Now I want to turn the reader’s attention to the second major issue to be considered in this chapter, namely, the place which we should assign to paradox in systematic theological formulation. I wish to begin by stating that I take for granted that the Christian reader wholeheartedly believes (1) that God is rational, that is, that God is logical, that he thinks and speaks in a way that reflects the so-called ‘laws’ of logic—the law of identity (A is A), the law of non-contradiction (A is not non-A), and the law of excluded middle (A is either A or non-A)—just as all other rational minds do, (2) that his knowledge is self-consistent, and (3) that he cannot lie (Tit. 1:2; Heb. 6:18). Accordingly, just because God is rational, self-consistent, and always and necessarily truthful, I would insist that we should assume that his inscripturated propositional revelation to us—the Holy Scriptures—is of necessity also rational, self-consistent, and true. (In the light of our just concluded discussion, I would even insist that the truth which God’s revelation intends to convey to us is, in addition, univocal truth.) That this view of Holy Scripture is a common Christian conviction is borne out, I would suggest, in the consentient willingness by Christians everywhere to affirm that there are no contradictions in Scripture. The church, on a wide scale, has properly seen that the rational character of the one living and true God would of necessity have to be reflected in any propositional self-revelation which he determined to give to men, and accordingly has confessed the entire truthfulness (inerrancy) and non-contradictory character of the Word of God.
Now while the evangelical church—that large portion of Protestant Christendom which believes that the Bible is the Word of God—everywhere and unhesitatingly confesses this, not all of its theologians and preachers have endorsed this conviction. While many Bible-believing theologians and preachers unwittingly do so, many other Bible-believing theologians and preachers self-consciously affirm that the Scriptures, even when correctly interpreted, will represent their truths to the human existent—even the believing human existent—in paradoxical terms, that is, in terms which (so it is said), while not actually contradictory, are nevertheless not only apparently contradictory but also cannot possibly be reconciled before the bar of human reason. It is commonly declared, for example, that the doctrines of the Trinity, the person of Christ, God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, unconditional election and the sincere offer of the gospel, and particular redemption and the universal offer of the gospel are all biblical paradoxes—each advancing antithetical truths which are unmistakably taught in the Word of God but which cannot possibly be reconciled before the bar of human reason.1
James I. Packer affirms the presence of such paradoxes in Scripture in his Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, although he prefers the term ‘antinomy’ to ‘paradox’:
… we have to deal with… antinomy in the biblical revelation… What is an antinomy?… an antinomy—in theology, at any rate—is… not a real contradiction, though it looks like one. It is an apparent incompatibility between two apparent truths. An antinomy exists when a pair of principles stand side by side, seemingly irreconcilable, yet both undeniable… [An antinomy] is insoluble… What should one do, then, with an antinomy? Accept it for what it is, and learn to live with it. Refuse to regard the apparent contradiction as real…2
Van Til even declares that, because man’s knowledge is ‘only analogical’ to God’s knowledge, all Christian truth will finally be paradoxical, that is, all Christian truth will ultimately appear to be contradictory to the human existent. Ponder his exact words:
A word must… be said about the question of antinomies… They are involved in the fact that human knowledge can never be completely comprehensive knowledge. Every knowledge transaction has in it somewhere a reference point to God. Now since God is not fully comprehensible to us we are bound to come into what seems to be contradictions in all our knowledge. Our knowledge is analogical and therefore must be paradoxical.3
I have contended that we must think more concretely and analogically… All the truths of the Christian religion have of necessity the appearance of being contradictory… We do not fear to accept that which has the appearance of being contradictory… In the case of common grace, as in the case of every other biblical doctrine, we should seek to take all the factors of Scripture teaching and bind them together into systematic relations with one another as far as we can. But we do not expect to have a logically deducible relationship between one doctrine and another. We expect to have only an analogical system.4
What should one say respecting this oft-repeated notion that the Bible will often (always, according to Van Til) set forth its (unmistakably taught) truths in irreconcilable terms? To say the least, one must conclude, if such is the case, that it condemns at the outset as futile even the attempt at systematic (orderly) theology that Van Til calls for in the last source cited, since it is impossible to reduce to a system irreconcilable paradoxes which steadfastly resist all attempts at harmonious systematization. One must be content simply to live theologically with a series of ‘discontinuities’.
Now if nothing more could or were to be said, this is already problematical enough because of the implications such a construction carries regarding the nature of biblical truth. But more can and must be said.
