The Absolute Paradox: A Kierkegaardian Consideration of Jesus Christ
What follows is the first essay I ever wrote. It’s an ontological examination of the nature of Jesus Christ, i.e., the Absolute Paradox or the God-Man. I wrote this over ten years ago and many of my philosophical and religious views have drastically changed since then. I’m not the same person who wrote this essay. I found a copy of it while doing some cleaning and just finished rereading it. I felt like I was reading the words of an entirely different person. It was an uncanny experience. Anyway, even though I would never write something like this now, I’m still proud of it for various reasons. I had written some stuff before it but this was my first real essay. I actually ended up presenting this paper at Truman State University at its 21st Annual Undergraduate Philosophy and Religion Conference. If you want to learn more about Kierkegaard, then you might want to check out a lecture I gave on his philosophy. Here’s the link.
The Absolute Paradox
With this essay I hope to establish two main points: (1) that the concept of the God-Man (Absolute Paradox) generates self-contradictory propositions, and (2) that the self-contradictory propositions the concept of the God-Man generates don’t necessarily disprove the reality of the God-Man.
Jesus Christ is obviously the foundation of Christianity. The Absolute Paradox (God-Man) is by far the defining doctrine of Christianity. However, most people don’t have a clear concept of what this doctrine actually means, nor do they have the slightest idea of the consequences it has theologically. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the Danish philosopher and theologian, called Christ “the Absolute Paradox” and with good reason. As far as I know, Kierkegaard is the first Christian to explicitly state what this doctrine means conceptually and dialectically, though I understand that many Christians in the past have understood it implicitly. There are three works in particular in which Kierkegaard via pseudonyms (Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus) discusses the Absolute Paradox: Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Practice in Christianity; the problem with much of what he has to say about the Absolute Paradox is that his thoughts are housed in extremely dense passages of philosophy.
And density is just one of the problems a reader faces in approaching Kierkegaard’s oeuvre; another comes in the form of the ironical nature of his works. These difficulties have lead Kierkegaardian scholars to be divided on how we ought to understand Kierkegaard’s notion of the Absolute Paradox; some of them believe what Kierkegaard means by “paradox” is a formal contradiction, and, therefore makes him an irrationalist; others are convinced Kierkegaard means the God-Man is beyond reason and not logically proven to be impossible by it, it’s this group of scholars who believe Kierkegaard’s philosophical endeavor is Kantian in its nature, in that he is trying to simply limit reason and not totally discredit and/or disregard it — I will not enter into a discussion of these opposing views at this point.
I should like to say right now I’m in no way giving a summary of Kierkegaard’s views on the Absolute Paradox; however, I will be drawing from his position. Despite what many Christians think about philosophy, it’s very useful; it teaches one how to reach the logical consequences of statements; it teaches one how to correctly make conceptual distinctions, among many other things. Kierkegaard, via the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, says in Philosophical Fragments that “an unshakeable insistence upon the absolute and absolute distinctions is precisely what makes a good dialectician” — I shall try my best to hold to this principle throughout this discussion. Kierkegaard had a great talent for this kind of analytic philosophy — his relentless attack on Hegelianism proves it — and one of the greatest examples of this is to be found in his conceptualizing Christ as the Absolute Paradox. This Christological discovery, or, I should say re-discovery, is one of Kierkegaard’s defining accomplishments as a thinker.
Before we go into a detailed description of the God-Man let us first establish that it is a biblical doctrine. Obviously, the Bible teaches that Jesus was a man, I can’t think of one denomination that would challenge this claim (although there were certain groups of people who held this to be true in the early days of Christianity: the Docetists and the Gnostics for example; also Marcion denied the reality of Christ’s flesh which Tertullian took him to task with in De Carne Christi). Jesus was born, he ate, he slept, he grew, he wept, he worked and he died like any man does (though no man died like him). The Bible teaches that Jesus wasn’t just partly a man; it teaches He was everything you and I are as humans. I think this is more than enough to establish Jesus’ humanity. To put it simply: Jesus was all human.
Now, Jesus as God, as Creator of the universe, is a whole other thing; like the Arians and the Ebionites before them, most people living here in modernity have great trouble accepting the doctrine that in Jesus Christ dwelled “all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). This is undoubtedly the most difficult assertion about Christ to believe; the question is: does the Bible itself support this claim? To this question I must answer that it does; there are many places in Scripture that support this claim: (Isaiah 53, Zechariah 12:7–8, Matthew 22:43–44, John 1:14, John 8:58, John 10:30, John 14:6–7, John 20:28, Acts 20:28, Colossians 2:9, 1 Timothy 3:16, etc.). For the sake of brevity I’m not going to take the time to perform an exegesis of these verses.
