9
Jesus often used paradoxical language in his teaching. "For whoever wants to save his
life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" (Lu. 9:24). "...The greatest among
you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves" (Lu. 22:26). He
used metaphors in contrary ways that created cognitive dissonance. One time he said, "Do not
suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword"
(Mt. 10:37); yet to Peter he said, "Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up
the sword shall perish by the sword." After healing a blind man, he said, "For judgment I have
come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind" (Jo. 9:39).
He challenged his hearers to love their enemies (Mt. 5: 44) and hate their parents and children
(Lu. 14:26). These sayings are not impossible to understand, but they show that the very Logos
of God made use of paradoxical language in striking ways.
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Paul also taught paradoxes. "For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Co. 12:10b).
"Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to
will and to act according to his good purpose" (Ph. 2:12b-13). And some of his teaching is
reminiscent of Jesus' paradox about living through dying, with a Christ-centered twist: "For you
died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God" (Co. 3:3), "I have been crucified with
Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I live..." (Ga. 2:20), "Count
yourselves dead to sin but alive to God" (Ro. 6:11). Concurrences pervaded Paul's
understanding of the Christian life.
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Many Scriptural paradoxes are only detected when we compare Scripture with Scripture.
Systematic theology, as traditionally conceived, is the attempt to organize and harmonize the
chief teachings of Scripture,
25
a task that can only be accomplished with the aid of formal logic.