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9. Wesley C. Salmon, Logic. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 101-102; P.F. Strawson, Introduction to
Logical Theory (Strand, England: Methuen, 1952), 16-19.
10. John Etchemendy, "Paradox," The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 558-9.
11. W.V. Quine, The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 3.
12. John van Heijenoort, "Logical Paradoxes," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5. (New York: Macmillan,
1967), 50-51. For a list of paradoxes and their attempted solutions, cf. Glenn W. Erickson and John A. Fossa,
Dictionary of Paradox, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998).
13. Robert S. Tragesser, "Antinomy," A Companion to Epistemology (London: Blackwell, 1992), 17-18. Van
Heijenoort describes an antinomy as the most extreme form of paradox in which two propositions are equivalent, yet
one is the negation of the other. Cf. "Logical Paradoxes," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 45. Quine wrote that an
antinomy is "a self-contradiction by accepted ways of reasoning." W.V.Quine, The Ways of Paradox, 5.
14. Immanuel Kant coined the term "antinomy" in his exploration of this and other logic problems. Critique of Pure
Reasons, trans. N. K. Smith, (New York: Macmillan: 1929).
15. Cf. Robert s. Tragesser, "Absurdity," A Companion to Epistemology (London: Blackwell, 1992), 8.
16. Besides the above, more analytic, discussion regarding paradoxes, more programmatic works that approach
paradox constructively from a Continental standpoint can be found in Howard P. Kainz, Paradox, Dialectic, and
System: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the Hegelian Problematic, (University Park: PA: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1988); Howard A. Slaatte, The Pertinence of the Paradox: The Dialectics of Reason-In-Existence,
(New York: Humanities Press, 1968). Mention should probably be made of their Continental roots. Beginning at
least with Kant's work on "antinomies," Continental philosophers have typically been more willing to confront the
limitations of human reason than have Anglo-American philosophy. Kant demonstrated that formal logic can be
used with different assumptions to derive exactly opposite conclusions. Radicalizing Kant's comparatively modest
investigation, Hegel concluded that Mind (Geist) itself was composed of such rational tensions, and he argued that
the development of Mind is best understood as a historical unfolding of dialectical themes into a higher synthesis or
reconciliation of opposites. The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J.B. Baillie (New York: Macmillan, 1931); Hegel's
Science of Logic, trans. W.H. Johnston and L.G. Struthers, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929). Though his
overall system was a significant departure from classical Christianity, more than any previous thinker in the Western
tradition, he took seriously the logical tensions that exist in human thought.
Though there are few doctrinaire Hegelians today, in one way or another, his insights into the often
paradoxical nature of human thought was quite influential. Marx, Bradley, Nietzsche, Dewey, Husserl, Heidegger,
Sartre, Ricoeur, Derrida, and Foucault all have made use of dialectical modes of thought and argument, for good and
for ill.
17. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam, 1974).
18. The theological usage of "mystery" has a long history in the classic tradition, but it differs from Paul's use of the
term mysterion, which referred to a truth that had been concealed for ages, but had come to be revealed in Christ
through the gospel. Cf. P.T. O'Brien, "Mystery" in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity, 1993), 621-3.
19. Etiene Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), 238; Alvin
Plantinga, "Divine Knowledge," In Christian Perspectives on Religious Knowledge, edited by C. Stephen Evans and
Merold Westphal, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993),56-7; Jonathan Edwards, "Notes on the Mind," In Scientific
and Philosophical Writings, edited by Wallace Anderson, (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1980), 341-2;