Now, let us begin our analysis of what it means to say that Jesus Christ is the Absolute Paradox. The first thing to know is I don’t mean this in any derogative or negative way; on the contrary, this is what makes faith possible; it is the necessary condition for faith — it is “The Way.” Perhaps it would be useful to be clear on just what a paradox is according to the dictionary before we get to the Absolute Paradox. Here’s the entry for the word “paradox” found @ merriam-webster.com:
Main Entry: par·a·dox
Pronunciation: \ˈper-ə-ˌdäks, ˈpa-rə-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin paradoxum, from Greek paradoxon, from neuter of paradoxos contrary to expectation, from para- + dokein to think, seem — more at decent
Date: 1540
1: a tenet contrary to received opinion
2 a: 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
3: one (as a person, situation, or action) having seemingly contradictory
qualities or phases.
All three of these definitions shed light on the nature of a paradox but the one I want to focus your attention to is the third one: “a person having seemingly contradictory qualities”; I’ve edited the definition to bring out the point I have in mind, namely, that a person can be a paradox; however, notice the use of the word “seemingly” in the definition. Christ is a paradox, yet, without the “seemingly” contradictory attributes. A paradox is a contradiction or an impossibility that is posited to somehow be (and it is being that establishes the qualitative difference here). Christ is a paradox and not a contradiction or an impossibility (though He is a contradiction and an impossibility); for if He is, then He isn’t a contradiction since a contradiction cannot be (according to ideality), and if Christ is, then He isn’t an impossibility, precisely because He does in fact have being — the truth that He is refutes the claim that He cannot be. Suppose x is logically and ideally impossible yet concretely and factually is; does ideal non-being refute factual being? Nay, on the contrary, reality refutes ideality, actuality refutes impossibility. The part of the definition about the paradox having “contradictory qualities” is where I really want to draw your attention; this notion of contradictory qualities, attributes or predicates is what I’m going to use to illuminate the paradoxical nature of Christ.
Let me ask you a simple question: what is man? You probably think that this is a rhetorical question but I assure it’s not. Let me ask you another question: what qualities or predicates best define man? And let me ask you yet another question: what are the qualities of man that differentiate him from God and what are the qualities of God that differentiate Him from man? Well now, let us list the standard predicates that are used to define God: (1) eternal, (2) infinite, (3) transcendent, (4) immutable, (5) omnibenevolent, (6) omnipresent, (7) omniscient, (8) omnipotent; now, by using the God predicates we can negatively discover the predicates that define man as a being that is the opposite of God, let us list them: (1) temporal, (2) finite, (3) immanent, (4) mutable, (5) limibenevolent, (6) limipresent, (7) limiscient, (8) limipotent.
Now, I know these last four words aren’t words one can find in any dictionary, they are, in fact, words I created; I did this for one reason: parallelism helps to clearly conceptualize opposing predicates. By “limibenevolent” I mean that man is limited in goodness; by “limipresent” I simply mean that man is limited in presence; by “limiscient” I mean that man is limited in knowledge, and, fourthly, what I mean by “limipotent,” as you can probably guess is that man is limited in power.
Does this conceptual analysis seem correct to you? Can you find any fault in ascribing these qualities to their respective beings? Is there anyone stubborn enough to object? Will anyone object? — I think not. And certainly no one would dispute the concepts which define man; and if they do, out of stubbornness, dispute the defining concepts of God it’s for one of two reasons: (1) they don’t believe God actually exists, or (2) they don’t conceive of God in the standard monotheistic sense. It should be known these two objections have no significant bearing on our analysis because: (1) we are not trying to prove the existence of God from His concept or definition alone (as did St. Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, etc.), and (2) we are only trying to get a clear conception of the God of monotheism.
If we are in concurrence on these distinctions between God and man, then let the fun commence! We are ready to start drawing conclusions from our analysis. Let us begin by analyzing these distinctions one by one and give them the attention they deserve.
The Eternal/Temporal Distinction
What do we mean when we say God is eternal? Well, for one thing we mean God is not “in” time. If God is the cause of time, then God existed before time, and if God existed without time, then time is not a necessary condition of His being. Another thing we mean by God being eternal is He has “always” existed (I put the word “always” in scare quotes because it has a temporal implication; also, saying God existed “before” time has the same logical problem). Philosophers avoid these semantic hurdles by saying God exists necessarily, but for the sake of discussion I’ll just use everyday language — albeit confused. These two aspects of God’s eternality should be more than enough to establish that God has never had a beginning, although, and somewhat ironically, He is in fact the “In the beginning” (Genesis 1:1). Everything began with the beginning-less. So God had no beginning, he has “always” existed. Man, on the contrary, is essentially a temporal being; he has a beginning in time. This is something all of the great existentialists agreed upon; Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre all saw that man is essentially temporal in his existence. If you take a fish out of water you still have a fish but if you take a man out of time you no longer have a man — in the moment man is taken out of time he becomes something else.
