It strikes me that the way in which (what I might call) mainstream/ orthodox/ traditional Christian theology tries to explain its inbuilt contradictions, is by the assertion of contraries, in a paradoxical and mystical way.
The contradictions arise from monism - by which I mean that the starting assumption is of the unity of God who is assumed to be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. This means that everything is God, including all of creation, and every possible derivative and consequence of creation.
So that God is good, and God is also everything we regard as evil. And the world, which seems to be a mixture of good and evil, is actually (by assumption) absolutely unified. All that exists is one kind-of-thing - because that thing is God, because there is nothing else that it could be.
The appearance of the world seems to include many distinct people, animals, plants, minerals etc; but at root all must (by assumptions) come from God; and everything about them comes from God. All all apparent differentness is ultimately one.
For Christians there must be freedom, agency, autonomy; and therefore life unrolls unpredictably. And yet, everything that seems independent is actually just "a thought in the mind of God" (who is time-less), and everything that happens is foreknown to God - because for God there is no time; and all that was, is, and shall-be is "simultaneous".
How does mainstream Christian theology explain such contradictions? Ultimately it does not explain them - ultimately, these contradictions are asserted in sequence, one after another, and both sides of the contradiction are then said to be true.
For instance: 1: We are creatures wholly of-God - everything of us was made, from nothing, by God. 2: We are also free agents, capable of genuine choice, from our-selves. Both at once, 1&2... Q: But how exactly? A: Just Because.
Two contradictory statements are made, one after the other, and asserted both necessarily to be true - and that is the (mystical) explanation of the contradiction.
Therefore, when an enquirer digs deep into Christian theology to ask how it fits-together; he meets with mysticism: and that mysticism entails the sequential assertion of contraries as simultaneous truths. Christian mysticism is the realization that all apparent contradictions are compatible within the unity of Omni-God.
For mainstream/ orthodox/ traditional Christian theology; contradictions are fundamental and unavoidable - therefore paradoxical mysticism is necessarily the bottom-line "explanation" when it comes to reconciling The World with Ultimate Reality.
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The question for each Christian is whether or not he is happy with having his religion rooted in paradoxical mysticism?
It seems that in the past, in many times and places, people were happy with a religion rooted in contradictions.
However, I am not happy with such a situation here-and-now; and indeed regard it as a fundamental and fatally-weakening flaw...
Which is why I have needed to develop a qualitatively distinct explanation for Christianity, rooted in different primary assumptions regarding the nature of God and reality.