First, the proffered definition of ‘paradox’ (or antinomy) as two truths which are both unmistakably taught in the Word of God but which also cannot possibly be reconciled before the bar of human reason is itself inherently problematical, for the one who so defines the term is suggesting by implication that either he knows by means of an omniscience that is not normally in the possession of men that no man is capable of reconciling the truths in question or he has somehow universally polled every man who has ever lived, is living now, and will live in the future and has discovered that not one has been able, is able, or will be able to reconcile the truths. But it goes without saying that neither of these conditions is or can be true for any man. Therefore, the very assertion that there are paradoxes, so defined, in Scripture is seriously flawed by the terms of the definition itself. There is no way for any man to know if such a phenomenon is present in Scripture. Merely because any number of scholars have failed to reconcile to their satisfaction two given truths of Scripture is no proof that the truths cannot be harmonized before the bar of human reason. And if just one scholar claims to have reconciled the truths to his own satisfaction, his claim ipso facto renders the definition both gratuitous and suspect.
Second, while those who espouse the presence in Scripture of paradoxes are solicitous to point out that these paradoxes are only apparent and not actual contradictions, they seem to be oblivious to the fact that, if actually non-contradictory truths can appear as contradictories and if no amount of study or reflection can remove the contradiction, there is no available means to distinguish between this ‘apparent’ contradiction and a real contradiction. Since both would appear to the human existent in precisely the same form—contradictories—and since neither will yield up its contradiction to study and reflection, how does the human existent know for certain that he is embracing only a seeming contradiction and not a real contradiction?
Third, and if the former two difficulties were not enough, this last point, only rarely recognized, should deliver the coup de grace to the entire notion that irreconcilable (only ‘apparent,’ of course) contradictions exist in Scripture: once one asserts that truth may legitimately assume the form of an irreconcilable contradiction, he has given up all possibility of ever detecting a real falsehood. Every time he rejects a proposition as false because it ‘contradicts’ the teaching of Scripture or because it is in some other way illogical, the proposition’s sponsor only needs to contend that it only appears to contradict Scripture or to be illogical, and that his proposition is one of the terms (the Scripture may provide the other) of one more of those paradoxes which we have acknowledged have a legitimate place in our ‘little systems’, to borrow a phrase from Tennyson. But this means both the end of Christianity’s uniqueness as the revealed religion of God since it is then liable to—nay, more than this, it must be open to—the assimilation of any and every truth claim of whatever kind, and the death of all rational faith.
Now it begs the question to respond to this crisis in truth detection by insisting that in this situation one must simply believe what the Bible says about these other claims to truth and reject those that contradict the Bible, if one has already conceded that the Bible itself can and does teach that truths may come to the human existent in paradoxical terms, that is, in irreconcilable contradictory terms. Why should either proposition of the ‘declared’ contradiction be preferred to the other when applying Scripture to a contradicting truth claim? Why not simply live with one more unresolved antithesis? The only solution to this madness is to deny to paradox, if understood as an irreconcilable contradiction, a legitimate place in a Christian theory of truth, recognizing it for what it is—the offspring of an irrational age. If there is to be an offence to men in Christianity’s truth claims, it should be the ethical implications of the cross of Christ and not the irrationality of contradictories proclaimed to men as being both true.
By nothing said thus far have I intended to deny that the living God, upon occasion, employed paradoxes (understood as apparent but reconcilable contradictories) in his spoken Word to man. But he did so for the same reason that men employ them—as a literary device to invigorate the thought being expressed, to awaken interest, to intrigue, to challenge the intellect, and to shock and frustrate the lazy mind. But I reject the notion that any of God’s truth to men will always appear to the human existent as contradictory. Specifically, I reject the notion that the cardinal doctrines of the faith—the Trinity, the person of Christ, the doctrines of grace—when proclaimed aright to men must be proclaimed as contradictory constructs. What a travesty—to perpetrate the notion that the great and precious doctrines which are central and vital to Christian faith and life are all, at heart, a veritable nest of irreconcilable ‘discontinuities’!
Now I readily concede that it is possible for an erring exegete so to interpret two statements of Scripture that he thinks that they teach contradictory propositions. But I totally reject the idea that he will have interpreted the statements correctly. Either he misinterpreted one statement (maybe both) or he tried to relate two statements, given their specific contexts, which were never intended to be related to one another. To affirm otherwise, that is, to affirm that Scripture statements, when properly interpreted, can teach that which for the human existent is both irreconcilably contradictory and yet still true, is to make Christianity and the propositional revelation upon which it is based for its teachings irrational, and strikes at the rational nature of the God who speaks throughout its pages. God is Truth itself, Christ is the Logos of God, neither can lie, what they say is self-consistent and noncontradictory, and none of this is altered in the revelatory process. It does the cause of Christ no good, indeed, only positive harm results, when the core teachings of Scripture are portrayed by Christ’s friends, not only to the non-believing mind but even to the Christian mind, as at heart a ‘precious list of contradictories’.
