One netfriend wrote:

I wonder whether we need a major rethink on the merits of contradictory truths? Does the presence of two mutually exclusive and contradictory facts mean that one of them must be wrong? I’d suggest that our ancient historical perspectives of faith would suggest not, and that problems emerge when we try to reconcile and/or synthesise the irreconcilable. Consider Christology as a case in point. Maybe the truth is in both extremes, rather than somewhere in the middle.

Another responded:

I’m sure this is right. A simple example is that two irreconcilable positions might both be wrong. But more often it would be likely that each has some truth, but neither is completely self-consistent. Close examination of most things we call paradoxes usually reveals that the combining of the two things is in fact nonsensical, and only appears paradoxical on the surface. Logically speaking, if two things combined imply something that cannot be true then something must be wrong somewhere, it’s not necessarily a paradox. Of course, the trick is knowing what it is that cannot be true! Perhaps it is easiest seen in the once closed universe of mathematical logic. I have a wonderfull little old book called something like “Fallacies in Mathematical Reasoning”, but can’t seem to put my hand on it right now. He gives many examples where the presuppositions are respectable, the reasoning looks rigorous, but somewhere along the way a false but non-obvious step is made and the whole system collapses into a meaningless answer something like +1 = -1. It is tempting to claim that one has therefore “proved” a new feature of our number system, but the more sensible (and often tricky) response is to find the fallacious step.

It is harder to see in more philosophical systems, but just look at how politicians move from A is true, B is true, therefore C is true. Who checks whether both A and B are actually true? Of course it gets messy when, despite the nonsensical reasoning by which it was arrived at, C just happens to be true anyway. Of course, I’m thinking modern here – but I haven’t read much on postmodern mathematics yet. Perhaps fuzzy logic or chaos theory might give us a way in, but they are also strongly grounded in modern formal logic and probability theory. The writings of Vladimir Tasic look interesting here.

I well remember struggling with Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whithead’s lifelong attempt to systematise all of known mathematics into a single system based on a handful of presuppositions. In my third year analysis classes we had to reproduce their reasoning. This was the ultimate mathematical “big story”. Then along came Kurt Godel with his incompleteness theorem and swept it all away in a single line of logic. The mathematical universe is not closed at all, but open at the edges. Mathematical systems can only be described by reference to something that is outside of the system (God?). Godel’s approach to this was through rigorous logic, but I wonder if he was a postmodern at heart?

When it comes to the example of Christology, perhaps it is our Greek categories that get in the way. A man is a man and isn’t a god – by definition (although Alexander the great might disagree). A god is a god and isn’t a man – by definition. Some forms of hybrid are possible, such as the man Alexander becoming a god, or even for a being to be half god and half man (Dyonisius). But Jesus is both fully man and fully God at the same time – something inconceivable to a Greek – or a Western humanist. This is because the starting definitions are human constructions and not based on the reality of the natural and supernatural world.

First netfriend:

I put my hand up and plead guilty… or at least sloppy. The hard part is that pomo is a slippery eel, or an elephant… one part is not representative of the whole, and even if we think we grasp it, it wriggles out. I should have said something more general. (I’m still a modernist at the heart of my keyboard!)

Second:

Slippery is its name!