One should not think slightingly of the paradoxical; for paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.
—Søren Kierkegaard
One of the classic paradoxical tensions in our Christian experience is between faith and reason. We have encountered it often in our explorations but now address it directly. Faith without reason or reason without faith is not difficult to navigate; how faith and reason relate to one another is complicated. In a Western worldview that implicitly assumes the superiority of reason, many of our questions circle around “How can my reason accept faith?” In Ethiopia the prevailing worldview assumes the priority of faith, so my graduate theology students’ questions often came from the opposite perspective, “How can my faith accept reason?” Since Western books defending the integrity of Christian faith often have titles like Reasonable Faith,1 I told my students the book I expected one of them to write for their culture would be titled Faithful Reason. Indeed, one might generalize that the anguishing “clash of civilizations” today stems, at least in part, from the inability of reason-based and faith-based societies to fruitfully engage with or even understand one another.
According to systems theory, when two persons experience tension with one another, one of them often pulls a third person into the relationship, thus creating a triangle between the three of them. Such triangling siphons off into the third person the tension the first two were experiencing with each other. What happens when paradox is invited as the third person into the sometimes tense relationship between faith and reason? It may end up catching some of the tension reason already has with faith, or that faith already feels about reason. We will look at three ways I have observed this happening as biblical paradox enters the faith/reason debate.
Does Paradox Imply That Reason Is Unnecessary?
I remember a friend who had no use for reason in her Christian experience. She grew up in a quite conservative Christian culture, which included nonstop litmus test arguments over arcane points of doctrine to determine who the “real” believers were. She walked away from active participation in this somewhat oppressive Christian community; some years later she personally met Christ, and Jesus became a real presence in her life. She became involved in a different church, although she remains suspicious of argument and heady discussions; she wants to keep her faith simple.
Philosopher Ronald Hepburn addresses my friend’s misgivings about arguments and reason in Christianity and Paradox.2 He begins by agreeing that “paradoxical and near paradoxical language is the staple of accounts of God’s nature and is not confined to rhetorical extravaganzas.”3 He then asks an important question: “When is a contradiction not a mere contradiction, but a sublime Paradox, a Mystery?”4 Can we determine when a paradox is simply a muddle, a logical contradiction, and when it is a mystery, “an excusably stammering attempt to describe . . . an object too great for comprehension, but none the less real for that”?5
When Hepburn sets about separating the sheep from the goats, he concludes that little if any paradoxical talk about God passes muster.6 His only recourse is to forsake rational thought altogether! “We are not argued into belief by apologists,” Hepburn concludes, “but converted by the impact of Jesus upon us into accepting his authority as absolute” (emphasis added).7 I find it remarkable that this skeptical intellectual, who walks through the open door of paradox and accepts the challenge to relentlessly lay bare the “muddles” of Christian faith, ends up at an orthodox, even evangelical, position: “converted by the impact of Jesus into accepting his authority as absolute.” Hepburn follows (in far more sophisticated fashion) the path traced by my seeker groups: honest investigation eventually recognizes that a person cannot be rationally argued into faith in God. The paradoxical nature of Jesus Christ eventually requires us to make a decision or leap of faith (so Kierkegaard) based on Jesus’ person, character, and claims.
While Hepburn sees this decision of faith as nonrational (without reason), I would argue that it is superrational (beyond reason, in the same way that supernatural is beyond natural). This is an important distinction. Hepburn mistakenly assumes that because a person cannot be reasoned into belief, rational arguments leading to belief are unnecessary. But these are surely two different things. Reason is essential both before and after a faith commitment.
C. S. Lewis, one of the twentieth century’s great proponents of a rational Christianity, is a good example. Lewis also realizes no one can be argued into belief: “Doubtless, by definition, God was Reason itself. But would he also be ‘reasonable’ . . . Not the slightest assurance on that score was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, was demanded.”8 Yet in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, he narrates how essential his reason was in his faith journey; his reason cleared away the intellectual underbrush that obscured his path toward faith.
After he became a Christian, Lewis’s prodigious output as a Christian intellectual fully employed his reason, belying the assumption that reason is less useful “once you have faith.” By engaging his reason to explore his faith, Lewis produced enduring books addressing questions on miracles, prayer, and Satan, among many others—a superb example of what we will discover in just a moment as “faith seeking understanding.”