The main point to observe here is every human being has a beginning, has a birth; every one of us was thrown into time before we could understand what happened to us. Let me put this a little more concretely: everyone grows and matures, we are always becoming; we are always in a process of change. This is what I want you to understand about man’s mode of being: man is change (and change itself is essentially temporal). And not only change in the passive-biological sense of the word but also in the sense that man must always choose his manner of change, he perpetually (both actively and passively) projects himself onto the future. We are always making choices and can never stop choosing; a real clever fellow might proclaim he can stop choosing by choosing not to choose but what this clever fellow has failed to realize is he can never cease to choose even if he chooses to not choose, this is because man is essentially temporal; this means the choice not to choose isn’t something he can choose once and for all, the choice not to choose must be repeated every moment of the man’s life. This man can choose not to choose but this choice must be chosen repeatedly every second of his life, and, therefore, in all actuality he can never choose not to choose.
The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre said it best: “man is condemned to be free.” This means we are imprisoned by our freedom because we can never escape it. A man cannot choose to fix himself as an essence once and for all; he cannot make himself into a thing whose essence is the inability to choose. We can never turn ourselves into objects or things; a chair is just a chair, it has no say in the matter. We, on the other hand, always choose what we are. I said all of this to show how our mode of being is essentially temporal; how we are essentially choosers, and that there is no choosing outside of temporality. So we’re clear, the main thing to keep in mind about this distinction is it holds that God is beginning-less and every human being is not.
The Infinite/Finite Distinction
What do we mean when we say God is infinite? We mean God is unlimited, but what does this mean? This simply means God is unlimited in every aspect of His being; it means He knows no limitation or external determination; it means He is immeasurably and inconceivably great. I must say the predicate “infinite” covers a lot of ground but I’ll try to spell out all of this in due course. You should know that God’s infinitude is what is at the heart of the Latin prefix “Omni”; this prefix gives us the four famous properties which describe God’s being: omnibenevolent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. “Omni” literally means “all” but this should be understood as essentially meaning “infinite.” The first way in which God is infinite is He is not spatially limited, regardless of whether or not space is or is not limited; God existed prior to space, and is, therefore, not subject to it. God is infinite in space, time, presence, knowledge, wisdom, power and goodness. Now, obviously, when we say man is finite we simply mean the exact opposite of infinite; man is limited in space, time, presence, knowledge, wisdom, power and goodness; a man is not present in all of space and time but only present at one place at one time; man is not all knowing, all wise, all powerful and all good — man is limited.
I should like to inform you that the infinite/finite distinction really gives us all we need to make my point, but the price of learning is repetition, so I’m going to say a little something about the other distinctions just to make sure we are all on the same page.
The Transcendent/Immanent Distinction
By transcendent we mean God exists outside of space and time, and is, therefore, not subject to their laws. By immanent we mean man is in both space and time; man is subject to the laws of physics and the laws of nature.
The Immutable/Mutable Distinction
Immutable means unchangeable or immovable; God does not change in His being and does not move. If one holds that God is a perfect being, then one must also hold that God cannot change in any sense of the word and remain perfect, because any change in a perfect being would be a change for the worst — this means any change in God would make Him less than perfect. Another way of putting it is to say God is a necessary being, whereas man is a contingent being. Question: how can one move when one is everywhere? Question: How can you move to a place you are already at? God Himself says in Scripture He is immutable: “For I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6); this not only applies to God’s relation to space and time but also to His personality. God is who He is through and through, unlike us who must always choose who we are. God doesn’t have to perpetually choose who He is. This means in the God-Man we have a being that changes but who is also without change; we have a single being which is both necessary and contingent.
The Omnibenevolent/Limibenevolent Distinction
I would like to state right now I’m in no way saying with this distinction that Jesus Christ was immoral in any way, shape, or form; Christ, as a man, lived a perfectly good life. One must approach this distinction with great care because Christ Himself was not in the least immoral; this applies not only to His divinity but also to His humanity. But if Christ was morally perfect through and through, then why make this distinction? I’ll tell you why: Christ was in sin in the sense that He was born from a natural woman who, like all of us, inherited Adam’s sinful nature; Christ, as a man, was subject to hereditary sin. Christ experienced every sinful desire and temptation you and I do, and yet He sinned not; He never once gave in to the possibility of sin, and, so was not a sinner; he never comported Himself to Himself as a sinner. Now, God is righteous; God is perfectly just; everything He is and does is good; “God is love” (1 John 4: 8, 16), and, most importantly, God is sinless. God is complete in goodness; nevertheless, there is a paradox in relation to this goodness: God’s nature is all good, in the sense that God is incapable of being tempted to commit an evil act — that God is immune to the temptation of evil is precisely what makes Him absolutely complete in relation to goodness; man, on the other hand, is not complete in goodness because he’s subject to temptation, and, even if he lived a perfectly good life he would still not be absolutely good simply because he would’ve had to struggle against the temptation of evil — the fact he’s even tempted establishes he’s not complete in goodness.
