Abstract
A new idea of ‘contradictory Christology’ has been recently advanced by JC Beall (The contradictory Christ. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021a). This paper does not enter the debate whether Christ double nature instantiates a contradiction or does not. It aims to point out a possible view about the Christological problem similar to Beall’s view but more focused on the metaphysical consequences of admitting a treatment of the Christological paradox in dialetheic terms, as a case of ‘true contradiction’. In Beall’s account, the glut-theoretic approach can improve the conception of logic presupposed in theological discussions, giving new suggestions for the development of an updated ‘logic of Christology’. I move in the other direction, exploring whether the philosophical reflection on Christology could give new insights for paraconsistency and the study of inconsistencies in general. More specifically, I claim that the idea of the unity of contradictories in Christ’s being both divine and human may give some support to the idea of conjunctive paraconsistency, whereby true conjunctions of contradictories do not admit of Simplification. After an introduction which presents the main argument, I summarize the theory of conjunctivism in paraconsistency, then I focus on the (pseudo) Athanasian Creed, wherein the two natures – one person principle is defended against monophysism.
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Notes
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The task of Christological theories to a certain extent is to dispel the appearance, and Anderson proposes the idea that once we specify the terms involved, we do not have any contradiction (Anderson 2007: Ch. 6).
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In the discussion about Beall’s proposal, Uckelman (2019, 515) contends that Beall does not give an explicit definition of ‘C’ in general, what he says only regards logical contradictions, contradictions in logic. Beall replies by specifying that a ‘contradictory sentence’ is not only !A (a sentence of the form ‘A and not A’) but also a sentence which “with (possibly no) other true sentences, entails !A” (Beall, 2019a, 568). This is clearly another ‘logical’ account, in some sense. But sometimes we use ‘a contradiction’ also for intending a contradictory fact, and – as I hope it will be clear in a moment – a fact working as a truthmaker for !A, rather: a fact which is correctly described by (or rather: whose best description is) ‘A and not A’.
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In Karl Barth’s illuminating account: “the statement that Jesus Christ is the One who is of divine and human essence dares to unite that which by definition cannot be united.” (quoted by Anderson, 2007, 103). Is the Doctrine really entitled to ‘dare’ this, so countering logic and ordinary language in general? This is the capital question. But note that it is the same problem we have when we deal with a metaphysically sensitive notion of contradiction.
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Here and hereafter, I adopt the following notation: when I speak of facts (truthmakers), I use the propositional names p, q, etc., non-Italic, without quotation marks; when I mention propositions, I use inverted commas (‘p’, ‘q’, etc.) or Italic (p, q, etc.); when I speak of truthbearers I use angle brackets (〈p〉 is true); capital letters for properties (P) and small letters for objects (a). So that I will have, for instance, that ‘p’ or ‘Pa’ is a state description of the fact p or Pa, and 〈p〉 or 〈Pa〉 are true. Normally, for propositional variables I use Greek letters, φ, ψ, etc.
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I am clearly overshadowing here the distinction between semantic and metaphysic dialetheism. For a clarifying account, with reference to theistic paradoxes, see Cotnoir 2018. In fact, I think it is difficult to avoid metaphysical considerations in doing logic, especially when we deal with the specific challenge to traditional metaphysics represented by contradictions as JI states. The notion of ‘prelogical’ that I am using (similar to Hanna’s conception of protologic – see Hanna 2009) is typically addressed to capture this logic-metaphysic level of analysis, which is required, I think, when we advance alethic considerations (see Sects. 3.2 and 4).
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Here I am postulating that ‘T’ implies subsistence and acceptance (with exclusion of the opposite): a position which will be clarified later (2.3).
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A slightly more detailed account is to be found in d’Agostini (2021a).
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If we maintain the idea of ‘real’ contradiction, we may adopt Brandom-Rescher semantics (Rescher and Brandom 1980), saying that C may occur ‘distributively but not conjunctively’, so the fact p might subsist in one world, and not p in another, and we see both propositions are true, but there is no world in which 〈p and not p〉 obtains: the rule of Adjunction (or &Introduction) fails.
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Graham Priest has never answered the question posed by Armstrong (2004, 108), but there are reasons to believe he defends the idea of two truthmakers, if not else, because in his system “being true and false is not a third truth value. It is the possession of two truth values”, there is an overlapping of truth and falsity, correlated to the intersection of the extension and anti-extension of the predicate (Priest, 2019, 140).
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As to truth, dialetheists preserve logical truth as ruled by the transparency of the T-schema (see Beall, 2019b), and this is one of the benefits of the theory, because normally people who want to solve paradoxes should renounce the unrestricted action of the schema (Field, 2008). But they do not preserve ‘truth’ traditionally intended as marked by the exclusion of falsity– a notion that, I think, is grounding for logic (see Sect. 2.3.1 hereafter).
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Clearly, if we keep to the logical realism expressed by the T-schema, there is no constraint related to exclusion: we only have that if 〈p〉 is true then p, and if p then T〈p〉. So Beall, accepting the fundamental transparency of truth is led to favour the idea that the exclusion constraint is not really compelling and can be dropped.
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More details about this conception of truth are in d’Agostini (2021b), 520–525.
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The Incarnation process how it is here presented indirectly involves a crucial passage of the trinitarian theory. Christ is ante saecula genitus, so the eternity of generation may imply a priority with respect to the Holy Spirit. The hint recalls the so-called problem of Filioque, grounding from the Great East-West Schism (many centuries after St. Athanasius). The consequent idea is that the Holy Spirt proceeds from the Father and Son, so it is temporally subordinated, while the Son is co-eternal (as also stated in St. Paul, Col. 1, 15–20). Theologically, the ‘procession’ of the Spirit may have some impact on the logic of Incarnation, but we cannot develop this point here.
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It is important to remember that the Fundamental Problem of Christology (in Cross’s and Pawl’s account) is not the simple contradiction Hλ and not Hλ, but what is implied, metaphysically, by the acceptance of the contradiction. And what is implied, as it seems, is a metaphysical explosion, which is significantly different from the logical explosion postulated by the Pseudo-Scotus argument. Pawl’s compatibilist solution in this respect is close to the conjunctive view (see Sect. 4 hereafter).
- 20.
One may find here the symptom of a gender-oriented framework. There is no action of the mother, or if there is, it is negligible. This is a question that falls outside the scope of this paper. Rather it is obvious that the author wants to confirm the Trinitarian doctrine he just exposed.
- 21.
For van Inwagen (1994) the “no confusion sed unity” principle dispels the contradiction. He appeals to the idea of “relative identity” (RI) so that a RI-logic can easily show there is no true contradiction.
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Clearly, this does not mean that any human being is both divine and human. The two properties work in humans as dispositions, while in Christ they work as facts.
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Finally, and altogether, I would say that the conjunctive view of Christological logic reminds us of the importance of a pre-logical foundation of logic. In any logic informed by the idea of aletheia, logical choices are to be justified and explained by metaphysical, epistemological and pragmatic considerations, and it is on ground of this prelogical view that Conj appears perfectly justified, and in some sense preferable (see d’Agostini, 2023a).
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d’Agostini, F. (2023). Two in One. What the Logic of Christology Can Teach Us. In: Vestrucci, A. (eds) Beyond Babel: Religion and Linguistic Pluralism. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42127-3_21
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