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arminian, bible, books, calvinist, christian, christianity, election, John Piper, paradox, religion, scripture, The Pleasures of God, theology
…a few more thoughts on embracing biblical paradox
Unless God has clearly told us what he will or will not do, it seems a little presumptuous (if not downright laughable) for flawed, finite beings like us to think we somehow intuitively know what the all-wise, all-powerful, transcendent God and Creator of the universe would or wouldn’t do. In reality, our intuitions about God are marred by sin and limited by human nature, and therefore often unreliable.
A while back I came across a helpful comment by someone named India:
It seems to me that one of the surest ways to fall into theological error is to make an argument about what God would or would not do based on our own fallible conceptions of what a good God ought to do. After all, this is the same reasoning that leads atheists to reject God (because a good God wouldn’t permit evil) and universalists and annihilationists to reject the notion of hell (because a good God wouldn’t punish people eternally).
In a similar way, we should be cautious about making bold assertions that the Bible couldn’t possibly teach a certain doctrine, simply because we can’t imagine that it would. John Piper said something that arrested me the first time I read my favorite book of his, The Pleasures of God:
My aim is to let Scripture stand–to let it teach what it will and not to tell it what it cannot say.
Wow. How many times have I heard someone (in so many words) tell the Bible what it cannot say? That sentence alone is worth the price of the book (and it’s nowhere near the best thing he says in it). Piper continues:
For example, the statement, “God cannot choose individuals unconditionally and yet have compassion on all men,” is based on a certain kind of philosphical assumption, not on Scripture. Scripture leads us precisely to this paradoxical position. I am willing to let the paradox stand even if I can’t explain it.
Anyone, regardless of theological persuasion, can make this mistake. Calvinists can make it. Arminians can make it. Those with Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or various Protestant backgrounds make it. I can make it. You can make it.
The bottom line is, we’re not as smart as we think we are. Are we content to let the paradoxes of Scripture stand, even if we can’t explain them?
who am i? 
Hi, I am curious to know what are some specific paradoxes that you allude to. I agree that it would be presumptuous for people to question an omniscient God, but strictly speaking, that assumes the Bible is divinely composed. I look forward to your thoughts.
Hi, ruip. Let me make a couple of quick introductory remarks, and then I’ll try to give you a couple of brief examples.
First, I do begin with the assumption that the Bible is divinely composed, and think there is good reason to do so. I realize, of course, that not everyone begins there, and that it’s possible you may not.
Second, I’m no expert on this or any other biblical subject. I usually have more questions than answers myself, although I think there are people who are capable of giving very satisfying explanations for most of the questions that arise from examining the paradoxes in Scripture.
What are some specific examples?
The Bible says that God is “slow to anger” (Ex. 34:6) and yet that “His wrath is quickly kindled” (Ps. 2:11). It says that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and yet that “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). There are probably hundreds of small, specific examples like that.
Then there are larger, more philosophical questions. How can God be absolutely sovereign (which the Bible teaches) and yet man be absolutely responsible for all his actions (which the Bible also teaches)? How can God be sovereign and yet not be the author of sin?
Those are just a few examples. Thank you for visiting and thanks for your question!
Scripture indeed reveals to us things we struggle to fully comprehend. I think there is wisdom in being able to admit some things work in God’s economy, even if we struggle to reconcile them in ours.
Thanks for your comment, docdeer. It’s humbling for us to have to admit that God’s thoughts are so much higher than ours, isn’t it?
It is presumptuous as finite beings to think that we could ever fully understand the infinitely divine.
We should be immensely thankful that He even chose to give us His word to reflect and meditate on, to live by.
That we cannot fully comprehend it is due to our short comings, not His.
Andy,
I am thankful, and constantly humbled by the wonder and beauty and complexity of God’s Word.
Barry,
Another great post. The Piper quotes are super!
Derek
I probably mention Piper too often, but very few people have helped me think through some of these issues the way he has. I appreciate your encouragement, Derek; also, thanks for the links.
So true. Reminds me of this quote that I read recently, quoting Calvin:
“John Calvin says that Christians ‘are drunk with the false opinion of our own insight and are thus extremely reluctant to admit that it is utterly blind and stupid in divine matters.’ ” – John Calvin quoted in Discipline of Spiritual Discernment by Tim Challies, p. 159
Don’t think I could say it better myself.
