Paradox

As promised, here is the unedited version of the talk I will give in a couple of months. Knowing myself, and the insatiability with which I regard my work, it will be edited several times, and, in live form, summarily butchered.

Somewhat to my surprise, I have found myself committed to giving this talk. The subject will be Paradoxes in Christianity, or something to that effect. I plan to draw heavily from my dear friend Mr. G.K. Chesterton, who has been affectionately dubbed “The Prince of Paradox”.

My slight obsession with Mr. GKC could be troublesome, especially as I plan on, or perhaps only aspire to, making a career out of this little hobby of mine, that is, writing. I am not certain that anyone could fill the shoes of a man who stood six foot four, weighed in at a considerable three hundred pounds and wrote some fifteen million words during his prolific career—all this despite an incredible propensity to miss his train to wherever it was he was supposed to be. Anyway, although I am certain that I am not man enough to fill his shoes, but I do know that the neglect of Chesterton is a serious crime on the part of humanity, and if my incessant proselytizing causes but one person to discover the wit and wisdom of that forgotten Brit I shall be moderately content and pronounce my obsession at least partially beneficent.

But before we get to Chesterton, and even before we get to paradox, we must hastily discuss a far more boring topic. Namely, myself. Actually, what follows is the delightful occasion of my introduction to Mr. GKC. It's a love story. But I think a greater appreciation of the whole affair can be gained if we can understand the frame of my tangled mind before it was delightedly untangled by paradoxes.

I am the eldest of eight children. From this we can safely glean that my family was stringently Catholic. Despite thirteen years of Catholic education, my understanding of the faith was nominal. More importantly, and tragically, the teachings of the Church were never taken fully to heart.

I fell. Sophomore year was a despicable display of pride and stupidity as I sunk lower and lower into depths I did not know existed. At last, by returning to the God I had rejected, I began to be pulled slowly out of the pit I had dug for myself. I returned home firmly intent on rediscovering my faith over the summer. My mom, who was at least theoretically unaware of my crisis of faith, or at least the depths thereof, gave me a book. It was Chesterton's masterpiece: The cover featured a giant of a man, cigar in hand, scattered papers on the desk at which he sat. His very presence made him seem out of place. A quote adorned the cover: "People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy."

I was taken aback. Chesterton is full of surprises, and he always seems to say the thing which is directly opposite of that which one is expecting to hear. Shockingly, and more importantly, after careful consideration, it turns out overwhelmingly that one's first impression was absolutely wrong and it is he that is in the right. Orthodoxy did sound boring, and I was fairly convinced that this bizarre man was a lightweight, making incendiary comments for the sake of being incendiary. But the philosopher in me won out and I tackled the book.

I have never been made to think so much in so few pages. I have now read the book three times, and each visit conjures up new truths which had escaped my mind on the first several passes.

The key to understanding Chesterton, and with him Catholicism, is this notion of paradox. Chesterton calls paradox "truth standing on its head to gain attention". The dictionary's definition is far more solemn: A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true. The best way to explain paradox is simply by illustration. Fortunately, Christianity is packed with paradox, and while some of these truths are subtle and will require explanation, some of them are obvious, and have probably been taken for granted by the believer without his realization of the paradox therein.

The whole of Christianity hinges on one truth: Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Apart from this stunning paradox, Christianity is not a way to salvation, but only another collection of sayings to help man stumble his way on his road to nowhere. It does little good to tell man how to walk if we cannot tell him where he came from—and why—and where on earth he is, or where he should be going.

But retain the paradox, and the path remains illuminated. We now know why we are here: God has made us, and we know where we can, by the Grace of God, hope to go. Christ Jesus has become man so as to die, yet remained God so as to conquer death and win for us Salvation. The solution to the mighty riddle of human existence is satisfied by that terrible moment on Calvary when God willfully sacrificed Himself to Himself as an expiation for the evils of mankind.

Now no one can understand how a Jesus could be both God and man. Aquinas does an admirable job, but even the brilliant mind of the Angelic Doctor can only get along so far on this dazzling intellectual ascent heavenward; at some point, the mystery, the paradox, must simply be accepted as true. Only an act of Faith will suffice. "The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man," notes Chesterton. Yet humans, rational creatures that we are, have trouble with simply accepting the paradox. We seek to chip away at it until it becomes rational. But in the process of making the thing rational, the truth becomes a fallacy. It erodes into a half-truth—a heresy.

