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makes it that much more gorgeous, and so on. The more we simplistically eliminate theological
paradoxes, the more we obscure God's revelation and water down the faith, and rob ourselves of
reasons for worship and a deeper insight into God's infinitely great glory.
Many theologians in our day have insisted that they can scale the greatness of God with
their own intellect. But in so doing they have had to reject the God of biblical revelation (or at
least some "side" of that God). The primary error of certain "hyperlogicians" is to think, "God
and reality cannot be any bigger or more complex than my formal reasoning can comprehend."
Avoiding such hubris, and using a chastened, wiser reason, may we submit our minds to all the
revelation we have been given and so accept the mysteries that exist in God's nature and his
relation to us, learning better how to give glory and praise to our infinitely excellent God.
Endnotes
1. The author wants to thank Doug Huffman, Merold Westphal, C. Stephen Evans, Ronald Nash, and Lyle Larson
for their help in identifying weaknesses in earlier drafts. Special thanks are due to James Spiegel for extraordinary
efforts to improve this piece. Its remaining problems are the fault of the author.
2. Early Greek Philosophy, ed. John Burnet (Cleveland: World, 1957), 136.
3. Ulrich Zwingli, On True and False Religion, Ed. Samuel M. Jackson & Clarence N. Helks, (Durham, NJ:
Labyrinth, 1981), p. 61.
4. Though he never put it quite that way. Cf. Etienne Gilson, Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. (New York:
Random House, 1955), 44-45.
5. Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic, 7th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1996), 3.
6. This is what the psychologist Piaget termed "formal operations." Cf. Barbel Inhelder and Jean Piaget, The Growth
of Logical Thinking: From Childhood to Adolescence, trans. A. Parsons and S. Milgram. (New York: Basic Books,
1958).
7. Cf. Robert S. Tragesser, "Principle of Contradiction," A Companion to Epistemology (London: Blackwell, 1992),
366; Cohen and Nagel, Logic, 181-2.
8. F.H.Bradley, The Principles of Logic, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1883), 147.