Great quote, Ronnica! I had to chuckle, even though I know it wasn’t meant to be funny. It’s good, I suppose, to laugh at our blind, drunken stupidity.
I don’t understand. Why do you first assume the Bible is true and continue to accept Christianity knowing all these contradictions? If we are too dumb to understand God, doesn’t that suggest the Bible is not divinely authored? I don’t think accepting that the Bible isn’t authored by God is a big deal…it’s written by humans, like any other. Also, you wouldn’t have to expound these human, textual contradictions that you want to resolve. What do you think
ruip,
I appreciate your questions. Derek (below) has done an excellent job, much better than I could, of addressing the subject of biblical paradox. I won’t attempt to add anything to his thoughts on that issue. I do want to respond very briefly, though, to your question about whether the Bible is divinely authored.
As Derek mentioned in his comment, it was contemplating both the words, and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that ultimately convinced me (and other Christians) that Jesus was exactly who He claimed to be, and that He not only deserved my trust, but rightly demanded it.
To take that a step further, because I believe that He’s trustworthy, I readily believe that the entire Bible is trustworthy. Why? Because Jesus believed it was. Here are just a few examples (from this article by Gary Habermas) of Jesus’ confidence in the authority and infallibility of the Old Testament writings:
As I said previously, I’m no expert on any of this. And I’m not trying to convince you of anything, really; I’m just trying to explain why I’m convinced that the Bible is God’s inspired and authoritative Word, and why I therefore take the paradoxes of Scripture seriously. I’ll close with a couple of New Testament passages:
I believe those words to be true, and I believe that my trust in them is warranted and well grounded both in the reliability of Jesus, and in the historical reliability of the documents that communicate His words and actions.
In closing, there are various articles I could recommend by former atheists or agnostics who became followers of Jesus Christ. Instead, I’d like to recommend a book. If you can obtain a copy of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, a highly educated Oxford don and Cambridge professor (as well as a one-time atheist who later became a Christian), please consider reading it. I wish you the best.
Hi Ruip,
I’m a friend of Barry’s and a regular reader of this blog. I’d like to offer an answer to your question, if I can.
First, I think your question is a very good one. I’ve often asked myself the same kind of question. Here’s how I answer it:
1. For Christians, Biblical paradox means “apparent contradiction.” The reason we use the term “paradox” is that we believe the contradictions are only apparent. Therefore, they are not truly contradictory, but ultimately reconcilable by someone (in certain cases, only God).
2. Biblical paradoxes fall into several categories:
A. The “easy” ones. These are mere rhetorical paradoxes such as Christ’s statement, “He who loses His life for My sake will find it.” They’re more ironic than contradictory, and fairly easy to understand.
B. The “difficult” ones. Deeper philosophical paradoxes that require serious thought to penetrate. The human mind can undestand them, but not easily. These are similar to a puzzle that takes time to put together; once it’s finished, the picture becomes very clear. An example would be, “If God is perfectly good, how can He not immediately punish people when they do wrong?” The Bible gives a very good answer to this question, but it takes some study to find it.
C. The “impossible” ones. There appear to be a few Biblical paradoxes that only God can understand. This is not to say that we can’t explain them at all. For example, the Incarnation of Christ: God united Himself with human flesh and became a man, but He did so without losing any of His divinity (this we conclude logically from a survey of many Biblical texts). So far, nobody can fully explain this without breaking Scripture or logic. So, we simply affirm that Christ is fully God and fully man. The Bible says it, but it doesn’t fully explain it. It’s apparently contradictory to our finite minds. However, if God is Almighty, He can certainly accomplish such a feat – and much more, also.
3. We believe that God is so great that the mind of man simply cannot get itself wrapped around some things in the Bible. I’d say 90 percent of the Bible is very direct, and 99 percent is fully explicable, but some mysteries remain – especially when we start talking about the nature of God. In fact, the Bible seems to say this in a number of places. Here is a brief sampling of verses:
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Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.
Job 9:10 [Job speaking of God] Who does great things, unfathomable, And wondrous works without number.
