking conditional, say ‘⇒’, where the truth and falsity conditions are familiar: A ⇒ B is true at a possibility iff there’s no relevant possibility in which A is true but B untrue; and A ⇒ B is false at a possibility iff there’s some relevant possibility in which A is true and B false. Assuming, as is natural, that every possibility is a ‘relevant possibility’, and assuming a standard account of consequence, the given conditional detaches. If modus ponens really needs to be involved in going from claims like (S) to their consequents, then such an all-worlds-looking conditional will do the trick.

There are many other natural options in the vicinity, most taken up elsewhere (Beall 2021). Enough has been said to show that said ‘detachment issues’ neither complicate nor undermine target contradictory theologies. 4.4  Closing Remark The ten objections canvassed herein are, in my experience, the most common ones to be launched against contradictory theology. For reasons given, the objections do not undermine or diminish contradictory theologies, at least as developed to date. Of course, the development of contradictory theologies remains nascent. Future debate and further exploration is required. Acknowledgements I’m grateful to the participants of Truth and Contradiction in Neo-Platonism at Chinese University of Hong Kong. I’m also grateful to Sam Dubbelman, Mike DeVito, Sean Ebels Duggan, Ryan Haecker, Greg Moss, and Jonathan Rutledge for discussion and to many others who’ve engaged with my work in contradictory theology over the last few years. I hope that the current objections represent the most common ones that have been launched, either in print or in correspondence, to date. Notes 1 Dually, a gap is a sentence (or proposition or claim or whathaveyou) that’s neither true nor false; it’s an untruth whose logical negation (viz., it is false that ...) is also untrue. 2 Some glut theorists disagree (Weber 2021), arguing that gluts are as common as familiar gaps. I leave this for debate elsewhere. 3 Much more on this topic is discussed elsewhere (Beall 2023).

64  Jc Beall 4 For logic experts, talk of theories here is talk of prime theories – that is, ones that respect standard truth and falsity conditions governing disjunction. 5 This standard methodological rule of thumb obviously lacks a formal description (unlike the other two). 6 On one reading of her work, Coakley (2002) makes this point – though, alas, she does not explicitly consider contradictory theologies as herein discussed. 7 I say ‘may’ because speaking against is not obviously a tension or opposition in any important sense. 8 This is done more because of my limited competence in other traditional monotheisms. 9 Those who point to the kenotic tradition do not, in my view, undo apparent contradiction. Lest divinity be empty of any essential features – in which case, what is it? – other contradictions emerge. 10 For objections along these lines, see the work of Dahms (1978). 11 For further discussion of related positions, see the work of Beall and DeVito (2022). 12 Further discussion of the leading account along such lines – notably, Anderson (2007) – is given elsewhere (Beall 2021). 13 For objections along these lines, see the work of McCall (2021, §6). 14 Here, ‘relevant possibility’ can be filled in along standard relative-possibility lines, as in familiar Kripkean semantics. 15 For objections along these lines, see the work of Page (2021). 16 This assumes various technical features of disjunction and the consequence relation involved – assumptions that most readers likely make anyway – technicalities that I set aside for present purposes.

Bibliography Adams, Marilyn McCord. 2006. Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, James N. 2007. Paradoxes in Christian Theology. Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster. Beall, Jc. 2009. Spandrels of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2021. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2022. “Book review: Weber.” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. https:// tinyurl.com/NDPR-Review-Weber.  . 2023. Divine Contradiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. and Michael DeVito. 2022. Entailment, Contradiction, and Christian Theism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chow, Dawn Eschenauer. 2018. “The Passibility of God.” Faith and Philosophy 35 (4): 389–407. Coakley, Sarah. 2002. “What Chalcedon Solved and Didn’t Solve.” In The Incarnation, edited by Stephen T. Davis, SJ Daniel Kendall and SJ Gerald O’Collins, 143–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crisp, Oliver D. 2009. God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology. New York: T & T Clark. and Michael C. Rea. 2009. Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cross, Richard. 2002. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology 65  . 2011. “The Incarnation.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, edited by Thomas P. Flint and Michael Rea, 452–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2019. Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dahms, John V. 1978 “How Reliable Is Logic?.” Journal of the Evangelical Theolo­ gical Society 21 (4): 369–80. Ficara, Elena. 2023. “Dialectical Jesus.” In Paradox and Contradiction in Theology, edited by Jonathan C. Rutledge. New York: Routledge. Lourié, Basil. 2019a. “Theodore the Studite’s Christology Against Its Logical Background.” Studia Humana 8 (1): 99–113.  . 2019b. “What Means ‘Tri’ in ‘Trinity’?” In The Concept of God (Vol. 6), edited by Stanislaw Krajewski and Ricardo Silvestre, 1093–107. College Publications. http://collegepublications.co.uk/ifcolog/?00035 McCall, Thomas H. 2015. An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic Press.  . 2021. Analytic Christology and the Theological Interpretation of the New Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page, Meghan D. 2021. “Detachment Issues: A Dilemma for Beall’s Contradictory Christology.” Journal of Analytic Theology 9: 201–4. Pawl, Timothy. 2016. In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2019. In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2020. Incarnation. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Priest, Graham. 2005. Doubt Truth to Be a Liar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weber, Zach. 2021. Paradoxes and Inconsistent Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, C. J. F. 1968. “A Programme for Christology.” Religious Studies 3 (2): 513–24.

5

Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology Kenneth Boyce

5.1 Introduction According to the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, Christ has a human nature by virtue of which he is fully human, and a divine nature by virtue of which he is fully divine. A key issue for this doctrine is that it appears to entail contradictions. More exactly, there are seemingly complementary pairs of predicates, one of which (it seems) must be apt of Christ if he is truly human, and the other of which (it also seems) must be apt of him if he is truly divine. Given classical theism, for instance, any being who is truly God is immutable, and so if Christ is fully divine, the predicate ‘immutable’ must be apt of him. But, obviously, if Christ is truly human (in anything resembling the manner we are), Christ must be capable of change, and so the predicate ‘mutable’ must also be apt of him. Thus, the doctrine of the incarnation appears to entail both that Christ is mutable and that Christ is not mutable, and thereby appears to entail a contradiction. Jc Beall (2021) proposes that instead of attempting to understand the doctrine of the incarnation in a way that alleviates such apparent contradictions, Christians should embrace them. Christ, argues Beall, is “a contradictory being”. Beall does not recommend that Christians embrace this view at the cost of giving up on logic however. Rather, he has already made a career arguing that the correct logic is first-degree entailment (FDE), which is subclassical, and allows for the possibility of true contradictions. In this chapter, I grant (for the sake of argument) that the best understanding of the doctrine of the incarnation posits that Christ is a contradictory being, in the sense that it has him satisfying complementary pairs of predicates. However, I also argue that embracing the doctrine so understood does not require giving up classical logic. We should be careful to distinguish (I argue) between predicate negation (a negation operation that applies to predicates) and sentence negation (a negation operation that applies to whole sentences). Once we do (I contend) we also find that we need not embrace the validity of any inference rule that allows us to move from one to the other. The upshot is a logic of predicate DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-6

Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology 67 negation that allows for objects to satisfy complementary pairs of predicates without doing so in a manner that generates classical contradictions. I apply this logic to develop a Christological view according to which Christ satisfies complementary pairs of predicates without violating the classical law of non-contradiction. I also argue that the resulting Christological view has several advantages over Beall’s: it is more conservative about avoiding contradiction (which is a good-making feature of a theory even by Beall’s own lights). It exhibits greater logical neutrality than Beall’s view. And it comports better with Christian tradition. Before I continue, I want to make a couple of additional remarks about the dialectical setup. First, while I am granting for the sake of argument that the best option for Christians is to take the position that Christ is a contradictory being, I do not actually agree with that assumption. Nevertheless, for ease of exposition, I will write as though I do, and also as though I embrace the Christological position I am advocating as an alternative to Beall’s view. Second, I will sometimes write (again for ease of exposition) as though Beall is committed to “Conciliar Christology”, by which I will mean the set of claims about Christ embraced by the first seven ecumenical councils (which are authoritative for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and many Protestants). I will not, however, be using this term in quite the same way that Tim Pawl (2016) uses it (where on Pawl’s more narrow usage, it refers not merely to the contents of the Christological claims, but also to methodological and metaphysical commitments going beyond them). Beall in actuality explicitly distances himself from Conciliar Christology in Pawl’s more narrow sense, and regards his own view as more general than (though compatible with) Conciliar Christology in the sense I have given it. 5.2 Some Non-Christological Motivation: The Logic of Multilocation In this section, I propose that multilocation scenarios provide independent motivation for the logic of predicate negation central to my Christological proposal. I warn my readers in advance, however, that since this is not a chapter about issues pertaining to the possibility of multilocation, and because this section is intended primarily as a softening-up exercise, my discussion of those issues will be all too brief. It is worth pointing out for this reason that one could reject what I have to say about multilocation while still embracing my Christological proposal. Metaphysicians find themselves with at least some reason to countenance the possibility of multiply located objects. Some philosophers argue that we have good reason to believe in Aristotelian universals that are wholly spatially present in the objects which exemplify them. Others countenance the possibility of time-travel scenarios involving enduring objects in which an object goes back in time and occupies space alongside itself. In such scenarios, one and the same object becomes wholly present simultaneously in distinct non-overlapping regions of space.

68  Kenneth Boyce On first appearance, descriptions of multilocation scenarios seem coherent. Even if time travel turns out to be metaphysically impossible, for instance, there seems to be nothing incoherent about many carefully crafted science fiction narratives in which someone travels back in time and meets their past self. Nor does it seem, on first telling, that such stories require (on pain of incoherence) a view of the metaphysics of persistence according to which individuals fail to be identical across times. But as philosophers are well aware, a superficial appearance of coherence can sometimes be deceiving. When I was five, I was not over five feet tall. But now I am. So, if I persist through time by way of being numerically identical to individuals who exist at past and previous times, and if I did manage to go back in time and stand next to myself at five years old (without shrinking in height), I would have brought it about that, at the same time, I am over five feet tall and I am not over five feet tall. In doing so, it seems, I would have brought it about both that I am over five feet tall and that it is not the case that I am five feet tall. But if I managed to do that, I would have brought about a contradiction. Or (if time-travel cases are not to your liking) consider an Aristotelian view according to which universals are wholly spatially present in the regions in which they are exemplified. One may or may not buy such a theory of universals, but on the surface, it does not appear to be incoherent. But now consider a case in which a fire hydrant exemplifies redness on the west side of the street and a stop sign exemplifies redness on the east side. Over on the east side, the redness universal is octagonal. Over on the west side, it is not octagonal. So in this scenario, redness is octagonal and redness is not octagonal. It seems to follow both that redness is octagonal and also that it is not the case that redness is octagonal. And this is just a straightforward contradiction.1 Some attempt to dissolve such paradoxes by relativizing predicate satisfaction to special locations, i.e., instead of saying that my child self in the time-travel scenario is not-over-five feet-tall simpliciter, we might say instead that he is under-five-feet-tall at (or relative to) location L0. Similarly, instead of saying that my adult self in that scenario is over-five-feet-tall simpliciter, we can say that he is over-five-feet-tall at (or relative to) location L1. But such solutions are not without problems. For one thing, properties such as height appear to be intrinsic, whereas the present solution seems to make them implicitly relational.2 Furthermore, as Douglas Ehring (2002: 21–23) argues, such relativizing solutions do not easily handle certain cases in which objects are collocated in more than one place.3 So I propose (all too hastily) to set such relativizing solutions aside. Where does this leave us? In both the above cases the derivation of a contradiction depended on the application of an inference rule that I will refer to as “Negation Extraction”. The rule may be represented schematically as follows: (Negation Extraction) t is not F. Therefore, it is not the case that t is F (where t is a singular term and F is a predicate).

Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology 69 In order to move from negation extraction to the logical impossibility of the described scenarios, we also need the classical law of non-contradiction (henceforth, ‘LNC’), which we may put schematically as: (Classical LNC) It is logically impossible that both p and not p (where p is a truth-evaluable sentence). The combination of these two principles allows us to move, for instance, from the claim that I am not over five feet tall to the claim that it is not the case that I am over five feet tall. And conjoining the latter claim with the proposition that I am over five feet tall results in a violation of Classical LNC. Here, we face two options. We can either hold on to Negation Extraction and Classical LNC and so reject the logical possibility of the scenarios described above, or we can regard such scenarios as logically coherent and thereby counterexamples to the conjunction of Negation Extraction and Classical LNC. Since it seems that these scenarios are genuinely conceivable, I propose we take the latter route.4 I am not here relying on any claim to the effect that genuine conceivability entails metaphysical possibility. I  deny that. But it is much more plausible that genuine conceivability entails (or at least provides strong prima facie justification for believing in) logical possibility. But rejecting the conjunction of Negation Extraction and Classical LNC leaves us with two additional (non-exclusive) options: we can reject Negation Extraction or we can reject Classical LNC. There are two reasons why I propose we do the former. First, the former suggestion provides the most conservative option for those of us drawn toward classical logic. Second (as Beall himself would agree), even if we do deny Classical LNC and accept the logical possibility of true contradictions, we should be conservative about positing them. So exhibiting how we can understand multilocation scenarios like those described above in ways that do not violate Classical LNC remains a win even if we do not in fact endorse the principle. 5.3  Some Details Concerning a Logic of Predicate Negation But how does the logic of predicate negation behind this treatment work exactly? Standard first-order predicate logic is not up even to the task of representing the negation extraction rule. That is because standard predicate logic contains only one type of negation, namely, sentence negation. The standard way of translating t is not F into predicate logic is as ∼Ft. And of course, it is trivial that if ∼Ft then ∼Ft. In order even to represent the rule of negation extraction, then, we need to introduce a different kind of negation, one that applies to predicates rather than to whole sentences. I propose that we represent this sort of negation by drawing a line above the predicate being so negated. That is, I propose that we represent t is not F

70  Kenneth Boyce as F̅t. This allows us to represent Negation Extraction as follows: Ft̅ ⊢ ∼Ft. Since the sort of negation occurring on the left side of the turnstile is predicate negation, and the sort occurring on the right is sentence negation, the inference rule (so represented) is at least not obviously trivial. The view at present does require positing a genuine logical distinction between predicate negation and sentence negation. Fortunately, there are independent reasons for doing so. Many natural languages contain negation devices (e.g., prefixes such as ‘un’) that operate directly on predicates, often converting them into their complements.5 Such phenomena have inspired logical treatments of predicate negation as distinct from sentence negation.6 Considerations pertaining to the logic of predication surrounding (socalled) “empty” terms and phrases also help motivate the distinction.7 Suppose for instance that individuals cease to exist at death. Then, plausibly the sentence ‘It is not the case that Socrates is wise’ is true, whereas ‘Socrates is not wise’ is false. The former sentence merely denies that ‘wise’ is aptly predicated of Socrates (a safe assumption if in fact there is no longer any such individual), whereas the latter appears to predicate the complement of ‘wise’ of Socrates (a dubious proposition if in fact there is no longer any such person). Suppose instead the truth of a Meinongian view according to which so-called “empty” phrases do in fact manage to refer, albeit to nonexistent objects. Then, as both Alexius Meinong himself and contemporary Meinongians have noted, distinguishing between predicate negation and sentence negation (and denying Negation Extraction!) allows us to have a non-contradictory theory of impossible objects. For example, it allows us to say that the round square cupula on Berkeley college is indeed both round and not round, while denying that it both is and is not the case that the round square cupula on Berkeley college is round.8 But just how is predicate negation (in contrast to sentence negation) to be understood? I propose that predicate negation be understood as a predicate forming operator. In order to understand how the operator works, we need the notion of the extension of a predicate, as well as the notion of the antiextension of the predicate. To characterize these notions, we can use two other more fundamental ones, the notion of a predicate being true of a given thing, and the notion of a predicate being false of a given thing. The extension of a predicate just is the set of things the predicate is true of. The antiextension of a predicate just is the set of things it is false of. The predicate negation operator takes a predicate with a certain extension and transforms it into a predicate with the original’s anti-extension. These characterizations allow us to spell out the following truth conditions for both atomic sentences and sentences that result from applying the predicate negation operator to them (where F is a predicate and t is a singular term): (T1) Ft is true iff F is true of t. (T2) F̅t is true iff F is false of t.

Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology 71 Finally, we may characterize sentence negation for atomic sentences as follows: (T3) ∼Ft is true iff it is not the case that Ft is true. These three truth conditions (together with suitable counterparts for relational predicates) supply base cases from which recursive definitions of truth and falsity for more complex sentences may be given in the standard manner. These truth conditions permit what we might call “predicate gaps” (cases in which F is neither true of t nor false of t) as well as “predicate gluts” (cases where F is true of t and F is also false of t). However, they do not permit sentence gaps or sentence gluts. In any situation in which F is not true of t (whether because F is only false of t or because F is neither true nor false of t), ∼Ft will be true. And in any situation in which F is true of t, ∼Ft will be false, without also being true, even if F is also false of t. So ∼Ft does not follow from F̅t, that is, Negation Extraction turns out to be invalid. Compare and contrast the above with the truth conditions for FDE offered by Beall (2021, 18–21). As above, Beall appeals to two different fundamental relations, true of and false of, and Beall uses these two relations to characterize both the extension and anti-extension of a predicate in the same manner as above. However, Beall also has it that an atomic sentence is true just when the object referred to by the singular term is in the extension of the predicate and false just when that object is in the anti-extension. That is, according to Beall, Ft is true iff F is true of t, and ∼Ft is true just when F is false of t. From the current vantage point, Beall’s truth conditions simply conflate predicate negation with sentence negation. Even so, one might protest, Beall’s treatment of negation is at least uniform, whereas the present view treats predicate negation and sentence negation in objectionably non-uniform ways. Why does the present account have predicate negation characterized in terms of the presence of falsity but sentence negation merely in terms of the absence of truth? Why does predicate negation admit of gaps and gluts but not sentence negation? There are three responses that may be given to such concerns. First, I note that nothing in the Christological view I will develop in the remainder of the chapter depends on treating T3 as a part of logic. Beall himself maintains that various theories come with their own theory-specific consequence relation. The theory-specific consequence relation potentially restricts the possibilities countenanced by the theory to some proper subset of the logical ones. It may be that even though logic does not vindicate T3, the only possibilities countenanced by the true Christological theory’s consequence relation are those that vindicate T3. Second, while I originally characterized predicate negation in terms of a primitive falsehood relation, I could have done things the other way around. That is, I could have included as fundamental a true of relation combined with a fundamental operation of predicate negation and then defined ‘false

72  Kenneth Boyce of’ in terms of those. I could have done so by taking the predicate negation operator to define a new predicate whose meaning corresponds to the set of objects in the complement of the extension of the original predicate. For example, if F is a predicate whose extension is the set of all and only octagonal things, F̅ could have been defined as the predicate whose extension is the set of all and only those things that are not octagonal. (Be careful though! Keep in mind that on the present view it is logically possible for something to be a member of the set of things that are octagonal and also be a member of the set of things that are not octagonal.) Third, there is at least some motivation for treating truth for sentences differently from the true of relation for predicates. The true of relation has to do with how objects are positively characterized. The class of sentential truths by contrast merely lists the various ways in which objects are so characterized (or fail to be so characterized). So the true of relation is plausibly more fundamental and explanatory than sentential truth. Indeed, part of what motivates a distinction between predicate negation and sentence negation to begin with is the intuitive thought that there is a fundamental difference between an object’s being positively characterized by the complement of a predicate (the circumstance which makes for true predicate negation) and the mere failure of a predicate to characterize an object (the circumstance that makes for true sentence negation). It goes without saying that the subatomic predicate logic offered in this section is extremely fragmentary. Once we distinguish predicate negation from sentence negation, it is natural to do the same with other logical vocabulary. It becomes natural, for instance, to distinguish sentence conjunction (as in ‘Redness is octagonal and Redness is not octagonal’) from predicate conjunction (as in ‘Redness is both octagonal and not octagonal’). We might represent the former as Ft&F̅t and the latter as [F&F̅]t. Then we may ask such questions as whether Ft&F̅t ⊢ [F&F̅]t. Parallel questions also arise for disjunction. I will not address these questions, except to say that, however the logic of predicate negation is to be developed, any subclassical behavior is to remain confined to the predicate level, so as to ensure that the propositional logic in play remains classical. 5.4  A Christological Proposal The application of the above to the apparent contradictory claims of Conciliar Christology is straightforward. The current proposal follows Beall’s in simply accepting that Christ does indeed satisfy complementary pairs of predicates, such as ‘mutable’ and ‘not mutable’. Unlike Beall’s however, it denies that this acceptance commits us to any classical contradiction. For from the claim that Christ is mutable and Christ is not mutable, one may not derive the claim that Christ is mutable and it is also not the case that Christ is mutable. Thus we have a Christological theory that attributes each of a pair of complementary predicates to Christ while failing itself to include any contradictory pairs of sentences. If we like, we may say that according to this proposal,

Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology 73 Christ is indeed a contradictory being (he does satisfy complementary predicates), but even so, there are no true contradictions. I will continue to follow Beall in referring to his own view as “Contradictory Christology”. The current view also needs a name. Since it focuses on Christ’s satisfaction of complementary predicates, I will refer to it as “Complementary Christology”. 5.5  Advantages of Complementary Christology Complementary Christology, I maintain, not only incorporates all the advantages of Contradictory Christology, but also has many of its own. I detail a few of these below. 5.5.1  Conservativeness about Contradiction

In order to avoid the objection that we may posit contradictions willynilly whenever convenient to avoid refutations of our theories, Beall (2021) maintains that we should take a conservative attitude toward positing contradictions. According to him, we should posit contradictions only when dealing with “strange cases of extraordinary phenomena” (7). But according to Beall, Christ does afford such a case (9). As noted in the introduction, I am willing to grant that Christ does indeed satisfy complementary pairs of predicates. However, it is a mistake according to Complementary Christology to take this to license inference to a contradiction. Complementary Christology thereby accommodates, in the same straightforward manner as Contradictory Christology, the data to which Beall points, but without positing any genuinely true contradictions. 5.5.2  Logical Neutrality

Beall maintains it is an advantage of his own view that it is metaphysically neutral in ways many of its rivals are not (39–40). However, Beall’s view is not logically neutral. It requires the adoption of non-classical logic. Beall responds to this objection by claiming that no theory is logically neutral, as the logical consequence relation is the one common to all true theories (103–104). Nevertheless, a theory can be more or less logically neutral to the extent that adopting it does not require one to take certain controversial stances regarding the correct logic. I submit that Complementary Christology is more neutral than Contradictory Christology in just this sense. One may adopt Complementary Christology, for instance, without taking any stand about whether propositional logic is classical. One might think that the logic of Complementary Christology is incompatible with Beall’s presentation of FDE, given that on Beall’s account, a predicate F being false of a given object t suffices for the truth of ∼Ft, whereas the logic behind Complementary Christology denies this. But I submit that once we distinguish between predicate negation and sentence negation, we see that

74  Kenneth Boyce Beall’s truth conditions involve the substantive logical commitment that predicate negation in basic sentences suffices for sentence negation. FDE itself need not endorse such a hefty commitment. Beall motivates his own preference for FDE, furthermore, partially on the grounds that it involves fewer substantive commitments than classical logic (35). So once predicate negation and sentence negation have been clearly distinguished, Beall has motivation from within his own perspective to select more neutral truth conditions. 5.5.3  Avoiding Heresy

Beall is committed to claims such as the following: (CH) It is not the case that the Second Person of the Trinity is eternally omnipotent. But CH is heretical by the lights of Conciliar Christology. Thus, Beall’s view appears to be committed to (Conciliar) heresy. Beall himself considers an objection along these lines and responds to it by distinguishing two senses in which a theory may be heretical: (H1) Presence of negation: the theory contains the negation of a commitment of orthodoxy. (H2) Absence of affirmation: the theory fails to contain the affirmation of an orthodox claim.9 Beall claims that a Christological theory is heretical in a theologically important sense only if it is heretical in an H2 sense. This characterization of what theologically significant heresy amounts to strikes me as less than adequate. Suppose, for instance, that the Christological theory in question fails to contain the affirmation of an orthodox claim only because it is incomplete (and not because its proponents aim to deny that claim). In any event, Complementary Christology can easily avoid heresy in both the H1 and H2 senses. It is true according to Complementary Christology that the Second Person (being human) is not eternally omnipotent. This claim may sound heretical, but it is of a piece with assertions made within the Conciliar documents themselves. Consider, for instance, the following quote from the Second Council of Nicaea: One and the same Christ as both invisible and visible lord, incomprehensible and comprehensible, unlimited and limited, incapable and capable of suffering, inexpressible and expressible in writing.10 But what Beall’s view requires is not merely the affirmation that Christ is not eternally omnipotent, but also the denial that Christ is eternally omnipotent. Complementary Christology, by contrast, requires no such thing.

Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology 75 5.5.4  Further Comportment with Christian Tradition

Complementary Christology also comports better with the type of reasoning employed within the history of the Christian thought. As Pawl (2019, 445–446) points out: The traditional Christology once handed down, which so many theologians were and are at pains to defend, was itself arrived at through careful reasoning and argumentation. That reasoning and argumentation involved inference rules such as Modus Tollens and Disjunctive Syllogism, as is clear in a reading of Athanasius’s works against the Arians, Leo’s Tome, and many other seminal works. If all that reasoning was theologically invalid, and we now see that, that will take much of the impetus away from those who intend to defend it, whether through accepting contradictions or not. It is important to note that Pawl’s claim here is not about what the correct account of logical consequence is. Pawl is here willing to concede for the sake of argument that FDE is correct. Rather, the claim at hand is about the theory-specific theological consequence relation pertinent to Christology. That relation, argues Pawl, does not permit true theological contradictions. Beall (2021, 109) himself finds it doubtful that Christians committed to the authority of the ecumenical councils are thereby committed to endorsing every form of reasoning they contain. And this strikes me as correct. It is certainly respectable to believe that the Holy Spirit guided those who shaped the doctrines of the church to the correct conclusions in spite of bad reasoning. God can and does work through flawed vessels. But it is a bit odd to think that the councils have authority concerning what we should think about the nature of Christ, but not how we should think about it. And such a view will be less persuasive to those Protestants and others who maintain that the councils have their authority only to the extent that they represent an accurate drawing out of the teachings of Scripture and the consequences thereof. Fortunately, Complementary Christology, in upholding the inference rules licensed by classical logic, does not require casting any such aspersion on the forms of reasoning utilized by the authors of the councils. And in not requiring this, it obtains yet another advantage over Beall’s Contradictory Christology. 5.6  An Objection from Comparison with Tim Pawl’s View Pawl’s (2016) defense of Conciliar Christology affords (from the perspective of those who take standard logic as their benchmark) a more logically conservative view than Complementary Christology. While Complementary Christology has it that Christ is a genuinely contradictory being in the sense that he satisfies genuinely complementary pairs of predicates, Pawl’s view denies this. Pawl’s view is, rather, an instance of what Beall refers to as “an explicit meaning-changing account”. According to his view, for instance, the predicates

76  Kenneth Boyce ‘mutable’ and ‘immutable’, as used in the conciliar documents are not genuinely contradictory, but rather have the following satisfaction conditions: s is mutable iff s has a concrete nature that is able to change. s is immutable iff s has a concrete nature such that it is not the case that that nature is able to change. It is clear that these predicates are not logical complements. If something were to have two concrete natures (as Christ does according to Pawl’s reading of the Conciliar documents), it could satisfy both predicates without in any way violating standard logic. Beall objects to Pawl’s account on several grounds (including that it is not sufficiently motivated and is lacking in metaphysical neutrality). And since I have already granted for the sake of argument that Beall is correct that the best Christological theory has Christ satisfying complementary predicates, I will not rehearse these complaints. Rather, I want to consider a different objection that Pawl has made (in correspondence) concerning my own view. He objects that it does not really differ substantially from his, because like his, it fails to take the relevant pairs of predicates as genuinely complementary. According to my view, for instance, Christ is both in the extension of ‘mutable’ and in the extension of ‘not mutable’. But if so, argues Pawl, the extensions of these predicates overlap, and predicates with overlapping extensions are (by definition!) not complementary. I have two things to say in response to this objection. First, if the objection lands, it is as forceful an objection to Beall’s view as it is to mine. It is in fact an independent objection to the very notion of a contradictory being. If Beall is right, then Christ is also both in the extension of ‘mutable’ and in the extension of ‘not mutable’, in which case if Pawl is right the extensions of these predicates overlap, making them non-complementary. But, once again, the dialectical assumption currently in play is that Christ is to be understood as a contradictory being. And so we may conclude (given that assumption) that Pawl’s objection is (somehow!) misguided. Second, setting such dialectical games aside, a proponent of Complementary Christology may consistently embrace the view that two predicates are complementary if and only if whatever is in the extension of one is not in the extension of the other, and that the relevant pairs of predicates are indeed genuinely complementary in just that sense. I (in the role of such a proponent) can consistently embrace, for example, the claim that an object is in the extension of ‘not mutable’ if and only if it is not in the extension of ‘mutable’. Suppose I were to do so. Then, since I also embrace the view that Christ is in the extension of ‘not mutable’, this would commit me to the claim that Christ is not in the extension of ‘mutable’. However, this would not further commit me to the claim that it is not the case that Christ is in the extension of ‘mutable’. In order to move from the former claim to the latter, one must apply negation extraction, which (according to the present view) is invalid.

Contradictory Christ without Contradictory Christology 77 This allows me (if I wish) the possibility of consistently (though paradoxically) embracing the claim that Christ is in the extension of ‘mutable’ and that Christ is also not in the extension of ‘mutable’. Obviously, to treat matters in this way is to go in for some sort of non-standard logic (and no one is saying otherwise), but it preserves the standard notion of what it is for two predicates to be complementary. 5.7  An Objection Concerning Motivation FDE is motivated in part by its ability to deal with issues such as the liar paradox. It allows us to say, for instance, that ‘This sentence is not true’ is indeed true as well as not true. Or, alternatively, it allows us to say that ‘This sentence is not true’ is neither true nor untrue. Since the propositional component of the logic adopted by Complementary Christology remains classical (and thereby forbids both sentence gluts and sentence gaps), it does not permit either solution. Because of this, one might worry that the logic behind Complementary Christology lacks the kind of independent motivation had by the logic behind Contradictory Christology. Here, it bears repeating, however, that while Complementary Christology does not require violations of classical logic, it is also not committed to classical logic. Furthermore, the logic of predicate negation deployed remains compatible with FDE while allowing finer distinctions than the standard sort of predicate logic incorporated into Beall’s treatment thereof. Accordingly, it can accommodate an FDE treatment of the liar paradox. It also allows, however, for novel solutions to other paradoxes to which FDE has been applied. Consider, just for example, the following solution to Russell’s paradox: The set of all non-self-membered sets does indeed have itself as a member. It also does not have itself as a member. However, it is not both the case and not the case that it has itself as a member. Here we have the tantalizing possibility of a classically consistent set theory that includes the naïve comprehension axiom. At the very least, the logic of predicate negation endorsed by the proponent of Complementary Christology allows for the exploration of proposals such as this, whereas a more standard logic of negation (classical or otherwise) does not. 5.8 Conclusion Up to this point I have been engaging in the dialectical pretense that I agree with Beall that the best Christological model has Christ satisfying complementary pairs of predicates. In actuality, I am not convinced. Even so, I have suggested that there is a way of embracing this claim that does not involve endorsing any classical contradictions. One may believe in a contradictory Christ without embracing a contradictory Christology.11

78  Kenneth Boyce Notes 1 Ehring (2002) argues along similar lines that multiply located Aristotlean universes would instantiate contradictory special relations. 2 See Lewis (1986: 202–205) for a classical presentation of such complaints levied against solutions to the problem of temporary intrinsics that involve relativizing property having to times. 3 Although see Gilmore (2003) for a response and Keskinen et al. (2015) for a counterresponse. 4 Here, I remind the reader that I am writing in persona. 5 Although it should be acknowledged that these devices often fail to behave in ways that are semantically uniform, e.g., ‘unperturbed’ appears simply to mean not perturbed, whereas ‘unhappy’ appears to mean more than not happy, but also being in an oppositional state. 6 See, for instance, Wieckowski (2021). 7 Indeed, as Horn and Wansing (2022) notes, positing a distinction between sentence negation and predicate negation on such grounds goes all the way back to Aristotle. 8 See Jorgensen (2004) for a discussion. 9 I have slightly modified Beall’s wording of these senses for ease of presentation. 10 This quote is highlighted in Pawl (2016, 153). It is taken from Tanner (1990, 162). 11 I would like to thank Tim Pawl (especially!) as well as Davis Alexander Smith and Johnny Waldrop for helpful correspondence.

Bibliography Beall, Jc. 2021. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ehring, Douglas. 2002. “Spatial Relations Between Universals.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80: 17–23. Gilmore, C.S. 2003. “In Defense of Spatially Related Universals.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81: 420–28. Horn, Laurence R., and Heinrich Wansing. 2022. “Negation.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/negation/. Jorgensen, Andrew Kenneth. 2004. “Types of Negation in Logical Reconstructions of Meinong.” Grazer Philosophische Studien 67: 21–36. Keskinen, Antti, Markku Kainänen, and Jani Hakkarainen. 2015. “Concrete Universals and Spatial Relations.” European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 11: 57–71. Lewis, David K. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Pawl, Timothy. 2019. “Explosive Theology: A Reply to Jc Beall’s ‘Christ – A Contradiction.” Journal of Analytic Theology 7: 440–51. Pawl, Timothy. 2016. In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tanner, Norman P. 1990. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Two Volume Set. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Wieckowski, Bartosz. 2021. “Subatomic Negation.” Journal of Logic, Language and Information 30: 207–62.

6

Seeming Is Believing? An Exploration of Doxastic Responses to the Christological Paradox James N. Anderson

The one who hung the earth in space, is himself hanged; the one who fixed the heavens in place, is himself impaled; the one who firmly fixed all things, is himself firmly fixed to the tree. The Lord is insulted, God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been destroyed by the right hand of Israel. (Melito of Sardis, “On the Passover”) He suffered impassibly… (Cyril of Alexandria, “Scholia on the Incarnation”) ‘Tis mystery all! The immortal dies! (Charles Wesley, “And Can It Be”) Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying”, she said. “One can’t believe impossible things”. “I daresay you haven’t had much practice”, said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland) A paradox may be defined as an apparent contradiction. More precisely, a paradox is a set of propositions, each of which enjoys significant rational support, but which taken together appear to imply a logical contradiction.1 Paradoxes are encountered in philosophy (e.g., Zeno’s paradoxes, the sorites paradox), in science (e.g., wave-particle duality, Schrodinger’s cat), and in theology (e.g., the paradox of omnipotence, the doctrine of the Trinity). Since it is normally considered improper (if not altogether impossible) to believe a contradiction, paradoxes raise some pressing epistemological questions. What is the most rational doxastic response—that is, the most rational way to adjust one’s beliefs—when presented with a paradox? Should one disbelieve DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-7

80  James N. Anderson one of the constituent propositions, and if so, how does one determine which to disbelieve? Are there other options—indeed, more rational options— beside simply disbelieving one of the propositions? For any given paradox, does the most rational doxastic response vary from person to person? Is there a general doxastic policy that should be applied to all paradoxes, or could there be different policies depending on the domain of the paradox (theological, philosophical, scientific, etc.)? I will not attempt to answer all these questions in this chapter. I will focus solely on the theological domain, rather than addressing questions about the rational doxastic response to paradoxes in general. I propose to consider one prominent theological paradox—the so-called Christological paradox—and explore the possible doxastic responses to that paradox, with a view to determining whether (and on what basis) some responses might be deemed more rational than others. 6.1  The Christological Paradox One of the central claims of historic Christianity is that Jesus of Nazareth, a first-century Jewish man, is also the Son of God who shares a divine nature— and therefore all divine attributes—with God the Father. According to the Nicene Creed (325/381), Jesus Christ is “God of God” and “of one substance [homoousion] with the Father”, yet was “incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary”, “made man”, and “crucified”. In other words, Christ is both divine and human. This stunning claim is expanded by the Definition of Chalcedon (451), which asserts that Christ is “one and the same Son, the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man”, one person with two distinct natures, those natures being united in the one person “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation”.2 Thus, on the basis of its own creeds, the Christian faith is committed to two doctrinal propositions: (C1) Jesus Christ is divine. (C2) Jesus Christ is human. In C1, ‘divine’ is understood in the same sense that God the Father is ‘divine’—that is precisely the import of the homoousion claim.3 In C2, ‘human’ is understood in the same basic sense that you and I are ‘human’— that is to say, full-fledged members of the human race, possessing all essential human attributes. On the very face of it, affirming both C1 and C2 presents some challenges. The early church fathers who produced the Christian creeds cited above were generally committed to classical theism.4 On that view, being divine entails (among other things) being immutable, impassible, omniscient, and omnipotent. Yet being human—on any plausible view—entails being mutable, passible, limited in knowledge, and limited in power. Thus, affirming

Seeming Is Believing? 81 both C1 and C2 apparently commits one to affirming multiple contradictions, such as the following: (C1*) Jesus Christ is immutable (i.e., not mutable). (C2*) Jesus Christ is mutable. As such, the historic, orthodox Christian view of Jesus Christ has been widely viewed as paradoxical, if not flatly contradictory. Call this the “the Christological paradox”.5 Consider now the case of a Christian—we’ll name him Simon—who believes C1 and C2. Perhaps Simon was raised by parents who taught him basic Christian doctrine, and he has believed C1 and C2 from childhood. Or perhaps Simon was converted to Christianity later in life, coming to believe C1 and C2 as an adult. Simon could be a traditional Roman Catholic who believes C1 and C2 because they’re affirmed by the ecumenical creeds, and he takes those creeds to be infallible sources of doctrine. Alternatively, Simon could be a traditional Protestant who believes C1 and C2 because they’re affirmed by the ecumenical creeds, and he considers those creeds to be faithful summative formulations of the teaching of Scripture, which he takes to be an infallible source of doctrine. In other words, Simon believes C1 and C2 because he’s convinced that, in the final analysis, they’re implied by what the Bible says about Jesus. However, Simon has been reflecting on his Christian beliefs, and has come to recognize a problem with C1 and C2, namely, that they appear to have contradictory implications. C1 implies that Christ has certain properties, such as omniscience, whereas C2 implies that Christ lacks those same properties. In short, Simon becomes aware that his view of Christ is paradoxical, if not outright contradictory. But he also senses that there’s something epistemically improper about holding contradictory beliefs, even if the contradiction is merely implicit. If C1 and C2 seem contradictory, isn’t that good reason to believe they are contradictory, and therefore good reason to give up one of them? Could it be rational for him to continue to hold them, despite their paradoxicality? What is the most rational thing for Simon to do in this epistemic situation? 6.2  Possible Doxastic Responses As we consider Simon’s situation, let’s begin by surveying the possible doxastic responses before proceeding to evaluate them. I suggest that initially there are five “live” options for someone in Simon’s position.6 6.2.1 Resolution

One could seek out and adopt a more refined understanding of C1 and C2, clarifying their respective entailments in such a way that there turns out to be no logical contradiction. Thus, the paradox is resolved (or dissolved). For example, one might follow the lead of Timothy Pawl, who argues that

82  James N. Anderson the predicates we apply to Christ should be indexed to natures—specifically, either the divine or the human nature—such that there is no formal contradiction between statements like C1* and C2*. On this proposal, entailments of C1 and C2 such as “Christ is immutable” and “Christ is mutable” should be understood more precisely as “Christ has a nature that is immutable” and “Christ has a nature that is mutable”. There is no formal contradiction between the latter two propositions, any more than there is a contradiction between “Christ has an arm that is bent” and “Christ has an arm that is unbent”.7 This clarificatory strategy can be applied to all the apparently contradictory entailments of C1 and C2. 6.2.2 Revision

One could seek out and adopt a revised understanding of C1 and C2, altering or removing some of the entailments that were originally assumed. For example, one might move away from a classical theistic view of the divine attributes and adopt the position that being divine does not entail being immutable and impassible after all. As for attributes like omniscience, one might embrace a kenotic theory according to which God is normally omniscient, but not essentially omniscient; God the Son divested himself of those divine attributes incompatible with possessing a complete human nature.8 In this way, the apparent contradiction between C1 and C2 is removed. 6.2.3 Rejection

One might simply conclude that C1 and C2 cannot both be true, and therefore reject the one that is considered most likely to be false (or the one with the weaker epistemic justification). Typically, that will be C1 rather than C2, since C1 is the more surprising and epistemically challenging of the two.9 The notion that Jesus was truly human presents no special difficulties; the claim that he was truly divine, however, is one of world-shattering significance and a stumbling block for many. Unitarians would be among those who, while still considering themselves Christians of some stripe, adopt this stance toward C1 and C2 as affirmed by the ecumenical Christian creeds. Dale Tuggy, to cite one example, contends that the problem with the resolution and revision strategies is not so much that they’re unsuccessful, but that they’re insufficiently motivated, because the Bible does not in fact support C1 (as understood by the ecumenical creeds)—and the creedal claims are justified only to the extent that they enjoy biblical warrant.10 6.2.4  Retention without Contradiction

The fourth and fifth doxastic responses both involve retaining belief in C1 and C2, but with an important difference. Retention without contradiction entails continuing to believe C1 and C2, accepting that they are apparently

Seeming Is Believing? 83 (implicitly) contradictory, but also believing that the contradiction is merely apparent. On this view, C1 and C2 do not entail a real (true) contradiction; there exists some way to resolve the paradox, even if we do not presently (and may never) know how to resolve it. Perhaps there is a resolution yet to be discovered. Or perhaps there is a resolution that God alone knows because it involves grasping metaphysical concepts and distinctions that are beyond our human cognitive abilities. This is the position I have defended in my own work.11 It is worth noting that this response doesn’t require one to reject true contradictions in principle, although it is very likely to be motivated by assumptions about the possibility (or impossibility) of true contradictions. In theory one could accept that there are (or could be) true contradictions, while concluding that in this particular case—the case of the Christological paradox—there is no genuine contradiction.12 6.2.5  Retention with Contradiction

In contrast, retention with contradiction entails continuing to believe C1 and C2, and accepting not merely that they seem contradictory, but things really are as they seem; that is to say, C1 and C2 entail a true contradiction. According to standard classical logic, there are no true contradictions—no propositions that are both true and false—and thus this doxastic response entails rejecting classical logic in favor of some non-classical (or subclassical) system of logic that allows for true contradictions. Jc Beall has ably defended not only subclassical logic, but specifically the view that the orthodox doctrine of Christ’s two natures constitutes a true contradiction.13 Christ, according to Beall, is a “contradictory being” who, as both divine and human, possesses contradictory pairs of predicates such as being immutable and being mutable. 6.3  Proper Doxastic Responses 6.3.1  Narrowing the Field

Of the five possible doxastic responses summarized above, it is relatively uncontroversial to suppose that—all else being equal—Resolution is the ideal option. If Simon can find a more refined understanding of C1 and C2 that enables him to see how the two claims are logically consistent, that would be preferable to revising or rejecting either C1 or C2, or to living with an apparent (or real) contradiction.14 For the remainder of this chapter, however, I propose to set aside Resolution as a viable option. There are several reasons for this. The first is thoroughly self-serving: I’m familiar with all the proposed resolutions of the Christological paradox, and I do not find any of them to be successful in removing the apparent contradiction while retaining orthodox interpretations of C1 and C2.15 Thus, I am motivated to consider which of the other options would be the most rational.