Also, that man must in a striving perpetually choose to be moral is the greatest indicator of his lack of moral completeness. And, since Christ was a man He was morally incomplete. However, to say He’s not complete in goodness is not to attribute to Him any evil or moral shortcoming(s). Christ lived a perfect life and this is one of the most remarkable things about Him. Yet the paradox remains in that Christ, as a man, “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), but, as God, was not tempted to sin at all. Besides, the concept of sin is rooted in Otherness, simply meaning that sin is always sin against the Absolute Other — this Other being God. Now, if sin is an offense and a rebellion against God — and only God — how then could God sin against Himself? Yet this is the paradox: he who cannot sin could have sinned; for the paradox is the absolute synthesis of Likeness and Otherness. The ontological difference between man as a sinner and God as not a sinner is what Kierkegaard called the “absolute difference”; nothing, according to Kierkegaard, made man more different from God than sin. Note that this distinction establishes the contradictory difference between two natures and not two kinds of choices.
The Omni/Limi Distinctions
For the sake of brevity, I’ve combined the three classic omni/limi distinctions into one. We actually tackled these in the analysis of the infinite/finite distinction; but let’s quickly run through them again. God is omnipresent (all present or present everywhere) whereas man is limipresent (limited in presence). God is omniscient (all knowing) and man is limiscient (limited in knowledge). God is omnipotent (all powerful) and man is limipotent (limited in power). I think these distinctions are easily understood so I’m not going to waste any more time on them.
Let the inferences begin. If we say that Christ is all God and all man, then we have the greatest problem, logically speaking, that anyone can have: the problem of reconciling two absolutely opposed concepts, i.e., the concept of God with the concept of man. From a logical perspective we are in a contradiction, are we not? How do we mediate (conceptually reconcile) this contradiction? The answer is that we can’t, we don’t. There is no way to reconcile the concept of eternality with the concept of temporality; the eternal has no beginning but the temporal does. If Christ is the Eternal, then He has no beginning, and if He’s a temporal man, then He had a beginning, so Christ had a beginning but didn’t have a beginning; do you see the problem here? Now, a pastor might say this is no problem because they’re two separate natures, but if that is true, then Christianity goes caput. Besides, the Bible doesn’t support this claim; the pastor is just frightened by the truth and not just any truth, but, “The Truth.” Christ was a unified person: the man was all God and the God was all man.
“Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). Do you see that, God purchased the church with His own blood; God had blood, the blood He shed on the Cross of Calvary. Jesus Christ is the Absolute Paradox precisely because He is the God-Man in an absolute sense. Let us continue, God is infinite but man is finite; well, how can one thing be both unlimited and limited in space, time, presence, goodness, knowledge, wisdom and power. Let’s just list out some of the formal contradictions the Absolute Paradox generates:
1. Christ was beginning-less and not beginning-less.
2. Christ was located everywhere in space but not located everywhere in space.
3. Christ was outside of time but not outside of time.
4. Christ was present everywhere but not present everywhere.
5. Christ knew everything but didn’t know everything.
6. Christ was immune to temptation and not immune to temptation.
7. Christ was all powerful but was not all powerful.
8. Christ was immutable but not immutable.
9. Christ was outside of the natural world but not outside of the natural world.
To put it as simply as I can: Christ is impossible. Christianity is at its essence absolutely absurd! At this moment you’re probably thinking to yourself that I’m not talking like a good Christian should talk; to this I must say “thank you!” This is the great truth that Kierkegaard re-discovered: Christianity cannot be embraced rationally — it can only be embraced by a qualitative leap of faith. It’s from Kierkegaard himself we get the notion of an existential “leap.” St. Paul has been telling us for the last 2,000 years that Christianity is a matter of faith; so what’s the big surprise? It was Tertullian who, approximately 1,800 years ago, in De Carne Christi penned the words “I believe because it is absurd.” I haven’t whimsically whipped up the intension of the concept of the Absolute Paradox; I’m simply attempting to point it all out. Conceptually speaking, I’ve simply taken an x-ray photo of the skeletal structure of the God-Man whereas most people perceive the structure only through the perception of the flesh. When I said a moment ago that “Christ is impossible” I meant it; He is logically impossible. Ideality proves the God-Man is a formal contradiction, a self-canceling concept akin to the concept of a square-circle.
But just in case you’re unclear as to my intentions with the words I’ve written, I shall now state what my personal relationship to Christ is: Christ is my Lord and Savior who died so I might have my sin(s) forgiven and be reconciled to God; it is through faith in His Death, Burial and Resurrection that I have eternal life — and only through faith. I’m a Christian, plain and simple. You might be asking yourself: if you’re a Christian why are you trying to make Christianity so difficult; why are you trying to make faith so hard? To this I reply that I am, like Kierkegaard, trying to make faith hard — but not any harder than it actually is. The Absolute Paradox presents one with an existential dilemma: EITHER reject the Paradox because the understanding is logically offended by it; OR embrace the Paradox by making a qualitative leap of faith. If one makes the leap of faith that person’s life is forever changed because one discovers the Truth: that the absolutely impossible and the absolutely contradictory has being. One discovers in this moment the Truth that “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). It is only in this moment that the Contradiction becomes the Paradox; that the Contradiction has the breath of life breathed into its nostrils.
