Is the word "Dialetheism" properly described as an apparent contradiction in the Bible
I can't remember if Dialetheism is a correctly used Theological word to describe an apparent contradiction in the Bible. If not, please give me some insight to the proper word.
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I've not got a single instance of Dialetheism in my library (not even Perseus [;)] ). But I believe Paradox would be a better word for an apparent contradiction. IIRC Sproul deals with this in essential truths of the christian faith.
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Yup
[quote]
paradox is an apparent contradiction that under closer scrutiny yields resolution.
R. C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1996).
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I am looking for a word other than paradox. There is a word, and I believe it is Greek, maybe Latin for a Biblical Apparent Contradiction.
I have searched online, but, I heard, or read it someplace and now I can't track it down.
Thanks for your input, I appreciate it!
Thomas Black said:Yup
[quote]
paradox is an apparent contradiction that under closer scrutiny yields resolution.
R. C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1996).
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MJD said:
I am looking for a word other than paradox. There is a word, and I believe it is Greek, maybe Latin for a Biblical Apparent Contradiction.
Hmmm...
Antinomy A contradiction or tension between two or more laws, rules, or principles, each of which is held to be true.
Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, Rev. ed., 1st Crossway ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2001), 14.
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PDT also fills this out:
[quote]
antinomy. The bringing together of two principles, statements or laws that, even though appearing to be contradictory to or in tension with one another, are both believed to be true. A theological example of an antinomy is the belief in both the absolute sovereignty of God and human free will. Although both are held to be true, there is a tension between God’s will and our human will that cannot be easily or fully understood. See also paradox.
Stanley Grenz, David Guretzki and Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 12.
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Thomas Black said:
Antinomy A contradiction or tension between two or more laws, rules, or principles, each of which is held to be true.
Thomas,
Thank you sir, this is the word I am looking for! Do you know how this is pronounced? [Y]
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MJD said:
Do you know how this is pronounced?
"Ant Enemy" or An TIN emy
Google gives a pronunciation icon at the start of a define:antinomy search.
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You might want to look at Paradox in Christian Theology by James Anderson, in the Theological Studies Collection (alas, pricey collection and the books in it are not yet available unbundled). It has a whole section on the subject of Dialetheism:
4.4 Dialetheism
The
first of the two identified strategies for resolving the problem of paradox by
revising our laws of logic—namely, the rejection of deductive rules such as modus ponens—does not seem at all
promising. The second option is to reject the law of non-contradiction: the
principle that no statement can be both true and false. Understandably, this
approach is not a popular one among those attempting to address the problem of
paradox in Christian theology, particularly those with a professed concern to
preserve both rationality and orthodoxy. The comments of Thomas Morris typify
the disdain of scholars for this escape route:It should, however, be clear that the strategy of
defending the doctrine [of the Incarnation] by devaluing the status of logical
consistency has very little to be said for it from a philosophical perspective.
It is just a desperation move which embraces incoherence to avoid its sting.19Even
so, despite widespread disapproval the approach has been advocated by a handful
of writers.20 A relatively recent example is provided by John Dahms in
an article challenging the ‘unlimited applicability’ of logic.21
Dahms’ article is of particular relevance because its author claims that his
stance is motivated, at least in part, by the paradoxicality of certain central
Christian doctrines. In what follows, I will explain why Dahms’ specific
proposal is unsatisfactory before turning to assess the general philosophical
view that contradictions can be true.Dahms introduces
his case by explaining what he means by the term ‘logic’:The basic laws or principles of logic are commonly
said to be three in number: the law of identity, the law of contradiction and
the law of excluded middle.… [T]hese three are at least the foremost of the
laws of thought. Moreover, though the other two apparently cannot be derived
from it, writers often mention the law of contradiction when they have logic
generally in mind.22Dahms
notes that ‘orthodox thinkers commonly believe that logic is of unlimited
applicability’; for example, they believe that for every proposition p, it
is not the case that p is both true
and false.23 In the remainder of his article, Dahms focuses primarily
on the law of non-contradiction and argues, first, that there are good non-theological grounds for holding that