84  James N. Anderson The second reason is more broad-minded: there are many Christians who find themselves in the similar position to mine, where Resolution is not a live option. Some are familiar with the proposed resolutions but find them unpersuasive. Others are somewhat familiar with a few of the proposed resolutions but are not philosophically sophisticated enough to be able to embrace them with understanding. Still others are almost entirely unaware of the resolutions proposed in the literature. The fact is that Resolution is out of intellectual reach for many ordinary Christians like Simon. The third reason for setting aside Resolution is simply that it makes for a more manageable and arguably more interesting discussion. There is some merit in considering how one might deal with the “worst case scenario” for orthodox Christianity: the scenario in which no satisfactory resolution of the Christological paradox is forthcoming. Should creedal Christians pin all their hopes on Resolution? If that doesn’t pan out, what is the most rational fallback position? That’s the question I want to consider here.16 To further simplify the discussion, I also propose to remove Revision as a distinct option. Although I have distinguished Revision from Rejection as a response to the Christological paradox, there is good reason to think that, once we dig into the details, Revision turns out to be no more than a rebranded version of Rejection. Revision typically focuses attention on C1 rather than C2, proposing a modified understanding of Christ’s divinity rather than his humanity.17 That modified understanding typically involves denying that being divine entails the classical attributes of immutability, impassibility, omnipotence, and omniscience. Such is the way of kenotic theories. The divine attributes must be diluted or gerrymandered to make room for Christ’s human properties. While this removes the paradox, it is questionable whether it preserves an orthodox Chalcedonian view of Christ’s two natures. In the first place, the early church fathers who formulated the Christological creeds were, without exception, classical theists who took for granted that God (and therefore God incarnate) is essentially immutable, impassible, and so forth. They would surely have balked at the revisionist option. It is telling that we find no trace of such a position being seriously considered in the fourth- and fifth-century Christological debates. Moreover, once the classical view of the divine attributes is abandoned, it is unclear what remains distinctive about being divine. Are there any properties that are both uniquely possessed by God and compatible with being human? If no plausible answer is forthcoming, the appeal of the Revision option is substantially diminished. At any rate, I suspect I’m not alone in thinking that the distinction between Revision and Rejection is more imagined than real.18 All this to say, in the remaining discussion I propose to set aside Resolution and to fold Revision into Rejection, thereby narrowing the field to three doxastic responses: Rejection, Retention without contradiction (henceforth abbreviated to Retention-NC), and Retention with contradiction (henceforth abbreviated to Retention-C). Moving forward, the central question will be:

Seeming Is Believing? 85 Which of these three responses would be the most rationally justified for a Christian such as Simon? 6.3.2  The Doxastic Predicament

It will be useful at this point to summarize the doxastic predicament faced by our representative believer, Simon. As an orthodox Christian, Simon affirms two doctrinal tenets: C1 and C2. He has believed them for some time and thinks he has good reasons for believing them. However, he has come to recognize that C1 and C2 seem to have logically incompatible implications: C1 implies that Christ is immutable, while C2 implies that Christ is mutable, and so forth. Furthermore, Simon knows of no satisfactory way to resolve this logical problem. Even so, Simon is intuitively resistant to the idea that there can be contradictory truths or contradictory beings. It seems to him that no statement can be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense, and that it is impossible for something to both have and not have one and the same property. Simon thus finds himself in a situation where he has good epistemic grounds to believe each of the following four propositions: 1 Christ is divine. [C1] 2 Christ is human. [C2] 3 Christ cannot be both divine and human without contradiction. [No Resolution] 4 Christ is not a contradictory being. [No Contradiction]19 As we have noted, Simon could have various grounds for believing C1 and C2, but whatever those grounds are, the upshot is that it strongly seems to Simon that (1) and (2) are true. However, Simon’s reflections on the apparent implications of C1 and C2, coupled with the absence of any satisfactory resolution of the Christological paradox, give him good reason to believe (3). At the same time, Simon’s logical intuitions align with those of Aristotle and countless other lesser mortals: nothing (and no one) can be both P and not-P at the same time and in the same respect. The obvious problem is that these four propositions form an inconsistent set: they cannot all be true. Simon has rational grounds for believing each one of the four propositions, and yet it also looks as though Simon is not rationally justified in believing all four propositions together. One of the propositions is going to have to give way to the other three. But which one? According to Rejection, either (1) or (2) should be disbelieved; most likely (1) for the reasons indicated above. According to Retention-NC, (3) should be disbelieved, not because we know of a satisfactory resolution to the Christological paradox, but because we have sufficient reason to think that a satisfactory resolution exists, even if currently unknown to us and possibly unknowable for us. According to Retention-C, (4)

86  James N. Anderson should be disbelieved; the Christological paradox really is a Christological contradiction.20 Which of the three responses—Rejection, Retention-NC, and RetentionC—is the most rational? What does rationality require of Simon in response to this doxastic predicament?21 The most plausible initial answer here is that Simon ought to relinquish the least rationally justified of the four propositions (or more precisely, the least rationally justified of his beliefs in the four propositions).22 Whichever proposition has the weakest epistemic support for Simon ought to be rejected. But which proposition would that be? How one answers that question will depend in large measure on one’s account of epistemic justification; that is to say, on one’s view of the conditions for epistemic justification (and for varying degrees of epistemic justification). Competing accounts of epistemic justification will deliver different answers about the proper doxastic response for Simon. Needless to say, countless theories of epistemic justification have been proposed over the course of the last two-and-a-half millennia, and while many have been consigned to the philosophical trashcan, dozens of competing accounts continue to be defended in the contemporary literature. It is hardly feasible to consider them all here. To keep things manageable, we will restrict our exploration to two rival accounts of epistemic justification, both of which are considered leading options among religiously-minded philosophers: Phenomenal Conservatism and Proper Functionalism.23 6.3.3  Phenomenal Conservatism

Phenomenal Conservatism maintains that the epistemic justification of beliefs is grounded in the way things “seem” or “appear” to a person.24 As the name indicates, Phenomenal Conservatism holds that rationality directs us to conserve—as much as possible—the phenomena (i.e., appearances); in other words, a person’s beliefs are most rationally justified when they most closely reflect how things appear to that person. According to Michael Huemer, the leading proponent of the view, the central thesis of Phenomenal Conservatism can be formulated as follows: (PC) If it seems to S that P, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some justification for believing that P.25 As it stands, this is a fairly modest thesis, telling us only that there is a positive connection between justification and “seeming”. PC gives little in the way of detailed guidance about how one should regulate one’s beliefs in light of one’s seemings. The matter is somewhat complicated by the “absence of defeaters” condition because it isn’t always clear what counts as a defeater and (particularly relevant for our concerns here) which element of the doxastic situation should be designated the defeater (or potential defeater) when a conflict arises. For example, suppose Susan believes some proposition P on

Seeming Is Believing? 87 the testimony of a trusted authority (say, a college professor) and some other proposition Q on the testimony of another trusted authority (say, a textbook assigned by the professor). It seems to Susan both P and Q. However, on further reflection it also seems to her that P and Q are incompatible. It looks like there’s a defeater here, but what is it? Is her seeming that P a defeater for her belief that Q or is her seeming that Q a defeater for her belief that P? Or is it rather that her seeming that ~(P&Q) is a defeater for her belief that (P&Q)? Does the chronology of Susan’s beliefs matter here? Why should it, if epistemic justification is based only on how things presently seem, all things considered?26 There don’t seem (!) to be any obvious answers here. But perhaps for our purposes such tricky questions can be bypassed. The general spirit of Phenomenal Conservatism is that we should “conserve the phenomena”, and, more specifically, we should hold that—all else being equal—the more strongly it seems to S that P, the more justification S has for believing P. How then should these epistemic principles be applied to Simon’s doxastic predicament? Presumably the initial answer will be that Simon should disbelieve the proposition that is least justified for him, which would be the proposition that least strongly seems (to him) to be true. Which proposition will that be? There is no immediately obvious answer here, partly because Simon is a merely hypothetical Christian believer (so we cannot interrogate him) and partly because seemings often vary from person to person. What strongly seems to be the case for one person may not be so for another person. The best we can do, perhaps, is to offer some reasonable speculation on the basis that Simon (so we have stipulated) is an ordinary Christian who has engaged in some serious reflection on his Christological beliefs. In the first place, it’s unlikely that (4) will be the proposition that seems least strongly to be true. The Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC)—that a proposition and its negation cannot both be true—is held by most ordinary people to be intuitively correct, even to the point of being self-evidently true. For most people who reflect upon it, LNC seems as transparently true as anything can be. Still, we should not be too hasty here. A serious case can be made for not taking LNC as a universal axiom of logic.27 There are so-called “subclassical” or “paraconsistent” systems of logic that can accommodate true contradictions while avoiding problems such as logical explosion (“from a contradiction, anything follows”). And it can be plausibly argued that such systems should be preferred to “classical” logic, because they do not prejudicially rule out logical “gluts” and “gaps” from the very outset, and they leave room for “strange phenomena” such as liar paradoxes.28 Nevertheless, it requires a considerable degree of philosophical sophistication and technical knowledge of formal logic to grasp and appreciate the arguments for subclassical logic, which an ordinary Christian like Simon is unlikely to possess. Furthermore, the epistemic challenge for Simon here isn’t really concerned with matters of formal logic systems and the debate over classical versus non-classical logics. It isn’t about how best to handle somewhat contrived semantic oddities such as liar paradoxes. It’s about whether a real

88  James N. Anderson person—Jesus Christ—could simultaneously both possess and lack some set of properties. Indeed, it’s about whether, as a matter of plain sober fact, something could be a certain way but also not be that very same way. For most people like Simon, I suspect, reality itself being flatly contradictory is about as inconceivable and unbelievable as it gets. A contradictory reality strongly seems impossible. From the perspective of Phenomenal Conservatism, it’s very doubtful that (4) will be the least justified proposition for Simon. Let us therefore turn to consider the other propositions. It’s unlikely that (2) will seem true less strongly to Simon than (1) or (3). If we know anything at all about Jesus of Nazareth, we know that he was a human being. He may have been more than a human being, as orthodox Christians profess, but he was surely no less than one. It is the divinity of Christ that is extraordinary, not his humanity. If C1 (“Christ is divine”) seems true to Simon, that will almost certainly be due to the testimony of Christian authorities such as Scripture and the ecumenical creeds. But the same authorities testify no less firmly to C2 (“Christ is human”). It would hardly be rational then for Simon to disbelieve (2) while retaining (1). It looks as though it comes down to either (1) or (3). Which seems more strongly to Simon: that Christ is divine or that Christ cannot be both divine and human without contradiction? One might suppose that since the former is an extraordinary metaphysical claim, while the latter is a straightforward conceptual entailment, the former ought to yield to the latter, and thus the most rational response for Simon would be to relinquish (1): Rejection wins the day. But that would be too quick. In the first place, (1) is not an isolated proposition in Simon’s belief-system; it is a consequence of other strongly held convictions and a major component of a complex web of beliefs. It is likely that Simon’s belief in C1 is inferred from his beliefs that the Bible is divinely inspired and the Bible teaches the divinity of Christ.29 Suppose further that he believes there is a deep connection between the divinity of Christ and his salvation; only a person who is both divine and human could serve as mediator between God and mankind. If Simon abandons his belief in C1, that will demand massive revisions to his other beliefs. Either he will have to abandon belief in the divine authority of the Bible, which would cast into doubt many other Christian beliefs, or he will have to abandon belief that the Bible teaches the divinity of Christ, which could easily introduce doubts about his ability (and the ability of other Christians, including those who formulated the major ecumenical creeds) to reliably interpret the Bible with regard to other matters of Christian doctrine.30 All this to say, Simon’s epistemic justification for believing (1) is closely tied to his epistemic justification for countless other beliefs, and simply rejecting (1) will instigate a rebellion against a considerable body of tightly interrelated seemings. Rejection means not merely rejecting C1; in the long run, it will demand a tectonic upheaval of Simon’s belief-system. Compared with other doxastic responses, it exacts a high epistemic cost. Perhaps that is simply the price to be paid for rationality. On the other hand, matters could

Seeming Is Believing? 89 go very differently: after reflecting critically on his basis for believing C1 (the divine inspiration of Scripture, the actual teachings of Scripture, the consensus of the Christian church, etc.) the seemings that support C1 might be as strong as ever for Simon—strong enough for him to entertain other doxastic responses, such as Retention-NC. Indeed, a good case can be made that, from the perspective of Phenomenal Conservatism, Retention-NC is the optimal doxastic response because it requires the least upheaval to Simon’s belief-system and it best accommodates all of the relevant seemings. It is the least radical (which is just to say, the most conservative) response that Simon might take to how things appear to him. Admittedly, it requires Simon to disbelieve (3). While it seems (even strongly) to him that (3) is true, it is not really true. The apparent incompatibility of being divine and being human is merely apparent. However, this doxastic response is quite reasonable in light of other things Simon believes. Although he doesn’t find satisfactory any of the extant proposals for resolving the Christological paradox—none of them enable him to see how C1 and C2 can be reconciled—some of them are promising nonetheless. Given his limited knowledge and cognitive abilities, Simon is hardly in a position to conclude with confidence that there cannot be a satisfactory resolution to the Christological paradox.31 If there is indeed some way to be both truly divine and truly human without logical contradiction, it doesn’t follow that Simon (or anyone else, including the most ingenious philosophical theologians) would be able to discern and cognitively grasp that state of affairs. Given the uniqueness and extraordinary nature of the Incarnation—a metaphysical bridge, so to speak, between the Creator and the creature—it isn’t surprising that it would be mysterious and even paradoxical to Simon. In short, it wouldn’t take much reflection on Simon’s part to explain why (3) might seem true even though it is actually false. Retention-NC doesn’t require Simon to deny any of his seemings; it only requires him to conclude that one of those seemings isn’t veridical.32 That conclusion isn’t arbitrary or ad hoc. It’s a reasonable inference in light of the strong seemings that support (1), (2), and (4), and his other (justified) beliefs about the extraordinary nature of the Incarnation and his own cognitive limitations. All these considerations together function as a defeater for believing (3) (i.e., that there is no noncontradictory resolution to the Christological paradox). Retention-NC is the doxastic response that optimally aligns Simon’s beliefs with his seemings— surely in keeping with the spirit of Phenomenal Conservatism. 6.3.4  Proper Functionalism

Phenomenal Conservatism is an internalist account of justification: the justifying grounds for beliefs (in this case, seemings) must be introspectively accessible to the believer.33 In contrast, Proper Functionalism is an externalist account of justification: the justifying grounds for beliefs need not be introspectively accessible to the believer (although some might be). According to Proper

90  James N. Anderson Functionalism, whether a belief is justified depends crucially on whether that belief is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly according to a “design plan” that is well-aimed at truth. The best-developed Proper Functionalist account of epistemic justification is arguably that of Michael Bergmann, which Bergmann adapts from Alvin Plantinga’s account of epistemic warrant.34 Bergmann proposes the following analysis of justification: (PF) S’s belief B is justified iff (i) S does not take B to be defeated and (ii) the cognitive faculties producing B are (a) functioning properly, (b) truth-aimed, and (c) reliable in the environments for which they were “designed”.35 As we consider how to apply a Proper Functionalist account to the question of Simon’s proper doxastic response to the Christological paradox, three complications arise. First, we should note that like PC, PF incorporates an “absence of defeaters” condition.36 As discussed earlier, when considering conflicting propositions, it isn’t always clear which are to be designated the (potential) defeaters and which the (potential) defeatees. Such is the case in Simon’s situation. As before, a convenient way to sidestep this complication is to consider instead which of the four propositions would be the least justified for Simon according to the PF account. That leads to the second complication, namely, that PF says nothing about degrees of justification; it only gives us the necessary and sufficient conditions for justification as such. Bergmann has little to say about degrees of justification, except to point to Plantinga’s explanation for how warrant comes in degrees and to suggest that a similar explanation could apply to his account of justification.37 For his part, Plantinga suggests that if the general conditions for warrant are satisfied, the degree of warrant enjoyed by a belief varies according to the “strength” or “firmness” with which that belief is held.38 Plantinga is gesturing toward some kind of psychological feature of beliefs, although it isn’t entirely clear what that feature is. One might think that the “strength” of a belief is its resistance to defeat; the stronger a belief, the less likely it is to be defeated. But this cannot be right, for it implies that, if held tenaciously enough, a belief produced by a properly functioning faculty of memory (e.g., that I saw four deer in the yard last Saturday) could be as warranted as the belief that 3 is greater than 2. As Plantinga indicates elsewhere, how firmly various kinds of beliefs ought to be held is itself a matter of proper function and our cognitive design plan.39 Alternatively, “strength” might be more phenomenological in nature; indeed, it might be something in the neighborhood of seemings.40 On this view, if the general conditions of warrant are satisfied for S’s belief B, then the more strongly it seems to S that B is true, the more warranted B is for S. This view has intuitive appeal. It seems to me more strongly that 3 is greater than 2 than that I saw four deer in the yard last Saturday, and that correlates with the degree of warrant I have for each of those two beliefs. Once again,

Seeming Is Believing? 91 however, the relationship between seemings and degrees of warrant must be governed by the design plan if cases of psychological dysfunction are to be ruled out (e.g., inappropriately strong seemings for beliefs about the distant past or beliefs based on analogical inferences). Where does this leave us regarding a Proper Functionalist account of justification? The best we can say is that the degree to which a belief is justified will depend on some combination of proper function and firmness. As a general rule, the degree to which S’s belief B is epistemically justified will be a function of (i) the degree to which B is produced (or sustained) by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly and well-aimed at truth (in the environments for which they were designed), and (ii) the degree of firmness with which B is held. The third (minor) complication concerns the reference in PF to the “design” of our cognitive faculties. Bergmann places scare quotes around ‘designed’ to allow room for naturalistic views of the origins of our cognitive faculties, according to which living organisms are not literally the products of intelligent design (divine or otherwise).41 For the purposes of the present discussion, however, I will assume that a personal creator God exists and that our cognitive faculties were divinely designed (without assuming anything about the specific mechanism by which God implemented that design). After all, if there is no God, then no one is divine, Christ included. Atheism rather takes the wind out of any interest in the Christological paradox. In what follows, then, I will take references to the cognitive design plan in a broadly Christian theistic sense. Let us now try to apply this Proper Functionalist account of justification to Simon’s epistemic situation. Which of the four propositions would Simon be least justified in believing? Answering the question decisively would require us to know the details of Simon’s cognitive design plan, which presumably is just the human cognitive design plan. That presents an immediate difficulty because we do not have direct access to the details of the human cognitive design plan. The best we can do, perhaps, is to make inferences about what constitutes cognitive proper function based on commonsense intuitions about paradigmatic cases of epistemically justified beliefs. For example, we take for granted that beliefs based on sense perception are (normally) justified, and therefore infer that our cognitive design plan includes a faculty of sense perception that reliably produces true beliefs in ordinary human environments. Likewise for beliefs based on memory, personal testimony, inductive inferences, a priori intuitions, and so forth.42 The other relevant consideration is that according to PF, justified beliefs must be produced by cognitive faculties that are truth-aimed. Justification generally (but not infallibly) tracks truth. Thus, which of the four propositions Simon is most (or least) justified in believing will probably bear some non-trivial relationship to which of the four propositions are true.43 Unfortunately, this does not move us very far forward, because at least three of the four propositions (specifically, 1, 3, and 4) are subject to considerable debate, even among experts. There is no hope of settling such debates here. Our evaluation of Simon’s proper doxastic response with respect to the

92  James N. Anderson Proper Functionalist account of justification will therefore need to be conditionalized on different scenarios regarding the truth values of the disputed propositions. As we have noted, there is little if any doubt about whether Christ was human, and therefore we can safely assume that (2) is not the proposition to be rejected. So let us turn attention to the other three propositions, starting with (1). How strongly justified would Simon’s belief in C1 be? The divinity of Christ is a central tenet of orthodox creedal Christianity. According to Plantinga’s “extended A/C model”, Christian beliefs are most likely warranted if they are in fact true.44 They are warranted on the basis of the testimony of Scripture and the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, who brings about a firm conviction in the mind and heart of the believer that Scripture is divinely authored and therefore supremely authoritative in its teachings.45 The relationship between Plantinga’s proper function account of epistemic warrant and Bergmann’s proper function account of epistemic justification is such that warrant entails justification. A warranted belief is, in the nature of the case, a justified belief (although the reverse is not true).46 Hence, if orthodox Christianity is true, Simon’s belief that Christ is divine is very probably justified, assuming he has no defeaters for that belief.47 More specifically, if C1 is true—if Christ is in fact divine— then the following will almost certainly be true:

• Scripture is divinely authored (since Christ treated it as such).48 • Scripture teaches C1 (since this would be a very important fact about Christ).

• Christians justifiably believe that Scripture is divinely authored (through the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit).

• Christians justifiably believe C1 (since Scripture teaches it). Thus, if C1 is true, Simon’s belief in C1 would be justified (again, absent defeaters).49 But how firmly would he believe it? That will depend on many factors: how clearly Scripture teaches C1, how attentive Simon has been to the teaching of Scripture, the degree to which Simon has considered alternate interpretations of Scripture, the degree to which the corporate testimony of the Christian church (especially the ecumenical creeds) reinforces Simon’s convictions about C1, the degree to which the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit contributes to Simon’s convictions about C1, and so on.50 We can at least say that if C1 is true, then Simon’s belief in C1 could be very strongly justified on a Proper Functionalist account. Given that the general conditions for epistemic justification are met, the stronger Simon’s convictions about C1, the stronger the justification. Let us attend now to (3). How strongly justified would Simon be in believing that Christ cannot be both divine and human without contradiction— in other words, that there is no resolution to the Christological paradox? There’s no straightforward answer to that question. Even if (3) were true,

Seeming Is Believing? 93 it wouldn’t follow that Simon is justified in believing (3). That proposition isn’t an immediate deliverance of reason or simple commonsense intuition. Evaluating (3) requires considerable theological and philosophical reflection. It requires Simon to have at least a partial grasp of what it means to be divine and what it means to be human; it requires some understanding of the entailments of both concepts. This grasp may come from a combination of a priori intuitions, divine revelation (such as Scripture), Christian creedal affirmations, and a long tradition of Christian reflection on God, humanity, and Jesus Christ. Given the wide recognition of the Christological paradox by theologians and philosophers, and the protracted debate about it, it’s plausible that Simon has prima facie justification for believing (3). If he is reflecting on (3) in an intellectually responsible way, we have reason to think that his believing (3)—or at least his inclination to believe (3)—is due to properly functioning cognitive faculties. But the crucial issue here is the strength of the justification for believing (3). There are two reasons for doubting that Simon’s belief in (3) would be very strongly justified. The first concerns clauses (b) and (c) of PF. How reliable are Simon’s cognitive faculties when it comes to evaluating extraordinary metaphysical claims such as the claim that one person can be both divine and human? Are those cognitive faculties reliably truth-aimed in such lofty matters? Metaphysics is no easy business; theological metaphysics even less so. It is doubtful that Simon is equipped with the kind of cognitive faculties that would allow him to discern with great confidence that being divine and being human are outright incompossible. The one plausible scenario in which Simon would have such faculties is one in which (3) is in fact true and God (the designer of our cognitive faculties) wants ordinary humans to be able to know that (3) is true. If so, then it looks as though the degree to which (3) is justified for Simon will indeed depend crucially on whether it is true. The second reason for doubting that (3) would be strongly justified for Simon is that, according to the Proper Functionalist account, the degree of justification of S’s belief B depends on how strongly or firmly S holds B. In Simon’s case, I suspect this will depend in large part on how much thought— and what kind of thought—Simon has given to (3). If he has only recently come to recognize and reflect upon the Christological paradox, he will not be inclined to strongly believe (3).51 On the other hand, if Simon has given the matter quite a bit of reflection, even to the point of considering some of the sophisticated proposals for resolving the paradox, he is also unlikely to be inclined to strongly believe (3). For even if he doesn’t find any of the proposals satisfying—even if none of them enable him to grasp how C1 and C2 can be affirmed without contradiction—the process of considering those proposals is likely to cultivate some epistemic humility about his ability to know that (3) is true (i.e., to know that there is no resolution to the Christological paradox). In short, no matter how much thought Simon has given to (3), it’s unlikely that he would believe (3) with great confidence if his relevant cognitive faculties are functioning properly. Whether (3) turns out to be true

94  James N. Anderson or false, a Proper Functionalist account suggests that it would only enjoy a moderate degree of justification for Simon. Finally, consider proposition (4). If Simon is justified in believing (4), it’s most likely because he is justified in believing that, as a general principle, S cannot be both P and not-P in the same sense and at the same time. In other words, it’s because Simon has a justified conviction that things cannot both be a certain way and also not be that very same way. And that justification will almost certainly be a priori; it will be a basic pre-philosophical intuition about what reality must be like. If that general principle (i.e., that reality is non-contradictory) is true, then it’s safe to say that on a Proper Functionalist account, it will be very strongly justified. For if, as a matter of plain fact, reality is not and cannot be contradictory, presumably it would be a very important part of the cognitive design plan for humans to believe that a priori—and to believe it very strongly indeed. Inasmuch as phenomenology (i.e., what seems to be true) and psychology (i.e., what people typically believe or take for granted) serve as indicators of the design plan, both tend to confirm that (4) would be strongly justified for Simon. I suggest the safest conclusion here is that if (4) is indeed true, then it will be the most strongly justified of all four propositions, and Retention-C will not be the proper doxastic response for Simon. Conversely, if (4) is false—that is to say, if Christ is indeed a contradictory being and thus there is at least one true contradiction—then presumably there could be PF-rational grounds for disbelieving (4). But even if the LNC turns out to be false, surely the epistemic bar for believing any contradiction must be high; the beliefs that entail the contradiction must be very strongly justified.52 Thus, in Simon’s case, his epistemic support for (1), (2), and (3) must be considerable if it is to defeat his default presumption that (4) is true (because reality in general is typically non-contradictory). Depending on the details of our cognitive design plan, and especially the defeater system, it might still turn out that even if (4) is false, Simon’s most rational doxastic response is to disbelieve (1) or (3) than to disbelieve (4). Where does all this lead us? From the perspective of a Proper Functionalist account of justification such as Bergmann’s, there is no straightforward answer to the question of Simon’s proper doxastic response to the Christological paradox. Still, we can at least say this: whichever of the four propositions Simon would be least justified in believing (and therefore most justified in disbelieving) will depend on which of the propositions are in fact true. As Plantinga would say, the de jure question is not independent of the de facto question. We have proceeded on the assumption that (2) is not a serious candidate for rejection. If (1) is false—if Christ is not in fact divine—then for the reasons considered above, it will probably be the least justified for Simon. If (3) is false—that is, if there is indeed some way for Christ to be both divine and human without contradiction—then it will probably be the least justified for Simon [assuming that (1) and (4) are both true]. Finally, if (4) is false—if Christ is indeed a contradictory being—then the most rational doxastic response for Simon might well be to disbelieve (4). But it’s not a slam dunk.

Seeming Is Believing? 95 Given a strong rational presumption against true contradictions, it might still be more rational for Simon to disbelieve (1) or (3). 6.4 Conclusion The Christological paradox presents an epistemic challenge to orthodox Christians who reflect seriously on their creedal commitments. I have outlined five possible doxastic responses to the paradox: Resolution, Revision, Rejection, Retention without contradiction (Retention-NC), and Retention with contradiction (Retention-C). After setting aside (for several reasons) the first two responses, I explored the question of which of the three remaining responses would be the most rational for an ordinary Christian (“Simon”) who has engaged in some serious reflection on his beliefs about Christ. How one answers that question will depend in large part on one’s theory of epistemic justification. Two prominent accounts of epistemic justification were considered, with the following tentative conclusions: Phenomenal Conservatism: The most rational response for (someone like) Simon will most likely be Retention-NC. Proper Functionalism: The most rational response for (someone like) Simon will depend crucially on which of the propositions (1)–(4) is actually false, although there is reason to think that Retention-C would not be the most rational response even if (4) were false. I should emphasize that the scope of this exploration has been very limited. The analysis put forward pertains only to Christians with an “epistemic profile” similar to Simon’s, and that profile, while relatively common, represents only a minority of professing Christians (or so I suspect). Moreover, even among those like Simon, the epistemic justification enjoyed by a proposition can vary on account of different seemings, background beliefs, cognitive functionality, and so forth. Such caveats aside, I trust that the central question posed in this chapter is interesting and important, and that the exploration of that question offered here has some merit.53 Notes 1 The words “apparent” and “appear” are important here. As I define the term, a paradox may or may not be a genuine contradiction, cf. Anderson (2007, 5–6). 2 Kelly (1977, 339). 3 (Ibid.,, 232–237), Anderson (2007, 18–20). 4 Pelikan (1971, 54, 229, 270–272). 5 I have referred to this elsewhere as “the paradox of the Incarnation” (Anderson 2007, 61–106). Others have referred to it as “the fundamental problem of Conciliar Christology” and “the fundamental Christological problem”: (Pawl 2015); (Cross 2009). 6 Tuggy (2011) offers a different taxonomy of responses to apparent contradictions in Christian theology: “Redirection”, “Restraint”, “Resistance”, and

96  James N. Anderson “Resolution”. “Redirection” essentially involves denying the problem; since I agree with Tuggy that it lacks intellectual integrity, I do not consider it here. “Restraint” amounts to stalling one’s doxastic response on the basis that one doesn’t sufficiently understand the theological claims in question. I concur with Tuggy that while this response may be initially reasonable, it is unsatisfactory as a settled response. “Resolution” encompasses the first three responses I distinguish here (Resolution, Revision, and Rejection), whereas “Resistance” encompasses the last two responses (Retention without contradiction and Retention with contradiction). 7 Pawl (2014). For a survey of other proposed solutions, see Cross (2009). 8 Feenstra (1983, 256–259), Feenstra (1989), and Evans (2006). 9 There have been cases where C2 is rejected rather than C1, the main historical example being the early Christian Gnostic heresy of Docetism, which was condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325. Card-carrying Docetists are thin on the ground today. 10 Tuggy and Date (2020). 11 Anderson (2007, 2018). For similar approaches to theological paradoxes, see Crisp (2019, 77–100) and DeVito and McNabb (2021). 12 For example, one might be persuaded that true contradictions arise only in limited domains, such as self-referential statements (e.g., liar paradoxes). Alternatively, one might have theological reasons for rejecting a contradictory theology (e.g., if truth itself is grounded in God, it would be surprising for there to be true falsehoods about God). 13 Beall (2018, 2019, 2021). 14 I assume here that Simon hasn’t discovered other reasons to revise or reject C1 or C2 (i.e., other than the apparent contradiction). 15 In my view, Pawl’s solution tops the list of theologically informed and philosophically sophisticated proposals. While I agree that it avoids the problem of formal contradiction, I’m not persuaded that it eliminates the paradox. Chalcedon affirms that the properties of each nature are united in the one person, and thus the singular person is the proper subject of both divine and human properties: immutability and mutability, impassibility and passibility, etc. The contradictory properties cannot be merely “shunted off” to the two natures if the hypostatic union is truly a hypostatic union. The problem is particularly acute with respect to Christ’s cognitive states: omniscience and ignorance are properties attributable to a person rather than (merely) a nature. For further discussion, see Anderson (2007, 90–100). 16 The very fact that there is a rigorous ongoing debate about the Christological paradox, and how (or whether) it can be resolved, suggests that we should not put all our eggs in the Resolution basket. 17 Tom Morris travels the other road, contending that what are widely assumed to be essential properties of humans (being created, contingent, non-omnipotent, non-omniscient, etc.) should be regarded as common-but-non-essential properties. Whether this is a plausible move with respect to mutability and passibility is debatable. Moreover, even Morris concedes that one has to attribute non-omniscience to Christ on the basis of New Testament teachings (e.g., Mark 13:32; Luke 2:52), which prompts him to defend a “two minds” model of the Incarnation. (Morris 1989); (Anderson 2007, 90–100). I’m grateful to Greg Welty for pressing this point in correspondence. 18 For a fuller critique of kenotic theories, see Anderson (2007, 81–90). 19 By “contradictory being,” I mean a being with contradictory properties, or (equivalently for present purposes) “a being of whom some claims are both true and false.” (Beall 2021, 3).

Seeming Is Believing? 97 20 One might ask why Simon must disbelieve any of the propositions; perhaps the most rational response would be merely to suspend judgment about some of them (i.e., neither believe nor disbelieve). That is a fair question, to which I can give only a brief response here. For reasons that will be apparent in the subsequent discussion, I think it will be difficult for Simon to suspend judgment about either (2) or (4), in which case the only live option for Simon would be to suspend judgment about both (1) and (3). (“Well, maybe Christ is divine and there’s a resolution to the paradox, or maybe there’s no resolution and Christ isn’t divine—I just don’t know which to believe!”) However, given the significance of (1) in Simon’s beliefsystem, its tight connection to Simon’s other theological beliefs, and the basis for its epistemic justification (see the discussion in the two subsequent sections), I suspect that suspending judgment about (1) will eventually resolve into either believing or disbelieving (1). In any event, we can proceed by conditionalizing the question as follows: What would be the most rational doxastic response given that Simon must disbelieve at least one of the four propositions? 21 I assume it would not be rational for Simon to believe all four propositions and just swallow the inconsistency. Even those, such as Beall, who favor a subclassical logic that allows for “gluts” (propositions both true and false) will want to say that (4) is just false (i.e., that proposition is not itself a contradiction). It would be bizarre if the advocate of a contradictory Christology thought that Simon ought to believe (4). 22 In what follows, I will occasionally speak in terms of the justification of a proposition. I do not think that epistemic justification pertains to propositions as such; rather, justification pertains to beliefs. So the reader should understand this way of speaking simply as shorthand for the justification of S’s belief in that proposition (or, in some cases, the justification that S’s belief in that proposition would have if S were to believe it). 23 Phenomenal Conservativism and Proper Functionalism are two of the five views defended in DePoe and McNabb (2020). As for the other three, I consider Classical Evidentialism to set the bar for justification implausibly high, while Covenantal Epistemology and Tradition-Based Perspectivalism are less specific regarding the conditions for justification (and therefore less useful for the present discussion). 24 Huemer (2013). 25 Huemer (2007, 2013). 26 On the face of it, if P and Q are incompatible, then whether P is a defeater for Q or Q is a defeater P shouldn’t depend on which proposition Susan came to believe first, but rather on which proposition is more justified for Susan. Even in the case of a tie, it’s hard to see (on the Phenomenal Conservatist view) why either earlier or later seemings should be privileged. 27 Priest, Routley, and Norman (1989); Priest, Berto, and (Weber 2018). 28 Beall (2018). 29 At least if Simon is a traditional Protestant. Roman Catholic readers can make their own adjustments here. Even if Simon’s support for C1 comes primarily from beliefs about Scripture, it’s likely that beliefs about the ecumenical Christian creeds, the consensus of the church, etc., will also play an important supporting role. 30 Incidentally, the same considerations apply to C2, giving us further reason to think that disbelieving (2) would not be the most rational response for Simon. 31 Elsewhere I have drawn a parallel between the problem of theological paradox and the problem of evil. In both cases, something seems to be the case, but on reflection we have good grounds for thinking that the inference from X seems to be the case to X is in fact the case is not a reliable one. (Anderson 2007, 254–56); (Anderson 2018, 299).

98  James N. Anderson 32 This is an important point. Beliefs can be defeated without denying the seemings on which those beliefs are based. Consider the textbook case of Pauline who believes that an object is red because it appears red. On learning that the object is illuminated by red light, Pauline gains an undercutting defeater for her belief that the object is red, but the object still appears red to her. While the seeming remains, she now has a different explanation for that seeming. 33 Huemer goes so far as to call it “the paradigmatic form of internalism.” (Huemer 2006); (Huemer 2013); (Bergmann 2013a). 34 Bergmann (2006). Plantinga (1993, v) defines “warrant” as the ingredient of knowledge that distinguishes it from mere true belief. 35 Bergmann (2006, 133). 36 For Bergmann, this is a “no-believed-defeater-condition”. (Ibid., 163–168). 37 (Ibid., 133fn. 47). 38 Plantinga (1993: 9, 19, 194) 39 “Still further, the design plan dictates the appropriate degree or firmness of a given belief in given circumstances. You read in a relatively unreliable newspaper an account of a 53-car accident on a Los Angeles freeway; perhaps you then form the belief that there was a 53-car accident on the freeway. But if you hold that belief as firmly as, for example, that 2 + 1 = 3, then your faculties are not functioning as they ought to and the belief has little warrant for you.” Plantinga, 15. 40 Some of the examples Plantinga gives suggest this view. Bergmann has argued that seemings can play an important role even in an externalist account of justification. See Bergmann (2013b). 41 Bergmann (2006, 144–146). 42 Plantinga (1993) explores in some detail a proper function account of different kinds of beliefs. 43 To be clear, I’m not claiming that, as a general principle, whether a belief B is justified depends directly on whether B is true. It’s easy to conjure up counterexamples. Rather, I’m observing that when we consider how the specific propositions (1)–(4) would be epistemically justified according to Proper Functionalism, it becomes apparent that whether they are justified (and to what degree) will depend in non-trivial ways on which ones are true. 44 Plantinga (2000: 285, 325, 498). 45 (Ibid., 249–266). 46 Bergmann (2006, 133). 47 For Bergmann, a believed defeater will always be an actual defeater, even if that defeater is false or unjustified. (Ibid., 163–168). 48 Wenham (2009). 49 To be precise, so as not to beg the question: absent other defeaters than the potential defeater presented by (2)-(4). 50 According to Plantinga’s extended A/C model, the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit produces not merely a general belief in the divine authorship of Scripture but also specific Christian beliefs. (Plantinga 2000, 248–252). 51 If he were so inclined, we might reasonably infer that his cognitive faculties were not functioning properly. Presumably our design plan is such that we shouldn’t ordinarily form strong convictions about difficult metaphysical issues so early in our reflections. 52 Consider some other a priori belief for comparison, such as the belief that our sense perception is generally veridical. Although that belief could be false, it would take a lot to rationally relinquish it. 53 I’m indebted to Kenny Boyce, Tyler McNabb, Jonathan Rutledge, and Greg Welty for helpful feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Seeming Is Believing? 99 Bibliography Anderson, James N. 2007. Paradox in Christian Theology: An Analysis of Its Presence, Character, and Epistemic Status. Paternoster Theological Monographs. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.  . 2018. “On the Rationality of Positive Mysterianism.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 83 (3): 291–307. Beall, Jc. 2018. “The Simple Argument for Subclassical Logic.” Philosophical Issues 28 (1): 30–54.  . July 19, 2019. “Christ – A Contradiction: A Defense of Contradictory Christology.” Journal of Analytic Theology 7: 400–33.  . 2021. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bergmann, Michael. 2006. Justification Without Awareness: A Defense of Epistemic Externalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2013a. “Phenomenal Conservatism and the Dilemma for Internalism.” In Seemings and Justification: New Essays on Dogmatism and Phenomenal Conservatism, edited by Chris Tucker, 154–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press  . 2013b. “Externalist Justification and the Role of Seemings.” Philosophical Studies 166 (1): 163–84. Crisp, Oliver D. 2019. Analyzing Doctrine: Toward a Systematic Theology. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Cross, Richard. 2009. “The Incarnation.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, edited by Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea, 452–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huemer, Michael. 2006. “Phenomenal Conservatism and the Internalist Intuition.” American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (2): 147–58.  . 2007. “Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1): 30–55.  . 2013. “Phenomenal Conservatism.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. https://iep.utm.edu/phen-con/ DePoe, John M., and Tyler Dalton McNabb. 2020. Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God. London: Bloomsbury Academic. DeVito, Michael, and Tyler Dalton McNabb. 2021. “Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will: Embracing the Paradox.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 90 (October 1, 2): 93–107. Evans, C. Stephen. 2006. Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Feenstra, Ronald J. 1983. “A Kenotic Christology.” Calvin Theological Journal 18: 256–59.  . 1989. “Reconsidering Kenotic Christology.” In Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays, edited by Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga, 128–52. Kelly, J. N. D. 1977. Early Christian Doctrines, 5th ed. London: A. & C. Black. Morris, Thomas V. 1989. “The Metaphysics of God Incarnate.” In Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays, edited by Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga, 110–27. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

100  James N. Anderson Pawl, Timothy. 2014. “A Solution to the Fundamental Philosophical Problem of Christology.” Journal of Analytic Theology 2: 61–85.  . 2015. “Conciliar Christology and the Problem of Incompatible Predications.” Scientia Et Fides 3 (2): 85–106. Pelikan, Jaroslav. 1971. The Christian Tradition, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Plantinga, Alvin. 1993. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2000. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Priest, Graham, Francesco Berto, and Zach Weber. 2018. “Dialetheism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2018/entries/dialetheism/. Priest, Graham, Richard Routley, and Jean Norman. 1989. Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent. Munich: Philosophia Verlag. Tuggy, Dale. 2011. “On Positive Mysterianism.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69: 205–26. Tuggy, Dale, and Christopher M. Date. 2020. Is Jesus Human and Not Divine?: A Debate. Apollo, PA: Areopagus Books. Wenham, John W. 2009. Christ and the Bible, 3rd edition. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers.

7

Dialectical Jesus Elena Ficara

Methodological Remarks In what follows I argue for a dialectical interpretation of Jesus’ thought and nature, in a meaning of dialectics that I derive from Hegel and the Hegelian tradition, and which will become clear in the next sections. In order to do this, I present Hegel’s reading of the figure of Jesus in one early text on Christianity, written in Frankfurt around 1798.1 As a preliminary methodological remark it is important to keep in mind that, in the writings of this period, we do not have the complete treatment of dialectics that is presented in the later published works (as, for example, in the last paragraphs of the Preliminary Considerations in the Logic of the Encyclopedia, Hegel Werke 8, 168ff.). Yet what these early texts present for the first time is the logical core of dialectics, namely the idea of the unity of the opposites, and the view that this unity is the expression of truth. For this reason, they are unanimously considered crucial for a reconstruction of the development of Hegel’s dialectical logic (Düsing 1976) and are important for my aims for various reasons. First, in them the relevant methodological aspects concerning the nature of dialectical contradictions2 emerge from the analysis of concrete examples of the contradictions involved in the nature and message of Jesus. Secondly, they are important for “going to the roots of dialectics”, that is, for seeing where the Hegelian dialectical idea comes from, and what were the original motivations that brought Hegel to develop a dialectical logic. Examining the development of an idea is, in the methodological approach I favor (the approach of Entwicklungsgeschichte and Begriffsgeschichte, now revitalized in some works on conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy) essential for understanding the logical structure of an idea.3 7.1 Introduction In the texts on Christianity written in Frankfurt around 1798 (Hegel Werke 1, 324ff.), Jesus’ thought and action are seen as revelatory of a new justice, of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-8

102  Elena Ficara a new relation between people and the law, of a new way of understanding the laws and this relation. In the Sermon on the Mount we see Jesus directly attacking the laws, his speech is an attempt, elaborated in numerous examples, to strip the laws of legality. What Jesus says involves a species of paradox, the declaration to the multitude of eager listeners that they have to expect from him something wholly strange, a different genius, a different world. (Hegel Werke 1, 324) The new justice, the new relation to the laws is “paradoxical”. As I will show, the core of the problem is logical. Jesus’ thoughts and actions require, for Hegel, thinking in contradictions. This is the reason why what Jesus says is felt and seen by the multitude of listeners as challenging and paradoxical. Jesus’ views are not only paradoxical in a meaning of paradox as conveying ideas that are against common sense (Sainsbury 2009, 1f.), they are paradoxical in a stronger meaning of the word, i.e. in that they involve endorsing contradictory views, in a way that will be made more explicit in what follows. More specifically, the logic underlying Jesus’ message requires the unification of contradictory opposites a and not-a. Significantly, it also implies the rejection of trivialism, i.e. the view that everything is true. In what follows, I present some examples of the unifications of opposites that, for Hegel, are a characteristic trait of Jesus’ message and nature. I conclude by focusing on the nature of the unification and its logico-metaphysical features. 7.2 Examples 7.2.1 First Example: The Sermon on the Mount or the Opposition between Law and Inclination

Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew v. 2-16] with a species of paradox. [He] unambiguously declares to the multitude of expectant listeners that they have to expect from him something wholly strange, a different genius, a different world. There are cries in which he enthusiastically deviates directly from the common estimate of virtue, enthusiastically proclaims a new law and light, a new region of life whose relation to the world could only be to be hated and persecuted by it. In this kingdom of heaven [Matthew v. 17-20], however, what he highlights is not that laws disappear but that they must be kept through a righteousness of a new kind [my emphasis], in which there is more than is in the righteousness of the sons of duty and which is more complete because it supplements the deficiency in the laws [Ausfüllung des Mangelhaften der Gesetze]. (Hegel Werke 1, 324–325)

Dialectical Jesus 103 Jesus’ words are provocative and paradoxical. Jesus seems to overturn the extant laws, yet, as Hegel stresses, this does not mean that the laws disappear. This is a preliminary hint at the non-trivialistic nature of Jesus’ new rationality. Let’s re-read the last passage: what [Jesus] highlights is not that laws disappear but that they must be kept through a righteousness of a new kind [my emphasis], in which there is more than is in the righteousness of the sons of duty and which is more complete because it supplements [Ausfüllung] the deficiency in the laws. (Hegel Werke 1, 324–325) The point is now to understand what this justice or “righteousness of a new kind”—which is more complete than the old justice—consists in. This supplement [Ausfüllende] he goes on to exhibit in several laws. This expanded content we may call an inclination so to act as the laws may command [my emphasis], i.e., a unity [Einigkeit] of inclination with the law [my emphasis] whereby the latter loses its form as law [my emphasis]. (Hegel Werke 1, 326) Hegel calls the unity of law and inclination “what supplements the law” [Ausfüllende]. What does the unity of law and inclination, or the supplement [Ausfüllende] of the laws consist in? This correspondence of the inclination [with the law] is the pléroma of the law, i.e. a being, which, as it was said in the past, is the complement of the possibility [my emphasis] because possibility is the object as something thought and universal; being [is] the synthesis of the subject with the object, in which the subject and the object have lost their opposition; in the same way the inclination [so to act as the law may command] [is] a virtue in which the law (which Kant always calls objective) loses its universality and the subject loses its particularity and both lose their opposition (whereby in the Kantian virtue this opposition remains and the one becomes the dominating element, the other the dominated one). (Hegel Werke 1, 326) The correspondence or unity of the law (L) and the inclination (I) is said to be Pleroma and Complementum possibilitatis Pleroma is the Greek word that stands for that which fills or with which a thing is filled. It is said of those things which a ship is filled with, freight and merchandise, sailors, oarsmen, soldiers. In the New Testament, it stands for the body of believers, as that which is filled with the presence, power, agency of God, and of Christ.

104  Elena Ficara Hegel thus conceives the relation between law and inclination in terms of the ancient idea of pleroma, which he also connects to pre-Kantian metaphysical idea of being as complementum possibilitatis. Being is for Hegel complementum possibilitatis in the same way in which the inclination is the complement/supplement of the law—the realization of the law in the concrete life, actions and words of the individuals. “Being” is, accordingly, called a “synthesis”, intended as the unification of the universal and “objective” L and the particular and “subjective” I. In this perspective, the synthesis can also be seen as “virtue” intended as the inclination to act as the law commands. The inclination to act as the law commands is a synthesis in which the law (the universal) ceases to be universal as opposed to the particular and the inclination itself (the particular) ceases to be the particular as opposed to the universal. In other words, if we consider the case in which the law (the moral instance) is: “visit your parents on Christmas eve” while the inclination is to go to a club and dance, then there are two possibilities. If I follow my inclination and go to the club, or I act following the law even if I do not want to visit my parents, then the law is incomplete. I am still a particular, separated from the universal. The universal (the law) is separated from me and my inclination. In the second setting I love being kind, it is my inclination; I visit my parents and dance with them, or propose to go all together to the club and dance all together. In this case, the law is “fulfilled”, completed, enriched, I “fulfill” it with my inclination. I and L go hand in hand, are not opposite anymore. Inclination and law are different and opposite elements, which, however, lose their opposition in the unification. Hegel writes: The correspondence of inclination with the law [my emphasis] is such that law and inclination are no longer different; and the expression “correspondence of inclination with the law” is therefore wholly unsatisfactory because it implies that law and inclination are still [what they were without their unification]. […] In the fulfillment of the laws [Komplement der Gesetze], the laws, duty etc., cease to be the universal, opposed to the inclination, and the inclination ceases to be particular, opposed to the law. (Hegel Werke 1, 326–327) Inclination and Law are opposites. And yet, they are unified. Their unification is different from a mere correspondence relation of two terms. Rather, it is such that the opposites, in engaging in a relation with each other, lose their nature of opposites. Schematically, we have: The opposition between the inclination/the particular (I will call it P) and the Law/the universal (which I call U).

Dialectical Jesus 105 and The coincidence or unification of P and U. Through the unification P ceases to be P as opposed to U, and U ceases to be U as opposed to P. 7.2.2 Second Example: The Opening of John’s Gospel or the Opposition between God’s Humanity and God’s Divinity

In the same early writing on Christianity Hegel examines the beginning of John’s Gospel, pointing out that it entails a series of assertions (“God was the logos”, “in the logos was life”, etc.) that are “only apparently sentences”. They have a sentential form, and this means that in them a property (“being life”) is said to belong to a subject (“God” or “logos”). However, Hegel’s view is that from a strictly sentential point of view they seem meaningless. More specifically, in John’s Gospel Jesus is defined “not only as God’s son, but also as man’s son”. “The son of God is the son of man” is not a normal sentence, for Hegel (Hegel Werke 1, 378). In it two incompatible predicates, being divine and being human, are “enigmatically” put in relation to each other: the connection between the infinite determination [divinity] and the finite one [humanity] is enigmatic, because this connection is life itself. Reflection, which produces division in the realm of life, [distinguishes] between the infinite and the finite life, and it is only the limitation, the finite considered in itself, which produces the concept of humanity as what is opposed to the divine; beyond reflection, in truth, in contrast, there is no [limitation]. (Hegel Werke 1, 378)4 The connection of humanity (H) and divinity (D) is said to be 1) enigmatic and 2) life. 1) It is enigmatic from the point of view of reflection, the intellectual point of view that keeps H and D apart: according to it D excludes H and vice-versa, and it is not possible to be both. The truth is the unification of the two incompatible properties. 2) The unification is said to be life, and more specifically life as the unity of the divine and the human life. Schematically, we have:

• The point of view of reflection according to which the unification between D and H is impossible.

and

• The point of view of truth according to which D and H are unified.

106  Elena Ficara 7.2.3 Third Example: John’s Gospel and the Relationship between Duality and Unity

On the double and unitary nature of God Hegel writes: Knowledge posits […] two natures of different kinds, a human nature and a divine one, a human essence and a divine one, each with personality and substantiality, and, whatever their relation, both remaining two because they are posited as absolutely different. Those who posit this absolute difference and yet still require us to think of these absolutes as one in their inmost relationship do not dismiss the intellect on the ground that they are asserting a truth outside its scope. On the contrary, it is the intellect which they expect to grasp absolutely different substances which at the same time are an absolute unity. Thus they destroy the intellect in positing it. Those who (i) accept the given difference of the substantialities but (ii) deny their unity are more consequent. They are justified in (i), since it is required to think God and man, and therefore in (ii), since to cancel the cleavage between God and man would be contrary to the first admission they were required to make. In this way they save the intellect; but when they refuse to move beyond this absolute difference of essences, then they elevate the intellect, absolute division, destruction of life, to the pinnacle of spirit. (Hegel Werke 1, 380) While Hegel distinguishes, in the first example, between the old and the new justice and, in the second, between the point of view of reflection and the point of view of truth, here he distinguishes between two positions concerning the relationship between unity and duality in God. In both, what Hegel calls “the intellect” (and which goes hand in hand with the instance of “reflection”) plays a crucial role: it is the perspective that distinguishes between determinations, defines them as distinct from one another, and rejects contradictions. We could say, it is the logic based on the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC) and the Law of Excluded Middle. The first (a) accepts the nature of God as both two and one. In it, the intellectual point of view “destroys itself by affirming itself”. For the second (b) the nature of God is two and not one. In it, the intellect is elevated to the highest norm. Schematically, Hegel distinguishes between: a those who see D and H as contradictory determinations (absolute Verschiedenheit—absolute difference), i.e., as properties that cannot be thought/put together, and yet put them together (they see them as two and one at the same time). The intellect is not eliminated, which means: the opposites maintain their nature of opposites. Yet, they are unified. The intellect is destroyed in the very moment in which it is posited. and

Dialectical Jesus 107 b those who see D and H as contradictory determinations, i.e. as properties that cannot be thought/put together, and do not put them together (they see them as two and not one). This is the apparently consequent position, yet it elevates the intellect (the logic that admits LNC and LEM as valid) to the highest instance, and this implies some sort of “death”, “absolute division”, and “destruction of life”. 7.3 Conclusion In what follows, I hint at the aspects of the dialectical account of the figure of Jesus that are interesting from the perspective of the logic and metaphysics of true contradictions. 7.3.1 Are the Christological Opposites Hegel Writes about (L and I, D and H) Contradictory Opposites? Is Their Unification True?

Evidently, the determinations that are discussed in the three examples (L and I, D and H, unity and duality) are contradictorily opposed to each other (the content of the Christian message is said to involve the unification of properties and predicates that are “absolutely different” and “cannot be unified” and is called “enigmatic” and “paradoxical”) and their unification is true (the unification of the opposites expresses “the point of view of truth”). As it is evident in the three examples, the idea that the unification of the contradictory opposites conveys truth is different from the view that everything is true. The point of view of reflection (which follows LNC), insofar as it is established as the highest normative instance, is simply wrong (see example n. 3). Moreover, Jesus’ message “strips the laws of legality” but this does not mean “that the laws disappear”. Rather, it implies that the laws are fulfilled, accomplished, and realized via their unification with their opposite (the inclination). All this puts Hegel’s analysis in the tradition of non-classical logics (especially paraconsistent logics) and of discussions about logic revision.5 It also puts it in the vicinity of the proposals of an analysis of Christianity in the perspective of glutty logics [see especially Beall (2021) and (2023)] and conjunctive paraconsistency (d’Agostini 2021 and 2022).6 7.3.2 What Does It Mean When Hegel Says (First Example) That the Opposites Lose Their Nature as Opposites, When They Are Unified?

In the first and second examples, L and I and D and H are contradictorily opposed to each other insofar as they are outside of the unification, and are said to lose their opposition when they are within the unification. Does this mean that the unity Hegel writes about (and that for him is the expression of the truth about the Christian God) is a unity of elements one of which is not the negation of the other (in a preliminary meaning of negation as contradictory forming operator) and that in these unities there isn’t anything that

108  Elena Ficara “contradicts” anymore? The question concerns the meaning of negation and its relation to truth, as well as the meaning of contradiction and its relation to truth in both dialectics and in general, is extremely thorny and the object of controversies.7 I limit myself here to one consideration about the third example, in which there are aspects that can help, although marginally, to address the question. The third passage highlights the relation in which the opposites stand to each other within and without the unification and can be useful to better show the Hegelian standpoint. Two possible accounts of the opposites are identified: first—in the scheme of Section 7.2.3. It was called (b)—in which the opposites (unity and duality) are kept separate, is the consequent but wrong one; the second—called (a) in Section 7.2.3.—in which they are unified as what cannot be unified, is the really challenging and paradoxical one, and is the true account of the Christian message. In the second, the first is “maintained”, although it is not “the last word” (the last word is the unification). Clearly, the basic elements of what will then be the mature dialectical and speculative logic, and the method of dialectical negation are here at work. The question about the formal counterpart of the dialectical negation cannot be addressed here.8 For my aims, it is important to underline that the third example confirms that dialectics involves some sort of strong incompatibility between the opposites, whereby, to use Croce’s metaphor in 1906, “the life of the one is the death of the other” and that only their challenging and paradoxical unification is the true account of the nature and message of Jesus. 7.3.3  The Role of Simplification in Dialectical Christology

Possible connections between the conjunction in the Hegelian account of contradictions and paraconsistent logics have been highlighted in Beall and Ficara (2023) and, with special reference to truth and paradoxes, in d’Agostini and Ficara (2021) and d’Agostini (2023). In these works, it has been argued from different perspectives that Hegelian contradictions are conjunctions for which the classical logical rule called simplification does not hold, and, as such, have a specific impact on paraconsistent logics. The failure of simplification can be confirmed for the cases of Christological contradictions I have dealt with in the previous sections.9 Classically conjunction works according to the rule called simplification, which implies that if “Berlin is cold and Berlin is cool” is true, then “Berlin is cold” is true too.

Dialectical Jesus 109 How does this relate to dialectical Christology? In the examples, Hegel distinguishes between two positions, (1) and (2), which he calls in different ways: 1 Old, “reflection”, two but not one, death and 2 New, truth, two and one, life. (1) stands for the separation of the opposites and (2) for their unification. In this light, it is evident that the separation of the contradictory opposites in Christological contradictions is false, while its unification is true. This is expressed metaphorically by Hegel, in that he calls the separation “death” and shows that the unification implies life, and the birth of something new. This approach implies “thinking in contradictions” and promotes the life of thought which is one and the same as grasping the religious truth. The three examples also contain elements that illuminate the metaphysical reasons why simplification fails, in dialectics. From Hegel’s analysis of the specific cases of Christological contradictions, the idea clearly emerges that the unification of the contradictories concerns the relationship between the U and the P in a state of affairs and the instantiation of the U in the P (the instantiation of the law in the inclination, and of divinity in Jesus’ humanity). Hegel refers to this tie as the function of pleroma in the New Testament, which he also calls complemetum possibilitatis and Komplement der Gesetze, meaning that, through its unification with the P, the U (the law, the divine nature) becomes a living entity. The “and” that links the two opposites in a true contradiction is to be seen as the logical expression of this tie.10 In this perspective, the reason why simplification fails for Christological true contradictions becomes evident. It is because Christological contradictions are the expression of the fundamental tie that links the universals and particulars in the Christological reality that we cannot simplify them: if we did, we would not have anything to think at all (we would be left with a “blind” particular or an “empty” universal).11 Notes 1 Hegel Werke 1, 324f. The text is the result of the fusion, carried out by Nohl (the first editor of Hegel’s early theological writings) of several Hegelian fragments on Christianity in one single text titled by Nohl himself “The Spirit of Christianity”. See for more details on the problems in Nohl’s reconstructive work (Jäschke 2020, XVf). 2 I call dialectical contradictions the contradictions that are the specific topic of Hegel’s dialectics. Some aspects concerning their logical behavior and metaphysical bases will become clear in what follows.

110  Elena Ficara 3 It is also important to preliminarily take into account that, although the core dialectical insight about of the unity of the opposites is discussed in these texts, there are specific differences between its treatment in these texts and the mature dialectical idea. Düsing (1976, 51) stresses that the religious truth as the unification of the opposites has, in the early Hegel, a non-logical nature (it is seen as a matter of faith, which pertains to the sphere of feeling). Lukács (1973 II, ch. 6) shows that the specific text on Christianity I am going to consider in what follows oscillates between the view that reflection—the logic of the intellect, based on the LNC—is to be annihilated in order to reach the religious truth (which, in turn, would be seen as shrouded in a “mystic, non-logical fog”) and the specific dialectical idea that reflection is a necessary moment to get to, and internal to, the religious truth. I agree with Lukács on the presence, in the early writings, of the specific dialectical idea and focus, in my analysis, on the passages in which it is most evident. 4 For Lukács (1973, 312f.), this passage is revelatory of the non-dialectical approach to the unity of the opposites because it says “beyond reflection” and focuses on “life” (a non-logical structure) as the instance through which the opposites are unified. For my aims, what is important in this passage is that Hegel specifies the distinction between truth as the perspective that unifies the opposites and reflection as the perspective that separates between them. The theological reference point of this “paradoxical logic” (see also the third example) is the Council of Chalcedon [see on Hegel’s logic and the Council of Chalcedon (Wendte 2007, 5f.)]. 5 I have argued elsewhere for the view that Hegel’s dialectical logic is one important historical and philosophical root of paraconsistent logics (Ficara 2021b) and that one of the reasons of the importance of Hegel’s dialectical logic for contemporary logic is its contribution to discussions about logic revision (Ficara 2019). 6 For Beall (2021), the Christian message conveys true contradictions and requires a paraconsistent logic (especially: FDE); for d’Agostini 2022 the idea of the unity of contradictories in Christ’s being both divine and human (as suggested in the Athanasian Creed) supports the idea of conjunctive paraconsistency (d’Agostini 2021) according to which true conjunctions of contradictories do not admit of simplification. 7 On the disagreements among logicians concerning the meaning of negation see (Wansing 2001, 415ff.) and for an overview on the disagreements about Hegel’s notion of negation see (Ficara 2021, ch. 14). For a weakening impact on negation due to the case of true contradictions, see d’Agostini (2021, Section 3.1) and Beall (2006). 8 For the meaning of negation in dialectics and dialetheism, see Ficara (2014) and Ficara (2021, ch. 14). 9 The conjunctive paraconsistent approach to logic and metaphysics proposed by d’Agostini (2021) and applied to Christological contradictions in d’Agostini (2022) perfectly matches the Hegelian idea that only the unification of the contradictories is true, while their separation isn’t. Up to now, Beall has not stressed this element in his groundbreaking Christological writings. There are hints at the failure of simplification in Beall’s contradictory Christology. Beall (2022, 5) writes for example: “As I see the matter, [conciliar] writers, divinely inspired, were as puzzled as the rest of us by what they wrote. It’s not a case of magically moving pens (e.g., as in Harry Potter’s discovery of Tom Riddle’s schoolboy diary); it’s a case of hard thinking and reflection leading, via divine inspiration, to apparently contradictory claims. The situation is very common, particularly in theology. The writers recognized that, for example, saying only that Christ is human leaves important truths out, but, on the other hand, saying only that Christ is divine leaves important truths out—and so, divinely inspired, they said both, even if the result is an apparently contradictory being (viz., incarnate god) whose true description is thereby apparently very difficult to understand”. The passage fits the Hegelian

Dialectical Jesus 111 idea and is in line with the conjunctive paraconsistent approach to logic and metaphysics proposed by d’Agostini (2021). However, the logic proposed by Beall in 2021, for which simplification holds, does not correspond to this idea. 10 The idea of the unification of the opposites as the tie that joins the U and the P in a state of affairs goes hand in hand with the analysis of the metaphysical bases of Christological contradictions proposed by d’Agostini in 2022 (see especially point 3 of the “Hypothesis” presented at p. 16f. according to which: “Truth (truthmaker theory) is saved”). For d’Agostini (2021) and d’Agostini (2022), the failure of simplification is rooted in metaphysics. The present analysis shows that, in the dialectical account of Christological contradictions, we can find the reason why simplification, in the case of true conjunctions of contradictories, fails. The unification is the expression of the U’s fulfillment through the P, and of the tie that is necessary for something to exist, be real, and so to be truth-apt. 11 Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Franca d’Agostini and Jc Beall for their illuminating insights on the connection between truth and conjunction in dialectical contradictions and its impact on paraconsistent (glutty) logics, to Aaron Langenfeld for his important feedback on the theological background of the dialectical interpretation of Christianity, as well as to the audience at the Logic and Religion Congress (Warsaw 2017) and to the participants in the Logic Reading Group (Paderborn University, Winter 2022) for their helpful comments on a previous version of the chapter.

References Beall, Jc. 2006. “Negation’s Holiday: Aspectival Dialetheism. DeVidi and Kenyon.” In A Logical Approach to Philosophy, 169–192. Münich: Springer.  . 2021. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2023. “Ten Objections to Contradictory Theology.” In Paradox and Contradiction in Theology, edited by Jonathan C. Rutledge. New York, NY: Routledge. Beall, Jc and Elena Ficara. 2023. “Hegelian Conjunction, Hegelian Contradiction.” History and Philosophy of Logic – Special Issue on the Formalization of Dialectics, 44 (2): 119–131. Croce, B. 1906. Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto della filosofia di Hegel. Roma-Bari: Laterza. d’Agostini, F. 2021. “Conjunctive Paraconsistency.” Synthese 199: 6845–6874. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03096-6. d’Agostini, F. Forthcoming. “Two in One. What the Logic of Christology Can Teach Us.” In Beyond Babel: Religions in a Linguistic Pluralism, edited by A. Vestrucci. Berlin: Springer. d’Agostini, F. 2023. “Hegel’s Interpretation of the Sorites.” History and Philosophy of Logic – Special Issue on the Formalization of Dialectics, 44 (2): 132–150. d’Agostini, F., and Elena Ficara. 2021. “Hegel’s Interpretation of the Liar Paradox.” History and Philosophy of Logic 43 (2): 105–28. Düsing, K. 1976. Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik. Systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Prinzip des Idealismus und zur Dialektik. Hegel-Studien Beiheft 15, Bonn: Bouvier. Ficara, E. 2014. “Hegel’s Glutty Negation.” History and Philosophy of Logic 36 (1): 29–38.  . 2019. “Hegel and Priest on Revising Logic.” In Graham Priest on Paraconsistency and Dialetheism, edited by Thomas Ferguson and Can Baskent, 59–72. Cham: Springer.

112  Elena Ficara  . 2021a. The Form of Truth: Hegel’s Philosophical Logic. New York, NY: De Gruyter.  . 2021b. “The Birth of Dialetheism.” History and Philosophy of Logic 42 (3): 281–96. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1892ff.), Lectures on the History of Philosophy, translated by Haldane, Elisabeth and Simson, Frances. London: Kegan Paul. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1969ff.), Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Theorie Werkausgabe. New edition on the basis of the Works of 1832–1845 edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Jäschke, W. 2020. Einleitung. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Frühe Schriften. Hamburg: Meiner, VII–XVII. Lukács, G. 1973. Der junge Hegel. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. [1st edition, 1948]. Wansing, H. 2001. “Negation.” In The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic, edited by L. Goble, 415–436. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell Publishers. Wendte, M. 2007. Gottmenschliche Einheit. New York, NY: De Gruyter.

8

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing of Paradoxical Theology Andrew B. Torrance

8.1 Introduction Throughout most of his theological career, Karl Barth was committed to a paradoxical view of God’s relationship to creation, especially when thinking about the human reception of God’s self-revelation. Yet there was a noticeable shift in his attitude in this regard between his earlier and later writings. Early in his career, when writing the second edition of his commentary on Romans (Romans II), he was highly enthusiastic about paradoxical theology, following Søren Kierkegaard.1 Later, however, in Church Dogmatics, he became apprehensive about it. The aim of this chapter will be to analyze Barth’s paradoxical theology and consider why his attitude shifted. By so doing, we shall consider both the benefits and also the potential pitfalls that can face a paradoxical account of God’s relationship to creation. At the outset, however, let us try to clarify what Barth means by paradox— insofar as we can, given that his references to paradox and contradiction are often unclear. Generally, Barth understands a paradox as an apparent contradiction in two respects. First, a paradox is something that emerges when two propositions about reality appear to stand in contradiction, insofar as we can understand them based on our limited conceptuality. If, however, we could truly understand the propositions and the concepts they employ (i.e., from God’s perspective), we could see that, in actual fact, they are not really contradictory. Second, Barth sometimes understands a paradox as something that emerges when we hold to propositions about reality, based on our limited comprehension, that will, in some sense, stand in opposition to that reality. This is because our limited ability to understand reality can create tension between a human representation and the reality it seeks to depict. Practically speaking, therefore, a contradiction appears when we try to represent realities that cannot be adequately represented according to our limited categories—whether we realize it or not. In both cases, paradoxes emerge not because there is something essentially contradictory to reality but because of the inadequacy of our beliefs and concepts when it comes to representing that reality. These are the kinds of paradoxes that one might expect to arise when flatgirl makes propositions about three-dimensional space that involve contradiction(s) because flatgirl is DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-9

114  Andrew B. Torrance limited to the categories of flatland. Or, to put it in more Barthian terms, such paradoxes emerge when finitegirl makes theological propositions that involve contradiction(s) because finitegirl is limited to the categories of finiteland. According to Barth’s doctrine of revelation, the human capacity to know God rests on God’s free communicative activity because God is beyond the reach of finite reason, which is both distorted by sin and limited in its ability to conceptualize God. Consequently, the independent attempts by human reason to understand God’s revelation, based on immediate appearances,2 will generate thoughts that stand in contradiction to the true content of revelation. This is because the truth of revelation cannot be understood apart from its source, the eternal God, who is beyond and thus hidden from our immediate perception.3 In particular, our finite thinking about God, which is encapsulated within and thereby conditioned by space and time, finds itself in tension with the eternal God who transcends space and time. We see this, for example, when our best attempts to represent God’s eternal life in terms of God’s immutability, timelessness, aseity, etc. appear to clash with our understanding of God’s engagement with us in time, which finds expression in a changeable temporal activity. Yet, as this chapter will attempt to show, Barth is adamant that these paradoxes are not indicative of God’s relationship to creation being essentially contradictory but merely apparently contradictory. They are merely a sign of the limitations that confront human reason when it attempts to represent and grapple with the eternal God in its own temporal terms. In short, a paradoxical account of God’s relationship to the world is grounded in the human understanding of this relationship and not in the reality of the God–human relationship. As we shall consider in the first half of the chapter, it was the earlier Barth’s focus on the limits of human understanding, before God, which undergirded his commitment to a paradoxical account of (the human reception of) Godself-revelation in Romans II. To discuss this, we shall focus on two of the central paradoxes we find in this work: the paradox of the eternal God’s relationship to us in time and the paradox of faith. In the next half of the chapter, we turn to consider why the later Barth became nervous about the paradoxical theology he embraced earlier in his career. We make the case that it was because Barth became more committed to proclaiming the theological coherence of reality (of God and all things in relation to God), irrespective of the apparent contradictions that confront independent human reason.4 In short, the earlier Barth was more focused on (the limits of) human epistemology (on speaking to the appearance of things from a finite human perspective), whereas the later Barth was more focused on theological ontology (on testifying to the nature of things from God’s perspective, insofar as this is possible). 8.2  The Paradoxical Theology of Romans II When we survey Barth’s use of paradox in Romans II, one thing becomes clear. For Barth, there is far more going on in the relationship between God and creation than we can begin to understand or represent by way of our finite categories. So much so that when we try to grasp the nature of God’s

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing 115 relationship with us, we are confronted by contradiction. While these contradictions are merely apparent—they only appear when we try to understand God with finite minds that cannot behold the reality of God—there is also absoluteness to their appearance: they are absolutely paradoxical insofar as they cannot be made coherent according to our immanent categories. Consequently, for Barth, we are left to accept that the coherence of the relationship between God and creation is something that can only be known by God. So, what, more specifically, are some of the paradoxes that Barth considers in Romans II? In this section, we shall focus on two paradoxes: the paradox of the eternal God’s relationship with us in time and the related paradox of faith. 8.2.1  The Paradox of the Eternal God’s Relationship with Us in Time

What makes the relationship between time and eternity so perplexing, for Barth, is that eternity lies beyond the grasp of temporal minds. It transcends what we can immediately perceive, imagine, and conceptualize based on our time-bound experience of reality. Furthermore, it is not only the nature of eternity that is beyond human understanding but also the true nature of time. This is because whatever time is, it must be construed in relation to eternity—to the eternal God who creates the world in which time exists, out of nothing. Clearly, then, for Barth, the relation between time and eternity is not something we can straightforwardly work out. We simply do not possess categories that are adequate for developing anything close to a complete understanding either of eternity or time, let alone the relationship between them. Indeed, for Barth, the situation is such that any view of eternity that can be accommodated to fit our temporal categories will stand in contradiction to what eternity truly is. This does not mean, however, that Barth thinks there is nothing for us to say about time and eternity. As we have just acknowledged, he is happy to say, for example, that eternity lies beyond the frontier of time, as we directly experience it, and is, therefore, in almost every respect, incomprehensible to us. He is also willing to affirm that God’s life in eternity does not prevent God from relating to us in time. For Barth, eternity does not contain and relativize God in the way that time contains and conditions human beings. In eternity, God is entirely free to relate to creation in time. Furthermore, Barth is also willing to say it is possible for God to elevate us into a relationship with Godself in eternity. Nevertheless, he also understands that such a relationship can only ever be indirect because God does not elevate us into eternity in a way that enables us to transcend our temporality and relate to eternity in and of ourselves—as though we were gods. We can only ever relate to eternity in and through a relationship with the aspect of God’s activity that encounters us in time. It is then only by God transforming our hearts and minds to relate properly to the accessible expressions of God’s activity that we can be moved to reflect God’s eternal purposes for us. This means that God is free for us in a way that we cannot be free for God. It also means that any freedom we have for God will always rest on God’s freedom for us.

116  Andrew B. Torrance To elaborate on Barth’s account of time in Romans II, it is helpful to distinguish between two ways of thinking about time: (1) time as we know and experience it directly, within time, and (2) time as God knows it, within eternity. In Romans II, Barth’s references to time tend to refer to the first view of time, which we shall refer to as secular time.5 This kind of time (or history),6 for Barth, functions as “a secular and relative context” in which we are closed off from eternity and, therefore, from God—since neither eternity nor God is directly accessible to us within secular time.7 Consequently, secular time generates myopia with which we reduce and domesticate reality to what we can directly perceive within the “immanent frame” of secular time, to borrow Charles Taylor’s language.8 With this myopia, we construct and define worlds for ourselves according to the limits of secular time. In so doing, for Barth, we try to play god, acting as lords over the temporal realm, as it immediately appears to us, and we do so in a way that contradicts the true nature of things.9 What is more, we become so caught up in this game that we take on roles wherein we seek to displace the one true God. While Barth firmly condemns the many ways in which we settle into our secular temporal myopia, he is not naïve to the appeal of this superficial picture of reality. For Barth, when we are not bothered by eternity, confronted by the unknown God, and confused by the absolute paradox of God’s engagement with the world, we find ourselves in a situation that evokes confidence, for it is simple and straightforward and uncramped; it provides considerable security and has few ragged edges; it corresponds, generally speaking, with what is required by the practical experiences of life; its standards and general principles are conveniently vague and flexible; and it possesses, moreover, a liberal prospect of vast future possibilities.10 When captivated by our secular myopia, we can live with a god-like confidence in our ability to define ourselves for ourselves. The habits of secularity lead us to believe that reality can be reduced to our immediate experience of it, that there is no more to reality than meets the eye. To be shaken out of our secular slumbers, for Barth, requires a radical transformation that he associates with resurrection. On the one hand, we need to die in the secular worlds we construct for ourselves, as Jesus died on the cross (at the hands of a world captivated by secularity). On the other hand, we must be resurrected by God breathing an eternal life into us that awakens us to eternity, as Jesus was in the resurrection. For the early Barth, the resurrection of Jesus provides the fullest revelation of eternity, since it reveals the eternal life coming from beyond the constraints of secular time to bring about the restoration of humanity and makes all things new. To be clear here, Barth does not think that a person must physically die and be brought back to life to relate positively to eternity. Rather, he is contending that God must breathe an entirely new kind of life into a person,

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing 117 from eternity, in a way that elevates them into a life filled with new possibilities that correspond to eternity—e.g., a life of faithful relationship with the eternal God. Such a life is otherwise closed off to them in the deathly state of secular time—a state that is deathly because it does not contain the eternal resources that true life requires.11 We shall say more about faith in the next section. For now, however, let us think further about Barth’s understanding of the paradoxicality of the relationship between time and eternity. To reiterate, Barth’s references to paradox should be taken to refer to an apparent contradiction rather than a contradiction in any real (i.e., theological or ontological) sense. Therefore, any paradoxes that emerge when thinking about the relationship between eternity and time should be taken to refer merely to the appearance of contradiction between time and eternity. Put theologically, from God’s perspective, there is no contradiction between God and time per se; God does not create a temporal world that, by its very essence, stands in opposition to God. Also, there are no self-contradictions within God, which compromise God’s absolute oneness, unity, and integrity, which spill over into God’s relationship with creation. The only contradiction is between eternity and the deceptions we construct in secular time. Because our minds cannot look behind the curtain of our temporal frame, to perceive or imagine eternity, we are incapable of grasping (e.g., metaphysically) the relationship between time and eternity. So much so that, for Barth, any constructive attempt to conceptualize eternity for ourselves stands in contradiction to what eternity truly is. Again, therefore, we must entrust the ultimate coherence of the relationship between God and creation to God, and hope that God might draw our temporal lives into this coherence. Should this happen, for Barth, this will not be expressed by our gaining a sudden ability to master the logic of the relationship between time and eternity for ourselves. Rather, it will be expressed in lives of faith that are united with Christ and which, by the power of the Holy Spirit, embody God’s purposes for us.12 Another thing that might help us come to terms with Barth’s understanding of the relationship between time and eternity is an image that Barth uses to depict the relationship between time and eternity. In describing the eternal God’s revelatory encounter with us in time, Barth refers to the image of a tangent touching a circle. With specific reference to the revelation of God in the resurrection of Christ, he writes: “the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it. And, precisely because it does not touch it, it touches it as its frontier—as the new world”.13 What Barth seeks to capture with this image is that the intersection between God and creation, eternity and time, does not involve a straightforward meeting of two parties in which creatures can immediately experience God. Rather, it involves an encounter in which God is present to (“touches”) creation albeit in a way that cannot be directly experienced (“touched”) by human beings as a phenomenon contained and extended within the immanence of creation.

