Complimentarity

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress." --Niels Bohr


SOLOMON once said,"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be made like unto him."

But in the aphorism directly following, oddly enough, he is found to be saying, "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be made wise in his own conceit." Proverbs 26:5

And what is anyone to think--or do, if one were minded to be taking advice of Solomon?

As to the first of the two, it serves to affirm the view (mythologically speaking) that anything given to the Devil is a charity not contemplated by Virtue. A person could save a lot of time and misdirected attention adhering closely to the teaching of Solomon in this, but only for so long as it would take to move on to that next proverb, where you are faced with perhaps the most mystifying paradox (or glaring contradiction) to be found in the entire text of the Hebrew Scriptures.


One can hardly, with respect to reverence, argue for the superior wisdom of the one aphorism over the other, to suggest that if there is anything that characterizes the nature of a fool it is that he is already "wise in his own conceit" and no answer could make him the moreso. On the other hand, if you were of a mind to follow after the wisdom of the second proverb--do you then not make of yourself a "fool" according to the wisdom of the first?

The dilemma would seem to be insurmountable, until upon closer contemplation of the phrase, "according to his folly" it begins to hint of a resolution.

When you don't answer a fool "according to his folly" this does not mean you are giving no answer at all. Rather, it allows for the answer that is not "according to folly."

What the fool in his conceit expects is for you to accept the terms of his foolhardy (negative, churlish, slanderous, born-in-a-barn) characterization as the terms for your answer. Take him up on that and it buries you in his folly, to the foolish, futile, onerous, distasteful task of vainly trying to dig your way out with the dull, shoddy tool he lends you--his terms. Though the temptation is great to return coarseness for coarseness; to be quick to deny, refute or return in kind any low, no class remark--this is precisely what is meant by "answering a fool according to his folly," and he's got you down in the muck right with him, just where he wants you.

Foolishness is obvious to any eye that beholds it, it is self-evident, just as any pile of trash needs no sign posted in it, saying "pile of trash." To waste your time and effort trying to expose the obvious is to insult the intelligence of anyone looking at it. They know what it is, and only wait to see if you know any better than he who has dumped it, not to be jumping in and thrashing about in it, all the time shouting, "This is not me! Not what I said! What a lie! Not what I meant!" Do that and you have answered the fool according to his folly, to be made like unto him.

As the first proverb stands forever to teach, so long as you are not answering according to the folly of the fool, you are not pausing from forward, positive motion, long enough to take hold of his mucky tools, and in this way only may you win, by driving the fool all the more to his folly, until it is revealed in its extremity, perhaps even to the fool, to be nothing else.

True to the second proverb, the fool is thus deprived of feeling wise in his own conceit, being denied the triumph of claiming your silence as victory for his folly. Indeed the second wise saying is here to show that there is always at least one answer you can give that is not according to the fool's folly, but strictly, magnificently, if even miraculously according to the wisdom of the wise, as it acknowledges, in compassion that even a fool deserves some sort of answer, though it need be nothing other than telling him this . . .

"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou me made like unto him."

To offer that, the first proverb for your answer resolves the seeming contradiction, as it satisfies the requirement of the second . . .

"Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be made wise in his own conceit."

He is given an answer completely in accord with his folly because just like the effect of his folly upon another, it has the effect on him of addressing no part of what he would have expected for his answer, or any comment. And the tit for tat could not be more soundly accomplished.

This is the revelation of the wisdom of Solomon in both proverbs, how they can seem to be perfectly in contradiction one to the other, and yet not be more highly complimentary.


"The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true."
--Niels Bohr

After the Flesh

Contrary to the knowlege or opinion of some, there is strong textual evidence in the New Testament that the Greek church at Corinth of the Pauline persuasion most surely did have, previous to publication of the synoptic gospels, some familiarity with that tradition in some form, either minimally written in letters or by oral transmission. This evidence is to be found in Paul's own letters . . .


Gal.1 [6] I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: --

Without question there was current during Paul's time some form of the Gospel, such "another gospel" as hated by Paul . . .

Gal.1 [8] But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

But the most telling evidence that Paul's so-called "gospel" had come into sudden competition (in Paul's bitter view) with another is to be found in his verbatim quotation of a phrase from that very gospel just then gaining currency (at II Cor. 1:17) and this is in context of a larger veiled reference to a doctrine he hated; a commandment of Christ from that Gospel about "swearing" as contained in a passage which now in our contemporary recension is preserved in the 5th chapter of Matthew and in the 5th of the Letter of James. As it appears in that Gospel . . .

[33] Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

[34] But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

[35] Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

[36] Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

[37] But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. --

Commenting upon this in II Corinthians "Paul" has this to say . . .

[17] When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea yea, and nay nay?

