Mystery and Nonsense (Discussion of Quiz Question)

By nonsense, I am not referring to something with which we disagree and therefore call nonsense. I mean “nonsense” in a narrower way; I mean true non-sense, something incoherent, something that simply has no meaning. A square triangle is nonsense. The question of whether God could create a stone too heavy for Him to lift is meaningless.

What renders these examples and other things meaningless? They are self-contradictory. When you come across a theology that contradicts itself and, worse, makes Holy Scripture contradict itself, this (besides being highly irreverent!), is simply where somebody’s theory has broken down. It isn’t revelation, since what is allegedly revealed is in fact unintelligible. It isn’t Christian teaching, since Christ Himself is God’s intelligible, articulate Reason, the Logos, in the flesh. His religion will never be absurd, never irrational, never meaningless; these are the very antithesis of Who He is. Self-contradiction then, with emphasis on “self”, is the hallmark of nonsense. (It’s perfectly okay if Christian doctrine contradicts secular reasoning. What is NOT okay is if alleged Christian doctrine contradicts *itself*, for Truth does not contradict itself. God is Truth. There is no contradiction in God. God is One.)

There are, as I’ve already noted in a comment, some people who consider it virtuous to accept contradictions of Scripture by Scripture. But in fact, to do so is thoroughly self-defeating. Observe what it does: the moment you begin accepting any, real or apparent, contradiction of Scriptural teaching, even if it is a contradiction of Scripture by Scripture itself, you immediately unravel, indeed repudiate, the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura. You make Sola Scriptura perfectly, 100% meaningless. Far worse (for one who isn’t a Sola Scripturist, as I am not), you also undo Scripture itself as any kind of authority, much less the ultimate one. Why? Because if we suspend the rule that whatever contradicts Scripture is error, then how do you measure error? Scripture then becomes anybody's and everybody's tool. Satan can quote Scripture against Scripture, and does.

Every heretic comes armed to the teeth with Scripture to contradict other Scripture. Sometimes the heretic tells us to accept the contradiction; other times he tells us the contradiction he preaches is only apparent. Whose contradictory interpretation ought we to believe? On what basis shall I accept or reject any given person’s contradiction of Holy Scripture? Why should I even accept my own or my denomination’s contradiction in preference to someone else’s? The basis for the Sola Scripturist’s whole religion is undone!

Mystery, in Christianity, is when something is revealed (not hidden) that goes far beyond anything we can possibly understand conceptually. The Incarnation, for example, is a Mystery. It is not self-contradictory and doesn’t contradict anything else in Christian doctrine, so it is not nonsense. It may seem very strange, highly unlikely, etc., but it is not incoherent. It is Mystery because we can form no idea of how Divine and human natures could be united in one Person, Jesus. We cannot imagine how the Formless One takes form, the Creator of space and time comes and dwells within space and time. We have no clue, and until quite recently no science at all, to help us understand how a virgin can give birth – and to a male child, at that. (Parthenogenesis in frogs produces sterile female offspring.) There is no explanation for how the things what we have heard and seen and known can be. Moreover, the meaning of the event may also be too deep for words fully to express, although our deepest selves (which are also Mystery, by the way) know the meaning.

The Resurrection, likewise, is a Mystery, not because the teaching contradicts itself or anything else in Christian teaching, but because we cannot begin to understand how God has done away with death as we had known it, and has transfigured it into another venue of His own Presence, and a passage into greater Life.

The sacraments are Mysteries, because we do not know how the bread and wine come to be for us the Body and Blood of the Lord, or how the Holy Spirit sanctifies the baptismal waters so that they become for us our second womb, from which we emerge as new persons, grafted into Christ, all our sins, as it were, washed away, the hellfire within us cast out.

Mystery is not darkness, but as someone wrote (Lossky, I think), Mystery is inexhaustible Light. That is, Mystery floods our consciousness with new awareness, but, although our hearts embrace the deep meaning, it is more and deeper meaning than words or thoughts can ever know what to do with. You could write volumes on it and never exhaust its meaning. This, in contrast to nonsense, which by definition cannot give us any meaning, even if the words that couch it sound good on the surface.

("There are some people," I said to one not versed in theology, "who believe that before the world began, God chose who would be saved. He did not, however, choose who would not be saved."

(She thought about that a moment, then wrinkled her nose and asked, "What does that mean?"

("It doesn't; that's the point.")

When neither you nor anyone else can figure out the “how” of things, it’s probably Mystery.

When you know the "what" of something (like who you are or your love for your children), but there aren't words to express it, that, too is probably Mystery.

If you and I don’t understand the “what,” but nevertheless an explanation exists that resolves the matter, that’s only an apparent contradiction, not a real one.

When nobody has ever resolved it (because it is a square triangle), that’s a real contradiction. That's nonsense. Avoid that.