118  Andrew B. Torrance The reason God cannot be experienced in this way is that human experience is diachronic; it involves encountering an object over a period that is extended through secular time (again, time as we immediately experience it). The eternal God, however, can never be contained within time such that we can directly experience God within the frame of secular time.14 This is not to say that God cannot encounter and relate to us in time. But it does mean that God can never become contained in secular time such that we can directly experience God diachronically. This means, for example, when God reveals Godself to creation, visibly impacting it, the divine act of revelation must not itself be construed as a temporal action. The event of revelation, as Bruce McCormack clarifies, is “an event without before or after—which is to say, lacking any prior conditions which might be said to have produced the event and lacking as well any ongoing effects which might be said to be a continuing presence of that which produced the event”.15 For Barth, divine revelation must always be understood according to its eternal source beyond secular time. Revelation, therefore, always breaks into time from eternity with a newness that can never become familiar to us—as something that we are freely able to recall or remember in and of ourselves. This point is again helpfully captured by McCormack when he writes: “revelation is in history, but is not of history”.16 In sum, why does Barth understand the relationship between time and eternity, creation and God, as paradoxical? Put simply, any secular view of eternity and its relationship to time (i.e., one that we can understand in and of ourselves) will be unable to express these things adequately. Consequently, if we reduce the nature of time and eternity to a nature that we can understand according to our finite categories, our view of their nature will contradict their reality. This is because of contradictions between us relating to God in our own (finite) terms and God relating to us in God’s (eternal) terms. So as long as we are incapable of escaping our secular perspective, the appearance of God’s revelation in time will be paradoxical to us. Yet, as time and eternity are known by God, they do not really stand in contradiction to one another. What is more, it is possible for us to participate in a coherent relationship between time and eternity when God graciously enables our temporal lives to correspond to eternity in our temporality. When this happens, this is not reflected in our gaining the ability to grasp the logic of the relationship between time and eternity, for ourselves, but is reflected in lives of faith that witness to God’s eternal purposes for creation. 8.2.2  The Paradox of Faith

We have already touched upon the paradox of faith in Romans II. This is because Barth’s understanding of the paradox of time and eternity is closely intertwined with his thoughts on the paradox of faith. So, what is it that makes faith paradoxical? For Barth, as we have already indicated, it is that faith is grounded in divine-humanward, eternal-timeward movement that is

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing 119 not only beyond the grasp of secular time but is also in contradiction to it. Human faith in God, therefore, is a miracle that is wholly dependent on God encountering us in time and elevating us into a faithful relationship with God in eternity. Consequently, when we are elevated into this faithful relationship, for Barth, we become “not merely something more, but something utterly different”.17 We experience a transformation that is beyond what can be imagined within the secular frame of time. What is more, upon first experiencing this transformation, we are delivered into a faith that we cannot hold onto for ourselves. We are not simply given a faith that can be construed according to our own (traditional, cultural, practical, psychological, communal, etc.) experience and perception of it within secular time. And, for Barth, the continuance of faith depends on the steadfast faithfulness of the eternal God. This means that faith must always be understood in its relation to God. It is only on the basis of this eternal source that the Christian “stand[s] on firm ground and move[s] forward with assurance”.18 It is only because of faith’s relationship to God in eternity that faith can truly be in God. What more can be said about the paradoxicality of this way of relating to God? Again, it is important to recognize how easy it is to disregard the paradoxicality of faith when our lives are patterned on secular time. On the surface, it is far too easy to interpret faith in merely phenomenological terms, to tell a convincing story about the emergence of faith with reference to nothing more than the immediately apparent phenomena that surround it, without reference to God in eternity. But again, for Barth, such secular construals of faith stand in contradiction to God. True faith can only be known as a gift of the eternal God who must not be treated as a phenomenon that can be known and experienced in secular time. For Barth, therefore, when we live by faith we “[appeal] with tears and longing to the Great unknown, we stretch our failing arms towards the ‘Yes’ which confronts us invisibly in the ‘No’ by which we are imprisoned”.19 That is, we place our hope in God’s promise to sustain us from beyond the secular worlds we construct for ourselves—the worlds wherein we imprison ourselves in rebellion to God by embracing our own self-definition over against God’s definition of us. What all this means, in short, is that the “I” who is faithful to God must acknowledge that the true source of her faithfulness is “yet not I” but the grace of God. Writing on the Apostle Paul, Barth writes: Pressed onwards irrevocably by the power of God, he became what he is—the messenger of Him before whom every man is dust and ashes. He is what he is not; he knows what he does not know; he does what he cannot do—I live, yet not I. This is the grace in which Paul stands.20 Commenting further on the apostle Paul, and quoting Kierkegaard, Barth goes on to describe the person of faith as someone “commissioned and seconded to be a spy in the highest service”.21 This is because the immediate appearance of the person of faith does not directly reveal who he truly

120  Andrew B. Torrance is—someone animated by the grace of God. Moreover, the immediate appearance of the person of faith (perceived according to secular time) will stand in contradiction to who she truly is (someone mobilized by the invisible God).22 That is, to reduce the person of faith to who they immediately appear to be (according to a sense of immediacy that lacks theological context) would be overly reductive in a way that would misrepresent who that person truly is before God. What Barth seeks to emphasize is that faith in God does not belong to a Christian but to the invisible God who upholds and defines them from eternity—who is “the ground of all elements, by whom they are measured and in whom they are contained”.23 To “weave the paradox of faith into human spiritual experience”—by reducing God to “an element in spiritual experience or in the course of history”—entails “entering the twilight of religious romanticism”.24 For Barth, “By faith we are what we are not. Faith is the predicate of which the new man is the subject”.25 By faith, we learn that our identities are not grounded in who we know ourselves to be (in and of ourselves), but in who God knows us to be; we live by the life of another; we move by the movements of another; and we are as we are known by God. For Barth, to embrace the secondary nature of creaturely life, as life that is ultimately animated by the eternal God—and to correct every faithful “I” with a “yet not I”—is to “submit to the full paradox of our situation”.26 We should clarify here, however, that the early Barth’s paradoxical understanding of faith does not disregard human agency altogether or, indeed, present it as merely an expression of divine agency. The “yet not I” does remove the agency of the “I”. For Barth, while “the Gospel is … not an event, nor an experience, nor an emotion”, it “demands participation, comprehension, co-operation; for it is a communication which presumes faith in the living God”.27 Moreover, the fact that it involves human activity is a very part of what makes it paradoxical. As Barth puts it paradoxically, the Gospel “creates that which it presumes”.28 That is, when the Gospel calls a person to a life of faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it does so by catching them up into the movement that is inaugurated with the coming of Christ. Faith is moved by a movement that seems to be a part of this world and yet cannot be reduced to this world because, paradoxically, it is patterned on eternity. This does not mean that, by faith, a person’s agency suddenly achieves perfection (at least in this life). It does mean, however, that in the midst of the uncertain, feeble, and wayward steps of faith, the “yet not I” of God’s grace is at work, mysteriously but faithfully drawing the temporal movements of the Christian into alignment with eternity. To conclude this part of the chapter, at the heart of Romans II is Barth’s concern with the “appalling fact that no one is able to speak about God without speaking a great deal about himself”.29 As we have seen, however, Barth did not respond to this problem by simply calling for an apathetic silence. He did not think we are left to throw up our hands and wallow “in the whole dim world of mythology and mysticism”.30 While there will

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing 121 certainly be times for silent, prayerful contemplation, Barth nonetheless believed that we are called to proclaim the message of Christ aloud, trusting in God’s promise to be with us, using our words to bear witness to God’s Word, through the power of Holy Spirit. When we encounter and are empowered by the grace of God, we “are in a position to see that our own position in time is pregnant with eternal promise”.31 Barth’s account of the paradox of faith, therefore, not only testifies to the “despairing inadequacy of human speech” but to the fact that God reveals Godself through such speech—in acts that Barth describes as “a parable of the absolute miracle of the Spirit”.32 By recognizing the promise of God’s grace in the midst of our confusion, the early Barth’s theology remained adamant that, despite our limitations, God is at work delivering us from the contradictions that haunt us, and drawing us to share in the unity of God’s Kingdom.33 It was this aspect of his theology that would later be brought to the fore in Church Dogmatics. 8.3 The Change in Barth’s Attitude toward Paradoxical Theology in Church Dogmatics As we noted in the introduction, the later Barth’s attitude toward paradoxical theology was far more ambivalent. While he states at the outset of Church Dogmatics that “the Word of God alone fulfils the concept of paradox in full rigour”, he also encourages theologians to use the term “paradox” sparingly, “now that it has played its part, and also caused all manner of confusion”.34 Moreover, as we shall see, there are several points in Church Dogmatics where Barth is quite critical of a paradoxical account of the God-world relation. So what worried Barth about the paradoxical theology of his earlier years? The first thing to clarify, as the previous quote suggests, is that the later Barth does not reject his earlier use of paradox altogether—indeed, as we shall discuss below, he continues to use it constructively. Nonetheless, he becomes increasingly aware of how easy it is for uncareful readers of Romans II to misconstrue his paradoxical theology. He also noticed that the firmness of his earlier emphasis on the limits of human understanding had ended up overshadowing his doctrine of revelation. Who was it that led Barth to see the risks of his paradoxical theology? One of the key figures to alert Barth to its potential to cause confusion was Erik Peterson. In his booklet “What is Theology?”, Peterson stresses that if “revelation is paradox, then there is also no theology”, and, if this is the case, “there is also no revelation”.35 While Barth was frustrated by Peterson’s interpretation of him, he nonetheless took his perspective seriously.36 Consequently, he wrote in response: The revelation of which theology speaks is not dialectical, is not paradox. That hardly needs to be said. But when theology begins, when we humans think, speak, and write… on the basis of revelation then there is dialectic. Then there is a stating of essentially incomplete ideas and

122  Andrew B. Torrance propositions among which every answer is also again a question. All such statements reach out beyond themselves towards the fulfilment of the inexpressible reality of the divine speaking.37 The risk of being seen to neglect the positive side of revelation was Barth’s primary concern with the reception of his paradoxical theology. However, he had other concerns as well. He also worried that the language of paradox could be mistaken to suggest an essential contradiction between God and humanity rather than one that is merely apparent to finite human minds, and, more specifically, a consequence of the limitations of human language and conceptuality when it comes to making certain theological claims. The later Barth, therefore, sought to stress that “theology does not affirm in principle that the ‘contradictions’ which it makes cannot be resolved”, but that the resolution of such contradictions concerns the “free activity of God”, which is beyond human comprehension.38 When encountering certain theological paradoxes, therefore, it will sometimes be the case that the hurdle to human comprehension is not one for us to attempt to overcome via philosophical speculation. Rather, it is there to draw our attention away from ourselves to the one mediator, Jesus Christ, who elevates us into a relationship with God in a way that cannot be grasped by human reasoning. In response to the confusion surrounding his paradoxical theology, the later Barth would pay much less attention to the contradictions that appear to us from our finite human perspective. In doing so, as Michael Beintker and Cornelis van der Kooi argue,39 there is a sense in which Barth sought to approach the task of theology from God’s perspective (Schauen von Gott aus)—according to which there are no real contradictions.40 By witnessing to God’s perspective, on the basis of revelation of Scripture, Barth was emboldened to speak more about those things that surpass the limits of human comprehension—and all the conflict, confusion, and contradiction that accompanies it.41 He spoke with a recognition that, under God, there is ultimately no contradictory relationship between God and creation, and that any sense of conflict in the world is overcome by—and should thus be overshadowed by—the reconciliation in Christ that brings peace to the world.42 In taking this approach, Barth followed the Apostle Paul’s view that we should no longer think about anyone from a worldly point of view (2 Cor 5:16), but should “begin with the insight that God is “not a God of confusion, but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33)”.43 This meant, for example, he became quite happy to insist that Jesus Christ “is without tension, dialectic, paradox, or contradiction”, adding that if “the opposite seems true to us, it is our mistaken thinking, not God, which is to blame”.44 This statement from Church Dogmatics II/1 later finds elaboration in Church Dogmatics IV/1 in a passage that is worth quoting at length: [If God] has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ as the God who does this [becomes a creature, man, flesh], it is not for us to be wiser than He and to say that it is in contradiction with the divine essence… It is not for us to speak of a contradiction and rift in the being of God, but to

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing 123 learn to correct our notions of the being of God, to reconstitute them in the light of the fact that He does this. We may believe that God can and must only be… divine in contrast to everything human, in short that He can and must be only the “Wholly Other.” But such beliefs are shown to be quite untenable, and corrupt and pagan, by the fact that God does in fact be and do this in Jesus Christ… Our ideas of His nature must be guided by this, and not vice versa.45 Any appearance of contradiction is because our finite beliefs about God fail to represent the eternal God and, consequently, end up carrying a meaning that is in opposition to who God truly is. This is because, Barth writes, is because our concept of God is too narrow, too arbitrary, too human–– far too human. Who God is and what it is to be divine is something we have to learn where God has revealed Himself and His nature, the essence of the divine… We have to be ready to be taught by Him that we have been too small and perverted in our thinking about Him within the framework of a false idea of God46 While there is an extent to which Barth sought to speak about creation according to God’s perspective, we need to be unambiguously clear that Barth did not suddenly think he could transcend his creaturely limitations and speak from a perspective that is sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity). Rather, he simply believed that God’s revelation provides us with words that allow us to witness to God’s perspective on the world and trusts that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God can freely work through our proclamation of these words to lead people into lives that faithfully align with the coherence of God’s relationship to the world. And because the free activity of the eternal God cannot be adequately represented by the universal conceptuality of the secular world, the coherence of this relationship cannot be represented by human language in a way that will make it immediately accessible to all. Any alignment with the theological coherence of reality will be grounded in the hidden activity of God as it upholds and works through people’s lives and words of faith to enable them to witness to God. As we saw in our discussion of the early Barth, it is not the case that these emphases are completely absent from Romans II. What distinguishes Church Dogmatics, however, is that Barth has a more forthright commitment to proclaiming the essential coherence of God’s relationship to creation— albeit with a continuing recognition that the true meaning of such proclamation rests on God’s promise to work through human testimony. In Church Dogmatics, he sought to prioritize God’s unrelenting “Yes” to humanity over and above God’s “No” to the human attempts to reason up to God. Again, this is not because Barth suddenly acquired much greater confidence in independent human reason but because he gave greater priority to God’s promise to work through human proclamation, despite the contradictory, confusing,

124  Andrew B. Torrance and ambiguous statements that confront our theological speech. As Christophe Chalamet notes, “If words like ‘dialectic’ and ‘paradox’ slowly disappeared from Barth’s writings at the end of the 1920’s … it was because he wished to speak primarily about the good news of Jesus Christ, who is ‘Yes’ and ‘Amen’ and not an ambiguous Yes and No”.47 To elaborate on this point and nuance it slightly, let us return briefly to what Barth has to say about the “Yes” and the “No” in Romans II, before saying more about Barth’s understanding of the “Yes” and the “No” in Church Dogmatics. When we look back to Romans II, we find that Barth does not neglect the “Yes” altogether. Nonetheless, he does think it needs to be considered on the basis of the “No”. For example, he writes: Those who take upon them the divine ‘No’ shall themselves be borne by the greater divine “Yes”. Those who labour and are heavy laden shall be refreshed. Those who do not shun the contradiction have been hidden in God. Those who honestly allow themselves to be set to wait know thereby that they ought, must, and can, await the faithfulness of God. Those who stand in awe in the presence of God and keep themselves from revolt live with God.48 In this passage, Barth affirms that we must approach the “Yes” on the basis of our understanding and experience of the “No”. When we focus on the “No”—i.e., on the limitations and failures that hold us back from God—it is easy to see how God’s “Yes” can become shadowed by the “No” in a way that draws Christian thought toward the ambiguity and paradoxicality of the “Yes” and “No”, as Chalamet suggests. Yet while Romans II certainly placed a greater emphasis on the “No” than the later Barth, it is also true that the early Barth did seek to address the ambiguity that Chalamet highlights. We see this, for example, when he notes that “in the presence of His [God’s] ‘Yes’ and His ‘Amen’, our stammering ‘As If’, our muttered ‘Yes and No’, cannot stand”.49 Any experience of the “No” is “subjected to a vast and vehement pressure of His [Christ’s] demand, claim, and promise”—i.e., to the overwhelming pressure of God’s “Yes” to the world in Christ.’ For the early Barth, “To be a Christian is to be under this pressure”.50 That some of his readers overlooked these kinds of clarifications is perhaps why Barth was so frustrated by those readers, like Peterson, who thought his paradoxical theology undermined a theology of revelation. Yet, it is also understandable why such clarifications were overlooked, given how much they were overshadowed by statements emphasizing God’s “no”—as the later Barth himself seems to acknowledge in his changing attitude toward his paradoxical theology. We see this emphasis on God’s “no” in passages like the following: Faith means motionlessness, silence, worship—it means not-knowing. Faith renders inevitable a qualitative distinction between God and man; it renders necessary and unavoidable a perception of the contradiction

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing 125 between Him and the world of time and things and men; and it finds in death the only parable of the Kingdom of God.51 With sentences like this driving the message of Romans II, it is not hard to see why Barth’s emphasis on God’s “No” make his appreciation for God’s “Yes” ambiguous. At the very least, Barth’s account of the “Yes” risks being presented as so unknowable and incomprehensible that it reduces theologians to a motionless silence that cannot but generate anxiety when it comes to attempting to proclaim God’s “Yes” in a meaningful way. When we look forward to Church Dogmatics, it is certainly the case that Barth’s writing generates confidence in God’s “Yes”. However, this point also requires nuance. The later Barth does not simply generate such confidence by offering a more positive account of the human ability to know God—even if he does show a greater appreciation for the ways in which God faithfully awakens a knowledge of God, especially through the Church. Rather, the main reason that Church Dogmatics inspires greater confidence is that his doctrine of revelation is not bogged down by an unrelenting insistence on the limits and failures of human knowing. His emphasis on the reality of God’s revelation eclipsed questions about the possibility (or impossibility) of knowing God’s revelation. He writes: [The] question of knowledge [of God’s revelation] cannot, then, be put as follows: How is human knowledge of revelation possible?—as though there were doubt whether revelation is known, or as though insight into the possibility of knowledge of divine revelation were to be expected from investigation of human knowledge. It can only take this form: What is true human knowledge of divine revelation?—on the assumption that revelation itself creates of itself the necessary point of contact in man. But if this relationship is set aside, if the contradiction of human reason is made the subject of enquiry and its overcoming the goal, the sphere of the Church is abandoned and “another task” is indeed substituted for the task of dogmatics.52 In sum, what concerned the later Barth about his earlier paradoxical theology was that it had been too inwardly focused on the limits of human understanding and had been far too fixated on questions of human knowing (and the paradoxes we perceive). Such an approach does far too much to distract from the ultimate coherence of God’s creative purposes. For the later Barth, when we try to understand the reality of this under God, we must proceed with a deep appreciation for the oneness of God, which grounds the ultimate coherence of reality. Then, when we turn to think about God’s relationship to creation, our starting point must be the one in whom all things hold together, Jesus Christ. For Barth, the essentially unifying message of Immanuel, of God with us and for us, must lie at the foundation of the theological proclamation of the Gospel, and should do so without thought of contradiction.53

126  Andrew B. Torrance 8.4 Conclusion While there was certainly a shift in Barth’s attitude toward paradoxical theology between Romans II and Church Dogmatics, it would be an overstatement to say that he left it behind. In Church Dogmatics, there are many instances where Barth shows a deep appreciation for “the great and irremovable paradox of divine revelation”.54 Yet because he understood that this paradox was not one for us to solve or master, he lost interest in it, and was generally happy for theologians to forget about it.55 Instead, he believed that our theological work should proceed with confidence in the fact that, beyond our comprehension, God is working through our attempts at theology to create a faith that offers far more cognitive satisfaction than any resolved word puzzle. This point is beautifully captured by Barth in the following passage from Church Dogmatics II/1: [God] is primarily and properly all that our terms seek to mean, and yet of themselves cannot mean, that He has revealed Himself to us in His original and proper being, thus remaining incomprehensible to us even in His revelation, yet allowing and commanding us to put our concepts into the service of knowledge of Him, blessing our obedience, being truly known by us within our limits. It is the paradox of the combination of His grace and our lost condition, not the paradox of the combination of two for us logically irreconcilable concepts. Recognising the true, divine paradox, we shall not see together or put together God’s personal-ness and God’s absolute-ness in the way that we are often forced to do, with and without logical contradictions, when we describe created realities, but we shall hold to the fact that God has revealed Himself to us as He who He is, that is, as the One who loves and therefore as One-person.56 For Barth, when our attention is given to the grace that delivers us from our lost condition, the “foolish paradoxes” we associate with our puzzlement at God’s self-revelation can be seen to be beside the point.57 To be clear, God’s revelation “does not … destroy[s] the fact that it is so puzzling”.58 It does, however, transcend our bepuzzlement such that, when we are elevated into a relationship with God’s revelation—to know “the work and wisdom of God”—we can lose interest in the puzzles that distract us from the main show.59 Notes 1 For further discussion of the influence of Kierkegaard on Barth’s paradoxical theology, see Torrance and Torrance (2023, 222–244). 2 For example, in the visible humanity of Jesus or the teachings of Scripture, which are a visible expression of God’s revelation that is directly accessible to human reason. 3 Barth himself defines paradox as “a communication which is not only made by... a phenomenon, but which must be understood, if it is to be understood at all...

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing 127 i.e., in antithesis to what the phenomenon itself seems to be saying”. Barth (1956– 1975) (hereafter Church Dogmatics), I/1, 166. 4 Given the limitations of space, this chapter will primarily focus on the Barth of Romans II (who we shall call the early Barth) and the Barth of Church Dogmatics (who we shall call the later Barth). There is a more nuanced discussion to be had about Barth’s attitude towards paradoxical theology over the course of his authorship between Romans II and Church Dogmatics, and, indeed, over the course of the Church Dogmatics itself. Such a discussion, however, is beyond the scope of this chapter. 5 This term is also used in a similar way by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age (Taylor 2007, 54–59). 6 Barth uses the word “Geschichtlichen” here to refer to the historical (Barth 1922, 82). However, for our present discussion, we can refer to time and history synonymously. 7 Barth (1933, 107–108). 8 Taylor (2007, 539–593). 9 Barth (1933, 107–108). 10 Barth (1933, 49). 11 Throughout Scripture, life and death are not only construed physically but also in terms of either right relationship with God (life) or alienation from God (death). We see this, for example, when the Gospel of Matthew quotes Jesus’s paradoxical phrase in 10:39, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Or, as Jesus repeats in 16:25, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Later in Matthew 19:17, Jesus associates life with obedience when he says: “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter life, keep the commandments.” Further, if we turn to 1 John, we find John saying that “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 Jn 5:12). At several points in 1 John, we find that life does not simply refer to biological life but to a life that is breathed into us by the Spirit uniting us with Christ. What these passages indicate is that the fullness of human life is not simply given to us by our biology but by a relationship with the ultimate source of life: the triune God, who is the very reason we experience life in embodied ways. 12 Barth (1933, 282). 13 Barth (1933, 30). 14 Barth (1933, 29). 15 McCormack (1995, 252, emphasis original). 16 Ibid. 17 Barth (1933, 360). 18 Barth (1933, 113). 19 Barth (1933, 255–256). 20 Barth (1933, 100). 21 Barth (1933, 439). While Barth is making this point specifically about the apostle Paul, it can be understood to be generally applicable to persons who are genuinely characterized by faith. 22 The life of the person of faith, therefore, witnesses to the person of Jesus Christ who is paradoxically “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). 23 Barth (1933, 113). 24 Barth (1933, 115, 113, 220). Elaborating on this point, Barth writes: “The paradox [of God’s relationship to us in time] which still retains a relationship with normal spiritual experience, however peculiar or abnormal or even ‘ecstatic’ it may be, is no real paradox. That Other [God] from which we have come and which is contrasted with all concrete, known, temporal, human existence can be in no manner wholly distinct unless it be in every manner wholly distinct.’ (Barth 1933, 115).

128  Andrew B. Torrance 5 Barth (1933), 149). 2 26 Barth (1933, 255–256). 27 Barth (1933, 28). 28 Barth (1933, 28). 29 Barth (1933, 333). 30 Barth (1933, 141). 31 Barth (1933, 96). 32 Barth (1933, 333). 33 Barth (1933, 526). 34 Church Dogmatics I/1, 166. 35 Peterson (2011, 5). 36 The extent to which it was Peterson who prompted this turn in Barth’s choice of language is open for debate. See Chalamet (2005, 181) and Jüngel (1982, 178). However, Peterson clearly had some impact on this turn. 37 Barth (1926, 299–300). 38 Church Dogmatics I/1, 9. 39 Beintker (1987, 190); Cornelis van der Kooi, “Karl Barths zweiter Römerbrief und seine Wirkungen,” in Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935): Aufbruch— Klärung—Widerstand, ed. Michael Beintker, Christian Link, and Michael Trowitzsch (Zurich: TVZ, 2005), 66; (van der Kooi 1987). 40 See Church Dogmatics IV/3, 160. 41 See Church Dogmatics IV/1, 359. 42 Church Dogmatics 1/2, 268–69; see also Church Dogmatics IV/1, 348, 418, 502. For those who participate in the body of Christ, Barth writes, “the fact that ‘Jesus lives, and I in Him,’ this unknown attribute, the new subject of human life may be very hard to see or demonstrate in ourselves, yet it is no mere paradox, but the most obvious and natural truth”. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 761. 43 Church Dogmatics IV/1, 186. 44 Church Dogmatics II/1, 663. To add to this, point Barth affirms in Church Dogmatics III/2 that the incarnation “is not a paradox or contradiction to be accepted in amazed bewilderment by a  sacrificium intellectus” (66). He then elaborates: “In this Gospel faith and knowledge are not divided but always mentioned together as the way in which a decision must be made with regard to Jesus. This rests upon the fact that the humanity of Jesus and His participation in the Godhead are not irreconcilable and antithetic, but that it is His very participation in the divine which is the basis of His humanity” (66). 45 Church Dogmatics IV/1, 186. 46 Church Dogmatics IV/1, 186. 47 Chalamet (2005, 280). 48 Barth (1933, 41). 49 Barth (1933, 229). 50 Barth (1933, 229). 51 Barth (1933, 202). 52 Church Dogmatics 1/1, 28–29. 53 See, Church Dogmatics III/2, 66. 54 Church Dogmatics I/1, 450. Barth is here referring to the paradox of God awakening a person to faith: the paradox wherein “[God] becomes theirs and makes them His” Church Dogmatics I/1, 450. This is paradoxical because we are unable to understand, for ourselves, what it means for God to be ours and for us to be God’s. 55 As (Hunsinger 1991), 199 writes: “For the answer to the problem [of how God works with humanity] is that it is not a problem, that it cannot be solved, that it is not supposed to be solved, that it is a category mistake to conceive of the How? as anything other than a miracle and a mystery to be respected and revered”.

Karl Barth on the Mixed Blessing 129 6 Church Dogmatics II/1, 287. 5 57 Church Dogmatics IV/1, 359. 58 Church Dogmatics IV/1, 359. 59 Church Dogmatics IV/1, 359.

Bibliography Barth, Karl. 1922. Der Römerbrief, 2nd edition. Zurich: TVZ.  . 1926. “Church and Theology.” In Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928. Translated by Louise Pettibone Smith. London: SCM.  . 1933. The Epistle to the Romans, translated by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, 6th edition. London: Oxford University Press.  . 1956–1975. Church Dogmatics, edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Beintker, Michael. 1987. Die Dialektik in der “dialektischen Theologie” Karl Barths: Studien zur Entwicklung der Barthschen Theologie und zur Vorgeschichte der “Kirchlichen Dogmatik. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag. Chalamet, Christophe. 2005. Dialectical Theologians: Wilhelm Herrmann, Karl Barth, and Rudolf Bultmann. Zurich: TVZ. Hunsinger, George. 1991. How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Jüngel, Eberhard. 1982. “Von der Dialektik zur Analogie: Die Schule Kierkegaards und der Einspruch. Petersons.” In Barth-Studien. Zurich: Benziger Verlag; repr., Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshous Gerd Mohn, 1982. McCormack, Bruce L. 1995. Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909–1936. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Peterson, Erik. 2011. “What Is Theology?” In Theological Tractates, edited and translated by Michael Hollerich. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Torrance, Alan J., and Andrew B Torrance. 2023. Beyond Immanence: The Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and Barth. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. van der Kooi, Cornelis. 2005. “Karl Barths zweiter Römerbrief und seine Wirkungen.” In Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935): Aufbruch—Klärung—Widerstand. Edited by Michael Beintker, Christian Link, and Michael Trowitzsch. Zurich: TVZ.

9

Suffering and Flourishing Ecclesiastes Eleonore Stump

9.1 Introduction Central to Christian theology are certain paradoxical claims attributed to Christ, such as “whoever will lose his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). The question Christ asks in the next verse of the same text is similar in character: “What does it profit a person if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?” (Luke 9:25). Such paradoxes are generally resolved by relativizing the apparently contradictory elements of the claim or question to different realms. Christ’s question relativizes what is gained to the goods a person could have in this world and what is lost to the everlasting or most important part of her life. Christ’s paradoxical saying about losing one’s life in order to save it requires an analogous relativizing not with regard to worldly goods for a person, but with regard to her life itself. As it is generally understood, the first reference to life indicates her earthly life and the good for her life in this world; the second reference indicates her whole life, which includes her life with God in heaven.1 Such Christian paradoxical sayings can then be interpreted this way: what is lost are worldly or earthly goods and what is saved are goods of the spiritual realm. On this interpretation, Christ’s paradoxical statements are in effect vivid expressions of the conviction that the thriving a person has in the spiritual realm is infinitely more valuable than her thriving in the earthly realm. One assumption underlying this comparative evaluation is the theological doctrine of the Fall. It is an implication of that doctrine that in this life every human person is infected with a serious moral illness inclining him to prefer his own power and pleasure over greater goods. In every human person past the age of reason, this propensity results in moral wrongdoing; given the right circumstances, in some people it can and does eventuate in moral monstrosity. The afflictions and oppressions visited by those in power on those without it are traceable to the actualization of this propensity. When a person is physically sick, things that would otherwise be rejected as harmful to her or bad for her can become good for her. Think just of the cutting of surgery or the toxicity of chemotherapy, and the point is clear. Such otherwise highly disadvantageous things can seem good because they DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-10

Suffering and Flourishing 131 hold a hope of health for the sick person. And so our ordinary judgments of what one should seek for a person or what would be good for her are in effect overturned by her sickness. Analogously, the moral illness that infects a post-Fall person also has the consequence of turning upside-down the ordinary evaluation of goods for human beings. Things that would be rejected as not good for a person who was not suffering from the post-Fall condition can be welcomed as spiritually health-giving for her. And that is why the loss of worldly goods or even the earthly loss of something central to a person’s life can be appreciated as desirable, in virtue of being medicinal for the post-Fall human condition and conducive to the goods of the spiritual realm and everlasting life. This conclusion, of course, rests on another comparative evaluation: the spiritual realm is incommensurably greater and better than the earthly realm. Although on Christian theology this evaluation is true, if it is not interpreted carefully, it can lead to an extreme attitude which the Christian tradition has sometimes called ‘contemptus mundi’, a disdainful rejection of things in the world as of no value. The radical asceticism of Simeon Stylites is a famous example of this attitude. Simeon Stylites lived for many years on a small platform on top of a tall pillar, deprived not only of regular food and water and ordinary human relationships but even of the most rudimentary hygiene. The inhumanity of the radical asceticism exemplified by Simeon Stylites gave the early Christian world a reason for rejecting the more extreme versions of the contemptus mundi attitude. But even in the Patristic period, which valued asceticism, the implications of the contemptus mundi attitude were seen to be worrisome. How could it be right to have contempt of the world if the world was made by a perfectly good Creator, who declared his creation good?2 And so the Christian tradition looked for some way to maintain the comparative evaluation of the earthly and spiritual realms underlying the paradoxical sayings of Christ and yet avoid the drastic rejection of everything in the earthly realm as worthless.3 But even if there is a more moderate comparative evaluation of the earthly and the spiritual realms, how are human beings to live in this world? Given an evaluation that privileges the spiritual realm, how are post-Fall human beings to flourish as embodied creatures of a good Creator in the parts of their lives lived in the earthly realm? The biblical book most focused on these questions is the book of Ecclesiastes. 9.2  Ecclesiastes: An Overview In the lengthy and complicated history of the interpretation of Ecclesiastes,4 it has sometimes been interpreted as a paradigmatic representation of the contemptus mundi attitude.5 That is, it has sometimes been understood as rejecting the idea that there is any good worth having or any flourishing available

132  Eleonore Stump for post-Fall persons in this world.6 That interpretation has ample textual support. One recurrent theme of the book seems to be that nothing human beings care about lasts; every human achievement comes to nothing; inescapable heartbreaking suffering and irremediable injustice are everywhere; and everybody dies.7 And so it can seem that, on the view of Ecclesiastes, every human life is a distressing or depressing variation on what it might have been in a world without death, in a world without a Fall. But, paradoxically, Ecclesiastes also has a kind of counter-point to that theme, which is encapsulated in the line, “God has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). In one place after another, the book contains lines about post-Fall human life that seem not only hopeful but even consoling.8 Here, for example, is Ecclesiastes 5:18: “it is good and lovely for a person to eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor which he labored under the sun all the days of his life which God gave him, because it is his heritage”.9 And here is another example, in Ecclesiastes 9:7–9: “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God now accepts your works. Let your clothes be always white; and let your head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife you love”. The themes of Ecclesiastes can seem therefore to be at least in tension with each other, if not in fact inconsistent with each other.10 What is notable about the paradoxical character of the combined claims in Ecclesiastes is that the apparently inconsistent statements cannot be reconciled in the way that the paradoxical sayings of Christ are.11 The realm in which a person can be cheerful and enjoy his dinner and his beloved people is apparently the same realm as the one in which everything exemplifies not just vanity but vanity of vanities.12 Both realms are clearly and decidedly earthly. In spite of valiant efforts in the history of interpretation of Ecclesiastes to take mention of food and wife as allegories for something spiritual, the allegorizing effort itself seems an example of vanity.13 What is proposed for enjoyment in the optimistic lines of Ecclesiastes is more reminiscent of hobbit life than of a high-minded spirituality. So what puts the book of Ecclesiastes in a category by itself is that it has so sorrowful a view of the post-Fall human condition,14 and yet it seems to settle on the validation of a hobbit-like love of this world with its earthly goods, the small pleasures of dinner and the glad human company to be found at home. How does Ecclesiastes manage this feat? How is the paradoxical character of the themes of this biblical book to be resolved? How does Ecclesiastes understand the good life for human beings in this world of sin and sorrow?

Suffering and Flourishing 133 9.3 Ecclesiastes: The Character of the Book and the Narrator of the Story Ecclesiastes is generally categorized as wisdom literature, and it is easy to think of wisdom literature on the model of the biblical book of Proverbs: a set of sayings intended to lead a person into a good life. Ecclesiastes is often thought of in this same way, as a collection of sayings intended to convey ethical or religious guidance. In the book itself, these sayings are attributed to Solomon; and there is considerable discussion in the history of interpretation of Ecclesiastes over whether these sayings really are Solomon’s or whether the attribution to Solomon is simply fictional.15 On either approach, taken just as a collection of sayings, the book is flat, without movement.16 But if we take the book as it presents itself, we should see it not as a thirdpersonal presentation of putatively wise propositional truths about life but rather as a narrative, and in fact as a first-person story of the narrator’s inner life.17 As the book presents itself, it is a narration of the author’s spiritual journey, from a restless, defiantly depressive view of life to a place of quiet gladness. So understood, the book is not flat. Rather, it presents the author’s wrestling with himself and, through this wrestling, achieving spiritual peace. In this presentation, the book models the author’s spiritual journey for the audience of the book; and, by modeling it, the book also invites its audience to share the journey, or at least to reach the journey’s conclusion. For my purposes, it does not matter whether the narrative is fictional or historical; and readers can pick whichever alternative is most congenial to them. But it does matter that in the narrative the person recounting his spiritual autobiography is Solomon. That is, whether the narratively presented author is a real or a fictional person is not relevant to my chapter, but whether that real or fictional character should be understood as Solomon is. There are two things about Solomon as he is presented in other biblical texts that makes him an apt character for this historical or fictional spiritual autobiography. First, with regard to all the worldly goods typically valued by human beings, Solomon had more than most other human beings have ever had.18 He was a great king, who held absolute power over the people within his domains, which were extensive for his time. He was greatly honored not just by the people he governed but also by people in other countries who had heard about him. He had enormous wealth, which he controlled entirely on his own. He made use of some of that wealth to create exquisite living arrangements for himself, in the magnificence of his residences and his personal possessions, including furnishings, clothing, and treasuries of silver and gold. He feasted royally whenever he chose to do so. His harem included 700 wives and 300 concubines.19 He held absolute power over the people within his domains, which were extensive for his time. He was greatly honored not just by the people he governed but also by people in other countries who had heard about him. And he had work to do that made him famous for all time afterward. He built the great temple in Jerusalem, for example: and three biblical books (Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes) are attributed to him or associated with him.

134  Eleonore Stump If a person lacked wealth and then described himself as despising wealth, or if he were without honor in his community and purported to disdain human honor—if he lacked any of the things that mark Solomon as among the most privileged of human beings with regard to worldly goods—and then rejected those worldly goods as not worth having, we would be suspicious of him. We would wonder whether he might not in fact admire those worldly goods if he got them.20 We might wonder whether his disregard of them was in fact an adaptive preference, a kind of preference born only of deprivation, a sour grapes reaction.21 But no such suspicion can attach to the disdain for worldly goods by Solomon. He has what he purports to disdain, and it is precisely in virtue of his own experience of their possession that he rejects them as not worth having.22 Secondly, in other biblical stories about Solomon, it is reported that he has a special gift from God, namely, the gift of wisdom. We can take our understanding of the nature of wisdom as it is understood in those biblical stories by seeing why Solomon wanted it. In his request to God for wisdom, Solomon says: “O Lord my God, you have made your servant king instead of my father David, but I am a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to be numbered or counted. Therefore, give to your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of yours?” (I Kings 3:7–9) Solomon’s desire is to be able to judge God’s people well, and so the wisdom Solomon asks for is an excellence that is partly in the intellect and partly in the will. To judge well, he needs to be able to discern between what is truly good and what only looks like the good when in fact it is not, and then he also needs to care about what is truly good. He could not be a good judge of his people if he knew what the good is but did not have a love for the good he knew. So, in Solomon’s story, we might say, to have wisdom is to discern gold from glitter and to care about gold but disdain glitter.23 In the biblical story, God does give Solomon the gift of wisdom he asked for; and he gives it as only God can. In response to Solomon’s request, God says to Solomon: “I have given you a wise and understanding heart, so that there has not been anyone like you before you, nor shall any like you arise after you”. (I Kings 3:12) Because it is God who gives Solomon wisdom, Solomon comes to have wisdom to a very great degree. And so when Solomon has received the gift of wisdom, his judgments about what is only glitter and not gold have to be seen as weighty, as worthy of acceptance.

Suffering and Flourishing 135 It should be noted here that although the story establishes that God gave Solomon the great gift of wisdom, nothing about the story explains how that gift was given. In unreflective reading of the story, it is no doubt customary to suppose that immediately after his prayer to God and God’s response to it, Solomon suddenly became extraordinarily wise. But it is not necessary to read the story in that way. Giving a gift is not enough to transfer some good to the intended recipient of the gift. The recipient also has to receive it.24 And one way for Solomon to receive God’s gift of wisdom is for him to go through a process of education or formation.25 In my view, if we look at Ecclesiastes as a story Solomon is telling about his seeking the good life for human beings, then this way of thinking about Solomon’s receiving God’s gift of wisdom illuminates the book. Clearly, then, if Ecclesiastes is read as a narrative that is a spiritual autobiography of a person engaged in a struggle to understand the good for human beings, Solomon is the ideal character to be its narrator. In what follows, I will read Ecclesiastes as the autobiographical narrative of Solomon’s wrestling with himself in seeking the good life for human beings and thereby receiving the wisdom God has given him as a gift; and I will refer to the narrator as ‘Solomon’. But I do not intend thereby to imply that the historical Solomon was the author of the book. I will take the autobiographical narrative of the book to be Solomon’s story, but whether that narrative is fictional or historical does not matter for my purposes. 9.4  Ecclesiastes: The Object of the Quest With this much discussion of the structure of the book and the narrator of the story it contains, we can ask about the narrative itself. In this course of the narrative, what is Solomon looking for? The answer to that question will be a function of the way in which we understand his recurrent expression of disappointment when he has not found it: vanity of vanities—or, as he sometimes adds, a grasping after wind. There is endless interesting, erudite discussion of these phrases in the history of interpretation of this book. But I think that one helpful way to understand these phrases is as an expression of what we intend to convey when we say, “Who cares?”. It is common in our culture to undercut a pretentious bragging person with such a tacit or even explicit question. But we also ask this question in a deeply reflective way about the things some people give their lives to. It is common to find people meditating on this question or one of its variants when someone dies. He gave his whole life to making money, we say; and now who cares? At the end of a person’s life, those remaining around him sometimes look at his accumulation of whatever he scrambled for in life and think to themselves, Who cares now? In such cases, those judging the person whose life has ended suppose that he never really could discern the gold from the glitter; and that is why, however glittering his accomplishments or acquisitions seemed while he lived, his life at its end, seen in retrospect, just looks pathetic. It was mostly glitter; it was not gold.

