Wittgenstein on Heraclitus

“What we do is to bring words back from thier metaphysical to their normal use in language.  The man wh0 said that one cannot step twice into the same river, uttered a falsehood.  One can step twice into the same river.”

We spent nearly an hour in class the other day arguing over whether Wittgenstein was right to say this of Heraclitus.

Paradoxes and Christian Faith: an apologetic concern

Just back from the weekend’s Greer-Heard Conference, I’d like to say a few things about a paper given there by my friend Dr. David Bertch. David is a committed Christian and a clear thinker whom I respect greatly. His paper, “The Future of Atheism Continually Confounded by the Paradoxes of the Faith,” was on paradoxes and how we should embrace them, or at least not fear them. Handouts were not available, so I’m going by memory and notes I took (though he invited anyone interested in a copy to email him [see link above]). If I’m guilty of misrepresenting his position, I deeply apologize.

After an interesting historical survey of thinkers (especially philosophers) and the paradoxes they have embraced, David turned to the relationship between Christian faith and paradoxes. He named two examples of such paradoxes: the Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ. Having earlier set up a distinction between logical paradoxes (I suppose he had in mind such things as Zeno’s paradoxes of motion) and other paradoxes (there was unfortunately no title given to this second category), such as the two named examples, David explained that Christians should not be troubled by the latter. There was no discussion of the first category there, so we’ll limit discussion here to the latter, as well.

A Primer on Aristotelian Logic