Paradox Of The Incarnation

Working through parts of Kierkegaard’s (pseudonymous) Philosophical Fragments in one of my classes, Johannes Climacus discusses Christ’s incarnation as a paradox, an affront to reason. The way in which I typically think of the incarnation as an affront to reason is in (probably far too simplistic and unhelpful) terms of percentages: Christ is 100% human and 100% divine. The problem, of course, is how something—anything—can be completely one thing and also completely something else, how it can “own” in its entirety and identity two sets of incompatible or contradictory or opposing attributes. (Which one of the three disjuncts we choose to describe the sets of attributes is important, but one that I’ll leave aside for now.)

Another way to put this is in terms of communicable attributes. There are certain attributes God has that are said to be communicable, or capable of being attributed (though in an analogical rather than univocal sense) to humans: loving, just, merciful, etc. And there are incommunicable attributes that specify characteristics unique to God, ones that can’t even analogically be said to describe creatures: omnipotence, omniscience, aseity (independence), immutability (unchangeableness), perfect, infinite, etc. (Because these latter characteristics are supposed to be describing a being completely different from us creatures (at least in those ways), they often have negative (a-, im-, in-) or superlative (omni-) prefixes attached.)

Apart from the question of whether or not we can even talk intelligibly about God’s incommunicable attributes (Michael Horton in his Lord and Servant has a very interesting argument for how we can), there is the question of whether, or how, God’s attributes can also be human attributes in the person of Christ. Of particular concern are the incommunicable attributes, but, really, both these attributes and the communicable attributes are problematic, for if Christ is God then he would have even God’s communicable attributes univocally and not just analogically. What has the finite to do with the infinite? Can omniscience be predicated of Christ as human or can mercy be predicated univocally of Christ as God?

In his chapter “The Lord as Servant,” Horton discusses some of the pitfalls of non-Chalcedonian takes on Christ’s two natures, in which there is either too much separation (emphasizing Christ’s humanity) or too much confusion or melding together (ultimately divinizing Christ). Horton, of course, wants to steer the course set by Chalcedon: one person in two natures without division and without confusion. One way to separate the natures, for instance, would be to say that some attributes apply to one of the natures (e.g., the communicable ones to Christ’s humanity) while other attributes apply to the other nature (e.g., the incommunicable ones to Christ’s divinity). But this makes Christ schizophrenic at best and is an unbiblical view at worst (e.g., Acts 20:28 – God purchased the church with His own blood). The way of confusion would be something like Barth’s position that Christ reveals God only in his divinity, only in terms of his divine attributes.

So how does Chalcedon steer clear of the paradoxical nature of the incarnation?

“The doctrine of the two natures of Christ must be articulated within a thoroughly Trinitarian framework, without simply reducing one nature to the other. The paradox must never be resolved in any final synthesis: this, it seems, is precisely the point that Chalcedon makes.” (176)

What is this Trinitarian framework? It has been easy for theologians in the past to view Christ’s humanity as being wielded by his divinity, like someone wielding a tool (e.g., Athanasius held this view). This would ease the tension brought on by the paradox, but it fails to give full weight to Christ’s humanity. Horton’s answer is that when we put Christ’s work, and, thereby, Christ’s nature(s), within the context of covenant—the covenants of redemption and of creation—we see him as both the eternal Son and the second Adam, respectively. It is particularly in his active obedience regarding the covenant of creation—accomplishing what Adam could not—where Horton sees the Trinity at work, for

“the Son of Man claims victory for himself by right and not merely by gift, nor indeed by virtue of his deity.” (172)

Christ, obedient in his humanity, was upheld by the Spirit of God to accomplish and fulfill the task set before him and not just because his humanity was carried along like so much baggage on the back of the Logos. The paradox is not finally resolved—at least not in the sense that it now becomes rationally acceptable and ceases to be an affront to (unregenerate) reason—but perhaps the tension could be eased a bit.

Horton has us think about the two natures—the finite and the infinite—in terms of containment, what is called the extracalvinisticum: the finite cannot contain the infinite. Reformed folks have not interpreted this to mean that there could be no uniting of the two, but to mean instead that the two couldn’t be confused or commingled. That is, the infinite will not be contained in the finite without remainder; the former will always outstrip the latter. Heidelberg Catechism Q. 48:

“Since divinity is not limited and is present everywhere, it is evident that Christ’s divinity is surely beyond the bounds of the humanity he has assumed, but at the same time his divinity is in and remains personally united to his humanity.”