136  Eleonore Stump So one way to understand Solomon’s autobiographical narrative is as a representation of his attempt to discover what is worth caring about. What is worth living for? What will yield a human life that is not pathetic? What is the true gold and not just glitter in human life? After an initial expression of world-weary conviction that these questions have no acceptable answer, the narrative advances through a series of real experiments or thought experiments on Solomon’s part, each one designed to see if there is after all some good for human life about which one could not plausibly say, Who cares? In the narrative, no sooner has Solomon found what might be such good for human life than he undercuts it with a reflection that leads him to label it also as vanity. He sees something that might be the good for human life, but then he looks at it a second time, and on that second look it seems after all not worth caring about. The recurrent phrase Vanity of vanities is the condemnation of one after another of those experiments. On reflection or in experience, however glittering it might have seemed to be at first, each pattern of life Solomon experiments with turns out to be pathetic too. Each plausible candidate for a life worth living is presented only to be followed by Solomon’s questioning thought about it and his concluding judgment about it: who cares? vanity of vanities. Nonetheless, as attention to the story’s details shows, there is progress in this process. Each real or thought experiment follows in some psychologically understandable way from the previous one. And the rejection of each candidate for a worthwhile human life and the reasons for its rejection as pathetic lead Solomon a step further toward the goal that his gift of wisdom promises: an understanding of the life that is worth living in this world. 9.5  Vanity of Vanities: The Start of the Story We can begin the examination of the narrative with the book’s general introduction. Here are the famous opening lines of the book: “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem: Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit has a man26 from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually and comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea. Yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. All things are full of labor; man cannot express

Suffering and Flourishing 137 it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is what will be; that which is done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after. I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail has God given to man to be exercised with”. (Ecclesiastes 1:1–13) Here, the who cares? judgment begins with the claim that human labor does not lead to any profit for the laborer. The Hebrew word translated ‘profit’ has also been the subject of extensive philological study; but in this context, it seems to signify primarily something that is worth caring about, something about which it would not be plausible to say who cares? To ask dismissively what profit there is to any human labor is in effect to say about the results of any human labor who cares about that? The first reason Solomon gives for this dismal judgment about human labor consists in a review of natural phenomena. There is a cycle of nature that repeats itself. Human generations succeed one another. Sunrise is followed regularly by sunset, which is itself followed by sunrise again. And so on. Here it is worth noticing that, by itself, the regularity of nature hardly seems to warrant the bleak claim that nothing in human labor is worth caring about. On the contrary, as the increasing failure of such regularity in consequence of global warming makes people aware, the regularity of natural phenomena is a great good. What Solomon seems to find pathetic about human labor because of the cyclical character of nature is expressed in two claims. First, there is nothing new in nature, not even in the human part of nature. And, secondly, there is nothing permanent in nature; nothing human remains forever, or even is remembered forever. So here is why Solomon seems to suppose that nothing in human labor is worth caring about: nothing human labor accomplishes makes a memorable permanent difference in the world. And that is why, in Solomon’s judgment at this point, all human labor is just pathetic. But it is worth pausing to reflect on this judgment. Why does making a great and permanent difference matter to Solomon, or to anyone? That is, why would a life devoted to labor that did not make a great and permanent difference to the course of things not count as a good life? What standard for a good life is being presupposed in Solomon’s judgment? That it is a common standard is evident from the fact that virtually never27 in the extensive history of commentary on Ecclesiastes has this judgment been questioned or has the standard underlying it even been noticed. Once it is noticed, however, one can see that it is a dubious standard. That is because, on this standard, the goodness of human labor requires that there be

138  Eleonore Stump something singular about it; it requires that, to be profitable, the result of human labor must be something that is significantly different from what usually happens and that this difference remain or be remembered for a long time. But if the labor of every person had this result, that is, if all human labor produced something new and permanent, then none of it would be significantly different from what usually happens; it would in effect just be what usually happens in consequence of human labor. On the standard presupposed by Solomon’s judgment, then, what makes human labor worth caring about will have to be something that only a very few human beings can have. The good in question will diminish to the extent to which it is shared. And here it seems that Solomon’s standard of value needs correction. One way to distinguish great goods, true goods, from small goods—that is, one way to distinguish gold from glitter—is just by the touchstone of the effect of distribution. If the good diminishes in virtue of being distributed, the good in question is small; great goods do not diminish in virtue of being distributed. A pizza grows smaller with distribution. Wisdom does not; love does not. On this touchstone for distinguishing great goods from small ones, wealth, honor, and political power are all small goods. Being singular in effects and being singled out for remembrance—those things that Solomon finds lacking in the results of human labor—are also small goods. On a true standard for human goods, what Solomon laments as missing in the results of human labor is actually not a good worth caring about. On the contrary, the great goods that make a human life worthwhile include the excellences of intellect and will— wisdom and love, for example. Not only do wisdom and love not decrease with distribution, it is even possible for them to increase in virtue of being shared. So one way to understand Solomon’s judgment that all human labor is vanity is to take it as a lapse of wisdom in virtue of inflating a small good as if it were a great one. And, we might say, it is a lapse characteristic of post-Fall human beings, who tend to prefer their own power or pleasure to greater goods. 9.6  Vanity of Vanities: The Next Steps in the Story Because Solomon’s judgment on the products of human labor is who cares?, he moves away from valuing it; and he experiments with a different candidate for the true good. Suppose one really did not care about working for anything and just went for a good time. Would one then have a life that mattered, that was worth having, that was not pathetic? Maybe what makes life pathetic is just overthinking things and striving so hard to find what really matters. Maybe the only way to have what really matters is just to stop seeking it and live it instead. Solomon’s next experiment is with this sort of life. Here is how he begins his internal dialogue with himself in this next step of his spiritual journey: “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; therefore enjoy the good’” (Ecclesiastes 2:1). And then Solomon goes on to recount his wealth and all the things that wealth enabled him to have, everything from lavish houses with orchards and pools of water to large

Suffering and Flourishing 139 numbers of servants. He says, “Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure” (Ecclesiastes 2:10). But his judgment on this approach to life is just the same: in the end: who cares? He began his account of this part of his story by saying: “I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine, while guiding my heart with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for men to do under heaven all the days of their lives”. (Ecclesiastes 2:10) By saying that he was still guiding his heart with wisdom, Solomon makes clear that this step is an experiment. He is not actually giving himself a spiritual or moral lobotomy. He is experimenting with being like the foolish, to see if their life is the kind of life worth living; but in order to make this experiment, he does still need to preserve his wisdom. And he concludes his experiment this way: “I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. …Yet I myself perceived that the same event happens to all men. So I said in my heart, ‘As it happens to the fool, it also happens to me; and why was I then more wise?’ Then I said in my heart, ‘This also is vanity’. For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come. And how does a wise man die? As the fool!” (Ecclesiastes 2:10) At this point, Solomon is validating his judgment that the foolish life of wealth and pleasure is really just as stupid as it seems to be. His judgment on a life of pleasure is that it too is pathetic. But the thought about death presented in the last line of this passage explains his further judgment that the life of a wise person is pathetic also. In effect, Solomon checkmates this attempt at finding the life worth living by the reflection that even the wise person dies; in this respect, the wise person is no better than the fool, whose life is not worth living. Here we should step back to consider the standard of value on the basis of which Solomon reaches this judgment. It is not so hard to see why the foolish life of pleasure would be pathetic if the person sunk in pleasure were enough of a fool to think he is great because he is rich. But, as Solomon judges it, the life of pleasure remains pathetic even if the person living it somehow manages to keep his wisdom while he dissipates his days in pleasures. What warrants this judgment for Solomon is that death comes to the wise person just as it does to the fool. But why should we accept Solomon’s judgment that a life is pathetic just because it ends in death? As Solomon’s lines make clear, his judgment that it is not worth caring about depends at least in part on the apparently disheartening thought that a dead person is eventually forgotten. On Solomon’s view, that is why the dead person’s life is pathetic.

140  Eleonore Stump But then it seems that the standard underlying Solomon’s judgment in this case is the same as in the previous one. On this standard, a life that is worth living must make a difference that is not only notable but also permanently remembered—and, we might add, permanently honored—by everyone. (Presumably, a life that was permanently remembered as not worth living would not be a living worth living in virtue of being remembered.) Here too what is taken as the good worth having is something that diminishes when it is distributed. If every human life were remembered and honored permanently, then no human life would be different from any other. And being remembered and honored permanently would just be part of the ordinary course of nature—and then Solomon’s first judgment would apply to it: in not making any difference to the ordinary course of nature, a human life would just be vanity. So, on the standard of value underlying Solomon’s judgment on the foolish life of pleasure, for a person to have a life that is not vanity, it needs to be the case that other people do not have such a life. Consequently, those who want such a life will in effect want others not to have it. Clearly, there is something erroneous, something not wise, about such a judgment. To understand what is wrong with this judgment, it helps to think about pride. In my view, one of the best explications of pride is that given by Aquinas. For Aquinas, pride is the worst of the sins, and it comes in four kinds.28 The first kind is a matter of thinking one has an excellence one does not have. The person sunk in pleasure whom Solomon judges a fool has this sort of pride. The fool supposes he has a life that is worth living in virtue of having acquired wealth or power, but he is mistaken in this supposition. These things are not true human excellences; and so the fool has this first, childish form of pride. The second kind is the pride of the self-made man. It is a matter of thinking one has an excellence one does have but thinking one has gotten it for himself. If Solomon supposed that his wisdom were something that he had provided for himself, then he would have this second kind of pride. The third kind is the self-righteous kind of pride. If Solomon believed correctly that he had wisdom, which really is an excellence, and if he believed that he had that excellence because God had given it to him as a gift, but if he supposed that God gave this gift to him because he merited this gift from God, then Solomon would have had this third, priggish kind of pride. The fourth and last kind of pride is the worst, because it rests on a rejection of the love of others.29 If Solomon had believed correctly that his wisdom was an excellence given him by God because of the goodness of God but if he had been glad that others did not have this gift and hoped that they would not get it, then he would have had this last kind of pride. And now it should be evident that the fourth kind of pride is implicit in the standard of value underlying Solomon’s judgment on the life of pleasure. That evident pride is a sufficient reason for rejecting both his standard and the judgment based on it. But there is also another weighty reason for rejecting that standard. On that standard, what makes a life of pleasure or even a life with wisdom not

Suffering and Flourishing 141 worth living is that it ends in death and the oblivion that death brings. Now the Solomon of the story must know that death was not part of God’s original plan for human beings in Eden. Death came into the world with the Fall; it was part of God’s punishment for fallen human beings. But, in Solomon’s world, this claim renders Solomon’s judgment about death unacceptable. If no human life is worth living because it invariably ends in death, then it seems that death is a bad thing; but holding that God’s punishments are bad for those on whom they are imposed impugns the goodness of God. If God is perfectly good, then (all things considered, in the end) nothing given by God, including even God’s punishments, could be a bad thing for those who receive these things from God.30 So Solomon’s second step in his wrestling with himself about the good life for human beings is based both on a standard of value that will not survive examination and also on a theological view that in Solomon’s world will not hold up on reflection. The next, third move in Solomon’s experiments is natural, given Solomon’s failure at the second step. He can see that the foolish are apparently enjoying their lives, and he is outside looking in at their pleasure and noticing that his wisdom is what keeps him from joining them in their enjoyment. And so he starts the next step in his quest by reflecting adversely on the wisdom given him as a gift by God. He says, “Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:17). And here is his explanation for this reaction: “There is a man whose labor is with wisdom, knowledge, and skill; yet he must leave his heritage to a man who has not labored for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. For what has man for all his labor and for the striving of his heart with which he has toiled under the sun? For all his days are sorrowful, and his work is burdensome; even in the night his heart takes no rest. This also is vanity”. (Ecclesiastes 2:21–23) Here it seems as if Solomon has come to think that the whole problem is precisely wisdom. It is his continual reflection on the nature of a life worth living that is actually what is making him miserable. The life he is hating in these lines is his own. At this point what strikes Solomon as good is just the life of an ordinary person who is not preoccupied with the question who cares?. And so he says: “Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor”. (Ecclesiastes 2:24) An ordinary person does not go in circles wondering if there is anything that is not worthless in human life. He just enjoys his dinner. So, Solomon seems

142  Eleonore Stump to suppose, that is the path to a truly good life: jettison wisdom and enjoy whatever dinner you can get. It is worth noticing that here Solomon has apparently given up the standards that underlay his earlier judgments. The person who enjoys his dinner is part of the regular and unremarkable course of nature; and, sooner or later, he will surely die like everyone else. And so there has been progress in Solomon’s journey: he has given up the erroneous standards of value notable in his first two steps. At this point, what Solomon is taking as his standard of value for a good life is just the ability to stop thinking about what makes a life worthwhile and to enjoy what life one actually has. But because he is wise, even if not fully or completely, Solomon rejects the suggestion—his own suggestion to himself—that the life worth living is simply the ordinary life of ordinary people. He does so because he sees that the very ability to enjoy small goods such as dinner, without wondering whether doing so makes life pathetic, is also a gift of God’s. He says about the ability to enjoy dinner without undercutting reflection about the vanity of such a life: “This also, I saw, was from the hand of God”.

(Ecclesiastes 2:24)

At this point, so far from being willing to reject a gift of God’s as hateful, whether it is the gift of wisdom or whether it is the punishment of death, Solomon has found his way to presupposing that God’s gifts are good. Here the standard of value by which to measure whether a life is good or not, whether it matters or not, depends on the gifts of God. A life that accepts and makes use of God’s gifts is a good life. Clearly, there is progress in Solomon’s spiritual journey here. But he straightway undercuts his own thought by pointing out to himself that it is hard to know which things are God’s gifts. Is any given person’s ability to enjoy dinner a gift from God, or is it part of the same futile lifestyle Solomon just finished rejecting? After all, he reflects to himself: “who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in his sight; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and collecting, that he may give to him who is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind”. (Ecclesiastes 2:25–26) Although Solomon has here moved to the recognition of the goodness of God’s gifts, everything from wisdom to the ability to enjoy a meal, this recognition does not bring Solomon any rest because he has had an undercutting thought about God’s gifts. The gift might be good, and the giver of the gift might be good; but if the recipient of the gift is himself not good, then the gift will just render the life of its recipient another instance of vanity. Received

Suffering and Flourishing 143 in the wrong way, even a good gift will just make the life of its recipient not worth caring about. This reflection leads then naturally to the next one, about the goodness of God’s gifts when they are received in the right way, at the right time. The famous lines of Chapter 3 begin this way: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven”. The next line rests on a rejection of the thought Solomon had in his first attempts to find what makes a human life worth caring about. In those earlier attempts, he had focused on the fact that everyone dies, and then it seemed to him that that fact alone was enough to render every human life pathetic. But here Solomon starts his litany of things for which there is a time and a season this way: “A time to be born, and a time to die”. At the end of this litany, Solomon gives his now justly famous overarching judgment about the gifts of God received in their season and at their time: “God has made everything beautiful in its time”.

(Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Solomon has here come so far: even the ending of death is not enough to render a human life vanity if death comes to a person at the right time, in the right season. If it does, then the inevitability of death and all that death brings with it is not enough to make a human life pathetic, contrary to what Solomon was claiming at the outset of his dialogue with himself. Rather, in its time, even death is beautiful. It is a good gift of God’s that enhances the beauty of the life that ends in death at the right time. But no sooner has Solomon come to so consoling a conclusion than he finds a way to undercut it also. How do we know the right time and the due season for anything?, he asks. And he goes on to attribute human ignorance of the right time and season to God. He says of God: “He has set the world in the human heart, so that man cannot find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end”. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)31 Here too it is worth reflecting on Solomon’s underlying suppositions. He is evidently supposing that it is up to a human being to figure out what the right times and seasons are for things in his life. And then he is apparently willing to presuppose that there is something less than fully loving and caring about God since it is God’s doing (as Solomon supposes) that human beings have a hard time discerning times and seasons.

144  Eleonore Stump Making these two presuppositions explicit is enough to see that Solomon should reject them both. The reason for rejecting the second is obvious, and so in fact is the reason for rejecting the first. How could Solomon suppose that it is up to a human being alone to discover the knowledge needed? At the heart of his whole world is the grateful recognition and acceptance of God’s revelation to human beings; and central to his own story is the powerful religious experience in which his wisdom is given to him as a gift from God. And so this next attempt to find what is worth caring about in human lives in effect exposes to view another error in Solomon’s underlying presuppositions. To see the error is to advance in wisdom, at least enough to take the next step in the series of Solomon’s thought experiments. It is not possible in this chapter to examine every step in that series, but it is worth pointing out just one more. Among Solomon’s next steps in his wrestling with himself is a troubled recognition of the irremediable injustice in human communities and the suffering of those oppressed by people wielding power over them. So, in Ecclesiastes 4:1–3, Solomon says: “Then I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun: and, see, the tears of the oppressed! But they have no comforter. On the side of their oppressors, there is power; but the oppressed have no comforter. Therefore, I praised those who were already dead more than the living who are still alive. Yet better than both is he who has never existed, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun”. But not long after this remark, in Ecclesiastes 5:8, Solomon says: “If you see the oppression of the poor, and the violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province, do not marvel at the matter; for he that is high watches over him that is high, and there are those higher than they”. Here Solomon has moved from a distressed pronouncement about the plight of the poor to a recognition that human power is not ultimate. God has power over those people whose unjust exercise of power oppresses the vulnerable, and God is the ultimate guarantor of justice for those who are oppressed. 9.7  The End of the Story And so, moving by degrees through a series of defiantly depressive or distressed views of human life, Solomon comes closer and closer to the object of his quest: an understanding of the true good for human beings in this life. Solomon’s wrestling with himself continues in the same manner until it reaches this point: Solomon recognizes human ignorance of times and seasons and of many of God’s works as well; and yet, even so, he is willing to

Suffering and Flourishing 145 make specific recommendations for a good life for human beings. In Ecclesiastes 11: 1–6, for example, Solomon says: “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight, for you do not know what evil will be on the earth. If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth; and if a tree falls to the south or the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it shall lie. He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap. As you do not know what is the way of the wind, [or] how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child, so you do not know the works of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not withhold your hand; for you do not know which will prosper, either this or that, or whether both alike will be good”. The first two recommendations in this passage are exhortations to care for those in need.32 What is worth noting about these recommendations is that a person does not need to figure out that following these recommendations is important for a good life. Even with all the human ignorance Solomon notes in these and the preceding lines, a person can know that giving to the needy is necessary for a good life. And why, in Solomon’s world, can one know this? Because God has revealed it in the Mosaic law. So, for example, Moses tells the Israelite people: “If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother, but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs. Beware that there be not a wicked thought in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand’; and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the Lord against you, and it become sin among you. You shall surely give to him; and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand. For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land’”. (Deuteronomy 15:7–11) In the first recommendations in Ecclesiastes 11, which judge that giving to the poor is necessary for a good life, Solomon is now in effect accepting that God can be relied on to reveal the knowledge needed for living a life that is worthwhile. As the first of Solomon’s attempts at the outset of the book show, trying to find that knowledge by oneself yields only a defiant despair; but that

146  Eleonore Stump enterprise was misguided. Wisdom lies in seeking the needed knowledge from God, who will give it because God is good. The next recommendations in this same passage are analogous to the first ones. But how can Solomon recommend ordinary farming activities as part of the good life for human beings, given human ignorance about how anything grows, including the child in the womb? What sense is there in these activities if human beings do not know “the works of God who makes everything”? The answer lies in the question: it is God who makes everything. Just as God’s revelation can be trusted as a guide to a good life for human beings because God is good, so for the same reason God’s working in the lives of human beings can be trusted to lead them to a life that is worth living even with all that human beings themselves do not know.33 It is also worth noticing that these recommendations are exhortations to be active and to do what one can to alleviate the suffering of others. Although in the course of his wrestling with himself, Solomon is finding what is worthwhile in human life in reliance on the goodness of God, his attitude is the opposite of quietism. It is possible actively to labor for oneself and for others without worrying about whether all human labor is profitless because a good God is active in human lives. 9.8  The Wisdom of Solomon Socrates was said to hold that wisdom is a matter of knowing that one does not know. For Solomon, wisdom is a matter of knowing that one does not know too; but, for Solomon, underlying that recognition of human ignorance is a conviction of the goodness of God, who does know and whose revelation and guidance can lead human beings to wisdom and a good life even in spite of their inability to find either one on their own. By the end of his narrative, Solomon has found what he was looking for when he began the spiritual journey illustrated in his autobiographical narrative in Ecclesiastes. And he has found it precisely in the overturning of the pride that marked the start of his journey. In the first three species of pride, as Aquinas’s analysis of pride explains it, a person takes himself to be the author of his own good, in one way or another. Through his wrestling with himself, Solomon comes to understand that all good, including wisdom with its knowledge of the true good for human beings, is a gift from God and has to be sought from God. In the last and worst species of pride, as Aquinas explains it, a person does recognize that any good he has is not something that he could or did get for himself; rather it is a gift of God’s. But, nonetheless, the person suffering from the worst species of pride does not want to share the good he has been given; and he hopes others do not get it. Since humility is the opposite of pride, Aquinas’s analysis of the nature of pride yields a rich and sophisticated analysis of humility too. In this analysis, humility is the recognition and the disposition to act on the recognition that every good in a person’s life is a gift from a good God and is meant to be shared with others.

Suffering and Flourishing 147 Humility of this sort is what Solomon is exemplifying in his telling of his story; and so the whole of Ecclesiastes is a manifestation of that humility. Wisdom is the gift Solomon has been given. By sharing his spiritual autobiography and its movement from a proud despair to a quiet, glad humility, Solomon is inviting people who feel the pull of his initial despair—who cares? Who cares about anything that seems good in a human life?—to follow the progress of his thought as he wrestles with himself. In this invitation and in his narrative, he is sharing with others the gift of wisdom that was given him by God. Solomon finishes his autobiographical story by addressing those who are just beginning the adult journey of their lives. To young men, to people who might be where Solomon was in the part of his life described at the beginning of his narrative, he says: “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth; and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes: but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment”. (Ecclesiastes 11:9) This complex exhortation rests on an affirmation that is the very opposite of the view on display at the start of Solomon’s story, where a distressed cynicism was in evidence. Here what Solomon urges is joy, and not some ascetical otherworldly joy, but just joy in youth and the things that make youth glad. But Solomon’s exhortation to joy is coupled with an admonition: just know that God judges human lives. As the preceding part of Solomon’s story shows, this admonition is in fact necessary for the affirmation of joy. It is because God is not only good but actually actively engaged in human lives—by giving wisdom, by executing punishment on the oppressors of the poor—that human beings do not have to do for themselves what they should receive as gifts from God. Because the good of human lives and the knowledge of what that good has come from God, joy is not foolish; it is part of wisdom. The last chapter of Ecclesiastes and the end of Solomon’s narrative begins with a reiteration of the exhortation to the young to rejoice, but it finishes with the memorable and evocative description of where a human story ends for those who live to old age. The lines are worth quoting in full: “Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, while the evil days do not come, nor the years draw near when you will say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars are not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain; in the day when the keepers of the house will tremble, and the strong men will stoop, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows grow dim, And the doors will be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding fades, and he will rise up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of music will be brought low; and when they

148  Eleonore Stump will be afraid of heights, and fears will be in the road, and the almond tree will blossom, and the grasshopper will drag himself along, and desire will fail: because man goes to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets; or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern”. (Ecclesiastes 12: 1–6) This is a description of the diminishments of age. It gives a portrait of an old man and his impending death, and so it can seem evocative of Solomon’s attitude at the beginning of the book. If this is the end of human life for those who live to old age, then who cares? But this passage actually culminates in one last line to Solomon’s story; and that line finishes what is in effect the one very long sentence which begins at the start of the passage. We can grasp the sentiment of the whole sentence by starting with the beginning of the sentence quoted above and eliding everything until we add that last line. So construed that complicated sentence goes this way: “Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth [before you grow old and die]… [because at your death] the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it”. (Ecclesiastes 12:7) Here there is the final antidote to the distressed reflections in the book’s beginning when Solomon pronounced his judgment that nothing matters because everyone dies. Here at the end of the book Solomon validates the truth in that claim: everyone dies. This is the sense in which it is true even at the end of the book that human life is as transient as breath, a vanity if anything is. And yet this transient vanity is only part of the story. The thing that is transient is dust. But dust is not all that there is to a human being. There is also breath or spirit, and it is not transient as the dust is. The spirit returns to God, and in this return it persists with the God who gave it.34 The final expression of Solomon’s wisdom then is the recognition that he himself is something given by God. It is not just his wisdom that is God’s gift to him. He himself is a gift of God’s also, and his death returns him to the giver of that gift, his Creator. So here, at the end of Solomon’s story, even the fact that everyone dies does not validate the judgment that there is nothing in a human life that matters. Rather, it validates the recommendation to remember God and rejoice. And that is why the commentator on Solomon’s story, who has a few final lines at the end of Ecclesiastes, says this: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments” (Ecclesiastes 12:13) By the end of his narrative, Solomon has come to understand that the true good for human beings lies precisely in fearing God and keeping his commandments. Then even death does not render a human life pathetic, and the recognition that everyone dies does not prompt depression. In fearing God and keeping his commandments, a person acknowledges that all real power and all real goodness are God’s. For that very reason, in humility, a person

Suffering and Flourishing 149 can see the sad facts of the human condition: the poor are oppressed, suffering is ubiquitous, and everyone dies; and yet he can also have a quiet joy in the goods that he has been given, including his life, including even dinner when he can get it. The sorrows of life do not last forever; and even while they afflict a person, they are still encompassed within the power and goodness of God. What does last forever is a person’s relation to God, which continues even after death when the spirit returns to God who gave it. It is not plausible to think who cares? about human life on this view of it. With this understanding, Solomon has finally finished receiving the wisdom that God gave him as a gift when he first became king; and so he has finished his spiritual autobiography, too. In the final acquisition of wisdom, he has found the true good for human beings; and in humility, which sees all good in a person’s life as a gift of God’s to be shared with others, he has shared his gift of wisdom with everyone who reads or hears his story. 9.9 Conclusion At the end of Ecclesiastes, then, the apparently paradoxical character of the sayings in the book is resolved. They are not rendered consistent by segregating the true good to an otherworldly realm. The true goods are in the same realm as suffering, injustice, and death. At the end of the book, all the distressing things about human life that Solomon called to his own attention and to the attention of his audience are still just as bad as Solomon saw them to be in the beginning. What is different by the end of his story is his attitude toward them. When by the end of his narrative Solomon has finished receiving the wisdom that is God’s gift to him, it brings him to the recognition that in power and goodness God governs all human life. Everything, the distressing as well as the joyful, is under the rule of a good God who governs it. And every true good, everything that is gold rather than just glitter, everything that makes human life worthwhile, comes from God as a gift. Solomon can still affirm the evils and sorrows of human life that distressed him in the beginning, but by the end he affirms them with a quiet heart and with an ability to take joy even in the small goods, those that diminish when they are distributed. The paradoxical sayings of Christ that rest on a view of the spiritual life as infinitely more valuable than the earthly life are compatible with this position. The problem with the contemptus mundi attitude sometimes taken to be implied by this view is that, in effect, that attitude takes God to be only in heaven. But the apparently inconsistent views of human life often taken to be apparent in Ecclesiastes are reconciled in Solomon’s narrative because Solomon comes to see that God is the God of this world too. And that wise recognition makes all the difference to the sorrowful post-Fall condition, as Solomon’s progression from proud despair to quiet humility exemplifies.35 It is wisdom to see that being willing to lose one’s life in order to save it is compatible with enjoying one’s home, one’s people, and even one’s dinner when one has them.

150  Eleonore Stump Notes 1 For a detailed discussion of these and similar paradoxes, see my The Image of God. The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Mourning, Chapter 9. 2 So, for example, Jerome says, “But if all things are good, as being the handiwork of a good Creator, how comes it that all things are vanity? If the earth is vanity, are the heavens vanity too?—and the angels, the thrones, the dominations, the powers, and the rest of the virtues? No”. Cited by Christianson (2012, 101). In his commentary on Ecclesiastes 1:2, Jerome says, “If everything that God made is very good, in what way is all vanity, and not just vanity, but even the vanity of vanities?” (Jerome 2012, 35). See Christianson (2012, 103) for a similar line by Bonaventure. 3 For discussion of the treatment of this theme in Ecclesiastes by Christian authors in the Patristic period, see for example, Christianson (2012, 100–102). 4 Garfinkel (2011, 215) says, “Virtually no topic related to the book of Ecclesiastes is accepted without significant scholarly debate…”. 5 For discussion and illustration of this claim, see Christianson (2012, 100–107). He cites these lines from an unpublished thesis by Eric Eliason which summarizes the point: “[among medieval commentators] there was very little disagreement concerning what Solomon taught in Ecclesiastes. His subject was contempt of the world”. (Christianson 2012, 104) 6 Garfinkel says, “What the book meant to its author… is a notion as widely debated as every other aspect of this brief work. The majority of modern interpreters see the book as an attempt to answer, or at least address, life’s ‘big picture’ issues, raising questions about the ultimate concerns of humanity and ‘the meaning of life’”. (Garfinkel 2011, 217). 7 Concern about the content of Ecclesiastes gave rise to some debate within the Jewish tradition over whether the book should be included with the other biblical books; see Christianson (2012, 89–92). Against a worry of this sort, Zlotowitz and Sherman (2008, xliii) point out that “[the opening and conclusion of the book] was clearly a statement of Torah, an exposition of the fear of God”. 8 Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says about Ecclesiastes, “the biblical book most focused on joy is precisely the one often thought of as the unhappiest of all, Kohelet, a.k.a. Ecclesiastes. Kohelet is notoriously the man who had everything, yet describes it all as hevel [vanity] …. In fact, though, Kohelet uses the word simcha [joy] seventeen times, that is, more than the whole of the Mosaic books together. After every one of his meditations on the pointlessness of life, Kohelet ends with an exhortation to joy. …How then are we to find meaning in life? Kohelet eventually finds it not in happiness but in joy …. We are living in God’s land, enjoying His blessing, eating the produce of His earth, watered by His rain, brought to fruition under His sun, breathing the air He breathed into us, living the life He renews in us each day”. (Jonathan Sacks, “The Pursuit of Joy: Ki Tavo 5775”). I am grateful to Tamra Wright for the reference; see also her article on R.Sack’s remarks (Wright, forthcoming). 9 This translation and the others in this paper are minimally revised versions of the text in the New King James Version, which itself contains the text with just a few changes from the King James Version. Virtually all the texts quoted in this paper are widely known, often enough in their famous King James translation. This paper is a philosophical reflection on the nature of the paradox in religious discourse as it is found in Ecclesiastes; it is not a historical or philological investigation of the text, and so there is no need to annoy readers by idiosyncratic translations of familiar biblical lines. Consequently, I have simply helped myself to the mildly less anachronistic variant on the King James translation and modified it slightly when it seemed helpful to do so. But I have regularly consulted other translations, including the JPS translation of the text and the translation in the ArtScroll Tanakh series; and I have checked the Hebrew myself in any case in which it seemed likely that a translation might be controversial.

Suffering and Flourishing 151 10 Garfinkel says, “Part of the difficulty in establishing a clear pattern to the book is that it contains what appear as numerous inconsistencies, sometimes with one pericope contradicting the immediately preceding section” (Garfinkel 2011, 220), and he goes on to give a brief but detailed survey of different scholarly ways of reconciling the apparent contradictory positions. Summarizing contemporary interpretations, Katherine J. Dell says of the author of Ecclesiastes, “it is hard to know what the author’s true sentiments are because he often cites an optimistic saying… but then relativizes it in the next verse by an appeal to the ‘vanity’ of everything. This is where the contradiction and tension in his thought lies” (Dell 2001, 420). My own approach to the problem will emerge in this paper. 11 Interpretations of Ecclesiastes by Christian writers in the Patristic period were notable for their attempt to assimilate the paradox of the book to the prevailing understanding of Christ’s paradoxical claims by means of allegorizing any mention of things in the world. See, for example, Christianson (2012, 22–40, and especially 25–27). 12 Someone might suppose that the Talmudic approach to Ecclesiastes rejects this claim because it supposes that the good which is validated by Ecclesiastes is just study of the Torah. See, for example, the general points of the Preface in Zlotowitz and Sherman (2008). For a particular example of allegorizing that attempts to support this general point, see Cohen (1983, 94): “All the eating and drinking mentioned in this Book refer to Torah and good deeds”. But that the good of Torah study is a good in this world, as distinct from a spiritual good in an afterlife, should be clear. (On the other hand, the Midrash does also contain some examples of attempts to relativize the good at issue in Ecclesiastes to an otherworldly realm. So, for example: “R.Hezekiah said in the name of R. Simon b. Zabdi: all the Torah which you learn in this world is ‘vanity’ in comparison with Torah [which will be learnt] in the World to Come; because in this world a man learns Torah and forgets it, but with reference to the World to Come what is written there? I will put My law in their inward parts” (Cohen 1983, 51). 13 For an example of such allegorizing interpretation of Ecclesiastes, see, for example, Jerome’s commentary on the book. At some points, Jerome goes so far as to try to take Solomon as an allegorical figure for Christ. Jerome says, “If we want the Preacher [i.e., Solomon]… to refer here also to the person of Christ, we can speak of his slaves as those who have a spirit of fear in their servitude, and who desire, rather than have, spiritual gifts, whereas we can call slave women those souls who are still addicted to the flesh and world” (Jerome 2012, 48). 14 In Jewish tradition of interpretation, there was in fact some concern about whether the book should be allowed to be open to just anyone. Zlotowitz and Sherman (2008, xlii) say, “Therefore, there was an opinion among the Sages that perhaps Koheles… should be concealed lest it cause mistaken or heretical ideas”. 15 Garfinkel (2011, 216) says, “Authorship… [of Ecclesiastes[ has been the topic of longstanding debate. Traditionally authorship was assigned to Solomon…. In fact, Jewish tradition attributes authorship of three biblical books [Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Song of Songs]… to Solomon. Talmudic disputants differ about which he wrote in his youth, which during his middle age, and which in his later years, but… [all viewpoints] ascribe Qoheleth [that is, Ecclesiastes] to Solomon’s elder years”. Garfinkel goes on to explain that later scholarship on the book rejects both this attribution to Solomon and the consequent dating. 16 For some brief discussion of different interpretations of the structure of Ecclesiastes, see Garfinkel (2011, 220–221). 17 Actually, the first verse of the book and the last six verses of the book are thirdpersonal comments on the first-person narrative framed by those few verses. 18 See, for example, I Kings 4–10.

152  Eleonore Stump 19 See 1 Kings 11:3. This detail about Solomon’s life adds to the poignancy of the line in the description of old age (Ecclesiastes 12:5) which describes old age as a time when desire fails. 20 For a detailed exposition of this point, see Cohen (1983, 86–88). 21 For a helpful brief review of adaptive preference in connection with epistemic injustice, see Barnes (2016, ch. 4). 22 Meir Zlotowitz and Nosson Sherman remark on this point also. They say, “The first lesson of Koheles is that man avoid the striving after the pleasures of this world, because—for all their allure—they are fleeting and valueless. Solomon points to himself as the one who know this better than anyone”. (Zlotowitz and Sherman 2008, xxxvii). 23 Meir Zlotowitz and Nosson Sherman use this analogy also in their overview to the translation of and commentary on Ecclesiastes. Validating the view of Ecclesiastes in rejecting worldly goods and pleasures, they say, “Flesh-and-blood eyes are easily blinded by the synthetic light of glitter” (Zlotowitz and Sherman 2008, xxxi). 24 For an excellent discussion of this point in connection with texts in the Hebrew Bible about gifts between God and human beings, see Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). 25 This interpretation of the story should be enough, in my view, to dispel the erroneous view that the story promotes quietism, a view on which what human beings should do is nothing at all because everything can be safely left to God. Even with regard to the wisdom promised by God as a gift to Solomon in a powerful religious vision, God’s gift does not obviate the need for Solomon to struggle to receive it. 26 There is a rhythm to the prose of this biblical text with the word ‘man’ used to indicate every human being or the whole human race which is almost impossible to preserve with any of the customary substitutions for this use of the word. Because the flow of the prose is part of the power of the despairing or depressive or sorrowful parts of Ecclesiastes, I have hated to render the prose in another, more clumsy way; and so I have simply stayed with the older linguistic usage, which I myself have entirely discarded in other work. In addition, I have violated the practice which I have made ubiquitous in my other writing, namely, the practice of alternating the pronouns ‘he/him/his’ and ‘she/her/hers’, because it seemed to me that that usual practice of mine altered the character of Ecclesiastes. The lesson of Ecclesiastes is a lesson for everybody, regardless of gender; but, in my view, the tone or flavor of Ecclesiastes is that of an old man talking to young men. 27 I say ‘virtually never’ just as a precaution. I am not aware of any interpretation that would preclude my substituting ‘never’ for ‘virtually never’. 28 See Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II q.162 a.4. 29 Aquinas’s account of love helps explain why this fourth kind of pride is a rejection of the love of others. On his account, love emerges from the interaction of two interconnected and mutually governing desires, one for the good of the beloved person and the other for union with the beloved. Insofar as on this worst kind of pride, the proud person does not want others to have the good he himself has, the proud person lacks the first desire of love. And insofar as he wants to be not at one with others but distinguished over them, he lacks the second desire as well. 30 This claim implies that, on Jewish and Christian theology, there is an acceptable defense or theodicy for the problem of evil. In this regard, see Stump (1997) and Stump (2010). 31 I have used the JPS Tanakh 1917 translation for this difficult verse. 32 The ArtScroll Tanakh commentary says of the recommendation to cast one’s bread on the waters, “Most commentators explain this verse as urging that charity be given even to strangers who will never be seen again. The generosity will not go unrewarded: the favor will be repaid” (Zlotowitz and Sherman 2008, 182–183). As for the recommendation to give to seven or to eight, the ArtScroll Tanakh

Suffering and Flourishing 153 commentary gives this interpretative remark of Rashi’s: “Dispense to whomever needs it and don’t cry, ‘Enough!’” (Zlotowitz and Sherman 2008, 184). 33 The ArtScroll Tanakh commentary notes in this connection that on a related passage in Deuteronomy Rashi comments “Walk with Him in whole-heartedness and depend on Him and don’t probe into the future. Whatever befalls you accept whole-heartedly”. And the commentary adds, “Man should not … delve into the unknown. He should not postpone his labor waiting for especially favorable weather conditions. He should simply work diligently and confidently and seek God’s blessing” (Zlotowitz and Sherman 2008, 187 and 188). 34 In their introduction to their volume, Zlotowitz and Sherman say, “Lest the reader conclude that if all is indeed futile, that nothing in human existence matters… Solomon cautions … that the essentials of existence are eternal … Man’s soul was not fashioned from dust as was his body…[M]an’s mission …is fear of God” (Zlotowitz and Sherman 2008, xxxxviii–xxxix). For an outstanding discussion of the attitude toward life after death in the biblical texts, see Levenson (2006). 35 I am grateful to Jonathan Rutledge and to the members of the Tantur Virtual Workshop: Godehard Bruentrup, Nevin Climenhaga, Alison Fitchett-Climenhaga, Sharon Krishek, Sam Lebens, Simon Oliver, Darren Sarisky, Aaron Segal, Josef Stern, Judith Wolfe, Tamra Wright, Mark Wynn, and Patrick Zoll, for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Bibliography Barnes, Elizabeth. 2016. The Minority Body. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Christianson, Eric S. 2012. Ecclesiastes throughout the Centuries. Oxford: WileyBlackwell. Cohen, A (translator). 1983. Midrash Rabbah. Ecclesiastes. London: Soncino Press. Dell, Katherine J. 2001. “Wisdom Literature.” In The Blackwell Companion to the Hebrew Bible, edited by Leo G. Perdue, 418–31. Oxford: Blackwell. Garfinkel, Stefan. 2011. “Ecclesiastes.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible, edited by Michael D. Coogan, 215. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Halbertal, Moshe. 2012. On Sacrifice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jerome. 2012. St. Jerome. Commentary on Ecclesiastes. Translated and edited by Richard J. Goodrich and David J. D. Miller. New York, NY: The Newman Press. Levenson, Jon. 2006. Resurrection and the Resotration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sacks, Jonathan. “The Pursuit of Joy: Ki Tavo 5775.” Covenant and Conversation, https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/ki-tavo/the-pursuit-of-joy/, accessed 30 June, 2022. Stump, Eleonore. 1997. “Saadia Gaon on the Problem of Evil.” Faith and Philosophy 14 (4): 523–49.  . 2010. Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2022. The Image of God: The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Mourning. Oxford: Oxford University Press Wright, Tamra. 2023. “Serve God with Joy.” An Ode to Joy: Judaism and Happiness in the Thought of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Beyond. Edited by Erica Brown and Shira Weiss. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Zlotowitz, Meir, and Nosson Sherman. 2008. Kohales.Ecclesiastes. Translated and edited by Meir Zlotowitz. New York, NY: Mesorah Publications.

10 Analogy without Evisceration Analogical Interpretation as a Solution to Theological Paradox Dawn Eschenauer Chow

10.1 Introduction Most analytic philosophy of religion assumes that, although God’s nature does pose special intellectual puzzles, it is fundamentally just as tractable and well-suited for analytical methods as anything else. When paradoxes arise around aspects of God’s nature like knowledge or agency, the response is to offer an analysis of the relevant concepts which dissolves the paradox. It’s assumed that our concepts will apply accurately to God once we have analyzed them appropriately—stripping away any of the limitations or imperfections we associate with those things in human beings, and making any other necessary qualifications. But this assumption strikes me as implausible. God, as the sustaining source of everything that exists, must be of a different ontological order than any creature. And so I do not see how it could be the case that God could be, for example, a “person” in the same sense of the word I am—not even if we qualify that claim by noting that God, unlike other persons, is nonphysical, eternal, morally impeccable, and so on. Thinking we can arrive at an accurate conception of God by taking human concepts like “person” and then subtracting all limitations and imperfections is like thinking you could extrapolate from the concept of a rock to the concept of a human merely by subtracting imperfections from your concept of a rock. But while I doubt that any description of God in humanly familiar terms can be genuinely accurate, there’s also no alternative. If we could not describe God using the concepts accessible to us, we would be left to say and believe nothing about God at all. My conclusion, then, is that we ought to speak of God as a sort of perfected person, because that’s as close as we can come to the truth, but that we ought also to recognize that the things we say about God are probably inaccurate to some degree. This position has a long history in monotheistic thought. It is often expressed by saying that some or perhaps even all of what theists want to say about God can only be said analogically. Indeed, some version of this position was the mainstream theological position for Christians until at least the seventeenth century, and it remains a popular view among theologians, DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-11

Analogy without Evisceration 155 though it is much less popular among analytic philosophers of religion. Ronald Hepburn expresses the view this way: Theologians constantly declare that no analogy or image or symbol can adequately express God’s nature. He is father, but not in all respects like earthly fathers; he loves us, but with more than a human love… and so on. The best that can be done is to assert some analogy and then say, “But no: he is not quite like that”, and then another analogy, and largely cancel it in turn.1 On this view, God escapes our conceptual nets—God simply does not fit into those categories cognitively accessible to us. As a result, we are unable to have any direct positive conception of God’s intrinsic nature, but we remain able to indicate something of the truth about God with the help of analogy. The theological position described above is a strongly apophatic one: it asserts that none of our concepts, or at least none of those concepts which involve positive intrinsic content, are truly accurate when applied to God.2 But it’s not only those who accept such a radically apophatic theology who have good reason to appeal to analogy. Analogy offers a way to satisfactorily address any theological paradox one might be presented with—any region of one’s theology where the threat of contradiction looms. So even those believers who see no reason to accept a wholly analogical theology will probably still have good reason to interpret one or two specific theological claims analogically. For example,3 classical theism asserts that God is timelessly eternal: God does not travel through time as we do, but exists “outside time”, or at all times at once (so to speak). There are several reasons for a theist to want to stick to this traditional doctrine. First, for God to be subject to time would undermine God’s ontological independence and aseity: it would seem to imply that God is merely part of the physical universe. Second, asserting that God is timelessly eternal gives us a way to reconcile free will with divine foreknowledge. A timelessly eternal God could know what I will do tomorrow, not because my doing it is causally necessitated or predetermined, but simply because he sees all times at once and so has already seen me do it. But many analytic philosophers of religion reject the doctrine that God is timelessly eternal, on the grounds that it is incompatible with God’s agency. To say that someone acts entails that there is some particular stretch of time during which they act. To say that someone decides entails that there was a prior time when they had not yet decided. We cannot understand God as a personal being who acts in the world, makes decisions, and responds to us without thinking of God as a temporal being like ourselves. Philosophers have proposed numerous solutions to this theological puzzle, and each of those solutions has its virtues (and its costs). But the most sensible solution, to my mind, is simply to interpret some of our terms analogically

156  Dawn Eschenauer Chow when used of God. The believer can eliminate the contradiction between God’s timeless eternity and God’s agency and personhood by reasoning thus: Because God is timelessly eternal, it follows that God does not “act” or “decide” in any senses of those words I currently understand, and from that it follows that God is not a “person” in any sense of the word I currently understand. So God must really be some other sort of thing—call it a person*—which is similar to a person in important respects; but unlike persons, person*s can be timelessly eternal. I do not know how a being could be relevantly similar to a person yet timelessly eternal, but I should not expect to be able to understand how exactly God works. On the basis of revelation, I trust that God is relevantly like a person, and that God does things relevantly like acting and deciding. If I think of God as a specific sort of person engaging in specific sorts of actions, I will be thinking of God in a way which is appropriate, given my human limitations, and which is a good approximation to the truth, relative to my perspective. By interpreting claims analogically, I can retain the doctrine that God is timelessly eternal, while continuing to conceive of God in personalistic terms, trusting that these are at least close to the truth. Appeals to analogy have obvious virtues: they give us a coherent way of dealing with theological paradoxes without falling into outright contradiction, they enable us to uphold the transcendence and greatness of God to the maximum possible extent, and they reflect an appropriate epistemic humility regarding God’s nature. But despite these virtues, most contemporary analytic philosophers steer clear of appeals to analogy, finding them either philosophically or theologically suspect. This essay aims to demonstrate that appeals to analogy need not be either philosophically or theologically suspect. The way I will do that is by sketching out a specific approach to interpreting a theological claim analogically— an approach that avoids the pitfalls of other, more simplistic approaches to analogical interpretation. My proposal is that a believer who finds it necessary to interpret a particular theological claim analogically should interpret it as an irreducible and irreplaceably good analogy for the truth about God and should then employ that analogy as a model for thinking about God in their everyday religious thought and practice. I will not attempt to argue that an analogical interpretation of the sort I propose is the correct interpretation of any particular theological claim: such theological arguments are outside the scope of this paper. Instead, I am arguing only that it would be generally reasonable, both philosophically and religiously, to interpret theological claims as analogical in this way. Specifically, one can interpret theological claims analogically in the way I describe without emptying those claims of content, without abandoning one’s essential theological convictions, and without contradicting oneself. Once I have cleared away some of the common objections to appeals to analogy in theology, the virtues of the analogical approach speak for themselves.

Analogy without Evisceration 157 10.2  Analogy and Irreducibility The core of my proposal is that theists interpret some of their theological claims as irreducibly analogical. First, I must explain what exactly I mean by “irreducibly analogical”. Second, we will consider a few of the main objections to this proposal, in order to see the problems that my account needs to overcome. By “analogy”, I mean an appeal to a (real or supposed) similarity to something else. For example, “God is similar to a person” is an explicitly analogical claim. But most of the time appeals to analogy in theology don’t involve explicitly analogical claims. Instead, proponents of analogy interpret not-explicitly-analogical theological claims as making an implicit appeal to analogy. For example, if confronted with personalistic descriptions of God, I might take the term “person” as applied to God to refer, not to personhood in the normal sense, but only to some property relevantly similar to personhood.4 Thus, I could interpret the claim “God is a person” to really mean something more like “God is similar to a person” or “God has some property similar to personhood”.5 When a particular word like “person” is interpreted in a way that involves some such implicit appeal to similarity, I’ll say that word is being used “analogically”. As a shorthand, I will sometimes use an asterisk to indicate this type of analogical usage: thus, a person* is a person in an analogical sense, and “‘person*’” means “‘person’, said analogically”.6 Thus, an analogical description of God is one that, either explicitly or implicitly, describes God only by reference to something to which God is similar, rather than by directly ascribing (non-similarity-involving) properties to God. It’s possible for an analogical claim to reducible to some non-analogical equivalent. For example, if “God is a person” were reducibly analogical, that would mean that I could spell out in what specific respects God is similar to a person, and to do so non-analogically. In that case, I could explain that what “God is a person*” means is that God shares with persons specific properties P and Q. I could then easily eliminate any appeal to analogy simply by replacing the analogical claim “God is a person*” with the non-analogical claim “God is P and Q”. Reducible analogy is thus a comparatively trivial, inessential feature of how we happen to have put our theology into words. But if interpreting theistic claims about God analogically is to enable us to solve otherwise insoluble theological quandaries, we will need to interpret them as irreducibly analogical. To interpret “God is a person*” as irreducibly analogical, I must take it to mean something like “God is similar to a person”, while also thinking that I’m not in a position to determine in what specific respects God is similar to a person.7 Thus, I will be unable to (non-analogically) name the specific properties God shares with persons, and so will be unable to reduce the analogical description to a non-analogical one.

158  Dawn Eschenauer Chow One might object that the whole concept of irreducible analogy doesn’t make sense. Similarity consists in the sharing of properties—sometimes complex proportional or relational properties rather than simple properties, but properties nonetheless. Thus, if there is a similarity between x and y at all, there must be some property P which x and y share, by virtue of which that similarity holds. If so, there’s no such thing as an irreducible similarity: wherever a similarity exists, there will be some specific shared property that constitutes it. However, even if the analysis of similarity assumed in the above argument is correct, the mere fact that some shared property exists does not guarantee that we are in a position to know what it is. We may even lack the cognitive capacity to conceptualize the relevant property. Thus the similarity between God and human persons may be irreducible for us, even if it is not irreducible in itself. When I speak of “irreducible analogy”, what I mean is that it is irreducible for us. To say that “God is a person” is an irreducibly analogical claim means that God has something similar to personhood, but that due to our ignorance or cognitive limitations, we are not in a position to tease apart the aspects of personhood that do apply to God from the aspects of personhood that don’t. In that situation, the unanalyzed similarity claim is the best we can do. Given that point, however, a second objection naturally arises: it seems like irreducible analogies will be empty of content. Suppose I tell you, “A tebugish is similar to a rock”, but am unable to tell you in what respect a tebugish is similar to a rock. Is it similar to a rock by virtue of being hard? Heavy? Inanimate? Made of atoms? My sentence is effectively empty of content: I haven’t told you anything at all about what a tebugish actually is. To interpret “God is a person” as irreducibly analogical involves a similar move: I’m asserting that God is similar to a person, but am unable to specify in what specific respects the similarity holds. On such an interpretation, “God is a person” now seems to be empty of any content whatsoever. As William Alston points out, if we interpret claims of the form “God is M” to mean nothing more than that God is similar in some way to things that are M, then any possible claim about God would be just as good as any other, because almost any two things we could possibly name will be similar in some way. Thus “it would be just as true, true in the same way, that God is cruel as that God is merciful, just as true that God is a spider, a mud-pie, or a thief as that God is the creator of heaven and earth”.8 Furthermore, Alston argues, if we interpret claims about God as irreducibly analogical, they will no longer entail any of the things they are normally taken to entail. For example, if “God is perfectly loving” means only that God is similar to a perfectly loving being, then it no longer follows from the premises “God is perfectly loving” and “A perfectly loving being will forgive the sins of the truly repentant” that God will forgive the sins of the truly repentant.9 After all, perhaps God is similar to a perfectly loving being in some other respects, but not in respect of forgiving sins. Similarly, Alston argues, if “God commands us to love one another” means merely that God is significantly similar to a person who commands us to love one another, it no longer

Analogy without Evisceration 159 follows from the claim “God commands us to love one another” that we are actually obligated to love one another.10 Concerning this style of irreducibly analogical theology, Alston concludes: A theology the propositions of which are logically compatible with anything else sayable of God, which can be true only in the same way virtually anything one might say of God is true, which have no determinate consequences either for theory or for practice, so eviscerated a theology is stripped of virtually all of its impact for human life.11 Alston’s objection here lays out the core challenge which any theory of analogy must address if appealing to analogy is to be considered an acceptable strategy for dealing with theological paradox. Alston’s challenge has two aspects. On the one hand, our claims about God need to have enough non-trivial assertoric content to fulfill doctrinal requirements: it must be correct to say that God is merciful*, but not that God is cruel*. Furthermore, our approach to analogical interpretation must be robust enough that someone who affirms that God is merciful* is rightly understood as accepting the essence of the religious doctrine that God is merciful. That is, an analogical interpretation must not be a revisionistic or deflationary interpretation—one that really just constitutes an abandonment of the doctrine in question. I’ll call that set of requirements the “theoretical” problem. On the other hand, we also need our claims about God to have practically useful implications—to have the sort of content that can guide our actions and enable a robust religious faith and practice. I’ll call that the “practical” problem. I’ll consider those two problems in turn. 10.3  A Stronger Degree of Similarity The obvious solution to the theoretical problem is to make our similarity claims more robust. We cannot interpret “God is a person*” to mean merely that God is similar to a person in some way: that renders the claim effectively empty of content. At a bare minimum, we need to interpret “person*” in such a way that things like rocks, computers, galaxies, and spiders won’t count as person*s. One option is to simply specify a stronger degree of similarity, so that “x is a person*” is equivalent to (1a) x is very similar to a person, overall. Alternately, Richard Swinburne takes a different approach to strengthen the similarity requirement involved in analogical interpretation. Specifically, Swinburne argues that “x is a person*” entails (1b) x is more similar to paradigm examples of persons than to paradigm examples of non-persons.12

160  Dawn Eschenauer Chow Both of these claims are more contentful than the analogical claims Alston considers, simply by virtue of narrowing down the range of possibilities more. However, these simple approaches pose a difficulty. Claims about the degree of overall similarity between things are invariably context-dependent, determined by our particular needs, interests, and priorities.13 For example, I will judge an apple to be more similar to an orange than to a wax apple if I’m looking for lunch, but not if I’m composing a still life. The wax apple is “very similar” to a real apple from one perspective, but not at all from the other. This fact seems to throw a wrench into any attempt to describe God as “very similar” to a person, or as “more similar” to a person than to a nonperson: what counts as “very similar” or as “more similar” will depend on the context. Each context renders certain considerations relevant and others irrelevant: two things sharing property A but not property B will seem very similar in a context where A is highly relevant and B irrelevant, but very dissimilar in a context where B is highly relevant and A irrelevant. Now, there must ex hypothesi be some respects in which God is not similar to a person: if God were similar to a person in every respect, he would simply be a person, in the normal sense of the word, and no appeal to analogy would have been necessary in the first place. Given that there are some respects in which God is not similar to a person, it follows that there will also be some possible contexts in which God would not be correctly described as “very similar” to a person, or as “more similar” to a paradigmatic person than to a paradigmatic non-person: namely, any context in which it is those specific respects of personhood which are the relevant ones. It follows that any claim appealing to overall similarity, like “God is very similar to a person” or “God is more similar to a paradigmatic person than to a paradigmatic non-person”, will be true in some evaluative contexts but false in others. That does not align with how believers actually employ such claims about God. Furthermore, since we’re assuming that we don’t know in what specific respects God is similar to a person—if we did, we wouldn’t have needed to rely on analogy in the first place—it follows that we won’t be able to tell whether we’re in one of the contexts in which the claim “God is very similar to a person” is true or not. Thus, in practice, this approach would put us in a position of complete agnosticism regarding any of the claims we’re interpreting analogically: I’d never know if my current context is one of the contexts in which that claim is true or not. One response to this problem might be to argue that, although our ordinary similarity judgments are context-dependent and indexed to our particular interests and priorities, there is also an objective and context-independent truth about how similar any two things really are, overall. If so, perhaps we should interpret “x is a person*” to mean (2a) x is objectively and context-independently 90% similar to a person

Analogy without Evisceration 161 or (2b) x is objectively and context-independently more similar to paradigm examples of persons than to paradigm examples of non-persons. But even if there are such objective and context-independent facts about overall similarity—and I’m not confident of that—this approach would not determine overall similarity in a satisfactory way. An objective and context-independent truth about the overall degree of similarity between things would, precisely by virtue of its context-independence, be an irrelevant truth. God’s being objectively more similar to paradigmatic persons than to paradigmatic non-persons could be consistent, for all we know, with God’s being more similar to nonpersons than to persons in every way that actually matters to us. However, there is another option. Some considerations are relevant to almost everyone most of the time, and some considerations have never been relevant to any human being who ever lived. This enables us to speak of there being general facts about overall similarity: if a is extremely similar to b from the perspective of most standard or common human contexts, and dissimilar to b only in very unusual contexts, it makes sense to say that a is very similar to b in general, or from a general human perspective. And if a is more similar to b than to c from the perspective of most standard or common human contexts, and is more similar to c than to b only in very unusual contexts, it makes sense to say that a is more similar to b than to c in general, or from a general human perspective.14 We cannot make overall similarity claims that are genuinely context-independent—or if we could, they would by virtue of their context-independence be irrelevant to us. But we can do the next-best thing and appeal to something like a typical human context, or to a weighted average of all human contexts. Reinterpreting (1a) in light of this point, we get the following analogical interpretation of “x is a person*”: (3a) x is very similar to a person overall, in those respects relevant to human beings in general. That criterion is more-or-less equivalent to the following formulation: (4a) If, per impossibile, we were able to adequately conceive of x’s nature, but continued to occupy our current human perspectives, with their attendant values, concerns, and priorities, we would judge x to be very similar to a person overall. A premise of this whole project is that we are not actually in a position to grasp God’s nature—to directly compare God to persons in the normal sense, such that we could tease out the aspects of personhood which apply to God from the aspects of personhood which do not. If we could do that, we would

162  Dawn Eschenauer Chow never have needed to appeal to analogy in the first place: we could have simply ascribed the applicable aspects of personhood to God directly and nonanalogically. Since we cannot employ our actual perspective to judge what God is more or less similar to, we must take analogical claims to involve a sort of counterfactual: God is such that we would judge him to be very similar to persons if we were in a sufficiently good epistemic position to be able to judge for ourselves. One might worry that (4a) is really meaningless, given that the scenario described in the antecedent (our being in a position to fully grasp God’s nature) may be metaphysically impossible. Alternatively, then, the following formulation should be roughly equivalent for practical purposes: (5a) If there were a being that adequately grasped x’s nature, and also understood all our human values, concerns, priorities, and limitations, that being would judge x to be very similar to a person overall, in those respects relevant to us. And we could reformulate (1b) in a parallel fashion: (5b) If there were a being that adequately grasped x’s nature, and also understood all our human values, concerns, priorities, and limitations, that being would judge x to be more similar to paradigmatic persons than to paradigmatic non-persons overall, in those respects relevant to us. These final formulations appeal to revelation, of course. God understands both himself and us, and so is presumably a good judge as to which descriptions of himself are the best approximations to the truth, given our perspectives and our limitations. Given the context- and perspective-specific nature of similarity judgments, to say that x is similar to a person overall is just to say that someone who understands x, and understands personhood, and who considers the matter in light of our specific perspectives and concerns, would judge x to be similar to a person in those respects relevant to us. When I say that “God is a person” is true but should be interpreted analogically, what I’m saying is that a being who understands God, persons, and us would conclude that “God is a person” is a pretty good, truth-approximating way to explain God’s nature to us, given our limitations. 10.4 Irreplaceability We have made some progress toward tackling the theoretical problem. But “God is very similar to a person overall” still seems too vague to constitute a satisfactory analysis of what it means to assert “God is a person*”. It seems at once too restrictive and too unrestrictive. It’s too restrictive because a strongly apophatic theist might reasonably doubt that God is “very similar” to a person overall: recall that my initial reason for thinking we needed to

Analogy without Evisceration 163 interpret the claim “God is a person” analogically was my conviction that God must be radically different from any creature. On the other hand, it also seems too unrestrictive, because there are still too many things that could be “very similar” to a person, and those who have at the core of their theology some personal model of God will not be satisfied to know merely that God is very similar to a person. The Swinburnean approach, on which to be a person* requires that one be more similar to paradigmatic persons than to paradigmatic non-persons, fares better in some respects, but also seems inadequately restrictive to satisfy a personalist theist.15 For a satisfactory analysis of “God is a person*”, or of any other theological assertion interpreted analogically, the relevant criterion can’t be a simple degree of overall similarity or comparative similarity. Instead, the crucial criterion is whether we could get any closer to the truth. What we should be saying when we interpret a claim analogically is something along these lines from Edwyn Bevan: God is really of such a character that, if any of us could know Him as he is, which we cannot do, and then had to describe in human language to men what he saw, he would have to say, “What I see is undescribable, but if you think of God as a loving Father, I cannot put the reality to you in a better way than that: that is the nearest you can get”.16 What Bevan is saying here is not merely that God is “very similar overall” to a loving father, nor that God is “more similar” to a loving father than to paradigm examples of unloving fathers or non-fathers. He is indicating a far stronger criterion: that to describe God as a loving father is “the nearest you can get” to the truth. Thus, “God is a loving father” is not merely analogical in some general way; it is one of the best analogies that can be given. Bevan is not in a position to independently verify that fact himself, of course—only God is—but he takes it on faith that this is so. The term I will use for Bevan’s “nearest you can get” criterion is irreplaceability. For something to be an irreplaceably good analogy for us is for that analogy to be as close as we can get to the truth. If we want to interpret core theistic claims like “God is a person” analogically without emptying those claims of content or effectively abandoning the doctrine they were originally intended to express, we must interpret them as irreplaceably good analogies for the truth about God. To see why, it will help to consider an example of an analogy that is good but not irreplaceable. Suppose that I, per impossibile, came to fully understand God’s nature. And suppose that once I understood God’s nature, I realized that God really is very similar to a person, and more similar to persons than to paradigmatic non-persons, but that God is even more like a computer—and not an artificially intelligent, conscious computer, mind you, but specifically a computer which is not also a person. Furthermore, suppose that all the really important ways in which God is like a person were more

164  Dawn Eschenauer Chow aptly described as ways in which God is like a computer. In this scenario, my analogy of God as a person would be replaceable: I could get closer to the truth by discarding the analogy of God as a person and replacing it with the analogy of God as a computer. If the analogy of God as a person were replaceable in this way, we ought to consider those who adopt a personalistic theology to be mistaken— even if they explicitly take their personalistic language to be analogical! The point of appealing to analogy is to enable us to think about God in the way that comes closest to the truth, despite the limitations preventing us from adequately grasping God’s nature. If a superior analogy was available, the analogy of God as a person would not be getting me as close to the truth as possible, in which case it would be a mistake to place personalistic analogies at the core of my theology. (It might still be appropriate to employ personalistic analogies for God, but they ought to be relegated to the ranks of mere metaphors, along with descriptions of God as a fire, a shepherd, or a rock.) In asserting that God is (analogically) a person, part of what I’m committed to is that there are important truths about God that could not be expressed any better (to human beings) than through the analogy of a person. However, irreplaceability does not entail exclusivity. There might be multiple irreplaceably good analogies for a thing, so long as they are complementary. For example, prior to the development of the contemporary quantum-mechanical understanding of light, there was some evidence supporting the claim that light is like a (Newtonian) particle, but also some evidence supporting the claim that light is like a (Newtonian) wave. The truth is that light is very similar to both of those things, even though that seems absurd from a Newtonian perspective, since (Newtonian) particles and (Newtonian) waves are such radically different things. As it turned out, neither particles nor waves are irreplaceable analogies for light, because the various truths about light captured by the wave and particle models are all captured better by the quantum model of light we now accept. Thus, the earlier analogies were entirely replaceable. However, if the quantum model of light were cognitively inaccessible to human beings—if it were completely beyond our ability to understand it—then the wave and particle models would both be irreplaceably good analogies for the nature of light for us: each one gets something importantly right about light that the other analogy does not capture, and that no other description available to us can capture as well. It seems possible that something similar might be true of God. Perhaps God is crucially like a person in some respects, but crucially like a Platonic form in other respects. If that were the situation, it would be best for us to endorse both analogies, despite our inability to resolve the many apparent contradictions between those two models of God’s nature. Because the two analogies serve to illuminate different aspects of God’s nature, neither can replace the other, and so they would not violate the irreplaceability criterion.

Analogy without Evisceration 165 The irreplaceability criterion also entails irreducibility: If “God is a person*” were reducibly analogical for us, it would follow that we could get closer to the truth by simply replacing it with the claim “God has properties P and Q” (where P and Q are the specific properties in respect of which God is similar to a person). In taking God to be a person*, I am committed to thinking that the important truths about God expressed by the analogy of God as a person could not be better expressed by a different analogy, nor by any non-analogical description. The only theologically satisfactory approach to interpreting core theological claims analogically is to interpret them as irreplaceably good analogies. Thus, we should take “x is a person*” to mean (6) A person is an irreplaceably good analogy for the truth about x. As I argued in Section 2, we need to interpret claims of irreducible similarity as involving an implicit counterfactual about what someone in a better epistemic position would judge to be a good analogy for us, given our cognitive limitations. Given that point, (6) is roughly equivalent to (7) If there were a being that adequately grasped x’s nature, and also understood all our human values, concerns, priorities, and limitations, that being would judge a person to be an irreplaceably good analogy for x, in those respects relevant to us. The claim that “x is a person” would strike that being as the best way to communicate important (relative to us) truths about x’s nature to us. The irreplaceability criterion ensures that “God is a person*” is quite a strong, contentful claim, despite being analogical. We are not saying merely that persons are good metaphors for God, or that there are some similarities between God and persons. Instead, we are saying that it is impossible for us to come any closer to the truth about God than by describing God as a person. Although this position does deny that God is a person in any of those senses of the word we currently understand, it does so in a way that remains faithful to the theological tradition in question: this position could not reasonably be described as an abandonment of the theological claim that God is a person. This account of what it means to interpret a theological claim analogically successfully resolves the theoretical half of Alston’s objections to irreducible analogy. Alston’s concern was that irreducibly analogical claims will be empty of content, and that it will be “just as true” that God is cruel (analogically) as that God is merciful (analogically). But if by saying “God is merciful*” I mean that a merciful person is an irreplaceably good analogy for God, no such unacceptable implications follow. A cruel person is, I trust, not even a good analogy for God overall, much less an irreplaceably good one. And so this approach to analogical interpretation will not commit us to

166  Dawn Eschenauer Chow thinking that claims like “God is cruel” or “God is a spider” are just as valid as “God is merciful”. 10.5  Practical Implications of Irreducibly Analogical Claims However, the account given above doesn’t yet address the practical side of Alston’s objections. The practical problem, if you’ll recall, is that it doesn’t seem like irreducibly analogical claims will have any implications. If “God is a person*” means only that a person is an irreplaceably good analogy for what God is like, that will not enable us to infer any specific conclusion from the claim that God is a person*: I will not be able to infer from it that God has agency or intelligence, for example. And if I can’t infer anything from the claim that God is a person*, it seems like that claim is still, for all practical purposes, empty of content. What use is a claim to me if I can’t use it to infer anything else? One might be tempted to respond to this problem by reminding us that my approach to analogical interpretation requires us to say that God is not merely similar but relevantly similar to a person, in those respects important to human beings. And what aspect of personhood is more humanly relevant and important than, say, agency? Thus, even if we know only that “God is a person” is a good analogy for the truth, one might think that this justifies us in concluding that God must at least have agency. But to say this would violate the irreplaceability criterion, which requires that “God is a person” be taken not merely to be a good analogy but an irreducible analogy for the truth about God. If we could have expressed the core truth of the analogical statement “God is a person*” non-analogically, by saying that God has agency (or some other specific aspect of personhood) in a non-analogical sense, then “God is a person*” would in fact be reducibly analogical, and we should have just asserted “God has agency” from the start rather than complicating matters by appealing to analogy unnecessarily. So, in any case where analogy is actually necessary, we cannot make a deductive inference from “God is a person*” and “All persons are M” to “God is M”—nor even to “God is M*”. Part of the point of the counterfactual element of (7) is that when we appeal to irreducible analogy, we assume that we are not in a position to judge what possible similarities between God and a person are the ones most relevant to us. Agency is surely a highly relevant aspect of personhood from the perspective of human beings, but for all I know, there might be other properties that I am unable to grasp conceptually, but which I would judge to be even more relevant than agency, if only I were capable of grasping them. And so I cannot with certainty infer any other specific claim about God from the claim that God is a person*. We can take one initial step toward resolving this problem if we note that an analogical claim can have implications, in a sense, without our needing to be able to infer those implications ourselves. Consider Alston’s point that if “God is merciful” is interpreted to mean only “God is significantly similar to a merciful being”, it will no longer follow from “God is merciful” and “A

Analogy without Evisceration 167 merciful being will forgive the sins of the truly repentant” that God will forgive the sins of the truly repentant. This problem will arise for my more robust version of analogical interpretation too. But suppose the reason I believe that God is merciful* in the first place is that the Bible describes God as merciful. The Bible, in addition to describing God as merciful, also describes God as forgiving the sins of the truly repentant, and indicates that this is one of the implications of God’s mercifulness.17 Thus, in this case, I will be able to infer from “God is merciful*” that God will forgive the sins of the truly repentant. Alston is right that if “God is merciful” is interpreted analogically, it does not by itself entail that God forgives the sins of the truly repentant. But theological statements don’t stand by themselves; anyone who has acquired the claim that God is merciful through a revealed religious tradition will also have acquired at least a few other implications of that claim from the same source. One might object at this point that my solution only pushes the problem back a step. If I believe God to be merciful* rather than merciful, it’s likely that I will have similar reasons for thinking that God forgives* rather than forgives the sins of the truly repentant, and so on. Indeed, if “God is merciful*” were to entail the non-analogical claim “God forgives the sins of the truly repentant”, that would mean that “God is merciful” was a merely reducibly analogical claim all along, since its significance could be cashed out in terms of that non-analogical claim. So if we take claims about God to be irreducibly analogical, then their implications must also be analogical. But if their implications are also analogical, then it doesn’t seem like we’ve made any actual progress in escaping theological evisceration. But even the most die-hard advocate of analogy only takes those claims which ascribe properties directly to God to be irreducibly analogical. It’s theological difficulties about God’s nature, stemming from the ways in which God is radically different from us, which give rise to the need to appeal to analogy in the first place. This leaves unscathed all claims about us. Thus within the context of a particular religious tradition, irreducibly analogical claims about God can still have non-analogical implications about what believers should do and think. Thus, even if I think that God forgives* rather than forgives my sins, that is compatible with my being assured quite nonanalogically that all will be well with me in the end. Still, this response to Alston’s objection is somewhat unsatisfying. Sure, I might know some of the implications of “God is merciful*”, if my religious tradition teaches them to me, but it still seems like any claim interpreted analogically will be epistemically sterile: you can only get out of it what you put in. No analogical claim will enable us to work out the answers to any new religious questions that we don’t already have authoritative answers to. If this is right, then Alston is correct that it’s impossible to genuinely infer anything from an irreducibly analogical claim: we can “infer” from the analogy only those implications we have independent reason for believing. But in fact, there’s no reason why we couldn’t make genuine inferences from irreducibly analogical claims, so long as we take those inferences to be

168  Dawn Eschenauer Chow tentative and probabilistic rather than deductive. Even if my religious tradition didn’t explicitly include the claim that God’s mercy involves his forgiving the sins of the truly repentant, I could still legitimately infer from “God is merciful*” that God probably forgives* the sins of the truly repentant. If a merciful being is an irreplaceably good analogy for God, and if it is true that any merciful being would forgive the sins of the truly repentant, and if this is just about the most relevant aspect of mercy I can imagine, then it would seem fairly likely that God forgives* the sins of the truly repentant. Given that the conclusion “God forgives* the sins of the truly repentant” is strongly suggested by the analogy of God as merciful, given that it seems to involve only a single modest inferential step rather than a long chain of inferences, and given that none of my other beliefs about God suggest that God is unforgiving, I  would be justified in concluding that God probably forgives* the sins of the truly repentant, even if I did not have independent reason to think so. To consider one more example, to conceive of God analogically as an allknowing, all-powerful, morally good, perfectly loving being will reasonably lead me to expect that any universe God creates would be arranged so as to be free from unnecessary suffering. Accepting that analogical model of God will lead me to be surprised by the actual state of affairs I see around me, and to seek an explanation. Perhaps the universe actually is free from unnecessary suffering, even though it doesn’t seem like it, or perhaps God’s goodness and love are expressed in ways I simply don’t understand. But in any case, accepting that particular analogy for God will lead me to see the problem of evil as a problem, and to feel the force of it. Even though I take my mental model of God to be analogical, it ought to make me at least slightly surprised that the universe is so full of apparently needless suffering. Drawing positive expectations from my theological models in this way does not entail that I am really taking them to be only reducibly analogical, so long as the conclusions I draw are tentative and held in a fallibilistic spirit. One implication of the approach I am suggesting is that I will be able to draw inferences more confidently about matters that are close to the heart of my religious doctrines and that are highly relevant to human faith and life, because in those cases I will have greater reason to think that the implications my analogical models seem to have can be trusted. I should be much less confident in the conclusions of long, complicated inferences, or in inferences about highly theoretical metaphysical debates about God’s nature which are not actually important for religious purposes. The upshot of an analogical theology will be intellectual humility in one’s theological reflections, and reluctance to engage in far-flung speculation about divine matters. We have made significant headway toward addressing the practical problem, but one additional point is needed. Accepting an analogical theology does not merely involve accepting, in the abstract, that some y is an irreplaceably good analogy for the truth about God. It also involves adopting the model of God as y, such that one employs that model in one’s thinking about

Analogy without Evisceration 169 God and in one’s actions toward God. Taking something as a model involves a practical stance in a way that merely accepting an abstract similarity claim does not. To take some y as a model of x is to see x as y, to think of x as y or in terms of y, and then as a result to act toward x as one would act toward y, at least in certain respects. Thus, if I accept the claim that God is a person*, I should think of God as a person, even though I know that God is not strictly speaking a person in any sense of the word I understand. One might object that it is contradictory to think of God as a person while believing that God is actually not a person. But there’s no actual contradiction here: thinking of y as x is not the same as believing that y is x. There is admittedly a certain cognitive tension involved in thinking of God as a person while also believing that God isn’t a person (in any sense of the word we understand). But given that we’re dealing with an entity beyond human comprehension, this is a virtuous cognitive tension: it’s a matter of prioritizing closeness to the truth over mental tidiness. Furthermore, to be a theist at all, one must think of God in some way. If God is a person*, whereby “person*” we mean a being that a person is an irreplaceably good analogy for, it follows that “God is a person” is literally as close as we can come to the truth. If so, then we clearly ought to think of God as a person, because there’s no better alternative. The only alternatives to thinking of God as a person are a thinking of God as some type of non-personal entity that I’m able to conceptualize or b not thinking of God at all—thus becoming for all practical purposes an atheist. If God isn’t a person, then God must of course be a non-person. But if I think of God as a non-person, I’ll be forced to think of God as some specific type of non-person that I’m able to conceptualize—not as the specific type of non-person that God actually is, because that type of non-person is, ex hypothesi, not conceptualizable by me. To say that “God is a person” is an irreplaceably good analogy for the truth about God implies that thinking of God as any of those types of non-person would get me, at best, no closer to the truth about God, and would likely take me further away from the truth about God, compared to thinking of God as a person. And so, even though God isn’t a person in any sense of the word I understand, I nonetheless ought to think of God as a person, because that’s the way of thinking about God which is closest to the truth. What exactly is involved in thinking of God as a person will depend on one’s religious tradition. But it could involve thinking of God as having knowledge, as being saddened by evil and suffering, as issuing commands,

170  Dawn Eschenauer Chow and so on. To take God to be a person* also commits one to acting toward God as a person: praying to God as to one who listens to what I am saying and is capable of responding, taking myself to have personal obligations to God, and so on. Thus, those who accept “God is a person*” will in general think about and act toward God in the very same ways they would if they interpreted the claim “God is a person” non-analogically. An analogical theology will not consist merely in isolated similarity claims accepted in the abstract; it will instead consist in networks of interrelated similarity claims that serve to construct analogical models of God that the believer actively employs in their thinking. Once we see this, it’s clear that an irreducibly analogical theology is not empty of practical content. An irreducibly analogical theology offers a conception of God which the believer can feasibly employ in all their religious thinking. The believer takes this conception to be analogical, of course, rather than straightforwardly and non-analogically accurate. But since the believer takes this conception to be literally as close to the truth as they could possibly come, they’re justified in relying on it for practical purposes. The analogical model will also have a number of implications, both theoretical and practical, which come bundled with that conception of God in their religious tradition. This analogical conception will guide all their thoughts and actions related to God in basically the same way that a non-analogical conception of God does. 10.6 Conclusion If there is a God at all, it would be surprising if that God were properly comprehensible to us. It seems almost certain that there are some things that are literally inconceivable by human beings; to deny that possibility would be absurdly arrogant. And truths about God seem like particularly strong candidates for the role of “things literally inconceivable by human beings”. Now, if there are things that are literally inconceivable by us, but that for some reason are also relevant to us—things that God wanted us to know—what could be done about this? Among humans, when an adult wishes to communicate something to a child that is too difficult for the child to properly understand, the adult tells a story that is oversimplified and thus inaccurate, but which gives a child-appropriate analogy for the actual truth. There is nothing surprising or strange about the hypothesis that God might have, on occasion, done this for us. What would be strange is if such analogical communication was not necessary—if it turned out that, despite our manifest limitations, we were able to accurately conceptualize everything relevant to us about the divine. If appeals to analogy were necessarily empty of content or otherwise religiously unacceptable, then of course theists would be right to reject them. But the prospects for analogical theology are far more promising than that. Given that appeals to irreducible analogy can be made coherent, contentful, and consistent with a robust religious faith and practice, appealing to analogy is a valid response to theological paradox.

Analogy without Evisceration 171 Notes 1 Ronald Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox (New York: Pegasus, 1958), 199. 2 Even a strongly apophatic theology must allow, on pain of incoherence, that purely negative claims about God (e.g., that God is not evil) and purely extrinsic claims about God (e.g., that God is believed in by Mary) can be straightforwardly, non-analogically true. 3 For an alternate example, see Dawn Chow, “The Passibility of God: A Plea for Analogy”, which argues for an analogical solution to resolve the apparent contradiction between God’s impassibility and God’s love. 4 I will use the term “person” as my default example of a predicate to be interpreted analogically throughout this paper, but my account is not specific to that term. I encourage the reader to mentally substitute whatever predicate seems to you most plausibly in need of analogical interpretation. 5 I use the word “property” in the sense of what David Lewis calls “abundant properties”, such that every coherent predicate names a property. See David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 60. For some x to have “properties” in this sense is just for there to be things that are true of x. Speaking of God as having properties in this sense does not commit us to thinking that God has distinct attributes in the ontologically robust sense denied by the doctrine of divine simplicity. 6 I borrow this convention from Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 65ff. 7 Alternately, I might be able to specify some respects in which God is similar to a person—but only analogically. For example, I might know that God is similar to a person in respect of possessing agency*, but then be unable to indicate how exactly agency* is similar to agency. 8 William Alston, “Irreducible Metaphors in Theology”, in Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 32. 9 Ibid., 33. 10 Ibid., 33. 11 Ibid., 35. 12 Swinburne, Coherence of Theism, 251. Richard Swinburne’s approach to analogical interpretation includes other stipulations besides this claim of comparative similarity: he also stipulates that a term used analogically preserves all of its normal entailments except for those specific entailments which need to be ruled out to avoid contradiction with other parts of the theology. I am skeptical that this interpretive strategy would yield a coherent concept, which is why I will not be considering Swinburne’s full approach to analogical interpretation here. 13 On this point see Nelson Goodman, “The New Riddle of Induction”, in Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, 4th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 443–446 and Amos Tversky, “Features of Similarity”, in Preference, Belief, and Similarity: Selected Writings, ed. Eldar Shafir (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 7–45. 14 The position I am proposing here is similar to a suggestion made in Cian Dorr and John Hawthorn, “Naturalness”, in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics: Volume 8, ed. Karen Bennett and Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2–77. 15 Swinburne would presumably agree because he does not consider this criterion adequate on its own; see footnote 14. 16 Edwyn Bevan, Symbolism and Belief (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938), 257. 17 E.g., Micah 7:18–19, I John 1:9, Acts 3:19.

