My motivation for this topic is a little overdue but hopefully the ideas are timeless. I don’t really think II Peter 3:8 and 9 are primarily directed to the issue of free will vs. predestination, more on that later, but it was brought up. We were presented with the notion of two things which seem to contradict but in fact are both true. The term used was antinomy, but I like the word paradox. Antinomy has the idea of two lines of reasoning that contradict. But I think paradox is a lot more fun and alive. It has with it the notion that two things contradict in a logical sense, yet in a poetic sense they are both necessary. In fact crashing them together can bring out meaning and truth which neither aspect has in and of itself. The tension and the relationship between these two things is the way it was meant to be, it is the way God created it to be.
Paradox is the fabric of the Universe, it won’t unravel it, silly Doctor.
Paradox underlies much of creation. When we encounter them in scripture we often freak out like the Doc. Or we lament the fact that we can’t take one extreme and make a rule that would be simple to follow. Instead we are given this tension and we have to work it out. As sub-creators bearing the image of God we must be creative, in our resolutions to these tension. As an example of how fundamental these are, lets look at the creation account from Genesis 1. Most false religions err on one side of a tension or the other. They try to make the world many or one. But the trinitarian God is both. The entire creation account is one of divided unity coming back to relate to itself in a richer way. “God divided the light from the darkness” vs. 4 “and divided the waters which were under the firmament from he waters above the firmament” vs. 6. Even the creation of woman was a division of the man. “And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman.” Genesis 2:22. And so in marriage they come back together to become one, it is a mystery. This is perhaps the best idea of a paradox. Men and women are totally different, yet they are told to become one in marriage. It doesn’t make much sense if you deconstruct it and mix in a little sin, and so the world concludes that homosexual is just as good or better. You don’t make it all male or make it all female you crash them together and they become one. The nature of the world is paradox, and marriage is such a beautiful picture of it.
M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands
The book of Proverbs is also full of paradox. Lets say a pastor quoted Proverbs 26:4 “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” without quoting verse 5 “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. And then went on to talk about the importance of believing free will and predestination. It might seem like he has created a paradox, really he is just a hypocrite. Because, these are the same thing, he is holding one standard for himself and another for everyone else. Sometimes contradiction is just contradiction. But, these seemingly contradictory proverbs are a paradox. Those are two valid responses. We can’t just make one of them into a command that we must abide by and let the other one float away. We have to hold them both in our minds as we act. Sometimes answering a fool will make you a fool, not necessarily a bad thing maybe you need a lesson. On the other hand sometimes answering a fool will prevent him from becoming established in his folly. This brings to mind the Jewish mind, so beautifully illustrated in The Fiddler on the Roof. “On the one hand. . . but on the other hand”. This is the way of proverbs, because it is the way of the God’s world, this is paradox.
M. C. Escher, Relativity
Wisdom can get you a long way in your life, it can give you general principles that can inform your decision, but you still have to decide. In the real world you must choose, and that decision will inform future decisions, success or failure. Wisdom is an applied science, it is a skill, not a mere theory. With a paradox it is ok to have both, but situations might call for one side being addressed at the expense of the other. That is what is going on here with II Peter. He is not interested in the doctrine of predestination et al. He is explaining that God’s seeming slowness, is further love. God is making more opportunities for people to be saved. He loves us so much that he just waits for as many as he can get. The freewill vs predestination debate often degrades into some sort of an argument about whether God looked ahead and saw our decision, etc. This is foolishness. Peter makes it clear in vs. 8, God is outside of time, he does not measure time as we do. The ‘when’ does not matter. This idea was discussed by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy. Written in 524 and followed up by C. S. Lewis and others, yet is does not seem nearly prevalent enough. It really cuts out a lot of the silliness.
I must end with an extended piece of Chesterton, Master of Paradox. They flow so freely in his writing, he uses them as subject and as large and small scale literary device.
It [Christianity] separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny– all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of ONE’S SELF, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go–as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, QUA man, can be valueless. Here, again in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul.
-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Further Reading: The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius; Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton