Abstract
This short volume is a companion to Jc Beall’s earlier work The Contradictory Christ. In that first volume, Beall set out a Christology that defended the apparent contradictory traditional theological account of the coincidence of humanity and divinity in Christ.
Divine Contradiction applies this approach to the problem of the apparent contraction at the heart of the traditional theological account of the Trinity: that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are simultaneously three and simultaneously one, that each are simultaneously God but that at the same time each are not identical. Perhaps the most famous formulation of this apparent contradiction is found in the Athanasian Creed, which Beall includes as an appendix to this current volume: ‘the person of the father is other than the son, [and] other than the holy spirit. But of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, there is one divinity, equal glory, and coeternal majesty. As the father [is], so the son [is], and so the holy spirit’ (p. 139).
Given that classical theology has rested content that these apparent contradictions are part of the content of revelation concerning the person of Christ and the Christian doctrine of God as Trinity, the recent rise in analytical theology gives rise to Beall’s concern to defend what, from a logical point of view, appears at first impossible – namely, the persistence of such contradiction. Theological approaches which take the rules of logic as a given and proceed from this fundamental basis, while wishing to retain the simultaneity of humanity and divinity in Christ, and of the threeness and oneness of the Trinity, attempt to demonstrate that the contradictions at the heart of classic theology are merely apparent. This is sometimes defended as a fundamentally apologetic move – to make Christian theology credible in a secular logical frame.
Beall’s approach in Divine Contradiction is a welcome reassertion of the classical doctrine of God within a logical frame, which seeks to make God the basis of theological speculation rather than the laws and principle of logic. This stands in the tradition of Descartes in acknowledging the possibility that, for God alone, outside the logical realm of creation, the impossible may be possible – or, in this case, the contradictory. Rather than presume the law of non-contradiction, which rules out the possibility that contradiction may lie at the heart of reality, Beall explores the possibility of contradictory divine reality utilizing logic itself. The use of logical apparatus may initially seem daunting to the beginner, but Beall’s explanatory prose is clear throughout.
Divine Contradiction is an extremely important work given the growing place of analytical theology in systematic theology and the philosophy of religion: Truth, in the end, is discovered by careful, sturdy, case-by-case steps. But in that rare case wherein the few core axioms blink brightly of apparent contradiction – over and over and over again – one ought to consider the rare but real possibility: the reality itself is contradictory. (p. 138)