God and Logic

I am currently reading my way through the rather fascinating book, Four Views on Christianity and Philosophy (found here.) Once I have finished that, I might be able to articulate better where I stand on the issue. However, I want to talk about the consequences of completely rejecting logic here.

Regardless of whether logical principles are necessary in any reality, or contingent based on the nature of the creator(which to my mind makes them just as necessary), we start to run into problems quite quickly if we disregard them. I once asked an anon account on twitter if God could make a square circle. The answer was "Yes, of course."

This should worry you. Deeply. A square circle is a nonentity. A nonsensical construct. At first suggesting that God can do anything, seems pious and almost set up so we give credit to the speaker for being so committed to his doctrine that he is willing to embrace the truth even if it doesn't make sense to him.

A little prodding and everything starts to unravel, however.  If God can manifest logical contradictions, then is God trustworthy? How about this other logical contradiction: Can God tell a true lie? Sure, God cannot lie, but what if the lie is true? Is he lying? This is madness.

Let's entertain the rabbit hole of madness for a bit. If God can tell a true lie, how do we know He is not? How do we discern the truth, and what, for that matter does truth even mean? Sure, we have the witness of the Spirit, but the Spirit is God too, and can tell true lies too. This is no slippery slope, it is a bottomless pit of despair and uncertainty. God is reduced to a trickster. Untrustworthy because we cannot trust the nature or fabric of reality. We say, "God is good", but what does "Good mean"? What if Good is really evil and evil is really good?

Clearly we cannot embrace nonsense in respect to God. The position is self defeating and ultimately leads away from God. CS Lewis puts it very well;

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.

If you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, 'God can.'

It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

I really like CS Lewis' view. God remains omnipotent. He can do anything. However, some 'things' we think up aren't really things. They are nonsense.

However there is something to the idea that logic cannot circumscribe God. At some point in examining God we are going to come to mysteries, things we cannot explain, and yes, sometimes apparent contradictions. We need to understand that the mind itself is 'infirm'(I have been reading too many old books). There are possibilities that we may not have thought of to resolve some of the more complex contradictions.

The trick, in my view is to learn to distinguish between the genuine mystery and the flat out contradiction. We cannot bar logic from our examination of theology, and we cannot rely fully on our on own faculties. We make mistakes, God does not. God has granted us the ability to reason, and it is unfaithfulness on our part not to use it.

Can we use logic in examining God, and trying to understand better? Certainly, but with care.

As usual, comments should be respectful.