I believe I’ve established the first point I set out to: that the concept of the God-Man generates self-contradictory propositions. Now, I would briefly like to establish my second point: that the self-contradictory propositions the concept of the God-Man generates don’t necessarily disprove the reality of the God-Man. I should like to start with a principle: ideality doesn’t determine reality, reality determines reality. What this means is that thought itself (ideality, logicality, conceptuality) cannot determine if x is real or not; it’s reality which determines if x is real or not. What a thing is pertains to ideality but that a thing is pertains to reality. Here’s a little thought experiment to help clarify what I have in mind: suppose all self-conscious beings simultaneously ceased to exist, in this moment ideality would cease to exist as well, whereas reality (the space-time continuum) would not cease to exist — unless, of course, George Berkeley was correct in holding “esse est percipi” (to be is to be perceived).
Ideality is the “realm” of: (1) logic, (2) dialectics, (3) conceptualization, (4) imagination, and (5) abstraction; whereas reality is the “realm” of the space-time continuum. Ideality and reality are “realms” of being, that is both “realms” are. It follows that each “realm” of being has a mode of being. If x has being in the “realm” of ideality, then x has ideal being, but, if x has being in reality, then it’s mode of being is factual being, or concrete being. In ideality there are degrees of being, a necessary being has more being than a contingent being, e.g. God has infinitely more ideal being than a stone does; factual being, on the other hand, doesn’t have degrees of being, reality (as Kierkegaard points out in Philosophical Fragments) is subject to the Hamlet dialectic: “to be or not to be.” In the “realm” of reality a stone has just as much factual being as God does. Now that we have the distinction of ideal being and factual being in place we can see why a contradiction (impossibility) rooted in ideality cannot necessarily establish that the same contradiction (impossibility) is contradictory (impossible) in reality. This is true since the principle of non-contradiction is of law of ideality, not of reality; despite the fact reality might very well conform to the law most of the time. Before we return to our discussion of the Absolute Paradox and the bearing this distinction has on it, I would like to consider three examples of ontological confusion in light of this distinction:
1. The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God
This is the famous a priori argument which is claimed to prove the existence of God from His concept/definition alone. The problem with this argument is it attempts to move from a conceptual (ideal) necessity to an actual (factual) necessity by thought alone. This is impossible because ideality doesn’t determine reality even if this involves a logical contradiction. Reality doesn’t bend to deductive reasoning; St. Anselm would say that to understand the concept of “that than which nothing greater can thought” is to understand this concept must not only have ideal being but must also correspond to a factual being, otherwise we have a contradiction. I must confess that St. Anselm seems to be correct in his reasoning, to reject the factual being of “that than which nothing greater can be thought” is a contradiction because then I could think of something greater than “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” But all this establishes is a contradiction in the “realm” of ideality, and what is contradictory in ideality isn’t necessarily contradictory in reality. The problem with this whole enterprise of trying to prove God’s existence a priori is that it includes an ontological confusion: namely, what is true in ideality must be true in reality. To establish that something is true in concrete reality necessitates experience, not abstract argumentation. Necessity, contingency, possibility, and impossibility are the existential (modal) categories of ideality; reality only has two existential categories: actuality and non-actuality. As for the contradiction we’re left with in rejecting the factual existence of the necessary being which the ontological argument purports to prove, all I can say is that the argument is the child of ideality and since the argument doesn’t prove in reality what it proves in ideality I believe this contradiction is solely the concern of ideality itself — reality couldn’t care less about it.
2. Zeno’s Paradoxes
Zeno’s paradoxes attempt to establish the impossibility of motion in space a priori. The problem with these paradoxes is that they share the same ontological confusion as the ontological argument, Zeno and his teacher Parmenides believed the only true knowledge is rational knowledge, so what is true in ideality must be true in reality. Now, I grant the genius of Zeno’s arguments but he makes a mistake in assuming real space corresponds to the ideal space of Euclidian geometry. With Einstein’s theory of relativity and the development of non-Euclidian geometry, man now has an entirely different conception of real space. Again, what is true in ideality isn’t necessarily true in reality, and if we don’t project Euclidian space onto real space, then Zeno’s paradoxes are isolated to ideality, and then have no significant bearing on the space-time continuum. It’s important to note that the vast majority of people who have become familiarized with Zeno’s paradoxes continue believing in motion despite the fact they understand motion has been shown to be logically impossible; now, I’m not trying to disprove Zeno fallaciously via argumentum ad populum, I’m simply pointing out the fact that people tend to have an implicit awareness of the fallaciousness belonging to this ontological confusion.