Heresy is not a very popular word, but it is a good one, and it is the right one for what we must now discuss. Earlier, Chesterton informed us that orthodoxy was perilous, but also exciting. We are now about to see why. The tendency with paradox is to explain away the contradiction. Thus, the Incarnation: the second person of God becoming fully man, was reduced either to a very holy man who was not God or a God who did not become man but only took the appearance thereof. Both these statements can be more easily understood, but they no longer satisfy the riddle. There have been a great many sages who have lived and to whom we might turn for influence, but even the wisest of these have been unable to show the path to eternal salvation. Likewise, God's appearance as God—and God alone—on this earth would be remarkable, but it wouldn't be of much help in the long run. Death cannot be conquered if there was no one there to die. God's appearance in the burning bush didn't do away with the need for Christ to become flesh.

I have spent a fair amount of time dealing with what is, though mysterious, a fairly straight forward example, at least so far as paradoxes go. My reason for this is that I can never hope to contain even more than a few examples of paradoxes during this brief talk. I can, however, hope to give the general form so that you can begin to see paradoxes in other areas of Christian life. My hope is that the doctrine of Jesus Christ as true God and true Man is sufficiently understood as to render my task successful.

The point is, succinctly, this: there are certain mysteries—paradoxes—which cannot be fully fathomed by the human mind. Nonetheless, these paradoxes are true, and thus the Church finds herself at war with those who would simplify the truth in an effort to make it more understandable. In the Old Testament, God reminds the Israelites to stray neither to the right or the left; the same thing applies to Christians today. The Church must retain the paradox, and remind us of both sides of the truth lest we forget and slip, quite accidentally perhaps, right into heresy. This is the general outline.

To use another example, God is all-knowing, and yet He gives us free will. He allows us to make choices, yet is fully knowledgeable to the choices we are going to make. This truth is almost more terrifying than that of Christ as fully God and fully Man. And thus, many have tried to simplify the paradox. To one side we have the Calvinists who believe in predestination such that it mitigates free will. I will ignore the Scriptural arguments against Calvin due merely to time, for I think that common sense alone defeats Calvinism. If God ultimately predestines us to either heaven and hell, irrespective of our choices—which must also be predetermined—is there any doubt that this God would be cruel? It is entirely within reason that those who choose to sin merit eternal damnation; it is another matter entirely to suppose that those who were not free to choose must still pay the penalty which can only be incurred by those who, of their own volition, turn from God.

On the other side, we have a God who gives free will, but is ultimately unaware of all that will go on in the future. Are we to suppose that He who can number the hairs on our head is wholly ignorant of, for example, the next adjective I shall employ? This is absurd. Further, the Old Testament is chalk full of prophesies about Christ's coming in the New Testament. If God was unsure about the future, He could not have compelled the prophets to prophesize. Nor could he be sure that Mary would say yes to becoming the Mother of God, as if the omnipotent being would base His whole master plan on a series of possibilities. Thus, the difficult paradox remains, with the Church as her protector and guarder.

Next we have the three theological virtues, namely faith, hope and charity, which are all, interestingly enough, paradoxical virtues. Chesterton captures this brilliantly:

Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and, eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

I do not know that I dare add anything on charity and hope. As for faith, the early Church father Tertulian capture it best, "I believe," he says, "because it is absurd." This is not to say that faith and reason are in contradiction; Aquinas for one would have none of that. God does not tell us to believe things which we know to be false, for example, that the grass is the color of the sky; instead, He asks us to take, on Faith, something which can neither be proved or disproved, but does have a ring of absurdity to it. There are those who have studied Christianity without becoming Christians, but no one who possesses any intellectual honesty can think it anything but a bit odd and certainly perplexing.

I feel as though I am rushing through all of this. My intention is to touch on as many subject as I can and still impress upon you the need for paradox, and, more importantly, the freedom it can bring. I shall use two more examples, both of which are extraordinarily pertinent for today.

In regards to sex, there are typically seen two schools of thought. The “progressives”—whatever that may mean—or the “liberals”—who dishonor a good name—believe that sexual restraint is, by and large, not a good thing. Condoms should be given to those who are, speaking in regards to maturity, mere children, for they will have sex anyway. Homosexuals should be allowed to get married because it is bigoted to say otherwise. Parenthetically, I wonder whether it is similarly bigoted to tell a drunk that he cannot have another beer. This road obviously leads to chaos. We see this in our world today, with teachers, and worse, priests, having sex with those under their protection. Even the most adamant of free lovers has to admit that some restraint is needed. Camille Paglia, one of the few intellectually honest liberals remaining, says as much of her generations failed revolution of the 1960's. If people are allowed to have sex whenever they want, with whomever they wish, society will no longer function. An argument can be made that it no longer does.

The other school of thought is called puritan. It is difficult to imagine, perhaps, a time when sex wasn't so pervasive, and was indeed, looked upon with shame. We may very well empathize with the puritan line of thinking, for the puritan response is but the natural reaction of anyone with common sense when the progressives have take things too far. This works in reverse as well, for the progressive reaction was a somewhat healthy response to the puritan ideal, which isn't right either. The solution, of course, lies in the perilous balance of the paradox.