the law is limited in its applicability, and second, that from a Christian
perspective there are also good theological grounds for granting the truth of
some contradictions.Concerning the
non-theological grounds for rejecting the unlimited applicability of logic,
Dahms cites five reasons: (i) the problem of irrational numbers; (ii) Zeno’s
paradox of Achilles and the tortoise; (iii) apparent exceptions to the
principle that ‘according to logic the whole is equal to the sum of the parts’;
(iv) the ethical problem according to which a virtuous action must be ‘both
determined and free, which is a contradiction’; and (v) apparent exceptions to
logic in the realm of aesthetics (e.g., ‘harmonic discord’ in music).24
Whether any of these amount to good reasons for rejecting the law of
non-contradiction is debatable at best.25 But rather than engaging in
a detailed critique of this part of Dahms’ case, I propose instead to focus on
his discussion of contradictions within Christian
theology; for even if Dahms were right about accepting contradictions in non-theological areas, it would not
immediately follow that he has offered a satisfactory solution to the problem
of doctrinal paradox.Turning to
matters theological, Dahms writes:It is especially surprising that orthodox Christians
should hold to the universal applicability of logic. Various doctrines of the
faith provide problems for such a view.26He
cites four examples: (i) the fall of Satan (according to which, evil must
derive from good); (ii) the biblical view of the cross (according to which,
human sin is necessary to God and therefore ultimately good); (iii) the
doctrine of the Incarnation; and (iv) the doctrine of the Trinity. In each
case, Dahms suggests, the Christian who affirms these doctrines must thereby
implicitly affirm some contradictory truth. Thus, ‘it ought to be quite clear
that the doctrines of historic Christianity are not always compatible with the
law of contradiction.’27I will not
contest Dahms’ claim that these four Christian doctrines are paradoxical (i.e.,
at least apparently contradictory);
indeed, I have already indicated substantial agreement regarding his third and
fourth examples. The relevant question is whether Dahms’ recommendation that
Christians revise their understanding of the law of non-contradiction
constitutes a satisfactory solution to the problem. A number of objections
immediately suggest themselves.First, as I
observed in the preceding section, elementary principles of logic are
intuitively held to be necessary truths with a high degree of certainty: psychological certainty, at the very
least, if not rational certainty (as
many epistemologists would insist). As with modus
ponens, so with the law of non-contradiction: it lacks plausibility to
claim that doctrinal statements, however well supported, could be warranted to
such a degree as to justify abandoning belief in these intuitive laws of logic.
Dahms might counter that the Christian’s policy for belief revision should be
contextualized by the particular religious convictions and faith commitments of
the church community; but whether or not this line would persuade Christian
scholars, it hardly satisfies as a response to the extra-mural charge that
orthodox Christian beliefs are irrational.Secondly, it
might be objected that Dahms’ position is self-refuting since, as he himself
concedes, he has assumed the laws of
logic by way of arguing for their
limited applicability:It is to be emphasized that we have not stated that
logic is valueless, only that it is not always applicable. Logical
argumentation is frequent in the Bible. Logic was one of the things that made
it possible to put men on the moon. We have used logic in this paper.28Although
this objection might initially seem decisive, matters are not so
straightforward. For while Dahms has clearly assumed some logical principles—he would presumably insist that his
arguments are valid and his stated conclusions about the use of logic are not
both true and false—it is difficult to show that he has assumed the unlimited applicability of the laws of
logic. However suspicious, it is entirely consistent with Dahm’s thesis to
maintain that logic applies to the statements contained within his article, but
not to certain other statements.29 One might then object that
it is incumbent on Dahms to provide and justify some set of criteria, which can
be reliably and concretely applied, so as to distinguish those instances where
logic is applicable from those where it is not. As it turns out, Dahms
anticipates this obligation and proposes the following rule of demarcation:It would appear that [logic] is thoroughly reliable
when dealing with the nominal (being) but not when dealing with the verbal
(becoming) or the aesthetic. Our reliance on logic in this paper is justified
by the fact that we only use it of the existential and the aesthetic when we
are considering them in the abstract.30It
is not wholly clear what distinctions Dahms means to draw with his categories
of ‘nominal’, ‘verbal’, and ‘aesthetic’. The idea seems to be, roughly, that
the following claims hold:(7) Logic is always applicable to statements
describing some static state of
affairs (e.g., ‘God is good’) but not to statements describing some dynamic state of affairs (e.g., ‘the
Spirit proceeds from the Father’) or expressing some aesthetic judgement.(8) Logic is always applicable to statements
