I’ve chosen to address in this last post the topic of paradox for two reasons. The first is that I’ve been fascinated with this concept for many years—the notion that two statements or ideas that seem to be self-exclusive, inconsistent—”on the one hand, on the other hand”—may, on reflection, come together to provide a glimpse into the truth of things. It’s something I first learned from Harry Emerson Fosdick, who spoke of learning to “live under the ceaseless tension of opposites.” The idea has resurfaced for me many times over the years—Ronald Hepburn’s book, Christianity and Paradox, which I read in the early 60s; a host of readings in ethics, theology, and in the inevitable dialectic of philosophical conversation; in an address by the late John Claypool, who argued that the “challenge of maturity” is learning to live with paradox—learning not to absolutize one side of a matter at the expense of all others. And through my involvement with the play, Copenhagen—I’ll spare you the details—I was reminded of the way physicists Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Albert Einstein, and others had changed our understanding of the physical universe at its most fundamental level, despite their disagreements and arguments.  Take the “wave-particle duality,” for example—sometimes it behaves like particles, sometimes like waves, but not both at the same time.  Yet sacrificing either characteristic at the expense of the other impoverishes our understanding of the world. As Parker Palmer, in The Courage to Teach, quoted Niels Bohr: “The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth.”  Here is the concept of paradox—sometimes if we want to know profound truth, “we have to stop thinking the world into pieces and start thinking it together again.”

All of these confirmed what I have come to believe is, indeed, a profound idea, which has resurfaced—and this is the second reason—a number of times in the readings on World Religions, and has replanted this “termite in my brain.” So I  will note and examine some instances of paradox in several of the religions we have studied. By the way, I am not discounting, at all, the reality that not all contradictory statements are paradoxes and that we are sometimes confronted with forced choices when the necessity to “take sides” is fraught with moral or existential obligation.  We will deal with those as possible options when appropriate. And here we go . . . .

We’ll begin with a look at the first three religions we studied. The appearance of paradox in Hinduism arrives in its conception of God, always known as Brahman. On the one hand, it acknowledges that since the human mind is adapted to deal only with finite objects, it is permissible to think of God as the archetype, the supreme model of personhood—lovingly merciful, omniscient, almighty, etc.—who relates to the world as an artist to his/her handiwork. On the other hand, the more philosophically oriented within Hinduism insist on a more abstract God-without-attributes, who stands aloof from the finite in every respect. So within Hinduism are both personal and transpersonal conceptions of God. For some, this is a no-no—God may be personal or not, but not both. And here Smith employs the aforementioned quintessential paradox from physics—both wave and particle may be equally accurate.  With Buddhism, this search would lead directly to Zen, which you may recall, is characterized by Smith as stepping through “Alice’s looking glass” into a topsy-turvy world. Among the bewildering encounters are “stunning paradoxes, flagrant contradictions, and abrupt non-sequiturs.” The Zen masters attempts to distance themselves from Buddhism notwithstanding, Smith sets his treatment of Zen within the context of Buddhism and posits that its four “dichotomies” between self and other, finite and infinite, acceptance and rejection, and even between life and death are “transcended”—i.e. in Zen they disappear. One may agree or disagree, but it’s hard to imagine a stronger definition of paradox. Confucianism is, sadly from my perspective, easy and brief: I found in this religion—if religion it be—no incident of the use of paradox.

We turn now to the final four religions in this study.

The concept of paradox is “enshrined,” literally, in Taoism, which embraces the “identity of opposites” through the yin/yang symbol. Smith pictures it in his chapter on Taoism, showing halves of a circle in tension with each other but also complementing and balancing each other. As Smith puts it, “Taoism eschews all sharp dichotomies,” which includes all of life’s basic oppositions—e.g. active/passive, positive/negative, light/dark, summer/winter, male/female, even good and evil and life and death, the latter of which are seen as “complementing cycles in the Tao’s rhythm.” Without the necessity of qualifying exceptions, paradox is alive and well in Taoism.

The best incidence of paradox in Islam, at least that I found, has to do with the Koran, the bible of Islam, which Smith says “is perhaps the most recited (as well as read) book in the world”—a very strong claim, the inclusion of the qualifier, “perhaps,” notwithstanding. The possible role of paradox resides in Islam’s belief—available only in legend—that the “created Koran” came to Muhammad, who was essentially illiterate, over twenty-three years through “voices” that came to him through the Divine Reality of the “Uncreated Koran.” The paradox, perhaps, is in the belief in the “miracle” of the presence of the Uncreated Koran within the letters and sounds of the Created Koran—opposites that come together to provide a glimpse into the truth of things. That said, if this qualifies as a paradox, it is a bit of a lonely example not common in Islam.

