The Mystery and the Paradox
As children, or perhaps now grandchildren, of the Enlightenment, we still prove enamored with reason and systematic thinking. We yearn to make sense of everything and systematically lay out how we imagine it all works.
The God of heaven, who created all things, is greater than we are: as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His thoughts higher than our thoughts, and His ways higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9).
When the children or grandchildren of the Enlightenment then attempt to approach the thoughts and ways of the Almighty, we are presented with the great challenge: will we seek to impose our frameworks of rationality, reason, and systemization on what God has made known, or will we subject ourselves in faith before the God whose ways are well beyond anything we could begin to imagine?
Our ancestors in the faith felt compelled to systematize everything: to seek to find in the pages of the New Testament one coherent, systematic paradigm or pattern that would govern how churches should function and Christians should live their lives. Any forms of diversity which might be apparent from the text would be suppressed or neglected. Believers were conditioned to insist upon fully resolved and synthesized patterns by which to govern their lives and the work of the churches.
In truth, the New Testament did set forth what the Apostles proclaimed and taught regarding how Christians should live, and churches should function, in the ways which would glorify and faithfully serve the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel was the same Gospel as taught to Jewish and Gentile people; Paul would teach the same principles in every church (1 Corinthians 4:17).
Yet the primary “pattern” regarding which the Apostles taught featured a person: Jesus Himself. The goal was to embody Jesus in all things; to imitate Him fully, and thus share in the life of God in Christ (e.g. 1 Corinthians 11:1, Hebrews 2:9-18).
Jesus taught and lived principles which prove hard to systematize and synthesize, because, on the surface, they seem like a contradictory incoherent jumbled mess. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it,” as Jesus declared in Matthew 16:25, is logically self-contradictory. At one point Jesus would say whoever is not with Him is against Him (Matthew 12:30, Luke 11:23); at another point, Jesus declared whoever was not against them was for them (Luke 9:49-50).
Jesus’ life and teaching, therefore, are full of mystery and paradox. Mystery and paradox prove challenging to fit into nice boxes and categories for easy systemization. And so it goes for faith in Christ and those who would participate in the life of God in Christ.
Perhaps no mystery is greater than that of the nature of God Himself. Ever since God made Himself known in Christ, and poured out His Spirit on mankind, people have grappled with and tried to make sense of how God is one and yet the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. A Trinitarian understanding of the nature of God did not come from some kind of grandiose conspiracy at some church council; it was the position Christians found themselves in when considering how all other options could not make complete sense of all of what God revealed in Christ through the Spirit.
If anything, the development of the various heretical ideas regarding the nature of God proves instructive for us. In truth, all such heresies developed as attempts to completely rationalize and make the nature of God sensible to humanity, whether modalism positing God as one in three “modes,” or Arianism considering the Son and the Spirit as lesser divinities. They “made sense” of who God was by flattening out what they deemed incoherent and inconsistent aspects of what He had made known to mankind. By not fully appreciating the mystery of the divine nature, they made God into something they could understand better, and thus made a god in their own image.
The idea of God as one in three and three in one should remain difficult for us, not as difficulty for the sake of difficulty, but as the almost “natural” result when humans, in their frail and finite nature, are welcomed to see something about the far greater Almighty God.
Edwin Abbot’s Flatland presents for us a good comparison for consideration. In it Abbot posited a two-dimensional world in which a three-dimensional object intrudes. In a two-dimensional space and framework, one cannot coherently discern a three-dimensional object: it will appear as an incoherent jumbled mess of lines everywhere, and all because depth cannot be registered in two dimensions.
And so it goes for us in our human limitation: the ways of the divine will often seem as if incoherent jumbled messes, not because they actually are, but because they cannot be fully rendered in our limited frameworks and understanding. In that way they testify to being the ways of God, as greater than we are, and not derived from human imagination and innovation. Not for nothing did Paul make much of how the Gospel was made known by God in Christ through the Spirit, certainly prophesied but having taken place in a way which no human would have put together as it did (Ephesians 3:1-13). The life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return of Jesus the Christ would not have been the way any human would have put together that particular story and its effects. Thus it is testified to us as the revelation of the divine mystery, and it remains full of paradoxes.