Job 37:5 [Elihu speaking] God thunders with His voice wondrously, doing great things which we cannot comprehend.
Psalm 145:3 Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised, And His greatness is unsearchable.
Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
Ecclesiastes 8:16-17 When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the task which has been done on the earth (even though one should never sleep day or night), and I saw every work of God, I concluded that man cannot discover the work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover; and though the wise man should say, “I know,” he cannot discover.
Isaiah 40:28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth Does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.
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Logically, we expect a divinely authored Bible to yield some things we can’t understand. We aren’t saying that there are real contradictions in the Bible, or that God is in any way irrational or illogical. Rather, we believe He is supra-logical, which means He is above logic. In this stance, we affirm that logic is always valid, but it is also limited in what it can do. It can explain most things, but not everything.
By acknowledging that we don’t know how everything works (in a Biblical context), we’re simply saying that God is greater than we are. For a Christian, this conclusion would seem to be warranted by EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS, not just the Bible.
Ruip, thanks for considering the points in this oversize comment. I hope this helps you see where we are coming from.
I’ve written a few articles on this topic. If you’d like to find out more, these links might be a good starting place:
http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/2008/07/biblical-foundations-of-paradox-mystery.html
http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/2009/04/10-affirmations-of-theoparadox.html
Also, if you are of a philosophical bent, the Pensees of Blaise Pascal are well worth reading. Pascal was a genius who explored Biblical paradoxes, and he was also a brilliant mathematician, inventor, and philosopher. I’m sure you’ve heard of “Pascal’s Triangle.”
Ultimately, though, if you want to understand the Bible – I would urge you to look to the words and works of Jesus Christ. He might just rock your world. For Barry, and me, and thousands of others, it all changed when we started trusting in Him.
Thanks,
Derek Ashton
I don’t believe there are paradoxes in the Bible. What we have are “apparent” contradictions. Sinful humans see contradictions that are not there.
Suppose the Bible says that God’s wrath is revealed against all sinners who have not been converted and that God hates the reprobate? Perhaps you’re reading “common grace” into the Scriptures when it isn’t there? Calvin himself never taught any such doctrine. In fact, you won’t see it taught until the neo-Calvinist movement began with Kuyper, Bavinck, et. al.
It is one thing to believe that we don’t know everything. It is quite another to say that Scripture is not perspicuous. 2 Timothy 3:15-17.
Peace,
Charlie
http://www.reasonablechristian.blogspot.com
Hi, Charlie. Thanks for visiting. I’ve enjoyed browsing your blog, and I understand your position on common grace; it’s not new to me. I do disagree with it, though, as well as with your reading of Calvin. Hopefully, we can agreeably disagree. Grace and peace to you.
ruip:
I believe the Bible is true because of the weight of literary, historical and archaeological evidence which supports such a warrant.
I don’t believe there are contradictions in Scripture. Contradiction and paradox are not the same. No one said we were too dumb to understand God, but isn’t it fair to say that that which is finite has difficulty grasping that which is infinite? We believe the Bible was written by human beings who were inspired by God – so it isn’t merely a human book. So, since the Bible teaches absolute divine sovereignty and complete human responsibility, it may be a bit difficult to fully comprehend, yet believing such is not illogical.
Thanks for your comments. I hope you’ll continue to discuss this here – I’d like to hear what else you have to say on the topic and to hear your response to us.
Dr. Galyon,
You managed to reduce my entire thesis into a couple of lines. I wish I had the gift of brevity!
Derek
James:
And to everyone else, how do you interpret the parts such as in Acts where angels rescue Paul and the disciples from jail, or any other part where the supernatural intervene. If you are willing to believe a dead person was supernaturally resurrected, why use logic at all, when you can just say God did this and that? Evidently, the “spirit” isn’t enough, and you have to figure ‘paradoxes’ out through a different method, which is logic. And since you believe in God, you only need logic where your faith doesn’t suffice. You only believe what cannot be proved false.