One of the problems with the paradox is thinking of the divine attributes as applying in the same way to the Logos as to Christ, without taking into consideration the humanity with which those attributes are united. Is Christ infinite in exactly the same way as the Logos? No. Is Christ infinite? Yes. QED

Kierkegaard and Apologetics

Christianity has always rooted itself and its claims in historical fact, not only in the Scriptures themselves but in the creeds of the Church—after all, Pontius Pilate makes his way into the Apostles’ Creed. In the Philosophical Fragments Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus (“John the Ladder”), considers the role of historical evidence, particularly regarding the Incarnation, in providing a basis for faith. Climacus claims that historical evidence is neither necessary nor sufficient for faith, yet it plays the role as an occasion for faith. In fact, Climacus argues that we can’t reason our way to God at all; the attempt is doomed from the start, for we cannot raise ourselves, epistemologically speaking, to God’s level in order to know Him. One reason, I think, that Kierkegaard has Climacus say this is because Kierkegaard is very much concerned to counter a kind of intellectualized Christianity that he saw permeating Denmark, one where Truth was not seeping into the very persons who assented to Christian doctrine. Another reason, closer to Climacus’ concerns, has to do with the nature of the relationship between us and God. A problem arises between unequals for any love affair (as Climacus calls it), but this is especially so in a love affair between an infinite, holy God and finite, sinful human beings. How can this inequality be overcome? What point of contact could God have with human beings?

Climacus begins the work by considering two contrasting ways of coming to a knowledge of truth: Opinion A and Opinion B. Opinion A is essentially a Socratic/Platonic view of knowledge from Plato’s dialogue, Meno. In the dialogue, the truth is seen as something that resides in the person and knowledge is brought about by a teasing out of this truth by the teacher through Socratic questioning. In this case, the teacher imparts nothing but acts as an intellectual midwife (as Socrates once called himself), birthing the truth that was already within. The learner is not transformed. According to Opinion B, on the other hand, the learner is transformed by the teacher, who imparts upon the learner the condition for understanding the truth. The learner is unable to come to a knowledge of the truth on his own but needs help—he needs a savior, a deliverer, a judge (as Climacus says). He needs what Climacus calls “the god” as teacher.

Climacus claims not to be a Christian; he has not ascended to a knowledge of God, even through faith. But, I think, Kierkegaard was a Christian, and Opinion B clearly has God (and not just “the god”) as teacher in mind. The reason why we cannot ascend to a knowledge of God on our own, the reason we need a teacher, a deliverer, a savior is, ironically, the very point of contact that God has with human beings: the Incarnation. Human reason cannot comprehend the Incarnation; its paradoxical nature offends reason, so reason (apart from faith) decides not to believe it. Faith, says Climacus, is a gift from God that allows the individual to believe what reason could not. Reason, in this case, is not abrogated but rather fulfilled.

But, and this is closer to whatever apologetical implications Philosophical Fragments might have, reason is also unable to believe—at least with any certainty—based on historical evidence. Climacus’ reasoning for this claim is admittedly difficult and convoluted, but it amounts to seeing an historical event as being contingent by virtue of its coming into being, since that which comes into being from not-being cannot be necessary (for what is necessary cannot change or not-be). The upshot here is that reason is unable either to accept or reject any historical event with complete certainty—including the Incarnation. Because of the paradoxical nature of the Incarnation, reason takes offence and refuses to believe. Although this may seem like a “reasonable” way for reason to react, it can’t disbelieve with certainty—it can’t say, “It is absolutely true that the Incarnation is impossible.”

Belief is a function of the will, a conclusion of the will. Both reason and faith can be grounds of belief (in a causal sense, at the very least), but as belief is a function of the will, reason and faith will ultimately both be grounded in passion. Reason, the intellect, for Climacus, is not some neutral arbiter with regard to what it accepts or rejects. In the end, it has as little (or as much) rationale behind its decisions as does faith. It is no better; it is no worse. But because of its imperialistic nature, because it wants to impose its rational standards and criteria upon the world, because it refuses to see its own limitations, because (as Climacus says) its capacity to understand the things of God is affected by sin, there is the need for God to provide the condition necessary to understand the things of God: faith.

The apologetical implications are these. In the end, historical evidence will not decide the acceptance or rejection of the things of God. Understanding will ultimately come from God in the form of faith, not from reasoning our way through to an understanding, because the intellect has been made incapable of understanding the things of God through sin; that is, the problem is ultimately moral rather than epistemological. Yet, evidence can provide the means by which God transforms the individual.

As C. Stephen Evans notes in his essay on Philosophical Fragments, this looks a lot like Reformed epistemology: beliefs can be warranted even if they are not based on any evidence that can be appealed to, and beliefs are warranted by virtue of their being the result of “faculties designed to reach truth that are working properly in the kind of environment in which they were designed to function” (Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function). Our faculties were designed to reach the truth by working properly in God’s creation. But sin got in the way—our faculties no longer work properly, though they remain in the environment in which they were designed to function. So, (un)naturally, we’ll mess things up about God’s world. Where faith comes in is that it reorients our faculties to their proper working order. So, as Augustine and Calvin claimed, faith is necessary for understanding and for properly warranted belief.

