If your system of beliefs is totally consistent, then you may have cause for concern. Allow me to give you some background for this assertion . . .
We must start with Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, who published Principia Mathematica (PM) in 1911, a monumental work aimed at providing a complete, consistent, and non-self-referential mathematical system.[1] Kurt Gödel, a young Austrian logician and mathematician, came along in 1931 and blew PM out of the water in a remarkable published paper. He revealed numerous problems within PM and argued that no system could produce all truths, “unless it were an inconsistent system!”[2]
Stop and take a breath!
Imagine the reaction of the newly knighted Lord Russell toward this 25 year-old Gödel who declared that his book was riddled with self-reference and inconsistency, with arguments that stated “all sorts of absurd and incomprehensible things about themselves.”[3] These were the very things Russell and Whitehead had attempted to avoid!
Gödel’s theorem has plagued many mathematicians, logicians, and philosophers ever since it was published. He revealed that any and all organized systems of thought cannot be both complete and consistent. If they are totally consistent, they are at the expense of excluding elements that would otherwise make them inconsistent. If they are complete, they are at the expense of including inconsistent elements.
So, is theology subject to Gödel’s theorem? Absolutely! First of all, if God does indeed exist, then there will necessarily be discontinuities and inconsistencies, given our limited perspectives of the available slices of God. It is ironic that the inconsistencies some atheists claim invalidate the God concept are the very characteristics that validate truth! [4]
If systems of belief are permitted to take their natural course with integrity, given Gödel’s theorem, there will be inconsistencies; there will be discontinuities and paradoxes. The presence of inconsistencies and paradoxes does not indicate failure, but clarifies the limits of our existence. Granted, the presence of inconsistencies does not necessarily validate a given set of beliefs, but the absence of such inconsistencies declares it incomplete. Paradox is not a guarantee that the development of such systems of belief had integrity, but if integrity runs its course paradox will be present. [5]
So where does the rubber meet the road? I grew up believing that not only should one’s beliefs be totally consistent, but both consistent and complete. (Roll over Kurt Gödel!) I spent years jumping through hoop after hoop explaining away inconsistent scriptural texts and other discontinuities. The greatest error any one of us can make, whether we are a theist, atheist, or agnostic, is to convince ourselves that our beliefs are complete. They may in fact be totally consistent, but prescriptively incomplete.
I have found a profound freedom in permitting inconsistency and incompleteness in my beliefs (as though they needed my permission to be there). I wallow in them. I soak up the knowledge that my existence prescribes such tensions, and look forward discovering more and more truth that will not be contained by my meager existence.
-Sam Augsburger
[1] A non-self-referential work avoids using itself to substantiate or prove itself.
[2] Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, 24.
[3] I Am a Strange Loop (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 147.
[4] See The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins for example.
[5] Kurt Gödel’s theorem is a dimensional phenomenon. For more on this topic read Phase 3 in Slices of God: Strange, Dimensional, and Fractal Perspectives on God and the Cosmos.