Does Paradox Imply That Faith Is Irrational?
Here is a second tension: does paradox mean our reason must accept irrational contradictions that undermine faith? The early Latin father Tertullian robustly that asserted the illogical is a mark of truth: “Just because it is absurd, it is to be believed; . . . it is certain, because it is impossible.”9 Few people today matriculate into Tertullian’s “the more illogical, the better” school of thought. Just the opposite: might fooling around with paradox grease a slippery slope into illogic and irrelevancy? I regularly have conversations around this second tension. To sidestep this fearful slide into irrationality, it is commonly held that paradoxes are only apparent contradictions. We saw apparent contradictions displayed in the playful paradoxes of Jesus—the tension dissolves after doing its work in us. Yet our travels since then reveal there are many paradoxes where the contradictory tensions do not dissolve; in fact, they grow more intense the deeper we delve into them.
We can clarify this issue by returning to mystery itself. While logical contradiction is certainly a characteristic of mystery, it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition.10 It is not a necessary condition because contradiction is not present in all mysteries. Mystery may simply be incomprehensible, like the Christian claim that God can be intimately involved in the lives of several billion people at the same time, or the scientific claim that the light we see tonight in a twinkling star left the star billions of years ago.
On the other hand, contradiction is not a sufficient condition of mystery. Not all contradictions can be labeled mystery, for we remember there are also what Ronald Hepburn calls “muddles,” things that simply don’t make sense. We must retain our right to discriminate between muddles and genuine mystery. If not, we are back to Tertullian’s “it is certain, because it is impossible.”
In The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable, Steven Boyer and Christopher Hall describe Flatland, a two-dimensional world of length and width but no height. To residents of Flatland, a cylinder will be recognized as a circle because their two-dimensional minds can perceive only the cylinder’s circular base. A three-dimensional person observing the cylinder might tell the Flatlanders that, viewed from the side, the cylinder looks like a rectangle. A figure that is simultaneously circle and rectangle is a logical contradiction in the Flatlanders’ two-dimensional world. If they believe in the revelation that a third dimension (height) exists, then they have a mystery; however, the Flatlanders have no resources to judge whether a cylinder that is simultaneously a circle and a rectangle is a genuine mystery or simply a logical contradiction. They conclude, “To insist that a mystery may be incomprehensible but cannot be incoherent, or that it may be ‘above reason’ but cannot be ‘against reason,’ is to insist that an apparent contradiction must not really appear contradictory—which is, in fact, to beg the question and deny mystery altogether.”11 To leave mystery open as a genuine option, we Flatlanders must entertain the notion that reality is larger than our means of perception can register.
Gordon Graham avoids the contradiction cul-de-sac with a different definition of paradox: “Paradox is thus not to be understood as a logical form akin to contradiction, conjunction or disjunction but rather something, anything, which is intellectually objectionable but nevertheless unavoidable” (emphasis added).12 Graham goes on to make an astute observation: “Logic cannot take us by the throat and force us to do anything. If we discover that there is after all something whereof we cannot speak, we are, in principle at least, free to pass over it in silence.”13
This is a telling point. Christians for millennia have refused to pass over in silence the logical contradictions of the incarnation or Trinity, as well as many other biblical paradoxes. There is something more at stake, and more compelling, than mere logic. As Boyer and Hall conclude, “If we allow for mystery at all, then we should be prepared for real logical tensions.”14 Reason need not fear that paradox will lead faith into logical irrelevancy.
Does Paradox Imply That the Holy Spirit Is Irrelevant?
We have been investigating how biblical paradox enters the relationship between reason and faith. We first discussed that faith might use paradox as its justification that it has no need of reason and can get along fine without it, therefore concluding faith is nonrational (without reason). We then looked at how reason might see in paradox confirmation of its suspicion that faith itself is logically contradictory and flawed, therefore concluding faith is irrational (against reason). Now we briefly consider a third potential problem: faith using paradox to demonstrate just how clueless reason is about faith, since paradox seems to neglect the Holy Spirit.
Faith’s accusation might sound like this: “All this talk of paradox sounds like dry-as-dust, overrationalized nonsense. Who needs all this intellectual fussing with paradox to encounter the mystery of God? Don’t you realize that God is powerfully present in our personal experience every day through the Holy Spirit?”
