Oscillation and Other Approaches to Inconsistencies in Talking about God

Abstract

Any description of God leads to paradoxes. For instance, God is both transcendent and immanent, non-corporeal and described in bodily terms. For some, the tension in such conflicting descriptions is supposed to open a path to deeper insight into the divine. A rational handling of such contradictions is attempted by theologians. Jewish approaches can be based on emphasizing the limits of language; its inevitably metaphoric use; limiting discourse to negative theology; stressing the primacy of orthopraxy; or treating descriptions of the divine as necessarily partial, or rather complementary. The last point indicates parallels with modern science. A picture of oscillation between incompatible approaches seems to offer a promising, and rather unexplored, way of engaging with these theological tensions. This oscillation seems to be present in other areas and can be modeled formally through sequential paraclassical logic.