Divine Contradiction
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:11th May '23
Should be back in stock very soon
Building on his paradigm-shifting work on the incarnation in The Contradictory Christ (OUP, 2021), Jc Beall extends a robust contradictory theology with an account of the trinity. Throughout the history of the Christian church, heretics, apophatics, mystics, atheists, and many others have long proclaimed that the doctrine of the trinity - one of the central doctrines of the Christian faith - is contradictory. In this work, Beall agrees; however, as Beall convincingly argues, one needn't abandon orthodoxy, play language games, inflate one's metaphysics, nor abandon the standard faith in the face of such divine contradiction. Instead, one can accept central axioms of the trinity at face value and, with a suitable account of logical entailment, accept the 'contradictory truths' thereby entailed. With the clarity and precision that only a logician could provide, Beall provided theology and the Christian church in general with a very simple and viable (and arguably correct) model of divine reality. Unlike the vast number of theologians and philosophers before him, Beall rejects the quest for a logically consistent account of divine reality. The triune god (viz., God) is truly and fully described only via contradiction. As such, attempts to remove the contradiction are attempts to remove truths of God.
What Beall achieves in this work is nothing short of remarkable. Analytic theologians are often preoccupied with complex metaphysical theories and, whilst such endeavours are fruitful, Beall shows how we can solve some of the most important problems in the field, those concerning the Trinity, without commitment to such theories. He shows that by embracing divine contradictions and a particular understanding of logical entailment, we can solve these problems. This is thus a fundamentally important piece of analytic theology that is of interest to scholars and-owing to its user friendly and accessible presentation of the content-popular readers alike. * Harvey Cawdron, The Heythrop Journal *
What Beall achieves in this work is nothing short of remarkable. Analytic theologians are often preoccupied with complex metaphysical theories and, whilst such endeavours are fruitful, Beall shows how we can solve some of the most important problems in the field, those concerning the Trinity, without commitment to such theories. He shows that by embracing divine contradictions and a particular understanding of logical entailment, we can solve these problems. This is thus a fundamentally important piece of analytic theology that is of interest to scholars and-owing to its user friendly and accessible presentation of the content-popular readers alike. * Harvey Cawdron, The Heythrop Journal *
ISBN: 9780192845436
Dimensions: 15mm x 143mm x 223mm
Weight: 320g
176 pages