3. The Wave-Particle Paradox
In the 17th century there was a debate between whether light and matter consisted of particles as Isaac Newton claimed, or if they consisted of waves as Christiaan Huygens claimed. In more recent times most physicists have come to agree that all particles have the same nature as waves do, and vice versa. There doesn’t seem to be a problem with this unless you know that the concept of wave-nature and the concept of particle-nature are opposed to each other. If one takes these two concepts and then claims they both belong to x, then one has contradicted his or herself. The problem here is the same as before only in the negative: what isn’t true in ideality mustn’t be true in reality — this is just incorrect. Imagine me walking into a room filled with the brightest physicists living today and attempting to disprove a priori the theory of wave-particle duality, I should hope I’d be laughed out of the room since I would’ve been arguing from the same ontological confusion that St. Anselm and Zeno did. Reality will not conform to the laws of thought simply because we say it must. It’s important to see that in ideality wave-particle duality is a contradiction, whereas in reality it’s a paradox since it has factual being — in ideality truth is determined by thought; in reality truth is determined by experience (observation and/or experimentation).
In returning to the concept of the Absolute Paradox we now have the proper understanding of the distinction between ideality and reality which is imperative to our analysis. Throughout this discussion I’ve referred to Jesus Christ as a contradiction, impossibility, and a paradox, at times I’ve also rejected the notion that Christ is a contradiction and/or impossibility, but now that all of the dialectical elements are in order I will try to clarify myself. Christ is a contradiction and impossibility in the “realm” of ideality but as we have seen this doesn’t necessarily mean He is a contradiction and/or impossibility in reality. All ideality can tell us of the God-Man is He’s logically impossible, not that He’s actually impossible; because if we’re going to say that He’s actually impossible due to Him being logically impossible, then we are logically dishonest for: (1) rejecting that the ontological argument proves the factual being of God, (2) for rejecting Zeno’s claim that motion is impossible, and (3) for excepting the truth of the theory of wave-particle duality. If Christ is ideally impossible, then where does that leave us in relation to His factual being? It leaves us with an objective uncertainty. History cannot prove the factual being of the God-Man even if it proved the factual being of a poor carpenter from Nazareth who died by crucifixion. If the God-Man is ideally impossible and historically un-provable, how, then, does a person come to the truth of His factual being? In one word: faith. It’s through faith that the Contradiction becomes the Paradox. It’s through faith that one comes to the reality of the God-Man. However, my dialectical endeavor wasn’t intended to establish the reality of the God-Man, but to establish that the self-contradictory propositions the concept of the God-Man generates don’t necessarily disprove the reality (factual being) of the God-Man, which I believe I’ve sufficiently shown to be the case.
So where does this leave us? It leaves us who are Christians with a relationship to apologetics, to history, to the Bible, and to the nature of our very own faith that is very different from the relationship our “pastors” tell us we are supposed to have with these things. One must realize putting one’s faith in the Absolute Paradox has far reaching consequences as to the Christian’s stance on apologetics, history, theology, soul-winning, the Bible, preaching, science and philosophy, etc. I think it best to discuss some of the objections that some of you might be making at this point:
1. Objection: Abstraction
One might say that this whole Absolute Paradox business is so far removed from the experience of what it’s like to be saved that it’s just a waste of time; that the moment of conversion isn’t a leap of faith into an abstract impossibility, it’s the moment one receives Jesus Christ as a personal Lord and Savior; to this I say you’re most certainly right but I will also add receiving Christ involves understanding who He is: namely, the God-Man. If one is to receive Christ one must have an understanding of who He is. I think a distinction needs to be made between an implicit understanding of Christ and an explicit understanding of Christ. I understand the great majority of Christians are not philosophers but that doesn’t mean they don’t have an implicit understanding of who Christ is. When a person thinks to his or her self about Christ, and is astonished at the notion that the God who has existed forever was born and grew up, this person understands the Paradox — having realized that Christ is the Creator who became a creation. When a person considers that God, who is the all powerful Creator of the universe, became a completely powerless infant that person’s understanding has collided with the Paradox; for is there anything more paradoxical than the Creator-God in helpless need of a fresh change of diapers? Is there anything as paradoxical as the diapered God?
A person who has thought these thoughts has met with the paradox. And this diapered God is who Christ is and if you don’t have faith in this Absolute Paradox you don’t have faith in Christ. Christians have always understood the paradoxical nature of Christ; it is only recently that Christians have cowardly repented of the Paradox at the feet of modernity. My point here is that the kind of philosophical wizardry we find in Kierkegaard isn’t a necessary condition for meeting with the Paradox, and he of all people knew this all too well; the reason he presented the nature of Christ like this was to show philosophy cannot lay claim to Christianity; that Christianity cannot be incorporated into any philosophical system founded upon logical principles. Christianity isn’t philosophy — it is something much higher. I will give you a necessary condition though; it is a necessary condition of faith in Christ that one collides with the Paradox, because if one doesn’t “see” the Paradox, then one doesn’t “see” the Christ.