 Judaism, on the other hand, presents a number of instances—or possibilities, if you will—of paradoxes. As noted in the third post, Judaism centers on a God of righteousness and love, which could be open to a paradoxical problem if judgment in an afterlife were basic to Jewish belief.  Although it isn’t, the issue of the Holocaust looms. One of the essential teachings of Judaism is the belief that God is not only righteous and just, loving and good, but also all-knowing and all-powerful. If so, how could such a God have allowed the death of eleven million human beings, six million of whom were his chosen people, to have occurred?  Paradox, or simply contradictory and self-exclusive? Moving on, another paradoxical possibility resides in the Jewish view of human existence, sometimes described as deserving the labels of “maggots and worms” while at the same time crowned by God with “glory and honor.” Or to put it slightly differently, according to the Psalms, people are “dust;” and yet, according to the Psalms as well, they have also been made “a little lower than the gods (or God). Both/and or either/or? A third observation arises from Judaism’s view of history—i.e. that God’s hand is at work in every event and yet humans should be active in social reform. Put more directly, God intervenes but humans are responsible. A reconcilable paradox or an incomprehensible mystery?  Finally, although a little less clear, Judaism acknowledged being God’s “chosen people,” and yet insisted that they were not “special.” The humility is admirable but the paradox “whispers.”

We turn now (almost) finally to the role of paradox in Christianity. The three possible instances that stand out in my mind are the Trinity—God is One/God is Three; the doctrine of the Incarnation, which is, in a sense, a “piece” of the Trinity—In Jesus God assumed a human body, so Christ was simultaneously both fully God and fully man; and the Atonement—the crucifixion of Jesus as infinite recompense for infinite human sin.  Since the a discussion of the Trinity was included in the third post, I will only remind that the paradox can be resolved if it is considered not as doctrine but as the experience of early followers of Jesus, who believed in a Creator God, maintained that Jesus had shown what this God was like, and later became aware of a divine presence in their lives. That does not, however, dissolve the presence of the Trinity in the theology and the creeds of the Church—there the paradox remains. To return to the Incarnation, the divine/human “overlap” was not somewhat human, somewhat divine, but absolute divinity overlapping complete humanity. To speak of this as paradoxical is charitable, Smith initially suggests, when it looks more like a blatant contradiction! But in the end, he uses the analogy of “the bridge” to acknowledge the paradox which Christianity embraces: “a bridge must touch both banks, and Christ was the bridge that joined humanity to God.” Finally, the Atonement, as was also referenced in the third post, reemerges. The crucifixion of Jesus is said to have been required as “payment” to atone for all sin. But since God is the complete Sovereign, such a demand could not have been forced on Him by some moral law not of His making, so how does one reconcile such a brutal execution in the name of justice, with a loving and compassionate God, described as the Father of his son, Jesus? This, like most of the “candidates” for paradox, becomes a choice each person must make—both/and, or either/or?

This brief word about the Primal religions, which I don’t want to ignore. However, as best I could tell, Smith mentions paradox only once, in relation to primal time being “atemporal.” But even after admitting that speaking of “time as timeless” is paradoxical, in a single sentenced he dismisses it by noting that the focus is on “causal rather than chronological sequence.” So, although Smith suggests that everything that comes to be in the historical religions is “prefigured” in the primal ones, I don’t find the several paradoxical issues considered in this post making an appearance in the primal religions.

Now, finally (really!), some closing words about paradox. The review of over a dozen potential paradoxes, most of which have a real or potential relationship—some stronger than others—to religious belief or practice, presents to each involved individual a choice: is this a contradictory, either/or statement, one “side” of which must be rejected as irreconcilable with the other; or does this statement offer the possibility of accepting both “sides” as two profound truths to be held together in a paradoxical relationship. With no intent to be critical or demeaning, I would suggest that perhaps the majority of religious believers do not and have not thought through this issue and have simply accepted certain contradictory ideas and beliefs as a part of the “package” of their religious commitment. And, further, that the majority of those members of a religious community who have confronted the paradox-or-forced-choice dilemma have accepted the paradox as consigned to the category of “mystery” in their religious faith. And there are some, no doubt, who have found themselves unable to hold together some of the various paradoxes within their religion, and while they have chosen not to leave their religious community, have either adopted an agnostic stance toward these paradoxes or have simply chosen to “believe” what they cannot “know.”  This connects, by the way, with a series of four blogs posted three years ago that reflected on “knowing and believing.” We can leave this conversation by referring back to those non-religious, empirical paradoxes in the world of physics—the “wave/particle” theory or the “uncertainty principle.” Whether applied to electromagnetics, atoms, or the subatomic, sometimes it behaves like particles, sometimes like waves, but not both at the same time. I do not pretend to understand the mathematics or the finer points of physics, but because sacrificing either characteristic at the expense of the other impoverishes our understanding of the world, I choose to believe what I cannot know. The same applies to the uncertainty principle, that we can know the position or the velocity of a wave or particle, but not both at the same time. Can I know the language and the metrics of the physics that underlie this principle? Absolutely not. But do choose to believe it on the basis of those who do? It’s a matter of “faith,” but, Yes, I do.  

So paradox is frequently a matter of choice, but I continue to believe that there are topics, ideas, and issues that often live in an “either-or” world but that may deserve to be considered in the sphere of “both-and”—profound truths to be held “in the ceaseless tension of opposites,” reflections at the boundaries of things that matter.

And so, with deep appreciation to my dear friends and partners, Kimberly and Jim, here ends this series of posts on this overly long “Hiatus on World Religions,” and here opens the door, hopefully in a few weeks, to my return to fairly regular blog posts on a variety of subjects. I hope to “see you there!”