Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 2 – Redirection (Dale)

Last time we briefly distinguished four ways Christians respond to apparent contradictions in theology. Here, we look at what I call Redirection. When confronted with an apparently contradictory doctrine X, the Redirector changes the subject. She says something to direct your attention away from X, or at least away from the apparent inconsistency of X. The Redirector is either not arguing in defense of X at all, or she’s committing a red herring fallacy.

An example:

Doubting Don: What’s this Incarnation business? Jesus was God and a human? But isn’t that saying that he is and isn’t God?

Redirecting Rebecca: Isn’t it amazing that God loved us so much, that while we were yet sinners, he sent his only Son to redeem us?

(Don doesn’t bite on her first attempt at Redirection.)Doubting Don: Well, sure, that is amazing. But what does that have to do with my question? All contradictions are false, right? But the Incarnation doctrine looks like one. It seems we shouldn’t believe it, then, as we aim to believe what is true.

Redirecting Rebecca: Look, if the divine didn’t become human, then no human can become divine.

First Rebecca just changes the subject. When pressed, she gives (the start of) an argument for the Incarnation doctrine. But this is also a red herring – a distraction. Don has raised a worry that the Incarnation is inconsistent. It’s no good offering an argument for something which we’re pretty sure is a contradiction. Discovering that some claim is contradictory forecloses the project of looking for evidence or argument for that claim. Again, maybe what she says at the end is true, but unimportant, because no human can become divine (because that is logically impossible).

She’s thinking: some people are saved, and being saved is becoming divine, and so given the principle she states, the divine must have become human (i.e. the Incarnation doctrine must be true). This is all fine and dandy – perhaps true – but she just hasn’t faced the issue of whether that doctrine is consistent (so possibly true) or inconsistent (so necessarily false).

This is irresponsible. God gave us minds so that (concerning important things) we can maximize our true beliefs and minimize our false beliefs. Moreover, many people have faced the issue of consistency, whatever the doctrine is – Trinity, incarnation, free will and foreknowledge, evil and God’s goodness. Rebecca really ought to look into it more.

Redirection, as a settled stance (rather than a momentary response) towards apparently contradictory claims, just isn’t a serious option for someone who wants to love God with all her mind.

(Note: If you’re thinking that Rebecca’s argument for the Incarnation will be so strong that it will be cogent even if the doctrine is still (after she’s thought about it quite a bit) apparently contradictory, then you’re thinking of her not as a Redirector, but as a Resister. On Resistance, stay tuned…)