C.S. Lewis had a bit to say on this topic in Mere Christianity:

You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act, that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theater by bringing a covered plate onto the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?

I find it somewhat humorous, in a tragic sort of way, that he has to define strip tease, but the short answer to his question is yes, Mr. Lewis, we would think that their appetite is remiss. Sex is, as a gift of God, quite good. But like every good thing, it must be used properly. Beer is likewise a good thing, but that is no reason for a man to be drinking beer all the time. There is a time and a place for everything, and the Church is there to make sure we do not partake of something good at a wrong time; for that would be evil. Thus sex is reserved for marriage between a man and a woman. It must also satisfy the requirements of being unitive, drawing the couple together, and pro-creative, that is, the act must be open to God's gift of life. This truth is promulgated brilliantly, both in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, as well as during Pope John Paul II's talks on the Theology of the Body.

During an age in which we're a mess when it comes to understanding our sexuality, Christian thinkers have left a plethora of information to help us avoid the pitfalls we can so easily experience if we are not careful. Our society is swimming headlong into the tumultuous waters of sexual progression. It seems almost preposterous to suggest, but there will no doubt be a puritan backlash before our lives our over. All the while, the Church sits in the sensible middle, telling people the correct way to avoid madness. But people seldom listen.

Lastly, the Church has some very wise things to say about economic theory. About the turn of the twentieth century, socialism had begun to be taken very seriously by some intellectual-types over in Europe. Pope Leo XIII penned an absolutely marvelous encyclical entitled Rerum Novarum. Notes Pope Leo:

[S]ocialists... are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.

Socialism has since proven itself a failure in all the countries it has hitherto been tried. The true followers of Marx note that nowhere has the system been implemented correctly, but as Leo notes that the system is, ipso facto, unjust, the point is wholly irrelevant. This would seem to suggest capitalism as the economic system to be preferred by Catholics. Not necessarily.

Leo goes on to explain the importance of justice within a capitalist system, serving to remind us that capitalism is not, of its nature, just. It is more just than socialism for having the possibility of bringing with it justice, but it can take on a form equal to and even more wretched than a socialist system. Employers must pay their employees a just wage; this is altogether different from the arbitrary and amoral conclusion that the market produces. If the market pronounces a fair wage of, say, seven dollars an hour for a janitor, but this is insufficient to feed his family, a Catholic employer is obligated to pay the janitor a sufficient wage for him to live on, so long as he is able to afford to pay these wages. The employer must also provide congenial circumstances with which to work, again, so far as possible considering the man's form of employment. The employees, then, must strive to give an honest day's work for the pay they are to receive.

It hardly needs noting that American style capitalism seldom meshes with Catholic social teaching. We are all called to implement a more charitable form of capitalism so far as we are able. Conversely, we may become, to hail back to Chesterton, distributists. This school of thought was first advocated, I believe, by Hilaire Belloc, a fellow Catholic and good friend of Chesterton. Unfortunately, distributism is still largely a theory, but it is important to note because it serves to emphasize the thesis regarding paradox.

Chesterton once said that a man is capable of one mistake, almost, but one thought. The Socialists have their theory, but they have precious little to say about other topics. Al Gore has his global warming issue, and seldom says anything else at all. Hugh Hefner's magazine was showing naked women fifty years ago; it is showing naked women today. He hasn't changed his mind in fifty years, and I cannot help but wonder if he wouldn't trade in one of his girlfriend's for another thought.

Catholics are, of course, religious people, and as such they are impugned for not being particularly good thinkers. This is a shallow criticism, as some of the greatest thinkers throughout time have been Catholics. There is fallacy that Catholics, and other religious types, do not believe in science, or we do not believe in reason, but that we only read the Bible, and that, in regards to those who adhere to Rome, we listen to the Pope. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I believe in science when it is good and reliable science; I also believe in reason especially as it concerns the Pope and the Bible.

But I know something else. If a man does not look to the past, he will only be able to go so far. Brilliant minds have gotten far indeed, but I think it important to note that Aristotle and Plato got along further than Socrates by using his teachings for guidance. Augustine and Aquinas, likewise, used pagan philosophers, as well as Holy Scripture, to travel to dazzling heights. Modern man seems to believe that those of us who listen to the wisdom of the Church are foolish and behind the times. We can only pray for those who will obstinately continue to make one, and usually only one, mistake, through the course of their entire lives. For they do not understand the paradox, and emphasize one half-truth at the expense of another until it becomes a heresy. But we Catholics have been blessed with a Church that sees the whole truth and dares to contain it. The institution we call home has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. She protects the paradoxes; and we are the better for it.