concerned with any of these three areas in
the abstract—in other words, statements about the statements referred to in
(7).Regardless
of how Dahms’ distinctions cash out, his position (and variations on the same
theme) can be expressed more generally as follows:(9) The law of non-contradiction applies to
all statements except those concerned non-abstractly
with subject matter M.The
qualifier non-abstractly is essential
to avoid self-refutation. Although (9) itself is concerned with subject matter M, it is only concerned with M in the abstract. One who affirms (9)
is not thereby committed to holding that the law of non-contradiction does not
apply to (9) and hence is not vulnerable to the objection that the negation of (9) cannot be excluded.This general
position on the limited applicability of the law of non-contradiction may be
immune to a straightforward reductio ad
absurdum, but I suggest that it is untenable because the criterion it
recommends cannot be applied in practice. If the stance expressed by (9) is to
be viable, then it must be possible for one to judge, for any statement S, whether or not S is concerned non-abstractly with subject matter M (whatever M may be). However, in order to determine that S is concerned non-abstractly with M, one must also be able to judge whether or not claims of the
following two forms are true (where X
identifies some non-linguistic, non-conceptual item, e.g., Socrates, the
Atlantic Ocean, or my favourite shirt):(10) S
is about X.(11) X
falls under subject matter M.It
should be evident, however, that if both (10) and (11) are true, then they are both concerned non-abstractly with subject
matter M (since they both direct
statements about X). Therefore,
according to (9), it is possible for (10) to be both true and false and
likewise for (11). But if that is so, then one cannot make a reliable judgement
about whether (10) and (11) are true or not—and thus one cannot make a reliable
judgement about whether or not S is
concerned non-abstractly with M.If we consider
Dahms’ position as a specific instance of (9), we can see how this cashes out
in practice. Consider the claim, ‘Madrid is in Spain.’ Does the law of
non-contradiction apply to this statement? As a precondition of answering this
question, it must be possible in principle to judge (i) that the statement is
about Madrid and (ii) that Madrid falls under either the verbal or the
aesthetic.31 Yet if Madrid does
fall under either the verbal or the aesthetic then, on Dahms’ view, judgements
(i) and (ii) are not subject to the law of non-contradiction, in which case
they could be false as well as true. And if one cannot establish that both (i)
and (ii) are not false, then one could never in principle determine that the law of non-contradiction is not
applicable to the claim ‘Madrid is in Spain’—or to any other non-abstract
claim.It appears that
Dahms’ thesis that logic applies only to statements concerned with particular
subject matters cannot be observed in practice, even if correct in theory.
Nevertheless, the general thesis that some contradictions can be true,
irrespective of subject matter, has been seriously considered and competently
defended by a number of philosophers in the last two decades. This view, dubbed
dialetheism by Graham Priest and
Richard Routley, holds that there are true contradictions; that is, there are
statements that are both true and false.32 The paradigm example of a dialetheia is the so-called Liar
paradox:(12) This sentence is not true.
Is
(12) true or not? If it is true, then
(by its own testimony) it must be not
true; but if it is not true, then
it must be true (since what it says
to be the case is the case). The Liar
paradox has proven remarkably resistant to explanations as to why it does not
force us to concede that some statements are both true and false (and thus that
some contradictions are true).33 Self-referential paradoxes
of this kind have been taken by some philosophers as a compelling reason for
embracing dialetheism.34Dialetheism
itself is surprisingly difficult to refute, not least because attempted
refutations frequently presuppose the principle they purport to prove, viz.
that no statement can be both true and false. Similarly, objections based on
the principle that anything whatsoever can be inferred from a contradiction (ex contradictione quodlibet, as the
Scholastic maxim put it) fail to unseat the dialetheist since they merely take
for granted a classical rule of inference which (as Priest has shown) can be
rejected without any intolerable consequences. The persistent dialetheist will
cheerfully advocate a paraconsistent logic in place of classical logic so as to
avoid the spectre of ‘logical explosion’.Another argument
sometimes raised against dialetheism runs as follows. A statement is only
meaningful if it rules something out; but if the law of non-contradiction does
not hold, then no statement automatically rules out its negation or, a fortiori, any other statement; therefore,
the meaningfulness of language presupposes the law of non-contradiction. In
reply, the dialetheist can point out that the statement ‘everything is true’ is
clearly meaningful (even if obviously false) and yet it rules nothing out (by
virtue of ruling everything in).After
sympathetically considering the various objections levelled at dialetheism, R.