But what about the examples cited earlier? What about the Trinity? Does not the classical doctrine of the Trinity present, if not a real contradiction, at least an apparent one? In order to illustrate how the systematician should go about his work, while my answer here must be somewhat brief, I will run the risk of oversimplification for the sake of showing why the widely-touted, so-called paradox of the Trinity—namely, that three equals one and one equals three—is in fact not one at all. Let it be said unequivocally at the outset, if the numerical adjectives ‘one’ and ‘three’ are intended to describe in both cases the same noun so that the theologian or preacher intends to say that one God equals three Gods and three Gods equal one God (or one person equals three persons and three persons equal one person) in the same way that one might say that one apple equals three apples and three apples equal one apple, that this is not an apparent contradiction. This is a real contradiction which not even God can resolve! But of course, this is not what the church teaches by its doctrine of the Trinity, although this representation is what is advanced all too often not only by lay people but by certain theologians who should know better. No orthodox creed has ever so represented the doctrine as far as I have been able to discern. In fact, it is apparent to me that all of the historic creeds of the church have been exceedingly jealous to avoid the very appearance of contradiction here by employing one noun—‘God’ or ‘Godhead’—with the numeral ‘one’ and another noun—‘persons’—with the numeral three. The church has never taught that three Gods are one God or that one person is three persons but rather that ‘in the unity of the Godhead there are three persons’ (Westminster Confession of Faith, II. iii), the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that while each is wholly divine, no one person totally comprehends all that the Godhead is hypostatically. I grant that some of the factors which insure the unity of the Godhead may be unknown to us. But I would insist that when the Bible refers to the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, it intends that we think of persons or distinct centres of self-consciousness within the Godhead, whereas when it employs the imprecise and flexible title ‘God’, it refers either to the Godhead construed in its unitary wholeness (for example, Genesis 1:26) or to one of the persons of the Godhead, specifically which one to be determined by the context (for example, ‘God’ in Romans 8:28 refers to the Father; ‘God’ in Romans 9:5 refers to the Son). Thus construed, the doctrine of the Trinity does not confront us with even an apparent contradiction, much less a real one. The triune God is complex but not a contradiction!
Similarly, the Christian church has never creedally declared that Christ is one person and also two persons or one nature and also two natures. Rather, the church has declared that the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was and continues to be God and man, in two distinct natures and one person forever’ (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 21, emphasis supplied). The person of Christ as well is complex but he is not a contradiction!
In this chapter I have not been urging a Cartesian rationalism which presupposes the autonomy of human reason and freedom from divine revelation, a rationalism which asserts that it must begin with itself in the build-up of knowledge. But make no mistake about it—I am calling here for a Christian rationalism which forthrightly affirms that the divine revelation which it gladly owns and makes the bedrock of all its intellectual efforts is internally self-consistent, that is, non-contradictory. And I urge the preacher and the ministerial candidate reading these words to strive for nothing less than the same consistency in both their theological formulations and their preaching deduced from that revelation. This will mean careful reflection and a doggedness in their labours as students of the Word of God as they seek to understand the individual truths of revelation and to harmonize these truths into a systematic whole. But this labour, admittedly difficult, is infinitely to be preferred to the suggestion of all too many theologians and preachers that we must assume that the Scriptures will necessarily contain unresolvable paradoxes. Not to set before oneself the goal of quarrying from Scripture a rational theology is to sound the death knell, not only to systematic theology, but also to all theology that would commend itself to men as the truth of the one living and true God.
Most perfect is the law of God,
restoring those that stray;
His testimony is most sure,
proclaiming wisdom’s way.
The precepts of the Lord are right;
with joy they fill the heart;
The Lord’s commandments all are pure,
and clearest light impart.
The fear of God is undefiled
and ever shall endure;
The statutes of the Lord are truth
and righteousness most pure.
Reymond, Robert L. 2003. The God-Centered Preacher: Developing a Pulpit Ministry Approved by God. Fearn, UK: Christian Focus Publications.
See George W. Marston, The Voice of Authority (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1960), 16, 17, 21, 70, 78, 87.
James 1. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Chicago: Inter-Varsity Press, 1961), 18–25.
Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1955), 61, emphasis supplied.
Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1973), 165–66, emphasis supplied.