Skeptics perhaps use more logic since they don’t want to use “faith” as an explanation. The different uses of faith and logic is why conversion didn’t work for me. The average church just uses psychological techniques such as being happy and being around a majority of ‘Christians,’ and being nice to each other and singing praise songs perhaps with the theological hope that the “spirit” will convert people. Yet are these social ‘Christians’ not the same as those who are more scholarly and willing to investigate what the Bible claims? Even after 2000 years, Christians themselves still don’t understand what faith is, and the understanding of faith diverges significantly, so I wonder if even ‘Christians’ themselves are saved.
I’d like your insight.
ruip:
I think you are referring to the Apostle Peter being rescued by an angel (rather than St. Paul), nonetheless, I interpret that part of Acts to mean just this – that a supernatural being was sent by God to rescue the apostle. Does that defy logic? Not at all. It merely affirms that the physical is not all that exists.
How does an affirmation of the resurrection defy logic? If there is a God who has power over all life, then it is not impossible or illogical to believe He raised One from the dead. Now apply logic to the resurrection itself. Would the Apostles die for a dead leader whom they claimed had been raised from the dead? Since the religious leaders of the day were opposed to Christ, why didn’t they simply produce His body and end the entire discussion? Logic dictates that those who were afraid prior to the resurrection of Christ must have experienced something extraordinary to suddenly become bold. Logic dictates that the religious leaders and the Romans could have easily done away with Christianity before it even got off the ground with the presentation of a body. Faith and logic are not opposed to each other, to say the least. In fact, faith and reason go hand in hand. I don’t believe something simply because it cannot be proven false, but because there is much warrant for belief.
For me (and for multitudes of Christians), faith means trusting that Christ Jesus has taken away my sin and guilt through His life, death and resurrection. That is the core of faith – believing that God has done something I couldn’t do for myself and making me right with Him. This is the center of the Christian faith.
I look forward to your reply.
I appreciate your thoughtful reply. Unfortunately, I can’t agree with you on faith being logical. If it were completely logical, a new term for ‘logic’ would not be needed and Jesus does not seem to describe faith in logical terms anyway. Since Jesus never explicitly defines faith, I think it’s just as fair for me to interpret what faith is as much as it is for you. If it helps you, I write from a technically philosophical sense, and some of my ideas are shared by Kierkegaard, who, though he was Christian, thought faith was irrational as well. So strcitly speaking, when I say something is ‘illogical,’ I don’t mean it is impossible…and it doesn’t seem you or I will be convinced from logic anyway.
However, from what I get from your response, your logic seems to depend on the Bible being inerrant. Well, I think some parts are more historically supported than others. For example, the part in Matthew where the dead saints bodily rise from their graves to ‘many’…I think that would have been a noted incident, but it is only written in Matthew. Given that some parts of more historically accurate, how do you conclude that all the Apostles died for their beliefs? I think only Eusebius notes that, but he lived during the 3rd century.
In Acts, the author (who was historically anonymous, as opposed to ‘tradition’) says Christians preached the resurrection 7 weeks after the crucifixion. Since Christianity was a minor cult, it is possible that the opposing authorities simply did not care enough to check if there was a corpse–which would have decomposed by then anyway. People experience ‘extraordinary’ things all the time. Apparently, enough people believed in Hitler to eventually kill millions of people.
It is late so I will add later.
“Now apply logic to the resurrection itself. Would the Apostles die for a dead leader whom they claimed had been raised from the dead?”
People die for others all the time. What’s so special about a teleological suspension?
“Since the religious leaders of the day were opposed to Christ, why didn’t they simply produce His body and end the entire discussion?”
Since Christianity was a minor ‘cult,’ why would the leaders LOGICALLY want to? If normal people don’t believe in dead people coming back to life again, they aren’t going to take Christians seriously.
“Logic dictates that those who were afraid prior to the resurrection of Christ must have experienced something extraordinary to suddenly become bold. Logic dictates that the religious leaders and the Romans could have easily done away with Christianity before it even got off the ground with the presentation of a body.”
After 7 weeks, considering that Jesus died during Spring, any body would have decomposed too much to identify anyway. By the way, why do you presume that people follow logic anyway? If people heeded logic so well, we wouldn’t have problems today would we?
“Faith and logic are not opposed to each other, to say the least. In fact, faith and reason go hand in hand.”
Why do you presume your illogical faith is logical?