This proves all the more accurate in terms of Christian doctrine and practice. The history of Christendom is littered with earnest believers who desired to see all things systematized and made coherent, as well as earnest believers so caught up with one aspect of the truth that they pursued it to the exclusion of other aspects and to the detriment of the whole. And for every over-reaction in one direction, another over-reaction in the other direction was sure to follow.
In this way we can understand the arguments about faith and works, divine grace and human effort, eschatological arguments, and a host of other matters. One can pursue the goal of making the faith entirely coherent and systematized, but it will come at the cost of the truth itself, since Jesus, the Truth, manifested a faith of mystery and paradox (John 14:6).
In our own day we see the fruit of over-emphasis and under-emphasis time and time again. As a reaction to so many promoting the doctrines of “faith only” and “once saved, always saved,” it proved easy to strongly emphasize the importance of obedience in the faith and the possibility of apostasy and condemnation. Yet, in strongly emphasizing obedience and the possibility of apostasy, not a few believers have an impoverished understanding of how dependent they are on the grace of God manifest in Christ, and remain quite anxious and apprehensive regarding their salvation.
Does this mean that we should therefore so emphasize the grace of God and the security of the Christian as to neglect and suppress the need to obey God and the possibility of apostasy and condemnation? Such a reaction testifies to the reality of the over-reaction, for the extreme justifies itself by appealing to the other extreme. The Apostle Paul could maintain the tension between divine grace and human initiative, the great work of God in Christ and also our need to conform to His image: Romans 3:1-5:21 was written by the same author in the same letter as Romans 1:5, 6:1-23, and 12:1-2.
We struggle to make sense of it all, but how often do we question why we need so desperately for it all to “make sense”? We should expect divine truth to remain uncomfortable and something which we cannot fully make coherent or systematic according to our paradigms and understanding. Otherwise, it would cease to be divine!
To be a Christian demands we hold truths and practices which seem to be at least somewhat opposed to one another in tension. That will not be the most comfortable space, but it is where we will find God and His ways in Christ.
This will also provide the way forward in our current challenges. Christians should be known as humble, loving, charitable, and kind; the church ought to be a place of acceptance and belonging for those in Christ. Yet God in Christ has established certain standards of thought, feeling, and conduct to fully remain in Christ. Our joint participation in the faith is dependent on our mutual walk in the light of God in Christ (cf. 1 John 1:5-7); if any no longer walk in the light, we are no longer walking in the same ways. The church has always been called to be a confessional family, and there’s inherent tension and challenge in the idea of a confessional family. The confessional family works well and is great when all share the same confession and all treat one another as family. If the confessional family remains quite dogmatic about the confession but does not honor or treat those who share the confession as family, God is not honored or glorified. But the family of God in Christ is the family of God in Christ; anyone who no longer walks in the ways of Jesus has abandoned the basis upon which they share in that family, and so the confessional aspect remains just as important as the aspect of the family.
The church should be an accepting, welcoming family of believers in Christ. The acceptance and belonging are predicated on sharing in Christ; that can seem to be less than truly accepting. If our goal was full coherence, we would fall short. But the goal is not full coherence, or completely logical and rational sense. Our goal is to best embody and reflect Jesus the Christ, and the ways of Jesus the Christ do not make complete sense. They will require us to live in the mystery and the paradoxes of the faith, to hold to competing concepts and themes at the same time.
Thus, to hold well to the faith of God in Christ, we might well sound incoherent. We will have to strongly preach and insist upon the grace of God, welcoming and receiving in the family of God, and similar such things one day, and then on another day strongly preach and insist upon our obedience to God in Christ, the importance of our shared confession of God in Christ in the family of God in Christ, and similar such things.
It might all make sense to us in the “by and by”; perhaps it never can make complete sense, because we will never stop being the creation, and God will always be greater than us, and His ways higher than ours. In all things, however, we do well to faithfully embody and serve Jesus the Christ, and that will require us to embrace the mystery and the paradoxes of the faith grounded and rooted in Him.
Ethan R. Longhenry
The post The Mystery and the Paradox appeared first on de Verbo vitae.