172  Dawn Eschenauer Chow Bibliography Alston, William. 1989. “Irreducible Metaphors in Theology.” In Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology, 17–38. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bevan, Edwyn. 1938. Symbolism and Belief. London: George Allen & Unwin. Chow, Dawn. 2018. “The Passibility of God: A Plea for Analogy.” Faith and Philosophy 35 (4): 389–407. Dorr, Cian, and John Hawthorne. 2013. “Naturalness.” In Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, edited by Karen Bennett and Dean Zimmerman, vol. 8, 2–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodman, Nelson. 1972. “Seven Strictures on Similarity.” In Problems and Projects, 437–47. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merill. Hepburn, Ronald. 1958. Christianity and Paradox. New York, NY: Pegasus. Lewis, David. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell. Swinburne, Richard. 2016. The Coherence of Theism, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tversky, Amos. 2004. “Features of Similarity.” In Preference, Belief, and Similarity: Selected Writings, edited by Eldar Shafir, 7–45. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

11 Mystery at the Spandrels Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto

11.1 Introduction There are a number of doctrines of orthodox Christianity which, combined with some standard logical principles, might seem to lead to inconsistency. A paradigmatic example would be this one: The Father is God and the Son is God and the Father is not the Son.1 According to one important theological tradition, this doctrine is to be interpreted as asserting a relation of numerical sameness between the Father and God. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: “The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e., by nature one God”. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 253) If we take this to mean that the classical identity relation holds between the Father and God and between the Son and God, then it follows that it also holds between the Father and the Son. But, orthodox Christianity also holds that the Father and the Son are not (classically) identical, e.g., The divine persons are really distinct from one another. “God is one but not solitary”. “Father”, “Son”, “Holy Spirit” are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another: “He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son”. They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: “It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds”. The divine Unity is Triune. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 254) For this reason, the phrase ‘logical problem of the Trinity’ has come into common usage. DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-12

174  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto Other equally mysterious doctrines, have not traditionally been thought of as specifically logical problems, for example, Thus the official record of both substances represents him as both man and God: on the one hand born, on the other not born: on the one hand fleshly, on the other spiritual: on the one hand weak, on the other exceedingly strong: on the one hand dying, on the other living. (Tertullian, Treatise on the Incarnation trans. Evans 2016) However, in his recent and ground-breaking work on contradictory theology, Jc Beall (2019a, 2021) has proposed a christology which does take the doctrine to have a special logical significance, namely as the paradigm case of a true theological contradiction, aka a theological truth-value “glut”. Our aim in this chapter is to propose an account of the notion, or at least one particularly salient notion, of theological mystery generally on which mysteries are truth-value gluts. One motivation for providing such an account, if correct, is that it offers an answer to a worry raised in the recent symposium on Beall’s project by Tom McCall: My worry, in other words, is that contemporary theologians might take Beall seriously – too seriously. Beall says that “until there’s good reason to accept that our true theories of phenomena beyond Christ are likewise glutty I see no reason not to reject the spread of contradictory theories” (419). But a theologian converted to Beall’s position may wonder what reasons there might be not to accept the spread of such theories. (McCall 2019, 479) In other words, how are theologians supposed to know where to find the contradictions in theology? Our answer, in brief, is this: find the mysteries and you find the contradictions. So, for example, there are many other Christian doctrines beyond christology which are pretty mysterious. The Trinity is one, but some Christians also believe that By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1413) The doctrine of the Eucharist has seen comparatively little discussion in the recent philosophical literature, and when it is discussed, it is virtually never treated as raising specifically logical problems. Indeed, if there are logical issues here, they are better hidden than those that accompany the doctrines

Mystery at the Spandrels 175 of the Trinity and the Incarnation. However, we are suggesting that there are good reasons for thinking that theological mysteries (properly understood) involve contradictions, so the question whether the doctrine of the Eucharist involves a contradiction may be answered by asking instead whether the doctrine is really a theological mystery. By this, we return theology to the theologians, but with clearer guidance on the application of logical notions. It would be wise for us to clarify at the outset that we are proposing a theory of theological mystery, not a dictionary definition of the word ‘mystery’, not even an analysis of the myriad ways that word is used in the Christian tradition. The word ‘mystery’ is used in many different theological contexts, such as in the phrases ‘The Paschal Mystery’, ‘The Sorrowful Mysteries’, ‘a Mystery of Faith’, a ‘mystery of God’s will’ (cf. Eph. 1: 7–10), and many more. It is overwhelming likely that the word ‘mystery’ is not being used univocally in all cases. There will be uses of the word ‘mystery’ in Christian theology, to which our theory will not apply. However, we suggest that there is a particularly salient use of the word in the Christian tradition (though the concept can likely be found in other faith-traditions as well, but we leave this for future research) which has fixed on a particular sort of mystery, to be identified in Section 2, and it is that sort of which we are providing an account. The structure of our chapter is as follows. First, we provide a brief summary of Beall’s glutty account of christology (2021), which no doubt will come to be seen as the locus classicus of the developing field of glutty theology. This is done to set the stage for a contradiction-friendly approach to theological notions generally. Secondly, we discuss the notion of a theological mystery in the Christian tradition. And lastly, having isolated, up to a point sufficient for our purposes, the specific use of mystery in which we are interested, we propose our theory of theological mystery, something which will involve a detour into epistemology. And we conclude by highlighting the main advantages of our view. 11.2  Beall’s Glutty Theology Jc Beall has defended a glutty account of christology, that is an account of the doctrine according to which it is a true contradiction. He holds that the prima facie reading of the statements of orthodox christology (e.g., those expressed by the ecumenical councils and early Church Fathers) would take them to be contradictory. If they are contradictory at face value, then Beall seems to think we need a good reason to treat them some other way, and there is no such reason. Historically, there seemed to be such a reason, namely that if the doctrine of christology was taken to be contradictory, then it could not be taken to be true, or so it was thought. However, Beall argues that this view was based on a mistaken view of logical consequence. Decades of work on paraconsistent logical systems and philosophical work defending the utility of glutty approaches to solving semantic paradoxes (not least Beall’s own

176  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto work, see especially 2009), have made it respectable to hold that some contradictions may be true. Beall distinguishes between two kinds of consequence relation. One sort of consequence relation is language-specific. These consequence relations are just entailment relations, that is, relations between sets of sentences and single sentences such that, at all worlds2 in which the antecedent sentences are true, the consequent sentence is true. For most languages the corresponding consequence relation would therefore hold between sentences which are not linked by any truth-preserving relationship between their logical forms, for example, ‘the flower is red, therefore the flower is coloured’ is true, when ‘therefore’ is interpreted as expressing the consequence relation for the English language on a standard interpretation. In short, the language-specific consequence relations are what are sometimes called relations of “semantic” entailment in that they license inferences whose validity depends on the interpretations of the terms, rather than the form of the sentences.3 However, although the consequence relations for most languages will be such that some statements expressing enthymemes are true, they will also be such that all instances of some formal inference rules are true. So, for example, Modus Ponens will be valid relative to the consequence relation for the language of classical mathematics, in the sense that ‘if P then Q and P, therefore Q’ will be true for any replacements of P and Q. The second sort of consequence relation that Beall distinguishes is the “logical” consequence relation. This consequence relation is formal in that this relation only holds between a set of sentences (the premises) and a sentence (the conclusion) if the forms of the sentence guarantee truthpreservation. It is also such that if a relation of logical consequence holds, so does every language-specific consequence relation (Beall 2021, 24–27). In short, (material) Modus Ponens is logically valid only if it is licensed by every language-specific consequence relation (on Beall’s view, it isn’t). There are of course many candidates for the role of logical consequence relation. Beall, however, thinks that the relation of logical consequence is the one captured by the theory of First Degree Entailment (FDE). This theory is both glut and gap-friendly, in that explosion (i.e., P & ¬P ⱶ Q) fails and the Law of Excluded Middle (i.e., ⱶ P v ¬P) is not a theorem. This theory validates De Morgan’s Laws (i.e., ¬(P & Q) ⟛ ¬P v ¬Q, and ¬(P v Q) ⟛ ¬P & ¬Q), but, as it lacks any conditional in its vocabulary, neither Material Modus Ponens (i.e., P & (P → Q) ⱶ Q) nor Material Modus Tollens (i.e., ¬Q & (P → Q) ⱶ ¬P) is valid. It also accepts negation elimination (i.e., ¬¬P ⱶ P) and rejects the Disjunctive Syllogism (i.e., (P v Q) & ¬P ⱶ Q). Since FDE does not license the inference from a true contradiction to any given formula, it is a paraconsistent logical system, which means that, if FDE is the correct theory of logical consequence, then logic does not rule out the possibility of true contradictions. Beall gives three reasons for preferring FDE as the correct account of logical consequence (Beall 2021, 35). The first is that it provides intuitive

Mystery at the Spandrels 177 truth and falsity conditions for sentences. More particularly, FDE provides the same truth conditions for the familiar logical vocabulary (i.e., the signs for conjunction, disjunction, and negation).4 Second, FDE is a theory according to which logic is topic-neutral, just as Beall claims it should be. According to Beall, the issue of whether a sentence, P, can be both true and false, or neither true nor false can be answered only by investigating the content of P, it is not the business of logic to give us the answer. Finally, FDE as a comparatively weak logical system (that is, validating comparatively few inferences) is open-minded about the possibility of strange phenomena. It can accommodate truths which are unlike most other truths we encounter. It is clearly this third benefit which makes FDE most amenable to theology, where we might expect the unexpected, and on this basis we will assume for what follows that FDE does indeed provide the correct account of logical consequence. So, logic itself does not rule out true contradictions, according to Beall, but how about our language-specific consequence relation? Well to answer that question, we must determine which combinations of sentences can be true at the same time. Beall (2021, 36–48) thinks there are seven advantages to his view that ‘Christ is mutable’ and ‘Christ is immutable’ can be true at the same time. These largely involve theoretical and metaphysical simplicity and the avoidance of ad hoc-ary. We agree that Beall’s glutty christology enjoys all the advantages he lists, but the final two advantages will be especially significant for what follows: Beall’s account preserves the mystery of the doctrine and the need for faith, respectively. In what follows, we shall argue that if we want to preserve the status of “mysteries” for some religious doctrines and if it is important that religious beliefs require faith, then these desiderata should be met not merely on a one-off basis, that is, not merely by our treatment of specific doctrines (like christology), but by our treatment of all those doctrines that our respective faith-tradition itself nominates as mysteries and as requiring acceptance by faith. In other words, if Beall thinks it is a benefit of his account that it makes christology a mystery requiring faith, then he ought to accord the same status to other doctrines. Our goal in what follows is to do just that. 11.3  Mystery in Theology Very little recent work in the analytic tradition has been done on the role of mystery in monotheistic religions. In a 2007 paper on the topic, Steven D Boyer makes a distinction between what he calls “investigative mysteries” and “revelational mysteries”. Investigative mysteries are, by definition, unknown and can perhaps be worked-out in the way that Sherlock Holmes solves a mysterious murder (2007: 97). Boyer grants that there are religious mysteries of this kind (he suggests divine hiddenness as an example 2007: 93), but suggests that the most paradigmatic religious mysteries are instead revelational mysteries. According to Boyer, revelational mysteries

178  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto are simultaneously knowable and mysterious: “it is precisely as known that the revelational mystery is a mystery” (2007: 94). We think that Boyer is right about this: religious mysteries, at least those that concern us here, are not just knowable, but it is an important part of religious doctrine that they are actually known (as when Paul speaks of God “making known to us the mystery of his will” in Ephesians 1: 9). How can something be known and a mystery at the same time? Boyer seems to think that this can happen when the mystery in some sense “defies reasons” or “defies understanding”, but is revealed to us to be true, and he proceeds to further categorize revelational mysteries into three groups, though this further classification will not concern us here.5 We find talk of “defying reason” particularly obscure and talk of “defying understanding” only slightly better. Yet this sort of phrasing is nearubiquitous in discussions of religious mystery; Dale Tuggy also makes a taxonomy of mysteries and includes among his five categories: “a ‘mystery’ may be something we don’t completely understand, something whose entire essence we can’t grasp” and “by ‘mystery’ some mean an unintelligible doctrine, the meaning of which can’t be grasped” (Tuggy 2003, 175–176).6 These characterizations of mystery each have an apophatic or even fideistic ring to them, which we would like to avoid. We do not think that we are unable to understand revelational mysteries or to appropriately reason about them. We therefore seek to provide an alternative to talk of defying reason (or understanding). The replacement we propose will of course involve the glutty status of religious mysteries. However, this will not do on its own. The concept of mystery is an epistemological concept and the concept of a truthvalue glut is a logico-semantic one, and we will need to do some work to draw a link between these. But before we get to that, we have to ask, what are the Christian mysteries that fall into this revelational category? Ultimately, it will be for theologians to determine exactly which bits of theology are mysterious in which sense, but if we can go some way to pinning down Boyer’s notion of revelational mystery as it appears in the Christian tradition, we will have more content into which to conduct a philosophical investigation. We attempt this next. The use of the English word ‘mystery’, and its Greek origin-word ‘μυστήριον’ [mystērion] do not have a consistent meaning in most major denominations, still less across denominations. In the orthodox tradition, the word ‘mystery’ is frequently used as the English translation for talk of what western traditions tend to call “sacraments” (though a western use of ‘mystery’ in this context is hardly unknown), while these same western traditions use the term in a wide range of contexts as noted earlier. However, among the wide range of uses, it is clear that all major Christian denominations take there to be revelational mysteries, in something like Boyer’s sense of the term. For simplicity, we will focus on just the largest Christian denomination in order to help isolate one particular use of the term.

Mystery at the Spandrels 179 In the Roman Catholic tradition, we find a clear commitment to the existence of revelational mysteries. Such a commitment was confirmed at the First Vatican Council: If anyone says that in Divine Revelation there are contained no mysteries properly so called (vera et proprie dicta mysteria), but that through reason rightly developed (per rationem rite excultam) all the dogmas of faith can be understood and demonstrated from natural principles: let him be anathema. (Session. III, On Faith and Reason, can. i) Admittedly, the contrast of mystery with dogmas that can be rightly developed through reason and understood, may not seem at first glance to give us very much more insight into the nature of these mysteries than Boyer or Tuggy’s characterizations. However, an interesting feature of this doctrine is the phrasing “mysteries properly so called”, which may bear the implicature that there are “mysteries” which are not properly so called, and indeed this distinction has become sufficiently well entrenched that the 1963 New Catholic Encyclopaedia, in its article on theological mystery, distinguishes “supernatural mysteries in the in the wide sense” from “supernatural mysteries in the strict sense”.7 Of the latter is says this Supernatural Mysteries in the Strict Sense. Those truths that cannot be known without revelation and that, even after revelation, remain obscure to us by reason of the sublimity of their object are supernatural mysteries in the strict sense. Three principal mysteries are normally recognized as belonging to this class: (1) the Trinity (H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum [Freiburg 1963] 3225), which is the mystery of the communication of divine life within the Godhead; (2) the Incarnation (ibid. 2851), which is the supreme supernatural communication of the divine life to a created nature; and (3) the elevation of finite persons to share, through grace or glory, in the divine life (ibid. 2854). All other supernatural mysteries (e.g., original sin, the Eucharist, the Church as a supernatural communion, predestination) are commonly held to be reducible to the three central mysteries just named. (New Catholic Encyclopaedia 84) This can be seen as an extrapolation of the dogma stated at the First Vatican Council, though with examples helpfully provided. However, it also sheds important light on the rejection of the view “that through reason rightly developed (per rationem rite excultam) all the dogmas of faith can be understood and demonstrated from natural principles”. In particular, it makes clear that there really are two different claims here, first, that there are supernatural mysteries in the strict sense and that these cannot be known without revelation, and second, that even when they are known they remain obscure

180  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto because of the “sublimity of their object”. The first of these two claims is perfectly clear as its stands. The second will require yet more unpacking, but a contrast with the second category provides a way forward. Supernatural mysteries in the wide sense are characterized as follows Supernatural Mysteries in the Wide Sense. Truths concerning the created order that are not knowable without revelation but that, once revealed, are free from any special obscurity are supernatural mysteries in the wide sense; for example, the primacy of the Roman pontiff in the Church. Such a fact, being dependent on God’s free disposition, could not be known without revelation, but after being revealed it has an intelligibility comparable to that of other juridical notions. (New Catholic Encyclopaedia 84) So, these mysteries are also unknowable without revelation. However, they do not count as supernatural mysteries in the strict sense because, once revealed to us, there is nothing obscure about them. It is what follows that can help shed light on the strict sense category. The example given is the particularly Catholic doctrine of Papal primacy. This doctrine, we are told, requires divine revelation to be known because it is a truth dependent on God’s free disposition. In short, there is nothing in the content of the doctrine itself which makes it unknowable without revelation; as far as content goes, it is unexceptional. It is just why it is true that makes it unknowable without revelation. Although it is not explicitly stated, it is plausible to take this example as providing a contrast with supernatural mysteries in the strict sense generally. In short, whereas supernatural mysteries in the wide sense are unknowable without revelation even though their content is unexceptional, supernatural mysteries in the strict sense are unknowable without revelation precisely because their content is exceptional, so exceptional that with revelation we can know them to be true, but still find them obscure. We are now in a position to replace talk of “defying reason” and “defying understanding” with something a bit more definite. We will henceforth use the term ‘religious mystery’ as a synonym for what the New Catholic Encyclopaedia has called “supernatural mystery in the strict sense”. We take the following to be true about religious mysteries: (D1) Religious mysteries can be true. (D2) Religious mysteries can be known. (D3) Religious mysteries cannot be known if they are not revealed. (D4) The reason religious mysteries cannot be known unless revealed has to do with the nature of their content, which means that they are in principle not candidates for human knowledge, absent revelation, and remain “obscure” even when revealed. We note that (D1)–(D3) are quite clearly doctrinal commitments of the Catholic tradition. For example, the claim that there is a strict sense of

Mystery at the Spandrels 181 ‘mystery’, that such mysteries cannot be known unless revealed, and that the doctrine of the Trinity is an example, can all be found explicitly in the 1992 Catholic Catechism: The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the narrow sense, that is, one of the mysteries hidden in God, “which, unless divinely revealed, cannot be known”.8 God certainly left some traces of His Trinitarian Being in His work of creation and in His Revelation in the course of the Old Testament. But the intimacy of His Being, as of the Holy Trinity, before the Incarnation of the Son of God and the mission of the Holy Spirit, constituted a mystery inaccessible to reason alone and even to the faith of Israel. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 237) (D4), in conjunction with (D3), represents our own best attempt at making sense of talk of “defying reason”, which is a commonplace in discussion of theological mysteries across denominations. Although textual support has been sourced exclusively from Roman Catholic sources, we think that (D1)–(D4) are in fact likely to be amenable to most mainstream Christian traditions. We also note that these sources have given us several specific examples of religious mysteries. Naturally, the examples (e.g., the Eucharist) are less likely to be agreeable to all mainstream denominations, but it is worth noting the prominence given to the doctrine of the Trinity, we will have a bit more to say later.9 In any case, having identified a particular notion of mystery in the Christian tradition, our goal for the rest of the paper is to defend a philosophical account of it. We take (D1)–(D4) as desiderata. We think we can show that our account can satisfy each of these. Our account of religious mystery is just this: Religious mystery: A religious mystery is a contradiction which is taken, by the relevant religious tradition, to have been divinely revealed to be true. If Beall’s account of logical consequence (i.e., FDE) is right, and if the relevant language-specific consequence relations similarly allow for it, then our account is compatible with (D1), mysteries can be true even though they are contradictions. This is something we will assume for what follows. Showing that our account satisfies (D2)–(D4) will take more work, and will require a detour through epistemology, to which we turn next. 11.4 Epistemology We think our account of religious mystery can satisfy (D2)–(D4) if it is supplemented by the following epistemological thesis, Unknowable Falsehood (UF): P is false entails (by language-specific consequence) for any S, that S does not know P or P has been divinely revealed to S.

182  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto More particularly, with the addition of UF, our thesis that religious mysteries are contradictions clearly secures (D3), very plausible secures (D4), and is compatible with (D2). But is UF plausible? We will argue that it should be found plausible by a religious believer. We note that the first disjunct in the consequent of UF has been popularly held to be true, and we will start by exploring the reasons why. We grant that a glut-theorist may find some of these reasons uncompelling, but we think there remains an important intuition which speaks in favour of this disjunct. We further claim that an account of virtue epistemology which captures this intuition would also provide the resources to defend the second disjunct, which makes an exception of divine revelations. The goal of this section is not to argue that UF is true (this would be too difficult a task), but merely defend its cogency and plausibility from the perspective of a religious believer. 11.4.1  The Truth Condition on Knowledge

Traditionally, it has been taken for granted that if P is false, then nobody S knows that P. Knowledge is traditionally said to involve three individually necessary conditions. Necessarily, P is known by S only if 1 P is true 2 P is believed by S, and 3 S is justified in believing P. If there are true contradictions, what are we to say about (1)? Specifically, should we take from (1) that, necessarily, if P is false, then P is not known? In other words, assuming that P’s being false is just the same thing as P’s not being true, then does necessary condition (1) contrapose, such that if P is not true, then P is not known? If it does, then for any given contradiction, P, the secular glut-theorist may respond by pointing out that traditional theories of knowledge have worked on the assumption that there are no true contradictions. They might hold also that any intuition in favour of the claim that we can’t know what is false or false in a nearby possible world, is really just the intuition that we can’t know something that is just false. As soon as we allow the possibility of contradictions, our intuitions should change. However, a major problem with this response is that the notions of “just true” and “just false” in a dialethic context are highly controversial. Beall himself has in the past (2009, Chapter 3) held that “just true” simply means “true”, and assuming this goes for “just false” and “false”, this leaves the dialetheist no further ahead. Various attempts, including by Beall (2013), have tried to make good sense of “just true” and “just false” as distinct from “true” and “false”, but the controversy remains unresolved. Moreover, even if we can make sense of “just true” and “just false”, it is not clear to me that we have sufficient motivation to employ these notions

Mystery at the Spandrels 183 in our characterization of knowledge. If we are to choose between (1) and, say, (1*): P is not just false, then I think we will need to first decide whether our notion of knowledge primarily tracks truth or tracks the avoidance of falsehood. This seems to me to be a difficult question and we shall see in the Section 3.3 that it is a question with a long history, which is highly relevant to the topic of religious mystery. In the meantime, let’s consider some other reasons for thinking we can’t know what is false. 11.4.2  Sensitivity Conditions on Knowledge

As is well-known, Edmund Gettier (1963) showed that there is more to knowledge than just (1)–(3). One historically popular response to Gettier cases holds that there is a stronger, modal, connection between truth values and knowledge. Specifically, some philosophers have argued that knowledge is subject to a sensitivity constraint, one characteristic version of which is (4) Necessarily, S’s belief that P is sensitive if and only if S’s belief could not have easily been false. Of course, if P is a contradiction, then it could easily have been false, because it is false (plausible, something could easily have been false if and only if it is actually false in some possible world near to this one, and there is no world nearer to this one than this world itself). So, if (4) is true, and given that it involves a necessary conditional, we once again arrive at the awkward consequence that we cannot know anything that is false and hence we cannot know contradictions, though perhaps, contradictorily, we also do know some of them. Now (4) is in fact rejected by a significant number of contemporary epistemologists, often because it seems to conflict with a particular strategy for responding to skepticism (namely the view that even though it is possible that I am a brain in a vat, I might still know that I am not a brain in a vat). Nevertheless, the historical popularity of sensitivity conditions emphasizes that they are tracking, even if imperfectly, a strong intuition that we cannot know what isn’t so. The secular glut-theorist must reject this intuition, at least in some cases. We agree, but which cases? We can now provide some reasons for restricting the exceptions to just what has been divinely revealed. 11.4.3  Norms and Virtues

One last approach to the analysis of knowledge may yet shed the most light, that is virtue epistemology. As a lead in, recall that William James (2000/1897) famously proposes that the ethics of belief are governed by two

184  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto great commandments, which sometimes conflict: seek the truth and shun error. These commandments, or rather strategies, represent a focus on different but closely related goals. Both seek to maximize true beliefs while minimizing false beliefs at the same time. They disagree only in limit cases, namely the cases where evidence is insufficient to clearly speak either for or against a particular belief, in which case the seek the truth strategy involves believing on the grounds that the belief might turn out to be true, while the shun error strategy involves withholding belief on the grounds that the belief might turn out to be false. James himself prefers the seek the truth strategy, but only when the consequences of believe are “momentous” (2000/1897, II). As he puts it, “It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound” (2000/1897, VII).10 What James’s discussion reminds us is that there are multiple goals when it comes to forming beliefs, to believe what is true, but also to avoid believing what is not true. James’s work has had an important impact on both religious epistemology, but also in the field of virtue epistemology, which is an approach to theories of knowledge according to which knowledge is a matter of what is truly believed in accordance with the intellectual virtues (originally proposed by Sosa 1991: 277, but defended by many others since). Roberts and Wood (2007, 215–235) are examples of virtue ethicist with a debt to William James. They distinguish the virtues of intellectual courage and intellectual caution, which respectively more-or-less correspond to James’s two great commandments. Courage is the virtue that provides the middle path between cowardice and recklessness. Caution is the virtue that provides the middle path between recklessness and what Roberts and Wood call “scrupulosity” (2007: 216). Here is what Roberts and Wood have to say about intellectual recklessness: “…the love of knowledge is not an indiscriminate enthusiasm for knowledge. Knowledge can be trivial, irrelevant, or unworthy, and the virtuous lover of knowledge seeks knowledge that may have its proper place among the larger range of human goods, both epistemic and nonepistemic… the value of knowledge is tied up with the value of its objects and the human well-being in which it is involved…” (2007: 224) Thus, it is not merely that the virtuousness of our belief formation depends on the truth or falsity of what we believe, it also depends on the value and relevance of what we believe. Perhaps there are even cases when it is more virtuous to take the epistemic risk of believing what is false, when the belief is relevant and worthy, than it is to believe utterly trivial truths. Certainly James seems to think so, given his caveat on the “seek the truth” strategy, that it applies when our choice of what to believe is momentous.

Mystery at the Spandrels 185 A religious believer, like James, will probably take the mysteries of their religious tradition to be the least trivial, most relevant, and most worthy candidates for knowledge available to any knower. In fact, the relevance and worthiness of these mysteries may well be held by the religious believer to be infinite (if relevance and worthiness are the sorts of things that can be numerically quantified). This same claim cannot be made for other candidate gluts with nearly the same plausibility. If ‘This sentence is false’ and ‘Christ is immutable’ are both true contradictions, it seems pretty clear which is the less trivial11. The significance of this is that a position of the following sort therefore becomes available: it is reckless, and therefore non-virtuous, to believe what is false unless the worthiness of the belief is infinite.12 If divine revelations were the only available beliefs of infinite value and if being virtuously-believed was a necessary condition on knowledge, then of course this would have UF as a consequence, the only false claims that could be known are those that are divinely revealed. Of course, this is only an example of how a virtue epistemology could entail UF,13 but what it illustrates is just this, virtue epistemology provides the resources to distinguish what is knowable from what is unknowable in such a way that (D3) and (D4), the claims that religious mysteries are only knowable because they are revealed and because of the nature of their content, are true if religious mysteries are contradictions. To sum up this section, we have proposed that our thesis that religious mysteries are contradictions can satisfy desiderata (D3) and (D4), if it is supplemented by UF—i.e., the claim that all falsehoods are unknowable unless divinely revealed. (D3) follows immediately from this. (D4) follows because it is the contradictory nature of the mysteries which guarantees they are only (consistently) knowable by revelation, given UF. This of course entails that the only (consistently) knowable contradictions are ones that are divinely revealed. ‘Consistently’ is bracketed in the previous two sentences because there are in fact two different versions of UF available here, and we are not entirely decided between them. Insofar as UF is motivated by a commitment to the truth and/or sensitivity conditions on knowledge, as discussed in Sections 3.1 and 3.2, UF is compatible with the weaker thesis that unrevealed gluts may be either unknown or simultaneously known and unknown, whereas revealed gluts alone may be consistently known. By contrast, the considerations of virtue raised in this section, and assuming that belief in non-revealed gluts consistently fails to meet some virtue threshold that belief in revealed gluts meets, entails the stronger thesis that unrevealed gluts are always consistently unknown, while revealed gluts can be consistently known. The latter of these views in particular may be unwelcome to friends of secular gluts, like Beall, but we think that the religious believer can find, in virtue epistemology, the resources to draw a principled distinction between revealed and secular gluts such that the former are candidates for knowledge, while the latter are not. We are not claiming that this distinction has been convincingly established, merely that it is not an implausible position for a Christian theist to take,

186  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto given that (D3) and (D4) are theological desiderata. The position as a whole still needs to be motivated, so let us turn to its advantages. 11.5  Advantages of the Position There are two primary respects in which our approach to theological gluts differs from Beall’s. The first is that, whereas Beall begins from a glut-friendly position, and then uses the possibility of true contradictions to provide an account of christology, our account suggests that the only contradictions that can be (consistently) known are those that have been divinely revealed. Of course, this aspect of our approach results from adopting as a desiderata the claim that religious mysteries can only be known by divine revelation, i.e., (D3). Any plausible glutty account of religious mysteries that satisfies (D3) will probably have to accept the consequence that all gluts that we (consistently) know are theological. The second way in which our approach differs from Beall’s is the mechanism by which we identify theological gluts, which may in turn generate different numbers of such gluts. Beall takes christology to have particular features which are suggestive of a theological glut, and he seems to think it is the paradigm case of this. By contrast, we do not start by identifying individual doctrines that are likely to involve contradictions, rather we identify a category of doctrines which is already recognized by orthodox Christian theology and claim that the features of this category are well explained by the doctrines within it being true contradictions. Accordingly, we defer to theologians for the task of identifying the specific doctrines that are contradictory. This means our account may identify as theological gluts, some doctrines that Beall would deny are contradictory. The doctrine of the Eucharist, might be such a case for some Christian traditions. These departures may strike some as disadvantages of our account. The first, in particular, will strike anyone with a friendly attitude to truth-value gluts generally as problematic. In compensation, what are the advantages of our approach? We think they are fivefold. Advantage 1: We provided evidence in Section 2 that there is a strong tradition in Christianity which is committed to (D1)–(D4): that there are genuine religious mysteries (properly so-called), that these mysteries are knowable, but only knowable by divine revelation, that the reason these mysteries are not knowable except by divine revelation is about the nature of the content of the mysteries rather than the contingent cognitive limitations of humans, and that the doctrine of the Trinity is an example. Our account is compatible with all of these and provides, we think, quite a nice explanation of why religious mysteries are not knowable except by divine revelation. Advantage 2: Our account provides a simple and plausible answer to McCall’s question: “how do we know where to find the contradictions

Mystery at the Spandrels 187 in theology?” Our answer: look for the mysteries (properly speaking). And where are these? For that, we will have to refer the reader to a theologian. Naturally, this involves buck-passing, but there is still considerable progress here. Whereas Church tradition has rarely explicitly identified any doctrine as contradictory, it has regularly identified specific doctrines as mysteries. On our account, there is a great deal more evidence from the Christian tradition in the search for theological gluts than is available to Beall, for example. Advantage 3: Relatedly, our account should at least partly allay McCall’s pragmatic concern that allowing gluts into theology might give too much encouragement to theologians to find them everywhere. Our account provides a clear heuristic for identifying theological gluts. Those doctrines that the tradition has historically identified as mysteries (properly speaking) are theological gluts. There is no good reason to go looking for others. Advantage 4: Beall has claimed for his contradictory christology the advantage that it preserves the mystery of the doctrine. We think he is right about this. To say a contradiction can be true, is not to demystify it. True contradictions are outside of our everyday experience, they are difficult to imagine, and in general we should be suspicious of anything claiming the status. But if it is an advantage of a contradictory account of christology that it preserves the mystery of the doctrine, surely there is a corresponding increase in that advantage to a theory that preserves the mystery of just those doctrines that the Christian tradition tells us are mysteries. Indeed, if Beall’s account does preserve the mystery of christology, it might be thought that there is something rather arbitrary about which theological mysteries have had their mysteriousness preserved on Beall’s account. There is no such problem with our account. Advantage 5: Beall also claims, as an advantage, that his account of christology preserves the need for faith. Once again, our account does the same, but with a wider and less arbitrary application. Moreover, our detour through epistemology has provided us with a bit more to say about the nature of faith. On our account, religious mysteries are mysterious because belief in them requires us to abandon some of the traditional epistemological virtues, when faced with a divine revelation, in order to believe in a more courageous way. We don’t have the space to develop this thought here, but these seems to us to be a good starting point for an account of the nature of faith. 11.6 Conclusion The application of glutty accounts of consequence to theology opens up a great deal of opportunity. There is an opportunity to reconcile the methodology of analytic philosophy with some of the more paradox-friendly treatments of doctrine found in sacred theology. There is an opportunity to

188  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto answer objections of incoherence levelled against specific theological doctrines. There is an opportunity to make space for faith without falling into fideism. There is the opportunity to treat contradictory-sounding texts at face value, without embarrassment. As argued here, there is also the opportunity to shed light on the broader theological notion of mystery, as it is found in religious traditions. For all these reasons, glutty theology is worth pursuing. The governing principle behind the proposal in this chapter, and which perhaps sets our approach apart from other glutty treatments of theology, is that we think that theology is the proper subject matter of theologians and, hence, if there are contradictions in theology, it is for theologians to identify them. We think our proposal offers that. Notes 1 Phrased in this way, and without prejudice to how this statement should be interpreted, I think this is acceptable to orthodox Christians generally. 2 Beall initially characterizes consequence relations in terms of “points” (e.g., the conclusion is true at all points at which the premises are true), but his own view is that the best candidate replacement for the place-holder notion of points are possible worlds, and in this we follow him. 3 Aaron Cotnoir (2019: 515n11) seems to think that Beall is still committed to his earlier Logical Pluralism, but that it operates at the level of the language-specific consequence relations. I’m not sure this is right (though Beall (2019b) did not object to the characterization in his response to Cotnoir). Beall’s Logical Pluralism (Beall and Restall 2006: 19–23) demanded that for a system to count as a system of logic, it must be formal, albeit there isn’t one single notion of formality at play and those there are have vague boundaries. Still, the only formal consequence relation that Beall is committed to in The Contradictory Christ is the FDE consequence relation. Beall seems also to take care to apply the word “logical” only to this latter relation. I therefore think Beall is no longer a pluralist about logic, or if he is, his pluralism is of a significantly different kind than that which he defended earlier. 4 The language of FDE as Beall sets it out (2021: 28–33) also contains a truthpredicate (‘ ’), such that A is true in model m if and only if A is true in model m and A is false in model m if and only if A is false in model m. A therefore is true and false in model m if and only if A is true and false in model m. 5 Boyer’s three categories of revelational mystery are as follows: Extensive mystery – “A mystery that defies reason by virtue of the fact that it is quantitatively more vast than we are able to manage” (2007: 94); Facultative mystery – “something that has been made known, but that defies reason by virtue of a kind of qualitatively non-rational opacity that makes knowledge in the normal sense rather irrelevant” (ibid); Dimensional mystery- a mystery that “def understanding in virtue of the fact that it transcends ‘dimensionally’ the normal workings of human reason” (2007: 97). We don’t have a position on whether religious mysteries, in our sense of the term, can fall into each of these three categories or only some of them. 6 In addition to these two, Tuggy identifies three more senses of the word ‘mystery’: “there is the main New Testament sense of ‘mystery’: a truth formerly unknown, and perhaps undiscoverable by unaided human reason, but which has now been

Mystery at the Spandrels 189 revealed by God and is known by some” (2003: 175), “a ‘mystery’ may be some fact that we can’t explain, or can’t fully or adequately explain” (2003: 176), and by “‘mystery’ some mean a truth which one should believe even though it seems, even after careful reflection, to be impossible and/ or contradictory and thus false” (2003: 176). Tuggy’s categories have significant overlap with one another, which makes a thorough discussion of them unnecessarily complicated, so we don’t do that here. Briefly, though, mysteries of the kind we identify in this section probably fall into the first and third of these Tuggian categories. We are neutral on whether they fall into the second category. 7 There is also a third type of mystery that is identified in the article, “natural mysteries”. Free will is given as an example (New Catholic Encyclopaedia 84). They are not the sort of mystery we are concerned with in this chapter. 8 Double quote marks in the original. 9 In fact, the Catholic Encyclopaedia goes further when discussing the Trinity: 234 The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in Himself. It is therefore the source of the other mysteries of faith, the light that illuminates them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the “hierarchy of truths” of faith. 10 James’s target in his paper is the evidentialism of William Clifford (1999/1877), to who James attributes the “Shun Error” strategy. However, when the possibility of gluts are considered, it becomes apparent that James’s attribution is incorrect. Clifford’s evidentialism holds that it is wrong to believe anything without sufficient evidence, but in the case of some true contradiction, P & ¬P, we may have compelling evidence for P, even while P is false. In this case, the evidentialist would still tell us to follow the evidence and believe P, whereas the “shun error” strategy would surely tell us to withhold belief from what we know to be false. 11 ‘Trivial’ is not being used here in the technical sense familiar to logicians. 12 This is not intended to have the implication that all false beliefs of infinite worthiness can be believed virtuously, the idea is that only those false beliefs that are also true and have infinite worthiness can be believed virtuously. 13 There are other ways of doing this. For example, perhaps it is not the worthiness of the object, but rather the worthiness of the source which makes the difference between divine revelations and true contradictions that we discover for ourselves. Perhaps it is non-virtuous to believe what is false unless a supremely good source reveals its truth to you. This would also entail UF. The point is just that virtues can play the role of distinguishing gluts such that some are candidates for knowledge and others are not, and this allows (D3) and (D4) to be satisfied.

Bibliography Beall, Jc. 2009. Spandrels of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  . 2013. “Shrieking Against Gluts: The Solution to the ‘just true’ Problem.” Analysis 73 (3): 335–438.  . 2019a. “Christ – A Contradiction: A Defense of Contradictory Christology.” Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 400–33. https://doi.org/10.12978/ jat.2019-7.090202010411.  . 2019b. “On Contradictory Christology: A Reply to Cotnoir’s ‘On the Role of Logic’”, Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 529–43. https://doi.org/10.12978/ jat.2019-7.113106106105108115.  . 2021. The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beall, Jc, and Greg Restall. 2006. Logical Pluralism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

190  Spencer Johnston and Daniel Molto Boyer, Steven D. 2007. “The Logic of Mystery.” Religious Studies 43: 89–102. doi:10.1017/S003441250600878X Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2003. www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/ _INDEX.HTM Clifford, William K. 1999/1877. “The Ethics of Belief.” In The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays, edited by T. Madigan. Amherst, MA: Prometheus. Cotnoir, Aaron. 2019. “On the Role of Logic in Analytic Theology: Exploring the Wider Context of Beall’s Philosophy of Logic.” Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 508–28. doi: https://doi.org/10.12978/jat.2019-7.00-51-51021417. Decrees of the First Vatican Council. 2000–2022. www.papalencyclicals.net//councils/ ecum20.htm Gettier, Edmund. 1963. “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis 23: 121–123. James, W. 2000/1897. “The Will to Believe.” In Pragmatism and Other Writings, edited by G. Gunn. London: Penguin Books. McCall, Thomas H. 2019. “Doctrinal Orthodoxy and Philosophical Heresy: A Theologian’s Reflections on Beall’s Proposal.” Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 473–87. https://doi.org/10.12978/jat.2019-7.190718120211. New Catholic Encyclopedia. 2003. 2nd edition, vol. 15, Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning in association with The Catholic University of America. Roberts, Robert C., and W. Jay Wood. 2007. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sosa, Ernest. 1991. Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sosa, Ernest. “Proper Functionalism and Virtue Epistemology.” Noûs, 27(1) (1993): 51–65. doi:10.2307/2215895 Tertullian. 2016. “Treatise on the Incarnation.” In Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incar­ nation: The Text Edited with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, translated by Erenst Evans. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. Tuggy, Dale. 2003. “The Unfinished Business of Trinitarian Theorizing.” Religious Studies 39: 165–83.

12 Depicting Doctrine Theological Paradox and Conceptual Iconography Eric Yang

12.1 Introduction Mystery and paradox shroud core Christian doctrines. This may not be surprising given the acceptance of a transcendent God that is ineffable and incomprehensible. Yet on the basis of some of these paradoxical doctrines, some have charged Christianity as being incoherent or self-contradictory. Many of these doctrines are not peripheral to Christianity but are part of its central teaching. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity, which some may regard as the distinctive heart that distinguishes Christianity from other monotheistic religions, has the air of paradox whenever it is presented. Several quandaries arise when examining that doctrine. What origination or dependence relations, if any, do the divine persons bear to each other? What external actions do they undertake, and what is each of their role in such actions? Are some divine persons subordinate (in some sense) to another divine person, and if so, were they subordinate from eternity or from some moment in time? Yet it seems that the primary paradox is over the claim that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are each God and distinct from each other, yet there is exactly one God. This mystery, once unknown but now revealed, putatively implies that there are three divine individuals and exactly one divine individual. This particular paradox is often labeled as ‘the logical problem of the Trinity’ or ‘the threeness-oneness problem’. Treating the problem as a paradox suggests that we are taking the propositions related to the doctrine of the Trinity as appearing to be logically inconsistent, and so it seems that a contradiction can be derived from those propositions. Different strategies to address the logical problem of the Trinity have been proposed by both historical and contemporary thinkers, especially by those who engage in analytic theology. Some propose that it is rational to accept the apparent contradiction in the doctrine of the Trinity while insisting that there is no genuine contradiction (Anderson 2007). Others suggest that the doctrine of the Trinity may indeed include a genuine contradiction, but that its inclusion is not problematic if one is willing to opt for non-classical logic (Beall forthcoming). Perhaps the most prominent approach by analytic theologians who have addressed this issue is to provide a paraphrase or a model of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003319221-13

192  Eric Yang relevant propositions in order to show that the reconstructed or reformulated set of claims is not logically inconsistent. Models or accounts of the doctrine of the Trinity are thereby put forward as solutions to the logical problem.1 In this chapter, I consider shifting the way we approach the paradoxical nature of the doctrine. Rather than offering trinitarian models as solutions to the logical problem of the Trinity, I propose that we regard these models as artistic embellishments or theological works of art, and more specifically as conceptual icons. Icons represent, but they do not attempt to provide a precise or an accurate depiction of the object that is being represented. I suggest that theological models of the doctrine of the Trinity should be regarded in a similar way. Instead of using paint, oil, or a mosaic, analytic theologians employ ontological, ideological, or logical tools at their disposal. The doctrine of the Trinity, then, is not a problem to be solved but a teaching of the church to be imaginatively explored and creatively embellished for the purpose of wonder at the God that Christians worship. 12.2  Trinitarian Paradox While the term ‘paradox’ can be used in different ways, a common use has to do with the appearance of something rationally unacceptable. For example, a paradox may be a set of claims that is apparently logically inconsistent or an argument with an apparently unacceptable conclusion derived from apparently acceptable inferences and apparently acceptable premises.2 Paradoxes in philosophy abound, e.g. the liar paradox, the grandfather paradox, the preface paradox, etc. These paradoxes are problems that require a solution, which usually aim at finding a flaw in the reasoning process or by rejecting or revising some of the premises or assumptions involved. Does the doctrine of the Trinity involve a paradox of this sort? It is tempting to answer in the affirmative. Consider the salient propositions concerning the logical problem of the Trinity: 1 The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. 2 The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Father is not the Spirit. 3 There is exactly one God. These claims appear to form a logically inconsistent set.3 Typical solutions offer a reconstruction or paraphrase of these propositions, but many (if not all) solutions have been charged with deviating from the historical contexts and intentions of the creedal, conciliar, or traditional pronouncements from when these claims were being formulated.4 If this is right, then contemporary solutions solve the problem by showing that there is no unacceptable inconsistency or contradiction but do so at the price of a heterodox or ahistorical rendering of the doctrine (Anderson 2007, 12).

Depicting Doctrine 193 The attention to the historical development and context surrounding the formulation and development of the doctrine of the Trinity has been a welcome and beneficial turn among contemporary analytic theologians, but we must beware foisting too much content on claims where there was no such intention. Even in the 4th century CE, some theologians regarded as orthodox held to claims concerning the doctrine of the Trinity that conflicted with other orthodox theologians. James Anderson correctly points out that “while there may be only one God, there is surely more than one doctrine of the Trinity; at any rate, there is more than one interpretation of that distinctive Christian teaching expressed in the ancient creeds and confessions of the church” (Anderson 2007, 11–12). These conciliar pronouncements, rather than providing a full-blown trinitarian theory, offered boundaries of acceptability, focusing their attention on anathematizing particular conceptions that were considered as outside those boundaries and hence were regarded as heterodox or heretical.5 Arianism and Sabellianism (among others) were out. Despite what the creeds and councils ruled out, they permitted a variety of views. Commenting on the pronouncements from the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Sarah Coakley highlights the regulatory framework of the Chalcedonian definition. The claims are not mere linguistic regulations—they do not merely tell Christians how to talk about Christ. Nor are the claims to be taken merely metaphorically (even if metaphors are used at times). Rather, she opts for a horos-oriented approach where the definition does not yield a precise analysis but (following the etymology of the term ‘define’) provides the limits or boundaries for what does or does not count as acceptably orthodox (Coakley 2002, 159–163). Another common thread among the theologians from the period of the ecumenical councils is a strong commitment to divine ineffability and incomprehensibility. While Augustine offers several psychological models of the Trinity, he repudiates all of them, recognizing the inability to comprehend this mystery.6 And while some of the Cappadocian theologians are known for employing accounts that involve universals (or shared masses7), these models arguably are used to address questions and challenges from the opposition rather than offering their preferred way of speaking about or conceptualizing the Trinity. Admitting some measure of apophaticism should be expected when thinking about a God who is transcendent and unlike everything else in the created order (especially for those who subscribe to certain versions of classical theism). While there are different ways of understanding apophaticism, Jonathan Jacobs and Sameer Yadav offer proposals that are both historically sensitive and conversant with contemporary issues. For Jacobs, espousing apophaticism entails that we cannot say anything both true and fundamental about God’s intrinsic characteristics (Jacobs 2015, 165). This allows uttering many true things of God (e.g., “God is all-powerful”, “God is love”, etc.). But these truths are not fundamental (cf. Sider); that is, we are not saying

194  Eric Yang anything about God that carves God at the joints (so to speak). Even the propositions involved in the doctrine of the Trinity, while strictly and literally true, are not fundamental. It is true that the Son is God and that there is exactly one God, but these are not mapping on to reality precisely in the way that reality is actually structured.8 But the apophatic approach, as Yadav notes, is not merely about what we can or cannot say of God; the aim of apophaticism includes attention to mystical experiences that yield a direct and immediate union with God, filling the experiencer with wonder and awe (Yadav 2016, 32). According to Yadav, “[w]onder can…be roughly characterized as an attitude of epistemic interest in an object for which the felt stances of surprise, amazement, or astonishment are appropriate” (ibid., 34). Such wonder is produced at the recognition of the mysteriousness of that which is being contemplated. Moreover, the appearance of God will be “under some gerrymandered mode of presentation which is recognized by the mystic as an indicator of God’s ineffability” (ibid., 34–35). The way God appears will be, in a sense, manufactured. A crucial feature for our purposes is that the artificiality in the experienced presentation can highlight God’s transcendence and incomprehensibility. The prominence of apophaticism among historical theologians involved in the formulation and development of the doctrine of the Trinity needs to be taken seriously, and I suspect doing so will shift the way we think about the logical problem of the Trinity. 12.3  Reframing the Logical Problem Return to the main propositions related to the logical problem of the Trinity, viz. (1)–(3). The important role of these claims was to preclude particular statements that were propagated by those deemed as heretics by the councils. Claims of Arian subordinationism, Sabellian modalism, and polytheism are the intended targets ruled out by (1)–(3). So one cannot remain with the bounds of orthodoxy and claim that the Son is not God or that the Father is the Son. Orthodoxy, then, requires claiming at least that the Son is God and the Father is not the Son. But what more do these statements tell us, or what do they entail? Taking the conciliar pronouncements as primarily providing boundaries of acceptability for orthodox Christians and also recognizing conflicting trinitarian accounts by pro-Nicene theologians, we can reasonably assume that (1)–(3) are missing some content in such a way that trinitarian models can fill them out in different ways. To be perspicuous, let ‘the doctrine of the Trinity’ refer to (1)–(3), and let ‘models of the Trinity’ refer to attempts to paraphrase or reconstruct those propositions.9 Contemporary models of the Trinity are the ones that use cases involving time travel (Leftow 2004), extended simples (Pickup 2016), multilocation (Effingham 2015), episodic periods (Mooney 2021), relative identity (van Inwagen 1988), numerical sameness without identity (Brower and Rea 2005), constitution relations

Depicting Doctrine 195 (Hasker 2013), parthood (Cotnoir 2017; Molto 2018), powers (Page 2017), truthmakers (Byerly 2019), perichoresis (Davis 2006), and more. These contemporary models are not to be identified with the doctrine of the Trinity, but they are rather offered as competing ways of interpreting or construing the doctrine of the Trinity. To be sure, the conciliar pronouncements concerning the doctrine of the Trinity are informative, as they inform us that there is one divine nature or substance, that there are three divine persons or hypostases, that the three are not the same person, that the Father is a source of the persons without having a source, and that the Son and the Spirit have (at least) the Father as a source (Pawl 2020). What it says is adequate for ruling out (most, if not all of) the heretical claims from the third to fifth century.10 Even so, much of the content in (1)–(3) remains open. For example, we can take ‘the Son’ to designate a particular person, but such a denotation does not provide a detailed analysis of what that person is. Is it a subsistent relation? A center of consciousness? Moreover, the term ‘God’ also leaves things similarly open. Is it a nature, and if so, is it concrete or abstract? And the same goes for the copula. In saying that the Son is God, how exactly should the relation between the Son and God be construed? When examining what the conciliar pronouncements claim about the Trinity, councils and creed do not clearly state what the relationship is between the divine persons and the divine nature (ibid., 107). Here are some live possibilities of what that relation may be: a b c d

The Son is (strictly) numerically identical to God.11 The Son is numerically the same but not identical to God. The Son is the same F as God (where ‘F’ is a suitable sortal). The Son is really identical to God (where real sameness does not have all of the formal properties that strict identity has). e The Son is constituted by God. f The Son has God as a (proper or improper) part (or God has the Son as a proper or improper part). Perhaps there may be some considerations for disregarding some of these possibilities.12 Similar remarks apply to the distinction between the divine persons. Rejecting Sabellian modalism requires a commitment to the claim that the Father is not the Son. But what relation is being denied? As with (a)–(f), we might aver that the relation being denied is (strict) numerical identity, numerical sameness without identity, relative identity, real identity, constitution, or (proper or improper) parthood. The logical problem of the Trinity has bite only when the contents of (1)–(3) are filled out in a way that yields a contradiction, which is what opponents of trinitarianism may be doing. If we take the relation in (1) and (2) to be (strict) numerical identity, then a straightforward contradiction can be derived.13 When some of the pro-Nicene theologians are considering objections to trinitarianism, the objectors are sometimes filling out the trinitarian

196  Eric Yang claims in just this way. While this particular sameness relation has the formal features of being reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive, there is no clear indication that the trinitarian formulations in (1)–(3) require a relation with these formal properties. One may complain that the lack of robust content would lead to a failure of ruling out the relevant heretical positions, or that ruling out these heresies would fill in the content of (1)–(3) in such a way as to make them logically inconsistent. Yet all that is required to reject Arianism is to admit that the Son is God in the same way that the Father is God. It does not demand that the Son be numerically identical to God over being numerically the same (but not identical) to God, being constituted by God, having God as a proper part, or being a proper part of God. And the same goes for the other relevant propositions in the doctrine of the Trinity and the heresies they oppose. Given this shift, the logical problem of the Trinity, rather than being solved, is dissolved. If avoiding inconsistency is the main worry, then by merely avoiding filling out the content in ways that yield an inconsistency, then no logical problem arises. What then of the so-called solutions to the logical problem? The brief answer is that they are not solutions since there is no problem. Yet this need not render extant trinitarian models as useless or otiose. These models may be offered as ways of creatively embellishing (1)–(3) for a theological purpose. It will be helpful here to mention briefly the nature and role of models. According to Oliver Crisp, models are “simplified conceptual frameworks or descriptions by means of which complex sets of data, systems, and processes may be organized and understood”, and they are “representational, analogous, hermeneutical in nature, have a certain fidelity to aspects of the thing they represent, and take different forms” (Crisp 2021, 9–10). Given that many analytic theologians adopt a realist framework, Crisp notes that models (for realists) are approximations of the truth (ibid., 13). But truth or the approximation to it may not be the most apt standard of evaluation of models, especially in their use in other domains (such as in the sciences). Additionally, apopohaticism should make us suspicious whether we can ascertain that some model approximates the truth more than another model. Now a proponent of apophaticism can maintain that (1)–(3) are true (albeit, not fundamental), but does employing the constitution relation approximate the truth more than employing relative identity or real identity? The incomprehensibility of God should make it difficult if not outright impossible to tell whether using some concepts are closer at approximating the truth than an approach that employs other concepts. Rather than truth or the approximation to it, another purpose for which a model may be put forward is a way of conceptually picturing or imagining one way in which the contents of (1)–(3) can be filled. There are, of course, important constraints to the ways in which it can be so filled. They cannot be filled so as to yield a contradiction (if one is committed to classical logic).

Depicting Doctrine 197 Nor can they be filled in ways that would conflict with authoritative pronouncements. Some take conciliar pronouncements as authoritative, and hence the depiction would have to abide by what is claimed. Thus, it could not be depicted in a way such that the Father proceeds from another divine person. However, not all Christian analytic theologians take the conciliar pronouncements as authoritative, and hence some may fill out the content in a way that excludes any procession or dependence among the divine persons.14 Rather than regarding the doctrine of the Trinity, or at least (1)–(3), as giving rise to a logical problem waiting to be solved, we can reframe the issue by construing (1)–(3) as a canvas with basic contours waiting to be painted. But rather than oil and brushes, we can use ideological, ontological, or logical tools at our disposal. Trinitarian modeling becomes a creative expression of filling out the content, all within acceptable parameters. These ways of filling out (1)–(3) need not be regarded as competitive with each other. One solution is not better at solving the logical problem of the Trinity than another (since there is no problem to begin with), nor does one solution approximate the truth more than another. In other domains (such as in the sciences), multiple models need not conflict given the intended aim for which the model is offered. The same goes for artworks, even representational ones. Multiple portraits of the same person can be made, but we need not construe these portraits as competing against each other, and the various depictions may focus on or highlight different features of the person, and so each portrait can be worthy of appreciation and enjoyment in its own right. Similarly, trinitarian models need not be competitive nor in conflict with each other but may be appreciated and enjoyed as a kind of theological artwork. 12.4  Conceptual Iconography The embrace of aphopaticism should give pause to treating trinitarian models as analogies or approximations.15 What other use could these models have? I propose that we treat these models as icons, and specifically as conceptual icons. Icons are artworks that represent some feature of reality, typically God, one (or more) of the divine persons, a saint, or some event in salvation history. While these pieces are representational, no one should take them to be seeking an accurate or precise depiction of what that targeted portion of reality is actually like. Even the depictions of human figures or ordinary physical objects are distorted in ways that make such artworks stand out when compared to other forms of art that aim to be more realistic or representationally accurate. One reason for this is due to a defining feature of icons, viz. the use of reverse perspective, which leads to intentional distortions of what is being represented (Antonova 2010, 27). In brief, reverse perspective is the “simultaneous representation of different planes of the same image … regardless of whether the corresponding planes in the represented objects could be seen from a single viewpoint” (ibid., 105). For a common example in icons, a saint may be

198  Eric Yang depicted with both ears clearly seen from facing the front. It is as though we are looking at each ear from the side angle, yet seeing them simultaneously when looking straight at the face. Another example is the well-known icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev, which appears to be the three human figures that visited Abraham as representing the three divine persons. Yet in that icon, the “three figures are actually one figure seen simultaneously from different points of view” (ibid., 163). Reverse perspective is employed to achieve the aim of viewing multiple dimensions from a single perspective, which is one way of describing how an eternal or timeless God might view multiple dimensions or distinct spatiotemporal regions from a single perspective (ibid., 101).16 Moreover, what is said of the images in the icon may not be true of what is said of the target, as some theologians believe that we speak homonymously when talking about images in comparison to their prototype.17 While icons intentionally distort the target object, it is the distorted depiction that allows for an appreciation of some aspect of God, Christ, a saint, or some event in a way that draws the person contemplating on the image into prayer and awe. Icons are “a means and a path…[and] a prayer…[whose] goal is to orient all of our feelings, as well as our intellect and all the other aspects of our nature” (Ouspensky 1978, 211). The goal is not to attain a “purely theoretical understanding of God” but to contemplate God “in the sense of to dwell intellectually or spiritually on God’s perfections” (Tollefsen 2018, 142). Not only can this be done through visual images but also through words. In fact, we can construe theological attempts at talking or writing about God as engaging in such an artistic endeavor, for “[i]n some cases, theologians tried to impart this aesthetic form on their writing by creating concise analogies between theological ideas and the act of painting— becoming in the process painters themselves and acting their work as a visual object or phenomenon in its own rights” (Tsakiridou 2013, 214). Writing out ideas and painting become analogous undertakings. One creates a physical representation and the other creates a conceptual representation. If both are iconic, then both distort, but both demand intellectual and contemplative apprehension and wonder at portions of reality where our words fail, or at least where our words are not employing fundamental language that captures the actual structures of those portions of reality. To be clear, (1)–(3) by themselves are not the conceptual icons but rather the filling in of the content. For example, Leftow’s Latin model that illustrates the view with time-traveling Rockettes (and later with the aid of Lockean events or modes) fills out the content of the relevant trinitarian claims by construing the divine persons as Lockean modes, regarding the relation between the divine persons and God as strict numerical identity.18 The model can still be evaluated whether it genuinely avoids contradiction or whether it avoids falling into heresy.19 So not anything is allowed when it comes to constructing a trinitarian model. But supposing Leftow’s model stays within the constraints, we can then contemplate on the model as an intellectual exercise, one that may be demanding given its employment of concepts from

Depicting Doctrine 199 philosophy of language and metaphysics. Imagining the illustration or working out the metaphysical tools can help one appreciate and value the unity or oneness of God. Or consider Stephen T. Davis’ social approach that depicts God as three separate centers of consciousness exemplifying the essential divine properties, bearing some dependence relation to each other, being unified in will, and being perichoretically related to each other.20 Assuming that the theological and philosophical constraints are not violated, reflection on this model may lead some to contemplate the distinctness of each divine person. Which model is better? But we would have to ask: better in what sense? Better at approximating the truth (or offering a better analogy)? But as stated earlier, neither can be better in those senses since neither is closer at approximating the truth.21 Now one model may be better at emphasizing the distinction of divine persons and another model may be better at emphasizing the divine unity. But all these models are on par when it comes to avoiding contradiction provided that each way of filling out (1)–(3) yields a logically consistent set. Construing trinitarian models as conceptual icons makes these models non-competitive. The different icons of Christ are not in competition with each other with respect to being more accurate or approximating what Christ’s face or body actually looked like. But each icon can be used to enable the people dwelling on it to focus on particular aspects of Christ (or whatever the represented target is) for the purpose of intellectual engagement, aesthetic appreciation, wonder, and worship. Rather than offering models as solutions to the logical problem or the threeness—oness problem of the Trinity, we can shift the framework away from construing (1)–(3) as a problematic set and rather as the starting point from which we artistically conceptualize ways of thinking about God. The products will be distortions in the way that icons are distortions, but they help capture our attention on particular aspects of God or the divine persons, in the way that physical icons overemphasize certain features to draw our attention toward that characteristic. These models are illustrative and not analogous to God, yet they can serve what they were intended to do: a way of thinking about God that precludes heresies. These models of the Trinity should thereby not be regarded as adhering to the original intentions of those who formulated the creeds or conciliar pronouncements. Iconic depictions are not treated as orthodox representations that must be accepted by all. Similarly, there is no model that must be assented to in order to remain orthodox (assuming that the acceptance of (1)– (3) is not tantamount to putting forth a model). These models are conceptual embellishments. If a model required denying one of the trinitarian claims, then the charge of heterodoxy would stand. But these models seek to retain (1)–(3). This approach, therefore, does not construe the models as reconstructions, paraphrases, or analyses that get at the original intent or meaning. Taking the historical pronouncements as setting up boundaries that provide some conceptual materials, other conceptual materials (e.g., the ideological

200  Eric Yang and ontological tools of metaphysics) are fair use in depicting the doctrine. So, a conceptual iconography approach sees (1)–(3) not as a problem or puzzle but rather as a palette on which to be painted by metaphysical tools. An upshot of this approach is that it respects the mystery of the doctrine of the Trinity and takes seriously an apophatic framework. 12.5  Is There Too Little Content? The conceptual iconography approach to models of the Trinity may be similar to what James Anderson labels as ‘semantic minimalism’ (Anderson 2007, 131f.) or what Tuggy has called ‘negative mysterianism’ (Tuggy 2011). Semantic minimalism, as the name suggests, considers the semantic content of the relevant propositions concerning the doctrine of the Trinity to be minimal enough such that they do not entail a contradiction. This is contrasted with positive mysterianism where (1)–(3) do appear to entail a contradiction (yet avering that accepting the claims is permissible since it is reasonable to assume there is an unarticulated equivocation, and hence the appearance of a contradiction does not give us reason to infer that there is a genuine contradiction). According to Anderson, he “can find no scholarly defence of [semantic minimalism] in print” (Anderson 131, fn. 50).22 The main objection to semantic minimalism or negative mysterianism is that they are associated with a version of apophaticism where no positive affirmations concerning God can be made. But such an apophaticism is fraught with difficulties, as even negative affirmations can entail positive statements. And some proponents of apophaticism do appear to make some positive statements about God. While there have been some who have endorsed such a strong view of apophaticism (e.g., the Jewish theologian Moses Maimonides), there are other forms of apophaticism that fit with the framework of the pro-Nicene theologians, including the version of apophaticism proposed by Jacobs (2015). Given the kind of apophaticism laid out earlier, true and positive affirmations about God can be made. These claims, however, will not be fundamental. They can be literal and non-metaphorical. So the implausibility of the stronger version of apophaticism does not give reason to reject semantic minimalism or the conceptual iconography approach to models of the Trinity. Another worry for the proposal offered in this chapter is that the content in (1)–(3) will be so minimal that the trinitarian claims are uninformative or uninteresting. In response, we may consider a different issue where a similar objection has been made. Consider the statement that we are animals, which is the primary thesis of a view known as animalism. Some have criticized this animalist thesis by insisting that it is too semantically minimal so as to be trivial or uninformative, especially since the thesis does not tell us what the nature of animals is, whether they are entirely material or partly immaterial, what the persistence conditions of animals are, or whether we are animals essentially or not.23 Yet defenders of animalism have argued that the thesis is plenty substantive, for it tells us that we are not identical to immaterial

Depicting Doctrine 201 substances, that we are not constituted by animals, that we are not proper parts of animals, etc.24 The animalist thesis rules out several competing views of personal ontology even given the minimal semantic content of the animalist thesis. There are different ways of answering the question of what the nature animals is or what the persistence conditions of animals are, but those questions need not be answered in order to affirm that we are animals. Similarly, the Trinitarian theses in (1)–(3), even with their minimal content, are enough to rule out other views, such as Arian subordinationism or Sabellian modalism. The trinitarian claims can be embellished in different ways, but as long as they are informative enough to rule out the heretical claims that the early councils and creeds sought to oppose, they are informative and interesting enough. To demand that they tell us more may be to give up on apophaticism or the mysteriousness and ineffability of God. 12.6  Idolatry or Proper Worship? An expected objection to treating trinitarian models as conceptual icons is that it may succumb to idolatry. After all, it was and is a common criticism against the use of icons that venerating them is tantamount to idolatry, which is strictly forbidden for Christians (and those of other Abrahamic faith traditions). The worry of idolatry for physical icons can be bypassed since the conceptual iconography of trinitarian models are not physical. Another worry is that physical icons can only paint Christ’s human nature, which leads to a Nestorian separation of natures. Yet this worry is also bypassed since conceptual model-building is not so restricted.25 But there may be a lingering worry of conceptual idolatry as distinct from physical idolatry. One question is what would count as conceptual idolatry. It may be that having false views about God counts as conceptual idolatry. But William Wood argues that this cannot be right, and that conceptual idolatry instead requires thinking about God “in the wrong way”, in particular ways that would negate attitudes such as “reverence, gratitude, and humility” (2021, 122). Assuming Wood is correct, the threat of idolatry does not attach merely to trinitarian model-building but onto any kind of reflection that precludes having the right intellectual or emotional posture toward God. Trinitarian model-building can be idolatrous, but so can formulating natural theological arguments, as God’s existence may become primarily a conclusion to be inferred, which may overshadow reverence and awe toward God. But that it can be idolatrous does not entail that it must be so. Wood also notes that analytic theology can be a form of spiritual practice, for it demands concentrated attention and a sense of wonder, among other actions and attitudes (ibid., 185–186). Much of the same applies to trinitarian model-building or the appreciation and apprehension of extant trinitarian models. Understanding some of the recent models offered by analytic theologians requires careful attention to the details of the case and the employment of various metaphysical and linguistic conceptual tools. The models can also

202  Eric Yang be awe-inspiring and conducive to evoking wonder, as depicting the doctrine of the Trinity is no ordinary feat as depicting mundane objects.26 This abides by Yadav’s apophatic approach, where God is presented in a gerrymandered, or we might say distorted way, and yet it leads the one contemplating into awe and wonder (2016, 32). We recognize trinitarian models as distortions because we cannot depict God as God actually is. Failing to provide an accurate depiction should remind us of God’s ineffability and incomprehensibility. The models are not trying to analyze God or make God amenable to our intellectual concepts. The charges against ontotheology do not stick when we construe trinitarian models as artworks that inspire and evoke worshipful attitudes. As much as physical icons are used as a means or path to engage in the worship of God, so conceptual icons can be used in the same way. People worship in different ways. Some employ music, ingest bread and wine, hear Scripture, offer signs or kisses of peace, or communicate with God. Some modes of worship are linguistic and others are not. Some modes of worship are more cognitively oriented and others are more affective. One can use a trinitarian model as one way of trying to think about God as God has been revealed, recognizing that this neither describes nor represents God as God actually is. But it recognizes how other and transcendent God is, which should lead us to humility when thinking about God and to wonder and marvel at the God Christians worship. Notes 1 The exact nature, function, or goals of these models have been mostly underspecified in the literature, though there has been some recent attention to the approach of model-building as it relates to theological methodology (Crisp 2021, Wood 2016). Understanding theological models is crucial for understanding the use of trinitarian models, of which I say more in (unpublished). 2 These ways of understanding paradoxes can be found in Rescher (2001), Sainsbury (2009), and Anderson (2007). 3 Branson (2019, 1055) helpfully shows the ways in which it can be logically inconsistent either by being syntactically inconsistent in a language or (semantically) unsatisfiable in a language. 4 See Branson (2018) and Jedwab and Keller (2019). 5 For more on this, see Coakley (2002) and Torrance (2020, 136). 6 See Augustine (2002). 7 Marmodoro (2018). 8 This is compatible with rejecting anti-realism, where these truths are minddependent, and with maintaining these claims as non-metaphorical (Jacobs 2015, 167). However, it is also open to regard such claims as mind-dependent or as metaphorical (McFague 1982). 9 The phrase should be ‘models of the doctrine of the Trinity’, but for sake of ease, I will use ‘models of the Trinity’. 10 If we take all of the ecumenical councils, then other claims deemed as heresies, such as monothelitism, are ruled out as well. 11 This relation is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive. 12 Anderson avers that the relation between a divine person and God must be numerical identity in order to capture the intended historical meaning (Anderson 2007,

Depicting Doctrine 203 19–20). However, Pawl argues that the relation cannot be strict identity (nor can it be instantiation of divine properties), since they fall afoul of several worries (Pawl 2020, 108–112). However, defenders of strict identity or instantiation may be able to avoid those worries. What is important is that the historical formulations can reasonably be taken as not requiring numerical identity (or any specific sameness relation). 13 Nuances of the sort given by Leftow (2004), Pickup (2016), or Effingham (2015) left aside. 14 For an example of this, see Craig (2019). 15 There seems to be historical precedence for doing so. Consider Basil of Caesarea, a Cappadocian theologian instrumental in defending the claims later formulated in the Nicene Creed, who states that “what I say at best a token and reflection of the truth; not as the actual truth itself. For it is not possible that there should be complete correspondence between what is seen in the tokens and the object in reference to which the use of tokens is adopted” (Letter 38, in NPNF2, vol. 8). Some have taken these statements as indicating that Basil offers these tokens (or models) as approximations (Anderson 2007, 26), but that is difficult to square with the fact that “Basil’s answer to this and to any such difficulty was to declare that what was common to the Three and what was distinctive among them lay beyond speech and comprehension and therefore beyond either analysis or conceptualization” (Pelikan 1975, 223–224). 16 Distortions may also be due to the attempt of infusing icons with energeia or the kind of dynamic vividness that makes the art lively (Corenlia Tsakiridou 2013, 7–8) [Icons in time, persons in eternity]. 17 For more on this, see Tollefson (2018, 122). 18 Leftow develops his views in 2004 and 2007. 19 If one takes the ecumenical councils as authoritative, then additional constraints may also come into play, as Scott Williams (2022) has argued that Leftow’s model is inconsistent with some of the pronouncements from the sixth ecumenical council. 20 Davis develops his view in the chapter “Perichoretic Monotheism” in 2006. 21 A trinitarian model can approximate the truth better than another if the latter does not accept all the relevant trinitarian claims (assuming that those claims are true). Thus, one of these models can be regarded as better than a Sabellian or Arian model that denies one of (1)–(3). 22 Anderson does state in that footnote that Coakley (2002) seems to intimate such a view. 23 For one such criticism, see Duncan 2021. 24 For such a response, see Bailey, Thornton, and van Elswyk (2021) 25 There are also ways of defending the veneration of physical icons from the charge of idolatry. See, for example, Wolterstorff (2015) who argues that the veneration of an icon can count as another act, viz. honoring or worshiping God. 26 Though there may be no mundane objects, especially since philosophical analysis of some of these objects may be surprising. This fits with a Christian view in which all that God has made is to be wondered at, appreciated, and enjoyed.

Bibliography Anderson, James. 2007. Paradox in Christian Theology: An Analysis of Its Presence, Character, and Epistemic Status. Eugene: Wipf & Stock. Antonova, Clemena. 2010. Space, Time, and Presence in the Icon. London: Routledge. Augustine. 2002. On the Trinity: Books 8–15, edited by Gareth Matthews and translated by Stephen McKenna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bailey, Andrew, Allison Krile Thornton, and Peter van Elswyk. 2021. “Why Animalism Matters.” Philosophical Studies 178: 2929–42.

204  Eric Yang Beall, Jc. (2023). Divine Contradiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Branson, Beau. 2018. “Ahistoricity in Analytic Theology.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92: 195–224. Branson, Beau. 2019. “No New Solutions to the Logical Problem of the Trinity.” Journal of Applied Logics 6: 1051–92. Brower, Jeffrey, and Michael Rea. 2005. “Material Constitution and the Trinity.” Faith and Philosophy 22: 57–76. Byerly, Ryan. 2019. “Truthmaker Trinitarianism.” TheoLogica 3: 77–97. Coakley, Sarah. 2002. What Does Chalcedon Solve and What Does It Not? Some Reflections on the Status and Meaning of the Chalcedonian ‘Definition’, in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall S. J., and Gerald O’Collins S. J. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cotnoir, A.J. 2017. “Mutual Indwelling”, Faith and Philosophy 34: 123–51. Craig, William Lane. 2019. “Is God the Son Begotten in His Divine Nature?” TheoLogica 3: 22–32. Crisp, Oliver. 2021. The Importance of Model Building in Theology, in T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology, 9–19, edited by James M. Arcadi and James T. Turner, Jr.. New York, NY: T&T Clark. Davis, Stephen T. 2006. Christian Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Duncan, Matthew. 2021. “Animalism Is Either False or Uninteresting (Perhaps Both).” American Philosophical Quarterly 58: 187–200. Effingham, Nikk. 2015. “Multiple Location and Christian Philosophical Theology.” Faith and Philosophy 32: 25–44. Hasker, William. 2013. Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jacobs, Jonathan D. 2015. “The Ineffable, Inconceivable, and Incomprehensible God: Fundamentality and Apophatic Theology.” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 6: 158–76. Jedwab, Joseph, and John A. Keller. 2019. “Paraphrase and the Doctrine of the Trinity.” Faith and Philosophy 36: 173–94. Leftow, Brian. 2004. “A Latin Trinity.” Faith and Philosophy 21: 304–33. Leftow, Brian. 2007. Modes Without Modalism, in Persons: Human and Divine, edited by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marmodoro, Anna. 2018. Gregory of Nyssa on the Trinity (With Focus on His Letter Ad Ablabius), in Exploring Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical, Theological, and Historical Studies, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Neil B. McLynn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McFague, Sallie. 1982. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Molto, Daniel. 2018. “The Mereology of Latin Trinitarianism.” Religious Studies 54: 395–418. Mooney, Justin. 2021. “An Episodic Account of Divine Personhood.” Religious Studies 57: 654–68. Ouspensky, Leonide. 1978. Theology of the Icon. New York, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Page, Ben. 2017. “The ‘Power’-Ful Trinity.” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9: 155–80.

Depicting Doctrine 205 Pawl, Timothy. 2020. “Conciliar Trinitarianism, Divine Identity Claims, and Subordination.” TheoLogica 4: 102–28. Pelikan, Jaroslav. 1975. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Pickup, Martin. 2016. “The Trinity and Extended Simples.” Faith and Philosophy 33: 414–40. Rescher, Nicholas. 2001. Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range, and Resolution. Chicago, IL: Open Court. Sainsbury, R.M. 2009. Paradoxes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schaff, Philip, and Henry Wallace (Eds.). 2007. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series, vol. VIII. New York, NY: Cosimo Classics. Tollefsen, Torstein Theodor. 2018. St. Theodore the Studite’s Defence of the Icons: Theology and Philosophy in Ninth-Century Byzantium. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Torrance, Alexis. 2020. “Defining and Supplementing Conciliar Trinitarianism: A Response to Timothy Pawl.” TheoLogica 4: 129–37. Tsakiridou, C.A. 2013. Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity: Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image. London: Routledge. Tuggy, Dale. 2011. “On Positive Mysterianism.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69: 205–26. van Inwagen, Peter. 1988. And Yet They Are Not Three Gods but One God, in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, edited by Thomas Morris. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Williams, Scott M. 2022. “Discovery of the Sixth Ecumenical Council’s Trinitarian Theology: Historical, Ecclesial, and Theological Implications.” Journal of Analytic Theology 10: 332–62. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 2015. “Would You Stomp on a Picture of Your Mother? Would You Kiss an Icon?” Faith and Philosophy 32: 3–24. Wood, William. 2016. “Modeling Mystery.” Scientia Et Fides 4: 39–59. Wood, William. 2021. Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yadav, Sameer. 2016. “Mystical Experience and the Apophatic Attitude.” Journal of Analytic Theology 4: 17–43. Yang, Eric. (Unpublished). Theological Modeling and Models in the Sciences.

Index

analogy 7, 19, 46, 57, 152, 154–172, 199; irreducibly analogical 157–159, 165–167, 170; irreplaceability 162–166 analytic theology 10, 50–51, 64–65, 78, 99–100, 189–191, 201, 204–205 apophaticism 15, 193–194, 196, 200–201 Aquinas, Thomas 12, 14–16, 64, 140, 146, 152 asceticism 131 atheism 51, 91

Ecclesiastes 130–133, 135, 137–139, 141–153 entailment 18–19, 24–25, 28, 31, 34, 39, 56, 59–62, 64, 66, 88, 176; logical consequence 24, 31, 48, 55, 60–62, 73, 75, 175–177, 181; logical entailment 60 eternity 115–120, 123, 156, 191, 203, 205 eucharist 174–175, 179, 181, 186 exclusion 27 explosion 87, 176

Barth 113–129; Church Dogmatics 113, 121–129; Romans II 113–116, 118, 120–121, 123–127

faith 7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 41, 43, 46–47, 51, 64, 80, 110, 114–115, 117–121, 123–124, 126–128, 153, 159, 163, 168, 170, 172, 175, 177, 179, 181, 187–189, 201, 204–205; paradox of faith 114–115, 118, 120–121 FDE 19–20, 25–28, 34, 38–39, 42–43, 45, 47–49, 51, 66, 71, 73–75, 77, 110, 176–177, 181, 188 flourishing 130–131, 133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 149, 151, 153

Catechism of the Catholic Church 173–174, 181, 190 classical logic 4–5, 7–8, 18, 24, 31–32, 34–35, 47, 66, 69, 73–75, 77, 83, 191, 196 Complementary Christology 73–77 Contradictory Christology 18–20, 27, 29–30, 33–37, 40, 43, 51, 65–67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 97, 99, 110, 187, 189 contrary 15, 26–29, 33, 59, 106, 137–138, 143; negation contrary 26–27; satisfiability contrary 27 creed 23–24, 80, 110, 195, 203 detachment issues 51, 62–63, 65 devotion 43–44 dialectic 121–122, 124 divinity 10, 12, 14–15, 27–29, 46, 64, 84, 88, 92, 105, 109, 173–174

gap 52, 61, 63, 176 glut 8, 34, 45, 52–54, 57–58, 61–63, 174, 176, 178, 182–183, 186 Hegel 101–107, 109–112 heresy 47, 74, 96, 190, 198 humanity 10, 12, 27–29, 38, 46, 49, 84, 88, 93, 105, 109, 116, 122–123, 126, 128, 150 humility 19, 93, 146–149, 156, 168, 201–202

Index  207 iconography 191, 197, 200–201; conceptual iconography, 191, 197, 200–201; icon, 198–199, 203–205 identity 173, 194–196, 198, 202–203, 205 idolatry 201, 203 incarnation 10–17, 19, 34–35, 37–39, 41–42, 44–46, 48–49, 53, 55, 57, 64–66, 79, 89, 95–96, 99, 128, 174–175, 179, 181, 190, 204 inferential inertness 38 knowledge 2, 58, 80, 87, 89, 98–99, 106, 125–126, 128, 141–142, 144–147, 154, 169, 180, 182– 185, 188–190 love 48, 104, 132, 134, 138, 140, 152, 155, 158–159, 168, 171, 184, 193 McCall, Thomas 53, 64–65, 174, 186–187, 190 metaphor 19, 57, 108 MMK 44 modality 61 Morris, Thomas 10–12, 15–16, 96, 99, 205 Mueller-Lyer 3, 7 multilocation 67–69, 194 mysterianism 99–100, 200, 205 narrative 11, 16, 40, 49, 133, 135–136, 146–149, 151, 153 negation contradictories 25–26 non-classical 8, 18, 26, 31–32, 61–62, 73, 83, 87, 107, 191 non-contradiction 67, 69, 87, 106

ontotheology 202 opposites 37, 101–102, 104, 106–111 orthodoxy 10, 24, 49, 74, 190, 194 paraconsistent 17–19, 26, 34, 45, 47, 50–51, 87, 100, 107–108, 110– 111, 175–176 Pawl, Timothy 6, 8, 13, 15–16, 53, 65, 67, 75–76, 78, 81, 95–96, 100, 195, 203, 205 phenomenal conservatism 86–89, 95, 99 Piranesi 1, 8 pride 140, 146, 152 proper functionalism 86, 89, 95, 97–98, 190 proposition 4–5, 18, 21–23, 25, 31, 38–39, 46, 48, 52, 63, 69–70, 86–88, 92–95, 97 Rea, Michael 16, 53, 64–65, 99, 194, 204 Religious Mystery 178, 180–181, 183 ROY G BIV 36 satisfiability contradictories 26 scripture 59, 75, 81, 88–89, 92–93, 97–98, 122, 126–127, 202 sensitivity 183, 185 Solomon 133–153 subclassical 55–56, 61–62, 66, 72, 83, 87, 97, 99 The Full Truth Argument 33–34 transcendence 46, 57–58, 156, 194 trinity 40–41, 53, 55–56, 65, 74, 79, 99, 173–175, 179, 181, 186, 189, 191–200, 202–205 wisdom 50, 126, 133–142, 144, 146–149, 152–153