M. Sainsbury laments:With some distress, I come to the conclusion that
none of the objections I review ought to force a resourceful rational dialetheist
to admit defeat.35However
distressing this conclusion, it would seem to be a fair assessment of the
debate. As such, it would be foolhardy for me to attempt a decisive refutation
of dialetheism simpliciter, when
others better equipped and more determined have failed. Nevertheless, it should
not be thought that this concession thereby opens the door to embracing
dialetheism as a satisfactory solution to the problem of paradox in Christian
theology. On the contrary, I suggest that there are at least three good reasons
for rejecting this application of
dialetheism: two are of considerable weight, while the third is weightier
still.36The first is
simply this: theological dialetheism has the odd consequence that God believes
some falsehoods (about God, no less) and invites us to do likewise. This
criticism may not be decisive, but it seems hard to reconcile this outcome with
the biblical emphasis on promoting truth and eschewing untruth (e.g., Ps. 52:3;
Eph. 4:25; 1 John 4:6).The second
reason is the observation, made several times previously, that the law of
non-contradiction enjoys considerable prima
facie support by way of the phenomenology and ubiquity of belief in it. If
nothing else, this indicates that a rejection of the law should serve only as a
last resort in attempting to address the problem of paradox. Moreover, this
solution is likely to endear itself only to those standing within the Christian faith (and even then will be deemed a bitter
pill). As a defensive strategy to counter the charge of irrationality levelled
at Christian doctrines, it lacks plausibility and smacks of special pleading.The third
argument for rejecting theological dialetheism runs as follows. If dialetheism
were to be adopted by Christians as a response to the problem of paradox in
doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, then presumably the desire
to preserve an orthodox interpretation of those doctrines would feature as a
significant motivation. After all, if one were unconcerned about maintaining
orthodoxy, then one would be more inclined to revise or reject the problematic
doctrines themselves than the laws of logic. Yet for believers such as these,
embracing dialetheism would have a direct and quite unacceptable consequence,
namely, that one could no longer object
to heterodox theological statements. For example, an orthodox explication
of the doctrine of the Trinity would likely include the following statements:(13) The Father is God.
(14) The Son is God.
(15) The Father is not the Son.
The
paradox arises because on the most natural interpretation, the conjunction of
(13) and (14) implies the negation of
(15). Now, the Christian dialetheist would presumably concede this entailment
but would argue that affirming (13), (14) and (15) is not irrational because some contradictions are true—including, one assumes, the
following contradictory statement:(16) The Father is not the Son and the Father
is the Son.However,
even on a paraconsistent logic such as that preferred by the dialetheist, one
can logically infer from (16) this heterodox modalist claim:37(17) The Father is the Son.
The
problem is obvious: advocating dialetheism in order to preserve orthodoxy
ironically ends up making its preservation irrelevant,
since it involves the joint affirmation of both orthodox and heterodox
theological claims. It should go without saying that this solution would hardly
have appealed to those Christian thinkers who were responsible for forging statements
of orthodox doctrine in the fires of the trinitarian and christological
controversies. It follows on a theological dialetheist view that these debates
were all so much wasted breath: Athanasius and Arius should simply have
concluded that they were both right
about the deity of Christ, in spite of the logical incompatibility of their
views; likewise Cyril and Nestorius on the relationship between Jesus and the
Logos. As a solution to the problem of paradox, dialetheism only saves
rationality at the expense of trivialising orthodoxy.[1]19 Morris, The
Logic of God Incarnate, 25.20 The most famous of which is often said to be Søren
Kierkegaard. However, it is questionable whether Kierkegaard understood the
paradoxes of the Christian faith to be actual logical contradictions. See C.
Stephen Evans, Faith Beyond Reason
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 80–83. A more recent example may
be provided by David Cunningham, who contends that theology ‘should not be
drawn into that realm of enterprises that must conform to the true/false
dichotomies of Boolean logic.’ Cunningham, These
Three are One, 35–36. Elsewhere in the same volume, Cunningham seems
inclined toward a form of anti-realism, suggesting as he does that while the
Trinity is problematic in ‘conceptual worlds such as arithmetic, formal logic,
and analytic philosophy’, there are nonetheless alternative conceptual schemes
in terms of which threeness and oneness are not incompatible. Cunningham, These Three are One, 127. This suggests
that there is no objective fact of the matter regarding the logicality of the
Trinity; it all depends on how one thinks about it. I will not attempt to
disentangle Cunningham’s position here, since I argue that both anti-realism
and dialetheism are inadequate responses to the trinitarian paradox; thus
whichever approach Cunningham means to endorse, it is misguided.21 Dahms, ‘How Reliable is Logic?’. See also Norman L.
Geisler, ‘ “Avoid. Contradictions” (1 Timothy 6:20): A Reply to John
Dahms’, Journal of the Evangelical
Theological Society 22.1 (1979), 55–65; John v. Dahms, ‘A Trinitarian
Epistemology Defended: A Rejoinder to Normal Geisler’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 22.2 (1979), 133–48;
Norman L. Geisler, ‘Avoid All
Contradictions: A Surrejoinder to John Dahms’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 22.2 (1979), 149–59.
