The Contradictory Christ
Jc Beall begins his book on contradictory christology with a quotation from Tertullian's Treatise on the Incarnation on Christ:
'…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. That these two sets of attributes, the divine and the human, are each kept distinct from the other is, of course accounted for by the equal verity of nature’
Apparently contradictory claims like these would be preserved in what became orthodox christology as defined by several ecumenical councils, most famously in the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Rejecting Nestorianism and Eutychianism it affirmed that Christ is one person with two natures — without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.
The difficulty in understanding what this means has not been lost on generations of Christian theologians. Yet attempts to explain it without contradiction have tended to err into one or other of the heresies Chalcedon was rejecting. The problem, however, has always been that if the on the surface contradictions cannot be resolved into a consistent theory then the rationality of Christian belief is undermined. The incarnation, after all, is one of the central doctrines of Christian theology. A consistent account must be given.
In his new book, The Contradictory Christ, Jc Beall wants to say that this is wrongheaded. Yes, Chaledconian christology is contradictory but rather than try to explain this away, the contradiction should be affirmed. Christ is both mutable and immutable. Really is passible and impassible etc. The apparent contradictions are real contradictions. Christ is a contradictory being.
But what about the law of noncontradiction? Doesn’t it rule out the possibility of true contradictions? Well yes (more or less), says Beall, but why should we accept the law of noncontradiction? Beall’s provocative view is that we shouldn’t. The best theories of logic deny it.
Most people - including theologians - accept the law of noncontradiction without reflection. It just seems to be the case. The law can be stated in numerous ways, one is that ‘it is impossible that the same thing can at the same time both belong and not belong to the same object and in the same respect.’1 You can’t eat your cake and have it too. This is just obvious. Yet coming up with valid arguments for its universal application isn’t, as it turns out, easy. Aristotle was the first to formulate the law in his metaphysics. But modern and contemporary logicians - even if ultimately affirming the law - find his arguments weak.
Despite the longstanding influence of Aristotle’s logic, its weakness is why the principal target of Beall’s criticisms is the, so-called, classical logic formulated by Frege, Russell and co. Aristotle - sorry Thomas - is not the philosopher. Classical logic was developed particularly in the context of mathematics. It’s correct that mathematics can’t have true contradictions but that is domain dependent. It is an error, therefore, to simply take what obtains in mathematics and assume it applies to everywhere else. Life, would you believe it, is bigger and more complex than that.
Instead Bealls says there just are a greater number of logical possibilities than the classical account allows. To be more precise, in addition to every statement being true or false, a statement may also be true and false (gluts) or neither true or false (gaps) — gluts being the central concern of the book. Applying classical logic generally (i.e. outside the domain of mathematics) arbitrarily limits the space of logical possibilities. The arguments for Beall’s position are well laid out in the book and I certainly couldn’t do better than he does at explaining them. But in arguing for this he appeals to a well known logical problem as an example of a glut: the liar paradox. Simply stated; this sentence is false. So if false it is true. If true it is false. Here we have a true contradiction. The sentence is both true and false. There are, then, both good arguments for the view and there are known examples of true contradictions.
In establishing that logic permits true contradictions Beall is able to clear a path to say that contradiction is not an objection, in principle, to any theory. But the worry of many is that once contradiction is permitted then how does one stop appeals to true contradictions when a given theory runs up against the buffers? The answer, and I think he is certainly right about this, is that it is - or would be - no different from identifying the truth of any statement per its domain. If there are good reasons for believing contradictory statements then there are good reasons. Nothing more can be asked for.
This is to say, that christology does not necessarily need to be contradictory but if we arrive at a christology that is contradictory for good reasons then the contradiction is no reason to reject it. Beall does not rehearse the reasons why we get a christology that ,at first blush at least, is contradictory, he simply takes it as read. But he is certainly right to say that it’s not a novel view to see orthodox Christology as contradictory. The fact that so many theologians past and present have attempted to consistentise speaks clearly to that. What he does do, though, is to suggest that we shouldn’t be surprised that Christ is a contradictory being. Isn’t he unique? Doesn’t he involve the union of the finite and infinite? Here we shift decisively from the domain of logic to something like theological reasoning.
Beall considers many objections to his view in the book. He also runs over various attempts to explain the contradictions as only apparent. From shifting the meaning (qua accounts and so forth) to the epistemologically motivated mysterianism of James Anderson. This is all fine. Like Beall I find the explanations unconvincing. Some, not his words, bordering on tediousness if not for ingenuity. The virtue of his account is that the sub-classical logic he advances is independent of theological considerations. The true theory of logic is what it is. The true theory of christology is what it is. The two are consistent. But the appeal to the uniqueness of Christ as a justification for at least being not surprised by the contradiction seems to me to be misplaced. Not that we should be surprised but that we shouldn’t.
There are two reasons for this. The first is that sub-classical logic does not, in principle, mind whether a set of claims is contradictory or not. It’s indifferent to it. This means that we would not expect Christ to be contradictory anymore than we would expect anything else to be contradictory (or not contradictory for that matter.) We look at the reasons etcetera, etcetera and we decide one way or the other. The second is that we have examples of true contradictions other than Christ. Beall, as noted, mentions the liar paradox. Interesting as this may be, it’s not in the same league as God incarnate. If that’s the case, then why would we expect or not be surprised that Christ is a contradictory being? What seems to motivate this view, beyond various theological tropes, is the infrequency of true contradictions. Yes there are examples but not really that many. Our inductive experience of the world leans overwhelmingly towards noncontradiction. Our best theories also work well assuming noncontradiction. So if anything is likely to be a true contradiction it is Christ. I just don’t see it. One other creaturely example speaks plainly against it. More likely that if sub-classical logic is the truer account then we should simply have no preference. We attend, if we must, as best we can, first in sorrow and then, perhaps, in joy.
Notably towards the end of the book Beall acknowledges how the tradition has ultimately thrown up its arms. We don’t really understand this and we probably can’t. It is, in the end, a mystery. Beall can agree it is a mystery in a particular sense. A logical theory doesn’t, after all, require explication of how it is the case. This we simply don’t know. But it is not a mystery in the sense that it is beyond or above logic. We affirm the contradiction coherently. This is what matters for any theory as a theory. The chief virtue of the contradictory Christ is that we get to keep both but if we take the incarnation to be something entirely different, entirely new, then we might think again — great, indeed, is the mystery of godliness: god was manifest in the flesh. Or not.
Contradiction //plato.stanford.edu/entries/contradiction/