Kierkegaard in Perspective

I have a new-found respect for Kierkegaard. He is considered a Christian existentialist and is best known for advocating a "leap of faith" to God. Before last spring (when we read some of his works in my existentialism class), what I'd read of Kierkegaard didn't seem all that Christian--at least not very orthodox, which is what interests me. When folks recite his most well-known and important works, they list titles like Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript. These are supposed to give us some insight into what Kierkegaard thought about things.

But Kierkegaard won't be boxed in so easily. The fact is that these works were written under pseudonyms that he created. This might not sound all that consequential, but it has everything to do with understanding him. For Kierkegaard, these pseudonyms were his "poetical creations," complete with their own worldview, voice, motivations, and perspective. They were not just Kierkegaard putting his voice in another name; they were Kierkegaard putting a different voice in another creation. He adamantly distances himself from what these pseudonyms wrote, going so far as to claim (at the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where he confessed that he was the "author"--in a legal sense--of the pseudonymous works) that he had "no opinion of them except as a third party, no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, and not even the most tenuous private connection to them." As he says in The Point of View for My Work as an Author, the point of these works was not to give his voice, but to shatter the illusions of the reader and to get the reader to reflect upon himself, his own subjectivity, rather than try to rationalize everything.

At the same time that he was publishing these "aesthetical" works, he was also publishing his "religious" works, which were published under his own name and were meant to be his voice. In these works, he wanted to get the reader to relate his subjectivity to God, to stress that what was important was one's relationship to God (and not the number of true propositions about God one could amass). Over and over again, he says that the problem he is tackling in his works taken as a whole and from beginning to end is "how to become a Christian." The thing is--a thing as true now as it was when all of these works were published--no one really pays attention to the religious works but instead look to his pseudonymous works to find out 'what Kierkegaard thinks.' The problem is that you won't find what Kierkegaard thinks in those works. He says,

Supposing that such a reader understands perfectly and appraises critically the individual aesthetic productions, he will nevertheless totally misunderstand me, inasmuch as he does not understand the religious totality in my whole work as an author. Suppose, then, that another understands my works in the totality of their religious reference, but does not understand a single one of the aesthetic productions contained in them--I would say that this lack of understanding is not an essential lack.

Wow. Insofar as people continue to focus on the aesthetical works (which they do) and ignore the religious works (which they do), they will continue to "totally misunderstand" Kierkegaard. This seems like a pretty serious interpretive shortcoming on the part of Kierkegaard readers. (At least those readers in "the public." I'm not privy to the orientation of Kierkegaard scholars, or scholars in general for that matter.)

What is perhaps just as (if not more) interesting is that he sees his use of pseudonyms as a literary device conceived for a particular purpose. In order to shatter illusions, he thought that "direct communication"--telling people straightaway what you want them to understand--was simply not going to cut it. Direct communication, he thought, "presupposes that the receiver's ability to receive is undisturbed. But here such is not the case; an illusion stands in the way." His method of "indirect communication" is much more in line with the dialogue as a literary form and pedagogical tool. Kierkegaard was very much a respecter of Socrates' method of questioning his interlocutors rather than coming out and giving "the answer" in Plato's dialogues. Just as Plato (and Socrates) never came out and told us what he thought but instead used the characters in a dialogue as a way to make us think about what was being said rather than about what authority was saying it, so Kierkegaard used the 'characters' of his pseudonyms as a way of counterbalancing what was being said by him in his religious works. A dialogue on a grander scale.

Kierkegaard claimed that the deeper significance of his pseudonymous works was that they were an intentional deception. However,

One must not let oneself be deceived by the word 'deception'. [HA!] One can deceive a person for the truth's sake, and (to recall old Socrates) one can deceive a person into the truth. Indeed, it is only by this means, i.e., by deceiving him, that it is possible to bring into the truth one who is in an illusion.

I'm not completely certain what he means by "deceiving into the truth," but I think it is akin to a reductio ad absurdum argument--assuming the opponent's position in order to show that it is problematic. It is a deception of a sort to start off agreeing with the opponent's position, since you don't agree with it at all! But why do you start off by agreeing with it? In order to show that something is terribly wrong with it--which ends up being consistent with your actual position! Kierkegaard says that the person to whom he is writing is "under the allusion that the aesthetic is Christianity; for, he thinks, I am a Christian, and yet he lives in aesthetic [rather than religious] categories." Now, I'm not sure what all is included in "aesthetic categories," but he plainly does not believe that that is what Christianity is about. "The deception consists in the fact that one talks thus merely to get to the religious theme." This is where Kierkegaard wants to end up--at the religious. He does so by showing how thinking about Christianity from an aesthetic point of view just leads to problems.