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Perhaps the first Christian to make concurrences in Christian theology a major theme in
his writing was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) who argued that God is a "coincidence of
opposites." Being infinite, God transcends and contains within himself a set of intellectual
concurrences or contrasts. He is both the greatest being (maximum) and yet he is fully present at
the smallest level (minimum). In him maximum and minimum are one. Since human reason
must be governed by the LONC (and other rules), Nicholas asserted that human reason is
confounded by this God. As a result, Nicholas believed we can have no more than an
"approximate" (though genuine) knowledge of God.
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Luther also took concurrences in Christian thought seriously. Influenced by the
nominalism of his day, Luther's reformational protest can be seen as a prioritizing of God's
words over the philosophical speculations of the middle ages.
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Consequently, he seemed to
relish making paradoxical statements that would scandalize human reason. Much of his theology
consists of a rich juxtaposition of concurrences: God as hidden and revealed, the believer as
simultaneously sinner and saint, and the relations of the law and the gospel and the letter and the
Spirit; such that critics have disparaged his work as containing logical contradictions.
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This
glorying in concurrence is seen most powerfully in his "theology of the cross" where Luther
claimed God reveals himself in all his hiddenness: the majestic Son of God slain in weakness
and humility, "omnipotent in impotence."
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His language was sometimes guilty of
overstatement. But Luther reveled in such apparent "contradiction" because he wished to
magnify the wisdom of God above the mind of humans; he reckoned the Word of God a higher
standard than the rules of logic, and faith in God's word a higher human activity than reason.
Calvin wrote often of the limitations of human reason when considering God and his