2. Objection: Mediation (Conceptual Reconciliation)
By “mediation” I mean the rational reconciliation of opposing concepts, the concept of mediation is a Hegelian concept. This objection basically says that Christ isn’t actually a logical impossibility; that the nature of Christ can be made rational. The person who holds to this position has failed to truly understand the paradox in its illogical integrity. But I think it important to explain how a person can come to think that the paradox can be mediated.
I should like to start with the attempt to mediate the Paradox via perspectivism. Heraclitus was the first great perspectivist; he is known for his pithy aphorisms which can be somewhat paradoxical. For example, he said that “the way up and the way down are one and the same”; he seems to be contradicting himself by saying that the opposing predicates of up and down belong to the same the thing: the way. How is one to make rational sense of this statement? The key lies in perspectivism. Imagine yourself walking on a road approaching a hill, from your perspective the road leads you up the hill; now imagine a person at the top of the hill walking towards you, from this person’s perspective the road leads down. Interpreting Heraclitus’s aphorism in light of perspectivism allows us to rationalize the seemingly contradictory.
A Christian might try to make this kind of move when thinking about Christ’s nature, a move that has its roots in the interpretation of two of the gospels: Luke and John. It’s very common for Christians to hold that each of the gospels emphasize certain aspects of Christ’s nature: Matthew presents Christ as the King of the Jews, Mark presents Him as a suffering servant, Luke presents Him as the Son of Man, and John presents Christ as the Son of God (most theologians, however, usually just make the distinction between the Synoptic Gospels [where Christ is presented as a man] and the Gospel of John [where Christ is presented as the God incarnate]). Now, it’s certainly not my intention to say it’s a misinterpretation of the Bible to say each of the gospels shed a specific light onto the nature of Christ; rather, my intention is to merely point out this can actually distort ones understanding of Christ’s nature. When a pastor performs an exegesis of, say, the Gospel of John, he will often point out the verses that establish Christ’s divinity, and, sometimes when Christ does something miraculous the pastor will say this shows Christ to be the Son of God. The same goes for the Gospel of Luke, a pastor will point out some passage that really shows Christ in all His humanity.
This can leave the Christian thinking that Christ’s nature is divided, not unified; this is the problem this kind of emphasized interpretation of these two gospels can have. Christ was not divided in two; He was a unified consciousness no different from you or me — except, of course, He was entirely different. My point is that no mediation via perspectivism can rationalize Christ; yes, there are times in Scripture that show Christ in His divinity but one must also remember His humanity is just as present in these verses and vice versa. Pastors love to scream out the words “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” for a theatric effect and then they’ll go on saying how these words are the words of the Son of Man, Christ in His humanity experiencing hell (absolute alienation from God) as a lost man does; ah, yes, very true, but what they leave out is that that same person is God Himself calling out to Himself and asking Himself why He has forsaken Himself. No amount of perspectivism can fix this up rationally. When Christ walked on water it wasn’t simply that God walked on water but that a man walked on water; when Christ prayed to God in Gethsemane and asked for the cup to pass from Him it wasn’t simply that a man asked God for mercy but that God asked God for mercy. I must return to the verse from the Book of Acts to support my position here: “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood”; this verse says God shed His blood, this means divinity and humanity were absolutely unified in the person of Christ. Christ’s divinity and humanity were not divided, they were one in perspective, and this is precisely why Christ is the Absolute Paradox which cannot be relatively synthesized with an appeal to a perspectival equivocation.
Another way that a person might try to mediate the paradox is via analogy. Let’s take the analogy of color: black and white are opposite colors but if you combine them you get the color grey which has both black and white in it, and is, therefore, both black and white which is paradoxical but not impossible. I must say this is a weak analogy if there ever was one. This is because the concepts of white and black are subject to gradation, and are not absolutes in themselves; black and white are opposites bridged by a continuum of gradations. This analogy is weak because the distinctions of eternality/temporality and infinitude/finitude are not bridged by a continuous structure.
3. Objection: Mythological Correlation
One of the objections people tend to make against the God-Man is that it’s a kind of plagiarism; that it’s an unoriginal story which has been told in many ancient mythologies: Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Babylonian, etc. It’s true that many of the details of Christ’s life are found in these mythologies, as established by Lord Raglan in his work The Hero: A Study of Tradition, Myth and Drama; Raglan’s scale identifies 22 characteristics that one finds in the lives of the great mythological heroes (Oedipus, Jason, Moses, Gilgamesh, Mohammad, Robin Hood, Dionysus, The Buddha, Theseus, King Arthur, Hercules, Krishna, Beowulf, Romulus, Perseus, etc.) — obviously not all 22 characteristics apply to the lives of all the mythological heroes. Here’s the list of the 22 characteristics:
1. The hero’s mother is a royal virgin.
2. His father is a king and
3. often a near relative of the mother, but
4. the circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. he is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or maternal grandfather, to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. reared by foster-parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. on reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and or giant, dragon, or wild beast
12. he marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. prescribes laws but
16. later loses favor with the gods and or his people and
17. is driven from the throne and the city after which
18. he meets with a mysterious death
19. often at the top of a hill.