[18] But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay.

"As God is true" as any reasoning mind will recognize is an OATH. And most especially as used in context of Paul giving his "word" to say, "our word toward you was not yea and nay."

[19] For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. -- Somewhat further along in the 5th Chapter of the same Letter, Paul says . . .

[16] Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.

Paul is green with envy over the news he gets of "another gospel" having been received at the church in Corinth, and purporting to transmit the actual teachings of Jesus, "after the flesh." In his anger and distress, again in defiance of what he has heard from that "other gospel" Paul, in blasphemy, forswears himself, again in this 5th chapter, to say . . .

[23] Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth. --

He calls "God for a record" upon his soul. But this commandment of Jesus was a matter of settled doctrine in the 'church' at Jerusalem, in the Nazarene, so-called "Ebionite" synagogue of Jesus' brother "after the flesh," James the Just. From the 5th Chapter in the Epistle of James . . .

12] But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation. --

It can readily be argued that Paul was talking not about any early written transmission of the Nazarene Gospel but about this letter of James when in the same letter to the Corinthians in which he mentions "another gospel" he mentions also this . . .

2Cor.3 [1] Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?

It is most decidedly the case, as some insist, that Paul was teaching a Jesus, not "after the flesh" not after history, not after the Law, nor the oral tradition of sermons and miraculous acts of Jesus, but a Jesus of his own invention, "after the spirit" in which Jesus becomes the "Christ", an icon, a demigod, a risen Dionysus meet only to be a mere sacrificial offering of flesh and blood and wine and bread for the propitiation of sin. Pure paganism.

The Mystery Guest

Belief is only half of faith--if even so much as that. What if it so happens that I am the sort of ever-loving angel on earth that never has and never will cheat on his wife? Then I will be known as a "faithful" husband. Now what on earth has fidelity to one's wife or husband to do with "belief"?

Clearly, a faithful person is no mere "believer" but far, far more than that; this is the kind of intrepid soul who Kierkegaard has dubbed a "Knight of Faith," who is in short, a lover. Oh, yes! and at that, one who in truth actually can't believe the thing that he would like to accept or know to be true--really, really is so. Faith is not to 'believe' the unbelievable, but to skip that as impossible and just throw your arms around it.

This person is quite simply beside himself, and though he still can't believe it, he would so absolutely adore for his desire to be true that there is no reason or logic or evidence on earth that can prevent him from making his move as though it were all so, because just maybe it is. On the other hand, he could remain loveless, or which is the same, 'faithless'. He could shove his hands in his pockets, turn aside and go home, alone, because why take the chance on the answer being, "No"?

This "movement" described in K.'s existentialist opus, Fear & Trembling is at first an act of love, a "leap" over an abyss of unknowing toward the object of adoration. This devil-may-care act of reckless abandon is a rebellious embrace of the wildest irrationality, just because we are so gloriously free to do that!

And so faith, like any other kind of love, is at once a devotion, even a vow, a promise, a pledge, a prayer; a discipline of fidelity which turns out to have a thoroughly unanticipated pay-off: you feel the love you gave, leaping right back to you over the abyss in a vision of that Beautiful Knowing described by the Apostle as the Knowing of being Known.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

And here is where a Webster's definition so hits the conceptual nail right on the etymological noggin, in its definition of "belief" . . .

1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.

2: something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group.

3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence.

Like as not however, there's a lot of people who just don't really think of 'belief' as having much, if anything, to do with *evidence*. People tend to think that when you've got evidence, you've got knowledge, or something getting mighty close to 'proof'--so who needs belief?



Then you get people like me who think that *logic* has to do with knowing, not believing. I take logic as more than evidence, but for *proof*. If I see something as logical, I'm feeling like I'm knowing something, seeing something, trusting and feeling so totally confident about something that I'm shocked to see that this which fits my definition for knowledge only rises to what some say is "belief".

But maybe that's just me, as I know there are those who believe, or who have been taught in classes on Logic, to take it on faith, to trust the professor when he says that something can be logical without its being valid. I say they don't know what they're talking about, and that their education in Logic has been only to the half of it.

When you have what appears to be a logical proposition, based on some hackneyed syllogism that can be proven invalid, what you really have is proof that there is a lot more to govern the rules of logic than mere mathematical manipulation of the deductive apparatus of the syllogism. Except the syllogism is used in context of that which governs it; with all that *used to be taught* (hundreds of years ago) about Topics and Categories, you are like a person at the carnival, driving in circles in a Dodge-Em car called "Syllogism," while the real logicians are out zooming down a highly regulated straightaway in a 1936 Packard Speedster hitting on all Ten Categories--or i.e. cylinders: 10 categories;12 cylinders.