I would reply that it is in our personal experience that we bump into paradox. We do not go seeking paradox; it finds us! Events simultaneously pull us in opposite directions and we are forced to live within the paradoxical tensions they create (e.g., try harder, eagle/hippo). Our personal experience with God immerses us in paradoxical tensions (e.g., God’s choice/our choice, beyond us/with us, already/not yet). Throughout the Scriptures, it is human experience of God that shapes ideas of God—this human experience of God includes paradox (e.g., Three/One, divine/human, transcendent/immanent). Even the treasure/vessel nature of Scripture itself is paradoxical. These paradoxical tensions are not imposed on our personal experience; they originate within it.
After an especially powerful worship experience, someone might say, “God was unbelievably close to me. I felt an awesome power and majesty just sweep me up into heaven.” That sounds like a paradox! God’s immanence (“unbelievably close”) and God’s transcendence (“awesome power and majesty”) were glimpsed in the same experience. As we unpack such common experiences, we find ourselves encountering paradox more than we might recognize.
Like a kid launching a kite, our intellect runs along the ground tugging a paradox behind it. Might we not imagine that what lifts the paradox high into the sky is the wind of the Spirit (John 3:8)? Scripture is clear that God’s Spirit (not human reason) leads us into all truth (John 16:13). If paradox stimulates our imagination by opening windows into the mystery of God, we can be confident it is ultimately the Spirit who lifts us into God’s mystery.
“Faith Seeking Understanding”
We began this chapter by recognizing that faith and reason are often in tension. Let me summarize the two main observations so far.
First, the journey toward faith requires intellectual processes. Reason is necessary to acquire basic knowledge of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as well as how the Bible claims these events impact all creation. Thus, whether our journey toward faith is short or long, complicated or straightforward, none of us makes this trip without understanding basic ideas. For some of us, a major part of this journey toward faith is also addressing crucial questions about the meaning of suffering, other religions, or the church’s woeful complicity in so much human suffering throughout history. Reason is essential in honestly investigating such questions.
Second, faith is never solely an intellectual decision. Søren Kierkegaard demonstrated that reason is stymied by the Absurd, the paradox of a God/man. Reason can never marshal 100 percent certainty for faith in Jesus; neither can reason (when we’re honest) generate conclusive evidence against faith in Jesus. Faith requires the risk of personal choice, a “leap of faith” (Kierkegaard), or an “absolute leap in the dark” (C. S. Lewis).
In the eleventh century, Anselm of Canterbury offered a classic formulation of how faith and reason fit together: “For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this too I believe, that unless I believe, I shall not understand” (emphasis added).15 We assume it should be the other way around: first we have all our questions neatly ticked off, then we consider believing. Anselm maintains it is just the opposite, however, for the same reasons given by Kierkegaard—reason helps us in our journey, often crucially, but the moment comes when we must risk trusting God with our lives. Once we take that trusting step of faith, we naturally want to understand more and more of this new relationship with God and all its implications for our lives, hence “faith seeking understanding.”
To summarize: faith does not depend on reason, yet faith cannot do without reason. We must find ways to live within this paradoxical tension. Perhaps we see faith and reason as static and predictable, two figures frozen into position. “Faith seeking understanding” invites us to think of them as a dance! Often faith is the leading partner, with reason struggling to keep up as they swirl around the dance floor. Other times reason takes the lead, steering faith away from tripping over potted plants (logical fallacies) or blundering around the floor in blind exuberance (joining a cult). If faith and reason are Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, each placing a foot where the other’s has just been as they swirl together, the nuances of the dance are beautiful to behold (even if, occasionally, toes do get stepped on). If our investigations into paradox help us imagine this complex choreography and thus expand our view of faith and reason, we will be better equipped to live faithfully and intelligently in God’s world.
Reflection Questions
1. When you began this book, did exploring biblical paradox suggest any dangers to you?
2. Thinking of the people you regularly interact with, might they see the Christian faith as nonrational, irrational, or something else? Why?
3. By the end of this chapter, were the roles of faith and reason in Christian faith clarified or made more confusing for you? What was clarified? What is more confusing?
4. Does the “faith seeking understanding” relationship of faith and reason make sense to you? What thoughts are stimulated for you in imagining them dancing together?