My analysis of Dahms’ thesis differs in significant respects from Geisler’s.22 Dahms, ‘How Reliable is Logic?’, 369.
23 Dahms expresses the law of non-contradiction in
terms of things rather than propositions or statements, e.g., ‘nothing can be both A and not-A’. This
difference does not affect my analysis, however, since on realist assumptions
it follows from Dahms’ characterisation that the statement ‘X is A’ cannot be both
true and false.24 Dahms, ‘How Reliable is Logic?’, 370–72.
25 Indeed, Dahms’ reasoning here seems plagued by
confusions. For example, in his first argument he confuses irrational numbers (i.e., those which cannot be expressed as the
division of one natural number by another) with imaginary numbers (i.e., those which can be expressed as the square
root of a negative real number)—and in any case, the concept of irrational
numbers has nothing to do with logical violations. Dahms thus fails to show why
accepting irrational (or imaginary) numbers forces us to concede exceptions to
any of the three classical laws of logic.26 Dahms, ‘How Reliable is Logic?’, 372.
27 Dahms, ‘How Reliable is Logic?’, 375.
28 Dahms, ‘How Reliable is Logic?’, 375.
29 Indeed, this is Dahms’ own defence
against Geisler’s charge of self-defeat. Dahms, ‘A Trinitarian Epistemology
Defended’, 141–42.30 Dahms, ‘How Reliable is Logic?’, 378.
31 I am not claiming that these
judgements must always be consciously made when evaluating the applicability of
logic to the target statement; my claim is merely that if these judgements
could not be reliably made in principle
then neither can the overall evaluation of the target statement.32 Graham Priest, Richard Routley, and
Jean Norman (eds), Paraconsistent Logic:
Essays on the Inconsistent (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1989), xx. This
neologism is a compound of the Greek words for ‘two’ and ‘truth’. A dialetheia is thus a ‘two-way truth’: a
statement that evaluates to both true and false.33 For an analysis of attempts to resolve
the Liar paradox and its close relatives, see R. M. Sainsbury, Paradoxes (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2nd edn, 1995), 107–29; Rescher, Paradoxes, 193–215.34 Sainsbury, Paradoxes, 135; Priest, Routley, and Norman (eds), Paraconsistent Logic, 503–10.
Dialetheism has also been advocated on the basis of theological considerations; in this respect, Dahms is preceded by
Peter Damiani, Meister Eckhart, and Nicholas of Cusa. Priest, Routley, and Norman
(eds), Paraconsistent Logic, 18–20.35 Sainsbury, Paradoxes, 136.
36 It should be noted that all three
points count also against the ‘limited applicability’ thesis of Dahms, in
addition to the specific objections raised earlier.37 The rule of inference in question, one
shared by classical and paraconsistent logics, is the ‘Rule of Simplification’:
p and q, therefore q.[1]
James Anderson, Paradox in Christian
Theology: An Analysis of Its Presence, Character, and Epistemic Status,
Paternoster Theological Monographs (Milton Keynes, UK; Waynesboro, GA:
Paternoster, 2007), 117-26.
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Thanks Rosie!
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http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/ and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/
give you an answer which is why:P.S. Vyrso has just been added to this reading list
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Rosie Perera said:
... two identified strategies for resolving the problem of paradox by revising our laws of logic—namely, the rejection of deductive rules such as modus ponens [and, secondly] to reject the law of non-contradiction: the principle that no statement can be both true and false. Understandably, this approach is not a popular one among those attempting to address the problem of paradox in Christian theology, particularly those with a professed concern to preserve both rationality and orthodoxy.
The comments of Thomas Morris typify the disdain of scholars for this escape route: ... It is just a desperation move which embraces incoherence to avoid its sting.
I'd say Mr. Morris has hit the nail on the head. Nevertheless, paradox and its close companion, irrationality, thrive. Discard logic and one can make the Scriptures (and anything else that bothers) say whatever is desired. "In the beginning was the Logos" really means "two plus two equals chocolate bunnies". It sort of reminds me of Lucy VanPelt in the Peanuts comic strip who used to do jigsaw puzzles by using a pair of scissors to trim the pieces to fit. It's all so-o-o-o easy when you make up your own rules ...
Instead of Artificial Intelligence, I prefer to continue to rely on Divine Intelligence instructing my Natural Dullness (Ps 32:8, John 16:13a)
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MJ. Smith said:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/ and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/
give you an answer which is why:Thanks MJ!
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