Divine Contradiction

Building on his paradigm-shifting work on the incarnation in The Contradictory Christ (OUP, 2021), Jc Beall extends a robust contradictory theology with an account of the trinity. Throughout the history of the Christian church, heretics, apophatics, mystics, atheists, and many others have long proclaimed that the doctrine of the trinity - one of the central doctrines of the Christian faith - is contradictory. In this work, Beall agrees; however, as Beall convincingly argues, one needn't abandon orthodoxy, play language games, inflate one's metaphysics, nor abandon the standard faith in the face of such divine contradiction. Instead, one can accept central axioms of the trinity at face value and, with a suitable account of logical entailment, accept the 'contradictory truths' thereby entailed.

With the clarity and precision that only a logician could provide, Beall provided theology and the Christian church in general with a very simple and viable (and arguably correct) model of divine reality. Unlike the vast number of theologians and philosophers before him, Beall rejects the quest for a logically consistent account of divine reality. The triune god (viz., God) is truly and fully described only via contradiction. As such, attempts to remove the contradiction are attempts to remove truths of God.

Jc Beall, O'Neill Family Chair in Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

Jc Beall is widely known for work in logic and the philosophy of logic, particularly nonclassical logic. Beall holds the O'Neill Family Chair in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and he is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. In 2022 Beall was a Global Fellow in Philosophy and Divinity at the University of St Andrews. Prior to Notre Dame, Beall was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut.