Abstract
In this chapter, I want to read particular biblical cases as a means for examining two philosophical problems; namely, how to deal logically with contradictions and the consequences that follow from the alternatives examined regarding the notion of rationality. Considering a perspective according to which rationality is closely connected to a certain idea of logicity, my aim is to show that, on the one hand, in the story of Susanna and the Elders, Daniel’s belief in Susanna’s chastity can be understood as supported by a reasoning that is grounded on classical logic and thus fits perfectly into the classical model of rationality. The narrations of Jesus’s resurrection on the other hand would require a different approach both to contradictions and to the relationship between contradictions and rationality. Otherwise, there is a risk of either shaking up important parts of the Christian creed—such as the idea that God has a salvific plan that is made possible precisely by the resurrection of Jesus—or accepting that believing in the resurrection is irrational. It is worthy to take into account that, for fideists, accepting a religious belief as irrational is no problem because they hold that religious beliefs are a question of faith, and faith is either independent of or adversarial toward reason in the sense that it is not founded, nor can it be founded, on arguments. Something different happens with those who adhere to more rationalistic traditions like natural theology, which attempts to give a rational support to the belief of the existence of God. The Christian believer to which I refer in this work stands on the latter, more rationalistic side. With regard to the rationality of the belief in the resurrection, I contend that in order to be considered rational, one who believes in the resurrection could support that belief with a reasoning grounded on some form of paraconsistent logic. I focus here on da Costa’s C1 system and on the LFI1 system of Carnielli, Marcos and de Amo, but other paraconsistent systems could also be used. In the last section of the chapter, I present some problems that emerge when a perspective like the one proposed here is adopted.
A previous version of this chapter was discussed with colleagues and friends at the Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios and at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia. It was published as part of the book Racionalidad, lenguaje y acción. Aproximaciones analíticas (2016) with the title “Contradicciones y Racionalidad: Susana y los viejos jueces y la resurreción de Jesús. Un estudio de casos.” Regarding the present version, I am thankful to the anonymous referees for their useful comments and to the people who contributed to the enrichment of the ideas developed here through the discussion of some central thoughts and technical proceedings. Among them I include Evandro Luis Gomes, Tomás Barrero, Jose Andrés Forero, Miguel Ángel Pérez, Carlos Miguel Gómez and Luis Fernando Múnera. I am especially grateful to Professor Graham Priest for inviting me to participate as a visiting research scholar in the academic community of CUNY, where several of the ideas presented here were refined and reformulated. Finally, as always, I am more than grateful to God, the Virgin Mary, the angels and the saints for everything.
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Notes
- 1.
I must clarify that my intention is not to reduce the study of the biblical texts to a logical reading. I am simply exploring this option and trying to make explicit some consequences that follow from choosing it. Taking this path implies making some assumptions, such as accepting the biblical sentences analyzed here as sentences that can be true or false (which I sometimes refer to here as “sentences” and sometimes as “propositions” disregarding any possible philosophical differences between these terms), and not simply expressions of feelings or desires, or sentences produced with a solely exhortative or directive evangelical purpose. I obviously recognize that other biblical sentences may have different uses depending on the context in which they are immersed, but I assume that the particular sentences analyzed here have the descriptive character that I attribute to them.
- 2.
Logic is normally understood to be the study of valid arguments. From this perspective, we can say that a logical system or a logic is a language provided with a syntax (vocabulary, rules for the formation of sentences and axioms, and rules of inference that allow us to make the transition from one sentence to another), as well as a semantics (models that provide us with the truth values of the sentences and the tools for assessing the validity of the arguments). Logical systems can either be axiomatic (if they include axioms and rules of inference) or natural deduction systems (if they only include rules of inference). One example of an axiomatic system is Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica (1910), while one of a natural deduction system is E. J. Lemmon’s Beginning Logic (1965). (Haack 1978).
- 3.
I understand classical logic to consist of the logical systems whose axioms, and deductive rules are completely in accordance with the fundamental principles of the deductive thoughts of Frege and Russell-Whitehead.
- 4.
Assuming a sort of fideism, some readers of previous versions of this chapter have asserted that—generally speaking— religious believers do not believe in response to a logical argument, but rather because they are moved by feelings and emotions. I think this is an interesting point that deserves discussion. Even though I would like to clarify that my concern here is not the way believers actually adopt a certain belief, but whether or not a belief once adopted can be shown to be rational, if we assume that rationality is a matter of following logical rules. In this sense, my question, as will be clarified in the next section, is whether a belief that consists of a proposition involving a contradiction can be rational, given that what is considered rational in this context involves a logic that holds contradictions to be false.
- 5.
The translation of all Portuguese and Spanish quotes into English is my own.
- 6.
Although authors such as Carnielli and Marcos (2002) separate ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet and ex falso sequitur quodlibet, we will maintain the equivalence between these two principles in this work.
- 7.
As in the case of Susanna, the only support here for the sentence “Jesus rose from the dead” are the sentences that constitute the testimonies of the women. Based on this, I take q and ¬q as necessary and sufficient conditions of p, and take p→q and p→¬q as premises of the argument.
- 8.
I owe proofs 13 and 14 as well as two additional proofs not included here to Tomás Barrero, who also suggested the idea of introducing LFI1 into the discussion. I am extremely grateful to him for these important contributions to the present work.
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Gómez Gutiérrez, S. (2020). Contradictions and Rationality: An Analysis of Two Biblical Cases. In: Silvestre, R.S., Göcke, B.P., Béziau, JY., Bilimoria, P. (eds) Beyond Faith and Rationality. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43535-6_10
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