20. His children, if any, do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. he has one or more holy sepulchres.
Christ’s life shares 19 of these characteristics, and because of this many people believe the parallelism between the life of Christ and the “lives” of myriad mythological heroes to be more than enough to dismiss Him as a cheap, cultural plagiarism: something all the ancient cultures had before Christianity had it. Now, I admit this kind of parallelism is uncanny, however, I still think there’s a problem with an objection to the Absolute Paradox based on mythological correlation: namely, the Absolute Paradox isn’t found in any of these mythologies; it should also be noted that these “historical” details are not essential to the notion of the Absolute Paradox (unless, of course, the Absolute Paradox is appropriated existentially in an individual’s life through that infinite passion called faith). It’s most important to keep in mind that none of the great mythological heroes are reputed to be the God-Man, although, some of them are said to be a god-man. The concept of a god-man is a far different concept than that of the God-Man for three reasons. These three reasons are dialectically related, in that each one conceptually involves the other two.
First, a god-man is a demigod or superhuman, a being who in its being is more than human and less than divine (in the strict sense of the word). Jesus Christ isn’t said to be more than a man but less than God, He is said to no more than a man and no less than God — this difference is qualitative, not merely quantitative. A demigod has some human characteristics and some divine characteristics, however, these characteristics aren’t contradictory — in fact they’re the same characteristics simply with different quantitative measures. Heracles was said to be a son of god, but is this concept of a-son-of-god identical with the concept of The-Son-of-God? I think not, because Heracles was never considered to be identical with Zeus as Jesus Christ is considered to be identical with God the Father; Heracles was a completely separate personality from the personality of Zeus, whereas Christ is said to be the same person as God. Mythology has humans, gods and demigods but not the God-Man.
Second, the gods of mythology are not conceptually identical with the God of monotheism. This is why the human and the divine can be synthesized in the mythological heroes without there being a contradiction. Zeus wasn’t considered to be eternal, infinite, transcendent, immutable, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent, as the God of the Bible is, which means the predicates we ascribed to man we must also ascribe to Zeus. Zeus wasn’t all knowing or all powerful, and because of this the human and the divine in mythology are bridged by a dialectical continuum (every continuum is quantitative, and, though, there are moments of qualitative difference within a continuum we must always remember that these moments [leaps] are rooted in subjectivity), which means the difference between them is relative and not absolute. Unlike the God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, Zeus wasn’t thought to be absolutely perfect, and, therefore was imperfect (subject to lack). So, even if Heracles was the full embodiment of Zeus we still wouldn’t have the contradictory qualities we find in Jesus Christ, and this is the qualitative difference between a god-man and the God-Man. This means the God-Man isn’t found in mythology; also, since Judaism and Islam reject the notion of the God-Man as blasphemous the only place one finds this concept is in Christianity.
Third, the synthesis of a god-man is merely a relative synthesis, whereas the synthesis of the God-Man is absolute. This is because a god-man is a combination of some human characteristics and some divine characteristics which are actually the same characteristics just with different quantitative degrees — which aren’t even contradictory to begin with. What this gets us is a being which is a quantitative midpoint on the continuum between the human and the divine, and thus makes its ontological status relative to a quantitative mediation between humanity and divinity. The God-Man is an absolute synthesis in the sense that there is no quantitative mediation between humanity and divinity in Him; this divinity isn’t the divinity of mythology, it’s not the relatively different, it’s the absolutely different. There’s no continuum between humanity and this divinity, which means that we can’t even begin to actually think the absolute synthesis. This absolute synthetic unity isn’t found in any of the ancient mythologies.
Christianity lays claim to the Absolute Paradox, and no other religion, philosophy or mythology can claim it. This refutes the claim that the God-Man Christianity preaches is a plagiarism — ironically, the God-Man is precisely what establishes Christianity’s originality.
Conclusion
I believe that I have established the two main points I intended to establish with this short essay: (1) that the concept of the God-Man generates self-contradictory propositions, and (2) that the self-contradictory propositions the concept of the God-Man generates don’t necessarily disprove the reality of the God-Man.
In closing I would like say that I have no delusions in relation to my philosophical abilities; I understand there are mistakes in my reasoning which I am unaware of, mistakes, which if pointed out to me, I would reflect on in great detail. I hope what I lack in philosophical virtuosity I make up for with a true passion and honesty towards the concepts discussed in this essay. I love philosophy and I hope it shows. And to anyone reading this essay, I would just like to tell you that I hope you have come to see Jesus Christ in a new way, I hope what I have said challenges and sparks you. Also, I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so I must acknowledge the philosopher from whom I have drawn from the most, the old melancholy Dane himself, Søren Kierkegaard. Also I would like to acknowledge Tertullian, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, René Descartes, G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant and Heraclitus.
